Midian Unmade

by Joseph Nassise

  Manda sat at her round, velvet-covered table staring into the glass orb at the table’s center, idly shuffling her tarot cards. The single, handkerchief-covered lightbulb overhead spotted the crystal ball and splashed muted colors on the curtain walls. The smoke of incense layered flat above the bulb, turning in psychedelic swirls. She reached beneath her veil and scratched her nose. The emptiness she felt was not in her stomach, but in her loins and blood.

  “I’m hungry,” she said.

  From behind her, Ozlet’s box (its side stenciled WARNING: DO NOT INSERT HAND BEYOND CURTAIN) sat on a shadowed table. Ozlet said, “Me, too. I can smell those deep-fried Twinkies from a mile away. Driving me crazy.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Breathe, my love. It will pass. And remember the law of Midian.”

  She moved to turn to him, to chastise him for holding on to the past, and that burned dream. But she stopped, and laid the cards on the table.

  “Midian fell and the law with it. I am free to do as I please now.” She laughed without humor. “Free.”

  Ozlet let out a long sigh. “I’ve noticed.”

  From the distant stage, a power chord thundered and a demon-voiced singer screamed.

  The entrance curtains moved, and in slipped the Girl That Plays with Fire.

  “Busy?” She stepped in, hands held demurely behind her back. The hanging smoke parted and banked down in curls. She still wore her act costume: spiked high heels, torn and singed fishnet stockings barely held by frayed garters, silk panties that dipped far below her bared belly, and the nearly sheer red and black bra that lifted her breasts to a faux cleavage. The front of her panties held a grinning, flaming skull.

  Manda smiled behind her veil and slipped her hands beneath the table to slide up and down her thighs as her legs parted ever so slightly.

  “Not at all, my dear. How did your performance go? Amaze everyone with your fiery delights?”

  Brigid giggled and Ozlet audibly sighed.

  “Yeah, they loved me. I kind of pushed it tonight. Left the fire on a little too long in spots.” She lifted a corner of the handkerchief to light her. She slid a pointed finger across her breasts and belly, tracing the bright red paths that marked the dragging fire.

  Another fire lit between Manda’s legs. Blood rushed and cried out in her veins. She leaned closer.

  “Oh, my. Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Hell no. Feels good, really. But I did kind of go too far here.” She lifted each leg in turn, showing the deep red glow where fire met the skin of her inner thighs. Brigid rubbed at the minor burn as if she were putting out a flame.

  “Crazy, huh?”

  Dare I? She is so strange and beautiful and so willing …

  “Indeed.” Manda almost moaned. “But there’s nothing wrong with pushing boundaries. Am I right?”

  Brigid dropped her leg and dragged the tip of her finger across the smooth table cover. She grinned.

  “‘Pushing boundaries’ is my mantra.”

  A sound of disgust came from Ozlet’s box. “That’s not a mantra. That’s more of a philosophy. Not a healthy one at that.” Ozlet’s warning did not pass Manda by.

  Manda lifted a dismissive hand. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” She stood and moved to pull the opposite chair around the table.

  “You know, I have never read you in all the time we’ve known each other. Would you like that, Brigid?”

  Brigid smiled and clapped her hands and sat right down.

  “Please, please.”

  Manda sat and reached out, clasping Brigid’s hands in hers.

  Brigid said, “Don’t you need your cards?”

  “Oh, no. That’s just for the rubes. You get the real thing.”

  The girl’s eyes went wide and she gripped Manda’s long fingers. “Oh, wow.”

  Manda slipped forward in her chair, letting their knees touch. Brigid sighed.

  “Quiet now,” Manda said, her voice lowering. “Breathe easy and relax.”

  Manda closed her eyes and the images came rushing in. She spoke softly, careful not to react, telling Brigid of her torn past: the drunken father, the brutality of her mother’s beatings at his hand, the dark shadow that entered her bedroom night after night, his wandering hands across her body and the pain as he lay atop her and entered her again and again, moaning and sweating; her mother turning away in silence, silent until he abandoned them, and silent still. Her high-school Goth years and the gang rape at a drug-fueled party as she lay incoherent and helpless. The cutting. The drugs. The burning of the school. The attempted suicide. Her running away and life on the streets. All laid out in Manda’s dispassionate voice. Only when she heard Brigid’s sobs did she break away, letting the brutal imagery fall away.

  Manda pulled closer and cupped the girl’s tear-strewn face. Tears streamed between her fingers and down the back of her hands.

  “Oh, my dear girl. Such a sad life. So brutal and unjust. You are so strong … and tender.”

  Brigid gripped Manda’s arms, and looked into the veil, searching for Manda’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Brigid sobbed, “so sorry. I didn’t mean to break down like this. Let you see me like this.”

  Manda petted her cheek. “No, no, no. It’s okay. You must cry. To let it all go and flow away with your tears. It will all be okay. I not only tell the past, but the future, too.”

  Her head tilting down, Manda took a hand away from Brigid’s cheek and started to lift her veil. Far away a great calamity of thudding music and howling vocals rose with the cheers of the crowd.

  Ozlet’s voice went unheard. “Manda. Don’t.”

  Brigid’s eyes cleared and she stared into Manda’s eyes. “What? Am I going to be okay? Am I going to die? What?”

  Manda swept the veil over her head, revealing her quivering red-lipped smile. “No death for you, just bliss.”

  Brigid moaned in and out in a rush of breath as she stared into the mirrored pupils of one of the Nightbreed. Manda leaned in and pressed her lips to the girl’s, sucking at her breath. As Brigid went near limp, her arms wrapped around Manda’s neck as if she was drowning and feared sinking. With a quick sweep of her arms, Manda pulled her to the floor, pressing her body, parting Brigid’s legs with her knee, her hand passing across breasts and belly and diving beneath the flaming skull. With mouth wide, Manda sucked in the eternal, life-animating force of the living. Her fingers massaged and dived between Brigid’s legs, making the life force expand uncontrollably into her mouth and lungs, feeling it flow and burn into her cells, making Manda squirm and sending her to near orgasm.

  They rolled on the floor and moaned.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Serge stood above them, yelling above the musical din. He kicked Manda hard in her ribs, sending her sprawling and gasping to her back. Brigid moved as if drugged, trying to lift her head, eyes rolling into her head. Her skin was sickly pale and her lips blue. She gasped.

  “No, no. Don’t stop. Don’t—”

  With one hand, Serge threw the table aside with a splintering crash. The glass globe flew and slammed into Ozlet’s box, toppling it to the floor.

  Manda pressed a hand against her ribs and sat up, screaming. She turned her mirrored eyes to Serge and hissed. He took a shocked step back.

  Grinning wide, Manda slung her hair back, pulled up her skirt, and spread her legs. She was too far gone and her hunger burned as a fire that needed quenching. Serge’s eyes fell to her parted cunt and her glistening wetness.

  “Come, strong man,” Manda said, her voice turning velvet. “Take what you’ve wanted since you laid eyes on me. Come feed your lust. Come and fuck me.”

  Serge blinked and he staggered on weakening legs. “Yes,” he whispered. Then his voice rose. “Serge will give you pride of Soviet Russia.” He ripped his Speedo away and let the rising pride of Soviet Russia swing free.

  Brigid rolled to her hands and knees, gasping for breath, and crawled to the back exit
. She pulled at the curtains, found her feet, and stumbled through the opening between them.

  Serge leapt between Manda’s legs and she fell back, laughing and moaning, hands gripping at his back as he thrust into her like an invading soldier. Manda clutched his hairless head with both hands and pulled his lips to her wide-open mouth. She fed and her fingers lengthened across his skull, digging into skin and bringing blood.

  Manda broke away from his lips and threw her head back. She arched her back, wrapping her legs around him, engulfed in orgasm. A lift of his head, and Serge shook and moaned in one final hammer thrust. Manda laughed, feeling his useless earthly essence spill into her.

  Serge looked down at her, blinking and dreamy-eyed. His face had paled and tremors shook his body. Sweat dripped from his chin.

  “You … you … are witch.” He lifted his arm high, and clutched his hand into a massive fist. It came down like a hammer and smashed into Manda’s cheek, making her head snap. Her legs fell from his waist and she went limp. He cocked his arm back for another blow.

  “Serge will kill you.”

  “I think not,” said a high-pitched voice.

  Serge looked up. Crawling from the darkness, a contorted horror, hardly bigger than his pillow, grinned with twisted teeth, and bulging eyes. It was naked, skin loose and dragging as it flopped closer on a flipperlike arm. Drool dripped, escaping its darting tongue.

  Serge tried to scream and move back, but an arm flung out from the thing, tipped with a crablike pincer, and caught his shoulder in a viselike grip. Serge the Strongman convulsed and rolled over to his back as the pincer pierced his shoulder. His skin turned gray and wrinkled as muscle deflated toward his deep bones.

  “Hadn’t you heard? Soviet Russia died long ago,” Ozlet said.

  * * *

  The cool night-dewed grass felt good to his bare feet. It had been too long, too many deformed years had passed since he had run the night, bathed in the light of the lovely moon. Ozlet grinned into the moon’s full face as he wept and ran naked across the open field toward the cloak of wooded darkness ahead.

  He did not weep from the tortured memories from Serge; they were soldier’s memories, violent and rage-filled. He had taken plenty of those onto himself, had even been one long ago. He packed those away like so many faded pictures in a trunk. No, he wept for joy at his transformation and the first burgeoning of hope since the fall of Midian. Full-bodied now, tall and lean as in his youth, he reveled in the power and length of his legs, the return of his arms and hands, and the strength to carry his love, his Manda, in his arms.

  She stirred and her eyes opened to his moonlit face. Her confusion disappeared as realization dawned.

  “Ozlet?”

  He smiled. “Hello there.”

  She touched his face. Gone were the deformities. She wiped away his tears, then ran her hand across his bald head and returned his smile. “Ozlet.”

  “That’s me.”

  Her confusion returned. “Serge?”

  “A husk.”

  Manda bit her lip. “I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”

  Ozlet shrugged. “You are what you are. I can love you no less.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know. We run. We hide. Thus is our life.”

  “They will chase us.”

  “I’m sure of that. Didn’t leave a pretty picture back there.”

  Manda laid her hand on his chest, feeling his muscles and the rise and fall of his breath. She smiled in amazement.

  “Let’s go far away,” she said.

  “We will, my love. But one thing is for sure.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll be carrying you from now on.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, and laid her head on his chest.

  “I hope your hair grows fast,” Manda said, smiling. “I hate bald men.”

  Their laughter ran across the grass and rose to the moon as they passed into the shadows of the trees.

  TAMARA

  Paul J. Salamoff

  I am still haunted by the events that transpired at Midian.

  It was never my intention to kill, but that is what I have done.

  Baphomet help my soul.

  When Boone arrived, it felt like a liberating time for the tribe of the moon. Even though there was immediate dissension in the ranks, he brought a newfound sense of hope. I could see it in Lylesburg’s eyes. The way he looked at the young man. Was this the fruition of our age-old dream?

  But our hopes were dashed when the world encroached into our sanctuary and our home was laid to waste in a pile of ash and rubble. Many of my brothers and sisters died that day, but I survived.

  But at what cost?

  I can still feel his warm blood on my body, a scarlet stain that won’t scrub off no matter how often I wash or how hard I scour. My clawed hands thrust up inside his bowels. The gaping wound that I made led to an effortless evisceration. There was so much blood. It splashed against my naked form, coating my breasts, spikes, and stomach … warm crimson dripping down the cleft between my thighs.

  I understood for a moment what Peloquin must have felt during his nightly hunts—the raw animalistic thrill of the slaughter. Face-to-face with my prey, witnessing as the light and life drained from his mortal soul. But that sensation was fleeting; a momentary thrill.

  As my senses returned, what I was left with was the corpse of a man crushing me with almost two hundred pounds of dead weight. I am so small, so easily frightened. My lithe form is fragile. But Baphomet blessed me with talons and barbed protrusions to protect my physical self. These however do nothing to protect my soul. Even in self-defense, I cannot remedy my actions.

  I am not a killer.

  I was not a killer.

  For the moment, I was safe. The fighting was long over, having ended in the early hours of the new day. As far as I could tell I was now alone in Midian. Left for dead underneath the carcass of a deceased man.

  Using the cave wall for support, I used all my strength to heave the corpse off of me. He toppled over onto the harsh ground, eyes staring up through the blasted-out opening above us. Smoke still wafted on the surface, blotting out the morning sun and protecting me from its harm.

  Wiping my bloodied hands on the man’s clothing, I got my first real look at him. He seemed considerably younger than I thought. My first impression of him was that of a vicious old bear as he charged out of the darkness with a rifle leveled directly at me. Being petite makes me fast and I easily avoided the first shot as it whizzed by my torso.

  He was moving at such a hasty speed in unfamiliar and uneven ground that he tripped himself up on a large rock and stumbled into me. The rifle was knocked from his grasp when we both hit the ground. It still lay where it fell.

  Panicked even more so than I was, the large man punched and hit me. He was as desperate to kill me as I was desperate to live. I didn’t know I had done it until it was too late. Human flesh is so delicate. It tears so easily. So much blood.

  I cannot accept that I am forever damned. If Baphomet’s teachings are true, then there is a way to make amends. A way to make peace with my heinous actions.

  I studied his lifeless body. He was like Boone in many ways. Handsome and physically fit. Though he was dressed for killing, for the hunt. Curious to know the name of the man whose life I had taken, I rifled his pockets and found a handmade snakeskin wallet.

  Flipping it open, I discovered his driver’s license. I read through the words on it. Lylesburg taught me man’s language and I had become quite adept at reading and comprehending it—so good that I would in turn teach the young Breed of Midian both English and our native tongue and read them stories found in books scavenged from the outside world.

  Daniel Morrell was his name. Such an amiable name for a man filled with such rage and bigotry. He looked almost angelic in his picture. There was no hair on his face like there was now and he even wore a thin smile, a stark contrast to the
angry scowl that came at me from the darkness.

  There were some pictures among his credit cards. I wish I had not bothered to look. Then I wouldn’t have seen their faces. A loving wife. A beaming son. So young. Too young to be without a father. But he would be without one—my talons still caked with his father’s blood had seen to that.

  I could make this right. I could ease the pain and ease the burden on my soul as well. Baphomet has blessed me with other gifts, gifts that made me unique among the tribe of the moon.

  I was blessed with the Becoming. I discovered it at a very young age.

  To know someone is to become them.

  But the knowing was to devour their flesh, to consume them into my body so that I might join with them and become them.

  Peloquin valued this about me, that’s why he tolerated my pacifist chidings and reproaches against him and his hunts. He would on occasion bring me gifts fresh from the hunt, usually the heart of an animal, sometimes of a human, which I would devour like candy. I was young then and didn’t fully understand the implications of the pieces of flesh that I simply regarded as nourishment.

  He was very prideful and took great pleasure in imparting all the details of his hunts down to the most specific minutiae to the tribe. His stories were self-indulgent and boastful, and with my help, he could reenact the events of the evening as a bizarre Grand Guignol pantomime, with him as the noble hunter and me as his deserving prey.

  You see, this gift allows me to transform my body, to change my appearance and become those that I know.

  There’s an address on the driver’s license. Lylesburg kept maps in the library. Hopefully they have not all burned.