“You’re not pregnant.”
“But we are with you. Losing, with every step we take, the delusion of freedom from the consequences of the past. Discovering we are not as independent as we thought we were.”
“You’re free to come and go. Both of you. I’m the one that’s a prisoner of this thing inside me.”
“Non, Tonton. You’re wrong. In the past, we always took care of ourselves, even with the Jola mother who found and adopted us. Through Senegal, West Africa, the Sahara, to Europe, we survived and fulfilled our needs. It was when you discovered us in Paris, became our guide and showed us we could be more than wandering cubs, that we chose another path. As you did. We all tricked ourselves by coming and going as we pleased, thinking we controlled our destiny by satisfying our appetites, trading recklessly in lives and desires. But when our lives joined, we left our old paths and went off on a new road together.
“Alioune and I didn’t think of what we were leaving behind when we left the Bois de Boulogne with you. We found ourselves in a world full of possibilities we had never imagined existed. The excitement, the hunger for newness swept us up. And for you, Tonton, discovering us filled the emptiness in you that the Beast, even when it lived, could not fill. None of us considered what lay ahead, what would change, what we were giving up. You continued your work of killing, and satisfying your appetites. And we moved through the world, adopting the mask of humanity, thinking ourselves invulnerable, as if more than you and our powers protected us.
“But we’d made our choice and did not see the world close in around us, the path we walked become more defined. We did not see that the price of straying from that path grew higher the longer we walked together.
“When you came to us months ago, wanting us, our lives came into focus. You had chosen us, and we you, that day you found us in the Bois. Since then, through the time we spent in Paris and then here, you had walked beside us, letting us mature, until we were ready to truly belong to you, and you to us. If we had refused you when you wanted us, we would have had to leave you forever.
“The cost of that choice was too high. We stayed, demanding our price so we could survive in your company. And you paid that price, sacrificing the Beast for us. Another road opened, and we took it together. This time, at least Alioune and I did not hide behind illusions.
“When you came back from Painfreak, and again when you saved us from our father, we realized how much in our lives was beyond our control. How much we had to lose because of what Alioune and I, and you, had chosen. Though our nature called for us to be wild and act as we wanted, we became afraid. We saw the perils of the road we had chosen.
“We’ve talked, Alioune and I. We’ve seen mortals on TV wrestle with the consequences of their decisions, and with threats and disruptions in their lives. We hoped we might be stronger, better, than what we saw. But we feel as helpless as any weeping mother, any broken child, any rageful man from the programs we watched. We feel as helpless as you, Tonton.
“With every decision, there is something lost for something gained. The road we take changes, and we can’t always see what’s ahead or what was left behind. This is what frightens us. And you, too. The baby is a threat, and a promise. It is the past come to haunt us, and the way through which we must go to find the future. The child hurt us all, but maybe it will heal us a little, as well. Too late now to jump from the path, Tonton. We walk the same road together.”
This time, it was Max’s eyes which burned with tears. “I feel old with all this talk of roads taken and given up. But maybe not so afraid.”
“So do I.” Kueur said.
“And I,” said Alioune.
Max gasped for breath, as if he had dived into dark waters, plumbed warm depths with a grazing touch of soft sand, and surfaced stunned by daylight and desperate for air. He blinked, surprised the tears gathered in his eyes had not fallen. For a moment, he was confused. Emotions surged through him. Some he recognized as his own. Others, he was surprised, belonged to the twins. The Beast’s insatiable rage rushed past, as well as the terror and despair of its victims. For that moment, he did not need bonds or words or spells to feel close to Kueur and Alioune. He was them, and others, and they were he.
The moment passed, leaving behind only the doubt that it had ever come. Max sat up, forcing the twins to shift around him.
“Are you all right?” Alioune asked.
He almost laughed. He pressed fingers to forehead, re-assuring himself of his solidity. “I’m fine. I should just be more careful what I wish for.”
Kueur smiled, pinched his arm with a seductive look. “Not too careful, we hope.”
Max sat back, let the twins cover him once again with the prayer blanket. He looked up, drawn to the restless, red-tinged candlelight leaking from the Box into the loft’s darkness. Dex stood, naked, with his back to the open door, legs spread wide, arms extended to the side and elevated over his head. In each hand he held a thick red candle. The melting wax dribbled along the candle sides, on to his fingers, down his arms, leaving red tracings on his flesh. Another candle burned on top of his head, and others on each shoulder and on his feet. Hot wax flowed over swollen joints, raw bruised skin, into open wounds. A fine tremor shook Dex’s body, as if he were only a conduit for the pain and not its final reservoir. The columns of thin smoke rising from the flames curled and swayed to the frequency of Dex’s trembling. Under the monotone hum of electronics in the alcove, Max could hear the New Age crystal healer whine.
The Beast showed no interest as it lay in Max, cowed and shocked by the moment’s communion with the twins. Dex’s superficial resemblance, in his finery of pain and red glowing candles, to the image presented by ghosts of Max’s victims in the House of Spirits, could not be comforting for the Beast, either. An angel of death, Max recalled, made of red scarves. He turned away from the memory with a shudder.
“If Legba was right,” Max said, “I should wish for another soul.”
The twins gave him a blank look. Alioune asked, “Why?”
“The child needs one, according to the loa riding the mambo. If I had another soul, I could give it to the child, and then it wouldn’t want to kill me.”
Kueur put her hand on his belly. “The spirits of your victims, you say they’re the ones who gave you this. Perhaps they wish to possess the baby?”
“If that was their intention, then I ruined the plan when I escaped from the House of Spirits. I don’t think they’ve found me, or they would have entered their creation by now.”
“We could find the child a soul,” Kueur said, looking to Alioune, and turned to Dex.
Max shook his head. “No more innocents. I have enough to pay for.”
“Dex is not an innocent,” Alioune said, standing, putting a hand on her hip. “He has lied. Let people die when he could not help then with his crystals, when he could have taken them to other healers. And he has used what small powers he has to spread illness, and kill, for others as well as to satiate his own petty hungers. He told us. Freely.”
“Even worse. His corruption in this baby? I might as well seek out the ghosts of my past.”
“We could cleanse him.” said Kueur. “Prepare him for you. Bind him to all of us so the child and its soul would never harm us, could never become an agent for the dead.”
Max scoffed. “He’d never survive.”
Alioune shook her head. “His strength comes from the depths of his depravity. Desire is strong in his heart. He wants so much, so badly.”
“Look at him, Tonton,” said Kueur, standing, strutting toward the doorway, presenting Dex like a game show hostess sweeping her hand across a stage full of prizes. “Look at what we’ve done to him, how long he’s waited, suffering. And still, he stands. For us. Is that not right, mon petit Dex?”
The healer whispered, “Yes.”
“Louder!” Kueur commanded.
“Yes!” Dex screamed, sending ripples of agony through flame and smoke.
Kueur raised
an eyebrow and placed a fingertip at the corner of her mouth. She glanced at the alcove, winked, cocked her head toward the Box, smiled at the reaction she received from the suited men.
Max did not bother to look over at the men. He studied Dex, trying to understand the hunger the twins had uncovered in him, wondering if he wanted the soul of such a man in his child.
His child. He smiled at the slip, at the thought of passing something of himself on beyond his death. His amusement quickly vanished under reality’s harsh glare.
“You see?” Alioune said, joining her sister.
“Let us do this for you, Tonton.”
“I don’t think I want to rely on his soul to protect me.”
“It will not be his soul when we are done with the harrowing,” Alioune said. “It will be a small spirit, with sins and corruption burned away. The hunger will be left, yes, but do we not all have appetites? The child could hardly be a part of our family without appetites. The spirit will be strong, and that is what is important. Strong, and imprinted on the three of us. We will work hard, make certain the soul is worthy of you, and your child.”
Max considered, reluctant to hope. “What if the child is a girl, or some kind of monster?”
“The soul, Tonton, will be pure, and take without protest whatever shell it receives.”
Nausea twisted Max’s stomach. “How long? Is there enough time?”
Alioune went to the Box, leaned against the door and looked in. “We have enough time, if we work straight through to the time of your delivery.” She looked to her sister. “If we work true, cut with precision, and release the soul at the proper moment.”
Kueur went to her side. “No sleep for us, my sweet sister. We’ll feed on his delicious pain and pleasure, rest in the darkness of his veiled desires. And we’ll see who dies first, us, or him.” She laughed, then sobered. “We’ll have to watch for interference. The dead.”
Max curled up on the sofa, huddled under the prayer blanket. Hope was too demanding, with its possibilities of elation and despair. He stared at the twins, remembered the time he had spent with them in the Box. “Is he as good as me?”
“Who could be, Tonton?” Kueur replied. “But he is good enough, for now, until you can join us again.”
“Still, he has desire,” Max acknowledged, feeling the twins’ distance from him.
“Stunted and twisted, but yes, Tonton, he has that. He hungers. And we will satisfy him. For us. For you. For the little one.” Kueur turned to Alioune and said, “Shall we?”
The twins went into the Box, leaving the door wide open, sharing the intimacy of hunger’s satisfaction that had turned into the joy of their work for his child. He watched the twins bracket Dex, undo his ponytail, run their hands over pain-mottled skin. The physical aches and discomforts of Max’s body faded as he lost himself in Kueur and Alioune’s attention to drawing Dex’s secret heart out and purifying his soul. In the background, the men in the alcove remained quiet and still while tiny motors whined, extensions unfolded, mounts turned, lenses refocused.
Kueur laughed sweetly, removing the candles, dripping hot wax pooled under flame onto Dex and setting them on top of a rolling metal cart. Alioune reached down to a lower cart shelf and removed a harness with a double dildo secured at the groin, the smaller, crystal-encrusted phallus pointing outward.
“Remain as you are, my sweet, and tell us what you want,” Kueur said when she was done. Alioune reverently inserted the large, knobbed and twisted dildo into Kueur’s vagina. The hint of a smile passed between them; its subtle light might have cast the shadow of amusement on the figure in the Louvre’s most famous painting. They both shuddered slightly as Alioune completed the insertion, the leather and metal harness rasping on satin skin. While her sister carefully adjusted straps and closed locks, Kueur continued speaking, her words a soft, seductive song. “Beg us for what you want. Don’t make us angry, or we’ll set you free. Do you want to be free, do you want to leave? Or do you want what we have to give you? Do you want to surrender what you have for us? Tell us,” she said, raking her nails along the wax burn marks across Dex’s shoulder.
“Tell us,” echoed Alioune. She shifted on her knees from Kueur to Dex, teased his red, erect penis with her tongue.
Dex moaned, shuffled closer to her, began to lower his arms.
Alioune reared, bared her teeth. “Stop!” she commanded.
“Don’t move!” Kueur growled. “You were told to stay still. How dare you disobey!”
Dex stiffened while his erection drooped. The twins stepped away and behind him. Stood silent, legs apart, Alioune with her arms crossed over her breasts, Kueur with her hands behind her back. Dex cried out, called to them, pleaded for them to return, to let him please them, all while remaining in his original position, arms out and feet spread wide. “That is all I want to do,” he said, hoarse from his ceaseless, desperate cry for their return. “To please you. Tell me, what do you want me to do, what do you want me to say, so I can feel your touch—no, just be in your presence—wait, so I can just serve you, to know I’m a part of your world, no matter how small, because I can’t go back, do you understand? After what you’ve done to me, shown me, I can’t go back to what I was. I can’t … please, don’t leave me here … alone …” His words lost themselves in wet, inarticulate blubbering.
“Do you want to leave or do you want what we have to give?” Alioune asked.
“Take what we have to give,” said Kueur, “let go of what we want. Or we will throw you in the gutter, and you will live the rest of your life in the depths of your worthlessness, this golden moment of life gnawing at every scrap of meaning you try to hold on to until they are all lost in the emptiness that will be your life without us.”
“Let me stay …”
“Tell us what you want …”
“… beg for what you need …”
“ … please…”
“Is it this?” asked Alioune, draping herself over Dex’s shoulders, hooking a leg around his thigh, grinding her body against his.
Kueur stepped up behind Dex, positioned the dildo, rammed it into him. “Or this?” she said into his ruined ear, slowly pumping and rotating her hips. She snaked her arms under his, interlocked her fingers behind his neck. His arms were forced out of their outstretched positions, hitched up, hands held high. Bone cracked.
He tried to keep his feet positioned wide, but slipped as Alioune slid her leg down, drove the heel of her foot into the back of Dex’s knee, put her foot down, reached around him and held on to Kueur’s hips. Dex lost his balance, scrambled, legs flailing.
“Yes?” asked Alioune. “This?” The power and rhythm of the twins’ gyrations managed to lift Dex off of his feet.
Kueur, her back arched, her head in profile, eyes half closed and lips parted in a feral smile, said, “And this?”
The twins moved, danced a slow, rocking dance, sinking in tandem into a crouch and then rising smoothly, the muscles of their thighs and calves and backs flexing under glistening skin. Their feet stomped the floor as they circled, carrying Dex between them skewered on a phallus of flesh and blood and plastic. Blood dripped from his anus, blood smeared across the twins’ bodies. Kueur hummed a hypnotically repetitive tune while Alioune chanted, low and guttural.
They drove Dex back and forth between them, his flesh slapping against theirs, their sex joined on an axis of pain and pleasure. The magic circuit of hunger and satiation sparked as the twins’ power, born from African and Asian spirit gods, flowed through Dex’s conductive flesh, through his desire. Their eyes glowed, their faces were flushed.
Max gripped the couch, jealous. The ghost of the Beast was silent, hiding in some dark corner, cowed by unwanted intimacy.
Dex’s cries rose above the twins’ song. His writhing struggle fueled the dance, sending Kueur into a biting frenzy, provoking Alioune into a sinewy counterpoint to her sister’s brutal pumping.
“Tell us, please, why won’t you,” said Kueur, spitting
Dex’s blood as she looked up from the raw wound on his neck. “What do you want?”
“There,” Alioune said, then fixed her gaze on Dex’s, made him stare into her eyes while bringing up a hand to hold his head in position by the jaw. She moaned when he did, opened her eyes to reflect his startled expression as a new corner of pain opened for him, a different source of pleasure erupted within him. Her mouth shaped the same 0 as his lips, and the play of fine muscles beneath her face captured the twitches and scowls and grimaces running across his face.
Kueur joined in the mocking, gasping, “Yes, yes,” to her stroke, and then to Alioune’s. Sensations rebounded through him, to them, back and forth. At last they gasped and, instead of falling into a deadly embrace, trapped him in the cascade of pleasure and pain that only Max and the Beast could survive, they stepped back. Released Dex. Drew him out, and drew out of him.
He fell to the floor, lay on his back, still crying out, body convulsing spasmodically. The twins circled him like proud, long-legged cheetahs inspecting their kill.
“Not yet …”
“Too soon…”
“You haven’t told us…”
“You must tell us…”
And words spewed out of Dex like a hot jet of lava, fiery and desperate and bearing the chewed-up and molten pieces of himself carded from the depths of memory and desire and conditioning and genetic design. A primal howl, like a poet’s consumed by rage, filled the loft, and in that howl parts of a life boiled away, vanishing in air.
It took several minutes for Max to catch the rhythm of Ilex’s rapid speech and parse the sense in his ragged voice.
“—I let her die I did I could have told her she needed a real doctor damn bitch but she was so fucking rich she just sat there and ate it up her and her stupid daughter the pair of them not a brain between them so fucking stupid afraid of doctors hell I told them I did that doctors were only here to help even if they did more damage than good with their knives and tubes and medications and there I was talking in a roomful of crystals and the sun was shining in through the glass walls and the colors were everywhere and the air was warm and scented from these little burners I have spread all over the place and I was talking and letting her feel the cool glass and stone against her dried-up old skin and telling her daughter on the side that she could get some if she wanted to ’cause my dick was blessed with healing powers and could make her feel alive and like a woman instead of the slut bitch she felt like after years of living in that crazy old woman’s house waiting for her inheritance while her uncles banged her and I told the old bitch she didn’t have to trust the doctors all she had to do was trust me and have faith because the crystals would absorb and refract and boost her belief and heal her and she signed the papers because she believed and when she died I put crystals in her caskets to heal her on the other side and spent the rest of the money on a nice ranch in Arizona and her dumbshit daughter is still wondering how she wound up living with her youngest uncle entertaining his brothers when they come for a visit—”
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