Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  “How would you do that? Make him this way?”

  “Easy. We contracted with a former Bishop. She calls herself ‘hexengeist,’ and she specializes in the control of spectral manifestations.”

  The same as their last meeting, Margaret could taste salt in Aurora Cuttersark’s wake. Her dark coat of fur powdered with fine dust.

  “I keep hearing that word. Bishop?”

  Lady Cuttersark’s lips pursed as she walked around Margaret, then stood next to her, eyes focused on Erin and Badger who still waited in the dimly lit foyer, “It's what the British call their witches. Who are your little friends? I liked Ramona Lopez better than these two creatures.”

  “The girl is Corporal Erin Abid, my personal escort. The gentleman is a member of my combat fireteam.” Margaret thought better than to introduce Badger as ‘Badger.’ She could feel Lady Cuttersark examining them, probing, winding around their spinal columns and listening to the sound and echo of their mood, all but pressing them for their thoughts.

  “Have you come here for my head, Lady Mayhem?” Aurora Cuttersark answered, cool and quiet. Margaret’s own skin was drying out, and she suddenly wanted to scratch at her throat and chest.

  “If I wanted your head, why would I come to your home? I doubt you’re the only witch to reside here.” Margaret licked her lips, realizing even her Tilapia skin was parched, and took a step away from Aurora Cuttersark.

  “Home?” Aurora Cuttersark laughed, “I don’t live here. No one lives here. This is merely a capitol building. We have a social lounge, the largest arcane library in old America, offices, and public halls for conducting contractual business.”

  For Margaret’s part, she’d had no idea what to expect upon entering. Seeing her mother’s old clothes from the journey west didn’t set her at ease, and the idea of a ghost who’d been enslaved to become nothing more than a recording unsettled her stomach.

  What will your hexengeist do with my bones when I die?

  “Let’s call this business, Magnate.”

  Aurora Cuttersark turned away from Erin and Badger. As she stepped into motion, a fine powder drifted off her shoulders, stinging Margaret’s sinuses when inhaled, “Join me in the lounge then, Lady Mayhem. Your friends can mingle as they please, however the uninclined have no rights here. No more than a house pet would. If one of them shits on the rug, we won’t politely ask them to leave. We’ll slit their throat.”

  Margaret followed Aurora Cuttersark with enough distance that her eyes didn’t itch, and her lips wouldn’t crack. Her energy stung the edges of Margaret’s mind, like whiskey poured on a bullet wound. Her emotions were locked up and guarded behind gates and doors, no different from the moment Margaret had stepped foot in a place like this.

  The lounge, if it could be called that, was equal parts abomination and paradise.

  Down a curving hallway, behind two sets of steel-framed oak doors, was a large open space. New world tables and chairs of iron cluttered the floor, created from ornate molds, enameled with ruby highlights. Beyond the seated area was a small dance floor below a raised stage, under the glow of colored electric lights that shifted between gold and blue.

  In the center of the lights, on stage, was a woman in a wide, baroque gown of green velvet. She was belting lyrics in an unfamiliar language. Her projection was remarkable, singing directly from her throat, lips curling around each word and note as though it were a particularly savory slice of lamb. The melody itself was soaked in sorrow and loss, a heartbreak that washed out across the room and changed how the air tasted. At least, for a witch.

  Her eyelids had been sewn shut. Dried blood cracked and flaked off her cheeks, and her hands were wrapped in white linen, stained almost black, where her fingers should have been.

  Aurora Cuttersark looked over her shoulder, grinning, “A Bellini aria is best performed when you have something to cry about. Don’t you think?”

  The woman’s pain was a tangible river, undulating and rising, falling as mist through Margaret’s hair and across her face. It was a thing of unspeakable beauty, divine in every meaning of the word.

  You’ve cut a woman’s fingers off and sewn her eyes shut to harvest this divinity.

  Margaret did not answer, and Aurora Cuttersark turned, leading her to a long and narrow bar set against the room’s northern wall. A collection of shattered mirrors, painted in what appeared to be pitch and rubicund, were mounted behind a vast store of liquor bottles. Some were dusted, dark, labels ripped off and forgotten. Others were new decanters of glass and crystal, housing a thousand shades of liquor: clear, ecru, and even pitch black.

  A man strolled up from a few yards distant, wearing a waistcoat of red and purple stripes, each as wide as a finger, over a white cravat that looked like Georgette. His accent was rhotic and unfamiliar to Margaret’s ears, “Yer usual, Lady Cuttersark? What about yer pretty floop?”

  Aurora nodded, sniffing at the air as Margaret stayed a few steps back, “Pretty? You have an unusual opinion of pretty, Edgar. She has only one arm.”

  Margaret worked her jaw, ignoring the comment, “Whisky, top of the tumbler.”

  Edgar, the man with a Georgette cravat, grabbed two short glasses and began pouring drinks. Whatever Aurora Cuttersark usually drank was a more complicated concoction than a simple whiskey. When he produced the drinks, he tipped his head down and tried to walk away quickly before Aurora Cuttersark could speak further, but he was too slow.

  “Edgar? Hang on, don’t you wish to ask Lady Mayhem a question?”

  The bartender, who’d maintained a wall of neutral emotion, now turned moist, clammy. Margaret imagined she could taste the sweat that ran down the back of his neck.

  Or maybe that’s just Lady Cuttersark I taste.

  “I think not, no questions.” Edgar did not allow his eyes to meet Margaret’s, but his knuckles were flexing and turning white as they kneaded the rag in his hands like an anxious baker.

  “Edgar, don’t be shy. You wanted to ask her if she’d step behind the bar and suckle at your dick. You could keep making drinks. No one would be the wiser. Lady Mayhem wouldn’t even charge you, from what I hear. What do you say Edgar? Go ahead. Ask her.”

  The very tone and tempo of Lady Cuttersark’s voice ground away the edges of Margaret’s patience. She sneered as she spoke, showing her fine and shiny teeth, tilting her head back and forth as the words fell out of her mouth like unchewed crackers.

  In the back of her mind, Margaret scolded herself for not considering how many witches held the room. Most of these people were uninclined, vaguely sensitive, people who liked to play with fire. The same sort of individuals who liked to walk feral neighborhoods at night, unarmed, drunk on risk. Praying for the satisfaction of violence to follow. No one here was blind, or stupid, they were simply sadists and masochists. Margaret considered skipping inside the bartender’s skull, promising him safety, but the little rat didn’t want or need that. He wanted to go home after his shift. Jerk off into one of his socks, dreaming of the witch in fish skin who might of have killed him with the snap of her fingers.

  “Aurora the Younger,” Margaret’s eyes never came close to Edgar the barkeep, focusing on her host, “I came here to do business, not be insulted.”

  Lady Cuttersark laughed. It was shrill and nasal, just like her voice, “You came here to ask for help defeating your brother. I know you killed Amihan Lopez, and I know you’re hardly in condition to take on other Antecedent battlewitches.”

  Margaret leaned forward, clutching her glass tumbler tight, the sound of Lady Cuttersark’s voice pulling her nerves taunt as fiddle strings.

  “It was my understanding that Modus Vivendi witches were for hire.”

  Lady Cuttersark sipped her drink, and Margaret wondered what part of Aurora Owens lived on in those dark eyes, “Last time we met I asked you; what do you possess that I do not? Now you come before me, possessing nothing. You’re an Antecedent turncoat, and you’ve installed my mother as Heart. A temporary effo
rt to legitimize your treachery. You’re missing an arm and your face looks like a freakshow. I don’t want your money. It's even less valuable than your begging, in this place.”

  Margaret grinned, her lips separating at the center of her mouth to show her own, crooked and yellow teeth. She jerked the whisky tumbler toward her face and upended it to open lips, letting liquor fall back, down her throat. To the credit of Modus Vivendi, the drink was real quality and her chest turned warm in contentment.

  Margaret gestured the tumbler, heavy in her hand, base pressed to palm, “I don’t want to hear your voice anymore. I don’t want to be called an Alviso whore. I don’t want your petty humiliations. Do you know what I want the least of all?”

  Lady Cuttersark glanced to the glass tumbler and noticed Margaret’s hand turning black. Silver chandeliers offered dim, shifting light that swayed slowly. It made the onyx hard to see, such a simple thing at first, as though her skin was misted in a fine residue of motor oil from stuttering exhaust. The thick, obsidian coat spread around her fingers like tiny rings, hiding her knuckles, swallowing her short nails, and flowing up her arm like water.

  Cuttersark was so fixated, she never saw the single drop of liquid charcoal fall off Margaret’s lower lip, landing on red scallop lace.

  “I don’t want you to display my mother’s clothes in this fucked off place.”

  Margaret never took her eyes of Lady Cuttersark, nor did she stop smiling when she slammed the glass tumbler into copper plate. It shattered with a resonate pop.

  I hope you’re proud of me for this, mom, thought Margaret, as she slashed one slender shard of glass across Lady Cuttersark’s face. It cut to the bone when Margaret stepped in, ripping a gouge across the other woman’s lower temple, straight between her eyelid, and across the bridge of her nose. Cuttersark’s eyeball shrank away and spilled open like a cheap whore’s diseased cunt, fluid falling, a hint of the blood that would pour free.

  The broken tumbler flew away, bouncing off table and tile. Margaret heard a woman shriek, then another, then a man swear, “Gods be fucked!”

  Lady Cuttersark fell to her knees, efforts at barriers vanished, silent and impotent. Margaret could feel her spinning up something else, whatever arcane powers she could manifest. Her left hand, closest to the bar, swept wide, fingers spread and shaking. Liquor spun up in decanters, a blurry cyclone, cutting away at the inside of crystal and glass.

  Every bottle exploded in a mist as fine as sand.

  There’s salt in liquor. So, you’re a battlewitch after all.

  Margaret moved away, shifting quickly to avoid what Cuttersark had summoned. At a glance it looked like solid fluid, blurred and wound about, moving, salt and glass shards in flight. The lash gouged away chunks of the floor, splinter and nail torn apart in an even grind that looked like beavers had been unleashed. Even wrought iron bent and frayed under the savage saline assault.

  Margaret had no desire to find out how badly Cuttersark’s salt storm could injure human flesh. She had one hand of ink pressed into Cuttersark’s face, running from her chin and lips, up past her nose and eyes, clumsily groping, a young boy grabbing his first breast, unsure whether he should rejoice in the prize, or ask what next?

  She was inside Lady Cuttersark’s mind, everywhere, spreading like flood waters out a broken levy. Locking down the other woman’s physical nerves, removing her command of hands and fingers, driving her down. The rational thought needed to command weapons given to a witch also began to shutdown, along with her reason and problem-solving skills.

  Entire sections of Cuttersark’s brain simply went dark in the wash of Margaret’s will.

  The salt storm cast off a thousand liquor bottles died, shattering like snow and spreading wide across hardwood floor. The lounge smelled of whisky and rum, vodka and gin, so pungent and certain that Margaret imagined how drunk she could get just breathing in the bitter fumes.

  Holding Cuttersark’s face in one hand, Margaret looked out over the lounge.

  The blind vocalist with no fingers kept crooning. Men and women gathered at iron tables around the room stood, watching, seduced by this savage command over blood and magic. Margaret could hear their pulses skipping, pounding, hot and urgent in their veins. They had been afraid tonight would be uneventful. The alcohol flood was servile considering this starvation, this hunger. Beyond her physical senses Margaret could smell labia dripping in arousal and erect cocks commanding an ovation. This was the brutal sport that these uninclined so desperately desired, each one of them fantasizing about the one-armed-witch and her liquid charcoal. Part of Margaret found this notion thrilling, but it was her little secret that she shared in private. Nothing so vulgar as to display at court.

  This made her sick.

  There were three witches in this room, she could hear them thinking. They were afraid and confused. Their energy was dim and cool compared to what Lady Cuttersark could wield if her brain functioned.

  Doesn’t mean anything. Mom wouldn’t have taken the risk, and neither will I.

  Margaret gave the locations of all three witches to Badger and Erin, offering them a picture in their minds of the lounge she commanded in gruesome dominance. Those locations came with a clear understanding of which tables they sat, and an odor that even an uninclined could pick up on.

  It was like pointing to a crowd, in the mirror, whispering, “The man in blue, that’s him.”

  Kill them, they’re witches, Margaret’s voice hissed in their minds, a memory of a shout, the hint of her lips at their ears. Badger would know exactly how to handle this. It's what he did, unleashing murder upon an unsuspecting world.

  Erin would either follow orders, or fail, there was no middle ground.

  Margaret turned back to Lady Cuttersark, her face covered in oil and cruor, her breath bubbled through thick coat across her nose.

  “I know you can still hear me in there, Aurora,” Margaret stepped back, hand free, watching the charcoal and blood drip down her tailored dress of leather. “I’m not a sadist, I don’t get my thrills like you do. I’m just an Alviso whore, remember?”

  Kneeling, Lady Cuttersark was still much larger than Margaret. Wrapping her left hand around the other woman’s face, Margaret moved behind her and pressed Cuttersark’s skull into her corset front. She stroked Cuttersark’s face, and fell back into her mind. Part of the big woman was locked away, screaming in anger and pain, clawing to free herself. Margaret truly had no interest in that part of Lady Cuttersark. It was an ugly and drooling creature that had lost possession of sanity in the wake of such a simple horror. Margaret wasn’t really hurting the other witch, she wasn’t raping her with a broom handle or putting lit cigarettes out on her skin. She wasn’t showing her any horrors.

  This was nothing by Margaret’s calculations, except a little payback.

  Margaret followed Lady Cuttersark along for her adventures in life, watching her study at her father’s side. Listening intently as he explained a hundred medical terms the child could never grasp, gesturing at a microscope and forgetting about her. She didn’t hate him for that, she understood the importance of his work, but she was lonely. Her mother granted her even less attention, shushing her when she spoke, refusing to answer her questions, and some days pretending she never existed at all. She nipped a bit at Lady Owens for that, always looking to anger her, rebel against her, give her a reason to yell.

  In this, Margaret found a degree of warmth, caressing Lady Cuttersark’s bloody and swollen face. Maggi Lopez had never forgiven Margaret for existing on the day that her lover died. She also had loved her blood son more than Margaret.

  But, she never treated little Margaret with indifference.

  Margaret decided, here and now, that she could accept that; accept her mother’s love for what it was, not what she wished it could have been.

  “I’m sorry. This will hurt.”

  Margaret slid her left hand over to Aurora’s ruined eye and pressed her fingertips into the wound slush. Her eyeball
was still intact, simply separated, cut like a grape. Margaret pushed her fingers in deeper, middle and ring, behind the eyeball, until it slid out and flopped into her palm. Gelatinous meat rolled up against her flesh, mixing with thick oil, dripping off fingers. It reminded her of throwing up into one hand, all the soggy food and bile pressing between fingers, ejaculating down her chest.

  The optic nerve and blood vessels didn’t want to wrestle free at first, but with a quick jerk, they let go and a second round of warmth fell.

  For a moment, Margaret examined her palm, nerve stem drooping down like a freshly shorn umbilical cord. Lady Cuttersark’s eye curved in on itself and split across the retina where broken glass had cut so smoothly.

  Margaret tossed it behind the bar where it hit something with a wet plop.

  Hand still covered in a thick placenta of ink and blood, she reached inside the top of her lace scallop, to the underside of her right breast. The sensation of a slick warmth crossing her nipple made her giggle for a second before she focused on retrieving the hidden trinket.

  The Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta.

  Turning it over in her hand, the curved eye was free of its golden housing. Margaret reached back for Lady Cuttersark’s face and began forcing it into the socket where her old eye had lived. It required some force, pulling and twisting away eyelids, but it wedged into place.

  “I’m going to grant you mercy, now. I’m going to turn you off, wipe away any part of you left in this mind. You won’t feel any more pain. Before we say our goodbyes though,” Margaret leaned down and nuzzled at Lady Cuttersark’s right ear, whispering, “Your mother and brother commissioned your death. I assumed it was just cold political maneuvers. Now, I think they just never loved you. My mother would beat me until my eyes were swollen shut. But you know what? She never ordered me killed.”

  With that Margaret stood up and stripped away any part of Lady Cuttersark’s mind that made her a sentient person. It was like scooping out a melon, memories gone first, followed by her favorite alcohol and the fact she preferred lamb over beef. Every book she ever read, and her understanding of magic. Her favorite color had been light blue, and she really did love Bellini. She had always wanted to pierce her nipples and she dreamed one day of visiting Britain, on the other side of an ocean.