Death. What happens after it? What lies beneath the surface?
Poor Arielle Daniels stumbled through dangerous hoops to figure this out. She wakes in a new place--the Void--and discovers that what waits after death are layers, dimensions, and sadly...
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"What the fuck was that?"
His skin burned. It was as if a lion had lunged onto him and scraped its claws down his back, ripping through his T-shirt, piercing through his flesh like it was melted butter. The wound singed, as if said lion's claws were tipped in poison or had drizzled lava into his spine.
"What? What is it?" He couldn't see Kylie—he'd long since abandoned the camera on the ground, after nearly freezing to death—but sensed her rush up to him. Her sweet scent, usually so reassuring, so tantalizing, did nothing to assuage his agony.
"I... something... I got scratched!" He tried to touch the area where he'd felt the scrapes, but he couldn't reach. "Can you... grab your phone, or my phone, and check? It fucking hurts." He hissed as the burning sensation worsened and he worried that blood started to gush from the area.
"Shit." Kylie shuffled about, and next Benny knew, she'd whipped out her cell and flicked on the flashlight. She shimmied behind him, and before she could even lift his shirt, she gasped. "Holy shit, Benny. Holy shit."
"What? How bad is it?" Benny had already imagined the worse, based on how intense the pain was; yet nothing in the world prepared him for what was to come.
"Your shirt... it's ruined." She ran her fingertips down the slashes, causing Benny to wince, to grit his teeth, to fight the suffering. Under other circumstances, he'd be licking his lips and basking in her touch, eager for her to remove his shirt, to tickle her nails along his skin, to place precious kisses from the base of his neck to his waist. But at that moment, the slightest brush of her finger was awful.
"I'm gonna need more details, Kylie," he said, hands tightening into fists as she gently dragged the fabric of his shirt up.
"It... they... whatever did this got deep. It's... ugh, it's gnarly, man." Benny could almost feel the light on his skin as Kylie inspected the gash. "It ripped through your shirt, and you're... bleeding. Pretty badly, actually. This is... fuck." She sauntered away from him and fumbled around in search of his bag. "Did you bring any first aid shit? I need to clean that, fast."
As the clothing fell over his skin once more, he grimaced. The simplest touch sent agonizing jolts up and down his spine. "Um, somewhere..." He mumbled, too preoccupied with the stinging and the stickiness of the blood as it slithered under the waistband of his jeans. "How... how many marks?"
"Huh?" Kylie's chin lifted, and she shined the phone's flashlight on her face. "How many marks? What do you mean?"
Benny gulped. It might have seemed insignificant to her, but to him, it was an important detail. Scratches were often a demonic sign, and their number was key. "How many scratches are on me? I'm... it hurts too much for me to check, and I can't touch them..."
Kylie's silhouette cropped out for a moment as she lowered the light and rummaged through the bag. "Aha!" She emerged victorious, with some rubbing alcohol and a roll of toilet paper. "This... will have to do." She meandered over to Benny and pulled the shirt up again, prompting him to hiss at her. "Whoa, sorry, hun."
