by John Everson
“I don’t have a key,” I said.
“Suit yourself.” Annabel deftly uncinched her pants, dragging my hand uncomfortably close and squatted down on the toilet, pulling me to kneel on the floor at her side.
I’m not sure this was what I needed.
6. WANTS, AND NEEDS
Later, after undressing, washing and drying off in some awkward choreography that could have made us both winners in a game of Twister, Annabel and I both emerged clean and moist from the bath. I was just about to say that it would stink to have to put our dirty clothes back on when Annabel pointed at a rack to the left of the doorway. Several items of clothing hung from its many pegs, including a man’s white shirt and black slacks, and a silky green dress.
Annabel pulled the dress down and stepped into it, and with my help eased her injured arm through one sleeve, which flared at the wrist. The back buttoned with glossy round stones, and I closed as many as I could, leaving her shackled arm exposed. She helped me pull up my pants and socks, and I slipped one arm into the shirt.
She fumbled with the button on my sleeve, and then patted it with satisfaction, tapping a finger to my chin.
“All buttoned up, sire,” she grinned. “Now let’s find the keymaster so we can finish the job.”
As we stepped back to the main room, I could feel the blood warming my cheeks, but she seemed nonplussed by the experience.
“Thanks,” I said, a little too soft and a little too late. But she heard me. She didn’t say anything, just turned and stared for a moment into my eyes, and then nodded.
I could feel my heart shudder, and the recent image of her in the tub, water glistening on her breasts and streaming down the crevice between them came unbidden to my mind. She’d run her hand—and mine—over her chest unselfconsciously, and I’d felt a torturous mix of desire and discomfort in the moment. The stream of water down her chest turned to blood in my mind, and a tear welled in my eye. I suddenly couldn’t imagine that the woman we had just seen, the gracious and noble Char-Lee, would want or require Annabel’s throat to be cut in order to grant Rick his request.
Annabel pulled me forward.
We found Rick lying back in his room on a four-post bed, rings of white smoke issuing from a deeply crooked wooden pipe. It didn’t smell like tobacco in the bowl to me.
“Que pasa,” he grinned, eyeing us and then staring upward to blow a heavy cloud of smoke at the ceiling. He narrowed an eye and turned his head to me.
“I said watch her, not wash her.”
“Could you undo this so I can finish getting dressed,” Annabel asked, holding out the cuff.
“Apparently it didn’t stop you from getting undressed.” He stood up and trailed a finger up her exposed ribcage to touch the base of her breast. Then he slid it up to circle her neck. My heart stopped again.
“I don’t recall this being what you wore to the party,” he said, his hand slipping down to grip the thin material covering her breasts.
“Rick, I don’t think—” I began, but stopped with the familiar ting of a knife slipping free of its scabbard.
The hooked barb of Rick’s Bowie was at my chin in a heartbeat.
“Back off junior,” he warned. “You’ve had your fuck for the day. If I want to handle the merchandise, I will. In fact—”
He pulled a silver chain from his pocket, and deftly released the cuffs with its key.
“Wait for us outside,” Rick said to me, and pointed with the knife at the door. Then he turned back to Annabel, and instead of helping her finish dressing, he pushed the glimmering material off her shoulder and down, until the dress slipped across her thighs to wrinkle like shed skin on the floor.
Knife at her heart, he forced her to the bed, and I slid unnoticed from the room.
Something had happened. The landscape had all changed, I thought. When we had started, I was Rick’s right-hand man. Confidante. Friend. But over the past couple days, he’d grown rougher. Not that he hadn’t always been a bastard. He had. But now he was ordering me around like a slave, and I was apparently falling for the girl we’d brought along to kill.
Not a good chemistry. Not at all.
I walked back to the fairy dust room thinking that Annabel had gotten what she wanted, just as the Oracle had promised (at least while she’d been in our room), and Rick was now getting what he wanted.
But what about me?
There was a bed now in the center of the room, where I was sure there hadn’t been one before. I pulled on my hanging shirt sleeve and buttoned up, and then lay down on the pile of silken pillows at its head. I thought about Annabel in the bath again, and shut my eyes, focusing on that thought, imagining myself in the tub with her, soaping her back…
I must have drifted to sleep, because when I heard the gong, my whole body jolted. I rolled to the side of the bed, and as I pushed myself upright, a pain shot through my left hand.
I pulled back as if burnt, and looked. A thin red line stitched across my palm, tiny beads of blood already at the surface.
The reason was readily apparent.
The business end of a wood-handled straight razor glinted in the dull light on the edge of the bed. I picked it up to study, when I heard Rick’s voice from the corridor.
“You ready Romeo? I think that’s the dinner bell.”
I slipped the razor into my pants pocket and tucked my shirt in. Rick was looking around in irritation in the middle of the hallway as Annabel tried unsuccessfully to button up the back of her dress with one hand.
“Let me,” I said, and finished the last three for her.
“Where are we supposed to go?” Rick asked, and, as if on cue, the light in the hall that led back to The Oracle’s chambers faded out, and the hall beyond seemed to brighten.
“I’d say this way,” I said, and began to walk.
The light led us to a dining hall. A table with enough places for 40 men stretched from one end to the other, and at its head, The Char-Lee sat, resplendent in black lace. She was grace, mystery and death incarnate. Her lips were painted a deep red for the evening, and her silvering blonde hair rode in a wave to the back of her neck.
“Welcome,” she said as we entered, and gestured to either side of her. “Join me at my table.”
Plates of beef and chicken steamed in the center of the table, and bowls of corn and beans and sauces I couldn’t identify led halfway down its stretch.
We sat, Rick on The Char-Lee’s left, with Annabel at his side. I sat on her right, alone.
“I trust you found whatever you needed in your rooms,” she asked. Rick smiled widely, nodding. Annabel looked uncertain, but nodded as well.
“I receive fewer and fewer visitors these days,” The Char-Lee said quietly. “The way grows more dangerous, and my legend, perhaps, less known.”
“Your name is yet known,” Annabel said.
“Perhaps it would be better if that were not so.”
We filled our plates with food, and I stuffed my mouth with creamed spinach and Arabian olive salad as Rick answered the Oracle’s request to talk of how things went with the world of men.
“The police states of Irving and Darien have fallen to the gangs of Oakbrook and Willow,” he related, “and the cult of Moonrise continues to spread throughout the western towns that remain alive.”
He told her of the plague towns and the roving bands of mercenary armies, and of the drought that turned many a small burg into tombs of desiccation. When he began to speak of finding the book of Aurica, and studying the scribes for spells of protection, The Char-Lee turned to Annabel.
“And you, child. What of you?”
“I’m of no consequence, ma’am,” Annabel said, barely looking up from her plate. “Like everyone else, I’ve looked for love and found its taste bitter. I have worked beside the beasts to till the earth and bled enough ground to spare my life. No more than this.”
She turned to me next, and though I’d had time to prepare, I had no answer.
“I’
ve had to do a lot of things to survive,” I said. “I’m not proud of it all. But I’m still standing.”
“You’re sitting,” Rick laughed.
I considered throwing my roll at him, but out of propriety, declined.
Instead, I looked at The Char-Lee and amazed even myself.
“I’ve also found the taste of love bitter, but I know in my heart that it can be sweet. And I would give my life to earn such a love.”
Rick made a gagging sound. “I’m going to lose my dinner,” he proclaimed.
“Then it is time for dessert,” The Char-Lee announced.
I saw shadows move out of the corners of my eyes, and I turned to catch them, but saw nothing but the stone walls of the chamber.
However, when I looked back at the table, the plates and bowls of food had disappeared, replaced with pastries and cookies and a cake of darkest chocolate.
There was little conversation during this final course, and even I had to smile in amusement as Annabel pushed bite after bite of cake into her mouth, smearing chocolate on her lips as if it might disappear were she not to get it all inside her quickly. Perhaps it would have, I don’t know. I contented myself with stuffed dates and a rich zucchini-honey pastry. When at last, the group of us pushed back from the table stuffed beyond memory, we all looked at The Oracle.
A sad smile crossed her lips, and she nodded.
“It is time,” she said. “You have come with a purpose, and I will hear it. But not here.”
7. THE ORACLE, THE CHAR-LEE
The Oracle rose, and bade us follow her, back down the hall to her formal chambers, where she mounted the dais and sank back into her demonically encrypted throne.
Rick turned to me and hissed, “Hold her,” as he pushed Annabel's arm into my grip. Then he turned to face The Char-Lee, to plead his case, and offer his sacrifice.
“You have come this far, and claim to have studied the ways, so surely you know the duality of my gifts and power,” she said, eyes unblinking and cold. “Like the lycanthrope, it changes from cool skin to claw, a symbiotic dance of desire and death. You may leave my chambers now, with my blessing and gratitude for an evening of companionship. If you begin the path of request, at least one of you must die. Perhaps all of you will find dread and claw, not kiss in my answer. Consider carefully, before you speak.”
My hand held Annabel’s wrist, but somehow, it slid down as Rick began to speak, and I felt her fingers clench around my own.
“In the book of Elysian, it states that the Oracle not only has the gift of sight, but of power,” Rick said, and The Char-Lee pursed her crimson lips and gave an almost invisible nod.
“Likewise, it states that this power can be conveyed to those seekers who offer sacrifice, both heroic and brutal to earn it.”
Again, she nodded.
I felt the heavy weight in my pocket shift as Annabel’s hand gripped mine tighter, pulling me closer. The moment was nearly here. Rick would take her from me, and open her neck with his Bowie, so that he could gain the magic to rule the gangs of madmen that ruined our homes, and haunted our nightmares.
In my pocket, my fingers found and clenched the wooden shaft.
The shadows of the hall seemed to move around us, a twirl of shifting light and darkness that could not be seen, only glimpsed. Forces were moving.
“I have studied the teachings and made the sacrifices of Odun and Nothfair,” Rick said, his voice growing louder and more sure as he spoke.
“I have traveled the paths ordained and brought to you an acolyte, and a sacrifice, so that I may be imbued with the power.”
Annabel’s grip felt as if she would crush my hand, and her lips suddenly brushed my ear.
“Love is always bitter,” she whispered, as Rick turned, grabbed her by the arm and yanked her from me.
“For you, I dedicate this life,” he pronounced, drawing his Bowie and holding it high in the air as he crushed Annabel to the floor with his other hand tight around her neck.
On her throne, The Oracle observed but said nothing, her face expressionless.
“May this blood rinse the room with life and set your generosity free,” he intoned, and brought the knife to Annabel’s throat.
In my mind, I saw the water trickling down her breasts again in the bath, and felt her hand, chained to mine, a binding that was, at its end, not unwelcome. I felt her hand pinching mine just moments ago, and felt her breath in my ear.
I felt the razor in my palm.
I felt my throat constrict in utter fear of my next step.
But still, I took it.
I pulled the razor from my pocket and stepped forward at the same time, grabbing Rick by the hair and yanking his head backwards. Taken by surprise, he fell back into my arms, a heavy, deadly burden that almost instantly began to struggle.
“I dedicate this sacrifice to love,” I said, and brought my razor down across his throat. I could feel the flesh give way, and felt the hot spray of his blood and saliva as I dragged it down deep and severed his throat from ear to ear.
Rick’s eyes bugged out wide and white; his brows clenched in shock and anger. His lips struggled to speak as his blood washed my white shirt. Red, the color of death. Red, the color of love. A sharp pain ripped through my side and I heard Annabel scream “No!” as Rick fell away from me and I tried to stand. But there were teeth, blades, acid fire in my gut and I staggered backwards, falling down at the feet of The Char-Lee.
Annabel knelt and pressed her hand to my cheek.
“Be strong,” she said, and a new blaze, ignited by her words ripped from my belly to my groin and back to my heart. A blaze that almost staunched the wound.
She kissed my lips then, gently. “Strong,” she repeated and drew back. The world seemed to be growing fainter. Hazy. I pressed my hand to still the screams in my side and felt the heat, the wetness there. Flowing fast.
In the distance, I heard Annabel.
“Accept this sacrifice from your handmaiden,” she said, and I heard something, it had to be Rick, squeal and sputter. “I have brought him to you,” she continued. “He has strength for your strength, and life for your life. May I beg of you the power?”
8. SACRIFICE
I awoke in a sea of fairy green, in a bed of down and air.
When I started to sit up, I felt the blades bite my side, and I collapsed instantly.
“You’re awake,” a familiar voice cried, and then warm hands and lips were on my face.
“She said you would wake, that it would take time, but I’ve been here waiting for so long and sometimes it seemed that your breath would stop for minutes at a time and I would kiss my breath to your lips and pray that you would hold on, that you would come back for me once more but I was so afraid because…”
“Whoa,” I gasped, grabbing her by her shoulders and pushing her back, just a little.
“Slow down,” I begged. “What’s happened. Where’s Rick?”
“I finished him,” she said. “He was my sacrifice.”
Annabel’s face filled my vision and her eyes looked sad, scared. Her mouth trembled as she told me.
“When you found me, us, I was already on my way here to find The Oracle. I know the teachings; I have studied the power. And I had a quest, too. When you slashed Rick’s throat and set me free, I used the knife to cut out his heart.”
“And The Oracle?”
“She granted my request,” Annabel said, her face suddenly serene and calm.
“Are you going to try to rule the world?” I asked, incredulous that this quiet, beautiful woman could have practiced the same rituals and followed the same paths I’d found Rick wallowing in.
“Rick was studying the path of the powers of death,” she said. “I sought the power of life. The sacrifice I was bringing The Oracle had volunteered for the honor. Then you and Rick showed up.”
She ran a finger across my chest and smiled.
“The Oracle accepted my new sacrifice and said I should practice the power s
he granted on you. So you’re my first patient!”
“Can you do something about the pain?” I said, wincing.
“Maybe,” she smiled, then looked at my face. “Did you mean what you said at dinner and when you cut Rick?” she asked. “About love?”
“You got your bath and Rick got laid when we went to our rooms,” I said. A shadow crossed her face.
“The Char-Lee told us that the rooms would provide us with whatever we needed.”
She nodded, but looked confused.
“I needed a razor,” I said. “To gain a love that doesn't taste bitter.”
The corners of her mouth raised and then bent to kiss me.
Love wasn’t bitter at all.
— | — | —
BLOODROSES
Tanya loved the roses; she only wished she could look at them.
Every morning, her husband Mel guided her down the stairs from her bedroom, through the house, and down the rocky steps to the rose garden.
“Let me help you with that, he’d say, and tenderly lift the shirt over her head, undo her brasierre and slide her pants to the ground. With a kiss and a pat he sent her forth, into the tangle of thorns and leaves and sharp, rocky earth.
Tanya loved to run naked through the rose garden. She loved to feel the roses’ feathery touches, their sharp bite. Once she had been able to smell the humid sugar of their perfume, and see the vibrant smears of crimson across their petals. But that was long ago. Now Tanya could only experience her rose garden by touch, and so she drew the prickling bushes to her bosom and bled with every kiss of their stinging boughs.
She’d been 16 when it happened. Skin of virgin vanilla, cheeks blushed bright cherry, eyes like sapphires glinting against the stark satin of her raven hair. The boy had been called Marshall then, and she met him late each evening—a mute moon the only spectator to their urgent, exploring gropings.
They whispered and laughed and lay down on the bricks to stare out at the stars. “I wonder who’s out there,” they said aloud, but inside they thought, I wonder who’s in here.
