Unholy Trinity: Emily by Peter K. Rothe

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Part 1: Awakening

Emily, beloved daughter, the light of our world. A small placard grafted to a slumped stump of serrated wood. A pink pointe shoe sways in the frigid wind.

She had her mother’s grace – a memory that provided nourishment through terminal days. Days waiting for grief to start – a bottomless pit that sought for succour in dark, forbidden rituals. 

She stirs in a pit of shallowed grit, the shoe a waypoint, back to her dad, back home.

The soil contracts and groans, giving new birth to his beloved Emily, ushering her out of darkness into a world of fragile lights. 

Part 2: Hunger

A savage hunger grumbles within her. 

Her first victim, a familiar face. He weeps with joy when he sees her, even when she sinks her teeth into his succulent flesh. A visage which awakes within her a spark, a memory of who she is. 

Daddy now sways with the mindless ones. Not daddy, anymore.

Unlike Emily, whose soul clings onto necrotic flesh. She vows to change, to stop feeding, to yield and wither, to do the right thing. But Emily knows. The moment that carnal, maddening, hunger returned, and it always did,  Emily would recede and the monster would reign.

Part 3: Voices

She feasts on living flesh. Fresh souls help to quell her thirst, she awakens. Covered in soil and of meagre frame as she contemplates the cruel acts wrought by her own hands. Acts beyond redemption.

She studies the day’s hunt. Meat stirs, awakened by her infection, they rise. Fresh souls were getting harder to find. So few left for her to taste.

Yet, within her, those she ingested weep as a singular voice. A familiar voice. They call her from within, singing, ‘Emily, beloved Emily, light of our world.’

In vain they plead her to stop the never ending night.