Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  Margaret extended her hand, coin purse offered in return, “You and your ghosts are so worried about someone who wants to kill you, you never noticed someone who wanted to steal from you.”

  The surface of San Francisco was a thrusting current of progress, but underneath all the fresh construction, fishmongers, dock workers, and whores, there was an even deeper array of magic currents that wound up and down the streets. Ripe with curious danger and ringing lust, this place was alive in its own way. Ghosts clamored with the living, and creatures Margaret had never seen outside of Maggi’s old books lurked in shadow. She could understand why Modus Vivendi kept their headquarters here, and not Stockton.

  “I’ll pay attention.” Ramona nodded.

  Finding The Beast was easy. By the time Margaret and Ramona came into view of the eastward San Francisco coast, it towered perhaps four hundred feet above the city. There was a quiet belonging that it exuded. Margaret’s eyes didn’t pop out of her head, her jaw didn’t drop, it simply felt as though the monster had always been a part of the city and always would be.

  San Francisco was a small city, less than ten miles ocean-to-bay. It was mid-afternoon before the two women stood in its shadow. This close, Margaret realized that The Beast was partially submerged in the bay, its legs, perhaps near the knee, were underwater. It was impossible to guess how much taller it would have been on open land.

  Margaret understood that the name was aptly given. The monstrosity was indeed a beast. It was hewn in a shape like a person, as if the sculptor had never known how a person ought to look. The arms were far too long, knuckles licked by cool bay waves. The head erupted like a broken bone from its hunched shoulders, above a pinched, narrow chest. Dreary and loathsome, with a wide maw, crossing nearly shoulder to shoulder, grinning at San Francisco, past her, and into the great Pacific.

  Margaret’s eyes went mad trying to identify all the pieces that bent and shaped it. Wrecked engines, shredded automobiles, varied shards of heavy I-bar. A wheeled excavator seemed to comprise the bulk of its misshapen torso, made of whole broadened blades. Articulated shovels larger than a house bulged from discolored, rusty hands to become fierce fingers. If metal was turned soft and rent apart, shaped, molded, and formed like clay, a god could have perhaps created this creature, a defiant act against natural order. It was a grand mess, dead and cold, a dreadnaught bogeyman, forever laughing at a joke to which only it heard a punchline.

  “The Beast. It could be named nothing else,” Ramona swallowed, her neck craned back as far as her ligaments would allow.

  A series of wooden piers reached out toward The Beast, and metal scaffolds wrapped around its thighs and torso, climbing high on the gargoyle. Enterprising locals had invented an attraction, charging entrance for a chance to climb the dread terror of America’s west, violator of dreams and dominator of the Federal military. Every Imperial knew the stories, knew how city-states laughed in private and said it was easy to conquer a continent if you had The Beast to clear a path for you. Perhaps that was so, but Margaret had watched many a young man die under the pretense of easy.

  Margaret and Ramona paid their dues, a few coins each, and silently hiked up into the wide variety of stairs, rickety superstructure, metal algae and moss for a monument. Grates and steps creaked, and the two witches passed other visitors. Married couples held hands and looked up in reverence. Several teenagers crouched on broken decks and chairs, sketching in detail the grand jumble of wreckage that bound up every square foot. The Beast held nothing in common with any part of the world Margaret had understood before this day, a fairytale manifest, a thousand nightmares made flesh.

  Margaret tugged away her gloves and ran both hands across the exterior. Dusty, sooty, her fingers were black before long. Streaks of grease and memories of flame darkened her jacket and crossed her face like swatches of paint telling a story. She held her forehead against broken axles, tethered sinew, listening to a rhythm of forgotten battles, the screams of those who wept and fell. The metal was full of memories that played together as one dire symphony, falling into a low melody that made her marrow itch.

  Margaret’s flesh puckered with goose pimples at these tastes and sounds, sweat ran down her back no matter how cold it was. She pulled off her yellow coat and tossed it to Ramona before diving in so close that she lay her lips on a spiderweb of safety glass, bent bolts and twisted rebar. She found a ghost, a young soldier who’d been caught in The Beast, a tumbleweed begging to be set free.

  Her kiss released him, and his screams fell quiet.

  Margaret possessed something unique, an extremely powerful empathetic nature. She could tune that power to push the tiniest nerve in the mind of a young street urchin, or she could spread her terrible wings across the field of war and educate thousands on the true meaning of terror. A woman, gifted as such, needed to love sad songs and tragic poems. She needed to revel in chaos, rejoice in the storm and allow waves to consume her.

  That’s what The Beast is, Margaret thought, it was the storm. A gift of total strife, seductive ataxia that whispered all the right dirty words into her ears, clutched at her throat until she giggled, and her breath quickened.

  “There was no way Aurora Owens could have made it up here,” Margaret heard Ramona’s voice behind, tangled in the wind.

  “I wish to the gods I’d come sooner, when she invited me.” Margaret's answer wasn’t for anyone but herself, blackened and filthy hands captivated her, the soot and grease moved like blood and semen as light refused to refract correctly.

  “Armor plate, god of hate.”

  Did Ramona say that?

  Margaret turned from her hands and looked back at Ramona. Her jaw was quivering, her eyes watered from the cold, scarring her cheeks with tears. “What did you say?”

  “I’m scared of heights.” Ramona answered, her voice small in ways Margaret realized could not be her own perceptions. For a moment she hated the young woman, her smooth features and sparkling eyes were as fetid and disgusting as sewage left in the sun to rot.

  “As a child we introduced you to fear, and you became so fluent in the language of terror that you betrayed your friend to die.” Margaret snarled in reply, her voice no longer her own, deep and angry, a painting of hatred that warped the air at her lips. Margaret forced focus upon herself, breaking away, taking control. “Memories. Just memories. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m scared of heights.” Ramona repeated, eyes closed.

  “Let me in,” Margaret nodded, “let me into your mind.”

  Her niece had followed her up these gantries, hundreds of feet above the bay, never uttering a word of protest, never hesitating. Only now, under the weight of heady and dark magic, did she lose her grip. Old things lived here with The Beast, memories of smokeless fire, forgotten kings, and hate that defied all imagination.

  Margaret took a step forward and ran her fingers through Ramona’s hair, skin sparking on skin, barriers surrendering to the touch. It smelt of cinnamon and peaches for a moment and Margaret could step in as easily as she had walked into Ramona’s nursery as a baby, hushing her to sleep when she was sick, calming her after a nightmare. She was older now, and stank of a god, but it was nothing for Margaret to calm her once more, to wrap around her terror and sing it to sleep, a lullaby she saved for her favorite niece.

  “Better?” Ramona’s eyes opened again as Margaret withdrew her fingers. She nodded, slowly, and Margaret turned away from her to gesture at The Beast. “Ghosts of djinn haunt this place. Even faded, they are terrible in their hate.”

  “Someone else is in there,” Free of her fear, free to simply pay attention to her gifts, Ramona could sense the other entity, dreaming, inside the monster.

  Margaret nodded. “That’s old, older than the Ifrit. Older than the oceans, the mountains, older than the gods.”

  “Primordial.” Ramona’s eyes focused far away, and her voice was not quite her own.

  How would you know something like that?

  Margaret turne
d back to The Beast, seduced by the memories of chaos, pressing upwards and onwards, past Ifrit ghosts, toward misshapen shoulder blades. In the recesses of The Beast, dark places no one looked, Margaret could smell cigarette smoke. On broken metal beams and impaled motors, she caught the odor of her cheap perfume; Maggi Lopez wasn’t just lurking, hidden, inside The Beast, her soul slept here, merged with the metal limbs, thin in some places, gluttonous in others. Breathless, close to hyperventilation, further up the metal steps and frame than any tourist dared, Margaret almost collapsed to narrow walk below her. The grates wobbled as she panted, frantic to express herself.

  “Maggi’s soul is bound to this monster. This really is her grave.”

  Ramona closed her eyes, and the air chilled quickly, whistling around The Beast’s wreckage skin. Margaret could feel her chest turn inside out and fought a wave of nausea. She knew Ramona had allowed another in. Allowed, or permitted, she wasn’t sure, but her barriers were long gone.

  “Dirty, dirty girl.” Ramona’s lips parted in a smile, as did her teeth. Her big, brown eyes were windows to a cool, green ocean.

  “Aphrodite.”

  Margaret offered her own smile, but it was disingenuous. Concern pressed at the back of her neck, worry for her niece, as Margaret tried to remember that Ramona had cursed herself with this affliction.

  “You look like an oil spill, and twice as ugly.” Ramona stepped forward, eyes darting and jumping all over Margaret, surveying her, sensing her, pressing deep into her mind.

  “What did my niece promise you?” Margaret’s voice was quiet as she watched Aphrodite move around in the skin of Ramona, the girl she’d helped raise, helped teach, the girl she loved.

  “What do gods always ask for? Eternal service in my name.” Ramona laughed with Aphrodite’s cackle, grinning wide, “Mar-gar-et, it's a big, bold, new world that we live in. I’ve given your little witch power that you’ll never dream of, I’m in her blood, her very bones, she is blessed with favor that you couldn’t fathom.”

  Margaret shook her head, sadness sinking deep in her chest, pulling her words down, a sense of defeat. “Gods aren’t supposed to have that much power, not over mortals.”

  “Who taught you that, Mar-gar-et?” Aphrodite laughed again, falsetto and melodic, rain on a tin roof, “The dead witch who merged with a primordial titan? A time once existed where power knew no limits.”

  Only now did Margaret realize how cold she was, shivering far above San Francisco in the sharp breeze. Something in Aphrodite’s words flooded up through her hands and arms, clutching deep inside her, questioning her very grasp of power, the meaning and nature of it. She didn’t have words to reply, and Aphrodite pressed on, stepping closer with Ramona’s body.

  “Mortals aren’t supposed to command the power of elemental witches, yet they do. You imply that power is an unethical thing. Yet, you control your lovers’ hands across your hips and breasts. How many times have you whispered in their minds, harder, please, harder?” Ramona’s lips dripped a provocative tone, as though her very syllables were delicate fingers that teased at Margaret’s flesh, tweaking her nipples and biting at the soft skin near the back of her neck where auburn-red hair grew thin, “You would command such power, yet deny me the same? Perhaps you are crueler than any god, Mar-gar-et.”

  Margaret trembled at the words, “What the fuck is a primordial titan?”

  Aphrodite narrowed Ramona’s eyes. “Clever apes like you, worship us. We once worshipped primordials. As we gift you power now, so too did they once gift us the same.”

  Something like revulsion ran down the back of Margaret’s throat. Ramona’s body was just feet away, eyes set open to see, lips moving with supple ease. Aphrodite’s words grappled along the nerves of Margaret’s shivering fingers, reminding of her what it felt like to run her hands across the slick conclaves of her own genitalia. It was one thing for Margaret to feel that dark and seductive draw from the body of a prostitute, it was disgusting for her to suffer the same lascivious afflictions at the vibrato of her niece’s voice.

  “I haven’t found the eye yet,” Margaret lifted her cold palms, pressing incongruous desire far from her mind, forcing the subject to change.

  Aphrodite looked bored, “I thought you were trying to crawl back into your mother’s womb down there. I’m sure you’ve got screws and lug nuts shoved everywhere. Maybe even a glass eye.” Ramona’s hand reached out and pointed to Margaret’s chest. She paused, looked down, then reached for her own blouse, black linen oily and torn after her escapades.

  She felt something smooth, rounded, caught at her cleavage. Margaret groped aimlessly for long seconds, fingers pressed down to where her breasts met, and she withdrew exactly what Aphrodite had predicted was there.

  The eye that does not see.

  “Thank you,” Margaret responded, quietly.

  “Your mother’s womb,” Ramona’s voice cackled for a second, and Aphrodite spoke again, raising her eyebrows, “Maggi isn’t your real mother. Do you even know what your mother’s name was? Or do you only remember what she smelled like, after she was on fire?”

  Margaret swallowed hard, fingers no steadier, the eye swallowed up by her fist. Her breathing turned ragged. She had hidden her own worst memories away in a place she could forget. Alone with Aphrodite; however, Margaret had no secrets. Whatever barriers she kept, the goddess had found, and knocked at that door.

  “Not anymore,” Margaret whispered.

  “Your real parents burned on a pyre, Mar-gar-et, and you never even pause to remember them? None of my children are so terrible as to forget me.” There was nothing sexual in the air now, eyes of merciless anger watched from Ramona’s face. Aphrodite needed to do nothing more to Margaret than pick on a wound that had never healed, nibbling at her nerves.

  “Don’t wet my cunt and twist a screw, under the flesh of someone I love, when calling me cruel.” Margaret pushed the words through clenched teeth. Her face was covered in sweat and sooty black grease.

  “Someone you love?” Aphrodite smacked Ramona’s lips as if she was checking her lipstick in a mirror, “Our bargain is met, if you love this one, no harm shall come to her. I never promised I wouldn’t introduce you to splendid pain. Cruelty has more flavors than the wind blows, don’t assume us the same.”

  Margaret could smell her mother burning.

  With eyes closed, tight, she did her best to excise the odor, block it far from mind and lock those memories away where they belonged, but it was to no avail.

  Aphrodite pressed the lips of Ramona into Margaret’s and there was a snap of ozone. Perhaps some rogue element of energy that the two witches shared, or just an expenditure of Aphrodite’s capricious nature made manifest. Margaret’s stomach turned up and twisted, the smell of crisp skin prying open her mouth and tangling her tongue.

  When Ramona’s face pulled away, Margaret’s stomach heaved up, bile and saliva running down her lips, hot against chill wind, her throat pulling in quick, successive, contractions.

  “What’s wrong, Mar-gar-et? Ramona isn’t your real niece. That’s only a gentle lie you tell yourself to forget how badly you want your own child.”

  Margaret was unable to answer right away, her free hand groping at her stomach as if she could command it calm, “I found the eye. Why would you do this?”

  If she could still fear, Margaret would have flinched from Aphrodite. Her question bore no weight of presentiment, nor did she beg for mercy. She simply sought to understand.

  How have I angered her?

  Aphrodite shrugged, “Mar-gar-et, Mar-gar-et. This isn’t anger. This isn’t even real cruelty. I told you, we only offer suffering when the lock must turn.”

  Aphrodite stepped out of Ramona’s body, without another word, as if this had explained to Margaret everything she needed to know. She had no threat to offer, no promises to make or deals to broker. It seemed to Margaret as though Aphrodite only wished to see the eye to safety and offer some kind of twisted thank you.


  A thank you that would have broken most people, Margaret thought, bitterly.

  Ramona collapsed a moment later, laying off the side of rusted, steel gantry steps, almost four hundred feet above San Francisco's bay. Her body, a limp sack of produce.

  Trying to keep her safe, Margaret had pulled her a few steps back to lay her down on the flat cat walk. Pressed up next to her, it’d be harder to fall, and her head could rest in the older woman’s lap. This meant Margaret was resting her back on a single, narrow handrail with nothing but the bay behind her, legs dangled over the other side.

  Most people would have found the position terrifying, but Margaret considered it merely comfortable. From this angle Margaret could watch the metal skin of The Beast, running her fingers through Ramona’s hair. Her yellow jacket was gone, as were her gloves. Now the bitter bay wind caught her slick skin and bit hard into her bones, corset and linen blouse offering no warmth.

  Her stomach did not calm, and the memory of Ramona’s kiss became an abject horror that needed to be locked away, just as the odor of her parents’ burning flesh. It wasn’t the physical intimacy, or the scent, that rattled Margaret so badly, it was her own unique satisfaction in the experience. Every ounce of her mind promised this was a hateful thing to be inflicted on her, her body demanded she weep, and cower behind this violation.

  Margaret did not weep or cower. She didn’t hide this feeling. It was a loss of control, an exotic tryst that left her stirred and excited beyond the simple act of fucking.

  A thank you, Margaret repeated, that would have broken most people.

  5:40pm January 17th, 39 Veilfall

  San Francisco, California

  Part of Margaret was there, in the flesh, watching over her niece, shivering.

  Some of her drifted through Ramona’s surface memories, her dreams, and the flavor of her mind, like saltwater taffy. Another part, a very small part, drifted in and out of the world that wrapped around The Beast. Reality had been broken, bent, and betrayed for this monster to walk the earth. There were layers beyond layers to pull apart and pick through. Every mangled component had a story, a collection of memories, shades of the Collapse, a dusty remembrance of a world that came before. Margaret would not have possessed the tenacity, or constitution, to dive so deeply into The Beast, if Aphrodite hadn’t reached into her with uniquely rousing abuse.