Manifest Destiny

But it had been a long week, and she was glad that they only had these two assholes for the last gig of the night. Functioning on autopilot, she looked around the spacious hotel suite, glad of the cleanliness and regal appearance of the room. The whores had a deal worked out with the hotel manager, who took a small cut and sometimes even solicited clients for them. As long as they wore upscale outfits or concealing coats, he let them be.

Dolly’s partner was close to finishing and, from the sound of it, so was Willow’s. Willow’s really hamming it up tonight, Dolly thought, smiling softly. She’d tease her about all that moaning and gasping when they went for breakfast later. Dolly glanced over in cynical amusement, but the smile froze on her face when she looked at her friend.

Willow wasn’t moving like a high-class whore finishing up her john; she was locked in place atop him, arms rigid, body trembling. Her breath was wheezing in and out in painful gasps, and she stared straight ahead, eyes wide.

“Willow? Honey, you okay?” Dolly asked.

“Doll…something’s wrong,” Willow gasped through clenched teeth. “I’m…I’m burning…”

“What do you mean?” Dolly forgot about the man beneath her, twisting to look at her friend. “Willow? Baby, answer me!”

Her only reply was a guttural hiss. Willow began to jerk as if in a seizure, her legs still locked around the man as he tried to squirm free.

“Get this bitch off me! Get her off me!”

Dolly scrambled off her own client and ran to Willow, jerking her hand back when she touched her. Willow’s skin was burning hot.

“Baby, what is it? Let go,” Dolly said frantically, trying to pull the woman away. “Let go, Willow. Let go.”

“Get her off me! Get her off me! Oh, God, it’s burning! It’s burning me! Help me!”

Dolly’s john was scrambling into his pants. “Jesus. What the fuck?”

He grabbed his wallet and the rest of his clothes and ran out. Dolly yelled for him to call an ambulance, but he never turned around. She raced to the phone and tried to dial out, but punched the wrong number.

“Shit! What’s the fucking call out number?”

Willow began to scream.

As Dolly watched in horror, Willow’s smooth skin turned grainy and thick. Then sections of it began to pour off of her like sand from a bucket, exposing muscle and black bone. Her eyes swelled, pushing out of their sockets, then ruptured from the pressure, spraying Dolly with hemorrhaged tissue. Willow’s midnight hair was smoking from the intense heat, drifting up and around her as if she were caught in an updraft. The grainy flesh continued to pour off of her, spreading across the bed and the sobbing man underneath, cascading to the floor and rippling out across the carpet like mercury on a glass surface. Then the exposed muscles of her shoulders and arms seemed to liquefy, pouring down across her body, enveloped in a steaming gray cloud. Dolly could see her friend’s blackened skeleton grow red-hot. Willow’s waist-length hair caught fire, swirling in an inferno around her head and back. She never moved from that terrible locked position. The frantic man beneath her clawed at her thighs, his skin crackled and black as it ruptured, spilling liquefied fat across the bed, his voice choked and sobbing as he tried to get away.

It all happened in seconds.