Convalescence Read online

  PRAISE FOR SHAUN O. MCCOY AND THE HELLSONG SERIES

  "McCoy is a talented and bright young writer."

  —B. Butler, Author of Murder in Cairo

  "McCoy is a brilliant writer; insightful, intelligent, articulate, imaginative, and funny."

  —McKendree Long, Author of No Good Like it is

  "McCoy masterfully creates characters, scenarios and the Hell where they live. He writes with a passion, layering emotion on fantasy and science fiction, drawing in readers from beyond his genre."

  —Ginny Padgett, President of SCWW

  "Shaun is the real McCoy."

  —Laura Valtorte, Filmmaker, Author of Family Meal

  "McCoy again mixes freakishly paced action with deep emotion and a subtle plot.”

  —Matt Michaelis, Author of Kids Summon

  "McCoy will certainly go to Hell for writing Soulfall . . . but it was probably worth it."

  —Justin Williams, Author of Blind Faith

  OTHER WORKS BY SHAUN O. MCCOY

  HELLSONG SERIES: ARTURIAN

  Even Hell Has Knights

  Knight of Gehenna

  March Till Death

  Book IV (2018)

  HELLSONG SERIES: INFIDELS: CRIS

  Affliction

  Soulfall

  Dust

  Convalescence

  Execution (2017)

  Wasteland (2017)

  Restoration (2018)

  NOVELLAS

  Electric Blues

  Binary Jazz

  Infidels: Cris

  CONVALESCENCE

  SHAUN O. MCCOY

  SISYPHEAN PUBLISHING

  This is a work of fiction. The damnation portrayed in this novel is fictitious, and similarities between it and any actual damnation are strictly coincidental.

  Convalescence

  Copyright 2017 © by Shaun McCoy

  All rights reserved.

  Editor-in-Chief: Gabrielle Olexa

  Associate Editors: Kitty Garner, Andrew Anderson, Justin Williams, Meredith Oliver

  Title art: Dusan Arsenic

  Title Layout: Paul Mavis

  A Sisyphean Publishing Book

  Http://hellsongseries.com

  ISBN-13: 978-0692904404 (Sisyphean Publishing)

  ISBN-10: 0692904409

  First Edition March 2017

  This book is forLila Klinck

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  From Neostoicism: Philosophia

  Beauty is unbearable. It drives us to despair, offering for a minute the glimpse of an eternity we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

  —Camus

  There is no evil like Eden.

  —Infidel

  Once more I reach up through the darkest depths and grab with my outstretched hand a single silver strand of wakefulness. It cuts deeply into my palms as I pull myself, bit by bit, hand over hand, into consciousness.

  I’m in a dim room.

  “It’s okay,” she tells me.

  “Myla?” I ask.

  I’d been sent to save Myla by a God I only half believed in. Myla’s sister had told me so, sitting at the foot of my old world deathbed. And I’d found Myla. And we’d fallen in love. But something happened after that. Something I can’t think about.

  Her bobby pin. Her red hair. Her tearful face as she reached out to me, begging me—

  “I’m not Myla.”

  Myla had laughed when she’d seen me there, beaten by those devil men. She had stolen and poisoned my son.

  Fuck her.

  “Cris,” the voice says. “Sweetheart. You’re safe.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She coddles me like I’m a baby. My head is in her arms. I feel her abdomen against my face. It’s firm, muscled, like a man’s, only she’s so tiny. It’s El Cid. I’m safe. Somehow she’ll fix it. I don’t have to remember. I can just relax.

  But relaxing is a mistake. My insides loosen, and I feel the pressure of my bruised innards against my sutured asshole.

  My memories flood back into me, choking me with the pain of losing my son and the humiliation of being raped, and kicked . . . and mocked.

  She holds me through the torrent.

  I cry like a fucking bitch.

  She wakes me. Feeds me. Gives me water.

  As the days pass, shitting becomes easier, and my insides begin to feel solid again.

  “You need to sleep, Cris.”

  But I lay there, eyes wide open. And really, what’s the difference between the stilling and sleep. Not much. Except Shy is there when I sleep. Melvin is there. The twitching corpse of Fellman is there.

  “We have your pack, Cris. Aren’t you glad to have your things back? We saved them for you.”

  I don’t care about my things.

  She regrets saving me. I can see it in her eyes. I’m useless now.

  Q is at the door.

  No. He can’t see me like this. Not like this.

  “Go, Q,” El Cid says.

  “You don’t understand, Cid,” his deep voice echoes in my hollow sleeping chamber. “You don’t know the bond between us. I’d die for him. He’d die for me.”

  Just go, Q.

  There is a pause.

  “He’s been in here for days.”

  “I do understand, Q. I know Cris loves you. But you can’t support him right now because he’s ashamed. He just lost his son. He’s been violated. He needs time.”

  I hear some shuffling. Q is in the room, a brilliant light behind him, silhouetting him, casting his shadow onto me. He steps closer.

  He can’t come closer. He can’t.

  “Go!” I screech.

  He pauses, indecisive. It’s hard to see his face in the dim light, but there’s pain on it.

  “Go!”

  Q’s hurt, stunned. El Cid is pushing him.

  “I’m sorry, Q,” I say, and I can hear the fucking tears in my pathetic voice. “Please go. Please.”

  And he’s gone.

  She wakes me. Feeds me. Gives me water. Takes away my waste.

  “I loved her, Cid.”

  “Who?”

  Myla.

  “The woman who captured you? Who we rescued you from.”

  “Yes.” Her too.

  “It’s okay, Cris. That’s natural. It’s okay to break every once and a while. We’ll make sure you anneal.”

  I don’t know that word. I don’t care to.

  “Sometimes I want her to rescue me, Cid. Sometimes I want to be hers.”

  I can see Shy’s brilliant red lips. I can sense her displeasure—and am assaulted by that memory where her oh-so-perfect face lolled to one side, eyes glazed over as the shadows of skeletons flickered across her features.

  “Well you can’t be hers. You’re mine at the moment.”

  “But you don’t really want me.”

  “She doesn’t really want you either. Cris, I want what’s best for you.”

  “I don’t deserve that.”


  “Everyone deserves that.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “I miss him, Cid. I miss him so much.”

  “Aiden?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know.”

  I can’t tell her. She thinks Aiden is dead. He is dead, but he still moves. He still suffers. He probably still kills. At least he’s alive in some way, right? In undeath?

  I’m breathing easier, but my thoughts become consumed with my lost son.

  He’d be alive in some way no matter what, in the next Hell. It’s just worse now. Had he died I could have rested easy, hoping against hope that he was in Sheol, wishing he’d found a harbor in the storm of Hell. I’d have fantasies about dying and finding him some day.

  But this is shittier.

  Now I know he’s alive. And I know what he’ll do. He’ll find people, kill them, and make them suffer more as he ushers the beaten souls deeper into this abyss. Or will he? He said he wanted to help them.

  Fingers are on my forehead, brushing back my hair. My back tightens.

  Whose fingers?

  Cid’s fingers. “Do you remember, on the boat, before Soulfall?”

  I nod.

  “You told me something, then,” she whispers.

  I did. I told her. I told her. I told her words I should have saved for Myla.

  Her tiny lips touch mine. They’re firm, but she uses them gently, caressingly.

  “I love you too, Cris. Not in the way you love me, but in the way I love people. Do you understand?”

  I nod. “More.”

  “I am powerful, Cris. I can bring you back to life.”

  But my soul is as dead as my son’s.

  She kisses me again. I feel the rush of my blood in my ears, and for once it’s not from anger or sorrow. The music is only in my mind, but it sings. Her lips are still gently caressing, coaxing, exploring, loving, whispering something. I struggle to hear it.

  “Again,” I whisper into her mouth.

  “I love you,” she says.

  “Again.”

  “I love you.”

  “Again.”

  “I love you, Cris. I love you. I love you.” And then, “You are not alone.”

  She kisses me a little harder, and my heart pounds, and I need it. I need this. I need it more than I’ve ever needed anything before—more than health, or love, or salvation. Her tiny tongue makes tiny circles in my mouth. I push against her, kissing harder, faster, and she responds. I hear her breath quicken as her lips work, sucking, opening, closing, moving, attempting in some sensual way to devour me. She’s a passionate devil now, her hands around me, searching over me, pressing against my body.

  I sit up as fast as I can, bruising our lips together. I taste blood in my mouth, her blood, from her lip, and it excites me. Her fingers find my belt, and I can barely wait for her to free me. There is no foreplay. I enter her, when she’s still not quite ready, forcing my way—bit by bit—through the friction because I cannot stop. I know it must hurt her. I know it must be painful, but I’m insane. It must be now. And suddenly she’s ready and the friction is gone.

  Then it is now. And I fuck her. I fuck her so hard we’re sliding back across the stone. She raises her hands to keep me from slamming her head into the wall, and I beat her body against the stone again and again and again and faster and faster and faster with all the passion I’ve ever felt because the only alternative is the sick, sick pain which lies at the bottom of my maddened mind.

  My fingers grope her still clothed body, pressing her shirt into her firm tit, squeezing her at the nipple. And then my hands find their way along her waist to where I feel her skin beneath her shirt and I shove the cloth up and I hunch down because she’s so tiny I can barely reach her breast with my mouth and I suck and I suck and I suck until I can taste her sweat.

  And I still cannot stop.

  I need this.

  I need this more than anything I’ve ever needed before.

  I crave this.

  I crave this more than anything I’ve craved before.

  “Again,” I say.

  “I love you.”

  I ram my lips into hers as I fuck her.

  I lean back. “Again!”

  “I love you.”

  “Again.”

  “I love you, Cris. I love you. I love you.”

  Then I feel her clenching against me, again and again. And she begs and croons and cries and shouts. And I’m not far behind.

  All is still.

  I find myself lying next to her, in the crook of her arm, my head resting against her small shoulder.

  “You are not alone,” she says.

  And somehow, on some level, that’s what all people need to hear. Particularly the damned ones.

  In a moment of clarity, I realize I didn’t believe her when she first said it. She would say anything to make me feel better, I’d thought. But she’s an infidel. She’s meant every damn word she’s said.

  It strikes me.

  I’m not alone.

  And then, just as quickly, comes the following realization.

  Aiden is.

  I awaken.

  There’s some dried dyitzu jerky lying on a woodstone plate next to a water-filled stone cup. I take a few bites. The jerky is tough, salty, and dry. I dip it into the water to loosen it up a little. Chewing takes quite a while, and gristle gets caught in my back molars.

  I drain the glass.

  Aiden is gone.

  How do I deal with this?

  I stand up and test my ankle.

  It’s sore in its wrapping, but it supports my weight well and is surprisingly close to pain free. Maybe the injury wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe it was just a sprain this whole damn time—or maybe I’d lain, soulfucked, in this dark room for so long the break had healed.

  I limp over to the door.

  Light creeps in along the floor from the room beyond. I think the door is of infidel make, or it at least appears so, with woodstone planks bound evenly together with iron. The knob, which is a rare thing to find in Hell, turns with ease. The door swings open, issuing a long creak. The squeal of the ancient hinges decreases in pitch as the last of the door’s momentum dies away—then all is silent.

  I step out into the hallway, my bare footstep slapping against the warm stone. I close the door behind me, its hinges’ protest punctuated by the thud of woodstone on stone and the small click of the latch.

  I’m in a hallway. There are about four rooms with similar doors to my left before the hallway dead ends. To my right are a dozen more rooms, and the passage opens up into some larger area. It has carpet, and I remember crawling on all fours, barking like a dog before Fellman took me.

  I sink to my haunches, covering my face with my hands.

  Come on, Cris, you can’t think about this stuff.

  A shadow falls over me. It’s Q.

  For a split second, I worry he might be angry with me after I’d so carelessly shouted at him, but no, there is a wide grin on his face—such an uncharacteristic smile from the stoic man.

  He helps me up and catches me in a hug. “You’re out.”

  I hug him back. “Yeah.”

  “I knew the stilling wasn’t going to get you, Cris,” he says. “I knew it.”

  He knew it. I didn’t. I still don’t. I feel it calling me, in the back of my mind. And it is indeed a stillness. That name seems so apt now.

  For a moment, though, I bask in the friendship—and then he releases me, stepping back.

  “I’m okay,” I lie.

  “Come on, brother,” he says to me, “let me show you the study.”

  The study is well-lit by warm light emanating from certain ceiling stones. There’s burnished wood furniture, easy chairs and couches and a bookshelf with bona fide, honest-to-God books. A clock adorns one wall, one hand dutifully ticking off the seconds while the others wait their turn.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  Q purses his lips. “An
infidel safe chamber. We think it was built by Archades, an elder Infidel Friend who’s likely dead.”

  I start to ask him a question, but I don’t really know which one to start with.

  “Come on,” Q says. “I’ll show you around. Staying in a safe chamber for too long is dangerous, you’re bound to draw a Minotaur, but we’re a couple months away from having to worry about that. This is going to be our home for a while so we can get you . . .”

  “Healed?” I ask.

  “No,” Q answers. “Trained. While we get you trained. We’ve got to give you some concepts and some basic skills you can work on for when we go back into Hell.”

  That’s not the real reason, and he and I both know it. The real reason is that I need to get my head on straight after getting mind fucked by Igraine’s people, and I have to do that before they’re willing to take me back out into Hell. That makes sense. Right now, I’d just get them killed.

  Q walks out of the room and beckons me onward.

  “Good,” I say.

  Q leads us into an Eden, then stops me with an upraised hand.

  I cannot process what I’m seeing.

  “There is a danger here, Cris,” he whispers. “An insidious one.”

  He must be lying. Hell has no sanctuary, this I know . . . but this place is safe—this place is heaven.

  Skystone veins, effusing a calm, golden glow, line the ceiling in even rows, each as thick as my arm, each running the length of the hundred-yard chamber. A waterfall issues smoothly from the far wall, filling Eden cavern with the sound of gently rushing water even as it forms the river which meanders gently across the room. Past one riverbend, a half-hidden waterwheel turns smoothly behind some brineberry bushes, its languid spin powered by the soft current. Hungerleaf and mika trees sprout up from the soft loamy ground, their branches reaching upward in rapture to the luminescent skystone. Green sprouts of devilwheat double for grass, and sinfruit vines crawl up the walls, sagging under the weight of their ripening fruit.