by Olivia D'Abo
“Be my guest, dearie. The nearer I am to death, the prettier I look”, she smiled.
He sliced as hard as he could, like he was butchering a wild boar for a feast of monarchs.
No blood dripped from her: only dead flesh which seemed to creep into the wound like melted butter.
Camilla threw Cedric against the stairs, knocking Trixie down. The succubus beast menaced towards them, dragging her pale nails across the wood railing every inch she walked.
Trixie yelled to Cedric “Cmon god dammit! Get up!”
She pulled him up by the collar and dragged him up a couple of steps while Camilla seemingly enjoyed their efforts to escape. The gamier, the tastier, she thought.
Trixie and Cedric bashed open the door with all her might, slamming it shut behind them.
Cedric looked around and yelled, “Here help me get this in front of the door!”
Both of them pushed the fridge up against the door for all the good it would do for them.
“Let’s get out of here already”, Trixie stated.
She yanked Cedric towards the front door.
Down below, Camilla regretted waiting too long to make her move. In her lust to get a more gamy-tasting meal she now not only might miss her meal, but dawn would be creeping over the horizon rather swiftly. She walked back to the body of Gilchrist with the aim of using the poker to pry the door ajar.
A gleam of light caught her eye. From her standing position it looked like a watch of some sort on the inside of his black jacket. She leaned down to inspect him more personally. A dozen fleas jumped out of his woodwork and onto her arm. She hastily swatted them away, likening her dark immortality to angelic status and unyielding to the tenets of dogs and ruffians. But there was something else. A faint murmur of voice perhaps, or of something mechanized, like a mechanical bird with broken gears. She heard a “tick…tick” sound emanating from the rotting body of Gilchrist. She pulled the jacket off completely, hurling it to one side. Beneath the jacket’s exterior was a tattooed ogre of an individual with the express purpose of murder and mayhem. Her own purposes were much more deific, she thought, and light years beyond this dog of a man. She turned him over. Wrapped around a ticking watch was a coiled, beige cord that spiraled repeatedly around his waist like a phone cord, along with two tightly packed sticks of what looked like rolled up…nickels, she thought. A note fell out of the inside pocket of the jacket and onto the floor. Camilla picked it up, unfolded it and read it.
“Meet us tomorrow at the agreed spot. Bring the goods. We should only need one stick but bring more just in case. Make sure the timer works this time or we’ve fucked it up again”.
It wasn’t hard for Camilla to immediately put it together; however the timer had been prematurely set as soon as the she had speared the leather beast, inadvertently setting the timer for AM in lieu of PM.
Her black heart seemed to immediately turn to stone as the timer ticked down: “five…four…three…”
In a flurry of panic and regret she dashed towards the window, sending battered boxes flying everywhere as she crudely shifted forms from a hot-tempered debt collector into a winged succubus of plague and disease. Time slowed down as she leapt towards the window, sending shards of smoked glass to the ground. The basement exploded in a vortex of splinted timber, dried paint and melted lunchboxes with No.2 pencils launched in seemingly contradictory directions as Camilla flapped her dark wings to escape the maelstrom of light and heat. On the front yard lie satchels, thermoses and wrapped pastries that were decades-old, given by overzealous mothers who wished solitude from their boisterous children. Small clusters of fire pelted the lawn like meteorites. The smell of burnt, plastic lunchboxes permeated the air.
Camilla flew faster and faster, not looking back.
“Safe” she thought.
Her secret was now out in the open, broadcasted by a circus of fire and light…with Trixie as ringmaster. She would eventually repay, no matter the cost.
No sooner that she thought of what she would say to her husband about her stepdaughter’s treachery that she noticed her dark wings smoking as they caught the rays of Earth’s early gaze as it unzipped itself upon the cloudy sky. She screeched a high-pitched scream as holes started to pepper her wings from the power of the titanic sun. The wind joined the sun’s rape upon her seeming corruption as it blew through the holes forming in her wings like hail on soggy bread. Camilla plummeted to the earth in a cataclysm of bellowing curses and misfired enchants.
Camilla not only thought of Trixie, but police sirens, lunchboxes and bizarre explanations as she fell from the cloudy sky. She cursed them all, but especially Trixie, a girl who relished the averageness of her life and the absence of conflict, except that conflict that launched and perished with Camilla.
The judgment of the earth had yanked her perverted form out of the sky, ordering her velocity towards a suburban pool turned to ice from the blizzard elements. She hit the ice with a fleshly thump as her wings flailed around atop the frozen summer reprieve; its tiny shards of ice stabbing through her unholy wings and cutting through vile artery and bone.
“The…little…snitch”, she murmured as she lay atop her frosty grave, bleeding and burned by the light’s disapproval. A heavy stench of burning pervaded the area.
Cedric held Trixie’s hand tightly as the walked towards his home five blocks away. The storm had seemed to leave as soon as it arrived. Trixie looked over at Cedric, wiping away her tears.
“Cedric what am I going to do now?”
“We’ll take it one step at a time. We’ll go to my parents. They’re won’t hurt you. Then we’ll go to the police, and we’ll call your dad.” he said reassuringly.
“He is in Toronto. I don’t even know if he knew about her. Like really, really know for certain? He had to know, right?”
“Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was hoping for some miracle cure for her craziness, who knows.” Cedric quipped.
She sighed and said, “My life is so insane. It always has been. Just filled with insanity.”
Cedric shook his head.
“I’ll tell you what is insane…letting that sorry excuse for a human being get to you when she is dead and six feet under. That’s insane.”
Trixie smiled and kissed him.
Within seconds, four Montreal police cars raced by them toward the burning sanctuary of Camilla and the many children she seduced and perversely buried under the cellar. The children would be found, she hoped, and given proper graves and rites. The walls of Camilla’s hidden Jericho had been blown down not by a trumpet, but by the light of discovery.
In the days that followed, there would be long and arduous explanations given to detectives, neighbors, and her dad, who would return from his duties to a home of ashes and demonic failure. If there was any justice in Heaven, Camilla’s dark brethren would meet the same fate as her. Trixie thought that whatever the result of all of this, she would not let what happened tonight cloud her season of joy, as she was now free of the iron shackles that Camilla had snapped upon her. Time would tick by and things would get better, as the tide always changes, and the seasons rarely blessed the same fate twice.
“Sometimes you have to set your Self free, Trixie”, he said encouragingly.
She took out the second finch from her coat pocket and released it into the air. The finch flew up to a nearby telephone pole and looked down on her longingly.
