WARNING: M RATED

  Chapter - 04

  She hadn't blinked in minutes.

  The Mouth sat across from her, his silhouette flickering in the candlelit dark like it wasn’t anchored to this world. Behind him, the stone walls pulsed, breathing—if not literally, then in her head. Isa wasn't sure anymore where thoughts ended and hallucinations began.

  Her fingers trembled. She touched her lips, remembering the way Rafa used to brush them absentmindedly when they were kids. Back when the world still made sense. Back when innocence wasn't a cage to be ripped apart.

  Now? Everything was raw. Flesh. Hunger. Rot. Love.

  The Mouth’s voice broke through her spiral—“You still think of him.”

  Not a question.

  She didn’t answer.

  Earlier that day, they’d walked miles of cracked terrain, through burned trees and abandoned suburbs where bones were more common than furniture. The Mouth never tired. Isa, on the other hand, stumbled more with each step, dragged forward by some force she didn’t understand—something like faith, or doom, or both.

  She asked, “Where are we going?”

  The Mouth smiled with his teeth but not his eyes.

  “To where you started.”

  That night, inside the husk of an old church, she couldn’t sleep.

  She stared at the stained-gss windows—shattered angels and bleeding saints—her body buzzing with something she didn’t want to name. Her hand slid between her thighs like it had so many nights before, chasing something, someone, she missed.

  And Rafa’s face fshed behind her eyes.

  Not him now—but him when they were safe. When he read poetry in bed and doodled little devils in the margins of textbooks. When he kissed her like she was home.

  A soft mewl escaped her lips as she plunged two fingers knuckle-deep into her dripping cunt, the wet squelch of her arousal obscenely loud in the cavernous silence of the church. Each thrust of her fingers was a memory of Rafa's hands on her body, of his touch igniting fires beneath her skin.

  The Mouth didn’t speak.

  He watched.

  “You’re in love with the corpse of a memory,” he said ter.

  She pulled a threadbare sheet over herself, shame and defiance burning in her chest. “He’s not dead.”

  The Mouth stepped closer.

  “He’s not alive either.”

  And then—visions.

  A hand on her chest. Not the Mouth’s. Rafa’s. Or was it her father’s? Her brother’s?

  Voices—whispers yered over each other in a hundred nguages she didn’t know but still understood. They all said the same thing:

  “You were never pure.”

  “You let him in.”

  “You liked it.”

  The Mouth pced his hand on her shoulder.

  Suddenly, she was back in their old apartment. The kitchen. The sink dripping. Rafa yelling from the other room about forgotten groceries.

  Normal.

  But the walls bled.

  And the floor pulsed like a heartbeat.

  And when she turned around, it wasn’t Rafa anymore—it was a version of him, twisted, eyeless, moaning her name with a mouth full of dirt and worms.

  She screamed.

  Back in the church, she blinked. Sweating. Shaking.

  The Mouth smiled gently, almost like a parent comforting a child mid-nightmare.

  “You’re becoming.”

  They walked until the bones beneath the earth whispered.

  Isa didn’t ask where they were. She knew it was sacred—or desecrated. In this world, they were the same thing now.

  The Mouth led her into a cave carved by time and screams. Symbols scorched into the stone. Not letters. Wounds. And every one of them bled when the candlelight passed over.

  “The Flesh is not skin,” he told her. “It’s not even your body. It’s what you surrender to. What eats you alive and spits you back out different.”

  She didn’t speak. Her throat ached.

  He knelt beside a shallow pool of bck water and pulled out a rotted book wrapped in veins.

  “Before the bombs, before your birth, before him,” he said, “they knew. The world is made of Flesh. The lie is pretending we are separate.”

  Isa dreamed of cities built from skin.

  Tall towers of meat pulsing under cloudy skies. People without faces. Screaming mouths sewn open. Arms twisted into bridges.

  She saw herself there—naked, floating, radiant.

  The prophet.

  Not because she wanted it.

  Because there was no one else left.

  She woke up screaming. The Mouth was already watching her.

  “You saw it,” he said. “You felt it.”

  “I don’t want this,” she whispered.

  “But it wants you.”

  That night, he showed her.

  Not with hands. With visions.

  She knelt as he chanted in a nguage that hurt to hear. Her eyes rolled back. Her spine arched. Her skin burned.

  She saw Rafa. Strapped down. Eyes wide. Crying. Not for help—but for her.

  He mouthed her name. “Please.”

  But her body didn’t move. She couldn’t touch him.

  Instead, she touched herself.

  And Rafa faded.

  And the Mouth said, “That’s it. Now you understand.”

  Later, she sat alone, covered in oil, shaking.

  Was this what the world was always becoming?

  A church of decay?

  A kingdom of the grotesque?

  Was she the key?

  She whispered to no one, “What if I just want to be human again?”

  But the walls only ughed.

  And in the shadows behind her, Flesh shifted.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  Growing.

  The cave pulsed like a womb.

  Isa stood at the center of it—naked, slick with sweat and oil and blood not all her own. Around her, the followers knelt, some moaning in trance, others writhing together, flesh indistinguishable. The Mouth hovered behind her, chanting in a voice that echoed inside bone.

  She didn’t flinch when he pressed the knife to her chest.

  Her breast squished and deformed around the knife's cruel bite.

  This was the final rite.

  This was becoming.

  “No,” she said. Calm. Cold.

  The Mouth blinked. Confused. Then furious.

  “You are the vessel!”

  Isa smiled.

  “Then I choose what I carry.”

  The morning before the bombs.

  She and Rafa in the kitchen. Pancakes. Radio static. A knock at the window—military trucks rolling through the suburbs.

  He kissed her temple and said, “The world’s about to change. But we’ll be okay.”

  They weren’t.

  Back in the cave, Isa wrenched the knife from her breast with a sickening squelch, a gush of blood arcing through the air as the bde tore free.

  She stared at the crimson liquid dripping down her front, her eyes glinting with a manic fervor. Pointed it at him.

  The followers gasped.

  The knife hovered, poised to plunge into his chest, as blood dripped steadily from its bde and Isa's mangled breast.

  “You think Flesh is power?” she asked. “It’s rot. It’s madness. It’s fear.”

  He lunged.

  She cut.

  His blood sprayed the altar.

  The orgy stopped. Moans turned to screams. His body writhed—twisting, melting, becoming something other.

  From his skin burst mouths. From his back, wings made of bone and sinew.

  He ughed.

  The cave colpsed into darkness.

  Followers crawled over each other, trying to escape, some sobbing, others ughing, possessed by whatever nightmare the Mouth had summoned.

  Isa stood alone at the center. The altar cracked beneath her feet. The visions returned—stronger, hungrier.

  She saw Rafa.

  Dead?

  Alive?

  Calling her name from the void.

  The Mouth—now a thing of many limbs and tongues—reached for her.

  “Be with me.”

  She kissed his lips.

  Then shoved the bde through his throat.

  He howled—not in pain, but in ecstasy.

  As he fell, the cave trembled. Flesh peeled from the walls. The cult screamed.

  And then silence.

  Later, she wandered the wastend, alone.

  Blood dried on her thighs. Ash clung to her lips. Her hand trembled, but her spine stayed straight.

  She found a cracked mirror in the ruins.

  Looked at herself.

  Smiled.

  “We are the flesh,” she whispered. “But I am the fire.”

  The sky split open.

  And the world was reborn in screams.

  The wind tasted like metal.

  Isa walked barefoot through the ruins of a city that no longer remembered its name. Her body ached—not from wounds, but from absence. Of time. Of meaning. Of him.

  She found the hospital like a ghost retracing its death.

  The walls were overgrown with vines that bled when touched. Machines hummed with forgotten electricity. And in the center of the room, under the soft blue glow of a half-dead monitor—Rafa.

  Still alive. Still unmoving.

  Eyes shut. Breathing shallow.

  A relic of a life that shattered.

  She sank beside the bed, her fingers brushing his skin—warm, fragile, untouched by everything the world had become.

  His chest rose.

  Fell.

  And in her mind, he looked at her.

  “Isa?” he whispered, somewhere beyond the veil.

  She kissed his knuckles. His colrbone. The space between his ribs.

  Each touch a memory.

  Each breath a resurrection.

  Slowly, she peeled the gown up his body, revealing the bandages and bruises that mapped the journey of his injuries.

  She paused for a moment, her gaze lingering on the rise and fall of his chest, the only sign that he was still with her in this world.

  Isa's own fingers drifted to the buttons of her blouse, her breath growing shallow as she began to undress. One by one, she popped the buttons free, letting the fabric fall open to the cool air of the hospital room.

  They were not like what Rafa remembered, the dark nubs of her nipples—her creamy swells.

  No longer.

  Now mangled and twisted—like an old and dried up timber.

  But at the same time. Like a beautiful carved out flower.

  She shrugged the blouse from her shoulders, letting it slip to the floor with a soft whisper. Her skirt followed, pooling around her ankles as she stepped out of it.

  Hooking her thumbs into the waistband of her panties, Isa shimmied them down her hips, stepping out of them to stand fully nude before Rafa's prone form.

  She climbed into the bed beside him. Not to possess—but to remember. To feel.

  Her skin against his—warmth meeting silence.

  She leaned in close, her lips brushing against his ear as she whispered, "I'm here, Rafa. I'm here, and I'm not letting you go again."

  Her lips met his in a soft, tender kiss. It was a kiss of comfort, of soce, of a love that had weathered the darkest of storms and emerged stronger on the other side. It was a kiss that spoke of forgiveness, of understanding, of a bond that could never be broken.

  She paused for a moment, her heart fluttering in her chest as she considered the intimate act she was about to perform, the line she was about to cross.

  But they had already crossed so many lines, hadn't they? In the face of everything they had endured, what was one more transgression? And if it meant bringing Rafa back to her, back to the world of the living, then I was willing to do whatever it took. With a deep, shuddering breath, Isa wrapped her fingers around Rafa's fccid cock, feeling the weight of it in her palm.Emboldened, Isa leaned down, her hair falling around them like a curtain, shielding their intimate act from the prying eyes of the world outside. She pnted a soft, reverent kiss on the tip, her lips brushing against the delicate skin, feeling it pulse faintly beneath her touch.

  Isa took Rafa's cock into her mouth, her lips stretching to accommodate the girth. She could taste the faint, musky essence of his skin, the salt of his flesh.She began to suck, her tongue swirling around the head, ving the sensitive underside. Slowly, she took more of him into her mouth, her lips sealing around his shaft, creating a tight, wet heat.

  Below her, Isa could feel Rafa's body beginning to respond, the flesh of his cock starting to swell and stiffen. It was a slow process, his injuries making it difficult for him to achieve a full erection, but each slight twitch, each faint throb, sent a bolt of triumph through her. Isa doubled her efforts, determined to coax him to full arousal. She bobbed her head up and down, taking him deeper into her throat with each descent. Her hand worked in tandem with her mouth, stroking what her lips couldn't reach. Soft, guttural sounds began to spill from Rafa's mouth, his breathing growing more bored as pleasure coursed through his battered body. Isa could feel the heat of his skin rising, could see the flush of arousal spreading across his chest. As she worked, Isa swore she could feel Rafa's heart beating faster, his pulse quickening. His hands twitched, his fingers curling as if reaching for her. And though he didn't open his eyes, though he didn't fully wake, Isa knew that he could feel her, could sense her presence. Her hand pumped his shaft in long, slow strokes, squeezing and caressing the sensitive flesh. She could feel it throbbing in her grip, growing harder with each passing second.

  Isa's other hand drifted lower, gently cupping and kneading Rafa's balls. They tightened and drew up closer to his body as his arousal mounted, the skin of his scrotum growing taut. Below her, Rafa began to make soft, mewling sounds, his head turning restlessly against the pillow. His hips lifted slightly, a instinctive response to the pleasure radiating from his groin. Sensing he was close, Isa doubled her efforts, sucking harder and faster, her tongue swirling around the sensitive gns. She could feel the telltale pulsing, the swelling of his shaft as he neared his peak.

  Suddenly, Rafa's body went rigid, his back arching off the bed as a guttural moan tore from his throat. "Isa!" he cried, his voice ragged with need and desperation. That was all the encouragement Isa needed. With a final, hard suck, she felt Rafa's cock erupt in her mouth, the first hot, salty spurts of his cum hitting the back of her throat.

  She swallowed greedily, relishing each pulse and throb as he emptied himself into her eager mouth.

  "Rafa, I...I'm so sorry," she whispered, her voice catching. "In the cave...The Mouth...I never meant to hurt you. I just wanted to feel close to you, to have a piece of you back."

  She rocked gently against him, feeling his softened cock nestle between her slick folds. "Please forgive me," she breathed, beginning to grind slowly against him. Rafa's hands, still trembling slightly, came up to rest on her hips. He couldn't speak, but he squeezed her hips lightly, a gesture of forgiveness and acceptance. Isa started to move more purposefully, rising and lowering herself on his shaft. She was wet and ready, her juices coating his flesh, easing the way.

  Their moans began to fill the room, a symphony of shared pleasure and reconnection. Isa's — gashed and ruined — breasts bounced gently as she rode him, the dark peaks flushed and stiff. It didn't take long before Isa felt the familiar coiling heat building low in her belly. She threw her head back, crying out Rafa's name as her climax crashed over her, her walls clenching around his partially erect cock.

  Beneath her, Rafa's body shuddered, a strangled groan escaping his lips as he followed her over the edge. Even in his weakened state, even with his injuries, he found completion within her. They clung to each other as their shared orgasm subsided, their bodies slick with sweat and exertion. In the afterglow, Isa y boneless atop Rafa, her head resting on his chest, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart. "We'll get through this," she murmured, hope and determination ringing in her voice. "Together. Always together." She feels his seed, a promise of new life, a hope for tomorrow. Their love, eternal and unbreakable, will endure.

  Outside, the sky cracked open.

  And from it, no angels descended—only silence.

  Peaceful. Terrifying.

  Real.

  We are the flesh.

  But even flesh remembers what it loved.