The Bride Stripped Bare

by Rob Bliss

  I ate the second piece of skin, washed it down, then I watched her face and the blood dripping off her forehead, slowing down, solidifying like wax.

  She bowed low after I swallowed the second piece, then stood, shuffled her small feet, enclosed in white silk socks split between her big toe and the other toes, over to a small panel high up on the wall. Slid it open and brought out a cylindrical pillow with tassels on either end as long as my forearm. Slid the panel closed and shuffled over to the painting. She laid the pillow down on the vine-carpeted floor beneath the painting.

  She stood in front of me, gestured for me to stand. I did, and she began undressing me, each article of clothing vanishing as soon as she had removed it. My vest and jacket, my protection, was gone. Naked, I watched her undress. She let her kimono drop to the floor an arm’s length away, where it, too, vanished. Kept her head bowed, fingers entwined in front of her sex, letting me inspect her. Then she lay down on the floor, head resting on the pillow, arms straight out at her sides, silk socks still on. Waiting for me.

  I walked over to her, stood at her feet, gaze down at her beautiful body. My penis rose, jutted out and curved up, the head against my stomach above my navel. Still ten inches. Kneeling down and delicately separating her legs, I shuffled my knees across the tatami mat, bent her knees up, her feet off the floor, as I positioned myself.

  Slowly I guided my penis between her labia and deep into her. Her eyes fluttered and she restrained herself from letting out a low moan. Fingers clawed the paper mat as I moved in and out of her, watching her small breasts shift on her chest to match my thrusts. She turned her face to one side, shyly trying to keep her facial expressions contained, but her mouth opened to utter soft moans and squeals which escaped from deep in her throat.

  I wanted her. Felt lust and rage burn inside me as I sped my thrusts and was soon pummeling into her. My face burned with the roiling of blood in my veins as I stared into her eyes, which never looked at me. I felt like an animal devouring its prey. My hand came up and gripped her slender white neck, thumb and fingers pressing into her soft skin, pushing down onto a small vein that pulsed beside her Adam’s apple.

  Her nails tore into the tatami as she cried and wept, blood renewing its flow down her forehead, the sight and smell of it driving me harder into her. I bent my head over hers and licked all of the blood I could, slipping my tongue across the two gaps in the flesh, tasting the sweetness of her skull.

  I bit my incisor teeth into the peeled skin of her left eyebrow and tore it open wider like a dog trying to get its fangs deeper to taste the marrow inside the bone. I could smell the marrow inside her, and I wanted to eat my way through her skin and muscle to get at it. Her body shook like a small leaf in a hurricane, desperately hanging onto its tree limb, as she wept and cried out her orgasm.

  My teeth tore off a strip of skin branching the two eyebrow gaps, and I chewed and sucked the meat into my mouth. A broad patch of bone faced me, pooling with fresh blood, as I rammed myself into her, wanting to split her body in half, cut her open to consume her with all of my appetites. I wanted to sip tea between bites from bowls filled with her flesh.

  Her blood and the scraps of her body hung from my lips and were stuck between my teeth as my mind churned with thoughts of consuming her with my cock and mouth.

  “Scalp her! Scalp her!” a voice called to me. I looked up to see the samurai in the painting urging me on, his red cock jutting out from a split in his kimono, clutched in his fist, a lecherous leer on his face. “Grab her hair and chew a line across the hairline. It’ll come off easily—I promise you!”

  I reached a hand to the back of her hair and gathered her hair into a fist. Leaned my teeth down to touch the top of her forehead.

  The cries and moans of the woman changed to laughter. Blades of blood washed down her face. She raised a hand to her mouth to stifle the new, strange sounds emitting from her throat, but she couldn’t hold them in. She opened her eyes wide to stare for the first time into mine. Her chest heaved beneath me and her neck stretched tight as laughter took over her body. I looked away from her face to scan down the length of her body. From the neck down she was no longer a young woman. Her torso and breasts were a loose wrinkled bag of skin dotted with brown patches of age, moles sprouting tufts of thin hair, white scars of ancient wounds.

  I got off her, sat on my knees between her legs, blood and fluids dripping off my erect penis, gazing down in horror at the hideous skeleton of creased, reeking skin that sprawled in front of me. She continued to convulse with laughter while I stared down at her.

  The metal, cloven-hoofed boots attached to my legs exploded into pewter dew. Shocked by the noise and feel of my feet free again, I leapt back from between the woman’s legs, and inspected my legs and feet. Wiggled my toes. My skin rotted away, down to muscle and sinew, down to bone, until from my knees down I was skeleton. The woman’s laughter increased.

  “You are not a man!” the samurai yelled at me from the painting. I looked back at him and he was a frozen drawing again, semen shooting out of his penis, splashing across the rest of the painting, erasing it.

  The woman wiped tears of blood away from her eyes and cheeks as she looked up at me, letting the laughter fade from her throat.

  “You don’t like me anymore, husband?” she asked in a sarcastically demure voice. “How about this way instead?”

  She smoothed her hands down her face, smearing away her youth, the face of an ancient crone looking back up at me. Her hands swept across her chest and stomach, continued down either leg. Her body from the neck down was again that of a young woman, soft and without the slightest taint of age.

  “Which part of my body would you like to eat now? I am still me, young or old, but your appetite comes and goes with age. You think you are a good man, but you are a liar and a cannibal. Yes, husband?”

  My throat felt thick, hands cold on my thighs, toes of bone flexing without my control. I felt legless and too afraid to try and stand. I sat sprawled on the tatami, the woman wrapping herself back in her kimono, laughing, always laughing. She had emasculated me with sexual humiliation. She owned me. I was her slave and knew it.

  “I’m not your husband,” was all my feeble voice could say.

  She giggled. “You fucked me before you fucked Venus. We are bound together for life. You chose the Asian girl amongst the three bridesmaids because you desire Asians more than any other race. You are a racist.”

  “No,” I stuttered. “You chose me. What’s wrong with liking a particular type of woman more than another type? Do you like white guys more than Asian guys?”

  “Type? You can only see in types. Like all men.” She giggled behind her hand. “I read your mind. We all did, Venus as well. We saw whom you preferred and gave you what you wanted. A woman controls a man not when she denies his desires but when she satiates them.”

  A lump wouldn’t swallow, and my words could muster no volume. “I’m not a racist. Would I have been if I’d chosen either of the other two?”

  She giggled and smeared blood around her mouth. “Of course. There’s no escaping your lusts or your prejudices.”

  “Then why did I marry Venus?”

  “Ah, Chris-san,” she said, eyes wide and blinking from left to right, seeing me from two varied perspectives, mocking me. “Venus chose you. So many of us wanted you, especially after you killed at our bidding, but Venus saw you as her prize, so we could only fuck you, not own you. But still, you will always be my husband. Sometimes a woman can own a man only by releasing him to his bigotry and passions. You are owned and controlled by your addictions and hatreds. The samurai is correct: you are no man.”

  I shuffled back from her, and some of the bones of my feet fell off, tumbled away like dice. I panicked and shuffled back further to a paper wall as she laughed. Then her face turned old to match her body as she got to her feet. Bowed low to me, smiled.

  “You honor me, husband. My death at your hands completes my life’s meaning. If
you wish to leave this room, you must be a man.” She shuffled her socks over to the panel in the wall, slid it open, brought out a man’s kimono and a long samurai sword. Proffered both to me with a low bow, the kimono draped over her forearm, the sword held horizontally in both hands. “Do a warrior’s duty.”

  I glanced at the painting on the wall. The samurai and geisha were both back in the picture, their ink bodies frozen. But now the geisha was seated on her knees with her head bowed, smooth neck waiting for steel. The samurai stood over her with his sword raised, his face contorted into a mask of rage and death. The sword about to sever his victim’s head.

  Every bone that comprised my feet and shins dissolved into chalk, but as soon as pieces of my body had vanished, they began to congeal back into existence. My flesh legs returned, and they began to grow thick brown fur until they became the fur pants. My torso grew a vest and jacket, my protection returned. The cloven-hoofed shoes never returned. I swung onto my knees and used the paper wall to help brace myself as I unsteadily stood. The paper turned to flesh, and I felt a heartbeat beneath my palm. My legs gained strength and balance. I took the kimono and sword.

  The woman knelt before me, head bowed, the nape of her neck exposed, two small bones of her spinal column my target.

  “It is easier to kill an old and ugly woman than one who is young and beautiful. It is the way of the patriarchal world. Yes, husband?”

  I hated her. Denied to myself every accusation she had thrown at me, knowing it was a trick—psychological warfare to break me, make me into one of the family members. Making me confess that I harbored the same thoughts and feelings as Gorman. Venus, too, hated the old and infirm members of her own family, as I had witnessed in Paco’s tunnel. Father and daughter were twins, but of opposing genders.

  I understood the trap.

  I put on the kimono, raised the sword…stepped around the woman kneeling on the floor, and slashed the razor-sharp blade through the painting.

  I leapt through the frame and was free of the room.

  — | — | —

  Chapter 28

  I awoke on a floor of thick brown bear fur, still dressed in the kimono, the sword loosely gripped in my hand. Gord and Elizabeth lay nearby, all of us waking from a strange sleep.

  Floor, walls and ceiling were all covered with the thick bear fur, no windows or doors visible, a massive bear head roughly the size of an elephant’s head hanging down from the ceiling over us on thick iron chains. Candles dotted the head, some stood upright in its jaws, one jutting from either eye, and others lined along its snout. Thin tapers and thick pillars all poured a crust of thick white wax down the bear’s head, throwing enough light for us to see each other by, but not much of the rest of the room.

  There was furniture, but it was buried beneath fur. What looked to be a bar stretched along one wall, shelves aligned behind it, even bar stools along the front. The stools were like pillars, immoveable, and plush with fur. A fur-covered rail stretched around the three edges of the bar.

  In the shadows were booths with tables bolted solid to the floor, but without chairs hedging in the booth. There may have been paintings or signs on the walls, but we couldn’t tell beneath the fur, only able to see the edges of the frames and rectangular contours of something pinned to the wall. All walls and furniture were soft, our hands sinking deep into the fur.

  Groggily, we all sat up, facing each other in a circle, inspecting our changed appearances.

  Added to Gord’s clothing and his melted boots were two metal gloves on either hand, first and index fingers split like crab claws, his thumbs poking through holes. With his jacket and vest hanging open, I saw that the old pieces of cloth were no longer fused with his flesh. Though he still bore the scarring from his burns, the wrinkles and whorls of his skin were now shaped into the family’s symbols and designs. And his missing eye had grown back!

  Instead of the shortened white bear fur I had given her, Elizabeth now had a full-length white fur wrapping her shoulders and extending down to her bare feet. Her metal hoof shoes were also gone. And wrapped around one leg was a leather bullwhip, its handle pushed into her vagina.

  Elizabeth turned her back to me and her brother as she spread her legs and sorely untwisted the bulbous bullwhip handle from inside her. Pushed what remained of the whip down off her leg and left it coiled on the floor, then wrapped the bear fur tightly around her body as she turned back to see me and Gord.

  “Well, what the fuck happened to us?” Gord asked with a chuckle. He asked me, “Did you go to samurai land or something?”

  “Close,” I replied. “Let’s not sit under that, please.”

  We all looked up at the bear head hanging over us. Like a strange Sword of Damocles. Then stood and gazed around the room, looking for a place to settle.

  Elizabeth commented, “Looks like the bar in the Swamp Hotel again. Only covered in bear fur.”

  We sat down in a corner of the room.

  “Keep on the lookout for anything about to pop out at us,” I cautioned them, and myself.

  One by one, we told our stories, eyes always on the fur furniture and every shadow the room held. I started. Told about the woman and the scalping, the sex and the samurai in the painting, and then how it all changed from euphoria to degradation. My feeling and the physical manifestation of sexual emasculation.

  “I totally understand that,” Gord said, a dazed look in his eyes.

  Elizabeth went next.

  “I was in a bedroom. A boudoir let’s call it. Four-poster bed, satin sheets, these tall paintings on the wall in rich golden frames showing weird animals—beasts having sex with women and men.”

  “Sounds like Venus’ bedroom,” I said offhand. But both Gord and Elizabeth were struck silent by my comment. Far away, sad looks in their eyes.

  “Oh yeah,” Elizabeth said in a whisper, her voice cracking. “Guess I’d forgotten about that.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No, don’t be,” she inhaled, wrapped the thick fur around her shoulders. “Well, shit, now that you mention it, I guess it was history repeating. You were there,” she said to Gord. “I thought we had lost Chris. But you—or the other version of you—was wearing this coat. I asked where you got it and you smiled all cocky and said you had ways of getting what you wanted.”

  She paused her narration, rested one hand in the other, eyes blinking rapidly as though she was trying to prevent herself from crying.

  “Elizabeth?” I whispered. “You okay?”

  She nodded and put a hand over her mouth, thinking, fighting with something terrible inside her. Gord shifted over to put his arm around his sister, but she pushed him away. “No, not now, okay? Just…no. No.” She broke down and sobbed. Gord and I glanced at each other, not knowing what to do except wait and see if she could go on. But I had a feeling that history had repeated itself in that room. It was as though something terrifying from each of our experiences was repeating, but as a distorted version of reality. Something too hard for us to handle. The Asian woman I had killed, raped and murdered, told me more horrifying things about myself than when I had killed some lone man tied to a tree. I had blamed much or all of my killing and torment on drug hallucinations. Perhaps if you thought something real was actually a dream, then maybe it wouldn’t affect you as much. But the Asian girl, I knew even while killing her, was real. I was possessed and out of my mind when I did it, but I eventually sobered up. And had secretly hated myself since.

  Elizabeth didn’t glance at Gord, kept her eyes always on the fur floor, but said to her brother, “You—or the man I thought was you—tried to rape me in that room. But I fought him off. He saw that I was cold. There was a fireplace. He lit a fire, took off his bear skin, laid it on the floor. Told me to sit and warm by the fire. The bear fur you gave me, Chris, had lengthened into this one. I went to the fire because, even with this fur on, I was shivering uncontrollably. The other Gord put his arm around me, told me that I was beautiful in the fire light,
that there was nothing wrong with incest. That we should abandon Chris, maybe even kill you, and be husband and wife in the family. Then I could…I, ah, I could…” She couldn’t speak; retched and looked about to vomit, trying to control her breath so that she didn’t. A hand hovered over her mouth, and from behind her fingers, eyes on the floor, she said, “He said I could sell my body to other family members or non-members and make a couple bucks. That Venus wouldn’t give him an allowance anymore since he wasn’t her husband. We needed to get money any way we could so we wouldn’t be poor anymore. He would steal drugs from the family and sell them to outsiders. And I could sell my body. I didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant from a john because I was barren. Then he told me how he really wanted a new truck.” She retched again and a little vomit spilled onto the floor, soaked the fur. Sweat beaded her forehead and she picked tears from the corners of her eyes. She needed time to compose herself, spat a few times onto the floor. I looked for water, but, of course, the room was all bear fur. “He attacked me, tried to rape me, but I got out from under him. I leapt onto the bed, but it instantly vaporized into ash which filled the room. The ash from the bed and smoke from the fireplace stung my eyes and made me choke. I had collapsed into a corner. Gord—the double—walked out of the smoke, a leering smile on his face, his penis hanging out of his pants and this whip in his hands.

  “‘You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?’ he said.

  “I made myself small in the corner, wrapped the white fur tight around myself, tried to find a way out, or something I could use as a weapon. But I couldn’t see through the smoke and ash, couldn’t stop coughing. Which, of course, told him where I was in case he couldn’t see me.