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He was so itchy.
Beneath his clothes, in every crevice and corner, he could feel it. It slowly crept through his bones, carried through the very blood cells meant to keep him alive. His eyes had grown dark, a bottomless pit with nothing inside. His ear had grown null, not picking up even the loudest of sounds.
Worse yet, his hands were beginning to fall off, one finger at a time. It started with his left pinky, then his right thumb, then his middle fingers at the same time. Now, he had little more than his pointers, used to show things yet so useless when alone. He wished he could itch his rotting flesh, if only to speed the process along, but his single fingers were of little help.
Still, he dragged them along his chest, right over the source of his rot:
The scar.
It spread out in tendrils from the burned skin, encircling his chest before it reached his arms and took a straight shot to his hands. His feet were still intact, yet he felt he couldn't walk at all.
So, in his bed he stayed, slowly becoming closer to the ghosts that roamed the halls.
The others couldn't see it. Miss Katherine checked every time he asked, and Esther had snuck into his room often enough to have seen it. Nathan had been by his side through the rot's entirety, from the moment it became so bad he couldn't stand from his bed.
He remembered all that time ago, when he had been gifted this scar. His blessing… the demon that refused to take a hold of him. He remembered the burning pain that had come from his heart and bones. It had spread through him much like the rot did now, and stayed present even several years later.
His body was dead. It had been killed back then, when the elders had forfeited him to the demons and gods of the world. Nathan had told him that he was alive. What did Nathan know of life? He ended his.
Abaddon looked up to the ghost, who was passed out on the chair beside his bed. His… disgusting bed. It felt like worms coming to collect their dinners from his heart. For the first time in days, he threw his bedsheets open and stepped out, feet now tinted purple and green reaching out to meet the soft carpet beneath him.
He walked to the mirror on his bedroom wall, careful on his unused legs, and peered into his reflection. His eyes were still missing, and his nose had now caved in. He looked hideous. He opened his mouth and immediately shut it when he saw maggots begin to crawl out of his tongue.
He looked down to his bare chest, unsurprised at the hole over where his heart used to be. It was small, no larger than an eye, peering into his soul… he brought his remaining fingers up and began picking at it, pulling it apart until the hole had grown big enough to see through his chest. Somehow, blood dribbled down from the opening, despite him being sure he had none left. He lowered his left finger to it and scooped a droplet onto its tip. It was bright red, as it would be if he wasn't dead, but he looked closer at the small red dot, and saw it: small, indescribable eggs. Flies had planted their children in his blood.
He began scratching insistently at the hole in his chest, trying to get the infested blood away from him. Only, as he did so, his fingers fell away from his hands, landing roughly on the floor beneath him. He had nothing to scratch with. Nothing, except… his teeth.
He brought his rotting arm to his teeth, bringing the sharp, yellow things down on it, slowly tearing away at the skin. It was going too slowly. He could feel the eggs begin to hatch, and he could just barely see as they traveled out of his open mouth, crawling against his corpse to feed, biting at his flesh and burrowing into his mussels.
His legs fall out from under him, and he can see them lying limply a few feet away from him, severed at their tops. He doesn't let it bother him, continuing to bite and pull at his arm. Blood was rushing through his mouth and he spit it out. His teeth fell to the ground, snapping at their weak roots. He could feel himself being pulled away, as if finally moving onto death.
Would he become a ghost in this hotel, or would he meet Satan down in his realm? His arm was forcefully yanked from his mouth and someone gripped him around his abdomen. He didn't fight it. If this was his reprieve, he would not denounce it.
The person who'd grabbed him spoke softly to him, and someone else knelt in front of him, right on top of his fingers and teeth. They reached out, but he did not feel their touch. A corpse had no nerves. A corpse cannot feel.
Yet, as something ran a hand through his hair, his hair that should be gone, he was brought back to life. Had he become a ghost?
"Abaddon," the person in front of him said softly, "are you there, bud?"
The boy looked up to meet the man's eyes, and he recognized Nathan's worried smile and tired eyes. How a ghost could look disheveled, Abaddon wasn't sure. "Am I dead?" He asked. He already knew the answer. He'd seen his body fall apart in front of him, after all.
The person behind him, still gently brushing through his tangled knot of what was once a braid, let out something akin to a sad sigh. It reminded Abaddon of the dogs they used to have, back in the Community. They'd all been killed a few years before his sacrifice, used in their own form of gift to the gods. "No, you're not dead."
Oh, so it was Miss Katherine who was holding him, then. He looked up at her, checking over her features. She looked worried. "But I was rotting," he states, as though it isn't obvious.
Nathan shakes his head. "No, bud, you weren't. That was all in your head. See?" He reached out and pointed at the boy's chest, and Abaddon looked down to meet his finger. Where the hole once was is now his usual scar, burning red against his skin. He frowns at it. That hadn't been there a few seconds ago.
He glances up at Miss Katherine, then back to Nathan, and frowns. Neither adult says anything, though the matron does tighten her grip around him. There's something warm coming from his arms. Blood, sprouting from bite-shaped holes. There are no eggs in it, when he asks Ms. Kathy to check as she's cleaning the wounds up.
Nathan confirms, and Abaddon feels silly as he is tucked back into his worm-less bed. How could he have seen something that wasn't there, he wonders? Maybe it was the demon, still clinging to his heart and soul, forever tainting him.
Abaddon falls asleep at the comfortingly familiar thought.