A Wish at the Price of a Life

I'll fuck her before the sky burns, - Hnat hissed in the house packed with villagers. Six hours remained until the end of the world. Beyond the windowpane the bloody tumour of a new star was swelling, and warm ash settled on the glass. Before the frightened crowd stood the Faceless One - a creature in a black shroud. Around her neck swayed a necklace of umbilical cords. She unrolled a scroll of human skin and hissed: - Name your filthiest desire.

Any filthy craving will come true. But the fire of the wish will strike a kinsman's name from this list of salvation.

Hearing this, Hnat dug his fingers into the damp skin: - I want Olesia! Naked, bound, crawling and begging for debauchery! A bone clicked in the darkness. A stench of corpse fat and wilted roses drifted in. When Hnat stepped back, his brother's name on the scroll swelled with black pus and vanished. And out of the darkness stepped Olesia - her eyes entirely white, hot, but she was breathing with the torn lungs of his brother dying in the corner.

Seeing that the craving had come true, the villagers in the house went mad with lustful fumes. A young wife by the stove bared her teeth: - I want three strangers in goat masks! Let them tear me apart before my husband's eyes! Monsters surfaced from the corner. Within an hour the young wife was dishevelled and bloodied, and her mother's name on the scroll dissolved. The old woman collapsed, gasping.

The Faceless One whispered with satisfaction: - A splendid bargain, a mother's breath in exchange for pleasure.

From the corner of the house Orysia and her daughter Solomiia watched this horror. Their names still fluttered on the scroll. - Mama, don't touch the skin, we're both on the list! - the girl begged. But beyond the windowpane rose Andrii - Orysia's dead husband. Naked, bloated with gas, he ran a slimy tongue across the glass. Lust seared Orysia down to the womb, as if his dead fingers were already tearing the shift off her.

- You did ask for one more night of wild debauchery, - the dead man hissed through the crack. - The kind where God shuts his eyes. Solomiia covered her mother's face: - Mama, don't listen! But Orysia no longer owned herself. She stared at the scroll, where only two lines remained - hers and her daughter's. "I have sisters in the next village... The fire will burn them out, not us," she lied to herself, justifying her lust and preparing to betray her own blood.

Solomiia shrieked, clutching at her mother's sleeve. With a cold grin Orysia broke her daughter's fingers, shaking off her hand. The door burst open. Andrii walked in - radiating heat, with a carnal leer. On the scroll Solomiia's name blackened and curled up like burnt gristle.

They coupled right on the dirt floor amid the frenzied crowd. Andrii smelled of sulphur and sweet decay. He tore the clothes off her, sinking his teeth into her neck. But the moment Orysia closed her eyes, the body beneath her turned into an icy, clammy carcass. She opened her eyes - and the dead man was greedily gulping air again. But his heart hammered under his ribs too fast, too thin. Like a frightened little girl's.

After the wild bacchanal Orysia looked around. Everyone in the house was already lost in wild lecherous ecstasy. She touched her husband's hairy chest: - Where's our Solomiia? Andrii gripped her thighs hard, leaving dark bruises: - No one will get in our way now. Under his nails was lodged her skin, torn off in the mad frenzy, and his mouth reeked of incense. - Andrii, where's the child? He bared his teeth.

And at that moment, from the corner of the house, came Solomiia's rending scream.

On the scroll, in place of Solomiia's name, gaped a festering hole. The girl was sliding to the floor, suffocating. Orysia tore open her own finger and tried to write her back in with blood: - Take me instead! The Faceless One only shook her head: - You did not bring your husband back from hell. You moulded his flesh from your daughter's breath. His heat and the pounding in his chest are her torn lungs. The dead man lives at the cost of her slow, martyred death.

Fiery drops poured from the sky, burning through the roof of the house. The crowd rushed away - to the stone shelter under the church. Hnat ran in front, behind him crawled Olesia, wheezing with his dead brother's lungs. The three in their hideous masks mauled the young wife as she ran. The dead lovers warmed themselves on borrowed life. Andrii dragged Orysia along, and wherever his fingers touched her skin rose the stench of burning fat.

The shelter doors let Orysia and Andrii in, but before Solomiia's breathless body stood an invisible wall. She no longer breathed - the dead man had taken her lungs for good. In her madness Orysia tried to drag her bluish daughter inside, but Andrii clamped her in an iron embrace: - She's already dead. You gave her to me yourself. Beyond the doors the fire began to melt Solomiia's corpse, and beside Orysia the dead man breathed with a full chest for the first time.

In the underground darkness the monsters caressed their masters with lust, while beyond the wall their children and mothers burned to death in agony. Orysia pressed herself against Andrii. In his chest Solomiia's stolen heart pounded madly. - What have I done?.. - she whispered. - You gave away her tomorrow for your wild lust, - the dead man grinned and for the first time drew breath entirely on his own.

The world burned the moment people traded their own blood for animal pleasure; the fire only finished the job.