Sunday, August 21, 2005

Sacrifice

[Note: The author apologizes beforehand for any irreverence or mentally disturbing images.]

Thunder boomed in the ominous sky overhead, their solemn hymn of fury coruscating from the ethereal darkness above. Flashes of lightning suffused the rolling clouds, bringing their divine yet vindictive illumination upon the swarming masses of sin below. Soon, heaven began it's daily cleansing ritual, its soothing ablution; the gentle collection of angels' soft, silent tears commingled with God's visceral fury, pelting the earth in a torrential storm that sent the rats scurrying down to their burrows, barricading their holes in anticipation of the looming flood. Yet as heaven opened its floodgates, they ran helter-skelter from it, a swarming mass of confused cockroaches running from the heavy crunch of approaching boots that signaled crushing doom. Yes, they ran, into their shelters and hiding-crevices, shivering as they peered out into the lineament of the now-solid grey curtain, evil defiant in the face of this empyreal benison, as if it were some odious waste pouring from the sky.

She glanced out of the window. Indeed, the evil in the hearts of men, she thought, struggled on under the duress of perpetual moralistic revelation, like a gangrenous, pus-filled pestiference that frothed and seeped yellow choler, dying and rotting yet perdurable in anger. She shuddered again, as she adjusted the candles around her again, not because of the thin, silky dressing gown she was wearing, that offered little protection against the raging cold outside, but because of the memories that shook her every time she fell asleep. The lurid nightmares, the perpetual saturnine thoughts, the indolent, gaping wounds that refused to close, the twisted, sadistic faces filled with perverted mirth, laughing, laughing, laughing...

That had been when four years ago. Even now, she had nightmares everyday, of the searing, scarring experience, sometimes sifting slowly in an interminable blur, sometimes coming back in a crystal-clear reflection, as though looking through the mirror of perdition.

Yes, she remembered, she had been fourteen then. An angelic, cheerful little cherub spreading her wings, preparing to fly into the vast, surpassing beyond. Still innocent to the vile filth, the moral turpidity that seethed through the minds of her peers, she was a good Christian girl, brought up morally in the statutes of the Lord. Indeed, she became a model that others aspired to be, popular, beautiful, brainy, hardworking, and kind. She remembered how, she would always be bubbly and enthusiastic, lifting the spirits of the dejected, encouraging the faltering around her. Yes, it had been tiring at times, but she felt then, that as long as she was upright and kind, that God would protect her. It said so in the bible, didn't it? So she continued in her ways, sometimes the pleading supplicant, sometimes the brave leader, always placing herself in a morally incorruptible situation.

Then that fateful day came - when she followed her friends to explore a deserted house; a classic, picturesque house standing on a small hillock, surveying the town where she lived below. It was an unofficial museum of sorts, of queer intricacies and burnished statuettes, of grand halls and devious little nooks and crannies. Creeping through the narrow corridors, marveling at the crystalline faces of the aquiline forms standing watch at the doors, gamboling through the verandahs littered with the yellow and gold of autumn, they felt a new uplifting sensation in their souls, like they could return here at anytime, this simulacrum floating above the ravages of time, and they could find peace and rest. Yet as the evening sky began to descend, her friends slowly drifted back to their faraway abodes, till there were only 4 others left with her, all guys all aged 18.

"Well, shall we go explore that last room we missed out just now? I heard there was some interesting old relic in It." piped her friend. At this, they all eased themselves off the floor of the back verandah, laughing as they strolled lightly back to the last unexplored room.

She opened it with a gasp. It was empty! Nearly, at least. In the middle of the room, there was a single queen-sized four-poster bed. Thin foam mattresses lined the walls. What was this? Certainly the old inhabitants of the house would have removed all these shabby, minimalist personal effects?

Then the click of the lock in the door sounded. She remembered this with a wrenching shudder.

She never had time to put a struggle - they were simply too fast. Before the shock of it had fully hit her, she was bound to the bed by thick ropes. Then she felt a sharp, burning pain, and heard the crack of a whip, just as a thin, red line split open on her porcelain skin. That was when she screamed.

She screamed as they tore her clothes and threw them in a heap, the terror in her mind rushing out in a vocal calumny, aborning in vituperation and rage, yet dying at it hit the soft, calming, caressing mattresses that lined the walls. And she screamed as they ravished her, whipped her, abused her, all the while laughing maniacally, the gleeful, childish toying warped into a perverse, demoniacal rage. The door opened, and six more of their friends entered, chuckling with disturbing, concomitant smiles. They gathered around, and each took their turn, worked into frenzy by the ever-weakening cries from her feeble body, wracked with long red lines that trickled out her now-tainted lifeblood.

She stopped screaming after an hour.

After that, everything was just a haze, a fog, as if an impermeable barrier had been glossed over her eyes. Everyone seemed to be just ghostly apparitions, shifty demons gliding just beyond the field of her vision. And every now and then, one of them would appear in front of her, a monstrous face that spat out absurd obloquies, never luculent, always fugacious. And the perpetual pain in her loins, always throbbing, always shaking, with a sickening warmth and fluidity, that welled up inside, leaving then returning, a nightmarish blur that rolled on like an unceasing horror movie, gripping and never faltering amidst her persistent struggles.

She stopped crying after the third hour. By now, all traces of feeling had evanesced from her icy-cold body. Perhaps this was just a terrible dream, a never-ending limbo, of men entering and leaving the room, The perpetual metallic click of the door opening and closing seemed as a clock, counting down the agonizing seconds to the end of this surreal dream, this garish tapestry.

Yet the end never seemed to come - or perhaps it was simply that as her tormentors slowed down, she was too traumatized to remember, and the end of the physical ceremony of her disgrace melded silently into the rippling, repulsive mental aftershocks. Did she sleep? She could not recall - only an empty gazing, at the bare whites of the ceiling, of the shimmering shadows cast by the wind slowly blowing the crystals of the overhanging chandelier. Yes, now she remembered, the chandelier. She had stared at each crystal, each chiseled lineament, each looking-glass, and saw herself, herself in different portraits, different times; yes, perhaps simply the madness of the unceasing trauma, but perhaps a spiritual enlightenment, a searing, searching epiphany, that reminded her of the better times, the better times, and still the better times; times where others had not taken her kindness for weakness, times when she was happy, times when she trusted those people close to her. And she realized that those times had passed.

She might have stayed up all night gazing at it, or she might have let her screams ebb into the ignorance of sleep... but they found her the next day, eyes wide open, with a blank, unnerving look, her pale face the epitome of oblivion, of the tabula rasa of insanity, the swirls and eddies of her dried tears still glistening in the light. Indeed, she made no acknowledgement when they untied her, and continued in her unceasing stare when they lifted her off the sordid cushion, stained forever with the malice of perdition.

It was hushed up of course - several of the principal culprits were from great, high-ranking families. Her family raged under the sweltering injustice, but were powerless - what were they, after all, but a simple middle-class family with few connections and even less clout in the high-swirling world of great corporations, of elaborate banquets and majestic fetes? So, just like that, the accused were acquitted, the sinners were forgiven, and irrefutable justice was crushed under the simpering facade of mercy and the frailties of circumstantial evidence. Not forgetting, of course, a small token of appreciation to the judge and jury involved, to the tune of a few hundred thousand apiece. But, of course, each family having a combined net worth of over 3 billion, they could easily afford it.

But all this while, she lay painfully oblivious to all this, with the same expression etched permanently into her face, exploring the nuances of the ceiling while the events re-ran in her head, a tragic serenade singing its saturnine melodies over and over again, alternately laughing and crying. She wasted away like this; her smooth porcelain skin turning sallow and weathered, while the scars of her whipping etched themselves over time, growing larger in mockery of her recovery.

Then one day she awoke from the stupor in the middle of the night, as if rising from an eternal slumber and finding the world in different hues, a warped paradigm of old days and fond memories. She picked up the newspaper and perused it. What day had it been? She could not remember. All she recalled was the headline that was splashed in bold across the cover...

"Accused rapists acquitted on insufficient evidence"

She dropped the newspaper, and the horrors of her dreams came rushing back at her like a torrential wind, knocking her off her feet and onto the cold, hard ground. Slowly getting up, she walked over to the reception counter, picked up a paper cutter, and walked silently back to her bed. Lying down, she slit her wrists and solemnly prayed for death.

The official report was that she was clinically dead for 5 minutes. Then again, who could tell how long 5 minutes was in the afterlife? She thought that she had seen the gates of heaven open wide for her, but only to be snatched away as she had reached its' doorstep. A short stint in the ICU had brought her back to life, and an inexplicable longing to return to her irrevocably shattered life had restored her to her original fiery state.

She shook herself back to the present, to realize she had been sobbing again. Life had never been the same again - oh yes, she had managed to scrape through school, even acing the final exams, but all her friends, if she had any real ones to begin, noted her unbridled distrust for everyone and everything, and the seething anger that burned in her heart, against God and against man, against the wiles of the world and its’ lascivious intricacies. Oh yes, she had often dreamed of revenge – that is when the horrors of the day took a sabbatical from the torment of her spirit – but that would only have brought her down to their level, would it not? She had kept telling herself that, all the while knowing she was only afraid of the repercussions of such an act, and perhaps, afraid of the demons of hell that would inevitably come for her after her unforgivable sins. So she had let her anger wax and wane, yet it had always accumulated, always frothed forth, and she had always had problems keeping it under control. But what were a few anger management issues? She was determined to succeed at life, to beat them at their own game; and it was this passion that had consumed her for the past 4 years of her life.

She glanced up at her bible on the shelf and scoffed. She had not touched it after her brush with death. It was thick with the dust of the ages, rank with the filth of the world, invariably unkempt and bug-ridden. And she stared at all the religious literature she had accumulated, all in varying states of disrepair, but more or less in the same condition as the book from which they drew their sacred origins. All untouched, all unused. Below it sat three shelves of what she liked to call “alternative religions”, though they were mostly composed of Wicca literature and other occult texts.

Staring around the house, she marveled at how her life had changed even within just the past few months. It had started, of course, with her coming home with a pentagram tattooed on her shoulder, with devilish platitudes such as “diabolum omnia vincit” and “amor e morte” carved into the ring of the pentagram. She had not argued, nor protested; she simply packed her bags and moved into her grandmother’s place, a quaint little villa in a forgotten secluded area of town. Here, at least, she could practice her summoning rituals and archaic mantras with peace and serenity, cut off from the sanctification of her parents and the ingrained holiness in her old house. Yes, in this little niche, she could gaze through her window at the cruel world outside, yet remain blissfully safe and protected within the embrace of her spiritual companions; she could glance at the numinous sun outside and yet swirl seamlessly within the mists of her séances, her calming, soothing aromas and meditations.

But time was short now – it was close to midnight already. Bringing out a ram’s head, she placed it at her feet, and then rolled up the carpet to reveal the cold stone floor beneath.

Carved deep into the floor, with the precise handiwork of many a skilled stonemason, was an intricate symbol; the combination of a ram’s head enveloped in a pentagram, with runic inscriptions encircling the entire five-point star. Dragons and harlots filled up the spaces between the circle and the five point star, representing the honoring of strength in infernal fire, the amassing of sinful wealth, as well as the lustful pleasures of the flesh, and the seduction in corrupting filth. In the middle was the enema – the symbol of Satan – pointing its’ unnerving, eyeless gaze up to the stars above, the fingers pointing to hell below, ever waiting, ever heralding the kingdom of its’ vain, beautiful and apocalyptic master.

The clock showed ten minutes to midnight. It was time to begin.

She threw off her dressing gown and drew back the curtains. Immediately, a flood of clear, bright moonlight, amplified by the special crystals in her window, rushed into the room, illuminating her milky-white body. Yes, four years of torment had irreparably shattered her spirit and torn her soul asunder, but gazing at her thin, aquiline nose, her high furrowed cheekbones, her crystalline, well-defined jaw, as well as her large, doleful eyes, filled with innumerable sadness that was at once haunting yet tearfully perfect, one could never tell the terrors that plagued her young, virginal mind. She unfurled her hair, and all at once, the silky ebony curtain fell, shimmering, swishing and rippling in the invisible wind. Now, even as she gazed at her naked body, she ran her smooth, lyrical fingers slowly and deliberately across the scar on her right thigh, a long and thin inscription on the Florentine marble of her skin, the first of three painful whip-scars that had remained stubborn and indurate since that unforgettable day. As if on cue, the second scar, a thick engraving on her porcelain shoulder hidden under the lines of the pentagram tattoo, began hurting, as if in solemn yet violent protest of the travesty of the trespassed. She clutched the scar, and let a single tear fall. It landed, as if by some invisible guiding hand, on the final scar, a curved, sickle-shaped trail that stretched from her right breast to the lower side of her left ribcage, and ran the length of the scar, a soothing salve that brought her out of her reverie.

But the ritual had to continue. Bringing out a small flask, she anointed the ram’s head with a little blood – her own blood, culled from her veins about a week ago. Then she kissed the head, and placed it before her as she knelt down and poured the rest of her own blood over her head. It was only a pint – not a great deal, indeed, but it ran in viscous rivulets, down the front of her face, down the white furrows of her back, down the smooth, rolling curves of her front, in between her legs, pooling below her lissome, nymph-like figure. Spreading out, the blood ran through the carvings on the floor, filling up the ram’s head with a devilish red, embellishing the hoards of the dragons and satiating the lusts of the harlots, and empowering the fist of the enema. Finally, she poured a flagon of ram’s blood into the five-pointed star, filling it to the brim, The blood ritual was complete; the silvery red of the menagerie of emblems testament to the outpouring of life, of sacrificial worship to the prince of the air. Then she began praying, even as the moonlight slowly, surely, yet inexplicably waned.

“Prince of the Air, hear my call!
Answer my prayer, aid my fall;
Unto your lusts I prostrate myself;
Into your hands, deliver my wealth.

Diabolum Omnia Vincit,
Diabolum Omnia Vincit.

Son of Perdition, I offer my blood
Your statutes to etch upon my heart;
I worship you and wallow in sin,
Forever my soul shall be unclean!<

Diabolum Omnia Vincit,
Diabolum Omnia Vincit!”

A shudder ran through her veins, and as if by some divine prophecy, the moonlight ceased instantly. She knew then, and arose. Pouring a clear fluid into the ring of the pentagram, she took a cup of absinthe and stepped back into the middle of the ring.

Then the bells of midnight began to sound. Suddenly, the clear fluid burst into flames, forming an immolating ring of fire. It was time for the unholy communion.

Clang.

“The dragon will sweep the stars out of heaven.”

Clang.

“He shall be loosed upon the earth.”

Clang.

“He will deceive the nations, Gog and Magog.”

Clang.

“They will meet the armies of God on the plains of Megiddo.”

Clang.

“They will fight in the final battle of Armageddon,”

Clang.

“They will cast God down into the abyss.”

Clang.

“And there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”<

Clang.

“Woe to you, O earth, for the dragon sends the beast.”<

Clang.

“The ram’s head represents your eternal dominion of the earth.”

Clang.

“The cup of absinthe, the new covenant in your kingdom of Babylon.”

Clang.

“In the name of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, Amen.”

Clang.

She drank the cup of Absinthe and kissed the Ram’s head. Immediately, she felt a choking, retching sensation, like something was boxing her in from all sides, and a ethereal, disembodied voice began speaking from around her, from the ring of fire, a terrible, booming, malignant voice, filled with the iniquities of eternal corruption, and tinged with the acrid, caustic smell of fiery brimstone.

“Do you call upon the name of Lucifer?” thundered the voice.

“Yes, I do,” She whispered in a small, feeble voice, suffocating under the immense pressure on her chest.

“Do you forsake your place in heaven eternally, to be my faithful servant?” rumbled the voice.

“Yes, my master.” She squeaked meekly.

“Who has eternal dominion, and what is his kingdom?”

“Satan, also called Lucifer, Son of Perdition, and his Kingdom is called Mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of Prostitutes and of the Abominations of the Earth…”

“VERY WELL!” roared the voice.<

And immediately, the great, pressing weight was lifted, leaving her gasping for breath. Slowly, a figure began to materialize before her.

It was a tall, dark, man, immensely handsome, immensely muscular, with a perfectly chiseled face and body. His lithe, supple skin, radiating a searing, cleansing heat, was shimmering with an unearthly gleam. His rippling, naked body exuded the perpetuating vicissitudes of hard labor, a sculpture of unquenchable lionized strength. Yet his eyes concealed a deathly evil, a demoniacal obsession, and his thin smile revealed a sadistic power, a terrifying totality that made one weak from fear and terror. On his right arm, several bloodstained were visible, yet somehow not of the liquid quality of regular blood – as though they had been magically painted into his arm. Then he stepped forward, and spoke.

“Greetings. My name is Cain. Perhaps you would have heard of me some time ago, the progenitor of this entire cursed race. Ah, yes, you are staring at my arm, the stains of my murder, no less, still fresh as that day, over six thousand years ago. Indeed, I’ve seen my fair share of people come – no, they never go – through hell, and I must say you’ve been one of the first to not throw themselves up in death at the first indicator of recognition. Well. That’s good. My master has sent me to tell you that he wants the souls of all the members of those families he knows you hate so much – every last one, in exchange for a little place in his kingdom. Of course, he will duly protect you as you go about your duty – in little ways, of course.”

Struck dumb by awe and admiration, she could only nod silently as he turned to leave.

But suddenly, he turned back and spoke.

“He tells me I am to guard you. Very well.” Then softly, “I know your pain, your torment. Men have degenerated much over six thousand years, indeed. Perhaps, you need to feel perfection, before you can be whole again.” With that, he embraced her and kissed her firmly on the lips.

Immediately, a fiery heat came over her, a visceral, shimmering sensation that was at once painfully burning and pleasurably tingling. Then it became a calm, soothing warmth that enveloped her in the folds of comfort, letting her drift aimlessly on the by-currents of pleasure. She had never felt this good in her entire life. When the ethereal, somniferous warmth subsided, she found he had already gone.

The following week, a huge furor was created when a bomb exploded on a private jet while it was flying innocently over the vast expanses of the pacific, completely eliminating one of the richest corporate families in the country. This was followed by a neighborhood shooting that targeted a group of 22-year old guys, leaving their bloodied, unrecognizable bodies to fester in the daylight of justice. All this, of course, perpetrated by her, a teenager with an unshakeable thirst for vengeance and a silent fury against all who associated with her tormentors. With a little divine interference, nobody ever saw her infiltration, they never realized the engineer who inspected the plane was carrying an unusually large tool bag which he did not bring off the plane, and they never realized that the shooting was not carried out by one of the 22-year olds who supposedly committed suicide after he shuffled his fellow mates off the mortal coil.

And lastly, the last family always went to confession on Saturday evenings. It was a simple matter to find them.

Sitting now on the front pew of the deserted church, she went over the thoughts in her mind, all the while staring at the image of Mary, at the immaculate conceiver, at the father of the God she had fallen so far away from. A pang of guilt began to thaw in her cold, frosty heart. Why was all of this necessary? She thought that she had told herself not to stoop to their level that other time, she had vowed to keep her head up, and beat them at their own game, but where was she now? Just a common murderer, yet undiscovered by the law. She knew, she knew, that the inevitable finality was that she had to go down to die. Murderers, drug dealers, even, (she shuddered at the thought) rapists; was she no different from them? Had she come all this way, these four years of rebuilding her life, strength to strength, simply to waste it all now, or later even, in a mad blaze of ignominious glory? Fingering the gun inside her jacket, she began to cry; great, heaving sobs wracked her petite frame even as the weight of her sins began to weigh down on her. It was the place, the holiness, and the merciful countenance of Mary, which began to crack her indomitable spirit.

Suddenly, a strong, powerful hand embraced her, and a dulcet, mellifluous voice came from the distance, easing her out of her spiritual reverie.

“Don’t cry, my dear, don’t cry. I know why you feel terrible, because you’ve no one to turn to. I felt that way often in my long time below; after all, all my relatives were snugly holed up in heaven above, while I was raging in fire below.”

It was Cain.

“This is your last task, he promises, and I promise you, when you come to Hell, you can serve him as my wife.”

Glancing up at him from her tearing eyes, she saw no more malice, no more eviscerating terror, only a warm countenance that smiled gently and lovingly at her. So she decided.

Screwing on the silencer on her gun, she drew aside the confessional entrance, to the surprise and dismay of the priest within. Phut-phut-phut. As the priest slumped dead to a side, she stepped into the box, repositioned his body, and waited for her quarry to arrive. Soon, the clatter of footsteps resounded in the empty hall outside

The grille slid open. She composed her final thoughts.

“Forgive Me, father, for I have –“ Phut.

Worth Killing For...

She exited the box, and saw the entire family sitting on the front pew, with their customary bodyguards. Taking them by surprise, half of the 10-member family was dead even before the security had a chance to draw their weapons. As she riddled the other five with hot lead, she felt the dull roar of the security guards’ weapons, as a hailstorm of metal pinned her to the wall. She spat up a cough of blood as she crumpled to the floor.

Worth Dying For...

She closed her eyes, and the pain subsided. As she opened them again, she saw Cain standing over her, his virile, powerful arm extended in a inexpressibly loving gesture. Behind him, she saw the rising fires, frothing forth in devilish madness as the smoke of burning carcasses filled the air. A pleasant, putrid stench that winded its beautiful aroma around her, uplifting her spirits as she marveled at this kingdom of Babylon. Taking Cain’s hand, she arose and walked up the path of tormented souls, relishing the interminable screams of agony and wails of torture, to the foot of Lucifer’s Throne.

Worth Going to Hell For.

The Dragon lays down on his hoard; peace, at last.






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