Bloodberry

 Bloodberry

The red berries stayed frozen on the black brier, untouched by frost. The villagers did not need them anymore as they wore tiny four-leaved yellow blossoms in their hair instead.

Thomas watched his skin stretch thin and turn translucent over his collarbone. A wet, yellow bud tore through the flesh with a sickening pop. He pulled the stem, but his lung lining peeled upward with the root; fibrous yellow threads were already braiding themselves through his pectoral muscles. Green shoots forced their way up his oesophagus. He could not scream; his throat was packed with wet, writhing tendrils. Pale, milky sap leaked from his tear ducts as his eyeballs swelled under the pressure, and golden petals erupted through his ear canals, deafening him with the sound of tearing cartilage.

Finally, his sternum cracked like dry kindling as the central stalk burst outward. Flaps of skin hung like raw leather around a blooming, fleshy cavity. His ribs uncoiled from his spine, stretching into wooden branches that gripped the air. He moved toward the river near Long’s Farm, teeth clicking against stems, a walking nest of wet loam and bone.

From the black mud of the burial pit, a ghost rose, a shape of grey ash and charred bone. The spirit pressed his burnt hand deep into Thomas’s open, pulsing ribcage. The yellow vines instantly wrapped around the ghost's blackened knuckles, drinking the smoke from his hollow chest. Grey ash turned to golden pollen as the roots pulled them close, fusing two dead hearts into a single, wooden breast before they sank together into the silt.

Years later, fishermen hauled a heavy mass over their gunwale. It was a double-headed trunk of pale wood, its bark smooth like human skin. One side was choked with charred black ash; the other was packed with rich loam. When a fisherman sliced the timber, thick golden syrup welled from the cut, smelling of honey and rot. Deep inside, two distinct pulses beat in perfect, terrifying peace.