Midian Unmade (22 page)

“They are taking care of us. We help them, they help us. It's better than what Boone or Narcisse are doing for us right now. What do you expect from us? A growing boy has to eat!” Leroy laughed and rubbed on his ample belly.

“Shut up. Do not speak in front of the master!” the priest hissed at them and the two retreated to the shadows of their cages.

“No need for that, Ashbery,” Decker said to the deformed priest. “Yes, Kaleb, they did in a way turn their backs on their kind, but only after they were left to fend for themselves. The cruelties of the world would have killed them if I hadn't come along and offered to assist them in exchange for their help. But that is neither here nor there at the moment. This is about you now. Are you ready to live up to your namesake and become my loyal dog?”

“Why would I help you?” Kaleb growled.

“Why wouldn't you? I'm offering you a spot at my feet as I rise above man and God.” Kaleb laughed at that and Decker sat upright, clenched his fist as though he was about to strike. “You think that's funny?”

“How do you plan on rising above God?”

“I will let the Nightbreed reform, use you to help them. Once they have done so, created a new haven, a new Midian, they will call forth Baphomet. And that is when I will strike and kill their god. When I have drained the life from a living god, what will that make me? A killer of gods? A god in my own right? The heavens will fall for me and I will rise up as the new prophet, the new master of earth and heaven.”

Decker stood up from his chair and took off his suit jacket. Kaleb watched as he opened his blood-soaked shirt and revealed the horrors underneath. Decker's skin had turned gray since his death, with veins of green rot which snaked across the necrotic flesh. The stomach area had been undone with a knife once and still lay open, wet with blood and hungry insects that swirled in the dark abyss. Decker reached inside the opening; his hands dug deep and made wet, smacking sounds as he probed. Kaleb felt sick as he watched, and it became worse when Decker pulled his hand out. Clenched in his fist was dangling meat. The foul smell of the dripping chunk found Kaleb and he wanted to puke.

“But every master needs his dogs. Every prophet needs his disciples. Every god needs his followers. This, Kaleb, is my body and my blood.” Decker took the bloody mess that had come from his spoiled insides and jammed it into Kaleb's mouth. Kaleb choked and gagged on it, but Decker pushed it deeper inside him until he was forced to swallow.

The vile meat slid down his throat, and Kaleb was sure he could feel heat emanate from it, burn his insides as it went down. It didn't slide down as much as it felt as though it had small insect legs that crawled deep into him. He thrashed against the chair and the men that held him until suddenly a sort of peace fell over him; a calmness that seemed like a drug-induced relaxation. He thought that it must be how people on heroin feel.

“There. Isn't that so much better?” Decker asked as he sat back down. “You two can let go of Kaleb, my loyal dog.” The men let go and Kaleb sat limp in his chair. He smiled at Decker, blood and saliva drooled down the front of him, and behind Decker, Ashbery laughed and clapped his hands. “Come here, Kaleb, and sit at my feet, where you know you belong.”

Kaleb obeyed him and lay down on the stage in front of Decker. He nuzzled his face against his feet and licked the soiled leather shoes of his new master.

“Tomorrow we will find you a nice collar,” Decker said, and stroked Kaleb's head. “Something special that will suit you. After that, we will find the rest of the Nightbreed and their god and show the heavens the face of their new lord and savior! Oh how the angels will weep.”

 

CELL OF CURTAINS

Timothy Baker

Ozlet had secluded himself in his box, weeping, since they had hit the road. Beside him on the couch, Manda sighed. No coaxing would bring him out when he was like this, not even to enjoy the semiarctic air whipping around their small room in the back of the bus. The air-conditioning was new and worth every dollar she had saved posing as Mistress Miranda, the Amazing Oracle.

She stretched out along the couch, naked and lithe, her ivory skin glowing in the near dark. Through the parted curtains and the deep-tinted window, she watched the rain-heavy clouds roll and pass; the sound of the tires hissing through the rain made her eyes heavy. The cool air erected her nipples and she half dreamed of a man between her legs, writhing and satisfying her.
Feeding
her. It had been far too long and both hungers were growling. Her fingers combed through her white and sparse pubic hair. She would have gratified herself then and there had the fantasy not popped like a pin-poked balloon at Ozlet's loud, wet-sounding whimper.

Manda wasn't glad for his sadness; quite the contrary. She would give anything to take away his pain, but that wasn't possible. No one could. It was his to bear, even though it was pain stolen, belonging to some other soul now walking the world of day, grateful they no longer carried it, some memory of loss, shame, guilt of act or omission handicapping them from a better life. Ozlet had taken it from them, absorbing the soul-breaking emotion upon himself, at great cost to his body. He was stronger than anyone Manda had ever known.

Still, he wept.

For Manda—who had never cried—it was if he was crying for them both. The two of them had lost much: their friends, their home, their security, their
family
. A cataclysmic attack on their tomb-roofed home had sent them fleeing into the night, their companions scattering to the four winds. Refugees of the fallen Midian she and Ozlet were now, each all the other had left, torn from the cool embrace of family, hiding in plain sight among human freaks. Those who had once ruled the night lived in fear of discovery now even in the cloak of darkness.

Weep for me, dear one,
she thought,
and for the children of the moon.

The bus shook. Its worn shocks could barely hold them up let alone take a shallow pothole. Up front, beyond the curtains that kept them away from the burning light of the sun, someone cursed. It was Serge and he sounded drunk. When he was sober, his accent was light, but drunk he sounded as Russian as Khrushchev.

Come to think of it, he sounds like Khrushchev most of the time.

They hit a hard road bump and the back of the bus lifted and landed with a rattle, sending Manda's open suitcase to the floor. Ozlet's curtained box would have toppled to the floor had Manda not caught it with her foot. In a high-pitched voice, Ozlet cursed too. Manda sighed and sat up, bending over to pick up what few clothes she had, and tossed them into the suitcase.

She said, “Are you all right, my love?”

“Do I sound all right?” said the voice from the box.

Manda arranged her clothes, pressed them down, and closed the suitcase.

“No. Of course not.”

A deep sigh from the box. “I'm sorry, my dear. Not a good day.”

Manda stretched back out and laid her arm across her forehead. “I understand. I always do.”

“Yes. I don't know what I would do without you.”

“You would die.” It wasn't true, but she said it anyway, not wanting to add to his pain. “As would I without you.”

She could survive without him, of course, but the thought of parting never crossed her mind. Lovers since the Great War Between the States, they had never been separated. Ozlet had saved her from a burning stake, coming out of the dark and sending the mob to their knees, wailing and sobbing from unknown emotions. Her hair wilting and naked skin bubbling, she watched him walk through the flames, untouched, tall, lean, and as handsome as Stonewall Jackson. As he cut her bindings, he said, “You need to be more careful.” He carried her in his arms through the fire, through the weeping mob, and deep into the forest, where he laid her down and healed her of her wounds with his touch. And later, when he saw her suffering past, he took that too. From then, they loved with the gravity of the earth and the moon.

There was a price to pay for his power and he had been too generous. Now he was a quarter of the man he was then, hiding in his curtained box. Though he was unable to satisfy her needs, she did love him with all of her soulless heart and would never leave him. But she
did
have needs, powerful and compelling.

A flash of lightning outside the window lit the room, making Manda flinch. She stood and moved to the shadow beside the open curtains and sat next to Ozlet's box. She slipped her hand between the slim parting of the box's vermilion drapes. A diminutive, fingerless hand lay in her palm, petting, too small to hold her hand.

“You are so beautiful,” Ozlet said.

She closed her eyes and rested her head back.

“I know. Thank you, my love.” Cool lips graced her palm. She felt his breath as he spoke.

“We need to get out of here. It's hell.”

Manda squeezed his hand, swallowing it up in her fingers.

“But where would we go?”

“Somewhere. Anywhere but this circus.”

A small smile passed across her lips. “It's not a circus, my dear. Far from it. It's a traveling freak show.”

“It's fucking traveling hell.”

“That may be so, but it's a hell where we can belong for a time.”

Ozlet made a spitting sound. “They're Naturals, no matter how freakish they make themselves or pretend to be. We just blend in here.”

“Precisely.”

The roar and the wind from a passing semi made the bus shake and swerve. Even with the noise, Manda could hear socked feet, meant to go unheard, hiss and stop outside the curtains.

“These
freaks,
” Ozlet said, “will turn against us too, eventually. Once they realize we aren't like them at all,
real
freaks.
Monsters
. You do realize that?”

Manda pulled her hand from the box and stood, taking her black silk robe from its hook, and slipped it up her arms. She didn't have to look to know there was an eye peeping between the room's curtains.

“That may well be,” she said as the roar of the truck faded ahead. She pulled her robe open, pretending to adjust it across her shoulders as the watching eye widened.

She leaned over, closed the window curtain, and said, “Can I help you, Brigid?”

A suck of air beyond the curtains and the eyehole closed.

Manda tied her robe. “Come in, Brigid, I'm decent.”

The curtains parted and let in a bit of cloud-filtered sunlight before Brigid filled the gap and passed through, snapping the curtains shut. Manda made a calm yet quick step back from the brief light that hit the floor. The sound of Ozlet's box curtains closing whispered in the dark.

“Sorry. Sorry,” Brigid said.

For Manda, the dark was a cloudy day for Naturals, the world alit and bathed in blue-grayness. Brigid looked in her direction, unseeing, one hand holding the curtains shut and the other up as if feeling for something approaching. Dubbed the Girl That Plays with Fire, Brigid was young for a Natural, in her early twenties, but a toddler to Manda and Ozlet's years. She was spotted with mad tattoos about her arms and legs, wearing a plaid miniskirt and too-tight bodice that lifted her smallish breasts to eye-catching domes, and head-shaved and sporting metal piercings around every sense-catching skull hole. A row of black spikes adorned in a line the center of her scalp. She never dressed down, even in their downtime, always in character. Manda knew Brigid felt like a freak, and expressed it on her exterior, but inside she was just a scared little girl Natural. And Manda thought she was beautiful.

“Well? What is it?” said Ozlet.

Manda felt Brigid's nervousness at being caught. “Oh. Uh. Um. Not much. Really. It's just—”

Ozlet huffed. “Damn, little girl. Spit it out.”

“Don't mind him,” Manda said, “his hiss is worse than his bite. Go on, Brigid.”

A nervous giggle and Brigid said, “Oh. Yeah. Sorry Ozlet. It's just that—” She paused, grasping for something to say. “Gosh, it's dark in here. How do you stand it?”

“Excuse my rudeness,” Manda said. “I'm,
we're
, so used to it. And I don't know how you run flames across your skin and swallow it. I'm terrified of fire. I would burn to a crisp.”

Manda watched her blush in the dark. “Oh. Well. Thanks. It's nothing. Doesn't hurt or nothing. I like it. Kind of a turn-on.” Another giggle.

Manda reached into her robe pocket and put on her Jackie O sunglasses then pulled the high hanging chain. The fluorescent light above flickered on.

“Is that better?”

Brigid blinked and stared with girl-crush eyes. In the harsh light, Manda's skin seemed to emit its own. Brigid's eyes fell to the wide opening of Manda's robe and her deep cleavage. Manda pulled the robe only a bit closer and tilted her head, enjoying the sudden lusty taste in the air.

Brigid blinked again, her eyes cutting away only to come back. “It's just—”

“You said that already,” Ozlet said.

As if brought out of a dream, Brigid jerked, and looked to the box.

“Right. Um, we'll be at the gig site in about an hour. It's gonna be big. All night heavy metal and all day tomorrow. Separate Souls are headlining then. I
love
Separate Souls. They kick ass. You like them?” She looked to Manda, as if trying to see behind the midnight sunglasses. “A carnival too. Is what Will told me. Another couple of hours and the sun will be down.”

The Girl That Plays with Fire looked down at her feet. Her high-heeled boot pivoted on its ball. “So. Like. You can come out and set up. Or hang with me. Or not. You know. Whatever. The first band starts at midnight. We open, of course, at eleven. So like, no hurry or anything.” She looked up at Manda with hope in her eyes.

From the box, Ozlet mocked, “Like,
whatever.
”