Midian Unmade

by Joseph Nassise

  “I will let the Nightbreed reform, use you to help them. Once they have done so, created a new haven, a new Midian, they will call forth Baphomet. And that is when I will strike and kill their god. When I have drained the life from a living god, what will that make me? A killer of gods? A god in my own right? The heavens will fall for me and I will rise up as the new prophet, the new master of earth and heaven.”

  Decker stood up from his chair and took off his suit jacket. Kaleb watched as he opened his blood-soaked shirt and revealed the horrors underneath. Decker’s skin had turned gray since his death, with veins of green rot which snaked across the necrotic flesh. The stomach area had been undone with a knife once and still lay open, wet with blood and hungry insects that swirled in the dark abyss. Decker reached inside the opening; his hands dug deep and made wet, smacking sounds as he probed. Kaleb felt sick as he watched, and it became worse when Decker pulled his hand out. Clenched in his fist was dangling meat. The foul smell of the dripping chunk found Kaleb and he wanted to puke.

  “But every master needs his dogs. Every prophet needs his disciples. Every god needs his followers. This, Kaleb, is my body and my blood.” Decker took the bloody mess that had come from his spoiled insides and jammed it into Kaleb’s mouth. Kaleb choked and gagged on it, but Decker pushed it deeper inside him until he was forced to swallow.

  The vile meat slid down his throat, and Kaleb was sure he could feel heat emanate from it, burn his insides as it went down. It didn’t slide down as much as it felt as though it had small insect legs that crawled deep into him. He thrashed against the chair and the men that held him until suddenly a sort of peace fell over him; a calmness that seemed like a drug-induced relaxation. He thought that it must be how people on heroin feel.

  “There. Isn’t that so much better?” Decker asked as he sat back down. “You two can let go of Kaleb, my loyal dog.” The men let go and Kaleb sat limp in his chair. He smiled at Decker, blood and saliva drooled down the front of him, and behind Decker, Ashbery laughed and clapped his hands. “Come here, Kaleb, and sit at my feet, where you know you belong.”

  Kaleb obeyed him and lay down on the stage in front of Decker. He nuzzled his face against his feet and licked the soiled leather shoes of his new master.

  “Tomorrow we will find you a nice collar,” Decker said, and stroked Kaleb’s head. “Something special that will suit you. After that, we will find the rest of the Nightbreed and their god and show the heavens the face of their new lord and savior! Oh how the angels will weep.”

  CELL OF CURTAINS

  Timothy Baker

  Ozlet had secluded himself in his box, weeping, since they had hit the road. Beside him on the couch, Manda sighed. No coaxing would bring him out when he was like this, not even to enjoy the semiarctic air whipping around their small room in the back of the bus. The air-conditioning was new and worth every dollar she had saved posing as Mistress Miranda, the Amazing Oracle.

  She stretched out along the couch, naked and lithe, her ivory skin glowing in the near dark. Through the parted curtains and the deep-tinted window, she watched the rain-heavy clouds roll and pass; the sound of the tires hissing through the rain made her eyes heavy. The cool air erected her nipples and she half dreamed of a man between her legs, writhing and satisfying her. Feeding her. It had been far too long and both hungers were growling. Her fingers combed through her white and sparse pubic hair. She would have gratified herself then and there had the fantasy not popped like a pin-poked balloon at Ozlet’s loud, wet-sounding whimper.

  Manda wasn’t glad for his sadness; quite the contrary. She would give anything to take away his pain, but that wasn’t possible. No one could. It was his to bear, even though it was pain stolen, belonging to some other soul now walking the world of day, grateful they no longer carried it, some memory of loss, shame, guilt of act or omission handicapping them from a better life. Ozlet had taken it from them, absorbing the soul-breaking emotion upon himself, at great cost to his body. He was stronger than anyone Manda had ever known.

  Still, he wept.

  For Manda—who had never cried—it was if he was crying for them both. The two of them had lost much: their friends, their home, their security, their family. A cataclysmic attack on their tomb-roofed home had sent them fleeing into the night, their companions scattering to the four winds. Refugees of the fallen Midian she and Ozlet were now, each all the other had left, torn from the cool embrace of family, hiding in plain sight among human freaks. Those who had once ruled the night lived in fear of discovery now even in the cloak of darkness.

  Weep for me, dear one, she thought, and for the children of the moon.

  The bus shook. Its worn shocks could barely hold them up let alone take a shallow pothole. Up front, beyond the curtains that kept them away from the burning light of the sun, someone cursed. It was Serge and he sounded drunk. When he was sober, his accent was light, but drunk he sounded as Russian as Khrushchev.

  Come to think of it, he sounds like Khrushchev most of the time.

  They hit a hard road bump and the back of the bus lifted and landed with a rattle, sending Manda’s open suitcase to the floor. Ozlet’s curtained box would have toppled to the floor had Manda not caught it with her foot. In a high-pitched voice, Ozlet cursed too. Manda sighed and sat up, bending over to pick up what few clothes she had, and tossed them into the suitcase.

  She said, “Are you all right, my love?”

  “Do I sound all right?” said the voice from the box.

  Manda arranged her clothes, pressed them down, and closed the suitcase.

  “No. Of course not.”

  A deep sigh from the box. “I’m sorry, my dear. Not a good day.”

  Manda stretched back out and laid her arm across her forehead. “I understand. I always do.”

  “Yes. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “You would die.” It wasn’t true, but she said it anyway, not wanting to add to his pain. “As would I without you.”

  She could survive without him, of course, but the thought of parting never crossed her mind. Lovers since the Great War Between the States, they had never been separated. Ozlet had saved her from a burning stake, coming out of the dark and sending the mob to their knees, wailing and sobbing from unknown emotions. Her hair wilting and naked skin bubbling, she watched him walk through the flames, untouched, tall, lean, and as handsome as Stonewall Jackson. As he cut her bindings, he said, “You need to be more careful.” He carried her in his arms through the fire, through the weeping mob, and deep into the forest, where he laid her down and healed her of her wounds with his touch. And later, when he saw her suffering past, he took that too. From then, they loved with the gravity of the earth and the moon.

  There was a price to pay for his power and he had been too generous. Now he was a quarter of the man he was then, hiding in his curtained box. Though he was unable to satisfy her needs, she did love him with all of her soulless heart and would never leave him. But she did have needs, powerful and compelling.

  A flash of lightning outside the window lit the room, making Manda flinch. She stood and moved to the shadow beside the open curtains and sat next to Ozlet’s box. She slipped her hand between the slim parting of the box’s vermilion drapes. A diminutive, fingerless hand lay in her palm, petting, too small to hold her hand.

  “You are so beautiful,” Ozlet said.

  She closed her eyes and rested her head back.

  “I know. Thank you, my love.” Cool lips graced her palm. She felt his breath as he spoke.

  “We need to get out of here. It’s hell.”

  Manda squeezed his hand, swallowing it up in her fingers.

  “But where would we go?”

  “Somewhere. Anywhere but this circus.”

  A small smile passed across her lips. “It’s not a circus, my dear. Far from it. It’s a traveling freak show.”

  “It’s fucking traveling hell.”

  “That may be so, but it’s a hell w
here we can belong for a time.”

  Ozlet made a spitting sound. “They’re Naturals, no matter how freakish they make themselves or pretend to be. We just blend in here.”

  “Precisely.”

  The roar and the wind from a passing semi made the bus shake and swerve. Even with the noise, Manda could hear socked feet, meant to go unheard, hiss and stop outside the curtains.

  “These freaks,” Ozlet said, “will turn against us too, eventually. Once they realize we aren’t like them at all, real freaks. Monsters. You do realize that?”

  Manda pulled her hand from the box and stood, taking her black silk robe from its hook, and slipped it up her arms. She didn’t have to look to know there was an eye peeping between the room’s curtains.

  “That may well be,” she said as the roar of the truck faded ahead. She pulled her robe open, pretending to adjust it across her shoulders as the watching eye widened.

  She leaned over, closed the window curtain, and said, “Can I help you, Brigid?”

  A suck of air beyond the curtains and the eyehole closed.

  Manda tied her robe. “Come in, Brigid, I’m decent.”

  The curtains parted and let in a bit of cloud-filtered sunlight before Brigid filled the gap and passed through, snapping the curtains shut. Manda made a calm yet quick step back from the brief light that hit the floor. The sound of Ozlet’s box curtains closing whispered in the dark.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” Brigid said.

  For Manda, the dark was a cloudy day for Naturals, the world alit and bathed in blue-grayness. Brigid looked in her direction, unseeing, one hand holding the curtains shut and the other up as if feeling for something approaching. Dubbed the Girl That Plays with Fire, Brigid was young for a Natural, in her early twenties, but a toddler to Manda and Ozlet’s years. She was spotted with mad tattoos about her arms and legs, wearing a plaid miniskirt and too-tight bodice that lifted her smallish breasts to eye-catching domes, and head-shaved and sporting metal piercings around every sense-catching skull hole. A row of black spikes adorned in a line the center of her scalp. She never dressed down, even in their downtime, always in character. Manda knew Brigid felt like a freak, and expressed it on her exterior, but inside she was just a scared little girl Natural. And Manda thought she was beautiful.

  “Well? What is it?” said Ozlet.

  Manda felt Brigid’s nervousness at being caught. “Oh. Uh. Um. Not much. Really. It’s just—”

  Ozlet huffed. “Damn, little girl. Spit it out.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Manda said, “his hiss is worse than his bite. Go on, Brigid.”

  A nervous giggle and Brigid said, “Oh. Yeah. Sorry Ozlet. It’s just that—” She paused, grasping for something to say. “Gosh, it’s dark in here. How do you stand it?”

  “Excuse my rudeness,” Manda said. “I’m, we’re, so used to it. And I don’t know how you run flames across your skin and swallow it. I’m terrified of fire. I would burn to a crisp.”

  Manda watched her blush in the dark. “Oh. Well. Thanks. It’s nothing. Doesn’t hurt or nothing. I like it. Kind of a turn-on.” Another giggle.

  Manda reached into her robe pocket and put on her Jackie O sunglasses then pulled the high hanging chain. The fluorescent light above flickered on.

  “Is that better?”

  Brigid blinked and stared with girl-crush eyes. In the harsh light, Manda’s skin seemed to emit its own. Brigid’s eyes fell to the wide opening of Manda’s robe and her deep cleavage. Manda pulled the robe only a bit closer and tilted her head, enjoying the sudden lusty taste in the air.

  Brigid blinked again, her eyes cutting away only to come back. “It’s just—”

  “You said that already,” Ozlet said.

  As if brought out of a dream, Brigid jerked, and looked to the box.

  “Right. Um, we’ll be at the gig site in about an hour. It’s gonna be big. All night heavy metal and all day tomorrow. Separate Souls are headlining then. I love Separate Souls. They kick ass. You like them?” She looked to Manda, as if trying to see behind the midnight sunglasses. “A carnival too. Is what Will told me. Another couple of hours and the sun will be down.”

  The Girl That Plays with Fire looked down at her feet. Her high-heeled boot pivoted on its ball. “So. Like. You can come out and set up. Or hang with me. Or not. You know. Whatever. The first band starts at midnight. We open, of course, at eleven. So like, no hurry or anything.” She looked up at Manda with hope in her eyes.

  From the box, Ozlet mocked, “Like, whatever.”

  Manda smiled an honest smile, and Brigid managed a nervous one, seeming to melt on the spot.

  “Thank you, Brigid,” Manda said. “I didn’t know our next event.”

  Brigid giggled. “Yeah. They’re all kind of the same. Right?”

  Manda kept her smile and nodded. “Yes.” She stepped forward and cupped Brigid’s cheek, making her eyes widen and her smile fall away. Brigid’s eyes wandered across Manda’s pale thick lips and rose to the bottomless black of the sunglasses.

  “Again,” said Manda, lowering her voice, “thank you.” Manda stepped back.

  Brigid’s cheeks flushed and she only managed an “uh-huh” before she slipped between the curtains and back to the front of the bus and the world of light.

  “You’re going to get us in trouble,” Ozlet said.

  Manda killed the light with a tug of the chain and took off her sunglasses. “Don’t worry, my love. I won’t consume where I defecate,” she said, licking the sweet sting of pheromone and sweat from her fingers. Brigid would taste so good.

  * * *

  With the falling of the sun, Manda opened a curtain and dropped a window. Even parked behind the dark box of the curtained stage, the roar of the whining gears of spinning rides and their cacophonous music punctuated by some shrieking girl wound its way among the multitude of buses. She breathed deep, taking in the rain-cooled night air. In the east, the clouds had parted and the full moon hung above the horizon, shining like a welcoming friend. She smiled.

  She stepped away and parted the two-piece couch, shoving the sections to the side. The heavy blanket that hid the door, she pulled aside.

  “You ready?”

  Ozlet shifted in his box, making a thump. “I’m always ready to get out of here.”

  Manda dropped the sheer gypsy veil across her face, and with two hands, she pulled the lever across the stamped EMERGENCY EXIT, and flung the door open. A shadow of a wide-shouldered beast stood before her, its backlit bald head near level with hers. Manda gasped and startled back. Serge’s deep staccato laugh filled the compartment.

  “Did I scare you?” Serge’s Russian accent turned “scare” into “scar.”

  Her composure back, Manda lifted Ozlet’s box to the edge of the door. “What do you want, Serge?” Hidden behind her veil, she eyed him with suspicion and disdain. Serge was nice and protective to the entire troupe—especially Brigid—except her and Ozlet, keeping his distance and whispering to others behind their backs. Manda had felt a touch of hatred and mistrust leak from his walled-off mind. And sometimes, fear. Fear could turn even the best into monsters.

  Serge took a step back into the light. Nearing seven feet tall, his already small Speedo looked swallowed by his bulging muscles. Bald and without a single hair on his face, his oiled body glimmered and rippled in the light. His arms were covered in a menagerie of tattoos and his chest was a billboard for a large-typefaced STRONGMAN. Below that, great brass rings pierced his nipples.

  “Oh, no need to feel scare for Sergy. I may be Strongest Man in World but I am gentle as puppy dog. I am good guy. I am only here to assist you with your little man.” He slapped the top of Ozlet’s box a little too hard. “You okay in there, little Ozlet?”

  “Hey,” cried Ozlet, “watch the ape hands there. You about deafened me.”

  Manda set her hands flat on the box, holding it in place. “You never help us, Serge. What is it you want?”

  Serge smiled without kin
dness. Brigid bounced out from behind his broad torso and waved.

  “Sorry! It was me. I talked him into it. I just hate seeing you lug that b … I mean, carry Ozlet around all the time.”

  Manda moved around the box, her skirt rising up as she made the long step to the ground. Both Brigid and Serge eyed the long perfect lines of her pale legs before her skirt fell to her feet.

  “We have done well this far,” Manda said, turning her back to them and reaching for Ozlet’s box. “And we will continue to do so.”

  Brigid slapped Serge’s arm and he stepped forward, brushing Manda aside. He lifted the box as if it were empty cardboard and set it down with a thud. Ozlet made a muffled curse. Serge patted the box as if it were a tender kitten.

  “Sorry little man.”

  “Yeah, right. Why don’t you keep your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape.”

  Serge laughed too loud. “That is from movie Planet of Apes. Very clever.” Serge’s face fell to a grim menace. “For so small a man you have funny stinging mouth.”

  A high-pitched chuckle came from inside the box and the curtains barely parted. “Please disregard the warning on the side of the box, Serge. Let’s touch and let me get to know you.”

  An uncertain smile passed across Serge’s lips, and he glanced at Brigid then looked into the darkness of Manda’s veil. He grunted and waved a dismissive hand.

  “Enough,” Manda said, and pulled a lever at the back of the box. It lifted on four worn rubber wheels. Her faceless veil turned to Serge and he stepped back, letting her roll the box forward and close the exit door.

  “Thank you, Serge. I’m sure you’ve done quite enough for now.” She turned to Brigid, who stood frozen in her faceless sight. “What way to our tent?”

  “Oh yeah, let me show you.” They left the scowling Serge behind as Brigid led them down the side of the bus, its side painted in broad carny colors declaring WILD WILL’S FANTASTICAL FREAKS, and into the maze of buses and trailers.

  * * *

  Even through the multilayers of hanging blankets in the tent, the thundering guitars and drums pounded into her sacred place. They had listened to the cheers from the outdoor venue as Wild Will, Master of Freaks, introduced the show’s acts one after another, then the oohs and aahs and shocked moans as they performed: Serge the Strongman; Billy Blockhead; the Illustrated Hootchie; Black Saber, Man of Knives; Snake Girl and the Hypnotic Haboob; Dom, Whip Master; Chainsaw Cherri; Rubber Woman; Deep Throat; and the Girl That Plays with Fire. While they performed, Amanda performed too, without enthusiasm, reading the mundane pasts and sorry futures of the giggling, stoned young and debauched. When the music started, the customers ended.