Every night, the darkness burrowed into my chest, wrapping itself around my heart like a constricting vine, squeezing tighter with each fleeting moment. I could feel it mapping my veins, searching for the fissures in my flesh, the vulnerabilities that made me human. There was a rhythm to it, a pulse beneath the surface, chaotic yet oddly familiar. It was haunting—almost beautiful, in a way. The kind of beauty that you can only find in the grotesque, in the frayed edges of reality, where nightmares brush shoulders with the mundane.
It began with the heart attacks. Just a flutter at first, like the wings of a moth caught in a draft, a fleeting sensation I brushed off as stress. I was accustomed to the burden of anxiety, the weight of a life spent dreading trivialities. But as the episodes increased in frequency, it became clear that I was standing on the precipice of something far darker than I had ever imagined.
The doctors told me to avoid excitement. “Stay calm,” they insisted, their voices steely and clinical, their faces blurring with dispassion. They issued prescriptions armed with side effects that danced like skeletal marionettes in my mind. But what did they know? In the pulsating expanse of the night, when the darkness seemed to stretch infinitely, there was a thrill that I craved, a desperation that clawed at my insides. The heart, they said, was a fragile thing, but I was prepared to tempt it with the weight of darker curiosities.
I had heard about the occultist long before the heart attacks had begun. Whispers in hushed tones, a flicker of eyes darting away whenever the name slipped through lips. They said he could see the threads of fate, weave them together with the ease of a practiced artisan. The practice was a ritual to him, and those who sought his guidance often emerged transformed—sometimes for the better, but more often, for the worse. He lived in a decaying mansion on the outskirts of town, shrouded in a mist that seemed to cling to his very soul.
One evening, as hues of purple and deep blue seeped into the horizon, I found myself walking those desolate paths towards his abode. My heart thumped heavily against my ribcage, as if protesting my choice, but the call of the unknown was like a siren’s song, luring me into the abyss. Each step was a delicate dance with my mortality, an act of defiance against the pain that threatened to devour me. My heart was a war drum, a raucous heartbeat that echoed the fear in my mind.
The mansion loomed in the distance, its silhouette jagged and oppressive against the dusky sky. As I approached, a chill crept over my skin, sending chills spiraling down my spine. The door creaked open before I even touched it, revealing a dimly lit foyer that smelled of damp wood and incense, thick like the air after a storm. It was a patchwork of shadows, the walls themselves seemed to breathe, to warp with the pulse of something ancient and malevolent.
“Ah, welcome,” the occultist’s voice rasped, deep and resonant, as if it had crawled from the depths of the earth itself. He stood there, cloaked in darkness, eyes glinting like polished stones. “You seek something, don’t you? Something only I can give.”
His presence was a whirlwind; he drew me in, the gravity of his being almost unbearable. I felt every cell in my body buzzing, stirring to life as if they craved the darkness that dripped from his words. “I can give you power, clarity, insight,” he continued, as if reading my desperation, “but understand: the path is fraught with terror.”
I nodded, heart racing, the rhythm wildly out of sync. The darkness within the mansion wrapped itself around us, seeping from the walls, crawling up my legs like a living shroud. It felt as though I was stepping into a void, suspended between worlds. The occultist was a maelstrom, and I was but a leaf caught in its tempest.
He led me into his sanctum—a chamber filled with curiosities that glimmered ominously under flickering candlelight. Skulls lay serenely on ornate pedestals, gleaming with an otherworldly sheen. Symbols etched into the floor coiled around me, encasing me in a web of ancient sigils. I could feel the weight of those who had come before pressing down on my heart, urging it to burst free.
“Sit,” he commanded, a vibration seeping into my very core. The chair was a relic, cushioned in tattered velvet that whispered secrets of lives long lost. As I settled in, my heart thudded relentlessly, each beat a countdown to the unknown.
And then he began—his voice rose and fell in an incantation that seemed to twist the very fabric of reality. The room expanded, contracted, and I lost my sense of time and space. My heart seized briefly, then resumed its chaotic pounding, the pain flooding me like a river, visceral and raw. I gasped, clutching my chest, feeling as though I were being pulled apart at the seams.
“Let it flow,” the occultist urged, his eyes gleaming with otherworldly glee. “Let your heart unveil the secrets buried within.”
With every syllable, the air thickened, and I could see colors bleeding together, swirling into a vortex of despair. I realized then that the darkness I had invited in was not merely a vessel for power; it was a harbinger of the grotesque. Nightmarish visions flooded my mind—a parade of doomed figures dragging their chains through the mire, their cries mere fragments of anguish erupting from the depths of my own soul. There was a grotesque beauty in it, a terrifying allure that sent shockwaves through the very fibers of my being.
And then it hit me—a heart attack, the crushing weight of mortality slamming down like the executioner’s axe. I was drowning, suffocating in the echoes of my own failing heart. The occultist’s voice turned monstrous, distorting into a cacophony of discordant laughter as my vision blurred, the walls of the sanctuary contorting into mockeries of life.
I grasped at the air, striving to pull myself back from the brink, from the infinite depths of despair, but the darkness devoured me whole. I felt like a marionette with its strings frayed, dangling helplessly in a world where meaning was stripped of its essence.
The heart attack seized me in its vice grip, wrenching my consciousness away, leaving me in a void where the boundaries of reality warped and melted into grotesque shapes. I was a bystander in my own horror, my heart battling against the overwhelming tide, but with every flare of pain, I felt the occultist’s influence coiling tighter around me.
In the whirlpool of agony and dark revelry, I grappled to find purchase, to reclaim my own existence against the backdrop of chaos. The occultist had warned me—the path was fraught with terror. I could not see the way back, only the swirling depths closing in, the laugh of the damned echoing around me.
But somehow, I persisted, clawing through the darkness, the light flickering like a dying star. I remember the sensation of grounding beneath me, the cold, hard reality of the floor rushing back like the touch of a lover after a long absence. The shadows swirled, buckling under the weight of my defiance, and as I gasped for breath, the occultist’s laughter faded into silence.
But it was not the end. It was merely a pause in the relentless symphony of dread. The heart is a fragile thing, true, but it is not without its tenacity. Each attack left me shaken, fragmented—a piece of my soul devoured by the unrelenting dark. And yet, in my shattered state, I sensed that the occultist’s power was still entwined within me, a dark seed waiting to bloom into something horrific.
Each night after that, the dreams came—a surreal landscape painted in shades of chaos and despair, the figures I had glimpsed still wandering, their eyes hollow, their mouths gasping for answers that were never to come. I realized then, I hadn’t escaped the grip of the occultist; I’d become part of its nightmare.
Days blended into nights, and I found myself tracing the pattern of every heart attack, counting the beats in dissonance with my own morbid fascination. I was both the observer and the observed, trapped in a perpetual cycle of horror. Each episode felt like a prelude to something greater—a sacrifice demanded by the darkness.
I returned to the mansion, driven by an impulse I could neither explain nor resist. The door opened to me as if it had been waiting, welcoming me back into its suffocating embrace. The occultist stood amidst the shadows, eyes gleaming with knowledge that transcended mere existence.
“Did you bring what I asked?” he questioned, his voice a mere whisper, thick with temptation.
And in that moment, amidst the thralls of decay and despair, I understood that I was merely a pawn in a game far beyond my own comprehension. The darkness coursed through my veins, a bitter mixture of longing and fear, and as I stepped forward, I felt the weight of my heart crash against my chest, thundering like an ancient drum summoning forth the horrors of a world forgotten.
Nothing led me to believe I would escape again. I was inextricably bound to the occultist now, my heart a vessel for the nightmares he beckoned forth, and I understood the true cost of meddling in realms beyond our own.
The choice was never mine; it had been made for me the moment I dared to tread the path of the damned.
Author: Opney. Illustrator: Stab. Publisher: Cyber.
