The Bestiarum Vocabulum (TRES LIBRORUM PROHIBITUM)

by Dean M. Drinkel

  It charged forward from the sheltering grass screaming with lustful joy and with its club struck swiftly on two of their sorry damp heads. One by one. They did not even have time to scream, so swift was their disablement. Five seconds - one girl down. Her head opened up like a melon on a chopping board. Her friend began to turn to help and was struck with one blow from the club full in the face and another in the side of her skull. That did it for her too.

  It laid them out on the bank of the river side by side on their stomachs. Legs akimbo, crushed heads pushed sideways down into the mud and buttocks up in the air ready for their destruction. It impaled both of them in turn upon its tumescent organ in the most undignified way ever imagined and thrust massively and repeatedly into their unsullied vaginas and anuses in murderous fashion until it achieved temporary satisfaction. It was harsh, brutal, spermatic and short-lived. If they had still possessed the semblance of mouths, an intact face or even a functioning brain, they would have cried out to their Gods for help, but all of them were absent in that dreadful, arterial rendering.

  Once it had finished, it lowered its face and laughed, then threw their ruined bodies back into the sluggish waters of the river and watched them sink slowly under the surface like the bait of desperate fishermen. So be it.

  Satiated briefly, it climbed upwards from the water to stand upright on all fours on the bank of the river, shaking the water from its head and closing its eyes against the blinding reflected sunlight. The sky had re-populated itself and now there were birds and tentative clouds making their presence known. Life was good!

  But in the midst of its priapic ritual when its focus was elsewhere, girl number three (who had witnessed the barbaric event) chose that moment to wade frantically out of the river and scrabble up the muddy bank on her hands and knees to the higher ground and then run as fast as she could homeward.

  Once reaching the village she screamed long and hard enough to get the attention of the inhabitants and very shortly they heard and they came quickly to her aid. After hearing her ghastly and perverse tale and comforting her, they began to form plans of retribution against the vile creature that had violated their own children.

  The young men of the tribe saw this as a hunt and ensured that their weapons were sharp and ready and made a rapid plan of pursuit and attack. The elders listened intently as the shivering escapee described the assailant in-between racking sobs, her body wrapped in a shawl of bright colors and her weeping mother's protective arms. They exchanged looks over the girl's head. They knew what this abomination was, although none of them had ever countenanced such a creature, from tales told to them from the old ones in the tribe before them. The lustful and deadly beast that was half human and half animal, with the upper body of a man and the lower body of a donkey.

  ***

  Out of nowhere, it felt the unexpected piercing of an arrow. Gasping in pain at the swift intrusion into its own body it looked down in confusion. What? This ugly, feathered thing dared to suddenly protrude from its flank? It hurt! It dropped its club in the moment of shock and galloped back into the shelter of the long tall yellow grass. It needed to reach the higher ground, but that was too far. Now it could hear the approaching sounds of enemies coming from all directions. They shouted to each other in voices that it could not recognize and their brutal scent of revenge carried to its flared nostrils as it ran. It reached the centre of the grass, but then the shelter ended in nothing but a bare clearing. It turned this way and that in confusion as it heard them getting closer and then screamed as a spear pierced its front leg. It fell to the ground and lay there unable to rise as the first warriors reached it.

  The beast's magnificent head thrashed from side to side in fear, spraying sour sweat and mouth foam upon the desiccated soil. Its front hooves railed upwards against the coming of inevitable night. The vengeful villagers, their leader clutching a drawn bow and the others with spears and machetes, circled and started to cautiously approach it where it cowered. Then they surged forward. There would be no remorse, pity or any notion of escape for their target, but there would be blood, a great deal of blood and then they would rejoice in its eventual dismemberment and the eating of its cooked flesh.

  In the human depths of its soul, it knew that they would never find forgiveness. How could they? They had to torture it in ways most vile and then kill it without mercy. It felt panic, fear and all of the dreadful emotions that it had so recently inflicted upon others. Briefly, the higher part of it flickered to the surface, crying for attention with feelings of remorse and guilt, but then they were swiftly extinguished. Gone.

  The tribesmen swarmed quickly over its body before it could move, removed the spear that had brought it to the ground and tied all of its limbs together. The flies that had previously declined to dine upon its foetid sweat now rejoined above its head and bound torso and their wings began to vibrate and sing the Onokentaura's death song.

  One swift stroke with full force by the father of the first victim wielding a sharp blade severed its penis; two tribesmen held its head steady and a third thrust the blood-dripping and semen-encrusted organ deep into the beast's throat. Choking, its once proud head fell backwards in slow motion into a hideous miasma of pain as the spear tips and machetes began to render its flesh. Pausing briefly they rolled it over onto its stomach, its twitching tail was grasped and stretched to full length by the second dead girl's parent and that too was sliced from its body and then inserted violently into its anus. The buzzing of the multitude of hungry flies became more and more invasive. It got louder and louder until it filled the beast’s brain as its body finally convulsed in the throes of death.

  ***

  "Hey, you doin' OK, Jake?"

  "Huh?" he muttered as he opened his eyes. His mind was elsewhere and it was hard to hear anything above the insistent buzzing of the tattoo machine. It even drowned out the music of local LA band At Your Funeral pouring from the skin artist's iPod in the powered woofer speaker system dock behind him. Dave ‘The Ink’ shut off the 5-needle machine, placed it in its tray and removed his disposable gloves and threw them into the waste bin. He turned down the hardcore music too and, brushing a lock of long, dyed black hair behind an ear pierced with a multitude of silver rings, said over his shoulder to his client:

  "That's it man, we're all done. Looking good!"

  He retrieved a half-smoked joint from the ashtray and sparked it back into life. He turned and glanced down at Jake as he sat with a distant look on his face.

  "Whoa! Aww man - you gotta fuckin' hard-on!"

  "What?"

  "Jesus Dude, that is one big mother fucker! No wonder they call you Jake The Snake!"

  Unbeknownst to its owner, Jake's mighty organ had somehow gotten a mind of its own during the inking, and had made its way out of his underwear and was now hard and clearly outlined against his muscular thigh under the fabric of his Billabong Sheme Cargo shorts.

  "Man, that's nearly down to your fucking knee!"

  An embarrassed Jake says:

  "Hey, I'm really sorry. I had no idea. I was having this weird trip while you were doing the work. Not like I was asleep or anything, but I felt like I was somewhere else, somewhere hot. But I wasn't myself. Well, I was me but uh - different. I was really turned on by something I was about to do. Then it went bad. But now, I can't remember it properly. Really scary."

  "Hey Jake, don't worry, pal. Here, have a toke on this," said Dave, holding out the still smoldering doobie.

  "No, I'm good thanks. I feel spaced out enough! Hey, let's see what you've done."

  He stood up, his hard-on dissipating rapidly, and he moved towards the full-length mirror on the bare brick wall of the parlor. Turning slightly in profile he rotated his well-defined right shoulder and gazed at his reflection. There, on the outside of his bicep, slightly raw looking and still in need of a clean-up, was a rendition of a mythical creature that was half man and half donkey with a huge and erect cock. Jake's face broke into a smile and he breathed
:

  "Ah yeah, that is really cool! Perfect. You're a true star, Dave." He flexed. It looked good. He ran his fingers through his lush, long brown hair and winked at himself. "The chicks will love it!"

  "Hey man, it's my pleasure. It's what I do. But if you don't mind, why'd you choose that image? It's kinda creepy."

  "You know what? I really can't tell you. It just came into my head the other day and I knew it'd be right. I found a picture of it on a website somewhere and that's what I gave to you to copy. It's mythological you know? I'm into all that stuff. Runs in the family. My old man was well hung too, that's why Mom often had a big smile on her face, dude!"

  They high fived each other. Before Jake pulled on his Hilfiger T-shirt, Dave came up with the antiseptic pad, wiped off the excess ink and then taped a sterile dressing over the tattoo. He said:

  "There you go my friend, keep that on for 24 hours, avoid the ocean and you'll be good to go. Hey, are you going to Sardo's Grill & Lounge on Tuesday for the Porn Star Karaoke? There'll be some hot babes there, I'll bet!"

  "No, man. I'm working Wednesday in the AM. Must conserve my energy. Until then that means no booze, no fucking or jerking off, lots of water and some heavy duty jogging every day. Besides, I've fucked most of the chicks that go there on camera already. They're really boring."

  "Ah, OK. So what're you filming?"

  "Oh, it's another one of those Saul Dagget flicks down at The Bunker in Encino. This one's kinda dark, a bit S&M. Doing a bareback Three-Way with these two Mexican identical twins in a fake prison cell. I think I'm supposed to be like the local Sherriff or something. It's a bit weird. But hey, the bread's good, the pussy's free and who really gives a shit about the story right?"

  Dave sighed. "Man, you are one lucky Motherfucker!"

  "Yeah, I'm a regular freak of nature!"

  Having paid and given Dave The Ink a generous tip and the names of two regular Sardo's girls who'd definitely be up for some action, he left the tattoo parlour and stepped out in the blinding sunlight of Ventura Boulevard.

  After the heat of the day had started to dissipate at about 6pm, Jake ‘The Snake’ Bishop put on his sweats and drove out to Wells Drive, parked off road and started his usual 5 mile jog up along the Serrania Ridge Trail to Dirt Mulholland and then back. He felt more alive than he had for a long while and the sting from the new tattoo had already started to fade. It was quiet up there away from the traffic, the smog, the noise and all the people. The air was sweet and the cicadas were in full swing.

  Occasionally he'd slow down so that the thud of his feet on the soil would quieten, but then the incessant buzzing and clicking that the insects made would start to become overwhelming and, for reasons that he didn't understand, they suddenly triggered a momentary bad feeling inside his head. His thighs burned, but felt newly powerful as if he could run endlessly without tiring. He sweated strong, clearing any toxins that might be lurking in his magnificent body right the fuck out. Feeling almost invincible, he threw his head back and laughed as he powered through the dips and turns of the houses-free valley.

  On the way back down and at a slower pace now, he passed two young babes in tight and sweat-stained cotton outfits jogging the other way. He flashed them the charming smile and grunted a cheerful greeting. Their jiggling breasts under their matching singlets were braless and noticeably ‘real’. He liked that. The girls gave him the inquisitive and lustful glance that he'd seen so many times before since he'd really worked on himself and got into ‘The Industry’. That look that said: "Mmm, I'd have some of that!" He was used to it, but was still flattered by it. He could pretty much have any girl he wanted, he reckoned. Especially the partner-less ones that spent lonely moments masturbating in front of one of his movies on their DVD player or laptop. But not today. No. He had to save his juice for Tuesday's ‘Money Shots’.

  He arrived home exhausted, but feeling somehow righteous. After showering, he changed into a Kimono of indiscriminate design, made himself a juice drink and created and ate a ludicrously slender meal of an egg white omelette, complimented by two slices of gluten-free bread and a salad so virtuous it came pre-packaged in a crucifix-shaped plastic container. How fucking dull! The buried wicked part of Jakey-boy longed to fold back time right in this moment and stand by the breakfast bar and observe himself a while back as he pops the stopper from that rectangular bottle with its mythic black and white label and pours out into a tumbler an amber waterfall of neat JD onto ice. Our wannabe actor boy drains No. 1 and then prepares do the same again. Naturally he's interspersing these delightful repetitions with a chopped out and snorted pair of fat ones from Colombia. From the musky bedroom two female voices giggle and beckon as Steely Dan's Do It Again swirls from his CD player. Clinking glass in one hand and joint in the other he slouches stiff-cocked towards them.

  It was around this time that Jake had the flash-forward into his current career. It all changed on the day that Bobby, a somewhat better-read friend of his, whilst sharing a Blue God marijuana joint poolside in a rented Condo on the rough edge of Toluca Lake, quoted a line from the Marquis de Sade's 'The120 Days Of Sodom': "...I show them my prick, then what do you suppose I do? I squirt the fuck in their face...That's my passion my child, I have no other...and you're about to behold it."

  "What do you reckon, Jakey-boy? You could do that." Bobby said in that constricted voice that stoners get when they've just inhaled a mighty draft of pure grass.

  "What?"

  "Porn, you klutz! You've certainly got the equipment for it! Jeez man, I've seen zoo apes less well hung than you!"

  "Oh, you've noticed? Hey, pass the doobie. Wow. I'll -er - give it some thought. Yeah, sure would beat the hell out of trying to be an actor right?"

  "Sure would!" Inhalation of smoke followed shortly by exhalation. Silence. Then a thought occurs: "Hey, you ever read any of WB Yeats' poetry?"

  "Who? I don't do poetry, man, you oughta know that! Why?" Jake replied with a laugh in his voice.

  "Oh, no reason. Not important."

  Back in the mundane, clean and healthy world of now, Straight Jake answered some possibly useful emails, deleted the ones that screamed ‘Trash’, sneered at the triviality of Facebook posts by those that were supposedly his ‘Friends’, ignored the beckoning of TV trivia and the need to jerk off and went to bed to sink into sleep.

  With a sharp intake of breath he woke up in his own bedroom at 4.15am in a feverish sweat with his heart pounding like a steam hammer. The sodden sheets clung to him like some kind of perverse and entwined death shroud. He threw them off and they slid away onto the tiled floor. Leaving him time to focus. To regroup. The strange, violent and inhuman images that had swarmed in his head just seconds ago were now slowly dissipating through the web of his clumsy wakefulness. He thought he could write it down but there was no pen, paper, iPhone or iPad to hand. But it went something like this:

  "Flashing back on jerky pictures of lustful pleasures like a grainy home movie from Hell with a soundtrack sick with the buzzing of carrion flies. A sense of dreadful pursuit. Blood, sex, semen, appalling pain and wonderful pleasure. A foreign land. Gross intrusion. Captive in a cave so very high up from prying eyes. Screams. Cock. Spunk. Club. The raised cheeks, the sluggish water of a red river. Piercing. Laughing. Shattered young girl bodies sinking downwards. Confusion, shame, desire and guilt wrestling for a dark being's pleasure in the deepest, foulest-smelling pit imaginable. Ululating screams of unendurable agony and vehement anger."

  Disorientated, he groped around to find the bedside light. It was no longer there. The fear came back like an angry wasp trapped in a jar, but then to his relief he found that he'd just awoken somehow at the wrong end of the bed. He sat for an hour or so where he was, with his arms cradling his knees until the dawn cinematically started to filter through the venetian blinds around 5.30am.

  What he'd just experienced was somehow more than a nightmare. It was more visceral, vivid and tactile than the usual dream dross we all have to endure o
n a nightly basis. He reached behind him to scratch at a sore place at the base of his spine. There was a fairly large bump there that he was sure wasn't present when he went to sleep. Damn mosquitoes.

  The remainder of the week and then the weekend passed in a dull, greeny-grey blur of boredom and healthy living. Tuesday finally arrived and he was at the studio by 9am. Showered, conditioned, sweet smelling and ready to rock. Although something just out of reach was niggling at him but he chose to ignore it.

  The primary set up for Day 1 was the jail scene. The tenuous story being this: In a small border town just outside of Otay Mesa, California, two illegal immigrants (who just happen to be silicon enhanced, bisexual Hispanic identical twins with neatly waxed pussies) have been captured, put in a holding cell and are currently awaiting bail. The local Sherriff, played by an improbably stubbled and greasy-looking Jake, decides to pay them a visit to check on their well being. Reaching the cell he looks through the bars and sees the two of them engaged in a hot and steamy, clothes-off 69 on a soiled mattress placed on the stone floor. He unlocks the cell door and enters. They continue to slurp at each other oblivious to his entrance, until the moment when he stands over them, unzips his Levi's and pulls out ‘The Snake’. At this point, the girls were supposed to stop their activity, wipe their lips and approach him from both sides on their hands and knees.

  "And - CUT!" says Saul Dagget, who perhaps foolishly had chosen to direct this flick himself. "Hey Jake - what's up man? Where are you? We need Jake The Snake! You need the Fluffer, or a blue pill, or what?"

  ‘The Snake’, although still mightily impressive even in a flaccid state, resolutely refuses to rise to the occasion.

  A confused and embarrassed Jake says:

  "Hey! I'm really fucking sorry, all right? I don't know what's wrong. I just can't do this. I don't know why but something's not right. I think I need to get out of here. I'm really sorry everyone. I know this is very uncool, but please - just gimme some time, yeah?"