Her bloodwork wasn’t human?
Before I could process the terrifying weight of those words, the first guard lunged at me, swinging his heavy steel baton toward my temple. I ducked beneath the swing, using the momentum to drive my shoulder into his midsection. We crashed into the metal tray of the cremation chamber.
I grabbed his wrist, slamming it against the iron edge until he dropped the baton. I scooped it up and spun around just in time to block a strike from the second guard. The metallic clang echoed like a gunshot in the confined space.
I kicked the second guard squarely in the groin, sending him to his knees, but the first guard grabbed me from behind, locking his arms around my throat in a chokehold. The air left my lungs. The room began to spin.
Through the blurring vision, I looked at the coffin.
Clara’s hand—her pale, beautiful hand—suddenly reached out from beneath the white dress. Her fingernails were completely black, stained with a dark, oily residue. She clawed at the velvet lining of the casket, tearing the fabric with a strength that didn’t belong to a dying woman.
“Daniel…” her voice was clearer now, but it sounded distorted, layered, as if two people were speaking in unison.
With a surge of adrenaline, I threw my weight backward, slamming the guard holding me against the hot exterior wall of the cremation furnace. He screamed as the heat scorched through his uniform, loosening his grip. I broke free, spun around, and delivered a brutal elbow to his jaw, knocking him unconscious.
I turned to the control panel, raised the steel baton, and smashed the glass casing over the emergency manual override. I grabbed the heavy red lever and pulled it down with all my might.
A high-pitched shriek pierced the room as the natural gas lines bled out. The roaring flames behind the iron doors instantly hissed and died, plunging the rear of the chamber into a dark, smoldering silence.
“You’ve ruined everything,” Helena whispered, her face completely pale. She wasn’t angry anymore. She looked paralyzed with terror. She looked at the door, then at the window. The sky outside was turning a deep, bloody orange. The sun was touching the horizon.
“Marcus,” she said, her voice shaking. “Get the car. We have to leave. Now.”
“What about Clara?” Marcus groaned, pulling himself up using a chair.
“She’s not Clara anymore,” Helena said, her voice hollow. “The incubation is complete. Look at her.”
The Awakening
I rushed back to the coffin, dropping the baton.
Clara was sitting up.
The movement was jerky, unnatural, like a marionette being pulled by invisible, clumsy strings. Her head tilted to the side at an impossible angle, a sickening pop echoing from her neck. Her eyes, which had always been a warm, vibrant green, were gone.
In their place were pupils so dilated that her eyes appeared entirely black, reflecting the dim chapel lights like pools of obsidian.
“Clara?” I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs. I reached out a trembling hand, touching her shoulder.
She turned her black eyes toward me. The expression on her face wasn’t one of pain, or fear, or love. It was a look of profound, ancient hunger.
Her jaw opened—wider than any human jaw should be able to open—and a thick, black fluid began to spill from the corners of her mouth, dripping onto the pristine white baby-shower dress.
“Daniel…” she said, but the voice didn’t come from her vocal cords. It seemed to resonate from deep within her swollen abdomen.
The stomach didn’t just shift now. It was thrashing. The shape of a tiny, malformed hand pressed against the skin of her belly from the inside, stretching the flesh so thin I could see the blue and black veins pulsing violently beneath.
Dr. Crane let out a terrified yelp, turned on his heel, and sprinted out the side exit of the crematorium, abandoning Helena and Marcus.
Helena didn’t try to stop him. She backed away toward the main doors, her eyes locked on Clara’s stomach. “The Vale lineage was supposed to contain it,” she muttered to herself, her mind seemingly fracturing under the pressure. “We suppressed the gene for three generations. How did she trigger it? What did you give her, Daniel?”
“I didn’t give her anything!” I yelled, tears of horror streaming down my face as I looked at the monstrous transformation of the woman I loved. “We just wanted a family!”
“A family?” Helena laughed, a hysterical, sharp sound. “You brought a god into a mechanic’s garage, boy. And now, it wants to be born.”
Suddenly, Clara’s body convulsed. She let out a sound that was half-scream, half-shriek—a sound so primal it tore at the eardrums. She gripped the edges of the wooden coffin, and with a terrifying display of strength, shattered the thick oak panels with her bare hands. Wood splinters flew across the room.
She fell out of the casket, landing on her hands and knees on the cold tile floor.
The black fluid was pouring out of her now, pooling around her knees. And within that pool of black liquid, something else was moving. Tiny, pale, translucent tendrils began to emerge from the hem of her dress, brushing against the floor like the legs of a centipede.
Marcus, despite his broken kneecap, managed to drag himself to the exit. He and Helena threw open the heavy oak doors, rushing out into the corridor, slamming the doors shut behind them.
I heard the heavy electronic lock click into place from the outside.
They had locked me in with her.
Trapped with the Truth
The room was completely silent now, save for the heavy, wet breathing of the creature that wore my wife’s flesh. The sun had finally dipped below the horizon, and through the high stained-glass windows, the chapel was plunged into a deep, twilight shadow.
Clara—or whatever was inside her—slowly rose to her feet.
Her spine bent backward in a horrific arch, her joints cracking in rapid succession. The white dress was completely ruined, soaked in black fluid and stained with crimson blood where her abdomen was beginning to tear open.
She took a step toward me. Then another.
