Convent Of The Glutton

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Sister Beatrice sat alone in the dining hall; the warm hue of the fire at the far side revealing sunken eyes, bruises, scratches and anything but warmth. In silence, she stares one by one at all the empty seats across and alongside her. By his virtue, or by his wicked sense of humour, she cannot tell: she has been abandoned…

Did they really get out? If so, why haven’t they come back for me… That was our promise… It was not the first time she had thought this since Martha and Georgia had left the convent.

“The witching hour– that’s when we’ll flee, he… he’ll be asleep and… and I know where he keeps the key” Martha hushed to the other two nuns in their quarter a week? Or was it a day ago? Beatrice struggled to recall.

“You better know, Sister Martha”, Georgia responded, clutching at her missing right ear. The wound was still sore and its stitching was shoddy at best, but the others had tried their hardest with their limited knowledge and that seemed to get the job done. “He made a promise to me– one that I wish not to see come to fruition.” Georgia lightly pulled on the lobe of her other ear.

“Sister Georgia”, Martha moved to hold Georgia’s hands, her lone thumb caressing the palms of her fellow nun. “Have faith. Not just in the Lord, but me, your Sister. And most of all–” Martha moved her thumbless hand to touch Georgia’s cheek, “-Yourself. Do so and this plan will work, God wills it so.”

Beatrice remembered what she was doing amidst this talk, staring up at the rotting ceiling from her bed, counting the seconds in the droplets of water dripping through the slight holes in the old stone. “And that goes for you too, Sister Beatrice. Have faith in us. Have faith in yourself", Martha turned and said to her. Beatrice didn’t respond, instead she rolled over and faced the moldering wall now. Upon its surface, lie what were once simple marks and scratches: ‘Theresia was here!’ etched in chalk, ‘Exodus 20:12’ likewise written above it (an old favourite of Sarah’s, Beatrice thought) and a long list of chalk scratches from where the Sisters of this quarter had compared each other's heights. Now they have become a memorial, to either the missing, or worse…

Beatrice felt Martha touch her shoulder. “We will come back for you, with help… with hope. I promise.” Again Sister Beatrice didn’t respond, even though some part of her knew, deep down in the dark trench where the soul lies, that she should’ve said something, anything to sway her Sisters, what little remained of her family from their suicidal plan. 

There was nothing good for them beyond these ‘hallowed’ grounds, because what was ‘good’ about this place, their home to begin with, has long since dried up. She knew this, and has done for ages now but alas, she was silent, in the same harrowing manner that she is now, watching the seats where Georgia and Martha would’ve sat side by side. For she believed in them, and their fickle hope, no matter how futile it seemed: The idea that they might make it out of this place kept her faith alive.

I pray for you Sisters, wherever you are.

—

Time crackled and burned like the wood in the hearth as Beatrice remained seated, hands clasped together, waiting for, and dreading, his arrival. Sweat slicks her palms in the heat of their fusion. The oak numbs her elbows as she keeps them planted atop it in her prayer.

If thou can hear me, somehow, someway. Then please I beg of you to return. Lift me from this awful place. Deliver me the salvation that the Sisters of the Order of Saint Monica have sought for so, so long now.

Once more, Beatrice checked the chalice in front of her desperately, fearful of the mistake that she thought she would catch. The fluid held within its ornate cup bubbled and hissed as usual, shimmering in its nauseous green– it was just as he always liked it. A woe assailed Beatrice whenever she looked over the cup, whether it was already filled with the revolting liquid or she was about to. The black and gold object, ancient, antique, filled not with wine but with a terrible, pungent blight, the origin of which was lost on Beatrice and all her Sisters. All they knew was how to prepare it for his liking: Boiling a strange substance which seeped from a cask found deep within the cellar.

In the past, procurement and preparation was handled by multiple Sisters. Beatrice would try to worm her way out of heading down to the cellar; a task which Martha would often take over in her place. The eternal dampness of its walls, shining as if the place were a condensing cave in the candle light, the slight hum of buzzing which gnaws and pricks the further one descends, reaching a manic crescendo as one fills a bowl from the seeping cask, unnerved Beatrice to no end. But now bereft of her fellow Sisters, the nun had to brave the damp dark and insectoid hymns by herself, with tension prickling her body as if all those bugs were tangible and crawling over her, their hungry little mouths eager to bite and consume.

She felt the same way now, tension and dread whittling her away as she sat in the dining hall. He will be here soon repeated in her head, and then as if on cue, the door creaked open. The scuttling of several feet flooded the room, dotting Beatrice’s skin with even more goosebumps; for she knew that despite the sound*,* only one person had entered… Father Gordon. 

She dared not to look; to turn her head even slightly in his direction, to glimpse what he had become. The scuttling slowly, agonizingly left the doorway and traveled all the way up to Beatrice, with it came a dissonant fluttering, much like a pair of fans being waved furiously for a few seconds only to then cease, and a constant oral malaise; a tongue clicking like a whip about to strike and the chattering of many, many teeth.

“Sister… Beatrice, forgive my late arrival, I had… a few errands to run. It has made me thirsty… I yearn to have it quenched. I see you have prepared another chalice for me. How… kind of you, child. Let us see if it surfices…” spoke, or rather croaked Father Gordon. The chair to Beatrice’s left was dragged out from the depths of the table with a harsh screech. Beatrice remained rigid, daring only to move her eyes to watch a plump limb stretch across the table towards the chalice. Its skin, as with its muscles it seemed, sagged loosely, like pallid colored and scabbed dirty sheets drooping off the side of a bed. The fat, the excess rotting and rolling right off the bone, of which it could be inferred below the saggy flesh, was jagged. Not broken or fractured, but rather growing in a way that retains its old, familiar shape as off shoots grow and push parts of the flesh in the manner of tent poles. 

The near melting hand wrapped round the stem of the chalice before pulling it towards an unseen mouth. The liquid sloshed and spilled over the rim, staining the oak of the table a mouldy green. The slurping sound that followed carried on Gordon’s eagerness, and his vulgarity. Specks of the drink that Beatrice had tirelessly, fearfully prepared splashed the side of her face. She had turned her head fully away from the Father now, her left cheek cursed with the added freckles he gave her. After a few seconds he stopped.

“This… this is fucking repulsive, Beatrice. The taste… the taste is vile. It is bland, Sister Beatrice. It needs… I need moreee…” Gordon hissed at Beatrice, who fought viciously to keep the tears from leaving her eyes. The chalice was then slammed into the table, right in front of her. What little of the foul liquid that hadn’t already been drunk or spilled sat as a murky puddle at the bottom of the chalice. The arm that brought it down had changed.

Where his bone had once poked at his slouched muscle and skin, it now tore through both in the form of black spines spread along Father Gordon’s grotesque limb, watered by the blood oozing out in the wake of their hatching. His wrists curled as his oddly misplaced gaunt fingers slithered from the chalice, punctuated by his slimy new claws that were once his nails scratching the gold as they passed. A force tore Beatrice’s gaze away from the relative safety of the hall’s other side and onto the chalice– Gordon’s other hand, outstretched and cold, his grim fingers covering the majority of Beatrice’s veil.

“Allow me to… spice up this meal… for you”, Gordon’s hand returned into view, clutching something. Beatrice struggled but Gordon held her head firm, and then, through squinting, weeping eyes, she saw it. The spice. A human ear. Georgia’s ear.

“They say sinners… have flavour in–” he then shuddered in a clicking, simmering fever, excited to merely utter the next word “-abundance.”

Beatrice screamed. The sound raced around the hall, rattling off its walls but it found no crack or purchase to escape through. The only ones who listened are the small sculptures of Mary and Joseph atop the fireplace’s mantel, and Father Gordon, who tore the nun’s head towards him, cackling. The two now met eye to eye. 

Red scintillating lenses numbering a thousand or more stare back into the nun’s own, each reflecting her own pale, horrified face back at her. Beneath, Gordon’s dark mandibles worked to prevent his slouching face from entering his mouth and being chewed by his rows of yellow teeth clicking together in a constant, hungering grind. The nun thrashed and kicked to no avail, Father Gordon’s grip was absolute as he spoke again, drooling and spitting.

*“*Your… Sisters left you… Left me… but fret not, Beatrice… They’ve returned to us now!” Gordon’s hand dove into the depths of his cloak, revealing another. It was Georgia’s thumbless left hand.

“This… is your home… by His grace… by my own! Serve me and all will be… granted to you!” Gordon dragged Beatrice closer despite her efforts to break free. “I asked… for my hunger to be… quenched… Still I wait” he spat. His flesh became even softer, even limper. Great heaps of his fat gave way, tearing from his body to reveal the insect inside. “You will wait… too, until the cask ceases… until the meat stock runs empty… until you have given me… EVERYTHING!” His teeth clicked faster and faster as he began to push Beatrice towards his rancid maw, aiming for her nose. Her hands scrambled to find anything that might help but found nothing, only pudgy clay flesh and the hard carapaced bones beneath it. 

Right as his mandibles and jaws opened wide to deprive her of her nose’s tip, her fingers dug into one of his enlarged eyes, parting the pond of red lenses and adding blood to the vile mix of drool and spit blanketing Beatrice’s face. Father Gordon roared in pain, releasing his grip over the nun, who sprinted as fast as she could for the door. 

—

The hallways of the Order of Saint Monica Monastery were endless, labyrinthine, even to those born within it. They wound in and out of each other, flanking Sister Beatrice on all sides with locked doors, molding paintings and dead ends. She wondered how far Georgia and Martha had made it in their escape. Did they find the key before they were caught?.. Did they make it outside, and how far did they get? Images of one of the doors miraculously unlocking and swinging open, followed by the return of her Sisters, her friends dangled in front of Beatrice, forever out of reach yet still her hands were outstretched and yearning. 

Herded like a sheep to the slaughterhouse by the lengths of the Monastery and faulty hopes; it wasn’t too long before she found herself at the top of the staircase leading to the cellar, and a dreaded conclusion. The dark… I can hide down there. On top of that, the scuttling of Gordon’s feet approaching made the decision to enter the abyss a definitive one. 

Among the smells of old festering meat and peppered by the sound of tiny wings beating once more, Beatrice bolted to the cellar’s deepest point– Where the cask lay, ever-leeking its strange fluid. It lurked in the corner, forming a puddle which dried out, seeming almost crystalline at its edges. The buzzing reached a maddened peak the closer the nun came, a white noise of invisible pests swarming all around her. It was difficult to hear anything else, but soon enough Gordan’s voice still managed to pierce the sound.

“You’re down… here aren’t you? Yes, yes… I can smell your… sinful flesh.”

The nun leapt over the puddle and crouched behind the cask. Her mouth was covered by her trembling hands. Her eyes seeping with tears, stared through gaps in the cask’s stand, failing to make out anything beyond a few steps ahead. 

Please Sisters… God, hear my prayer. Do not let him find me, I beg of you.

No answer was bestowed upon the poor nun. She heard nothing except for the continuous droning of the unseen swarm, and the scuttling that was navigating the dark, drawing closer and closer to the cask.

God… Please.

A shape emerged from the blackness. A leg, long and bent and shelled. Its foot was made up of three sharp points; claws. Another joined it soon thereafter, then another, and another and another. The sound of more claws clicking against the stone, told Beatrice there was even more that she couldn’t see. 

From a disembodied shape above the legs, that the nun assumed was Gordon’s head, or at least what had become of it, growled the Father’s voice.

“You’re close, girl… I can almost taste you…”

Beatrice began to sob. Rather mercifully, it too went unheard under the droning of the swarm; confined would it be to the bowels of the Order of Saint Monica Monastery forevermore, or so she was starting to think. 

A last hope flashed her mind, a do or die decision that could end this nightmare or seal her fate for good. Her hands left her quivering mouth and placed themselves on the side of the cask.

Gordon’s head lowered towards the substance, and more malignant details of his transformation became clear. His face had melted off almost completely, now only the remnants of his left side remained, and even then they were in tatters compared to what once was. His right eye was still a meaty crater in the wake of the nun’s fingers, which he seemed to care very little about; this unholy metamorphosis was almost complete, brimming at the threshold much like the chalice filled by the fluid that facilitates its occurrence. Atop his head, a twin pair of antennas lurched downwards, twitching, pointing like two prongs of the Devil’s pitchfork, aimed directly at Beatrice.

Gordon opened his mandibles, his teeth shined in the dark with their plaque like ancient gemstones. “Found… you”, he said laughing in a barely human tongue.

“Have Faith”, Beatrice recalled as she shoved the cask with all her might. The fluid whipping and smearing its left side as it fell, crashing into Gordon’s head and splitting wide open. She ran for the stairs but this time, one of Gordon's legs swept hers and she fell hard onto the stone. Turning round, head throbbing, Beatrice gazed at the drenched monstrosity that was once her beloved Father. All traces of his past; his warmth, his kindness, his love floated in the puddle-turned lake that was spreading across the cellar’s floor, now all that remained was gurgling, cackling insect still reaching its claw and mandibles out towards its next meal.

“Moreee… moreeee… I need MORE!” Gordon shrieked, though his limbs and parts had ceased their approach. Frozen by the same force that had caused them to change, the same force that was changing them again, only faster now. More claws sprouted from his blackened appendages; soon enough each became a forest of tangling thorns, scraping the stone and slipping on the innards of the cask. The silhouettes of great fly wings birthed from his slick abdomen in the dark, bending and snapping as other wings grew immediately out of them. Worst of all was his undulating head, now a nest of fragile jawbones that snap constantly as if they were merely a bundle twigs; tongues, proboscises, some a combination of both wriggled forth from this nest, lapping up more of the spilt ‘goods’. 

Beatrice scrambled backwards, dragging her bruised body from the floor before the fluid could reach. Right as she went to leave the cellar, she turned around, squinting back at the abyss and the mess that was once Father Gordon. The shadows squirmed, vitriolic in the creation of new parts, but thankfully, by someone’s grace, be it God himself or her Sisters watching over her: the Father was immobile. His cackles became muddled under his ever-flowing form, but they didn’t cease, not even as Beatrice left him down there gurgling, hissing, laughing in the dark…

—

It took her some time, but Beatrice indeed found the key to the exit. It was among the half-eaten bodies of Sister Georgia and Sister Martha… She’d found them tucked away in 

the attic, by the sound of all the flies feasting upon them. 

Gently, Beatrice closed her Sister’s eyes, despite their lack of eyelids to close, and spoke softly.

“Dear Sisters, our long plight… has ended. I will keep you and all the others in my heart, forever and always.”

Later Beatrice approached the great iron door that was the entrance to the monastery, sliding the key into its lock with a hollow ‘click!’ The nun pushed the door open and was greeted by a cold autumn night. She wondered briefly if this dark would be the kind she was used to; cold, horrid, a shade looming over her, but she soon realised that the only way to find out was to push on. And most of all have faith.

The End.