The blood. Marty saw now where it came from. It geysered from the cover, striking the floor and multiplying by droplets.
“Help us!” Rosie yelled.
Marty and she both pushed vocal ranges to throat-bursting limits.
Suddenly, the doctor ripped open the nurse’s chest. Her mammarous flabby French doors parted until they saw brilliant gashes of scarlet sinew and bands of yellow fat. The rounded ends of bones poked through meat as if eggs were being laid, squeezed out in pearls from chicken hawk orifices.
“We’ve gotta get out,” Marty said.
“The door won’t open,” she reminded him.
“I’ll try again. Maybe I can kick the sucker down.”
“I can’t walk,” Rosie said, feeling more useless than ever.
Wounds gaped from the doctor and nurse. Cul-de-sacs of steaks were on view. The exposed ribs gleamed on the man, a curve of punctured lung deflating from within like a dying budgie in a birdcage. The nurse pinched off tidbits. The kids saw the doctor’s heart.
It was black, decayed.
It didn’t spasm. It didn’t beat. It was atrophied, retrograding to wormy clay. Cold as stone.
“I’ll carry ya,” Marty promised, hoping he could both tote Rosie and kick open the door.
He slid his feet to the floor, finding himself ankle deep in blood. Madly, he thought, Don’t they see this in the hallway? It must be running under the door. He watched, petrified, as the doctor and nurse ‘en grosso flagrant’ were impossibly jerked beneath the shallow surface.
Now he noticed other bodies in the red stream. Their humped backs rose, hinting at unrealistic mass. Like suicidal floaters rising from river depths, faces/arms/legs/bellies surfacing.
necrOmania seXualis bumped Marty’s leg.
He kicked it away, putting his arms under Rosie’s shoulders and hips. He lifted her too easily, her lightness almost breaking his heart.
“Let’s boogie,” he told her, preparing to swing about and slosh toward the door.
She hugged his neck and tried to smile.
Something below grabbed his heel and pulled, shaking it. The liquid suddenly vortexed, no longer inches, but feet deep. He dropped Rosie back onto the mattress and grabbed hold of the metal rail. His legs sank into red wash. There was an undertow he knew couldn’t exist. It was a floor, damn it.
He kicked out, scissoring one leg to desperately locate that hard-fact floor. But everyplace Marty probed with his toes was simply more liquid, deep until it became heavy. It no longer supported the drifting bed he clung to. He felt tangled in seaweed, a simmering, nasty roiling stew. A primeval funk, slimy creatures shitting where they ate. The stench alone almost made him pass out and let go.
Whatever gripped his foot also bit through the seat of his jeans. Marty screeched and kicked, but the creature held. His thrashing hands slipped on the rail. Rosie called his name, a booming noise in seawall roar. One hand slid off the rail so Marty tightened the other, squirming, as whatever held the single foot maintained its grip.
He saw a head, a face, rise above the blood stink. She was so beautiful. Mermaid-like. Even if her hair was plastered with chum. Her breasts moved in the river, flotation devices, water wings—fins. She giggled, regurgitating the piece of denim and crescent of buttock flesh she’d snapped off. Marty recognized her… How?
From the pictures inside the book. One picture, or all of them. She raised her arms through the ichor flux… stumps just above her elbows. Ends healed with smooth, expert flaps folded down into tidy, elegant X’s. She stretched these toward him, offering a winsome smile.
Marty pushed her away.
He reached back for the bedrail. Under the surface, a lump brushed his groin. Humps collected, rising to submerge again, homing in on him. The gore reek choked him, splashing his face. It flowed, foul, into his mouth. Metallic, concentrated until nearly black. He held on with one hand, fluttering the other up. Bodies eeled nearby, gliding schools of burnished eaters.
Rosie called his name again, the sound oozing through viscous liquid plugging his ears. She snatched his flailing hand. He bobbed, put a leg onto the rail, then hoisted himself back onto the bed. It rocked like a canoe Marty feared would capsize.
“Oh, Marty!” Rosie hugged him, threading globs of carmine suet from his face and hair. He repeatedly spat to clear his mouth. “What’re we gonna do? This is even weirder than what happened at the store.”
The room’s bottom had disappeared beneath plasmic gulf. A chair floated by like wreckage from a lost ship. Yet, the teens didn’t float toward the ceiling as Marty figured, surrounded by four walls if the room simply filled up, bloodtight, sealed off.
Far off, there was a droning roar, an echo of a real sea rippling to a remote horizon, without four close walls. Of islands distant where sirens wept and laughed. Heads parted clotty sea, shoulders lifted, paddling flippers of abbreviated limbs. The doctor and nurse were long gone. These creatures were gore-streaked nyads. They did nubby arabesques under billowing gobbet-waves.
Marty. Marty.
Salty sea-plasma dribbled from their pouty lips.
Dive in, Marty. Save the girl. Feed us and we’ll let her go. You’ll die a very happy boy, we promise.
Then Rosie heard a voice, a whisper:
Sister Sophia Rose
Their dazzling human eyes were limpid, lids shadowed aquamarine, long-lashed, convincing of practiced charms. Erotic stumps rubbed breasts until nipples blossomed. They swam alongside the bedboat, supplicating near the rail. Not flawed, not defective… refined, elegant fins of sleek, sharky dolphins.
Marty’d always dreamed of gorgeous amputees. He’d fancied beds full of primitive prehistoric fertility goddesses dangling, undulating, pendulous. Only the right, necessary parts, ample. But this wasn’t as he’d dreamed it. This wasn’t a splendid figment of stone Willendorf Venuses brought to life by a lusty Pygmalion’s alter ego.
This wasn’t his Rosie.
Marty closed his eyes to them. “You aren’t possible,” he stated flatly. He expected this to make them go away, to restore reality. Still, the stabbing pain in his backside from the blood-mermaid’s bite reminded him: Magic and power are behind any true deathtrip.
Their melodic songs called:
Come on, Smarty-Marty.
Don’t you love Rosie?
Don’t you want her safe?
Don’t you want to know us better?
See how much like her we’re made?
We’re your dreamlovers, Marty.
We’ll rub you with these scraps of flesh and bone.
Jump in and cum in our soft oddments.
Whisper all you’ve ever wished for.
Every delusion, as we stroke you toward one sweet oblivion after another…
Marty hocked up red wash he’d swallowed, reeking of iron waste. Liquid lapped against the drifting bed, soaking bloody brine up the sides of starched white sheets, oozing onto the frame and mattress.
Rosie gagged. Who are these monster women summoning Marty? Didn’t their faces look familiar? But why? From where? Out of nightmares, born of trauma and narcotics and a world which she now knew held senseless terrors.
Sister Sophia Rose.
Marty’d sacrifice himself to save her. He was sweet, whole, good. Maybe it should be her. What did Rosie have to live for? She looked at their stumps thrust through the carrion lake. She saw this was also what she was.
Would any of the guys who’d jiggled her bones… have felt as much? Would they have died for her? Could they ever die for anyone?
Could she?
The monster women said it themselves. They were made as she was. Perhaps they’d go easy on Roseanne. They’d simply pull her under, she’d become a carnage mermaid like them, automatically accustomed to blood—as new as a newly born vampire. Any pain would be an initiation rite. Besides, nothing could hurt as much as when the store exploded, burying her under rubble.
She’d endured the worst.
She saw Marty
lean toward the bed’s edge. She knew he would sacrifice himself to save her. It made her tingle. In that good way, she thought. How could she do any less for him?
“I love you, Marty,” she said, hands on him to pull him back from the edge.
She hoped it wasn’t the pain just addling her judgment. Or the drugs, or the fear of being a lonely freak. She hoped she wouldn’t regret the nobility, just as it was too late to reverse the course.
Marty turned, feeling her kiss on his cheek.
See, they’re like me, she thought, looking at him, willing him to understand. Beautiful, shining, gloriously ruined… SISTERS. It hit her how she knew their faces. I know them. Chaz’s funeral!
“Rosie, NO!”
Marty reached for her as she toppled off the other side. Blood splashed high. Bodies thrashed around her. Ruby jets in waves rocked the bed.
Some ideas were melodramatic shit; she hadn’t endured the worst.
The worst was incomprehensible.
She shrieked, then gargled on that shriek as she was pulled beneath the surface, felt their woodchipper mouths…
The bed spun, humps of white flesh coming up underneath, a furious motion Marty couldn’t see. The spray was red—everything red. Who could say it was a feeding frenzy? One gout of blood looked pretty much like any other.
Marty cursed and wept. A wall of red water rose and fell on him. In it were specks of bone and raggedy clumps of pink flesh. One, a patch of skin with sutures in it. Another, a blue eye, landed on his shoulder, stuck as if a lasting tangible memento, then washed off. A scrap of shredded hospital gown rippled away.
In a blink, the room reverted to normal.
Dry floor. Dry sheets, starched white—not caked in blood. No bodies. The chair was back at its post against the wall. The abruptly steady bed queered Marty’s equilibrium, and he tumbled onto the hard floor. He came snout-up against the book.
necrOmania seXualis wasn’t wet, not damaged or runny with entrails. There were no signs, appendages, or cast-off clothes from the doctor and nurse. Not his stethoscope nor her clipcoard.
The room was the same as when he’d arrived to visit Rosie. Except she wasn’t there.
The bite on his ass stung. He suffered puffy blisters where the sea burned him. Yet there was neither blood nor dampness on his clothes.
Marty felt strangely serene as he picked up the book.
It was a rare thing. He tucked it under his arm and left the room.
– | – | –
Chapter 22
Renae nearly called in sick. Lenora can do today’s interview, she reasoned.
She hadn’t slept much after Eddie stormed out. She’d had bouts of uncontrollable shivers, not cold but electric current. Maybe she’d blown a fuse—or a synapse—screaming at Eddie. She’d climbed into bed, hoping the sheets would ground her back to a non-conductive state of being. They hadn’t. She tried not to glance into the mirror. Yet she did, seeing the usual misted blank, sparkling-sparking blue this time. No smile.
No need to swear she wasn’t smiling after Eddie walked out on her.
So, what of her no-smiling, yet smiling, frenzy she’d seen in the glass? Gone. Could’ve been a hallucination—or a revelation. An epiphany of the real woman within: CRAZY. Someone who’d seen horror, then abandonment, then gone catatonic, and never come to grips with it.
For her, in Eddie’s absence, it was back to dead time.
She curled up, fetal ball, back into the egg, never to emerge again. Like she’d done in the hospital. Not that she remembered much of the place. No more than recalling a long, bad dream, where you suffered terribly between periods of absolute darkness and complete nothingness.
Then the moments when Renae was almost lucid. They’d shocked her, sticking her with needles, putting (a rubber dick) in her mouth, turning on the juice:
BLOOD ACROSS A MIRROR.
HEAD WITH LONG BLACK HAIR.
ROOM DECORATED FOR A SAVAGE CHRISTMAS.
PIECES AFFIXED OVERHEAD, DANGLING FROM THE CEILING.
TURNING NORTH, WEST, SOUTH AND EAST—
WASN’T THAT WIDDERSHINS?
THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE DANCE OF THE WITCH?
OH. NO. MUST BE THE SEASON OF THE WITCH.
OLD SONG DADDY USED TO LISTEN TO—
WAIT—MOMMA LISTENED TO.
COULDN’T PICTURE MOMMA LISTENING TO IT…
BECAUSE MOMMA’S MEMORY WAS FRACTURED AND RED.
DONOVAN WHO SANG IT?
OR DID SHE LIKE THE VERSION BY THE VANILLA FUDGE?
And…
WHY HAD DADDY DONE THAT TO MY DOLLS?
And if she wasn’t on the shock table, she was walking, dragging, herself across the wall to the corner. Turn. Drag. Across the next wall. Anyone in the way scrambling out of crosshairs and the demonic scope, because if she touched them, they received a shock—
SNAP!
Keep contact with the wall. To her, it was one continuous mirror. What was reflected in it, she HAD TO, MUST reach, must make contact with, reclaim, it was a mirror smeared with blood. A MESSAGE in all that red telling her what came next… picking up every stitch.
Renae felt sick to her stomach.
Now it’s…
A LIVE WIRE UP MY ASS.
BLUE SPARKS IN MY VEINS.
I DID A DANCE…
HE PUTS GUNPOWDER UP MY VAGINA.
I AM THE BOMB.
THE BRIMSTONE BRIDE.
Almost called the studio and said she wouldn’t be in. Threw a quilt over the mirror, like in some hokey vampire film. One I probably reviewed, ha!
Finally, she got up: Brewed strong coffee, hard to drink because it was such a hot summer. Took an icy shower. Dressed in long, slinky black. Went outside to go to work, that was how best to deal.
If she wanted to be normal, she must proceed as if normal. Normal folks go to work to earn a living.
On the sidewalk, headed for her car, a cramp doubled her over. Renae cried out, and heard—no… shit!—was that her tight-fitting dress tearing? Another terrible pain in her abdomen. Her belly swelled as she watched in terror, big BIG BIG! Suddenly she squatted, unable to run back to her apartment or even to the car. Down she went, in the ancient way, legs forced apart, water gushing out—
Eggs. Hundreds of them. Tumbling from her insides, many breaking as they hit the sidewalk.
Within were clumps of raw, decomposing flesh—fingers, toes, teeth, eyeballs. Human.
Renae passed out, her thoughts eddying: Has to be a dream. Like the awful ones last night.
EDDIE, WHERE ARE YOU? PLEASE WAKE ME UP. PLEASE HOLD ME.
She opened her eyes. She wasn’t in bed but lying in the grass not six feet from her car. Her black dress was torn; pieces of skirt flapping in a desultory, useless breeze.
People surrounded her.
But they weren’t paramedics, no neighbors come to her aid. They were strangers. Some dressed like normal folk. Others were from any number of those weird death gangs. Everyone crouched around Renae, grabbing eggs, breaking open the whole ones or upturning the broken ones into egg-teacups, sucking down abominable contents.
Her mind reeled. It’s just one nightmare into another, nothing more. She was no taboo’s Madonna. This was an impossibility.
The eggs were consumed. The freaks scampered away. Except for one little girl, standing in the middle of the street, clothes torn, blood running down her legs—big round eyes staring at Renae.
Accusing Renae…?
A car drove past, windows down, playing the classic, very atmospheric Vanilla Fudge version of “Season Of The Witch”. The car drove between Renae and the child. As it passed, Renae saw the little girl no longer had a face.
Another car drove between them, windows down, music. Now there were two little girls, torn clothes, blood, bruises. No faces.
Renae turned away, stifling a scream, eggshells crunching beneath her. She spied a neighbor’s blinds moving, partly up, then grindingly, disappointly down.
She heard a
third car: Oh no! Must be the season of the witch!
She forced herself to look again—expecting what? A street-full of little girls without faces?
A wind rose. Fliers blew, all showing pictures of blank-faced kids. A question printed with the photos.
Have You Seen This Child?
Renae near laughed. But they have no faces!
She blinked. The question on the fliers changed:
DID YOU SACRIFICE HER?
Renae squeezed her eyes shut, counting back from a hundred, whispering The Lord’s Prayer. Forwards. Careful. Don’t count nor pray the other way ‘round.
««—»»
“Hi, Ren.”
Lenora, ethereally beautiful as ever, greeted Renae at The Goth Channel door, Suite 350 on the third floor of The Luther Building. “You okay, sweetie?”
No, I feel as if I just gave impromptu birth to Easter’s dead grab bag. By the way, cluck-cluck, I’m a duck.
Supernatural egg-event a no-go. Only a dark-of-the-moon whimsy. Actually, Renae’d no idea what cycle of the moon it was.
“Sure,” Renae replied, managing a smile. It felt painted on without the benefit of a mirror to get it straight. “Could’ve used more sleep. Damn hot.”
No! No more sleep…
Lenora fanned herself with a script. “It’s that. Shedu’s in his office. Wants to see you ASAP.”
Renae went down the hall, not wanting to go to her dressing room anyway—that cursed mirror. Maybe a crewman would throw a towel over it for me.
Shedu’s office door was slightly ajar. He talked animatedly on his cell, his back to her. She started to knock—
Eavesdropping wasn’t her style. But there was something in his posture, an intensity in the hush of his voice. Familiar. Too familiar. She eyed the feral curve to his back, neck arched, both hands cupping the tiny phone—when one wasn’t forming a grip around the groin. Furtive, passionate, bringing another’s face closer for a kiss—or a bite.
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