The Bride Stripped Bare

by Rob Bliss

  One of my hands was free. Venus, still dazed, lazily swung a paw through the air, but even a slow bear paw had force to it. She smashed thick claws against the left leg extension of the chair, snapping it. The chair shook from her blow, but it must’ve been bolted to the floor because it stayed upright even with a leg missing. And I still had the fur-covered wood extension strapped to my leg. I managed to pull my foot away from the beast’s next arm swing. Her other arm swatted the right extension, snapping that too, the wooden extension still strapped to my leg. The chair was propped up only from the back, laying me out on display facing the ursine bitch.

  I flexed my arms to pull myself up the chair, pulling my legs higher toward my chest, but the wood bound to my ankles was like carrying around a pair of broken skis that wouldn’t come off.

  My chest was tight as I held myself higher up the chair’s back. I watched Venus sway and stumble, slump back against a wall, her jaws snapping at air. Feeble moans came from the depths of her throat; she attempted to roar, but it faded out before gaining any volume or ferocity. I put my feet on the floor and kept sawing at the binding pinning my other hand.

  I glanced at Gord who was back beside the body of Stinger, rifling through his doctor’s bag.

  My hands were free. Eyes on the bear, I hoisted one foot as best I could with the piece of wood attached to it and began to saw.

  Venus got on all fours, blinking eyes gazing from light to shadow, and began lumbering toward me.

  “Jesus, Gord! Shoot her with anything!” I glanced down and saw that Gord was shooting something into his arm vein. “Aw, fuck, Gord—not now!”

  “Fuck you, Chris! He’s got liquid cocaine in here! I need to coke up to stay alive! Have you seen my face? I’m burned to shit and missing an eye! My dick is a lump of coal! I’m a freak because of you! What do I have to live for except cocaine?”

  “Holy shit, Gord, you want to play the blame game? Why’d you bring me and your family to this house? You knew what the family were going to do to us!”

  “So? Is your life better than mine? You hate who you are and what you do for a living too. I figured we could all benefit from this family. I was actually thinking of you and my folks, trying to help all of you. I didn’t know it was going to go this way!”

  The liquid coke went into his veins and the syringe slipped out, fell back into the bag. His face twitched and his tongue swam around his gums. This was really no time for he and I to be having an argument, I reasoned with myself.

  “Fine—you got your coke—now stab some poison into Venus while she’s fucked.”

  I shot my eyes to her, saw that she was changing again. Turning back little by little by convulsions into a human being. A bear’s jaw and nose hung beneath her human eyes and the top of her burned head; slender human arms, one of them still weighted down by a heavy bear paw; one leg was ursine, the other human.

  It was the perfect chance to knock her down, hopefully for good.

  Gord was flying high on coke and rage. I had to yell repeatedly at him to focus, get his hands back into Stinger’s doctor bag, find the syringe and any kind of drug. His hands rubbed his face compulsively and his nostrils flared, but he looked at the bag on the floor and headed back for it. I hoped to hell it wasn’t for another fix.

  Thankfully, he returned to do battle with Venus with the syringe in hand, its needle piercing the black bottle stenciled “L.O.V.E.” Hoped he knew what it was and what it would do.

  “Go for the eyes! The weakest part!” I yelled.

  He pulled the filled syringe out of the bottle, yellowish-red drops tipping the needle’s point. But he wanted to get in a quick cheap shot first. Kicked her in the face, but her fangs caught his leg and tightened. Gord screamed every name at her, pounding a fist against her head—she swung her powerful bear neck muscles and Gord slammed back hard against a wall. The syringe flew into a shadow.

  I sawed the golden blade faster until both feet were free of the wooden extensions. My legs were asleep, but I could still hobble. Venus was trying to crush her jaws through Gord’s leg. Stumbling and slipping towards her, I held the blade like a spear in front of me. I lunged and the gold penetrated her belly. Tried to wrench it sideways to open a wide gash, but she backhanded me with her remaining bear paw. I was naked except for the cloven boots that wouldn’t come off, unprotected by any magic, and felt every ounce of pain.

  Touch of concussion, knees and ribs and elbows throbbing and burning, but I had to ignore it all. Wouldn’t have minded a sip of liquid coke myself, just to keep me on my feet as long as possible.

  Taking my own advice, I rushed for the doctor’s bag and grabbed the whole thing. Kept it pried open as I rushed again at Venus. She saw me coming, let Gord’s leg drop from her mouth as she roared at me. Perfect. I smashed the opened bag into her mouth, punched the base of the bag so that as many vials of chemicals, ink, whatever, slammed into her maw, hit her uvula, dropped down her throat.

  I was no surgeon; no time for precise injections.

  She bit the bag and I stumbled away, backed into the chair. The white fur covering the chair fell and draped over my head. I wore it around my neck like a scarf, hoping it had magic, that it wasn’t just a piece of surgical/tattooing theatre decoration. Gord shook his dizzy head, but his leg was fine. The fur pants and metal boots that had melted up his shins protected him from any wound, plus the coke would’ve killed any pain. I crab-crawled to him and pulled him into shadow, keeping our distance as we watched if the mouthful of chemicals had any effect on the bride.

  Shards of glass fell from her fangs, liquids spilled down between her breasts, human again, but hairy. Her head swung from side to side, eyes blinking slowly, out of sync, as though she was looking for us, couldn’t see into shadow. Her excellent bear night vision could’ve been waning into mediocre human vision. The drugs were doing something. Gord and I didn’t really want to stick around to find out what. But she was still blocking the only exit from the room.

  “We gotta distract her,” I said, wrapping the white fur around my shoulders, about to take a step out of the shadow and into the light, needing all the protection I could get.

  Gord held me back. “No, dude, I got the fur pants and still some scraps of the vest and jacket stuck to my skin. I’ve still gotta have a little protection left.”

  Sound reasoning in an insane situation. I let him go. He took a first step, and accidently kicked the syringe of yellowish-red fluid out of shadow and into the light. He and I smiled at each other. I picked up the poison.

  “You distract her—I’ll stick the bitch,” I said.

  Venus pissed down her human leg. She charged for the smashed chair I had been strapped to, possibly thinking it was an enemy. Crunched it in her jaws and smacked it into smaller pieces with her heavy paw. I slipped with long strides along the wall toward the door as Gord stepped bodily out of shadow and faced her.

  “Hi, honey, I’m home,” he sang.

  Her breath roared out and ruffled the hair of his pants. I stood between Venus and the battered-open door. Held the syringe like a stabbing knife, leapt on her back, reached around and jammed the entire thing into one of her human eyes. Pushed all of the poison into her skull.

  My bride bucked me off and I sailed through the doorway. She bellowed like thunder and Hell. Gord sped to me, grabbed my arm and rushed me with him down the hallway. We ran through flickering candlelight, zigzagging down wooden halls until we couldn’t hear Venus anymore.

  Exhausted, chests heaving, we sat down against a wall. Gord was still twitching, hands rubbing his face and neck, as we glanced down both ends of the hallway, trying to figure out which way to go.

  “What was in the syringe?” I asked.

  “Love,” he said, spitting sweat off his lips, pupils as wide as dimes.

  “Yeah, I read the letters too. You know what they stand for?”

  Gord inhaled deeply through his nostrils and sweat reflected yellow light against his face. I could see in his eyes
that the coke was in control. Maybe for the best at the moment. “Uh, yeah, Venus once told me about how the family made their own medicines and drugs and poisons, from plants and chemicals in a laboratory—they made everything for themselves.”

  “Okay, so what is L.O.V.E.?”

  “‘Lysergic’ is the first one, uh…” He rubbed his wrinkled forehead, trying to settle his chaotic mind and memory.

  “‘Lysergic’?” I asked. “As in L.S.D.?”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s it.” He sniffed some more, licked his gums, scratched his neck. “The O is for opium, V for valium and, uh, the E is…uh…”

  I took a guess. “Ecstasy?”

  “Yeah. That one. The “four-in-one,” Venus called it. No, Poppy told me about it. Yeah, he does it all the time.”

  The revelations were hitting me hard and fast. “Um, Gord, was that what I was on during the bachelor party?”

  His eyebrows twitched and he blinked rapidly for a few seconds. “Oh yeah, hell yeah, we were all on it. Makes for a fun night, don’t it?”

  No comment. I saw something that he was holding in his hand, slapping against his fur knee. Looked like a bloody piece of rope.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

  He held it up, laughed at it, waggled it in front of his face. “Caught a tiger by its tail!”

  — | — | —

  Chapter 22

  We raced down a twisting hallway, popping open doors at random, some already open but going nowhere, others padlocked. We banged our fists on the locked doors, pressed ears to the wood, but we couldn’t find Elizabeth. I could only guess that she was still unconscious from giving birth. (There but for the Grace of God…) Hopefully it hadn’t drained her to the point of death.

  I found a door that should’ve been secured, but the ancient iron padlock fell to pieces when I wrenched down on it. A small window in the door showed only blackness in the room. I called to Gord, voice echoing against stone through the narrow halls. We had to keep up a call-and-response so that we didn’t get lost in the tight labyrinth of branching hallways and cul-de-sacs.

  Lights sat in rusted, cobwebbed cages high up on the walls, some of them working. Too many shadows in the dungeon. Gord joined me as I opened the creaking wooden door.

  When it opened fully, fluorescent lights sputtered to life. A long narrow stone room faced us, walls lined with long wooden beds. More lights flickered to life down the room, showing us a doorway at the end of the room which was open.

  We stepped in, smelling death and the dust of centuries. The ceiling and walls were wet and overlaid with thick green and brown moss. The bars of light flickered, a couple of them buzzed before popping, but we were still able to see what lay on the beds.

  Skeletons with bones a yellowish-brown, dressed in uniforms. The dead wore the fur pants and ornate vests and jackets. Rings with blue jewels were loose on their bone fingers. Nine beds against either wall, then we came to the end of the room, and the doorway into the next. Burned into the doorway’s wooden frame were the words, “Room for one more…” A macabre signboard for where Venus had buried her ex-husbands.

  “Exactly how many times has she been married?” I asked Gord as we inspected the dead.

  “Helluva lot more than I ever thought,” he replied.

  I saw him slip off a ring from the skeleton, a piece of fingerbone coming with it. He tried the ring on for size and I saw a touch of sorrow in his eyes. There was still a part of him that wanted to be married to Venus. Old brides die hard. But knowing Gord, it wasn’t that he wanted her specifically—he just wanted a wife. Not to be alone as he got older. Something most people wanted, a very basic and natural desire. When he saw himself in the hand mirror, his sorrow would’ve become more profound, wondering what woman would every want to marry him?

  I could only hope (terrible it was to think) that Gord’s ruined face and body, his despair, would prevent him from going back to Venus. The other option, suicide, was no option. What could I do for him?

  Simple answer: escape.

  One room led into another and another, fluorescent lights flickering to life, some popping dead, and the corpses lay on their eternal beds lining every wall. I was still naked, minus the chair’s bear fur, which I had wrapped around my waist and held it there, but cold shivers kept moving through my body, seeping from the walls and the stone floor. I stopped at a corpse, told Gord I didn’t want to show him my bits and pieces anymore.

  “Good idea,” he agreed, feeling how clotted with blood his fur pants were.

  We stripped skeletons of their clothing and dressed ourselves. I wondered if the vests and jackets worn by the dead still had any magical properties left. If not, no matter, they would keep us warm. I kept the white fur wrapped around myself like a cloak.

  “How do I look?” Gord asked, putting vest and jacket over the scraps that were fused to his chest.

  “Like a million and a half.”

  “You look weird bald.”

  I smoothed a hand over my dome. “Feels cool.”

  His smile dropped. “My face is shit, ain’t it?” Then he pulled open the waistband of the fur pants. “And I got a black dick! How in the hell do I explain that to anyone I wanna fuck?”

  Took me a while to look at him, and he noticed the pause. I felt like hell and needed to confess something that maybe he had forgotten. “Sorry I started the fire. I caused your wounds. Best friends forever?”

  He swallowed hard, voice cracking, sniffing from his coke high. “I don’t blame you. I was out of my mind—Venus and the coke.” He shrugged and twitched involuntarily. “Now it’s just the coke. Who would’ve thought that would save my life?” He stepped up to me, gripped my shoulder. “You were saving yourself and my kid sister from that fucking demon. I was stupid enough to obey her. But the fire kinda woke me up. Knocked me into shock, and a part of me finally saw that she was the enemy. That’s why I grabbed the knife blade.”

  I felt my new sleeve by habit, found that there was an intact knife that came with the skeleton’s jacket. Pulled it out and held it up. Gord found one up his sleeve, pulled it out, toasted his blade to mine with a metal clang.

  “You did what you had to do,” he said solemnly. “Thank you.”

  Before I could respond, a wooden boom echoed through the rooms. Gord and I slipped the knives back up our sleeves and raced passed the corpses back to the first room, saw the door closed, Venus’ face in the window. Fully returned to her human self, the syringe gone, but her eyelid closed, blood washed down her cheek. She laughed as we pressed against the door, rammed our shoulders against it.

  “You’re home, boys,” she called through the thick glass. “Have a chat with my past loves. They were all wonderful, served their purposes, as have you. I guess I’ll be getting re-married again soon. Back to the hunt.”

  Laughing, she vanished from the window, clicked off the lights. Gord and I breathed against the glass. He tried to punch it, but only hurt his hand. If there was magic in our clothing, it didn’t allow us to break the barrier of the crypt.

  We swore and cursed her, smelled the dead all around us, our metal shoes echoing on stone. Then I noticed a glow emanating from Gord’s sleeve. He reached in and pulled out the knife. Its blade shone with a white-blue light which eerily lit his deformed face. If he wasn’t a friend, I would’ve taken him for a monster, locked with me in a catacomb.

  I pulled the knife from my sleeve and it shone as well. I commented, “Even in Hell, there’s a little hope.”

  We headed back through the rooms—the catacombs, as I had started thinking of them as, reminded me of the labyrinths under Paris and Rome and other old cities. Where people fled to escape persecution of whatever empire was in charge, where they worshipped their unpopular gods, where they buried their dead. But no catacomb had only one exit and entrance—they were more like warrens that stretched far below the surface world with multiple exits and entrances arising in unlikely locations.

  Or maybe this was
just a mausoleum. Following the light of our knives, we passed through the first two rooms again and into a third that branched off in an L. Here, some of the dead still had skin and thin muscle and sinews. But their skin was rust-red and leather-black, vacuum-sealed to bone, eyes lost, mouths stretched back to expose every tooth in the corpses’ heads. Like mummies or sacrificial victims thrown into bogs. Their uniforms were, however, immaculate. The smell of decay was stronger here in this relatively confined space, the moss that covered the walls and ceiling acting as insulation and moisture absorption and muting the sound of our steps.

  No doors, only doorways, closed one room from another. The next room branched off at an angle, sloping down deeper into the earth, the air cooler, smelling more like marsh gas. The moss on the walls was thicker, now covering the floor in mounds, green sponge that still seeped rank water when you stepped on it. Our metal hoofs left a trail of cloven imprints.

  It was impossible to judge how far down the room led underground, but the dead who lay in their beds had even more flesh on their bones. Some were even plump. You could see how they had died—killed by their own hand or that of someone else. A white rope the width of my middle finger dug deeply into a neck, part of the flesh having grown over and swallowed the rope. Not a suicide because the corpse also had its wrists and ankles bound.

  (It bore a tattoo similar to mine on its forehead. Several of the flesh corpses did, though not all. Though my forehead still pulsed, I had forgotten the Mark of Cain I bore until I saw it reflected on the corpses. I stopped Gord, lifted the shining knife to my forehead, and asked how the tattoo looked, was it bloody? Gord wrinkled his eyebrows and asked, “What tattoo?”)

  Another corpse didn’t have any tattoos because it was missing skin from the eyebrows up. The eyebrows were still attached, but it appeared as though the person had been scalped, the dome of their cranium exposed. Another corpse still had the railroad spike that kill him driven through his forehead. Another was missing a belly and abdomen, his internal organs preserved in Mason jars, the jars stacked back into his body cavity. Others weren’t full bodies, legs missing, arms missing—or worse, the limb still attached but by only a thin and rotting ligament. I peered closer at one of these legs with the knife light shining against the rotted flesh, and I could see the marks of tiny teeth all around the stumps of the legs and the hips. Many teeth had chewed their way almost entirely through the limb from the outside in. Excruciatingly slow torture until they hit the femoral artery, and then the victim mercifully hemorrhaged out his life’s blood.