Part IV, "Metal Heart'

A/N: If you are reading, please review. I'm not sure anyone is still interested in this. It would be lovely to know otherwise. I understand that the Hellraiser fandom is a small community. But c'mon, please give me some love! This chapter is a little naughty.

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"I wish I had a metal heart. I could cross the line," ~ Garbage, "Metal Heart."

…

The sound of a baby crying is loud in her ears. There is dread in the pit of her stomach, bile burning in the back of her throat. There is a body covered by a black satin sheet on a table in in her living room. Two large, black candles at least three feet in length sit on wrought iron candle holders, the wicks are lit but they don't burn the normal orange white of fire. Instead the flames are a deep blue, burning higher than she is tall.

It is clearly some kind of religious sacrifice.

That baby won't stop crying! Is it Jacob? She's scared for him.

Feathers the color of blood fall all around her like it's snowing inside the room.

Kirsty is dressed in a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans; she walks toward the table without fear for herself; her eyes are blackened with kohl, her flat ironed hair is curling up in the humidity of the room. She is not a teenager in this walking dream; she is the adult she is today. She is a thirty-seven year old single mother of one.

She stops walking when she's at the edge of the table, where feet jut out beneath the black sheet, her eyes widening with anticipation, beads of sweat dripping down the back of her neck.

The sheet doesn't bleed like in her dream from sixteen years ago, it just mocks her, urges her to pull it off of the body and see who is beneath. Is it her Uncle wearing her father's face? Is it a skinless Julia? It wants her to touch it, to feel the satin beneath her fingertips.

Feathers fall swirl gracefully around her, landing in her hair and momentarily obscuring her view.

There is movement beneath the sheet, something is twisting, grinding; something wants to be seen, wants it more than anything.

Kirsty pulls the sheet at the corner and with one fluid motion uncovers what's beneath.

The figure beneath it sits up and reveals itself to her.

The scream wanting to come out of her throat is stuck in place. She hopes she doesn't choke on it.

Staring back at Kirsty is Kirsty herself.

They look into each others eyes: dark brown meeting the charcoal stare of a demon wearing her face.

"What the fuck?!" Kirsty says, looking at herself in demon form.

Kirsty the cenobite is standing proud now, waiting for her human self to look upon all her glory. The cenobite is arrogant and powerful. Her very stance is that of a leader.

The black priestess, her subconscious reminds her.

Suddenly, she recognizes the sobs in the ambient noise ... the crying, it's her father mourning her. The sound rises in pitch until it is almost overwhelming. She wants to bring her hands up to her ears, but it seems silly in her current surroundings.

Kirsty stares at her cenobite double taking in everything about her. Every inch of her exposed alabaster flesh is covered in the pattern of the lament configuration. It is evident that this work of art has been carved into her flesh down to the smallest detail. Instead of being red with blood the carved wounds are blackened and the white of her skin looks as though it has been coated with gold dust to mimic the etchings on the box. Her hair is black and flows to a few inches beneath her shoulder blades, plaited in front; the two braids are twisted and interspersed with strands of what looks like dried flesh. Each of her ears is pierced with tiny chain links that follow the shell of her flesh from the top of her cartilage to the fleshy part of the lobe. Her lips are white tinged with blue. A small leather skirt just barely covers her as Leviathan wants to show off its very essence carved in its image. Her breasts are fully covered with a leather bra, but between them there is no sternum – all flesh and bone is gone, exposing a perfectly reinforced metal heart. The pulmonary arteries and veins are all covered in metal independent of the organ and the aorta, superior and inferior vena cava are all copper to distinguish them from the muscle. Directly in the center of the heart a small metal crank sticks out; on its very end there is a small wooden handle.

The demon wearing Kirsty's face brings her hand to the crank and twists it with her fingers, black, glossy nail polish glinting in the candle light as she winds. To human Kirsty's horror, the saccharine tune the box plays when opened is now playing from the demon's mechanical heart.

It is as though she has been transformed into the lament configuration itself.

Deer neer neer … deer neer … deer neer.

It even emits the small chimes and pink colored sperm shaped light particles that had her so under its thrall the first time she opened it. Yellow light flashes from within the cavity in her chest, a beacon around the metal heart blinking a message in Morse code that clearly translates to, "Open me."

Kirsty's aware that her jaw has dropped at the sights and sounds before her.

As the song continues to play, the pinned demon finally makes his appearance.

"This is a nightmare," Kirsty assures herself. "It's only a nightmare." Everything feels real to her, and she believes that it is happening somewhere; that she is somewhere in limbo, where something like this is actually happening.

"This is no nightmare," Xipe Totec states as he steadily moves closer to her. He turns his head, staring intently at Cenobite Kirsty, taking great care to not miss a single sign of conversion. His eyes are wide with awe. "She is magnificent," he tells Kirsty. "Unlike any that I have seen."

"She's just a figment of my imagination," Kirsty informs him. "This is just a dream."

"This is not a dream," the demon says, not unkindly, placing his hands on Kirsty's shoulders. Kirsty accepts his touch, trying not to lean into it. "This," he announces grandly, "is prophecy."

The pinned demon shoves her at her doppelganger, and Kirsty feels as though her entire world falls out from under her. There is fire and ice, and the stench of death. Demon Kirsty and Human Kirsty merge and before she realizes it, Kirsty is opening wide coal eyes and staring out from within her own monstrous form.

"Ahhh," she screams, but it comes out sounding pleasurable. For a moment she feels as though every inch of her flesh is on fire, but the feeling leaves her euphoric and she is suddenly a dark phoenix rising from the ashes of her pain.

The bell tolls ominously, but it rumbles through her like a prayer and she only wants to feed that feeling, give Leviathan all that she is and all that makes up the universe. Whatever it wants, whenever it wants.

"What is this?" she asks; her voice is slightly distorted, her tone more powerful and commanding than she is used to. Her blackened eyes take in every minute detail of this fabricated room in her mind's eye. Everything is highlighted with an ethereal glow, nothing more so than he is.

Light radiates from him, a strong blue that has her gravitating back into his orbit, a helpless planet Earth revolving around the Sun. Without it, everything within her will die.

Kirsty's finger tips itch to touch him. She is surrounded by dozens of chains hanging from the ceiling. They call to her like they are alive. They are serpents who wait for a master's call before they can strike. There is a slight tickle in her mind when she commands them to hook into their priest.

They strike fast, piercing the leather cassock he wears and removing it in less time than it takes to blink. He stands naked before her, unmoved by her alpha female display. Only one finely arched eyebrow shows his curiosity.

It is his turn to command the chains, and they strike with just as much vigor as before. She too, is left naked before him, revealing to him that she truly is a flesh schematic of the lament configuration. Even the smallest details lay in the webbing between her fingers, across her breasts and womanhood.

They kiss, the nail heads jutting out from his face scratching the flesh on hers, causing small sparks of desire to shoot through Kirsty with every drop of blood shed from the wounds.

"Put them away," she says breathlessly, speaking as though the nails embedded in his flesh are nothing more than decoration. It is true that if he wished he could make the nails burrow into his flesh like maggots or he could take them out one at a time until they no longer remained, but that was not appealing to him.

"I will not. In this form we are equals. I will spare you no moment of exquisite torture," he tells her, his hand moving to the nape of her neck where vertebrae is exposed; his fingers brush by them while moving in her hair and she shudders with unexpected pleasure that jolts through her.

Kirsty lets out a gasp as his fingers tighten in her hair. He pulls her head back painfully and lowers his mouth to the side of her neck. She feels his tongue, wet and cold against her mutilated skin and her flesh comes alive. It is like a flash of lightening has struck her, running through her body from the tip of his tongue traveling directly between her thighs.

"Fuck!" she says, not expecting the intensity of her desire. She brings her hand up to his face, grasping his flesh between the nails and holding him closer to her.

Xipe Totec brings his index finger of his right hand to her forehead where the Priapus emblem, the top part of the box that represents the forbidden pleasures of the flesh, is carved into her skin. Her skin is super sensitive to his touch, feeling the pattern his finger makes as it runs across her flesh as though he is burning it.

Heat coils inside her, her body super charged and humming to life. She moans as the armor around her heart constricts painfully, the thick nails holding it in place pushing deep into the organ.

She knows he's excited, his flesh ready for her. "Take me," she commands him. "Take me now."

The studded demon watches her heart intently as he continues to draw patterns across her flesh. She feels like a toy come to life, and he is tinkering, seeing what she is capable of. He brings up his other hand, tickling her flesh with more patterns, this time running down her ashen collar bone and over her exposed right breast, lingering to pinch a whitish blue nipple.

"I am in there," the demon says in Elliot Spencer's voice, referencing her heart. "I can feel it."

He is playing with her flesh and it is driving her insane with want.

"I am in there," he repeats, this time with his demon inflection. "I am so deep inside of you. I tainted you when your shields were down and when you reinforced your armor, I was already growing inside you like a malignant tumor."

Kirsty shuts him up with a kiss, rough but pleasurable.

Their bodies come together effortlessly, unable to resist the pull of one another. He continues to run patterns over her skin and her metal heart constricts and expands as her pleasure builds.

Their hips continue to do battle, smashing against one another as his flesh enters her repeatedly, furiously. It is angry, vicious sex, but she is all for it, her body feeling more alive than she can ever remember.

"Do you taste your destiny in the back of your throat most foul and alluring?" he asks her.

Her nails scratch down his back, tearing flesh with their sharpness and he moans, his head tilting back at the pleasure.

"This is never going to happen," she tells him, "I won't let it."

"You have no choice!" he bellows, in time with a powerful thrust.

"Angh!" Kirsty grunts both at the display of power and the pleasure it incites.

Kirsty runs her fingers over his chest, digging her fingers mercilessly into the perfect flayed squares of flesh; it makes him roar unexpectedly, the action triggering her body to an orgasm that is both the most painful and the most pleasurable she has ever experienced. It seems to last forever, her flesh milking his for all he is worth. The cavern of her chest begins to steam as the metal of her heart turns red as though heated by fire. He continues to thrust, sneering at her as though he hates her, but she knows deep in her bones that it is not hate he feels for her.

The armor around her heart opens without warning, causing her to yelp in surprise. It exposes the beating muscle to his eyes. It is throbbing, a marvelous dark pink. It is studded like his head and face, full of deep, sharp nails placed in a grid pattern. He finishes inside of her, his seed pulsing deep within to the same rhythm as her heart beat and he brings his hands up cupping the organ reverently.

Kirsty watches him from heavy lidded eyes, her body exhausted and relishing in their dark afterglow. She is not sure what he is doing, but every touch from his hands only causes pleasure, despite her surreal dream like surroundings.

The demon's grip on her heart tightens, and without warning he rips it from its den, sending metal debris flying from her chest cavity, some of it embedding itself deep within his face and neck.

Startled, she lets out a pained groan. It is more emotional than physical. She looks on while her blood drips down his hands and arms, a thick red. He holds her heart up for her to see, impaled by dozens of nails. "Do you understand?" he asks her, holding her charcoal gaze with his own. "Do you see that I am inside you, always?"

Kirsty feels her eyes watering, tears leaking from the corner of her eyes. "I do," she says solemnly. The admission is heart wrenching. It is something she has been dealing with for years.

With great care he places her heart in its resting spot, allowing Leviathan's skills to reconnect it. The metal instantly covers it on its own, making it whole again, fortifying her.

"All the pitiful human souls that you walk among … were they afraid of the tiny human baby we created?" he asks, awaiting her answer and cocking his head slightly to the right. Her answers are important.

"No," she answers honestly.

"Then who were they afraid of, Kirsty? Who made their skin crawl? Who made them so terrified that they recited prayers and held their rosaries to their hearts and asked their God for protection?"

Her lower lip trembles with very real fear, realization suddenly achieved with crystal clarity. "It was me," she admits, plaintively, her voice small. "They were afraid of me."

...

Kirsty wakes up in her bed, covered in sweat, a sweet ache and the wetness of the demon's seed between her thighs. It was real. In another dimension it really happened, and the truth of it makes her heart ache.

Over the baby monitor, her son begins to wail. It reminds her of her father's sobbing at the beginning of her dream. Tears leak from the corners of her closed eyes.

Things will not end well for her.

End, Part IV, "Metal Heart."