Emotional Codeine: Infernis

When Gothic Decay Feeds Crime

Dear Reader,

We continue with the appetites that feed Crime.

For those who missed it last time we met, Crass fell for the stranger Eros. Both Hydras — Eros the embodiment of Suicide and Crass the fires of Crime — coupled together, unleashing Hell across the city. To which the Collective stepped in —the four most powerful Hydra who rule the city — and erased their encounter.

This is my submission this week for the Power Up Prompt by Bradley Ramsey this a level 3 entry for Gothic Horror. You can find details below including contents link:

Content Warning:
This work contains graphic depictions of addiction, psychological manipulation, parasitic relationships, religious imagery used in corruptive and coercive contexts, references to self-destruction, substance abuse, and systemic exploitation. Themes include loss of agency, relapse, nihilism, and emotional dependency without resolution or redemption. Reader discretion is advised.

Polluted Signal

For Crass — The Hydra of Crime — the city of Infernis was never hostile; it was always withholding. Always on the brink of where the next jolt, thrill, or fix would come from, it was an infection that tempered its spread.

The steam of the city streets was thick with slogans that would lure in the unwitting humans — “COMING SOON, A NEW HORIZON, TIME TO REBUILD.”

It ran on a sales pitch, always to keep you hungry, but even for some of the lesser Hydra, this could be true. Each Hydra yearned for a different craving, a truth that didn’t make Crass wallow — it made him empty.

The infection touched every corner, pushing it close to annihilation.

He wandered the damp, dark, and odious streets without direction, looking for his ticket. He wasn’t human and didn’t crave happiness in the mortal sense; he craved orientation. To be aligned with his truth so utterly, he would no longer feel lost.

Away from the neon lights in the hollow shelters of the underpasses, he sought a chance to retreat. He needed to figure out what profited Crime when it wasn’t being drained by co-dependencies, but the problem with hosting a parasite was that it just felt too good even when it was bad for you.

⟁ v ⟁ v ⟁ v ⟁ v ⟁

In the midst of feeling like he was jacked out, he saw it — graffiti only meant for a Hydra… The Lighthouse. A recurring pattern that fed him in an instant what he was drawn to the most — Hope.

He fed off every drop; it anointed him like a starved animal — leaving him euphoric.

If there is one addiction that is toxic to Crime, it is Hope.

It was the function that swayed his thinking because true Crime was about planning; it never won on a game of chance. In every sweet lie it told him, his mind lit up because for the Hydras, their high comes from the most dangerous connections.

He followed the series of those symbols as if he were ascending a wrought iron spiral staircase with only a lantern to guide him to his destination. He weaved through the streets in a delirium, on a leash of compulsion.

They appeared on the walls, in broken TV screens, and flashing across billboards in the dark, soaked streets. His senses attuned to devour the signal and for it devour him in turn.

Each signal fed him new symbols: “Stay,” “With us you matter,” “Come to us.”

This was not a benediction of coercion; this was activation by a shared desire. With each strobe of the Lighthouse as he got closer, he felt nearer to the rush. Emotion to Hydra, especially an opposing force, can be an overwhelming feeling.

The city accommodated his path to his destination, corners opened, paths narrowed, and obstacles thinned — with each revolution; it gave him access to the next. He was being guided to a familiar rot, his lungs compressing upon the burn of the night air.

The roar of the waves of dreams against the signal tower led him to one place for him to be processed — The Cathedral of Nos, a signal tower deep in the city belonging to a member of The Collective.

At that moment, Crass was too inebriated to know he had slid into an old danger. As this was hunger he had once survived, he would not fall for her tricks twice.

Relapse Cathedral

The signal tower opened to Crass, its doors flung wide as if it expected his arrival. Nos had always made a home among the beacons of the city — this was The Lighthouse he was led to. He descended its steps and moved deeper into her domain.

The walls oozed putrefaction, and the rust peeled like brittle skin. He felt invited and welcomed into its halls of grand decay. Crass was in a haze, following in a hypnotic state; the house of Nos received him, watched, and waited.

He etched closer to the sanctum down the steps covered in moisture and mildew. Each corridor, each hall, and every room was bathed in candlelight, for it was the only illumination that could survive the suffocation of her breath. The wax choked the wicks with a hiss as she exhaled through the eaves.

Even in the cold absence, he was invited as he was expected.

Every action and every infraction leads him to his place in the depths of the inner sanctum. He is a phantom deliriously haunting the threshold of this temple, and Nos is waiting.

He finally arrives in the halls of congregation; the candlelight rations itself in this space and orchestras pierce every corner in loops that never resolve. A feedback loop stuck on the same bars feeding the same signal as the embodiment of The Lighthouse, for he has been initiated.

Instinctively knowing the dance, he takes his seat at the altar — the only restraint is his dependence, a greater weight than a hand between his shoulders. Now it is time for Nos to show herself at last, she slides out of the dark as if made from the weave of its shadow.

As she comes to him, the music becomes like a static pressure, and in that moment, he is fuelled with copious amounts of Hope. In a blur, she moves to him and strokes his cheek as she declares to him:

“Remember, my love, when Crime worshipped Addiction.”

Crass bites down hard, frothing at the moment at the overwhelming feeling. As he rides the current, Nos invades his mind:

“That’s it, ride the waves so I can feed. I will only take a taste, submit to the order of my litany.”

Crass, unable to speak or offer his usual charm, feels it as she siphons his energy, flooded with Hope.

She was a dark matron who was feeding on the memories of a Hydra; she could only ever take, never give true communion. He longed for a mutual spark, and a piece of him at the back of his mind remembered what was erased — Eros, The Hydra of Suicide.

In the release of this clarification, Crass fell to his knees, and Nos took this as a sign:

“That’s it, pray to Mater Addictionis. Crime will flood once again, fuelled by the need for their fix, and I will have control.”

The decaying orbit of the music was breaking her spell each turn scratched on the gramophone and roused Crass from the flood of Hope. Nos was breaking all the rules; she was siphoning two Hydra to keep Crime docile.

Crass finally found his voice under the miasma of her laughter: “ENOUGH.”

He began to fight back. He couldn’t siphon other Hydras like a member of The Collective, but he could control the flow of Crime to be choreographed, not pulled. In that he knew the truth, she was a creature only sustained on borrowed worship who was too weak on her own when confronted:

“I remember, darling, why I stopped coming to your altar because I know I’m stronger when I am lucid. I will not be controlled by you or Obscura. Your plans to keep me in line have only removed the handholds that tied me down.”

He remembered then all the times he had been torn from Eros and how many times they had erased him, kept him starved of need, and broken him to keep him profitable.

Crass was weak; she had taken much when she fed, and he was strung out from relapsing on Hope. He would have to crawl to find his way to the neon lights of Infernis.

Drained Vessel

Mentally battered — his mind in tatters from the manipulations of The Collective. He crawled up those steps until he was strong enough to hobble. He knew Crime loved Suicide, and he would face the cost of two Hydras being together.

Right now, though, he needed to leave the backbone of rigour mortis he had climbed out of and find someone who could help. The only one he knew who could dull the signal and help him unravel the cost of manipulation. A tangible static in his teeth, leaving an aftertaste of her corruption.

In the echoes of the torments from Nos’s basilica, he sought the one thing she couldn’t feed off — Termina The Hydra of Negativity. Pessimism — the cancer to Hope and the clarity he needed to steer from addiction.

Crass did not know if redemption was possible; he only held on to the fragments of what was. He would burn down her Cathedral for the kiss of Suicide.

She comes to soothe your woes,

You only have to give up control,

Take the needle,

Hit the line,

Cravings end — so sublime,

She is the mother of narcotics,

Lose your wits to the abyss…

Everything you were — gone with just a switch.

Nosce te ipsum in addictionis,

Nosce te ipsum in infirmitate,

Nosce te ipsum in desiderium,

And she will know you…

At your lowest moment.

Partake of your vices,

It won’t be the end,

All you gotta do is say yes,

Oblivion on the powdered stars,

We know you,

We know what’s in your heart,

For you are a coward,

Who can’t say no…

To be a puppet aching for a fix.

Nosce te ipsum in compulsione,

Nosce te ipsum in obsessione,

Nosce te ipsum in confessione,

And she will know you…

As you pray in your lowest moment.

Your life on the edge,

We tip the scales,

You bleed for us through the night,

Every syringe is our benediction,

Powder, pill, our prophecy,

Our altar of conviction,

For when you give in…

We have you in sin.

All that will be left is a husk,

Gutter trash who denies former ties…

For we are now family — wrapped in lies.

Infernis will continue to burn next week, where we will meet more of the Hydras.

Is Addiction really the moral axis that brings us Crime, or are they feeding off each other?

Let us know your thoughts and any ideas you have about the series

Read more by Malrik Raithmoor

© 2025 Malrik Raithmoor | All rights reserved.
This work is protected under international copyright law.
Redistribution, reproduction, or AI data scraping without express permission is strictly prohibited.
Tracked and logged under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.