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"Are you ready for death? ... the comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern bills."
~ William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1610)
For a long moment, she merely relaxes there, licking her fingertips clean of the sticky red confection with all the contentment of a preening kitten, presenting a picture of eerie, sated tranquility... But even under the waltzing
shadows of the tiny cell of a room, the glinting steel of malice is clear in her eyes.
Bodies rapidly draining of life hang limp over the brass railing surrounding the stage, their scarlet essence spilling into lazy pools around her legs, to cover any traces of the lacquered wood surface. As it congeals, the fluid begins to take on the appearance of a slick of new nail polish, reflecting here and there the dim glow of stage lighting.
With a sudden upsweep of both arms, she brings her hands just against her forehead, the distended thumbs and forefingers meeting to create a triangle, and as those blood-smeared digits come together in somber unison, every surface in the room begins to shimmer, the very air disintegrating, the walls beginning to melt, as though the whole of the scene were bathed in the gauzy film of dream's distortion.
Through that milky haze, she snaps her fingers apart, her arms coming down in an elegant arc to rest, palms flattened, in the reservoir of blood.
Ever aware, is she, of the warmth of golden eyes boring into the back of her skull, never leaving, never ceasing their scrutiny...
"In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi excelsi...," comes her solemn whisper. The quiet murmuring from her lips is as refracted as the shadow and light spilling over her bare forearms as they rise in worshipful majesty, drawing the blood at her fingertips... but the blood is no longer the thick, opaque layer of gore... as it rises at her summons from the floor, it is a swath of the most sheer crepe de chine, deep crimson in hue, but translucent in value, enough to allow a clear view of the bodies as they fade back into the wall, now creating a ghastly mural of decay and wide-eyed death. Rising from the auras of misery, a few thin tendrils of smoke writhe up along the wall, weaving to create a circle, and then the points of two horns, the head of the black goat, thrust upwards in defiance, and then three other points, inverted, a symbol of the trinity denied. At each point of the star rise the watery, serpent-like characters that spell out the name... Leviathan...
With a dramatic, sweeping gesture, she lifts the veil of sheer silk over her head, allowing it to flutter down like a cascade of autumn leaves, the ends of the delicate yardage drifting into the air and then settling in grave quiet upon the stage.
One hand circles out to the left, and in the wake of that gesture is revealed a single black candle, its flame springing to life with the passing current of air. A brief wave to the right produces a matching stem of wax, this one in snowy white. Weaving her hands before her, with a fluttering of delicate fabric, she lifts them away, and where once was bare, wooden floor, is now a silver bell, and a chalice, also of the same finely-wrought silver.
Still, those golden eyes observe at her back, their fire captured by the curiosity of the scene...
She rises like a blood-draped phantom, surrounded by the flowing red silk that covers her limbs and obscures the private smile on her features. In one hand, she takes the bell, drawing it up and sending its peal once towards the west wall, tolling it in tribute to the horns of Baphomet. Like the robes of a dervish, the silk swirls around her, and as she turns, the bell sings out eight times more, its penetrating trill sent to the south, east, and north.
All falls to silence as she returns to face the black goat, and her eyes remain fixed upon that symbol, as she sinks to her knees once more, settling the bell back to its original place. With hands resting, upturned, on the cushion of her thighs, she resumes the quiet hum of muttering, and though the words are stifled by the silk at her lips, a few random syllables and names carry in layer upon layer of whisper across the air, to the ears of the golden-eyed watcher... Sekhmet... Ahriman... Cimeries... Kali... Yaotzin... Nihasa... Mammon... Shiva... and the very air around her begins to shudder with the wrath of the archaic infernal...
As the rambling whispers die away, she reaches forward, to wind her fingertips around the stem of the chalice. Lifting it to her lips and pressing against the veil, she drinks through the silk, allowing the sacramental elixir to leave behind a trace of rich crimson to darken the fabric as the chalice is returned to its seat.
With an ecstatic breath, she drinks in deep of the sudden anger surging through her. Her blood pulses with the destructive fury of a thousand nights spent weeping, a thousand days spent raked across the barbs of nightmares, of humiliation and torment that has dogged her every step ever since the day that those golden eyes first had the temerity to look upon her. And she calls upon this rage, her muscles tensing with the exhaustive effort of crying out with the voice of silent vengeance.
The floor before her shifts, as in answer to her plea, and a squared panel rises, the wood itself bubbling up to release a single, ragged peace of parchment, its edges burnt as though it were sent from the fiery pits itself, its face marred with the image of a man, a crudely drawn figure filled in with matte blacks and glimmering gold...
The floor sinks away once more, leaving the parchment sheet to be snatched up in her grasp. She lifts it with trembling reverence by both hands, holding it by the top and bringing it up before her gaze... and there it pauses, for a long moment, as she contemplates the figure upon the page, and her ears perk to sudden awareness, as she braces herself with a cleansing breath...
Her wrists snap, in opposite directions, and the grating torment of paper being torn asunder lacerates the air. A choking sob suddenly issues from somewhere behind her, and in that moment, she knows, the golden eyes are now hollow with shock, wide with terror, and the knowledge fills her with a renewed, exuberant fury. Her own eyes snap closed, so that she may see more clearly the agony carried to her by the rising screams at her back, as, bit by bit, the rip in the parchment is drawn out. Soon enough, the screams are stopped short, to be replaced by the sickly harmony of bones breaking like twigs, sinew ripped with an elastic curdle, and the moist thud of organs falling to the hardwood floor. When the tear in the paper reaches halfway, she pauses, her chest now rising and falling beneath the veil of crimson shadows, her ecstasy reaching a fever pitch, her nerves screaming with sinister bliss.
And suddenly, her arms spread wide, and with a sound like diamonds cutting glass, the paper is in two pieces, fluttering silently at her sides, and allowed to drift to the floor, one scrap beside each candle. With one last shuddering gasp, she slumps forward, her head brought to rest against the stage as she struggles to regain her composure.
It is some time before she is able to rise again, so exhausted is her blood by the boiling inferno that was summoned to accomplish her task... but when she does, it is with a voice strong and clear, perhaps for the first time in many months, as she lifts her head in prayer...
"Nonuci dasonuf Babaje od cahisa ob hubaio tibipipe..." The timbre of her purr grows more rich with each uttered syllable... "Alalare ataraahe od ef! Darix fafenu mianu ar Enayo ovof!..." Her unbeating heart trembles with the jubilance of release... "Soba dooainu aai i VONUPEHE. Zodacare, gohusa, od Zodameranu..." And the chains of her torment melt away... "Odo cicale Qaa! Zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!..."
And the golden eyes can see her no more...
The Slave Gets It.
And here's the grand finale you've all been waiting for...
Like the hollow, ritual rumbling of taiko drums, the storm that has been gathering just over the mountains for hours now chooses this moment to make its entrance. The clouds almost seem to be in haste as they carry their roiling, seething charcoal over the tree tops with a foreboding speed that seems to defy nature and dare the stars in its path to offer resistance.
Somewhere in the distance, a jagged bolt of white heat crashes down, slicing through the ink of night and lashing across a tree branch, sending its severed end tumbling to earth. The acrid stench of singed bark and leaves is tossed through the air on a wild wind, the first angry caress of the coming storm, bringing with it a layer of dust from the ground and sending that grit whipping across the translucent form of the Mistress and her chair.
A thunderous roar at the core of her being brings her rage to life... the picture rights itself, the dream-like distortions snap to screaming clarity, and milky whiteness is suddenly grained black, a mesh-wrapped coil of porcelain sinews taut with the excitement of blood arousal.
By this time, the slave boy is trembling uncontrollably beneath her, having reached the last scraps of his strength. He remains dutifully in place, too afraid, too obedient, to do otherwise, even though he is just on the verge of collapse from the hours of stationary posing. As her phantom form takes to flesh once more, it seems that he will finally give in. He wears a mask of anguish, this frail boy, and his arms go rigid against the sudden pressure, and the sheen of perspiration induced by the sweltering night air is only accentuated.
But she doesn't leave him to suffer for long.
As though the savage wind itself were carrying her, she rises from her seat in one swift, fluid sweep, her arms uplifted in joyful idolatry to the sky, to the howling clouds rolling in over the horizon. Another lightning strike ruptures the sky, casting a strobelight flickering over the grove that, for a brief moment, illuminates the frightened features of the slave boy, as he huddles against the seeming safety of an ancient oak.
What he can't see... what only the moon can see... is the feral dementia gripping the Mistress, reflected in the frothing of emerald and bitter black in her eyes, the greedy baring of teeth, the flash of silver and the glint at the tips of newly-sprung fangs as she calls down the fury of the storm, calls it into the grove. Her gloved fingertips flex and writhe, like leather serpents, each with a will of its own, each determined to drink in every delicious, sating ounce of evil that can be garnered from the approaching tempest.
The discordant crashing of cymbals and the jagged peals of bells join in with the thunder's wicked timpani. Somewhere deep in the forest, stolid oak and ash groan in protest, as another cruel wind batters at their trunks. A single tendril of the rushing air weaves around her features, lifting the flames at her temples and drawing the entire cascade of curls into a chaotic, fiery Medusa's head that bares her banshee's smile to the sky.
Again, lightning erupts from the clouds overhead, striking the earth with the wrath of ancient gods making their way back to the earth after centuries of slumber, and this last crashing reminder stirs her from her pose with a snarl that wells into hollow, maniacal laughter.
A chorus of dark angels lift their voices to the sky, their wails of changing fortune and monstrous fate piercing through the storm, their tenors and sopranos sweet and black as pitch.
Throbbing, surging, screaming with blood lust, she whirls in place, sending the tangle of curls whipping once more into the wind, and as she turns to face the slave boy, her eyes are all scarlet appetite, her fangs distended and dripping with the venom of her hunger, her hands like claws as they reach for him.
It all happens so quickly. In the precise moment that he realizes his life is forfeit to her rage, gloved hands are already wrapped at the scruff of his neck and lifting him into the air. With the strength of her immortal heritage pounding in her veins, she carries him in a swooping arc, and a few broad steps take her to the altar's edge, where she slams him down on his back, with no mercy spared, not even the remotest semblance of kindness wasted in her hurry to soothe the hungry beast inside.
He lands flat, the back of his skull striking the stone with a gruesome cracking sound, and she, with the ferocity of an animal in rut, is on top of his limp form at once, straddling and looking down over him. A sudden flash of almost maternal tenderness flickers across her features, in time with the next brilliant strike of lightning, as his boyish porcelain perfection is illuminated, framed by the deep coal of bottle-black hair. But this perusal lasts only a moment, and then she is overtaken by a seething hiss of pure rapture.
Gloved palms curled over the curves of his shoulders, she snaps forward, sinking her teeth through the raw and yielding ivory of his skin. The cries of the dark angels rise around her, their operatic swellings singing to the glory of crimson nectar as it bursts from his pierced jugular, rushing from his body and burning down her throat with every greedy gulp.
As though on cue, another shaft of lightning arcs across the tops of the clouds, lighting the whole scene and revealing all its crimson gore. The Mistress rights herself then, and with another furious hiss, she lifts her fanged, lunatic smile to the sky. And the lush scarlet of her mouth is rimmed with the last drops of the slave boy's life.
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