He feels helpless because he is under addiction's grip. And the horror comes from what addiction does to lover and beloved. His body shrivels to impotence as hers is corrupted, eaten away. The occult sources of addiction are explicated later. Humans, according to the Akishra's victims, are subject to parasitical possession because they are weakened by urge and demiurge, warring temperaments locked in an endless tergiversation.
Narrative acquires the rumble of prophesy and the grace of artifice.
In the ephemeral flare of a Bic he glimpsed the place they dragged him to. It was a basement of the Projects. A furnace room, strewn with trash. Something moved sinuously in one corner. Wetbones is extremely graphic in its depictions of sex and violence.