Desecrating Solomon II

by Lucian Bane

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I had questions, always.”

  Solomon gasped in relief. “See? Your gifts were trying to help you stop the curse from hurting Master!” he said, excited. “When? When did they start, what kind of questions were they?”

  “Master said they were bad,” she said in hushed tones like he might hear her. “That… the bad spirits were making me think about those things to stop him from lifting the curse, and that I must never entertain the bad questions.”

  “Oh shit,” Solomon whispered.

  “What?” she quickly asked, scared.

  “I was right. The curse got Master from early on. But that explains why he’s so blind, he’s had so many years under its spell.”

  Solomon waited in the sudden silence, praying and holding his breath that she’d bite.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, pushing away from him. “Oh my God, oh my God.” She paced nearby, sounding more scared and guilty than ever, like everything was her fault, and always would be. “I-I-I don’t understand, the queen—”

  “The queen,” he said, grabbing at the sudden angle. “Tell me about the queen, Chaos. Let’s start there. Who is the queen? Where is she?”

  “I-I don’t know who… I mean I wasn’t allowed to ask. She lives with Master, in his most private chamber.”

  His most private chamber? Sick bastard thought he was God. Most private chamber, holy of holies. “What… does the queen look like?”

  Solomon held his breath before she finally whispered, “She’s very beautiful. But… I wasn’t ever allowed to look upon her. I wasn’t clean enough,” she hissed, as though realizing things. Hopefully realizing the deception.

  “How do you know she’s beautiful?”

  The question must’ve stumped her. “Because… because she’s the queen, she’s… I mean I thought…”

  Solomon stepped toward her distressed voice and grabbed for her. “Okay, okay,” he soothed. He needed to go so very carefully, and yet so very quickly before their captors came back. At least she was embracing the idea that her beloved Master might be blind, duped by evil. And of course she’d blame herself for failing to see it, but it was progress in the right direction.

  The devil could not have hand selected a more perfect person than her. Faithful, unselfish, and honorable to the death.

  It suddenly occurred to him. “Has anyone seen the queen?”

  The long silence that followed made him sick with hope. “Y-yes. I… I’m sure yes.”

  “You assume they have?”

  “Yes,” she said, her tone firm before she went quiet for many seconds while Solomon sought for the right questions. “I… I’ve heard her!” she suddenly cried.

  “What did you hear?”

  “Her whispering. To Master, behind the veil.”

  “The veil?”

  “In Master’s inner chamber. He speaks to her there sometimes.”

  Inner chamber. Most private. Solomon fought the unholy creep factor crawling along his skin. “Does Master… like the queen?”

  She gasped her answer with passion, “He loves her! Very much!”

  “Loves? Like… a mother? A sister, a wife?”

  “I-I… She’s just… she’s the queen, she’s Mother of the order, he loves her like…”

  Solomon let it slip, “God?”

  He held his breath in the long stretch of dead silence, worried he’d messed up. “It wouldn’t be his fault. Curses usually always make false gods, Chaos,” he gently added. “Does the queen tell the Master what to do?”

  “I think… she councils him, yes.”

  Another idea hit him. “I see,” Solomon said with feigned knowing, quickly organizing another tactic.

  “What?” she asked, sounding as desperate for a justification as she was for a solution.

  “The curse may have taken the queen first.”

  Chaos let out a sharp breath. “And she…?”

  “Polluted the Master.”

  Solomon waited in the darkness, praying that her hand covered her mouth and her eyes were wide in shock. “Yes!” she finally hissed after a few moments. “Yes, that’s it,” she whispered with shocked understanding.

  Relief flooded Solomon until his knees nearly buckled. The queen would take the fall in this, which was fine by him, and understandable given Chaos’s devotion to that master bastard.

  “My first bad question happened when Master told me something the queen had said, I questioned it, it felt… not quite right to me.” Like she couldn’t bring herself to say wrong.

  “Oh my God,’ Solomon whispered as more dread dawned. “That would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she agreed, but it wasn’t as passionate as before.

  “Talk to me, Beautiful, is there more?”

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, pulling out of his arms again.

  “What? Tell me, help me understand.”

  “I don’t know!” she shrilled in the dark before him. “What do I know? I don’t know what I know! I just listened!” she hissed. “I listened like a good student. I didn’t ask questions!”

  Solomon needed to slow down. She didn’t need to realize too much too quickly and fall into some other psychotic well and get stuck.

  “I put away the bad questions,” she went on heatedly. “I didn’t give in to them, I abandoned them! Like a good student!” she strained, sounding like she grit her teeth. In anger? Regret?

  “Yes, like a good student, like a good daughter that trusted, Chaos,” Solomon said, wishing to fuck he could see! “There is nothing wrong with that, you did beautifully.”

  “Beautifully!” She sounded appalled, making him realize how poorly he’d chosen his words. “I’m stupid!” she seethed. “Just like Master said so many times, ‘you stupid, stupid, child, you never learn.’ So I tried harder and harder and I learned. I learned to say no to the questions! I learned to obey. I learned to listen to everything with disgusting perfection!” she yelled.

  “Stop it,” Solomon ordered, hearing her ragged breaths moving erratically in the dark. “This isn’t about your performance. The curse used you like it used Master, like it used the-the queen. I need you to focus and tell me about the first bad question you had. Maybe the bad questions will help us understand where it all went wrong.”

  Chapter Two

  Chaos wanted to run out of her skin, to scream and hide. Everything Solomon was saying felt too true. Right in that place he touched on her chest. He knew. He always knew things. And at the same time she could feel it with each passing second, blooming in her chest. Hope and dread, side by side. But he was here, he was right here, and he was right. He’d heard her call him, and he’d come. He’d answered her. Her call for him. God had brought him here despite the curse’s trickery. He was still here, and if that was the case, God was too. She stopped pacing. God was here and he was trying to help her!

  Chaos quickly found him in the dark and hugged him so tight. Oh God, thank you. Thank you for sending Solomon. She let out many huge gasps, breaths she’d been holding in that deep place inside her, the place that had once told her things; the place she’d learned to silence.

  That fire suddenly burned inside her. She remembered it. She’d felt it when Master had said she was chosen to help lift the curse. When had she lost it? When had the curse taken it? She loved her church family with all her heart, she loved God. She loved Master, Grandmother, the precious memory of her mother. She’d never wanted anything more than to help. Help make things right. To stop the suffering. Oh God, the suffering. The suffering they’d been through, all of them. Not one of them had gone untouched from it.

  So many bad questions, she’d had so many bad questions.

  Dread began to slowly fill her as her mind raced too quickly through the past. Desecration after desecration flooded in until she was sick.

  The bad questions… they’d been strong at those times.

  “Talk to me, Beautiful.”

  Eyes wide with
horror in the inky black, she paused her pacing and faced the sound of his voice. She suddenly felt like she faced God and he saw all her sins, all her vile sins. Her skin tingled and tightened, making her claw and scratch at it. “The desecrations,” she whispered, fighting to breathe around the dread, shaking her head. “I-I had… so many questions.”

  “Okay,” he said softly.

  The feeling of wrong filled her until those ants from her nightmares covered her skin. The questions were wrong. They were wrong. She rocked from one foot to the other and fought to get the ants off.

  “Chaos,” he whispered. “Listen to me, Beautiful.”

  She stared into the dark, whimpering, praying for help. Help to understand, to make it all go away.

  “The questions weren’t wrong. The questions were right. You were supposed to ask them, the curse lied.”

  His words shot through her skull like a ricocheting bullet, and she clenched her eyes shut tight, waiting for it to hit, to sink in and do whatever it would do. She knew it was coming, she gasped in the dark, feeling it coming. What that meant. Oh God, what that meant. The past suddenly rushed forward and in seconds vomited its dirty contents in her mind, telling her to look, look and figure it out, look and see. The dots Chaos, the dots, connect them, connect the dots stupid child.

  She didn’t want to look, but she did, even as she fought not to. The surreal horror came like a picture book, abstract and bloody. Body parts, body parts, babies, wide eyes, wide eyes, countless faces, young, old, agony, agony twisting faces, grotesque, ugly, consequence, consequence of blasphemies, sins, all being covered but not cleansed, never cleansed!

  A long sob of horror wrenched out of her, leaving her shaking violently, her hands flailing in the dark.

  “Chaos,” Solomon yelled at her.

  She stumbled in reverse, fighting for air and hit the wall with her back, shaking her head. She struggled to hold on, hold on to something. It was overtaking her, she didn’t know what it was, she only knew it was coming to claim her with an absolution. “Solomon!” she screamed as loud as she could. “Solomoooooooooon! Solomon Goooooooorrrrrge!”

  He was like an angel. An angel of light, sweeping into that darkness and yanking her out. With his own bare hands, he did it, he held her face so tight. And he kissed her, he kissed her right out of hell, right out of the arms of a thousand demons!

  She latched onto him in desperation, feeling her mind raising up from the devil’s clutches. But he didn’t stop there, he never did. She was soon out of her body, sparks of light breaking her wide open and burying inside her soul, soaring her through the universe in one breath.

  “I want to love you,” she cried in his mouth, desperate to do that now and never stop. “I want you so much. I want a family, I want to have children. I want to have your children!” The possibility of getting such a gift brought a sob of joy, followed by fierce panic that it was too late. That it was exactly too late to fix the mess they were in. “Did the curse lie?” She had to know. “Did the curse lie about me never having love? About me never being happy?” She forced the words past the painful knot gripping her throat.

  “It did!” Hot conviction broke his beautiful voice and the chokehold on her heart. She could only gasp over and over in relieved joy. “It lied to you, Beautiful. It fucking lied so much,” he breathed, kissing her quickly as though to thoroughly cleanse her. “You have me. You have my love, and nothing can take that now.” He said it in that firm way, the one that had power over her, made her believe, made her hope. “We have to get out of here Chaos, you have to help me get us out of here.”

  The urgency in his voice and the truth of those words sent her flying out of his arms and searching the room for a way to survive. She needed to think what came next in Master’s mind.

  “What are you doing?”

  She froze a moment. Preparation. Preparation came next, he would prepare them. The dread of that stole her breath and sent her again on a mad search along the walls in the small room. Which one were they in? “I know all these rooms,” she gasped, feeling along the cement walls. “We’re under the Asylum,” she whispered, keeping her voice quiet, still not convinced Master couldn’t hear her thoughts. “There are… hidden passages beneath it that nobody knows about except the Order, but I know all of them. And if we can get out of here, I can get us out.”

  One thing she knew… there would be no convincing Master, he wouldn’t listen. When Solomon said all those things about him being under the curse, she knew, she knew he was righter than right. Oh God, that meant she’d not been crazy all these years. She’d known something was wrong. So many times she’d known and he’d silenced her every time until she never uttered another word, until she believed she was tormented with an evil spirit, and that she was bad and required strict discipline for it! She trembled in the dark and strained back a sob when she thought of the many ways he’d helped her overcome.

  “What is this?” Solomon asked.

  She jerked to his voice, realizing he was searching the room with her. Reaching her hand out, she made her way to him. “Where?” she whispered.

  “Here. I’m here.”

  She finally latched on to his outstretched hand and allowed him to guide it to what he inquired about. She touched what felt like a metal loop. As she tried to remember what all was in the rooms, her stomach and chest clenched with the memories. Shame began to suffocate her as she considered the one question she’d had the hardest time refusing. Are we sure this is right?

  She couldn’t let herself think about how much of it had been wrong or if any of it had been right, she couldn’t. Not now. Or else she might just want to stay and take what she deserved. But Solomon didn’t deserve that fate.

  “This is a preparation room,” she said, remembering what the hooks on the wall were for. To chain the person up, hold them up while they were prepared.

  “For what? What do they do?”

  “Whatever Master says is right. It’s different every time. It depends on the confessionals. The door, let’s go to the door.”

  “The confessionals?”

  “Yes, remember?” She latched on to his hand in the dark and made her way along the small cell no bigger than ten by ten feet. “Every week after the confessionals, he’d know what kind of desecration was required.”

  “How?”

  “Whatever the sins were, he’d match the punishment.” She forced the words out, trying not to think in that moment how wrong or right that might have been.

  “Oh God,” Solomon whispered. “What are you looking for?”

  She’d found it, her fingers touching along the hinges. “I helped put many of these doors on. I remembered thinking it was a stupid design, but I never said anything about it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “There’s a metal piece that holds the hinges together, like a nail down the center.”

  “Oh God, are you kidding?”

  “Do you know what I mean?”

  His hands were on it, feeling with her. “We’ll need something to work it out,” he whispered.

  That was the problem.

  “What kind of floor is this?”

  “Cement.”

  “Let’s look for a broken spot. Maybe we can get a piece and use that.”

  For the next five minutes they searched the floor, occasionally running into each other.

  “I’ll do the edge,” he said.

  Chaos kept her ears alert for the sound of anybody while they searched. She didn’t want to think about what was coming but knew she needed to. “We need to talk about a plan.”

  “Yes, we do,” he whispered. “Shit. I found a spot,” he said, sounding excited. “Come here.”

  She quickly crawled toward the sound of his voice. When she got close, he grabbed her hand. “Feel.”

  The jagged edge of the cement brushed against her fingers, and she let out a quick breath. “Can you…”

  “Move, let me try.” He struggled for several seconds,
and she strained to see anything at all. “If we had something to hit it with, anything.”

  “I’ll keep looking,” she whispered, hurrying along the floor again.

  “Tell me about preparation while you do, I need to know what that involves.”

  Her stomach clenched tight as she raked her nails along the floor for anything loose. He really didn’t want to know, and she surely didn’t want to tell him. “I don’t really know what he might do.” It was partly true He was always doing things different. He liked surprising.

  “Then… tell me the possibilities, Beautiful. I need to know.”

  She shivered at that name. “Don’t call me that,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes in the darkness. She wanted to vomit whenever she thought about the things she’d taken part of. And she couldn’t think of them right now or she’d lose footing in her mind. She couldn’t let that happen.

  “What do you want me to call you?” he asked, sounding like he might somehow understand what she was feeling.

  After several moments of considering, she reached another dead end in her life, another snake pit. She had no name outside of all of this. She sucked in a breath as she realized that every one of her names were probably wrong. Nothing but a trick of the curse, just like everything else.

  “Don’t think about it,” he said, making her realize she’d not answered him. “It’s not important right now. Just find anything I can use to get us out.”

  A sound froze her.

  “Chaos,” he hissed.

  “I heard it,” she gasped, hurrying toward him in the dark. “We’ll have to fight.”

  “With everything you’ve got,” he hissed in agreement. “Do you hear me? Use your teeth, your nails, everything!”

  “Okay,” she whispered, trembling with him as they hurried to the corner behind the door.

  “How many do you think is coming?”

  “Usually… they prepare them in here. There’s four. With Master.”

  “I want you to run. First chance, I’ll attack and you run. Do you hear me! Even if I can’t, you run and get out and get the police, the FBI. Find Uncle Joe. He’ll help you!” he rasped.