The true voice of Aphrodite rippled and vibrated in the humidity of her mouth and mind. Tender and warm as her saliva, it dripped down Margaret’s throat, turning her chest numb and igniting nerves in a bliss that biology had never designed them to endure. Margaret’s ribcage cracked, an imbrued orgasm, she had never felt as defeated as that very second.
She had been a beautiful woman, despite her oddly large eyes and her misshapen shoulders. The scars she wore under clothes, her armor, they were private things shared with lovers, pressing them into open lips and needy teeth. What Amy had done, the destruction she’d wrought, was the fuel that burned hot in Margaret’s nightmares. Her flesh was curled up, crusted, and black, just like her parents, bound before flame, as she was forced to watch them die.
Aphrodite had found her turn screw. This piece of Margaret had been bent up, pressed down, and manipulated once too often. It was now a broken, serrated edge, chewing on needles, hungry and yearning.
Between wakefulness and fantasy, Margaret found herself lost in a dream. Standing before Amihan, on the battlefield, dust sweeping and blinding them both. Guns, artillery, only an echo in the distance. Amihan was panting, her chest heaving under a tank top and plate carrier, her teeth full of blood and one eye swollen shut. Margaret could hear her voice crack as she said; “I lit you on fire, how are you whole?”
Margaret would have enjoyed that above pressing unmarred lips against Townsend’s face. It was a more titillating fantasy than any other, even the notion of trusting someone to hurt her in the ways she liked to hurt, free of the marionette strings. Margaret hated Amihan to the edge of love, and it was beyond her will to say ‘no.’
If pressed; however, Margaret could not have explained why she didn’t say ‘yes.’
Aphrodite withdrew, offering a wink, “The offer is on the table. Think about it, dream about it, scrub up in the bath with it.”
It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? To worship a god?
Margaret was aware that Aphrodite could hear her. She needed to collect her mind again, make it her own, forget impossible notions of bone marrow ejaculate, and center herself as any good witch would. As Maggi Lopez taught her.
Gasping, shoulders heaving as if she’d rolled out from under a lover, Margaret reached down, under her collar of lace and cotton. She pulled free the golden necklace, along with the eye that does not see. “You asked me to retrieve this, to return it to its rightful owner. You never said who that was.”
Aphrodite reached forward and stroked a thumb against the eye. Each time she did, the veins under her body’s flesh turned deep red. The air shifted from brine and venison to something like ozone and sweet flowers she’d never known and could not identify.
“I never said return it. I said you needed to be in possession of it.”
Margaret’s stomach turned. It was worse than starving, or any craving she could imagine. Aphrodite’s voice didn’t change, she wasn’t cruel in a sneering or sadistic way. Her tone was one of affection, and the hint of a throat-weary lust that only demanded love from Margaret.
Love and worship.
Although Margaret had not known fear for decades, she was as mortal as in any in her desires. Part of her imagined Townsend distancing himself, ignoring her advances, just as she dreamed of Amihan’s horror, in discovering her magic had been for naught. She envisioned herself a lonely old woman watching over the Bay Area Reach, hair white and face twisted up, eternally the shape of Plague Dog’s hand.
Margaret was crying. Tears rolled down her face, relentless and warm.
“Well, I possess it now. What do you want me to do with it?”
Aphrodite leaned in toward Margaret, the eye that does not see vanishing into her balled fist, tendons clenching, knuckles pale, the very flesh of her hand translucent, showing bones and ligaments from within. When Aphrodite let go of the bobble, her hand was coated in white and blue enamel, she cast it to the floor with disgust and loathing,
“This was the glamour of a god. The eye was meant to be lost before your ‘Collapse.’”
The eye fell back to Margaret’s chest and milky paint dripped on her gown.
She scooped the artifact up with gentle fingertips. It had been an ovoid concave, roughly an inch across, polished glass with painted details of a pupil and retina. The jeweler had used tiny golden arms to hold it in place. Now, it was a dark brown, like cooked clay, and engraved in central circle from which extended golden threads like rays of sunlight.
Margaret pressed on, “Why hide the eye?”
Aphrodite’s own strange eyes shifted, seas growing rough, tinged in white caps and great waves. She wasn’t angry in any conventional sense, it was more like she was drawing herself up with pride and disgust, “Around your neck you wear the Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta, the Burnt City. A place long dead for your people. Maggi Lopez was taught whispers of their language, she was the last who still rendered their words of power. She didn’t find the Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta, it found her,” the deep voice Aphrodite borrowed made a rasping hiss, and she seemed lost in a distant place, “The Eye belonged to one of my priestesses. A powerful witch and oracle of her time. It bridged the gap between my side of the Veil and yours. The last of such relics, crafted by the fallen general of a dead god, in a time of real magic, when titans yet still walked.”
When Aphrodite finished, Margaret was faint. Those words had stolen breath from her throat, “The creature we saw at Crosstown. You came to warn me for that. Didn’t you?”
Aphrodite never blinked when she visited Margaret, but this time she closed her eyes, still, serene, calm hiding a much greater storm. There was power at the edges of her body’s flesh that warped the very air, black curls lifting, along with her silver earrings and bits of loose lace. Margaret could feel the shift. The Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta floated free from her fingers, along with her own greasy hair of auburn, and the tattered embroider at Aurora’s gown, shaded in dried blood.
The creature who was promised this bobble, is ignorant and blind to its power.
The voice wasn’t in the room, so much as it was in Margaret, under her skin, flowing in her veins and vibrating her organs. It was neither feminine, nor masculine. It had no gender. It was a power that had been molded to form ideas. Aphrodite opened her eyes again, speaking this time with her body’s vocal chords, as if she’d somehow lost control of her physical bounds, her raw power breaking free for just a moment.
“Your mother made bargains with gods and spirits, and this creature believes it is owed the Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta. You will not release it. You will possess it with all your might. You are now it's keeper in this world. Just as Maggi Lopez was before you.”
Margaret’s hair fell back to her neck and cheeks. There was no payment offered for this, and Margaret remembered the words from earlier, “you do what I want, and only what I want.”
“I’ll guard it. From the spirit I saw, or any others.” Margaret laid her palm gently on the Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta. “May I use it? The way your priestess did?”
Aphrodite lifted her index finger and poked it into the window of her own right eye. It passed beyond the flesh eyelids and into distant oceans, “You may, but a sacrifice is required. You would need to lose an eye of your own. Just as Maggi did. What would it matter? You couldn't be any uglier with one eye.”
This made Margaret’s flesh crawl, and she withdrew the Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta, tucking the golden necklace, and trinket, back into her gown. A part of her was curious about the power such a thing must wield, and then she remembered Aurora Cuttersark.
She wonders what it is that an Antecedent whore like me possesses that she does not.
“The Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta. It was part of what powered The Beast.”
Margaret’s words were barely a whisper.
A lascivious smile crept across Aphrodite’s lips, “Mar-gar-et, Mar-gar-et, doesn’t it feel good to exercise that beautiful mind you possess?”
Brassboy Erin Abid by LacticWanda
10:22
am March 8th, 39 Veilfall
Fish Rock, California
Atop a series of rocks that created a westward overlook of gentle hills and cliffs, Margaret could see across the Pacific. Her eyes were fixed at the horizon where the two shades of blue met, a deep oblivion drawing her in, tugging at her hair like a child, demanding she come closer. She wondered where in those depths existed the waters that could be seen through Aphrodite’s eyes.
It was a gorgeous afternoon north of the Marin Headlands. Clouds shifted across the sky, deep grey to the north and silken white above her, so vast and endless that if she had tilted her head back for a while, she’d have felt a sudden rush of falling up. Warm sunlight flowed across her skin; her face, neck, as well as her legs where she’d drawn up Aurora’s gown to mid-thigh. The hem was ripped away now, much of the lace that had been carefully stitched to dark cotton was torn free and tattered. The once sable fabric was now muddled gray and alabaster.
Margaret felt good here, in this place. Running her bare feet through the salty sand, cool water kissing her ankles, free of tightly laced boots and cumbersome socks.
She was in pain, of course. If she twisted the wrong way, she could feel flesh pull and peel like fresh beef jerky, torn in narrow shreds. She could no longer move the fingers on her right arm, nor rotate her wrist. The skin was turning deep shades of purple, and her nails were now black. Margaret did her best to forget this. She knew the arm would need to come off, and likely soon.
Little anxieties nibbled at her mind, like a coyote on rotting carcass. Can I still paint in charcoal with my left hand? Can I learn to write with my left hand? Or will I dictate letters? She wondered how she’d comb her hair, or even pull on a blouse or jacket.
Will Townsend still want a one-arm witch as his paramour?
Disconnected from these thoughts that stirred deep in her heart and spine, Margaret could hear another man approach before she felt him. Only the most disciplined of uninclined minds could hide themselves that way. It required a man to spend decades learning to quiet his thoughts and calm the innate energy that could sully a person, making them noisy enough for a witch to detect.
Margaret did not turn. He approached from the left, and it would have pulled painfully against the ragged remains of flesh on her right shoulder. Instead, she simply tipped her chin down, looking away from the cobalt horizon, listening to him approach.
“You’re the Antecedent witch?” He spoke first, his voice deep, certain, despite a tremor at the edge of his vowels, the kind of tremor that defied a man’s nature, the curse of old age.
“Please, sit with me,” Margaret gestured to the smooth boulder a few feet in front of her. It had been sanded down by a thousand years of wave and brine, protruding from the sand and surf below her feet.
His voice had betrayed him well. He was older, by far, than most people Margaret had met in her life. Lines etched deeply into his face, spots peppered his skin and wispy short hair undulated in the breeze, white like fresh snow. It seemed like his eyes had shrunk in their sockets, or perhaps that his brows had simply overtaken them. Despite that, Margaret could see a predator watching her. He took care to notice her bent and crooked shoulder, the way her back arched, lingering on her plum hand, and finally the line of her thighs.
Margaret smiled at him, as he sat.
“I wasn’t told you were hurt,” the old man grunted, “Curious that an Antecedent comes before me now, with a dead arm.”
Margaret glanced to her fingers, swollen and unwelcome in their necrosis, “I’m no longer Antecedent. I come to you as a House Owens witch.”
“Can’t much trust someone who’ll swap sides, like so much lunchmeat.” The old man’s accent was unknown to her, he used very antique slang, and dressed like an old-world soldier. Faded ACU’s, the pre-Collapse kind, no longer manufactured.
“The choice was made for me.” Margaret slid her left palm across the warm rocks. Calm, she felt as if she was looking upon a great marvel of her mother’s time. The old man’s white beard fell into a tan shemagh, as he worked his jaw, chewing.
“Not my place to calculate your loyalties, I suppose.” He replied.
Margaret offered the man a smile, “Today, I have no secrets to keep. I’ve been told the Maul hates me, the witch who made Aurora Owens kneel.”
The old man with a mind of granite grunted. There was anger there at the edges of his body, the light that escapes a solar eclipse. No matter how disciplined he was, she could still read him, “I suppose you’re Mayhem, then?”
“Call me Margaret, please.”
He watched Margaret for a while, then spit brown fluid to the moist sand at his boots. “Pretty face, Margaret, even with them burns. But those eyes seen some ugly. I suppose you do have secrets. How old are you, about, girl?”
Margaret didn’t shift or really move her head. She couldn’t place her finger on it, or even define it, but there was a familiarity to be found in the old man.
“I don’t know. Older than I look? Probably in my forties, I guess. I’m a Collapse baby.”
The old man nodded, looking down at dirty tobacco juice drying in the sand, “Bad times. Ugly times. Not a place for children, not a place for anyone who had a heart.”
“So, you have no heart?” Margaret offered a chuckle, mildly flirting.
“Not since we shelled the Bay Area.” The old man replied, somberly. She allowed him his silence, knowing full well the dark things that cascaded through his mind. They were at the edges of his eclipse too, scratching and nibbling at his disciplined walls. It was long minutes before he spoke again, “What’s it like? To be a witch, I mean? I never had much opportunity to ask anyone else.”
Margaret clicked her tongue, “How many witches have you known to ask?”
“Ro Owens, a few others. Never just shot the shit. I killed a witch once, but never just sat next to a pretty one with bare feet in the sand. Y'all normally is flame and fear.”
Shot the shit? What does that mean? Margaret skipped that thought and realized he’d also admitted to killing a witch. She answered, “Trade you. I’ll tell you what it's like to be a witch, if you tell me about killing a witch. Good bargain?”
The old man nodded, before spitting again. “Good enough.”
Margaret breathed a long sigh and closed her eyes. As she did, she allowed herself, her soul and energy, to unfurl and spread across Fish Rock. The Maul’s camp, more like a town, was nearby, up the hillside and deep in the trees. “Imagine what it would be like to know all the secrets, all the whispers from ghosts and people around you. You’re connected to the world, every moment, every day, and yet so fucking lonely. No one can really share it with you. Not even another witch. The uninclined make you a fetish, something to worship or rip apart depending on their mood. No one cares if you like the taste of almonds or avocados, they only make themselves so distant that you can forget them if you don’t work at it.”
Or fucked them, Margaret thought, remembering her sketches.
She had shared something deeply private, words never spoken out loud before. The old man reminded her most of her mother’s men, the soldiers of her childhood. The ones who taught her how to skin a rabbit, breakdown and clean firearms. Margaret’s father was long since dead, but she had been raised by many fathers, and the Maul warlord reflected those men.
He smiled at her, not unkind or mocking, showing off a mouthful of discolored and rotten teeth. The old man answered, taking his turn, “I didn’t just serve Ro Owens, I fought with her, back before they built the walls up on Highway 5 and 99. We’d been fighting in Morada, maybe a week. We needed green grass to shake down Stockton. My spotter was dee-oh-ayy and Ro played the part for me. Well, she called a shot and I took it. That shot was a rival witch. Guess I expected a big explosion or that fire would shoot out of her mouth.” The old man became hushed and squinted, “Her skull split open and she was just dead. The end.”
There was roughness between the two and as the old man became more comfortable, s
o too did he begin using more pre-Collapse slang. Margaret struggled to understand.
“Spotter?” She asked.
“Scout Sniper team is two men. Sniper and spotter. They work together.” The old man chewed at nothing again.
“Ohh,” Margaret knew exactly what this was. The Antecedent word ‘sniper’ always meant a team of two, watchman and gunman. “Your watchman arrived, but dee-oh-ayy.”
The old soldier pursed his lips, looked around, and offered a leering grin, “I can’t even blame public schools for this shit anymore.”
“Public schools?” She inquired, more curious than before.
“Don’t worry about it, Sugarlips,” the soldier waved her off, “Bottom line is, not much to tell. I put that witch in my crosshairs and she died like anyone else.”
Sugarlips? Margaret wondered if he was implying that her lips were sweet, or if her lips were white and granular? Concerned, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and looked for dry skin or scabs. She decided that he was complimenting her and smiled back at the old man.
“What was Lady Owens like? In the old days?”
The soldier shrugged, leaned back, and watched the sky for a moment, “Ro had some boy up by old SacTown. Guess they knew each other on the internets, and she’d been by to fuck him the week it all fell apart. They nuked SacTown a day after she got out. Her, some engineers out of Frisco, and my team got isolated on Highway 5. Her boyfriend was a little bitch. Died like a little bitch too. So did the faggot engineers. But Ro? Not Ro. Any kid who can keep up with fucking You-Es Marines, that’s no joke. She was a part of our family by the end of the year, and when she started lighting shit on fire with her mind, well, long story short.”
Long story short? Was it a long story, or a short story? Margaret decided not to inquire. The old man’s language was too distant from her own to understand everything.
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