Read Online Midian Unmade by Joseph Nassise - Free Book Online Page A

villains, but scared, powerless, inconsequential nothings.”
    Amy threw down her gloves and shouted, “No. No, Asteria. I am not like those people who burned your family. I care about you. I want what’s best for you.”
    Asteria stared at Amy and held out her open hand, smeared in blood and bile.
    â€œThen let’s move this truck together, okay?”
    Amy took a deep breath and nodded. She knew what she had to do, for her sake, for Asteria’s sake, and for the sake of more young men and women.
    â€œYeah, okay.”
    She reached for her discarded gloves, fished in her pocket for her car keys, and tromped toward her car.
    Asteria’s upturned palm remained empty.
    *   *   *
    Later the same night, long after they’d dumped the truck by the side of the road, Asteria opened her bedroom window and crept outside. It was still full moon—a far cry from her preferred time for nocturnal roaming—but she wanted to adhere to Amy’s plan. Maybe hunting the native fauna would satisfy the pit. Maybe a healthy deer would satiate the hunger.
    She had to try.
    Years ago, Amy had seen her panhandling on the street and taken her in. She’d given her a warm bed and a place to call home for the first time since Midian. An orphan herself, Amy had wanted for the two of them to be friends, if not family. And in return all she asked was that Asteria not heed the lamentations of the pit.
    But, as was Asteria’s refrain, Amy didn’t understand what she asked. Asteria the girl and Asteria the monster could never be separated. The loving soul and the infinite void that pulsed within her were one and the same. Violence spun in orbit around the atoms of her being. She could no more stop killing than she could stop thinking, stop breathing, stop feeling guilty about ruining Amy’s life.
    â€œA devil with a conscience.” Asteria sighed into the frigid darkness. “How can such things be?”
    Amy had been good to her, even if Amy didn’t understand. And so, for Amy, she would try to take the life of something that wasn’t human and hope it pleased the pit all the same.
    Through the barren fields she ran, faster than any human, faster than most of the small mammals that scurried in the darkness. She smelled caution in the air, fear of tooth and claw, but it wasn’t the same as the nuanced terror that humans exuded.
    She stopped dead and listened. Something grazed nearby, tentatively chewing at whatever remnants of corn or soy might have been left over from the autumn’s harvest.
    Asteria stalked her prey with the deliberate grace of a great cat. Body pressed low to the ground, she spotted her quarry—a young buck, head down, rooting in a field, oblivious to so much of the world.
    She moved in. When she was close enough, she struck, and her strike was sure and lethal.
    She crouched in the moonlight and tore the beast apart, swallowing it in massive bites, as she would any other sacrifice to the pit. But the meat tasted sour, bitter, and spoiled all at once. The flesh of a lower animal would not do. The void would not abide such a base offering.
    The deer came rocketing back from the pit and flew from Asteria’s mouth, a geyser of meat and blood spouting to the stars above.
    â€œNo,” Asteria moaned. “No. It has to work.”
    Remembering all the smiles and the hugs and the kind words Amy had lavished upon her through the years, Asteria scooped up handfuls of the gore that had spewed from her stomach and downed them again.
    She punched her abdomen and hissed, “Take it. Take it.”
    But again the organic miasma returned.
    For what seemed hours, Asteria hunched in the field and force-fed herself the same sustenance that her body could not use. Again and again she regurgitated and again and again she swallowed, until, finally, she became too weak to swallow and the pit grew too enraged to ignore.
    And when it was over, she lay down