The Bride Stripped Bare

by Rob Bliss

  “Okay. One at a time. I can go first if you want—we’ll take turns. Little hot in there?”

  “Boiling, yeah. I tapped the handle of my knife against the stone at the end and it didn’t sound as solid as the walls. So maybe that guy was right—he was so fucking close to escape before he got too weak. But who knows what’s on the other side—could be another locked room. How is the old guy?”

  I confessed to killing Malcolm, and told Gord who he was, the famous director. Gord’s jaw hung down, said he wished he had gotten an autograph…or was that too cruel to ask of a dying man? I waved away his concern, and suggested he forget Malcolm and concentrate on digging.

  I squatted down to the hole, shining my dagger in, but the light could only penetrate the darkness a few feet. Left the white bear fur with Gord as I squeezed myself in and began to crawl, but the tunnel didn’t stay perfectly horizontal for long. A gradual slope began to rise, so I used my feet to press against either wall to push myself up. The air stale and musty, my body heat quickly drawing sweat to my forehead, I was inhaling my own breath, which sent a wave of dizziness behind my eyes. I was like a cork in a bottle. My elbows pulled in, sleeves scraping on stone, feet pushing as I jammed my body inch by inch further into the tunnel. It would’ve been a horrible place and method in which to die. I tried not to think about it.

  Reaching the end, a barrier of stone faced me, scratch marks from knives crisscrossing its face. I knocked a knuckle against the wall but couldn’t distinguish if it was hollow or not. My knife handle was more dense and solid. But tapping the stone across its surface, then tapping the walls on either side of me, I could hear a difference. A little hope. But how long would it take to chip through stone with a knife? Weeks, months, years? Would Gord and I also degrade into weak skeletons before we could break through the rock?

  Difficult to get good leverage with my elbows and shoulders squeezed in, I changed my grip on the knife and could only poke the blade against the rock. Jammed it as hard as I could, scratching the stone, only grains coming loose. I was soon breathing as though I had just run a marathon, perspiration blinding me, but I didn’t need to see in order to dig. Sweat beads felt like flies walking down my face, but I ignored their tickle and sting, just kept my hand hammering the knife against the wall.

  I was getting frustrated, having no patience to hack away at a solid wall for an eternity in the hopes that the mere tip of the blade would eventually poke through. No wonder the diggers before me grew exhausted and wore away to nothing quickly. Thank God I wasn’t claustrophobic. Gord and I, I feared, would soon be lying on grave beds, happy to bequeath the secret tunnel to the next uniformed grooms and best men who had been trapped by Venus.

  I stopped my hand, thinking about something that had happened earlier. The uniform. The hand inside the wall of the hive that had grabbed my hand, cut off my sleeve, then punched through the wax wall to grab and pull in the rest of me. A hand wrapped in the scrap of my uniform. Wrapped in magic. Hadn’t I picked up Gitch as though he was a rag doll and thrown him out the bedroom window? If the uniform was trying to strengthen my arm, it could only do so much with my arms squeezed in by the walls. Poking weakly with the knife point traced scratches and loosened grains of rock, but even those should’ve been impossible without the jacket assisting my arm.

  I tucked the knife back up my sleeve and flattened my hands against the ground to push myself backwards out of the tunnel. Once back in the room, I didn’t mind inhaling a deep breath of musty, corpse-scented air. It was like sucking in a mountain breeze.

  “That wasn’t long,” Gord chuckled, watching me wipe a sleeve across my face. “It’s a little slice of hell in there, ain’t it?”

  I smiled and nodded as I caught my breath, forced the dizziness from my head. “I got an idea. Might speed things up, I don’t know for sure, but we gotta try something.” I pulled out my knife and shone it down at the corpse on the floor. Gord watched, asked what I had in mind. “Long story short—I think these vests and jacket are kinda…I know this sound kinda weird, but this whole place is kinda weird…kinda magical.” I sliced the sleeve off the corpse’s jacket from the elbow down, pulled it off the skeletal arm, stood and held the fabric up to Gord’s light. “If this doesn’t work, don’t laugh.”

  He chuckled. “Okay?”

  I tucked the knife back up my sleeve, then stuck my hand down the torn tube of cloth, scrunched the cuff into my fist, held it like a boxing glove. I stayed in Gord’s light as I stepped to the stone archway that led from one room to the next. Called myself crazy and prepared for intense pain shooting up my arm as I got into a stance and pulled back my wrapped hand.

  The first punch didn’t have all the strength behind it because I was afraid of pain. But there was none when my wrapped fist hit rock. And a chunk of stone the size of a baseball broke off and clattered to the floor. I lurched my arm back and followed through with the second punch. The blow chipped a grapefruit from the line of the doorway. I felt nothing—my hand went through stone like butter (if only I had a jacket when fighting Venus the bear; no wonder I had been stripped naked, and why Gord had been left to burn a little longer than the bride had).

  Encouraged, I smashed my fist up the side of the doorway, punched chips out of the wall, sending them rattling down the incline into the fourth room, until the doorway was about a foot wider than originally.

  Gord and I laughed and cheered. I slipped my hand out of the sleeve, checked for blood and bruising under Gord’s light, saw not even a scratch on my knuckles. And only a little bit of stone dust was on the sleeve itself.

  “Fuck yes!” he cheered, then waved the knife at the beds attached to the walls. “And none of these other fuckers ever figured it out!”

  I clicked my tongue, slipped the sleeve back over my hand, bunched around my wrist. “Now, now, let’s not speak ill of the dead. They tried ’til they died. Sometimes the answer is right in front of you—hidden in plain sight, impossible to see.”

  Gord shrugged. “Yeah, to tell the truth, I probably never would’ve figured it out either. I’d be scratching and scraping and only getting closer to lying on my death bed.” He shone the knife light around the corpses. “Sorry, guys, no disrespect.” Held the light to his chest as he opened the corpse’s jacket he wore, scratched a fingernail against the pieces of jacket and vest fused to him. “Think these are magic? Or did the fire burn the fun out of them?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’ve got new clothes, emperor. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  He smiled and closed his jacket. “Care to do the honors?”

  I pulled out my knife and held it up. “Stay close and stay quiet. We still don’t know what’s on the other side.” I winked and smirked. “I’ll try to punch quietly.”

  I took the bear fur with me, still hoping that it held some kind of protection. If Venus came after us again—if she shook off the drugs, the L.O.V.E.—then we’d need all the protection we could get.

  I hunkered down to the hole, Gord right behind me. Crawled and pushed my way through the tunnel as fast as I could before dizziness from a lack of oxygen hit my head, and before the space turned into an oven—now with two of us in it at the same time, heating it up. At the rock wall, I laid the bear fur in front of me to cushion my elbows as I put the knife in its sheath and stretched the torn sleeve along my right arm. Curled the loose end of my fist, then figured out how to angle my body for a blow with the most force. Had to lay on my side, arm extended, but even that would only allow for my arm to punch from the elbow not from the shoulder. Not a full reach, but it would have to do.

  I started out knocking on the stone as though I was knocking on a door. Small chips fell away with dust. I closed my eyes and turned my head away from the target, my body instinctively twisting, but my shoulder still pinned to the floor.

  A different tactic. I turned over onto my left side, giving my right arm more space to maneuver, not pressed against the tunnel ceiling. An awkward angle, but I punch
ed with more force, snapping off more and more chunks of stone and dust. I coughed and heard Gord coughing behind me. Held my breath, eyes closed, punched like a jackhammer.

  Felt a small coin of cool air press against my forehead. Opened my eyes but still only saw darkness ahead of me. Pushed my hand through the sleeve to feel the stone wall…and a hole in it through which I could stick three fingers.

  “What’s happening?” Gord’s muffled voice asked.

  “I broke through,” I called back.

  “Fuckin’ A!”

  “Hole’s not wide enough yet, gotta do a bit more. You okay back there?”

  “Holding in. Keep punching, Muhammad Ali!”

  I smiled, but then tightened my lips. Made the sleeve again into a boxing glove, looked away from the target. My arm was getting tired from being held at an awkward angle, but I couldn’t rest. Punching by feel alone, I broke my entire arm through the gap, then started punching the edges of the hole. It was like hammering through wax, the chunks of rock falling outward instead of toward me.

  I scooted my body up to see if I could fit my head through. Needed more room for my shoulders. Tucked back down the tunnel and punched to widen the hole. Gord was bigger than me, so I punched more of a space than I needed to be free.

  I crawled through and rolled on the ground away from the tunnel mouth. Gord had slipped his knife up his sleeve to use both elbows to crawl. My knife lit his path. He pulled the bear fur out with him and we curled it up to use as a pillow as we rested on our backs.

  Breathing pure air again that smelled of sweet water, we listened to our latest environment between breaths, the echo of water drops plunking into a pool. No light except that of our knives shone in the darkness. We sat up to inhale deeply and to let the sweat dry on our foreheads. I wrapped the fur around my back.

  “We are some badass kung-fu motherfuckers,” he said loudly, but I hushed him.

  My ears pricked up. There was a sound—a bass baritone—distant, like radio static between the water drops.

  We stood and raised our lights, approached the wall that our tunnel poked through. Wet moss clung to the wall, which looked more like coral than rock. Smelled of the sea. Our dagger lights couldn’t reach too far into the darkness, but we could see a greater darkness beyond where it could reach. To the ceiling. Stalactites drooped their tips into the light of our knives.

  We walked careful steps around the immediate vicinity until we bumped into a stalagmite. Then a small pool of still water that smelled a little of sulfur and a lot of salt. More stalactites and stalagmites squeezed in the space—the cave we had emerged into. Keeping our steps light and our ears tuned, we headed in the direction of the baritone static.

  The sound came and went, grew in volume, and I could feel that it wasn’t music—some chime or hum of the rock formation forest we walked through. It had the cadence of human speech. Sounds prolonged, then broken off, then emerged again in different tones, high register to low—a few words spoken, then a chant.

  A yellow, flickering haze glowed against the roof in the distance. Gord and I stopped. Listened and watched, held our breath. I held my blade up to my face so that Gord could see the words I mouthed.

  “Quiet. Slow.”

  He nodded and we stepped lightly and carefully, lights on the ground to see pits and water and broken pyramids of calcified rock which we didn’t want to kick. (If only we could’ve pried the goddamn shoes off our feet, though maybe they had magic in them too. Hadn’t I kicked in Gitch’s face, torn the shit out of his jaw?)

  The glow descended as we got closer to it, filling the vast cavern, shining against the cave’s cathedral walls. We could easily tell that the baritone was a voice speaking, not just radio static, and was accompanied by other voices. Call-and-response, as in a church service. We tucked our knives back up our sleeves to keep our hands free. I still had the torn piece of sleeve around my wrist, and felt better with it on me, as though I had an alternate weapon.

  We stayed low behind a stalagmite, peering around its pillar to see people gathered, about twenty of them sitting in chairs facing a man and a woman who held hands as another man in a black-and-red striped bear skin with its head perched on his intoned some strange language, a book in his hands.

  Gorman was marrying an unknown woman to Kevin, Gord’s brother.

  — | — | —

  Chapter 24

  Gord looked at me as though I had grown horns. I shrugged and put a finger to my lips to make sure he kept quiet. Instead, he leaned in to whisper, “The fucking family has brainwashed him, too. Are me and my brother that much alike?”

  I rolled my eyes, cupped a hand around his ear to whisper back, “Try to see a way out of here.” He pointed behind us into the dark cavern of stone, then shrugged. I shook my head, then cupped his ear again. “Those people entered somehow. There’s probably an entrance behind them.”

  Gord peered back around the stone, then returned to my ear. “There’s no way around them. We gotta go through. Do we just walk out and say hi and keep walking?”

  I stayed squatted down low, peering around the pillar. Stalagmites dotted around the walls of the cave, the open floor space where the people sat cleared of stone pyramids. Our potential cover. We could take the chance and try to creep from pillar to pillar around the cave walls and not be seen. Doubtful.

  Thinking of our options, I started liking Gord’s suggestion. We were still wedding participants, and I was technically still family. What were the chances any of the people ahead of us—Gorman especially—knew what had happened between us and Venus? That was the only wrench that might destroy the plan forming in my head.

  We had new uniforms, so we looked like normal members of the wedding. The only fault was Gord’s wounds, but maybe we could blame them on excessive celebration. A missing eye, though? Stretching it a bit. My bald head and forehead tattoo, however, would likely be seen as a confirmation that I was one of them and wouldn’t cause shock.

  I told Gord that we’d go with his idea. We would walk out like we belonged there, just arriving late for the marriage vows. Gord could congratulate his brother, schmooze it up, make small talk, and I’d keep my eyes open for a way out. Once I saw one, he could follow my lead and we’d just walk out of the wedding and cave. He agreed. We stood up, still hidden but peering around the pillar of stone. I counted to three on my fingers, and we interrupted the subterranean wedding.

  “Hey! How come you didn’t invite us?” Gord said, arms wide as he strode toward his brother.

  Gorman broke from whatever words he was intoning, shock on his face and on the faces of the guests. I realized that I may have misjudged how they would greet us.

  “Hey! Gord! Chris!” said Kevin, digging hands out of the jacket he wore.

  He also had the vest and the fur pants and the shoes. He was becoming family. His hands trembled as they reached out to Gord, shaking hands, slapping his brother on the back. Kevin’s pupils were the size of dimes. I could easily see a thin crust of red dust rimming his nostrils. But I could’ve bet there was more than just coke in his veins.

  “Where’ve you guys been—we were looking everywhere for you!”

  “You’re getting married?” Gord asked.

  His wife was dressed in a bear cloak that was striped from collar to hem in orange and black. A small bear head was woven into her hair, not perched on scaffolding that was pierced into her shoulder blades. She was nude beneath, designs painted on her breasts and stomach and twisting down either leg. White, cloven-hoofed shoes, high heels, looked to be made of leather. Swirls and letters and symbols were drawn across her cheeks—her family tattoo visible to me on her forehead. I wondered how many times she had been married before. She looked to be in her mid-sixties; Kevin was forty-two.

  “Yeah I’m getting married,” he said, swinging an arm around his wife, presenting her to us. “This is Danaë—ain’t she gorgeous?”

  Gord and I said our hellos, but Danaë wasn’t happy—we were interrup
ting her wedding.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said sternly to us, then turned her glare and words to Kevin. “Can you please—just—I will handle this—can you shut your goddamn mouth for a second?” she said to her new husband, holding a jagged finger at him. Which she then swept over to Gord and me. “What the hell are you two doing here? This is a sacred service and you couldn’t be found so you’re not invited.” She pointed specifically at me. “An exception can be made for you, perhaps—you’re the groom of Venus, is that correct?” I nodded. Her anger calmed. “Then I’m sorry, forgive me, it’s not my place to speak concerning your business…but this man—” Gord glared back at her, glanced at his brother, raised an eyebrow, but Kevin had his head bowed low, afraid to speak. “—this outsider has no right to intrude. I will allow him to be here—both of you—but, please, I’ll ask you to take a seat until the service is concluded.”

  Gord and I had forgotten that our goal was to make an escape. We had gotten too caught up in the ceremony—a bitch of a bride and a scolded groom. We had both felt the bride’s sting and actually intended to take seats and watch the rest of the wedding. But two things happened that changed how things played out.

  Gord turned to head along the aisle of the audience and take a chair. Gorman saw him, told him to stop, asked what was dangling out of the back of his pants. Gord slowly approached the priest, holding the tail firmly in his fist.

  “Recognize it?” Gord asked as Gorman stared at it in horror. “It’s a tiger’s tail.” The priest raised his sunken watery eyes, his long fingers and fat knuckles inching forward to let the narrow end of the tail slip across his skin. “The bitch is dead,” Gord said. “We killed her.”

  Gorman shot his eyes to me—I stared back, holding my face like stone, letting the priest believe what he wanted. Lies and truth meant nothing to these people—give them either one or both, they could assume what they wanted.