Moon River

by Nicholas Knight

  "You speak like you're a deacon or something?" Karen expressed, insulted that Dawn was correcting her on this.

  "Something," Dawn answered simply but sincerely. Dawn saw the disillusioned look in Karen's eyes, as if she had burst a reality bubble in her that she wasn't prepared for in the slightest. "One of the few things they tell you in church, that's actually accurate, is that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is the only unforgivable sin. What's scary about this, however, is that this passage is one of the many parts of the Bible that is extremely vague. None of us really know what blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is, short of saying those actual words in hateful disrespect. But, yeah...most of what preachers tell you in church is their own biased opinion or bold interpretation of the Gospel, not the actual Gospel."

  "Have you ever blasphemed the Holy Ghost?" Stacy asked the educated preacher’s daughter.

  "Hell, no," Dawn answered quickly and truthfully. "I might be a raving lunatic, but I'm not stupid. No, I would never do that."

  "But, you're pretty confident that you'll wind up in Hell anyway?" Stacy asked.

  "In certain ways, I'm already there. But, yes, I'm terrified that I'll end up there after I die," she admitted. "I'm pretty sure that God hates me. He's made that painfully clear. All the signs point to that being the case."

  Dawn’s friends talk amongst themselves, reminding each other how the early Christians of the Bible were tortured and persecuted, while later Christians burned alleged heretics at the stake. They found it unsettling how, throughout history, Christians had turned from such tenderhearted believers to covetous, biased, inhuman hypocrites. None of the girls were perfect, but they took pride in the fact that they were authentic and had their hearts in the right place.

  As they continued to vent over their collective intolerance of evil, Dawn gently shut her eyes in meditation. She took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and imagined that she was outside in an open field, laying under the soothing moonlight. Dawn, in their shared cell, could hear Nikolas’s voice again, as he ridiculed her for being weak, even though her infirmity wasn’t her own doing. His objective was to try and tear her down to the point of self-destruction, or at least that’s how it appeared.

  “We don’t waste our kindness on ingrates or weaklings. It’s a greater crime to keep people alive who are never going to be productive, who drain our resources, and create a stagnant world. We are not obliged to save the frail and feeble. Christians seek to help the weak, not because they care, but because it boosts their pomposity. Churches derive pleasure from going to places like Haiti and Uganda, because it makes them look good. Nobody really cares about anybody, including your Lord,” Nikolas insisted. “So, why should you? You cared for Julie, and now God has eliminated her. You couldn’t save her, just like you couldn’t save Reuben or your son. Everything you touch, and everyone who touches you, turns to shit. You’re no good to anyone, Dawn; not even to yourself.”

  The steroid-pumped, Boner, came to visit Dawn again, but this time to rub it in her face about Julie.

  “It’s a shame what happened to your psychotic friend, isn’t it?” he said, grinning with perverse pride and audacity. “What was her name again? Julie? Yeah, she was a nutcase, wasn’t she? Seeing things that weren’t there, and all. If only she had had a bit more foresight, and could see that I was setting her up with a convicted child killer.”

  Dawn’s ears perked up, as she heard him practically confess to being the one responsible for Julie’s untimely demise.

  “If it’s any consolation, I heard that the preferred client made her death as painful as possible. She went screaming, I’m told. They told me that she was crying for you, Dawn. How pathetic is that? Apparently, she kept calling out your name over and over again. How hilarious is that? I’ll tell you, I sure enjoyed it,” he boasted joyfully, entertained by the look of unadulterated anguish on Dawn’s face.

  As weak and frail as Dawn was, she felt a burst of energy overcome her body. She could feel the hate coarse through her veins, as she stared at the giant-sized, Middle Eastern bully. “You, son of a bitch! I’ll kill you, mother fucker! I’ll fucking kill you!! You’re dead!! You hear me, asshole?! You’re fucking dead!!” she yelled, as she quickly got up off the floor and hurled herself, like a tomahawk, against the chilled steel. As she violently collided with the vertical bars, she knocked herself out cold. The other girls quickly came to her aid and wept for their distraught friend, as the Muslim perpetrator laughed in twisted amusement.

  While Dawn was once again lost in the darkness, she heard the Supertramp song, Goodbye Stranger, playing exclusively in her head. As she listened to the private concert and Roger Hodgson’s appropriate lyrics, her eyes filled up with salty tears for Julie and her abused heart was becoming more hardened, numb, and overflowing with unfiltered, concentrated animosity.

  While her friends cried for and over Dawn, two gruesome ghouls appeared in their cell. Boner couldn’t see them, but the girls could. Frightened for their lives, they backed away and let this pair of blood-curdling phantoms approach and kneel before Dawn’s limp body. These two manifestations were ghastly in appearance, but their visit was one of charity and clemency.

  “We are Asena and Ashina,” they introduced themselves, using what seemed to be a Turkish accent. They looked like abominable snowmen, except they were female and had the fangs, claws, and ears of a werewolf. “Dawn’s body collapsed because it is cursed, and wasn’t capable of handling the adrenaline that surged through her or the blunt collision that knocked her out. We are shamans from beyond, who have come to nurse her back to health. We cannot lift the curse, but we can keep her from dying. Our help, however, is a one-time deal.”

  Asena laid her hands on Dawn’s chest, while Ashina touched her bloody head. The girls were too afraid to verbally address the creatures, so they just nodded and gave the visitors space. Boner didn’t even notice this strange behavior, as he was too focused on jerking off and laughing at Dawn’s breakdown. Somehow, Dawn was resuscitated and her bashed-in head was healed.

  SEPTEMBER 24, 1980

  FULL MOON

  RESCUE DAWN

  Dawn’s hypertrichosis had started to produce more extra body hair, not just around her pubic region, but everywhere. She was transforming into somewhat of a Lycan, looking more and more like her condition wasn’t all in her head.

  Dawn couldn’t articulate or analyze the love connection she had, and continues to have, with her pygophiliac boyfriend. She missed Reuben so deeply, that it physically hurt. Love wasn’t a big enough word for how she felt, and would always feel, for him. The only silver lining in her endless chain of traumatic adversity was her feelings for Cheri and Wolf. Reuben and their son had been taken from her, neither of which were her fault. She turned her back on her dear companions, and she did deserve blame and accountability for that. Leaving Wolf and Cheri tormented her almost as much as living without Reuben. She looks up at the ceiling to their cell and howls in excruciating pain, while the other girls latch onto her as if they never wanted to let go.

  The Mr. Crowley song is playing in the dungeon, just to annoy the female prisoners and make them feel more uneasy. The ominous tune is playing on an endless loop, while the girls walk around in a melancholic circle, as if playing musical chairs without the chairs. As Ozzy Osbourne’s voice reverberates throughout the clandestine lair, Dawn and her friends look like zombies as they sluggishly move to the Metal music. It was almost the stroke of midnight, and the moon was distinctively peculiar that night. The full moon had two crescent moons on either side of it, as if their backs were leaning against the center moon.

  “You’re a long way from the reservation, honey,” one of the thuggish brutes joked, as he threw a bowl of expired dog food at Dawn’s face.

  The red dwarf appeared again, this time while Dawn was still awake. The other girls didn’t appear to see him, which made her wonder if she was just daydreaming. The malicious guards ridiculed and mocked her, relishing how she looked with wet dog chow
on her face. Dawn, however, failed to hear their laughter or even acknowledge the assault, as she was too distracted by the sinister phantasm that she, and only she, could see.

  “Who are you?” she asked him, demanding to know his name.

  “Nain Rouge,” he answered.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked, now that he was finally answering her and acknowledging her questions.

  “Feu follet,” he replied, still refusing to communicate with her in a way that she could understand, knowing full well that she didn’t know any French.

  “Feu follet?” she repeated in the form of a question.

  “Ta mort,” he said, grinning slyly from ear to ear.

  Cheri finally reaches her destination of San Francisco, but as she does, her journey takes a whole new turn. A wormhole appears directly in front of her, just as her Van crosses over the California state line. Before she can do anything about it or even process what she’s seeing before her, she drives them right through it.

  This isn’t like being caught in the middle of a tornado, but instead was no more complicated than walking through a door. As soon as they came out on the other side, a newspaper conveniently blew onto their windshield. Cheri hit the brakes and stopped the van. She gets out and finds the newspaper, which was now laying on the asphalt of a parking lot.

  “Well, what do you know?” she said aloud to herself, as she read the date on the paper. “Son of a bitch.”

  Rather than be propelled to a parallel universe, the portal served as a time warp. Cheri and Wolf find themselves losing an entire year, in the blink of an eye. On the positive side, not only does this wormhole carry them a full year into the future, but it takes Cheri’s van to the precise place they need to be. She is shocked to discover that the location of Dawn’s captivity is none other than a battered women’s shelter.

  “Of course,” she said aloud, as she parked her Van. “It would be something like this,” she added, shaking her head. “Well, do you want to come, Wolf?”

  Wolf looked at her with his head cocked to the side, as if to convey to her that this was a stupid question.

  “Well, alright then,” she said, scratching the top of Wolf’s head. “Let’s kick some ass and go get our Dawn back.”

  Wolf growled and snarled to let Cheri know that he was beyond ready. They walked up to the doors, only to find that they were heavily constructed and secured.

  “Well, shit, Wolf. It looks like they have this place locked up like Fort Knox. I guess that makes sense though, huh?”

  Wolf just looked up at her and whimpered, as he was as discouraged as she was about not being able to break in. Cheri would have busted her way through, but she wasn’t blessed with the hidden muscle that Dawn had. She could have set the doors on fire, but not without the arson causing too much attention. Cheri did, however, have other ideas at her disposal. She and Wolf hid behind a dumpster, which was off to the side of the lot, and waited patiently for someone to either come out or go in. After staking the place out for about an hour, they finally spot a woman approaching the door. As she’s taking out her keys to let herself in, Cheri taps her on the shoulder. Turning around, the woman sees Wolf, who is bearing his teeth and looking at her like she’s an appetizer. The startled woman quickly fidgets with her keys, trying to find the right one, but in her nervousness, she drops them on the ground. Cheri sticks her hand out in front of her and wiggles her fingers, using telekinesis to bring the keys up to her palm. The employed woman watches this happen, and freaks out in a panic.

  “Jesus Christ!” she screams, backing up against the doors and placing her hands against the bulletproof glass, as if doing this will somehow magically protect her from inevitable harm. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “This is a women’s shelter, isn’t it?” Cheri asked, rhetorically. “Shelter me.”

  “Are y-you an abused w-wife?” the stuttering lady asked, trying desperately to catch her breath.

  “Well, something tells me you people know a lot about abuse, don’t you?” Cheri said, as she stared into the woman’s eyes and could see the dark secrets that she was keeping. “This place is a front, isn’t it? You’re destroying girls underneath this piece-of-shit property, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about?” the woman lied, trying to save herself by denying the truth that was clearly exposed.

  “Oh, I think you do. I think you’re holding our friend down there, which is unacceptable and unforgiveable,” Cheri said, as the scared lady saw her eyes literally turn to flame for just a millisecond. She saw how furious Cheri was, and saw her open mouth drool saliva that sizzled when it struck the ground.

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” the woman pleaded, realizing that she was dealing with something supernatural. “I’ll do anything you want,” she begged, while Cheri had to keep her hand on Wolf’s cold nose, just to stop him from leaping on the woman and ripping her to shreds.

  “First,” Cheri began, “you’re going to show me which key opens these doors, and then you’re going to take us where we want to go. Do what I tell you, and we just might let you live,” she fibbed, having no intention on letting her or anybody else walk away from this despicable den of iniquity.

  When Cheri and Wolf find Dawn, she and the other girls wreak of feces, body odor, and urine, are covered in bruises, and are visibly dehydrated and malnourished. Though they had a toilet in their cell, they were never provided with any toiletries or ways to clean themselves. The lovestruck Cheri stretches out her arm and magically materializes a bullwhip in her hand. The whip is made of fire and has a triangular tip, like a devil’s tail. Throwing her arm back, she mercilessly and aggressively takes out her unhinged wrath on the slave traders for daring to subject Dawn to such atrocities. She loses both her short temper and her disturbed mind as she violently assassinates each and every one of the human traffickers, execution style.

  Boner sees what’s happening and starts to run towards Cheri with fury and indignation, but is quickly stopped short by her whip, which catches him around the neck and instantly incinerates his skull.

  “Noooo!!” Dawn shouts, as she sees this happen. Though she is grateful to Cheri for coming to her rescue, she is both devastated and disappointed to see her take out Boner. This was something that Dawn had been longing to do herself, on her own, for so many reasons.

  While Wolf continues to do his part in contributing to the massacre, Cheri uses her fiery bullwhip to open the six cells that are holding female victims, beginning with the one holding Dawn and her friends. Cheri’s devilish whip slices right through the iron bars and the locks that hold them. Dawn takes a handful of the blood spatter and applies it on her face like war paint, before joining in on the fun, killing the last two traffickers with her bare hands. She even uses her jaws to scalp both of them, which she then proudly holds above her head and yells out a victory cheer in her native tongue.

  Just then, an oblivious Muslim woman casually enters the room, who was the obedient wife of the steroid-pumped goon that had tormented Dawn for the duration of her forced stay. The woman strutted, in her pride and prejudice, wearing clothes that made it clear that she had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Dawn miraculously and instinctively leaps on Boner’s widow, pinning the rich reprobate to the ground. Dawn had gone completely bananas, by this point, and chose this particularly offensive individual to go ape-shit on.

  “I’ve had enough!!” Dawn screamed, almost incoherently, as white saliva foamed from the corners of her mouth. “How the fuck can you embrace such a heinous religion?! You like how Islam endorses genital mutilation?! Have you done that to your daughter yet?!” she asked the thug’s widow, hypothetically, not knowing if she and Boner even had any children. “How about you? Did that ever happen to you?! Let’s see, shall we?” Dawn’s sweet and sensual voice had suddenly become deep and dark.

  Dawn used her razor-sharp claws to slice and dice through the consort’s heavy layers of fabric, until she ha
d carved a path to the woman’s bushy, pubic region. Shoving her hand inside the missus’s humid vagina, she continued reaching until grabbing hold of her cervix. Yanking it out of her, she threw the destroyed body part off to the side, as the mutilated Arab woman screamed in indescribable agony and unnerving terror. Dawn’s strength was nonexistent, but she refused to pass on this opportunity to maul and mar this woman, especially since Cheri had already disposed of the one responsible for Julie’s ultimate and unfortunate doom.

  “Oh, wait,” Dawn said, in second thought, “that’s right. You mutilate those little girls, so they can never experience pleasure. Sorry, I removed the wrong piece.” With that, Dawn grabbed the top of the woman’s pussy and brutally ripped off her clitoris. She then held it up in front of the woman’s face, so she could see it, as she slowly but surely bled to death.

  “Qabul,” the woman said softly, before closing her eyes forever. Once the woman passed out from shock, Dawn inserted the Muslim’s bloody, vaginal flesh into the woman’s mouth, and then got up from off of her.

  The other girls were frozen in horror, having watched Dawn rip Boner’s wife to shreds and tearing off each limb as if they were rotisserie chicken legs. They saw their friend’s blue eyes turn pitch black and her beautiful brown hair turn snow white. Dawn’s progressive transformation, that was once only visible to her, had escalated and graduated to public perception.

  “Holy fuck,” the Bible-loving Karen said, in total shock.

  “The Egyptians believe in a god they call, Khepera, who they claim is a moon god of transformation. They say he has the head of a scarab,” Claire shared her book knowledge.

  “Those Egyptians sure are intelligent, aren’t they? They definitely got the gender right and the beetle part right,” Teri noted sarcastically, as Dawn was anything but those things.

  “Actually, the Navajo call her, Estsanatlehi,” Dawn corrects, smiling again for the first time in a long time, and showing off her blood-stained teeth.