George clutched a crumpled paper bag tight as he shuffled down the dingy church basement hallway towards the exit. His mind swirled with shadows and echoes of the other grief-stricken souls who had poured out their anguish this evening.
The elderly woman who lost her husband of fifty years to a sudden heart attack. The teenage boy drowning in anger and survivor's guilt after his little sister was killed by a drunk driver. The young mother whose breast cancer robbed her of witnessing her infant daughter's first steps.
Each tragic tale lanced through George's heart like a serrated blade, spilling out his own anguish and loss in a fresh torrent. But none could possibly comprehend the true depths of his utter devastation and upheaval.
Blinking back hot tears, he paused in the doorway and gazed up at the sliver of waning moon barely visible through the gray haze shrouding the city. The night air was heavy and damp, the first whispers of an approaching summer storm rustling through the overgrown hedges lining the crumbling asphalt lot.
"Made it out just in time," the group counselor said, appearing at George's side with a weary but encouraging smile. "The weather's been so oppressive lately."
George merely grunted, unsure if the older man was referring to the atmospheric conditions or something more metaphysical. He shifted his weight, the crackle of the brown paper sack the only sound between them for a stretched moment.
"Look, George..." The counselor sighed, removing his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I've been doing this grief circle for a long time. Heard more tales of tragedy and senseless loss than I care to recount. But I've also witnessed the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit, time and again."
He replaced his glasses and fixed George with the kind but serious gaze of a man who had indeed seen his share of suffering up close.
"You're treading through the deepest pit of darkness and despair imaginable right now after that shattering trauma. I can sense you're still haunted by the 'how' and 'why' of what happened - the horrific circumstances surrounding your wife's death. That's completely natural."
The counselor placed a steadying hand on George's shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze.
"But clinging to those unanswered questions, letting them fester into conspiracy theories or supernatural delusions...that's a trap, my friend. One that will only let the anguish linger and take root until it strangles you from the inside. You have to let go. Process the grief itself, but let the darkness go before it devours your soul entirely."
George opened his mouth, a hundred tangled protests and anguished confessions rising up at once. How could he put voice to the creeping suspicion that his torment transcended mere human grief into something far more insidious and perverse? This was no fleeting darkness, but an eternal unholy curse metastasizing through his very marrow.
But the words shriveled up behind his lips, stillborn and inert. He swallowed hard, giving a jerky nod instead before rasping out a husky "Thank you."
The counselor squeezed his shoulder once more and offered a sad smile before turning away, leaving George adrift in the thickening evening gloom. Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance, closer than before.
Angling his coat collar up against the rising wind, George set off towards his empty home, the crinkled paper sack clutched to his chest like a lifeline. Each leaden footfall felt heavier than the last as memories surged unbidden.
That final evening he'd had with Carmen came creeping back in vivid flashes, as haunting and unstoppable as the looming storm front blotting out the city's lights one by one. Her radiant smile as they shared a candlelit dinner, the sparks dancing in her eyes as they stole deeper into the throes of romance and passion...
Right up until that picture-perfect scene had been shattered into jagged shards by the witch's violent intrusion and Carmen's life extinguished before his eyes. The happy ending they'd been building towards, the joyous new chapter they were meant to begin together after Carmen finally retired from the police force...all of it skewed into a graphic horror novel George awoke from each morning still trapped inside.
And the end remained unwritten, a festering void pulling him down into its depths like inescapable quicksand. Because deep down, George knew the counselor had it all wrong. Or at least, partially wrong. While processing the grief itself – the all-consuming anguish of losing his true love in such a brutal fashion – might ultimately help salve his human half, something far more sinister was unfolding within.
Something unholy, unnatural, unhuman. A mutagenic contagion taking root in his body and soul, festering just beneath the surface awaiting its chance to metamorphose into...something else entirely.
The squall broke with a deafening crack of thunder just as George reached his front door. Fumbling with the keys amid the deluge, he finally wrenched it open and ducked inside, slamming it shut behind him. The entryway was consumed by suffocating darkness and silence as yet another memory surged, unbidden.
That final evening, they'd flitted about the kitchen side-by-side, the very picture of a long-married couple still deeply in love. Carmen had teased him with a hip check as he sautéed the steaks to perfection, her smoky voice sending delicious shivers down his spine in a way he'd never grow tired of.
"So now that I've finally decided to retire next week," she'd murmured, looping her arms around his waist from behind so her warmth pressed against his back, "I was hoping my handsome husband might finally start putting a bun in my oven..."
George had rumbled an appreciative growl and twisted to claim her wicked mouth in a searing kiss. After a few breathless moments lost in the gentle clash of tongues and nip of teeth, they'd broken apart just enough for him to rasp against her kiss-swollen lips.
"First things first - let's get that badge put away for good. Then I'll make you a momma six ways to Sunday..."
The raucous thunderclap that followed his reminiscence was as harsh as a slap bringing George jolting back to the empty present. The sudden, vivid recollection hit harder than any physical blow, the memory searing through his mind with fresh devastation.
Stumbling deeper into the entryway, he flailed for the lightswitch, needing to chase away the suffocating shadows surrounding him. But his fingers found only empty space where the switch should have been, the old wiring ripped free and scorched by the witch's unholy conflagration that dreadful night.
A strangled sound caught somewhere between a sob and a growl escaped George's throat as he crumpled to the floor in the engulfing darkness. Pulling his knees to his chest, he curled into the tightest ball his shuddering body could manage.
Just for an instant, the desire to surrender completely to the intangible anguish swamping him was overwhelming. To simply drown in it, let the howling tempest of grief and utter heartbreak sweep him away into the void. To simply become unmade and unravel back into his constituent atoms was perhaps a kinder fate than carrying on as...whatever profane species he had begun mutating into.
Then the sharp, acrid stench of burnt ozone tinged the air, resurrecting that night's horrors with visceral potency. Emerald flames licking at his extremities. Searing agony spiking through his nerve endings, claws of eldritch fire scoring the very fundamentals of his humanity. Carmen's light winking out forever as darkness claimed him.
And from the tomb of that obsidian oblivion he had fallen into the same night Carmen was brutally murdered, something else stirred. It was like something deep within him wanted out. Something strong, something...
Unfurling tendrils of pure primal essence slithering free to merge with the pain and decay of mortal remains, catalyzing an unholy alchemical reaction.
George's eyes snapped wide as every nerve ending fired in symphony, scorched by an influx of power and sensation that defied mortal scale. His back arched, fingers splaying wide as vicious spasms gripped his entire frame. Only the whites of his eyes were visible, rolled back as a soul-rending howl was torn from his throat.
Inside his mind, there was no buffer against the telepathic torrent. Each flickering thought of those hapless souls from the support circle replayed in vivid detail as their losses and anguish crashed over him in relentless succession. The sheer weight of their collective despair was utterly cataclysmic.
But instead of drowning beneath it, George felt his consciousness expanding in turn. Growing, mutating, shifting into something...other. Fundamental barriers weakened as foreign instincts slithered through widening cracks...