Lambs

by Michael Louis Calvillo

  How could she fuck things up so badly!

  Given all of the trouble, her dad probably wouldn’t let her anywhere near Arthur and vice versa. The Organization would probably ship him off to one of their training camps in Asia and brainwash him to forget the whole thing. When he was back (and they wouldn’t move him back here) he would go on with his life and meet another girl in the church and get married and live happily ever after, this bothersome hunk of drama wiped from his conscious mind.

  Why couldn’t they do the same for her and everybody involved? It would be nice to forget. But no. Melanie already knew the answer. Strong magic was revered—it was dangerous and old and used extremely sparingly. Wipes were only initiated in very specific, crucial situations. The Neuromancers were highly selective, driven by the wisdom and guidance of the Lord Father incarnate and they wouldn’t wipe just anybody for just any reason.

  Her room door swung and Elder Collins, um, Dad, strode in. He was sweaty, his eyes wild and wide, his hair mussed from being trapped under his hood for the past few hours. He had always been so composed and…perfect. Melanie didn’t like seeing him like this. Frazzled wasn’t his thing.

  “Mel, we got one!” He was breathing hard. “We have to hurry. We got one!”

  * * *

  Walking the hall, Pickett escorting her, she was struck with a serious wave of déjà vu. Yes, she did the exact same thing, the walk, the forthcoming chants, mantras, passages, less than an hour ago, but the feeling that she had been here before ran deeper, as if she had been here a thousand times before, as if the blood sluicing through her system, the nervous sweat gathering on her brow, the heft of the dagger in her hands, happened over and over and over again.

  She approached the Sacrifice. The congregation had reassembled and was replaying the ritual. Would this count? It felt cheap. Would the magic return? Melanie scanned the room. Everyone seemed really into it. She didn’t see the Diviner’s white robe. Was he with Arthur? Perhaps they caught him and the Diviner was explaining how special and lucky he was to be one of them. Maybe a Wipe wouldn’t be necessary.

  The church droned on. Melanie tried to abandon thought and focus (like she had managed to do so perfectly earlier) but it wasn’t coming.

  Her brain kept on with Ifs and Ands and Buts.

  When she made it to the altar and took the dagger into her hands she got a good look at her new Sacrifice. Her dad told her she had to look him in the eyes and try to feel something. She had to go deep and center on a reason to love him, a reason to make the sacrifice count.

  He smoothed her hair over her forehead and looked earnestly into her face. “It’ll be easy to make the church believe Mel. Most of them are first class idiots. Just look the part and they’ll act right along with you. Besides, they’re all tired and itching to get the Blood Rites over with. But for him.” Her dad made a large sweeping motion with both of his hands. “For him, you have to feel it in here.” He placed his hands upon his chest.

  No pressure.

  Her dad wouldn’t tell her who the kid was or where they got him. He was a little younger than she expected. Melanie would have pegged him at twelve, maybe thirteen. He had blonde hair, darker than hers, and red, red lips. He wasn’t screaming or throwing a fit like Connor. His little, brown eyes were wide and his red, red lips were quivering, but any whimpering was drowned out by the congregation’s chanting. Pickett and Hanlon did a brutal job on his chest. They were rushed and the pentagram was messy. Deep jags ran this way and that, breaking the bounds of the circle and casting, wild, deep gouges into the soft skin of his sides and stomach.

  The church finished their prayer. It was Melanie’s turn to invoke the Lord Father and give him his due. She brought the dagger over her head and began reciting. Every word came to her clearly. Her cadence was perfect. Her pitch just right. A fire began twisting within. It sucked the oxygen from her brain and began to fill her with dark light. The Lord Father was returning.

  Fear nearly derailed her. He was going to know she wasn’t true, that this Sacrifice was born of convenience. Melanie kept on. She focused on what the ritual meant to her.

  The dark light filled her in, infiltrating hollows and crevices until she was buzzing with the Beast’s hunger. Anticipation somersaulted from between her ribs. Her heart thumped. Her stomach swam. Muscles contracted and locked. She pushed the dagger higher. Her prayer rose and fell, the words tearing from her throat, driven guttural and sharp by the deity within.

  “With this blade I commit thee to True Eden!”

  Melanie felt a million miles away. Her brain was one with the black mantle that enshrouded the world.

  “…evermore, to worship at the feet of the eternal, the infinite, the beast Baphomet…”

  Everything she was, merged with everything they were.

  “…in praise…”

  The dagger shook violently.

  “…in glory…’

  Through no will of her own, the knife shot downward.

  “…your soul for him! Your soul for us!”

  The point bit and a red welling bubbled around it. It pressed on, gold giving way to red and pink and flashes of white as it drove deeper, honed, razor-sharp surfaces cleaving through muscle and fat, cracking through the kid’s frail, thin breastbone. Momentum continued to gather, the knife a blinding bullet despite biology’s chunky defenses. The dagger dove on until it punctured the heart, stilled its beating, and ran the little bastion of purity through with the terminating silence of gold-laced death.

  The boy’s body bucked once and then stilled.

  Melanie’s mind broke communion with the collective and swished inside her skull. She was surprised to find herself hunkered over the dead teen, knife plunged deep into his heart. The Beast had taken over. Sated by the Sacrifice it had gone. Melanie felt a little cheated. Not that she wanted to drive the dagger home. She was glad the Lord Father had done all of the dirty work, but she thought she might have had more of an active role in the proceedings.

  Shaking it off, she took a deep reasserting breath. Back. I’m back. And the ritual wasn’t over yet. Melanie struggled with the dagger. She was supposed to remove it and hand it to one of the Sentinels (a quick glance over her right shoulder and sure enough, Pickett was standing there right on cue), but it was lodged in the meat of the poor kid’s heart. The teen’s eyes were still open, staring a death’s-headed stare into the great beyond. His mouth was twisted, slightly open, horrified. Melanie tuned him out. If she focused too much on death and blood and the dead teen and his dead looks and death, death, death, she’d lose her nerve and freak out.

  With a chest-rattling grunt she yanked the blade free. Her shoulders throbbed under the strain. Composing herself she handed the dagger off to Pickett, who in turn handed her a small, paring knife. It too was gold and its hilt was bejeweled with dark red stones. Hanlon (also right on cue) arrived on her left and handed her a gold chalice. The chalice was just as ornately wrought as the dagger and paring knife—more so, what with its abundance of Blood Rubies and Blood Onyxes. The church’s crest was carved into the fine gold of the goblet’s drinking bell.

  Thankfully, there were no more words to remember or passages to recite. The rest of the ceremony was a cakewalk. Melanie avoided looking the young man in the face as Hanlon bent in to move the teen’s head and expose his neck. With her right hand she dragged the ultra-sharp paring knife across the kid’s jugular and with her left hand she positioned the chalice to catch the jetting blood before it petered off to a dead trickle.

  Pickett took the paring knife, bowed and then backed off into the shadows. Hanlon bowed deeply and then receded as well.

  Melanie raised the chalice over head. She looked from left to right, from right to left. The congregation waited in silence, a calm sea of black robes. She thought she could see glistening tears streaking a cheek here or shining a chin there.

  Her heart bursting with pride, she brought the cup to her lips and drank deeply of the Sacrificial Elixir.
>
  The black robes erupted. Cheers livened the room. Even the dead teen on the Blood Altar, heartless, eyes glassy, mouth curled into the brokenest of smiles, looked happy.

  * * *

  Her mom held her close. Someone, Pickett perhaps, wrapped her in a blanket, a nice, fluffy, warm, fresh thing, and walked her from the Blood Chamber to the stairs. Her mom took over and held the soft cocoon snugly in place as she walked Melanie from the warehouse, to the car, to her bedroom.

  After she drank from the Sacrificial Elixir her body gave out. Her head weaved and she almost collapsed to the stone floor, but Pickett was fast. He caught her and it was a series of support shoulders from then on.

  Memory flickered fuzzily. Her sister Judy was there. She kept patting Melanie on the shoulder and telling her how proud she was. Her mom whispered “I love you” and an army of like sentiments into her ear. Her dad swooped in and gave her a solid kiss on the forehead.

  Louie nuzzled her limp hands. He licked the blood from her fingers and his hot dog breath made Melanie smile through the haze.

  Then sleep.

  Sleep.

  Sleep like no other sleep before it.

  There were dreams, but they were ingrained so deep and Melanie’s sleep attacked with such leaden ferocity that they were lost in the impenetrable black. Only the outlines of a horned Adonis penetrated the dark. The silhouette burned perma-streaks within her subconscious and seared her soul-deep.

  * * *

  A long, slimy strand of drool ran from Melanie’s bottom lip. The sunlight filtering through her open wood blinds reflected brilliantly off of the spit string. A glint of the light succeeded at waking her and no sooner did her eyes open then disgust and embarrassment came rushing in. She swatted the glistening thread and recoiled with a high pitched “Ewww!” when she saw that the strand ended in a fist-sized drool stain upon her Leron 800 thread count sheets.

  Melanie jumped out of bed. It felt like she was being watched, but she was alone in her room. Good. How embarrassing. She limped to her bathroom—her muscles were sore—and got a nice wad of tissue. She ran a little water over the bunch and then turned to head back to her bed to dab out the spit stain. Her reflection caught her eye. At some point her mom must have changed her out of her robe and into the Gown of Womanhood. It was customary and Melanie was looking forward to it. She had seen her sister Judy in it and wanted to wear it ever since. That she couldn’t, until now, made her want it all the more. After the heady rush of the Sacrifice, Melanie was out of it. She felt drugged up. The Gown was the last thing on her mind. Thankfully her mom remembered.

  It was the most beautiful garment of clothing ever devised. Its design was said to have come directly from the divine. Throughout the Endless War, God and the Lord Father have made and broken many pacts. They have made up with exchanges of glorious gifts and reinstituted their petty, infinite war with equally glorious destructions and devastations. The Gown of Womanhood (not the actual one she was wearing, but its cut and look) was said to be one of these gifts from God to Satan.

  Spun from the finest silk, it clung to her body perfectly. Its majestic shimmer, a magnificent white and its white on white embroidery, were dazzling. Melanie forgot about the wet tissues in her hand and did a little spin before the mirror. She wished she never had to take it off. Alas, her time with it was already done. The Gown of Womanhood was only to be worn after the Sacrifice. When she took it off and got dressed for the day the gown would be retired until next year’s female initiates completed their journey.

  Curtseying (it was that kind of dress) before her reflection, Melanie giggled and skipped back into her bedroom. She worked gently at the spit stain until satisfied and then threw the tissues into her wastebasket.

  Falling back into bed she smoothed her hands over the dress’s intricate stitching pattern.

  She was a woman. Not just a menstruating member of the world—not that kind of woman (that happened three years ago)—but a real woman, a real, real woman, a part of the great collective.

  Her mom laid out an incredible breakfast spread. Melanie was especially happy to note that there wasn’t a single Blood Dish. She fixed herself a plate piled high with steaming eggs (Eggbeaters) and fruit and then sat down to dig in. Her mom joined her, a hot cup of coffee steaming in her hands.

  “So?” She smiled through the rising steam and took a small sip. “Hot!” She blew on the coffee.

  “So what?” Melanie smiled back. She knew what her mom wanted, but liked to tease it out of her.

  “So what? So what! So how do you feel, sweetie?”

  “Good.” Which was a fair assessment. Given the lack of sleep and the stress and the murder, Melanie was feeling damn good.

  He mom nodded. She wanted more details.

  “I feel good, Mom! Great. Good. I don’t know what to say… You’ve been through it, you know. It feels like everything…I don’t know…tingles?” It was hard to explain.

  “We are so proud of you baby.” She tried another sip. “Perfect.”

  “Where’s Judy?” Melanie hadn’t seen her sister since New Year’s.

  Her mom pointed upstairs. “Still asleep.” She rolled her eyes, wishing her eldest daughter was awake and here with her to congratulate her youngest daughter.

  Melanie teased, “It’s all that partying at college.”

  “Can you believe she got a C in Chemistry?”

  “I was just playing, Mom.” Melanie didn’t want to get into any of that. She felt good, but not that good. In fact, that good feeling was beginning to wane a little. She asked, “Mom?”

  “Yes baby?”

  “Do you know what’s going to happen with Arthur?”

  Her mom shook her head. “No. I hope he’s okay though.”

  “Me too.”

  “You really liked him huh?”

  Trying not to swoon or narrow her eyes too dreamily she nodded.

  “Who knows? He’s one of us now…”

  Melanie smiled big. She didn’t want to get all worked up over something so rash. She had to wait for her dad to return from his Elders’ meeting before she jumped to any conclusions. The meeting ended the Blood Rites and it generally lasted the entire night following the Sacrifice and most of the day. Only the Lord Father himself knew what the power players of the church were talking about, but Melanie feared it had a lot to do with her messy Sacrifice. That good feeling completely dried. “Do you think everything went okay last night? You know with—”

  “Everything went fine sweetie. Please don’t worry. It went fine.” But there was the faintest glimmer of doubt behind her mom’s eyes.

  “I don’t want to be punished or—”

  “Everything is okay!” Her mom’s tone and volume sharpened. Taking a breath she softened. “Everything is fine Mel. Really.”

  “Dad asked me to try and feel for the…the…the boy and I tried, but—”

  Cutting her off for a third time, “Melanie! It’s going to be okay. Your dad knows what he’s doing and when he comes home from council this evening he will tell you himself okay? Now stop scaring up unnecessary worry.”

  Melanie nodded. Her mom was right. Her dad knew what he was doing and he would never jeopardize his little girl. Finishing her eggs she excused herself from the breakfast table to go get ready for school.

  Her mom nodded and sipped at her coffee. Melanie’s worries seemed to douse her excitement and free-flowing pride. Before running off, Melanie circled the table and gave her mom a big hug. “I love you, Mama.” She whispered the pleasantry into her ear and then gave her a giant kiss on the cheek. “I love you too dear.” The smile was back on her mom’s face.

  Melanie bounded upstairs. She twirled in her mirror, taking in the Gown one last time before pulling it off and folding it up. Someone would be by today to return it to storage for next year’s Rites.

  * * *

  There were tons of relationships to repair.

  Primarily there was Amy, Sarah and Veronica. They had been
her best friends ever since second grade and ignoring them for the past three months hadn’t gone over very well. Every year since, Melanie was tired or out of sorts during the Blood Rites, but this year, her year, she couldn’t get through unless it was all she thought about.

  The phone calls stopped coming about a month in.

  They began talking shit about her the second month (as she expected them to).

  By the third month they wouldn’t even look at her.

  So how was she going to win them back? Easy. She’d just be herself and run the bitches as she always had. And if they didn’t want her back? Melanie never seriously considered it, but if that were the case she would just find new friends. Or maybe Arthur would be back and…

  Don’t start that kind of thinking.

  She had them eating out of the palm of her hand by lunchtime.

  They all sat at their normal lunch table as if nothing had happened. Well, as if they never talked shit or disowned her for abandoning them, because plenty of stuff happened and there was a ton of gossip to catch up on.

  They started with Arthur.

  Melanie wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. He could be back (hoped, wished, prayed), but then again probably not. They’d surely Wipe him and relocate him. Either way she wouldn’t dog him out. She loved him and wanted his reputation to shine. “He was the best.” She giggled.

  Instant silence—which was a near impossible feat amongst four teenage girls.

  “You did it?” Veronica’s eyes were as wide as saucers. The other girls leaned in close for her response.

  “No!”

  A collective sigh of relief (disappointment?) broke out between them.

  “No, we didn’t do it. Gross. We made out though.” Melanie looked down on her naïve friends with badass pride. They were good girls. Prissy. No sex. No drugs. And because they didn’t have sex or do drugs they didn’t date as much as girls as pretty as they were should. Making out with a guy was unheard of, because they wouldn’t allow a guy to make out with them unless he was already their boyfriend, but most guys who they wanted to go out with wouldn’t go out with them because they wouldn’t put out. Melanie had got a guy to be her boyfriend and they got to the make out phase. This was monumental news within their girl world.