GRIP
SEVEN HOLY PATHS TO HELL ANTHOLOGY
This story was written as part of the Seven Holy Paths to Hell Anthology, a Valentine’s Day 2026 Collection of horror-erotica exploring the seven deadly sins. View the whole collection here.
I cannot emphasise how excited I am to be part of this with these amazing writers. Please read and enjoy ❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️
CONTENT WARNINGS: (18+) This story is not appropriate for all readers. Review content warnings at the end of the story.1
The professor pressed his palm against his shirt, fabric so thin he could feel the thrumming organ hiding under a bruised rib.
His form had never been meant for strenuous activity.
He winced at the pang in his chest, elbow bumping the desk, and it startled him something awful. His office was narrow, and in his hyper-focused episodes, he could forget this.
Of course, he could not imagine attempting to study anywhere else. He’d left his home weeks ago, well after it was no longer habitable. It was never a place to reside, but a treasure chest, a receptacle for his riches, his menagerie. And with enough imagination, anything could serve that purpose. A car. An office. Any place to protect the collection from damage. The location was not where his heart found solitude. His heart ached for the collection.
In dim lighting, a flickering bulb above him, a weaker one hunched over his oak desk, the professor pushed his vision to a new extreme. Eye strain had come upon him early in his youth. He could not remember a time when reading did not require a squint. But this had never stopped his endeavour. There was no sense that he could not adapt in his pursuit of knowledge.
Not to be shared. Never to be divulged. Understanding was to be his, completely his and his alone.
Before him lay pages of a text none had ever laid eyes on. It was ancient, leather-bound and stained, but the pages were crisp and prim, only ever damaged by natural elements. It was a topic of his recent preoccupation: theories of the heart. He knew its anatomy well, but its study was ancient, five millennia or more. And this book, his source had assured him, went well beyond the tubes and atria and ventricles the professor had thoroughly learned. These ideas pushed science elsewhere. These theories tempted science to fold in on itself.
The text had cost him every dime. But coinage was a trifling matter when the reward was immeasurable.
The professor had trembled violently upon first opening the great book. There was always that worry, that fear that he’d been duped. It would not have been the first time. But the text within subdued his terrors. The knowledge within poured out, cooed at him, hushed his excitement with a soft supremacy. He’d caught himself several times nearly touching the illustrations along the pages, but he’d always refrained. He was only deserving of turning the leaflets, and not only because of the crimson gunk under his nails.
There was a marriage of sensations in this hunt for mastery, thrills no other practise had brought to him. Lecturing youth who hungered for socialisation, not what his brilliance could provide them. Peers who ached for the work day to end to abandon their studies, not one was enthralled by what they preached.
Sometimes, he wondered if his hatred of humanity had been a trait placed in his soul, one that purposefully drove him to pursue wisdom.
As though wisdom longed for his worship just as he longed to revere it.
Within his hands, he was more than cautious. He worshipped the document’s promise severely. A cut from the page was a kiss for his gentleness.
He was elated with every new word, every new hypothesis. He jotted names of boffins he’d never heard of. He copied drawings that transformed the organ inside out, upside down. Within the pericardium, between the organ’s walls, lived an undiscovered awareness. Its muscle tissue hummed for digestion, not pulsation. Eyes and ears, watching, listening, persecuting every atom, dooming vessels to mutate, blessing pathogens to scatter. A sentient creature tucked away in an otherwise useless suit of flesh, eager to exploit the body imprisoning it.
And no one knew but him.
The professor’s mind raced with images. Did his lungs spasm from an asthmatic disorder, or from the heart’s wrath? Did his ribcage quiver at its might as the throat did under strangulation?
No one knew. No one would ever know, apart from him.
Warmth. Unbearable warmth. Perspiration dared to damage pages, and he dotted a dampening cloth over his forehead. It was a chase, a dance, an affair that demanded everything from him. And he gave. He gave and gave and gave to get a sliver of knowledge in return. He’d never imagined he could give so much, but the ache in his hands reminded him of his devotion, the memories burned in his brain from mere hours ago reminded him of his purpose. Nothing could get in the way of his quest. Nothing could stand between him and the words.
The words. The words. They beckoned to him, called him to praise them. Those inky black letters caressed his every sense. Phrases gripped his stomach, filled it with a fanatic excitement. The assurance of mastery petted him like nothing else. It quieted memories that could haunt, ghostly pleas of nosey colleagues.
Not to be shared. Never to be divulged.
He ran a palm over the nape of his neck, slick with sweat. His grip tightened at the thought of the book’s absence, the thought of understanding belonging to another. He’d made sure such a terrifying prospect was beyond the bounds of possibility. But if not that one, would another not loom over his shoulder soon enough? Wouldn’t others scheme together to acquire what was rightfully his?
The professor released the page just as fingers curled into a fist. Tears burned the backs of his eyes. Three words died on his tongue as a rush of emotions came to the surface.
Heat poured forth from him, battling the book’s feverish hold. His body tensed at its burst before melting into its embrace. The knowledge was no longer traversing over his synapses with feather-light grazes, but sternly, authoritatively. His heart thrummed in his chest as the slivers of freewill sizzled in the learning’s grip. Arteries and veins opened and liberated his blood to flow, flow, flow. A terror merging with desire, want submitting to paralysing need.
He pressed a hand over his chest as though to support the ribcage struggling to hold the heart within. It was his knowledge, his coveted knowledge, that stroked fibres of his ticker into a sporadic rhythm, his precious knowledge that made him lurch forward.
Eyes fixed closed as the professor felt learning crawl through him. Anatomical sketches grazed his lungs. Scientific language bruised his thighs with affection. Theories thrilled his insides, twisted his stomach—
And his heart. His beating heart was deafening.
The heart thrashed as rhapsody consumed him. A hiss. A gasp. A cry. A plea. A wonder.
A promise to rise and hunt tomorrow.
An assurance to protect his findings, to worship words.
And as the professor slipped into unconsciousness, slumped over in his chair, in a sheen of sweat from head to toe, he hoped and longed to rise once again with an avaricious hunger for the god he loved.
cover images are comprised of photos by Maximus Mazar and Ricardo Gomez Angel and edited under the Unsplash license by RM Greta
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CONTENT WARNINGS: UNHEALTHY OBSESSION, IMPLIED MURDER, IMPLIED (LIGHT) SADOMASOCHISM
Haha brilliant.. it sounds like a massive Wikipedia session. Really cool idea and dug the intensity throughout 🤘
Damn, that must be a good book. I fear he didn’t gain that book by peaceful means.
He gave everything to learn, yet hoarded the knowledge for himself.