“Move away from me,” I said, as the butterfly talked to the bloated men and women, smiling and giggling at their advances and moving hypnotically to their touches. The moon shone bright, and the world seemed ethereal around her. Something was wrong in the manor ever since the party had begun. The walls were bleeding, and the people were melting into pools of bloated, rotten slime. I shook it off. They were parasites, vampires and mosquitos, sucking my families wealth dry yet, my eyes were on the beautiful woman, who had entranced me so.

  I took her hand and, my suspicions ever tighter, I ordered my guards to surround the room while I dealt with this busty, lustful menace.

  “Madame, one last dance before we retire to our beds, please.”

  “It's already pretty late, dear,” she said, twirling her fingers around her bouffant hairdo and many necklaces, pulling and curling wayward strands. “But if you insist.”

  “Then consider yourself insisted upon, love,” I said, taking her soft hand and fingers into mine and pulling her into my embrace, warm and tight, before starting a gentle duet to soothing music. Pulsing like heartbeats and still on rhythm, she was the wave that crashed on my shore, the end to my journey of madness, the step to my rhythm that completed the song. And as we moved closer and closer to the window, her steps grew more and more rigid, tightening and pulling me away, and me pulling her closer and closer to the balcony window.

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  She looked into my eyes, full of love and lust in the beginning, turned to suspicion and cruelty as she stopped the dance for a few moments, as the moon was in full bloom, just beyond the curtains. She panted for a few moments, at least acting like she was exhausted, before trying to pull me away from the balcony door. I whispered in her ear

  “Stealing her invitation was not quite nice of you.”

  She whispered back, “That is but a minor sin compared to what I aspire.”

  “What would that be?”

  “To sacrifice your lives to the creature that sleeps beneath the manor, for the old timeless being that shall bring the golden age of our kind.”

  I was taken aback, and she held my arm and pulled me closer and whispered further, “To spill blood enough to gestate the goddess, and to summon forces from the vacuum of the sky.”

  My hairs stood on my skin. I pushed her onto the balcony, and as I saw she turned toward the moon and back, her eyes morphing into a blood red color, her face turning grey and black, her mouth sprouting mandibles and fangs, and she emitted a scream that resembled nothing of this realm, possibly empowered by the forces from the outer voids.