Tartarus Gate: A Space Opera Series (The Collapse Book 1) by Matthew P. Gilbert

Author:Matthew P. Gilbert [Gilbert, Matthew P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2021-08-16T22:00:00+00:00

Ana cursed herself as a foolish child for imagining she could ever outrun fear. It would always be a part of her, clawing at her, wrapping a tentacle around her throat and strangling her as it pushed itself into every cell again.

“No!” she shouted. “Not here! Not again!”

But it was. She could feel it now, crawling around inside her head.

Ana’s imagination was not her greatest asset. Alsatia would surely have laughed at her crude fumbling, but Ana cared less about aesthetics than efficiency. In her instance, she could have whatever she wanted, however she wanted it.

The dollhouse faded to a surgical suite, a clean, metallic room with a rack of tools, an operating table, and a large, clear mirror. From the tool rack, Ana seized a rotary bone saw—an instrument with which she was intimately familiar—and a thin chisel. She strode to the mirror and activated the saw. It spun up with a high-pitched whine.

“Chudovishche!” she screamed. “Demon! You die again!”

Ana plunged the spinning blade into her own forehead.

There was no pain, because she chose for none to exist. Her instance, her rules. Nor was there blood, just bone dust as she sawed a fist sized hole into her own forehead.

Help us!

“I’ll help you, ublyudok!” Near manic, she pried at the sawed section of her skull with the chisel, straining until it popped loose and flew across the room.

She plunged her hand into the opening and screamed, not from pain, but from fury and utter revulsion as her fingers touched something cold, wet, and wriggling. She flung it at the mirror in disgust, still screaming. It hit the glass with a wet splat: a purple, veined, roughly spherical mass that looked, for all the world, like a malignant tumor.

Ana reached for a cauterizing pen, then decided it would not be enough. The delicate, pinpoint instrument changed in her hand to a propane torch. “Your turn to be afraid, now!”

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