The Bride Stripped Bare

by Rob Bliss

  So not all—if any—of Venus’ husbands died of natural causes, to put it mildly. Nor would they have died quickly. I mentioned this to Gord, which stunned him and made him think about his desire to be one of the ‘chosen.’ Like me.

  His brow furrowed, which twisted his bubbled skin, making him appear even more horrific in the blade’s light. But I kept my comments to myself.

  “Why does she do it?” he asked me—or himself, ultimately. “Gets married in order to kill? And not for any insurance money since she’s rich and powerful. Just the thrill of murder drives her?”

  I shrugged, trying to block out the stench of the dead around us. To some degree, the smell was masked by the ozone sulfur of the marsh gas. I wondered if we were beneath a lake of some sort.

  “She mentioned genetics a few times,” I replied. “Any family that only fucks family for, what, three or four generations—never mind a hundred or more—are going to start getting mutations. Tails, for Christ’s sake, and gills!” I was just about to tell him about Elizabeth giving birth multiple times—all girls with tails—but I doubted if the father of her babies wanted to be reminded of just how fucked up his life was—even without the burn and the missing eye.

  “Tails and gills,” he repeated, scoffed. He had tucked Venus’ tail, appropriately enough, into the waistband at the back of his pants. It didn’t twitch anymore—just a lifeless piece of muscle. He pulled it out and snapped it like a whip against some moss growing out of the wall. “This is what I wanted to marry. And you did marry her. A fucking piece of tail!”

  We began to chuckle, which soon grew into belly laughs.

  “A fucking piece of tail!” I repeated. “And with her that’s not just an expression!”

  We laughed harder, buckling over, our foreheads burning and tears slipping down our cheeks.

  “What the fuck were we thinking? She’s a goddamn inbreeding mutant!” I shouted, which dropped Gord to the floor, feet kicking against a corpse bed, stomach muscles hurting. “And she’s my wife!”

  I sat down, laughing my ass off. Gord begged me to stop, the tail flipping in his hand—which didn’t make it better. We howled and wheezed, pounded our fists and kicked our heels. After all, we had both been through hell, and we needed a good laugh to release some stress. It also helped make the corpses and the darkness less frightening.

  And then a voice called weakly, “Hello?”

  We heard it as our laughter subsided. Coming from the far end of the room we were in. We stood and shone our knife lights through the room and into another shorter room that had nine beds but only three of them filled. Two corpses…and one man still alive. Barely. Skin over bone, cheeks sunken, eyes mere pits, a tattoo on his forehead which I could see but which Gord could not. The man’s fur pants and vest and jacket hung from his emaciated form like a false skin on a stick puppet of wood. The skin of his face and neck was stretched, showing only tendons and the shape of thin muscle, no fat to make him look less like a living cadaver. His chest rose and fell slowly, with long pauses in between each breath. The jeweled wedding band on his finger spun on bone, caught from falling off only by an arthritic knuckle.

  “Are you the next generation?” he asked with a raspy voice, needing to draw in a deep breath after speaking.

  “We don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe. Who are you? One of her husbands?”

  He nodded. “The most recent. Still alive. Not for long, I hope. Bread and water…the torture of slow starvation.” He tried to raise a bony finger, but it could only lift off the bed an inch or two. His eyes looked at Gord. “Tattoo?” he asked.

  I glanced at Gord, who wouldn’t understand. “He’s not a husband, only me. He almost was, but then he was relegated to best man. I married her.”

  The man nodded slightly, understanding things I didn’t need to say since he had probably been through it all himself. He closed his eyes and laid down his finger. Needing rest.

  “What are these tattoos you keep mentioning?” Gord asked me in a whisper.

  I explained what Venus had told me, and that he couldn’t see the one on my forehead, nor any of the ones on the corpse grooms. Only family members could see them. Told him he should consider himself lucky. But then I wanted to take it back, knowing he would probably rather have a tattoo than a burn.

  The man opened his eyes again, sucked in breath through his nostrils, tried to muster saliva to wet his tongue to talk. “You…locked in? To die?”

  “She locked us in. Is there a way out?”

  His sandpaper tongue protruded from his mouth as he licked dry lips, exhaled breath that already stank of rot. “Third room, lower bunk, middle of the room. Remove a stone behind. Tunnel. Each husband not dead, or dying, dug a little more each time. A little farther. Close.” He knocked a light knuckle against his bedframe. “Echo on stone. I…too weak. No more.”

  The light of my dagger shone into the pits of his eyes, and I saw a weak glow of light shining on one of the man’s palms. Reaching up his sleeve, I pulled out his knife. It dimmed in and out of a feeble glow. The shine of my knife, and Gord’s, was bright and steady.

  I told Gord my guess. “The knife shines brightly with life, but dims when the carrier approaches death? And dies completely with the corpse?”

  Gord nodded and stared at the old man’s knife.

  “Kill me,” the dying man whispered through a dry throat. “Please.”

  All the breath went out of me, my body sagging, feeling numb. Gord and I had both killed, but this was different. This man was us. A torture victim of Venus and the family. Gord had saved my life by battling the beast when I was hopelessly tied to a chair. But I knew I had to do this kill…this mercy killing, I told myself. Not murder. Salvation. Escape.

  I laid the man’s knife on his chest and looked at Gord. “Go find the tunnel. I’ll meet you.”

  Gord turned and I saw the man’s eyes glance at something, his forehead creased a washboard of wrinkles. His hand raised an inch as his voice whispered, “Wait.”

  “Gord—come back,” I called.

  We looked down at the man as his mouth moved, trying to find the words to communicate. But he didn’t have the breath for too many of them.

  “Tail?” he asked.

  I turned Gord around, pulled the tail from his pants’ waistband. Held it up for the man to see. I drooped over my palm like a dead snake, its chewed-off point hanging low enough to touch the man’s jacket arm.

  I explained, hoping to answer questions he couldn’t ask. “Venus’ tail. He cut it off.”

  “And took a bite. She was fucking pissed,” Gord continued with a cocaine high smirk and sparkling eyes. “Changed into a bear, tried to rip both of us apart, but Chris stabbed some drugs into her fucking eye. I killed the tattoo guy too, cut out his tongue.”

  “Stinger,” I filled in, seeing the smallest smile stretch the man’s mouth, a sparkle of delight in his gaze. As though we were telling him an old story he knew too well, that we had been over the terrain he had walked long ago. He wanted to hear more. “But it didn’t keep her down, I’m afraid.”

  “She came out of it, changed back into herself—but with one less eye,” Gord chuckled, winked with his remaining eye. “That’s when she locked us in.”

  I was serious, needed to know if the man could tell us something we could use, knew I should only ask questions which he could nod or shake his head to answer.

  “That white bear cloak she wears, like this—” I lifted a corner of the fur around my shoulders to his gaze, “—is it magical? A source of power and protection to her?” He nodded and then glanced at the tail, desperately trying to lift his hand to it. I sheathed my knife, lifted his hand for him, put the tail across his palm. Gord held up his blade for the man to see. A smile tried to bloom on his pale thin lips. “Is this a source of her power too?” I asked.

  He nodded. A laugh coughed up from his chest, replaced by a wheeze, tongue jutting out. He continued to cough for a while and needed to catch his bre
ath afterwards. When he could speak again, he said, “Matriarchal family. Women have tails. Power.” He felt the tail, stared at it.

  I tried to fill in the blanks. “And the men? They don’t have power?” The man shook his head, glanced at my jacket and his sleeve. “The clothes give us power? But just the husbands and the wedding party? Whomever gets to wear these jackets?”

  The man nodded.

  “So, if we’ve got her tail,” Gord continued, “and if we can get her bear cloak…she’s fucked? Just an average person? We stick a knife in her, and she bleeds, and the wound won’t heal? She’s as mortal as the rest of us?”

  The man nodded and Gord whooped and cheered, punching the air.

  I slipped out my knife to bring light back to the man’s face, and so he could relish the sight of the queen’s severed tail in his hand.

  He glanced at me and Gord with eyes that would’ve wept for joy if he had had enough water in his body. We had made him happy. It was enough inspiration to keep us going, to keep fighting until we escaped the family, or destroyed them, or both.

  “Gorman,” the man said, then inhaled deeply again to say, “Daughter’s tail.”

  I looked into his eyes to understand his message. “Gorman’s her father, we know. Daughter’s tail?” I tapped my lips as I connected the pieces. “Her power’s lost…so…her father will try to usurp her power?” The man nodded. I continued, “Will Gorman try to take over the family? Make it into a patriarchy?” He kept nodding. I looked at Gord. “Maybe we can work the father against the daughter—let them destroy each other.”

  “If we get out of here,” Gord said.

  The man’s grip fell away from the tail and I helped put his hand back onto the bed.

  “Thank you,” he uttered to Gord and I. “Now please…kill me.”

  Joy left our faces, though the man’s joy was still written on his face. I handed the tail back to Gord, who tucked it into his waistband, nodded once to me, and left the man’s bedside.

  I watched his light grow dim in the darkness as he headed through the rooms. Looking back at the man, I felt terrible for him, but didn’t feel I could kill him. I couldn’t muster the savagery in me to stab him or choke him or do anything to take his life. Even though my rational mind said he didn’t have much life left, and that it would be completely drained slowly from him by time.

  “Can you come with us?”

  He shook his head as best he could, blinked slowly with heavy eyelids. “Can’t move. Pain.”

  Ironically, if I had tried to bring him with us, the jolt of movement would probably have killed him. But I couldn’t give him more pain in his last moments on this earth. If only I had kept the tattooist’s syringe, find a vial filled with something to help him sleep, to drift slowly into death. All I had were my two hands and a knife.

  I needed to ask him first who he was to know something about the man I needed to kill. And, if he wanted to say, how he had met Venus, how she had gotten him in her clutches.

  “Malcolm Miller.”

  The name was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. It was impossible to tell who he was just by his appearance, since so few people looked like themselves on their death beds. He saw me puzzling over his name.

  “Film. Horror.”

  My eyes bulged as my thoughts raced into realization. I told him a quick version of his biography, and he nodded, joy in his eyes. I thought I had detected an English accent in his feeble voice.

  He was an English horror film director. Not big films, straight to video back in the ’80s, but he had a large cult following. I had been a fan, and Gord was a huge fan. People were upset when he retired from directing after getting married. Now I realized to whom he had gotten married. Venus took over his life and convinced him to abandon his career. He was older, his films losing popularity, and she was young and rich. Had she always been young? Did she never age? If she had no magic, would she turn instantly into an old crone?

  “How did you meet her?”

  “Actress.”

  Venus had been an actress? It made sense. She played a beauty queen but was actually a psycho bitch in real life. With acting, she could easily lure men into her web. Never trust an actress, or actor. I mentioned how Gord had met her at a horror convention. Seemed as though she followed the horror crowd.

  He nodded. “Horror attracts horror.”

  A simple aphorism that said so much, now that I knew much more about my wife. Gord must’ve mentioned the email I sent telling how I had begun writing horror. If Venus was a “horror whore,” then the email could’ve perked up her attention. Hadn’t he said something back at his apartment when I first met his bride-to-be? “You’re in, buddy!” In the family. But even he probably didn’t know to what extent. Was it at that moment, in Gord’s shitty little apartment, when Venus had chosen me over him? The Venus Club! She knew she would leave Gord or relegate him to best man or boyfriend or sucker. Knew she would break his heart, but, to her, a man’s broken heart was a tool of manipulation. He kowtowed to her too much, so she needed a man—a fan of all things horror—who had a little more backbone.

  How much backbone did I really have? I caved in to her seduction too. Gord and I had been friends for so long because we were exactly alike.

  But, of course, no husband would be allowed to have more backbone than she had. The matriarch didn’t allow for a patriarch.

  “Please…,” Malcom Miller repeated, and I knew too well what he was begging for me to do. I was trying to stall.

  I couldn’t find the words, my hands shaking, the light of the blade flickering across his deathly features. I stuttered out, “I can’t…Malcolm, you’re a great man, we can get you out of here. I don’t know how…I don’t hate you enough to kill you.”

  His eyes closed and his breath exhaled in a sigh. I saw his finger move, tap his wrist. Eyes opened again. “Bleed me.”

  I looked at his hand. Frail bones, thin veins, he couldn’t have much blood in him. He would die relatively quickly. My God, I thought, he doesn’t even have the strength to pull the knife from his sleeve and slit his own wrist. A man should be allowed at least that. He had probably spent the last of his energy on furthering the dig of the tunnel, his last hope before he grew too weak.

  I wouldn’t be stabbing him, nor choking the life out of him—I would be a surgeon, opening a vein, just not stitching it closed. It wasn’t murder, I had to tell myself. It would be an operation, cutting away a dying life for the health of the soul.

  “Please,” he repeated.

  Tears slipped down my cheeks as I picked up his wrist, pressed the blade against his skin. He turned his head away from the light of the blade, kept his face in shadow. I curled his hand in mine, held it tightly, closed my eyes, and snapped the steel across his veins.

  Not a sound came from him, not a movement, not a breath.

  I looked at the wrist and a thread of blood slipped out of the open wound. I was afraid for him—not that he would die, but that he wouldn’t. That some terrible miracle would happen while he lay in the darkness and the blood coagulated and stopped. I had to slice either up his forearm or cut the other wrist. If he lived, he would hate me, and I would hate myself.

  I pushed up the sleeve of his jacket enough to expose more of his wrist. The jacket was stiff so I couldn’t get to his entire forearm without moving him and pulling the jacket off his arms. Too much pain for him to endure.

  Pressing the edge of my blade hard between the tiny wrist bones, I lined up my cut. Couldn’t keep my eyes closed in case the knife slipped. Couldn’t slash. I needed my backbone in place more than ever. Had to keep the cut slow and press hard for depth. A little pain, but of the type he asked for. Then he would go to sleep, at long last.

  I felt his arm twitch and a low moan escape from his chest as I drew the blade up his forearm. Blood pooled out, slipped down either side of his papery skin, collected on the bed. Enough. I stopped cutting. He would, mercifully, not live.

  I held the b
loody knife and its red-tinted light up to see his face. A singe tear had collected in the deep corner of his eye. My throat thickened as I wept silently.

  “Sleep, Malcolm.”

  He blinked a few times, then closed his eyes. I left his bedside to join Gord.

  — | — | —

  Chapter 23

  In the third room, the bottom bed in the middle row, right side, was pulled off two wooden dowels that had held its weight and the weight of its eternal sleeper. Bed and corpse rested on the floor, cutting across the walkway of the room. A stone about three feet high had been pulled from the wall and I could see a greenish-white light shining out from the depths of the hole.

  On hands and knees, I peered into the tight tunnel, saw a tail hanging from a pair of fur pants. Gord was shuffling backwards towards me, so I waited for him to emerge.

  Sweat poured off his face.

  “Goddamn tight in there. They must’ve been digging for decades, maybe longer.” He held up his knife. “I guess knives were the only digging tools of all the dead husbands.”

  I nodded. “Then they’ll be ours too. How far does it go?”

  “Pretty deep. It starts slanting at a forty-five-degree angle, but it’s not too steep to crawl up. Only one of us can fit—if you were behind me, I’d just be throwing dirt and stones back in your face—and you’d be staring at my ass the whole time!”