The Bride Stripped Bare

by Rob Bliss

  I put a hand on her arm to soothe her, but she snapped it back. “These people have a morbid sense of humor,” I continued my bullshit. “I mean, look at all of this. They’re rich. Rich people are weird, eccentric. All that you saw was just some weird magic show. They wanted to make the wedding memorable, instead of the same old boring wedding. It was entertainment.”

  She blinked, looked away from me, taking in the room. Battling with the dilemma.

  “Then why the fuck are we dressed in these bear costumes? Naked underneath! Your…your wife is naked! You can see everything. My brothers, my parents, the bridesmaids—everyone! And what’s with that fucking priest slicing people’s fingers to drip blood into that bowl? And that freak with the blue glasses who sliced Gord’s forehead? This is not a magic show!”

  A few heads turned our way since Elizabeth wasn’t whispering anymore. I threw up my hands and shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you. It’s not a traditional wedding.”

  She scoffed a laugh. “That’s an understatement.”

  “Your brother was going to get married to her. You would’ve been here anyway.”

  “Well, look at him!”

  I looked over at the bar. Gord and Kevin were chatting, stuffing coke into their noses. The ugly red cut across Gord’s head had stopped bleeding. The coke probably killed his pain, got him to normal again instead of being a basketcase begging for mercy from Venus. A woman approached the brothers, putting her hands on her hips to open her cloak. They both scanned her body and Kevin put his arm around her, all of them laughing. Then Kevin left with her, first filling a champagne flute with coke, the two of them disappearing into the shadows of the room. Gord wandered along the bar, inspecting the bottles on display.

  “He’s so fucking drugged up,” Elizabeth continued, “he doesn’t know what’s going on or even where he is.” She jabbed a finger into my chest as she glared at me. “As soon as I can find a way out of this freak farm, I am leaving with my mother and father. If my brothers want to stay and think with their dicks, fine. I’m not a part of this deranged family, and I never will be.” She turned, stomping away to find her parents, but then came back and growled into my face. “They served us a fucking platter of what looked like brains! I threw up under the table. Was that magic? A joke? These people are sick and depraved, and now you’re sick and depraved too!”

  She sped away. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, feeling nervous and ashamed from her words. Took deep breaths and glanced around the room, feeling lost.

  Venus came up to me, now wearing just the white bear fur, no longer towering as she had before. The gold and henna were washed off her body, and she smelled like papaya and mango.

  She waved the cloak to cool her skin. “Oo, that’s much better. I can move again. Time for our first dance, sweetie.”

  — | — | —

  Chapter 14

  She led me by the hand to the center of the dance floor where a ring of candles on their tall iron poles had been arranged. Music played from the ceiling and from every corner, something classical sounding like a romantic dirge, a suicide love song, words sung in whispers by a woman’s and a man’s voices overlapped, saying words in and out of time in a foreign language. Behind the violins and cellos, there was a lone flute and a balalaika, even the odd fade in and out of a samisen. A song of strange dark love full of ghosts.

  It was beautiful, as was my bride. She moved lightly in my arms, like a paper doll, and her face moved in and out of the candlelight. I would see a flash of her cheekbone, then it would be swallowed by shadow and her lips would appear. A trick of the light, she was revealed to me piece by piece in a soft glow. Perhaps the light illuminated me in such a way to her. The guests crowded in to circle our candles, and their faces too seemed to float in the mutual yellow light, heads severed, bodies made invisible under the dark fur of the bears they wore.

  Venus kissed me and pressed me close, wrapped her arms and cloak to envelope me, drawing me hard against her nude body. My fingertips felt the soft buttons of her spine and the two raised arch patterns beneath either shoulderblade where the sharpened dowels of the lattice backbrace had pierced her. Her skin was as smooth as talc, and incredibly warm, almost hot to the touch. I inhaled her breath and tasted mint and cinnamon and champagne. I was hungry again, and she felt it.

  Peeling away the flap on my pants, she took me out and caressed my shaft. I easily forgot that there were hundreds of eyes watching us. She rubbed the swollen head of my cock against the slit of her vaginal mound, leaving a cool, wet trail that slipped between her legs. My thumb and forefinger pinched and twisted one of her nipples.

  “Fuck me,” she moaned.

  “Here? Are you sure?” I asked out of some modern propriety, forgetting the fucking and murder the guests had witnessed during the marriage. The cocaine erased all, made life new again by the second.

  “We fuck for ourselves and for them,” she echoed my feelings.

  She leapt and wrapped her legs around my waist, sank her full weight down onto my cock. Either the cocaine or the lust gave me strength in my legs and arms and hips to hold and penetrate her body, to piston myself deep inside her, two flesh bodies joined as one. Her moans and grunts echoed across the room, adding our voices to the music. Her cloak hung down to cover our sex so we weren’t appeasing the more perverse voyeurs. But we didn’t hold back our cries and our eruptions into orgasm. I held her pressed hard against me as her body quivered. My legs shook. I could feel my hot semen pouring from her, down my shaft and inner thighs, peppering drops on the cool floor.

  We held onto each other until the music ended, then she slipped her feet to the floor, and the audience burst into applause. We smiled. Venus blew them kisses, then saw me still jutting from the open flap. She tucked me up and sealed me in. Everyone else began to dance outside the candle circle as we left it. The music changed into something modern, metallic, speed-driven. I wouldn’t know it at the time, but it was forbidden for everyone to dance or step foot inside the candle circle. It belonged only to us. My ejaculant stayed on the floor, marking our territory.

  We freshened our drinks behind the bar where two high-backed, padded chairs had been placed. Similar to the ones we had sat in during the vows and feast, but less ornate, more worn, though each bore a bear’s head perched on the tall back. We sat and twined our fingers as the adrenaline left our veins. My cock still throbbed, and I felt like I could fuck her again. Or fuck anyone, to be honest. I wanted to rape every woman in the room (and—my God—perhaps even some of the men!).

  She squeezed my fingers and captured my eye.

  “Then why don’t you?”

  My eyes narrowed to slits. “Did you…did I say something out loud?”

  “You don’t have to. You’re my husband now. I know what you think and feel…and desire.” She glanced down at the crotch of my pants, the flap visibly bulging. “It is your right as my husband to have all your appetites satisfied—at all times.”

  Slightly embarrassed, I chuckled and folded a leg over a knee, leaned forward cupping myself, trying to make it go down. She pulled my hands away.

  “Never be shy about your manhood. Our family believes in many ancient traditions. Just because something is of the past does not make it invalid. Stand for me.”

  I did and she angled me to face the audience, with only the bar and its towers of alcohol bottles partially blocking the view of my waist. She stood and lifted her arms in a V. The music stopped.

  “Attention, guests. As you know my husband is somewhat new to the intricacies of family life. He must be taught one lesson at a time, but I’m sure they are lessons he will enjoy.” The room laughed, wolf whistles pierced the air, a few obscenities could be heard. Venus reached down and ripped off the flap covering me—completely off. My penis swung free and began rising. My bride slapped my hands away when I tried to cover myself. “This is my husband’s beautiful cock. I worship it—as a woman should. And so can you. Anyone who wishes
to taste it may come up here and test your skills at pleasing him.”

  Screams of joy erupted across the candle-lit faces, and women (and some men) scrambled up either side of the bar stage. I protested, but Venus pushed me back into my chair. I covered my eyes as the line formed, muttered “fuck fuck fuck” as I tried not to look at any of the people, or my penis which was hard and curved up my belly like a longbow.

  I glanced between my fingers at it. My God—it had gotten bigger! I had been six inches (every guy measures and always knows this private knowledge about his anatomy), but this monster with its purple head half-tucked under the bottom of the vest had to be at least ten inches, maybe more. I didn’t have a ruler handy.

  My hands fell away from my eyes as I stared at it, jaw dropped. Venus pulled it away from the vest and held it up straight.

  “Family secret,” she whispered. “A wedding present for you, my love.”

  The breath rushed out of my lungs. “You did this?”

  She nodded, a glint in her eyes. “A little potion in your wine. Old recipe. It grows when its hard—and it stays hard whenever you need it to. You might not even notice it after a while. Unless, of course, it grows even bigger!” She winked.

  My eyes glazed over at all she was telling me. Bigger? My God—what man wouldn’t want to join this family? The whole thing was a male fantasy come true. It couldn’t be real. If it wasn’t, then I didn’t want to know what real was. Reality was boring. No life in the real world; an amazing life in this wonderfully unreal world. Maybe I was losing my mind; if so, I loved my insanity. God bless madness!

  An old woman was smiling down at me. Grey hair, a wart above her left eyebrow, long breasts sagging out of her bear cloak, false teeth rattling behind her smile. With a shaky hand, she took out her teeth, held onto them as she struggled to get down to her knees.

  “Fuck grandma’s mouth, sonny,” she said with a witch’s rusty vocal cords. “I like my men sick and depraved.”

  I was in complete denial about what she was trying to do. Then reality intruded as she got to her knees and picked my sagging penis up with shaking, crooked fingers and guided it toward her opened gums.

  Reality suddenly intruded. Madness didn’t last long enough.

  “Jesus Christ!” I yelled, instantly on my feet, tucking myself back in, trying to push my dick under the leg of the pants to hide it since the flap was gone. I knocked over a few bottles and almost tipped over a punch bowl when I backed into the table.

  I walked backwards from the chair but forgot there was a line waiting for me. They swarmed, pawed at me, dug their fingers through the gap in my crotch, grabbed anything and everything they could, before I broke through their ranks. Gitch stood in front of me as a barrier with his arms crossed, but I saw Venus shake her head at him, so he stepped aside.

  I found a small doorway in the back of the stage and it led me out of the room into an alcove with a small bear’s head pinned to the wall. I didn’t want to see another goddamn bear head!

  Part of me was snapping out of the intoxication of sex, drugs and permissible murder. I had felt like a king, put on a pedestal by my new wife, but in a way she—and her family—were absorbing my personality. My soul.

  The old, toothless woman about to go down snapped me out of a psychosexual dream. Freud would have had something to say about my reaction to the woman, holding her teeth in hand, mouth of gums and an arrow-point tongue. Castration anxiety? Who knew—I just needed to get out of there and compose myself, get my head together, think seriously about what was happening. Or it could have had something to do with Elizabeth’s condemnation. My old love and the new crone who had squatted down between my legs had called me the same thing: sick and depraved. Shame at a life poorly-spent…was that what had started to wake me up?

  I sat on a wooden stool tucked away in a wooden room lined with painted portraits of ugly, inbred ancestors. Thinking about what I had gotten myself into. The coke didn’t help me, or anyone, maintain perspective concerning their environment or actions. Elizabeth had a point: the family-controlled people by keeping the flow of drugs going. Hadn’t I said the same thing to Gord when he was still the happy groom-to-be? I had too much powder in my veins to be sober any time soon.

  A scream echoed down the hallway that branched off from the room where I sat. I rushed through wooden hallways, down dead ends, turned and waited to hear the scream again—next time it had less volume to it, was more distant. I sped through rooms, banged open heavy oak doors banded with metal, sped down small flights of stairs, then back up more stairs. Trying to locate the scream. A woman’s cry.

  I was in a narrow room, one wall wood, one wall stone. Medieval torture instruments hung on the wall or were shoved into corners. An iron maiden, a rack, pincers to pull out fingernails, branding irons, metal impaling shafts with corkscrews, lead masks inset with spikes, stocks and benches where a victim had their necks slowly crushed as a screw tightened. I had read enough medieval literature to know the uses for most of the implements, though I had rarely seen the real things beyond museums.

  An immense oil painting hung in a gilded frame, taking up most of the stone wall. It depicted three grotesque figures, half human and half demon, faces distorted by pox and poorly healed bones, stirring a cauldron on which floated human body parts. The landscape behind the black-robed figures was pure Hieronymus Bosch, naked figures tortured in an endless Hell by demons bearing mismatched bodies of man and beast.

  The scream pierced this room, louder than ever from behind the painting.

  I pried open the frame and the painting swung open like a heavy door.

  Two blonde men, twins, had the flaps of their pants open, their erect penises hooked upward like scimitars, one at the head and the other between the legs of a naked woman strapped to a wide wooden table. They stopped what they were doing and turned to me. The man at the woman’s head shuffled to one side to show me that his victim was Elizabeth. Tears streaked her face and she pulled against her restraints. The man between her legs continued to lightly stroke himself despite my presence.

  “Hey, Chris,” said the one at Elizabeth’s head. “My brother and I were just having a little fun with one of the guests. Is she related to you? Hope you don’t mind.”

  Both brothers were tall and skinny, with faces cut from blocks of wood, angular cheekbones, sharp chins, eyes like dark brown knots sunken below their brows. The one between Elizabeth’s legs smiled and smoothed his hands up her thighs. She tried to snap her legs closed, knees folding inward, but her feet were pinned solid.

  “Yeah, we were gonna make her a part of the family. Maybe put a baby in her to make it official. Sometimes we need new flesh to keep the bloodline strong.”

  “Get away from her!” I growled between gritted teeth.

  “Ah, come on, Chris,” said the first brother, his belly bulging over the beltline of the bear pants, softly stroking Elizabeth’s sweat-soaked hair. “You can join in. You’re the groom—you get anything you want.” He pointed at my crotch. “You’re ready to go—can’t deny what the body wants.”

  Too often I couldn’t feel how my body had betrayed me. I was fully erect again, and since the flap on my pants was gone, my penis found its freedom.

  “If the groom gets what he wants,” I said, ignoring the thing between my legs, “then I want you two to get the fuck out of here. No one touches her. Undo the manacles—now!”

  They sighed, disappointed, but they did what I commanded. Freed, Elizabeth sat up, curled her knees to her chest, caressed her wrists where the iron shackles had bit in. The twins tucked themselves back into their pants, about to leave.

  “You,” I said to the brother who had been between Elizabeth’s legs. “Take off your pants.”

  He stopped, smiled, flicked his tongue out. “Hey, all right, now you’re talking! Getting a piece of the groom works for me—I was in line before Aunt Ethel scared you off. We should’ve never let her go first, but she’s got seniority over most of us.”
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  The other twin chuckled and looked at me. “Yeah, she’s fun, but doesn’t get as much as she used to. We shoulda put her in the tunnel, but she’s still got too much pull with Venus.”

  I glared at the first brother, who had quickly dropped his pants to his knees. I pulled mine off. “Don’t get your hopes up,” I told his leering eyes. “We’re just switching pants. You can wear the crotchless bear legs.”

  They laughed and I threw the pants at him. I held his pants in front of myself as they passed me and left the room.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Elizabeth as I got dressed.

  She nodded and wept. Then threw her eyes at me, full of hatred. “Now do you see? Was that fake? A goddamn magic show?” She got off the table and found her cloak balled up in a corner.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. You’re right. I couldn’t see it before—they have been using drugs to control me—to control your brothers too. One moment I hate Venus, the next I love her. Back and forth—I can’t control it. You haven’t taken anything, have you?”

  “Of course I haven’t fucking taken any fucking drugs, you asshole!” she screamed at me, wrapping the cloak around her cold body. “Am I the only one resisting these people? The only one who thinks they’re sick and twisted and should all be killed? I’m getting out of here. I’m taking my parents and I’m going to try and pry my brothers away from this scum, and when we’re home, I’m calling the FBI to fucking firebomb this place off the planet!”

  I lightly clutched her arm as she passed me. “Let me help you. It’s not going to be easy. There are shitloads of them, inside and outside. I don’t know how we’re going to get your folks and Gord and Kevin away from the dance hall. If we all leave at once, the family’s going to be suspicious.”

  She tore her arm out of my grip. “Let them! I’ll run. Get as far away from this hellhole as possible!”