Warning : Slightly mature elements ahead. Do skip if you feel uncomfortable.
Chapter 85: The Betrayal of Flame
The fire roared out of Firefly's flamethrower in a blinding orange surge. The familiar heat washed over his suit, the chemical smell filled his nostrils, and for the first time since this nightmare began, Garfield Lynns felt like himself again.
Powerful.
In control.
Alive.
"BURN!" he screamed, sweeping the flames across the nearest portraits. "Burn like you did before! Burn like you were always meant to!"
The flames hit Mrs Gloria's portrait, and Firefly grinned behind his mask, waiting for that perfect crackle, the blackening, the smell of victory.
But it didn't burn.
The flames danced across the surface of the portrait like water off oil, leaving no mark, no char, no damage whatsoever. Mrs. Gloria's painted face stared back at him, completely untouched, in a mock grin.
"What?" Firefly's grin faltered. "No. No, that's not—"
He redirected the stream to another portrait. Same result. The fire washed over it harmlessly, as if the portrait existed in a different space.
Firefly's heart began to pound. He spun, directing his flamethrower at the little girl with pigtails, then the elderly couple, then the basketball player. Fire poured from the nozzle in desperate bursts, but nothing burned. Nothing even got warm.
"No!" Firefly roared in panic. "This isn't possible! Fire consumes everything! That's the LAW! That's what fire DOES!"
"You really thought you were special,"
"You really believed fire is some deity and chose you."
"Even a monkey can make fire if given matches you idiot!!"
"Hahahahah!!!"
"I am NOT—" Firefly's hands shook on the flamethrower. "I am its prophet! Its avatar! Fire OBEYS me!"
Firefly pulled the trigger again. The stream of fire intensified and the pressure gauge on his tank reading maximum output. He bathed the portraits in flames, screaming wordlessly as he did.
The portraits didn't even stop laughing.
"Pathetic,"
"Pathetic little man with his pathetic little toy."
"SHUT UP!" Firefly screamed, blasting more flames. "Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!"
Something in Firefly broke. His arms trembled as he fired wildly, until he finally noticed it — Mrs. Gloria's hand was moving.
At first, it was just a twitch. Then her arm started pressing outward, the canvas bulging as if something was pushing through from the other side.
Firefly got a bad feeling.
"Oh god," he whispered, stumbling back. "No. No, no, no—"
Mrs. Gloria's hand torn open the canvas.
The hand that emerged was wrong. The skin was blackened and cracked, charred flesh splitting to reveal bone underneath. Wisps of smoke rose from the wounds. The fingernails were gone, melted away, leaving only raw, bloody nail beds.
She pushed harder, and her arm came through, then her shoulder, then her head.
She wasn't Mrs. Gloria anymore.
She was what he had made her.
Her face was burned beyond recognition, her skin split and peeling, one eye white and melted, the other just a dark pit. Her mouth smiled too wide, tearing the charred flesh around it. The floral dress she wore was fused to her skin in some places and the fabric was melted into her flesh.
She smiled at him, and the motion split her cheeks open wider.
"Hello, Garfield," she rasped, her voice like wind through a crematorium. "Don't you want to see your work up close?"
Firefly stumbled backward, his flamethrower forgotten and hanging loose in his grip.
All around him, the portraits were moving now.
One by one, two by two, in groups and alone, they tore open the potrait and came out.
Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. Every victim in the endless gallery, pulling themselves free of their portraits, transforming from paint and canvas into shambling horrors of burned flesh and exposed bone.
"No," Firefly breathed. "This isn't real. This is a dream. A nightmare. It's not REAL—"
"Does it matter?" One of them asked asked, taking a step toward him. "Real or not, we're here. And we're very hungry."
Firefly raised his flamethrower with trembling hands. "Stay back! I'm warning you! I'll—I'll burn you again! I'll—"
He pulled the trigger.
The fire engulfed Mrs. Gloria, wrapping around her burned body in a cocoon of flame.
And she laughed.
The fire didn't hurt her — it fed her. Her cracks glowed orange, her ruined flesh pulsing like molten glass. Her burned eye lit up with firelight.
"Oh, thank you, Garfield. Fire is what we are now. Fire is what you made us. And fire makes us strong."
"No," Firefly whimpered. "No, that's not how it works. Fire won't fail me—"
"Feed us," they chanted, their voices overlapping into a hideous chorus. "Feed us with the fire you love so much. Make us powerful. Make us unstoppable."
Firefly backed away, his mind was already fracturing. Fire was supposed to be HIS weapon. HIS tool. HIS power. But here, in this place, it had turned against him. Betrayed him.
Fire, the only thing he'd ever loved, the only thing he'd ever trusted, had chosen THEM over him.
Firefly turned and ran.
He sprinted into the darkness between the portraits, his breathing ragged and his mind screaming.
Behind him, he could hear them following—dozens of footsteps, some shuffling, some running, all moving towards him.
Firefly didn't look back. He ran blindly through the darkness, no longer caring about direction or destination, knowing only that he had to get away.
His foot caught on something and he went down hard, the flamethrower skittering away into the darkness.
He scrambled to his feet, but they were already there.
Mrs. Gloria emerged from the darkness first. The officer came next, then the little girl, then more and more until Firefly was surrounded by a circle of charred corpses, all pressing closer, their burned hands reaching for him.
"Please," Firefly begged, his former arrogance completely gone now, replaced by pure animal terror. "Please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—I was just—please don't—"
"Sorry?" Mrs. Gloria tilted her head. "You're not sorry for what you did. You're just sorry you're caught."
Mrs. Gloria's smile then widened.
"But don't worry. You won't be scared for long. We will make you one of us."
"What?" Firefly's voice rose to a shriek. "No! No, you can't—that doesn't even make sense! You're not real! None of this is REAL!"
"Real enough," Mrs. Gloria said.
She reached for him, and Firefly tried to dodge, but there were too many of them. Charred hands grabbed his arms, his legs, his suit. They dragged him down to the ground, holding him as he thrashed and screamed.
"Let me GO! Get OFF me! Don't TOUCH me!"
Mrs. Gloria knelt beside his head, looking down at him with her one good eye and one hollow socket.
"What are you—no—NO!"
Her burned hands moved to his face. He screamed as her fingers forced his jaw open. His teeth scraped against her blackened skin as she shoved her hand down his throat.
Firefly's screams became muffled, filled with frantic sounds of pure terror.
Mrs. Gloria looked down at him, her ruined face expressionless. Then she began pushing her hand into his mouth.
He gagged, choking, eyes wide, body thrashing — but her strength was inhuman. Her arm slid deeper. His jaw stretched too far and his joints cracked with the pressure.
Her wrist disappeared into his mouth. Then her forearm.
Firefly's eyes bulged in horror. His jaw was opening wider than it should be able to, the joints popping and cracking as they were forced beyond their natural limits.
He could feel his face distorting, stretching, his mouth becoming a grotesque cavity to accommodate what was being pushed inside.
The pain was excruciating. His jaw felt like it was tearing apart at the hinges. But still it opened wider, and wider, and WIDER.
Mrs. Gloria's elbow slid past his lips.
Firefly's mind was fracturing. This wasn't possible. The human mouth couldn't open this wide. His jaw should have dislocated, should have broken, should have—
But it didn't break. It just kept opening, stretching in ways that defied anatomy, creating space where there should be none.
She didn't stop.
Her shoulder passed his lips. Her burned face was inches from his now, close enough that he could see every crack in her charred skin.
"Don't fight it," she whispered. "You'll only make it worse."
Then she pushed forward, hard, and her entire shoulder entered his mouth.
Firefly's throat bulged obscenely. He couldn't breathe. His eyes streamed with tears. His body convulsed in violent spasms but the hands holding him down were relentless.
Mrs. Gloria's head tilted, angling to fit through the opening, and then she was pushing that inside too. Her burned scalp scraped against his teeth. Her ruined face pressed against his tongue.
Firefly's entire world became pain and violation and the impossible sensation of a full-grown woman's body being crammed into his mouth.
His jaw had opened so wide now that his face barely looked human anymore. His cheeks were stretched taut, splitting at the corners. His mandible had separated from his skull in ways that should have killed him, creating a gaping maw that looked more like a snake's than a man's.
Mrs. Gloria's torso was inside him now, being pushed down his throat by her own momentum and the pressure from behind.
Firefly could feel her inside his chest. He could feel his ribcage expanding impossibly to accommodate her mass. His stomach distended grotesquely, but still she kept going, forcing herself deeper.
Her hips pressed against his lips. Then her thighs. Her legs kicked weakly as she was swallowed up by his body, disappearing into the space that had opened inside him.
And then, with a final wet sound, her feet slipped past his teeth.
Firefly's jaw didn't snap closed. It hung open, dislocated and distorted.
His face was a mask of agony.
He tried to scream but his throat was too full. He tried to vomit but nothing would come up. He tried to breathe but his lungs were compressed by the impossible mass now packed into his chest cavity.
And then the next person stepped forward.
"No," Firefly tried to say, but it came out as a broken gurgle. "No more, please, no—"
He grabbed Firefly's head and angled it for better access.
Firefly's jaw was still hanging open, unable to close, the joints completely destroyed by what they'd been forced to do.
He pushed his hand into Firefly's mouth.
The process began again.
This time Firefly could feel both bodies inside him. The pressure was unbearable. His chest felt like it would explode. His stomach was so distended it looked pregnant, grotesquely swollen.
But still his body accepted more. Still there was room, somehow, impossibly, for another person to be crammed inside.
The little girl came next.
She giggled as she pushed her small burned hand into his mouth, her child's laughter somehow the most horrible sound in this gallery of horrors. Her ruined pigtails scraped against his teeth as her head was forced inside.
Her tiny body slid down easier than the adults, but the sensation of her moving inside him, settling in with the others, made Firefly want to die.
But he didn't die. He just endured.
One by one they came. One by one they were forced inside.
Firefly lost count after the first dozen. He lost sense of time after the first twenty. He lost sense of self after the first fifty.
His body had become something else entirely—a grotesque sack of flesh stretched tight around dozens of corpses, his torso so massively swollen that he looked like some kind of hideous balloon. His jaw hung completely useless, the bones shattered beyond repair, his mouth a gaping wound that never closed.
And still they came. They pushed themselves inside. His body somehow found room for more.
The last victim—a young woman whose name Firefly had never known—looked at him with something like pity before she pushed her burned hands into his mouth.
"Almost done," she said softly. "Just one more."
Then she was inside him too, cramming herself into whatever microscopic space remained in his impossibly packed body.
Finally, FINALLY, the hands released him.
Firefly collapsed onto his side, his grotesquely distended body making movement nearly impossible.
His jaw still hung open, useless and broken. Drool and dark fluid leaked from the corners of his ruined mouth.
He tried to move but his body wouldn't obey.
There were too many things inside him, too many people sharing the space, all of them pressing against each other, even against his organs and bones.
He could feel them in there. All of them. Moving. Shifting. Settling.
And worst of all, he could hear them.
Whispering inside his head.
Laughing inside his bones.
Living inside his skin.
Firefly tried to scream but the sound that came out wasn't his voice alone. It couldn't be his voice alone, not with all of them in there.
It was hundreds of voices, screaming in unison.
He tried to stand but his legs wouldn't hold the weight. His grotesquely swollen torso was too heavy.
He crashed back down. His body made a heavy sound as it hit the ground.
He twitched on the floor, hands clutching his grotesquely distended stomach, feeling faces press against his skin from the inside.
In the darkness of the gallery, Firefly's body lay.
But he wasn't Firefly anymore.
He was a prison.
A tomb.
A home for the ones he burned.
And somewhere deep inside that grotesque mass of bodies, Garfield Lynns was still conscious.
Still aware.
Still screaming.
Forever.
Note : I felt that the chase got a little stretched out / boring. Comment about your feelings, feedback is appreciated.
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Advanced chapters on patre*n
DC : Architect of Vengeance
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