His torment did not end that night.
Herrin lay in the cottage where he had once been happy, and the walls that had sheltered him now felt like the sides of a coffin. His body had become a foreign thing. Heavy and unresponsive, a carcass that still breathed but no longer lived.
The cold that had seeped into his bones during that terrible night never fully left him.
And his tormentor never left.
She returned to him again and again over the following weeks, moving through his home as if it were hers. Invading his sacred space and speaking to in a constant stream of idle chatter that devolved into laughter. And the growing sight of that belly constantly filled him with terror.
His body deteriorated with every visit, ageing years in the span of weeks. His skin had taken on a greyish pallor, his eyes had sunken into bruised hollows, and his hands shook constantly with a tremor he could not control.
He was dying by inches, and he could not bring himself to care.
