The Bride Stripped Bare

by Rob Bliss

  Elizabeth cleared her throat, wiped a finger beneath her eyes to smear away tears as she replied, “Yes, I’m sure it will. Thank you for the tour…for my husband. Can you show us the way out? I’m a little lost, feeling dizzy.”

  “Of course. Right this way to the Conception Room. A more inspiring sight to see, especially on your wedding night.”

  I had a feeling of what was going through Elizabeth’s mind. Same as in the previous room, but where she assumed—if she was pregnant—she may have given birth to one bizarre baby, she now probably thought she’d give birth to a litter. Seven was the average! We saw five from one mother. Did others give birth to ten, fifteen, twenty? Animals had litters, not human beings. Even triplets were rare.

  The nurse escorted us through the rows of nurse attendants and the mushroom cradles appearing and disappearing, of babies dropping from the sky, mothers howling out their pain as they dangled in mid-air, until we came to another slit in the wall, enough to squeeze through. We thanked the nurse—I did, Elizabeth could barely speak, bile stirring in her throat—and stepped through the wall into the Conception Room. Whatever the hell that was.

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  Chapter 20

  Once again, our eyes had to adjust from the bright light of the Birthing Room to the darkness of the next room we entered. But Elizabeth wasn’t worried too much about what we were inside, but what was inside her.

  “They just kept coming out of those women,” she whispered to me in the darkness. “I’m not a goddamn dog! What the fuck is inside me, Chris?” A few more tears and sniffles came, so I tried to assure her, but wasn’t sure how.

  My vision was returning so that I could see outlines and shadows. I cradled her face in my hands and lifted her eyes to mine. “Look, when we get the fuck out of this shit, we’ll take you to a doctor. Get the goddamn morning-after pill or something. Just to make sure, okay? We’ll say you were raped—not by Gord, of course—but you didn’t get a good look at the rapist, it all happened too fast—”

  “If we get out of here—if!”

  After a few more seconds, I could see her better in the dark, wiped a tear off her cheek with my thumb. “When, not if. Let’s just get through this room, find an exit, try to get back to the house, or, even better, outside. There must be tons of cars for all of the people who came to the wedding. We steal one, drive all night—hell, drive for a week straight—we’ll be in fucking Panama, they’ll never find us.”

  She hiccoughed out a laugh, sniffled, wiped the tears off her face. Patted her abdomen. “Okay. I won’t worry about this shit, not right now.”

  I put an arm around her, and we walked deeper into the room. Our eyes had adjusted enough so that we weren’t totally blinded. Stripes of diffused orange light glowed in bands circling the walls. A geodesic dome formed the ceiling that stretched high above us, the inner cone of the dome glowing the brightest orange. The floor was spongey black and orange swirled flesh, except there was a layer of something semi-transparent over it. I looked at where Elizabeth and I had walked and could see the treads of our shoes imprinted in the floor. I bent down to feel that our soles had sunken into semi-soft wax. It even smelled like beeswax. Though that wasn’t the predominant smell in the room.

  It smelled like sweat and semen and vaginal juices.

  Yet there was no one in the room but us.

  We had strolled to the center of the room, no sign of any exit, though the walls closest to the floor were too dark to see anything. We kept our eyes on the stripes of orange light, broken by hazy bands of blackness, always looking up since that was where the light came from.

  Wheels spun in my mind and I put together the shape of the room, the color of the light, the floor of wax. We were inside a hive. I whispered the revelation to Elizabeth, who spun where she stood to take in the room with a different perspective in mind.

  “If that’s true,” she whispered, “then where are the bees?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, hearing my heart, tasting dried sweat on my lips. The room was hot. I put a hand on the elbow of Elizabeth’s cloak. “Keep the bear fur tight around your body, no matter the heat—it has some kind of magic, I’ll explain later. Let’s check out the walls.”

  Our shoe heels slipped a little as they dug into the wax floor, like walking—not on ice—but on slush. The closer we got to the nearest wall, the easier it was to distinguish a sound other than our own footsteps. We stopped to listen, holding our breath, trying to peer through the darkness to the source of the sound.

  I thought it was humming or buzzing at first, but that may have been because my thoughts were on bees and a hive. But both of those types of sound are usually constant in tone and pitch, and even if there’s a change, they still sound like humming or buzzing. The constant tone wasn’t broken by moans or cries or grunts. Those sounds came from people.

  “Sex?” Elizabeth asked, mouthing the word.

  I nodded, put a finger to my lips as I pulled her along to tiptoe closer to the wall. We stood within the dark shadow of where floor met wall, the first band of orange light just out of reach of my upstretched arm.

  But the sounds were clearer. Unmistakable. Only muted behind a thick barrier. I touched the wall and it was the same wax as the floor. My fingertips left indents, the smell of beeswax on my skin. But the various stenches of human bodies were still thicker.

  Shadows moved deep inside the orange light. Thin shadows, ghosts, more orange than black, difficult to make out from my close perspective. Shapes that moved and vanished. We stared at the light, seeing shadows the odd time, but then they would vanish in the light. We moved across the band as it stretched around the wall, stopping to see and hear the same things across the light.

  I whispered in Elizabeth’s ear. “I got an idea. I’m gonna get a closer look.”

  She stopped me from approaching the wall, whispered back, “Let’s just get the fuck out of here. Find an exit. We’ll search the room.”

  My male pride was struck down—I knew she was right. This seemed like the kind of place where curiosity would definitely kill the cat. I’d seen enough horror movies and read enough books to know that being curious never saved anyone’s life. When the house is haunted—get the fuck out! Don’t go opening doors and peering down staircases into the basement.

  She went one way and I went the other. Hands patted the wax walls, feet tapped and slipped a little on the floor, as we moved through the shadows at the base of the striped hive. Smells of wax and sex stayed in my nostrils, waning only when I put some distance between myself and the walls. Perfectly smooth, not the slightest indent or slit or bulge—only where I pressed my fingertips was the wall minutely flawed. And the floor gave us nothing new but our cloven treads. We met back up after we had each inspected our halves of the hive…and found the same lack of escape.

  My male pride returned.

  I whispered, “Let me try my idea.” She shrugged, spread her arms out to ask what the idea was, but I mouthed the words, “Just watch.”

  I stepped to the wall and pressed all ten fingers into the wax. They sank in, but it took some strength to get my two strongest fingers in as deep as the second knuckle. Pushed them in, pulled them out easily. Used my index finger to push in five holes where my four fingers and thumb could go in. I gripped the holes as though the wall was a bowling ball. Tried to pull out the wax between the holes, but it held too strongly. I only managed to warp the holes, stretch them out so that my fingers were too small inside them and they slipped out.

  Plan B. Always handy to keep a knife up your sleeve.

  I stabbed it into the wall, sawed and pushed the blade through the wax, carved out a small rectangle. The tip of the knife pried and hacked away wax until the rectangle was hollowed out enough to act as a ledge for my hands. Took a bit of work, but I was eventually able to carve out four staggered handholds, making a short ladder up the wall, far enough to get my head closer to the band of orange light, to see the moving shadows inside, hear th
e sexual cries, piece together my idea that the ‘bees’ in this hive resided—and fucked—behind thick wax walls. Stretching along the bands of light all the way up the walls to the tapered peak of the cone.

  The cloven toes of the shoes were perfect for climbing wax walls. They stabbed in easily and stayed wedged for me to put my weight on them. Being made of metal helped them slip out of the wax easily, as my hand reached for the next handhold and I pulled myself up to the light.

  My face was bathed in sweat, reflecting orange light. Nose pressed to the wax, breath held, I saw the shadows tumble over each other deep inside the wall. Flattened an ear against the orange glow to hear moans and groans much easier. The buzzing we heard on the floor must’ve been the sound of muted ecstasy from a thousand throats blending together into a strangled hum.

  I was able to hold myself up on the wall easily enough to become bored. To give in to curiosity. Took the knife out of my sleeve again and began twisting the blade to wear away the wax, hoping to form a peephole. To see how thick the wax was too, of course, not to just be a voyeur watching people fuck. If that was what was even inside the walls.

  The knife bored a hole through at least a foot of solid wax before the tip released confined air. The human smells were thicker and made me gag, but I remained quiet. Held my breath as I peered in, but the hole was still too small to see anything but a pin of orange light pouring out. Still, the sounds of orgasm were louder with the wall pierced. I looked down at Elizabeth and she gestured that she could easily hear what was behind the wall.

  I put the knife back into the pinhole and corkscrewed the blade back and forth, peeling off thin layers of wax with each twist, scraping them out of the hole like wood shavings. Jabbed the knife into the hole, gouged out more wax, stabbed it in deeper, but I could only get so much power with a single arm free, the other hand gripped hard on the handhold.

  The knife finally stabbed through. A howl of pain burst out with the enlarged hole. Someone inside the recess grabbed the knife out of my hand—then grabbed my hand!

  I yelled and tried to wrench my hand back, but it was pulled in harder, until my entire arm up to the shoulder was inside the wall. My other hand and both feet slipped off the wall and my full weight hung from the captured arm. I didn’t budge from where I dangled. Something stabbed into my arm at the bicep and I yelled. Glanced for a second down at Elizabeth, who was screaming up at me, asking me what was going on. But pain burned my muscles too much for me to catch enough breath to speak.

  I felt warm blood slip down the skin of my arm, then the sleeve of my jacket tugged.

  Whatever held my arm was attached around my wrist and was cold metal. I thought: a handcuff? It was tight, cutting the circulation, and had no give when I wrenched back. I feared my body weight pulling against my pinned arm would eventually separate my shoulder—or wrist or elbow—or my whole fucking arm would rip off! Was that what the person inside the wall was trying to do? Sawing into my bicep?

  Fear imagines everything—none of it good.

  My arm wasn’t ripped off, just my coat sleeve. Though my arm was still pinned and locked at the wrist.

  Elizabeth screamed again, but for a different reason.

  I looked down to see two fists punch through the floor on either side of where she stood and grab her ankles. The black and orange wax slush floor spun and sank in a swirl beneath her, and she plunged into the floor, her screams sliced off. The wax swirled back over her to close the hole and become relatively solid ground again.

  A second fist, wrapped in the sleeve of my jacket, punched through the wax beside my head. It jackhammered from inside the wall until chunks of wax broke off, knocking into the hive to scatter across the floor. Enough of the wall was punched out for a figure to stretch half of their body through the orange light to face me.

  A bald man with some lost language tattooed across half his body and head, old thick scars and branding welts patterned his bare arms and chest.

  He laughed in my face, tongue lolling out of his mouth. The tips of his tongue split to form two points.

  He yowled, “Welcome to the fuck party!”

  Then his tongue spooled out of his mouth and the two points split further until two tongues spun in either direction around my neck, tightening a flesh noose around me, pulling me through the wax wall and into the bright orange light.

  — | — | —

  Chapter 21

  I dreamt of a man with an octopus mouth full of tongues who jabbed a steal skewer repeatedly into my forehead. I tried to move my arms to stop his hand, but his tongues reached down and wrapped themselves around my wrists. Three more tongues tied my ankles and spiraled up my legs to pin them together. Tongues tightened around my neck, pushing up my chin so that I couldn’t see his face, only the hand coming down with the skewer. Streams of blood trickled to wash down my face, smearing across my eyes. My vision saw through a red tint, the hand and the metal rod glinting in a harsh red light hacking away at my forehead. Chunks of bone peeled off and tumbled down my face, clogging my mouth to mute my screams. I tasted my own flesh, swallowed, choked on scraps of flesh and bone.

  The dream lasted hours and I couldn’t wake up. Didn’t wake up until the man had cracked my head like an egg, pieces falling across my chest, only my face from my eyes down remaining, covered in blood, wedges of bone and scraps of skin pasted to my cheeks and chin. He held up a mirror.

  I was Venus.

  My eyes snapped open and reality was similar to the dream. In a room half stone, half wood, the fog of my breath puffing in the air, a white light shone down onto my face. The bare-chested bald man covered in tattooed words and symbols hung over me, blue latex gloves on his hands. He held a tattooist’s needle in one hand, a moist, blood-peppered cloth over the other. Imprinting something onto my forehead, then dabbing away the blood. The split twin points of his tongue slipped in and out from between his lips as he concentrated.

  Some kind of brace was around my neck, raising up my chin so that I was unable to move my head in any direction. Flexing my hands and feet, I felt them tied. I think I sat in a chair covered in fur, could feel it soft under my entire body. Assumed I was naked, but too much of my body was numb. But I knew for sure that I was no longer wearing the vest and jacket. And the knife was gone.

  I heard bare feet slap on stone and Venus soon lowered her burned face over mine. She had begun to heal, her skin now solidified wax, red and raw with only faint char marks remaining.

  She clucked her tongue. “Why you don’t want to be my husband, I’ll never know. I’ll let you have a mistress—or two or five or fifty—in fact, I’ll insist on it. Is it love that makes you choose just one woman over many? Love rarely has had anything to do with procreation. In fact, having babies is hindered by love. What if the woman you’re with is barren? As is—was—your chosen mistress? The species would die out if everyone only chose love. Fucking is much more important, and natural. Fuck anyone and everyone, I say. The species demands that every womb is filled with as many babies as possible.” She smiled and slapped my cheek. The needle continued to buzz over my eyes, pinpricks stabbing my head. “Well, the family has developed quite revolutionary methods of making wombs where none exist.” She squeezed my mouth. The tattoo needle stopped. She glared into my eyes, the scars of fire crisscrossing her face and neck, frozen red bubbles. “You owe me. You and your fucking girlfriend killed almost half a nursery of family young who were just trying to feed off her flesh! So now both of you have to replace what you’ve stolen from me.”

  She looked at the tattooist, snapped her fingers. He took his hands and the cloth from my head, put his needle down, and popped a few clasps on the brace around my neck. Removed it in two pieces. I let gravity slowly drop my chin to my chest, neck stiff. Before the light was clicked off, I saw that, yes, I was fully nude, sitting in a fur-covered chair, my arms and legs pinned by thick flesh straps, dried and as solid as cables.

  I let dizziness pass as my head throbbed, drew in brea
th slow and cool. Coughed and heard my voice echo against stone. The tattooist swung the white light away from my eyes so that I could clearly see a closed wooden door with a small window in the wall opposite me. Hazy light glowed through the window. Above the door was a television sitting on a wooden ledge.

  The screen flickered lines of electric rainbow until it settled on a view of Elizabeth, in a similar room and in a similar position as I was in. Naked, she was strapped to a fur-covered wooden chair, tilted back, her legs raised by wooden extensions projecting from the chair, a wide light shining down to illuminate her body and most of the room.

  Her belly protruded at least two feet out from her waist and ribs. I could see movement beneath the taut skin; hands and feet pressed their imprints, then vanished.

  Two nurses like the ones we had encountered in the Birthing Room were attending to her. One between her legs with a pair of metal shears glinting in the light, the other standing beside a mushroom stalk and cradle.

  Elizabeth groaned and cried, veins like ropes on her red forehead as she pushed. A baby slipped out and the nurse with the shears cut the umbilical cord, passed the infant to the other nurse, who put it in the cradle. Tendrils extended to suckle to the baby’s forehead and navel, then the cradle filled with fluid—a barrier that seemed to become a thick gel which the grasping hands and tiny feet couldn’t poke through. Then the cradle descended on its stalk, sank through the floor, gone. A new mushroom cradle grew in its place.

  The infant had gills and a tail. None were boys. Unlike the infants we saw in the nursery, the ones coming out of Elizabeth all had sagging, developed breasts with nipples the size of corks hanging down either side of their tiny chests, and their teeth were needles.