The Bride Stripped Bare

by Rob Bliss

  I was exhausted, my slashing arm killing me. I sat back against the deadend wall and Gord joined me. Catching our breaths, re-living the hell we had just been through, glad that we were still alive.

  Rubbing hands down my face, goggles perched on my head, I thought about something that didn’t quite make sense.

  “Where did those people come from?” I asked Gord, and myself.

  “Like you said, they must’ve been in another tunnel linking to this one, the main one.”

  “But they were all blind. They should’ve been walking in all directions—down any branch—they’d even be right here.”

  He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. The blind leading the blind? They all head in the same direction so none of them get lost? Your guess is as good as mine. We’re alive, that’s all I know.”

  But the problem still nagged me. I stood and strolled around the deadend, putting my goggles back on to see if there was even the tiniest gap in the stone. I tapped a knuckle against the rock as I paced from one wall to another, looking at the ceiling as well, hoping to see a crack in the rock and a sliver of sky. Was it still night? Even a waft of fresh air from the exterior blowing down through a crack would’ve been a shred of hope. I didn’t want to head back the way we came.

  The family, eventually, would come.

  While knocking against the wall which Gord was leaning against, I noticed a change in the pitch. A hollow echo, not solid stone. Gord froze and looked at me.

  “You hear that?” I whispered.

  Then the entire wall moved.

  Gord and I leapt back, watching the stone slide sideways, its base scraping on earth and stone, but also the grinding of rollers on ball bearings.

  Two massive men, six feet tall minimum, muscles bulging out wife-beater t-shirts and sleeveless lumber jackets pushed the wall open to expose a gap that led outside. Dark pines and a full moon, fresh mountain air.

  And about fifty men and women, none of them elderly or disfigured. All holding guns trained on Gord and me.

  We stood still, hearts stopped, staring through green glows to see clearly the force of arms we faced.

  Poppy stepped from around the tunnel gap and smiled, standing between the two giant men, his round blue lenses each dotted with little moons.

  “Evening, boys,” he said. “Welcome to Canada.”

  One of the men turned to ask Poppy, “Which one’s the groom?”

  Poppy chuckled. Pointed at me.

  One of the men punched Gord in the face, sent his goggles flying, dropped him unconscious to the ground.

  Poppy put something into the hand of the second man, who held the object sideways in his thick palm. He grabbed my throat, lifting my chin, and jabbed the object into the side of my neck.

  The moon waned down to a green dot in my goggles.

  — | — | —

  PART 2

  — | — | —

  Chapter 11

  I awoke strapped to a St. Stephen’s cross, dressed in the costume—uniform—I had tried on at the tailor. I had pants on this time, but they weren’t tights. Two thick brown animal skins, like bear fur, covered me from the waist down. My hands and feet were tied with dried animal sinews and I wore strange shoes or boots made of black metal, the toes each shaped into a cloven hoof.

  That’s what I saw when my head cleared. Whatever poison the massive man had injected into my neck still swam in my veins and made my vision somewhat blurry. I was indoors somewhere, the cross high above wooden floorboards, a black curtain stretching in front of me, spotlights shining down.

  I felt as if I was backstage at a theatre. Which meant, I assumed, that I was about to be put on display. To reinforce this feeling, I heard the collective rumbling voice of a vast audience filter through the curtain.

  Two men eventually arrived, both the size of the men who had rolled back the tunnel wall. It may have been them, but I couldn’t tell. Each was draped from head to foot in thick black animal furs, with the heads of bears covering their identities. Each wore boots made of bear claws.

  The lights dimmed to a subdued crimson and the curtain rose. The bear men on either side of me pushed the cross, which was on rollers, to the edge of the stage. The audience was invisible without lights shining on them, but I could hear them. They gasped and murmured to themselves at my appearance. Children screamed with delight.

  To my left was a cut log table with the circumference of a Douglas Fir. As broad as King Arthur’s Round Table, I thought, with too many rings to count, ancient. It stood, perhaps, four feet high off the stage. The wood was highly polished, and I could see a thousand crisscrossed knife gouges across its shining surface.

  I hated to think what it was used for. Probably not dining.

  The two men stepped away behind me, giving me center stage. Then from my right came three smaller, thinner figures, each cloaked in furs with bear’s heads hiding their faces. They stood only a few feet away from me, lined up to face the audience.

  They simultaneously pulled off the bear heads and let their cloaks fall to hang just off their shoulders, revealing their naked bodies. They were beautiful. I knew them. They were the three women I had had an orgy with…in my dream. Or was it in my drug-enhanced reality? The white girl, the black girl, the Asian girl. Their bodies perfect, luscious, lustful. Painted with designs of gold that matched those on the ornate vest and jacket I wore.

  Except, in this reality, there was a difference. Their bodies were those of young women, but their faces were of crones. The three old women I had seen in the gazebo. Elderly women painted with cosmetics to look like hideous whores. Their hair stylized—thick locks and curls woven with jewels and ornamental pins. Their mouths, topped by wispy moustaches, were toothless orifices haloed by wrinkles, deep lines cutting across every inch of skin like the rings of a tree.

  Each turned her smile to me—old women shooting me looks of lust.

  But it didn’t last long. A rumbling of wheels on wood thundered to my left. Gord, dressed in his tailored uniform, was rolled out on a cross like mine, only smaller and lower. Later, I would see that his eyes had been punched black and purple, ligature marks bruised his neck. His eyes opened and closed as his head rolled from side to side, dazed. I doubted he knew where he was. His tied hands jutted over the posts of the X and he was pushed close to the edge of the stage. Which made me realize how much further raised I was on my cross.

  He who was raised on the biggest cross becomes the main sacrifice? Was I the lucky one?

  It was Poppy who pushed Gord out on the cross. The small man dressed in a similar vest and jacket, but the thread was green not gold, and the animal fur he wore on his legs was white. His cloven hoof shoes were dyed—or stained—red. Round blue glasses, as usual. I wondered if he even had eyes. He stepped to the opposite side of the stage from the three women.

  The crimson light gave way to a stark white light.

  Venus entered onto the stage.

  She towered over those on the stage not pinned to crosses. Her cloven-hoofed, high-heeled shoes made of gold hammered the boards. She was nude, but her entire body was tattooed with rust-red henna in designs more intricate than those on our vests. It was difficult to distinguish everything her body displayed, but just at a glance I could see mosaics and chessboard patterns, limbs without bodies, faces in torment, mathematical symbols vomited by insects, letters from unknown languages, scenes of war and depictions of obscene lust between humans and animals, gods and devils. Hieronymus Bosch on a naked goddess.

  Over the henna was a dusting of gold. Gold painted her nipples and lips and eyelashes. Poppy stepped to her, carrying a long white bear fur which he helped her put on. Attached to the cloak was the head of the beast looming high above the woven tower of her platinum blonde hair. Some form of wooden cradle kept the ursine head at least two feet above her hairline. She turned on a heel to smile at me, stepping heel-to-toe toward me, stood at my side. Then she faced the audience so that they could bask in her majesty and
beauty.

  “Venus!” a voice cried, sobbing, desperate. “I’m sorry! It was a mistake—for the love of God, have mercy!”

  Gord, his face leaning on his quivering bicep, blackened eyes weeping, stared across me to his bride. Former bride, perhaps. The audience hissed at him. Venus’ eyes shot fury across the stage as Gord pleaded for his life. Her beautiful jaw roiled with snakes beneath the skin and her nostrils flared into skull pits.

  My best friend yelled a wet burbling cry as Poppy leapt on him with a knife he pulled from his sleeve, and slowly drew a thick line of blood across Gord’s forehead. The audience cheered as Poppy licked the knife clean and slipped it back up his sleeve. Venus smiled smugly.

  The audience calmed when Gorman exited from upstage, wearing an animal’s fur painted half black and half red, the colors split down the middle, with a beast’s head hanging down his back. He passed between Venus and I to stand at the round table of wood, head bowed, mumbling in some language I couldn’t understand. He passed his hand over the wood, then stooped to retrieve two golden goblets and a black wooden bowl from a hollow in the table.

  Whatever prayer he intoned continued as he raised each cup separately to the spotlights, then rested them back on the stump; next, he raised the black bowl to the lights as the prayer went on.

  Then Gorman—the priest of the marriage, I assumed—pulled a long dagger with a pearl handle from his sleeve, held it high as he mumbled his words, stood in front of Venus. She had to stoop to compensate for their height differences. Gorman held the dagger in two hands, raised it to Venus as she leaned over and opened her mouth. She closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

  A thick, unhealed scar already sliced the center of her tongue. Gorman drew the blade down the scar and the flesh split open like rising dough, the end of her tongue cleft in two like the tongue of a snake. Blood swelled along the crease of her tongue and Gorman quickly put the dagger on the table, took up the goblet, and caught enough blood to fill the cup halfway.

  He put the goblet on the table, picked up the dagger again, approached me.

  “Oh, fuck no!” I yelped, then clamped my lips tight.

  The audience laughed, and Venus smiled with her bloody mouth. A red V was smeared down her chin, dripping between her breasts. Gorman held the knife up to my face as he had with Venus, but there was no way in hell I was going to let him slice any part of my anatomy.

  The massive men re-appeared from either wing of the stage and stood beside my cross. One of them held a strange metal mask like a face-shaped cage with a long flat piece of thin metal jutting from where the mouth of the cage-face was located. It had leather straps that could tie the cage to the wearer, but the man didn’t need to use them since his hands were tied, and the mask was only needed for a temporary reason, not as a long-term torture device.

  Then I remembered what this implement reminded me of, a torture device from Merry Olde Medieval Britain. A scold’s bridle, or brank’s bridle. To punish women who spoke too much. Or, in this case, to punish me.

  He slipped the thin metal tongue between my lips and clenched teeth, ramming it in with the heel of his palm until it hit my uvula and I gagged. Then he jammed the metal mouth—a circular ring—between my teeth, wedging my mouth open.

  I coughed and choked—my breath heaved—and I would’ve vomited but I had nothing in my stomach. The cocaine I had ingested made me feel no hunger, and the couple of times I had puked right after seeing a dead body—one of my kills—had emptied me out.

  While my mouth was wedged open, the second massive man reached between my teeth with a pair of iron tongs and grabbed my tongue. He pulled and I instinctively pulled back. The constant gagging, the threads of drool hanging out of the mask mouth, didn’t make it easy for me to keep up the fight.

  At one point, Poppy approached me, slipping the knife out of his sleeve, ready to drag the blade across my forehead to encourage me to stick my tongue out and keep it out. But Venus stopped him. With a glance, her eyes sharper than any knife. Poppy backed away and resumed his place on the stage.

  It doesn’t take long for your tongue to get tired. It may be the strongest muscle in the body, but human beings aren’t accustomed to having it pulled and wrenched in a tug of war. I was exhausted and my tongue relaxed. The man with the tongs pulled my tongue out and held it jutting through the ring of the mask as Gorman uttered his prayer again. Then he used the dagger to carve a line down the center of the muscle.

  My neck tightened, eyes squeezed shut and sweat beads bled down my forehead. Breath heaved in my burning lungs as I gargled out a scream. I tasted blood, swallowed it, coughed as it slipped down my throat half-inhaled.

  One of the men tilted my head forward as Gorman put down the dagger and held the empty goblet under my chin. Like maple syrup from a tapped tree, blood ran down the crevice of my tongue to fill the goblet half-way. Then the tongs let go, the mask was removed, and I was left to suck my tongue, drinking my blood, soothing my wound.

  I felt like what I was: a crucified man. Under constant and varied torture. I didn’t pay any more attention to Gorman’s mumbling and chants, my mind reeling, sweat in my eyes, the muscles of my entire body burning with exhaustion. They were trying to break me, and I was breaking.

  Mouth open, I pulled in breath. Venus had the two goblets in either hand. I didn’t see her until I felt the metal of the cup tip over my bottom lip and blood wash down my throat. I coughed, but my head was still tilted backwards, so I swallowed all the blood that hit the back of my mouth. I saw Venus drink the blood of the second goblet, smiling after with her perfect teeth, stained dark rust. I realized that we had drank each other’s blood. To continue this communion, she tilted her face over mine, and slipped her bleeding tongue into my mouth. We tasted the iron of each other’s mouth as the audience cheered and stomped their feet and pounded fists on tables.

  Gorman stood between Venus and I, one hand clasped with mine bound to the cross, the other with Venus’ long fingers and sharp nails folded into her father’s withered palm.

  He triumphantly spoke to the audience.

  “The bride and groom are now joined to each other, but they still have yet to join as one to the family. The procession may begin.”

  More lights came on, showing the vast audience in the immense room. Severed bear heads with gaping jaws hung from the ceiling. The room was entirely made of split logs, but the walls were covered with overlapping bear skins of black, brown and white. The circular tables and high-backed chairs were wooden, with immense silver candelabras on each table. The men, women and children (as young as, perhaps, eight years old) who made up the audience all wore bear skins without heads, and it wasn’t until they all reached the stage that I could see glimpses of their nudity beneath the skins.

  The crowd lined up to either wing of the stage and ascended the stairs to walk to the round stump table at center stage. Gorman used the dagger to flick a quick slit in the fingertips of each person, and then squeezed out a drop of blood per finger, draining it into the black bowl. Each person then descended the stairs and returned to their table. This part of the ceremony took a long time to complete. I looked over at Gordy, whose face was raked with lines of blood that had poured down from his forehead. He couldn’t open his eyes without blinding himself. Instead, he hung his head to one side like a Christ and let tears flow when they could come.

  The family proceeded past the stump table, and I watched them all. Men and women, boys and girls, all happily submitted to the blood-letting, sucking their fingers as they returned to become the audience again. Venus joyfully watched them too, and once or twice she met my eyes. She smiled and caressed my cheek with a knuckle. Flicked out her split tongue at me and licked up the blood it left on her bottom lip.

  A new shock hit me when I saw the people next in line whom I recognized. They stopped at Gord and wept, but were pushed ahead to the stump by Poppy. Gord’s mother, father, brother and sister gazed up at me with fresh tears. All of them were dre
ssed in bear skins, naked beneath. They had been like my second family so much that I called Gord’s mother and father Ma and Pa. I couldn’t find my voice, but I painfully mouthed their monikers to them, and they smiled through tears.

  Gorman was about to cut Pa’s finger, held over the bowl, but Venus stopped him. Her eyes pierced through the stare of the priest.

  “No. They are not family. They come from the lineage of the best man,” she hissed while snapping her glare over to Gord, who leaned an ear towards her. “Neither he, nor they, deserve to be bonded to our lineage.”

  Gorman looked at her, his dagger point held up, away from the bowl. “So…they are expendable?”

  Venus raised an eyebrow while she glanced across the four members of Gord’s family. (I wondered if they had been brought to the wedding only; had any been at the bachelor party as well?)

  “Let them enjoy the feast,” Venus said. “Perhaps they will fall in love with one of ours…and there will be a marriage in the future.” She looked devil eyes down at Gorman. “The family can never be too big or have too many genetic strains in its make-up.”

  He smiled his lipless mouth at her, used the dagger to wave Gord’s family off the stage. They left, Ma shaking and crying, Gord’s sister, Elizabeth, looking into my eyes with sorrow and desperation. I hadn’t seen her in years, and she was beautiful. I felt embarrassed for her when her bearskin cloak fell open and I saw a flash of her breasts. I looked away and she headed back into the audience.

  The procession continued for at least an hour, maybe more. (The family could never be too big!)

  When they were done, returned to their seats, Gorman lifted the now full black bowl to Venus for her to drink. He then lifted it to my mouth, one of the massive men squeezing my mouth to open my lips, and the blood was poured in. Gorman walked the bowl passed Gord, smirking as he did, then headed to Poppy. The three girls—or old women—to Venus’ right were next. They drank greedily. The remainder of the blood was for Gorman, the priest. He drank and intentionally spilled much of the crimson to stain his cloak. A splashed bib sent trails of red down either color of bear fur to his shoes. The empty bowl took its place between the goblets on the stump table.