by H C Turk
Quickly she dropped the bowl, not only to prevent her hands from burning, but to aid Eric in an indirect, perhaps magical manner. At once he was slapping at his head because his hair was sizzling, the heat barely noticed but genuine in that his jacket as well was ablaze. Here Marybelle concentrated her aid, not by smothering the flames, but by attempting to jerk the garment off. Her accomplishment, though, was to entangle Eric’s arms so that his own smothering became a failed tangle of elbows. Thus, the fabric began burning fully, Eric pushing away from Marybelle and rushing toward the water. A strange aid this woman was in continuing to hold the jacket so securely that Eric had to pull himself from beneath the garment to escape. With his hair and collar ablaze, he ran and stumbled to gain the river, becoming fully immersed for seconds, surfacing with little hair, curled and burned eyebrows, red patches most sore on the neck to scar him. Up into the air to see that Marybelle had kicked his jacket to her bare patch of ground, setting the bowl upon it as though to heat a pot for cooking.
No rush had Eric to gain the bank, for in the water he would not be burning. But from the Thames he rose, stepping bent to settle apart from Marybelle, who watched her glass pot boil air. Too steady was the jacket’s burning, since the fire should have either died or increased to consume the fabric, yet it burned as though a candle, Marybelle stretching with her shoe to tuck a fold beneath the glass, certain to lean away with her person. But was she certain of Eric’s beginning considering her words?
“No magic I find in you, in that you do not burn, but can swim. Therefore must you take the magic inside. So, witch’s husband, get your deserts from your marriage. Come to the bag.”
Eric complied, moving slowly due to his painful neck that hurt even from walking. But not mundane enough was he to touch that crinkled scalp.
“Reach in and take that item you touch.”
He did, with his first contact becoming wary, for the object seemed a foodstuff, Eric thinking pork. Lift the item he did only to drop it and retch, for the thing was aged, depleted in mass, yet recognized; for that was the wife’s particular nipple on the end of her vanquished breast.
“Now you have to contend with sand when you eat the thing,” Marybelle pronounced.
Looking toward it, Eric found he could not look away, could not help but laugh. Of course, he was to eat the mutilation, and what could make more sense? Eric’s mild laugh was mad enough to be a sinner’s cackle, Marybelle continuing, though her words seemed known before spoken.
“This is a man’s job. Oft you’ve sucked the wife’s breast, so now conclude your nibbling. Only men find lust in a baby’s meal, and only men are retaining our witch. Only males are there to cut her again and kill her, so you are our weapon against them, husband. Take this magic within you until you are sick of sinners torturing your wife.”
With a laugh like a choke, Eric bent to lift the breast, lift it without looking because his eyes had lost their focus. And with a brush of his fingers as though removing building crumbs, breast crumbs, off went the sand and grass. Then bite this magic he did, and it was tough and stank, and chewing would be an era; so a huge bite he took, pulling between teeth and hand until much thickened tissue came away in his mouth.
Here was the cause of his terrified weeks, Eric now aware how deserving he had been of anguish. He ate the wife’s dead flesh so that she would not become dead. Then he was weeping, for the breast was rancid, revolting, and—yes, dear Jesus, Father and Son—it smelled like Alba. Here he was eating her breast as though killing her, eating her meat when she would not allow him even fowl. But what was a bit of revolting perversion compared to Naylor’s eating Alba with flames?
Gagging and shaking his head, Eric breathed like a rabid animal, mucus dripping from his nose, saliva from his lips. But the final bite he took with care, for here was the nipple, and gentle Eric would not be biting through my areola; so in completion, he swallowed it whole.
Marybelle ran to the sinner, grasping stumbling Eric with both arms to guide him into explosively vomiting my body part into the hot glass. Then drop him she did as though losing interest, Eric falling to his backside like a child sitting awkwardly at the shore’s edge, staring at the glass container now unhandsome with that fluid slopped on its outer side hissing and turning dark from the flames, flames that continued to burn too long, one common jacket so full of sin as to provide Satan with energy enough to cook a meal, a repast of perversion.
Marybelle soon found new interest in Eric, though her concern seemed more disgust than appreciation of his aid.
“A poor husband you be to so reject the wife,” she retorted, “and no true man to decline great sex. Not true enough for your own desires. Therefore, we shall make you a man, one enough for your wife and the magistrate’s demon. So rise, sinner, and approach the baggage again. Therein find your true self or a false description. Look carefully, male, for no witch nor wife will benefit from your falseness.”
He did not rise. Neither vanquished nor defiant, Eric accepted that least stressful posture of crawling, collapsing into an awkward pose near Marybelle’s bag. Though intending to continue as he must, Eric desired no further torment. Where, however, was his sensible hesitation? What witchcraft had he found to so cooperate with demon Marybelle that he reached succinctly into the bag for his authenticity, his identity? An imperfect magic, perhaps; for after pulling forth his severed phallus, Eric had to drop it.
Insignificant of mass was this gore stump compared to the previous breast, but how would they compare as cuisine? Without a word from Marybelle, Eric knew he had to eat it.
“You will take yourself back inside and become the man needed to resurrect Alba.”
A huge erection it became, as though sexually engorged and about to be crammed into a baby’s anus, tighter and tinier than the wife’s cooperative tunnel; for without any change in size, it became impossible to fit his mouth. Impossible because this great aspect of his life had been irrevocably displaced, yet Eric here was inversely duplicating his greatest torture. No transferring of his senses to some dreamlike, dedicated state would come wherein Eric might process this act and this prick with scant notice in order to be on with the salvation. But not Marybelle’s order nor his own cooperation made Eric lift the member. Only most unpleasant magic could connive Eric to subvert his decency, to surpass that perversion of eating me. As he lifted his own prick with its dried surface like a leather vegetable, why through his weeping were his clearest thoughts of his parents? Why was his only thought of me in death’s prison not of the wife, but of his parents attempting in all sincerity to visit her? What force had this thought to allow Eric to lift that impossible burden those endless inches from the ground to his lips?
He saw the soil, expecting grit against his teeth, saw his phallus better than ever when attached, Eric feeling that the greater perversion was not the prick in his mouth, but the scar on his body, that former, forever loss, not this ludicrous regaining. Refusing to taste that sickness, Eric opened his mouth until his jaws cracked, for all his losses had begun with the body, remaining there despite endless mental reliving. Eric would not have his mutilated manhood against his tongue, and, no, never would he bite it. With the interior of his mouth extended like an empty bag, Eric accepted his phallus, weeping as he swallowed it whole, the pain from too great a gulp felt acutely, but not enough to conceal his torment. Eric then thought of the wife again, thought of her severing her own breast, maiming herself to save Marybelle. And despite his best objectivity, for that second of his swallowing, Eric could not consider his own perverted burden a lesser sacrifice then mine; for he had found the limits of thoughtful generosity, found the limits of his love.
Did the witch intend compensation by kissing him? Surely, this buss was no worse because Marybelle’s back faced Eric, her old inversion mild compared to his perverse, reverse eating. And what pride felt she to place her mouth against a sinner’s? This was no social witch as the wife, but a pure sister surely sickened by the contact, surely inten
ding Eric further illness, not reward, the sinner’s prick in his stomach so near its proper place before being thrown out again, expelled from his mouth into Marybelle, who swallowed it. But no comparisons had Eric of kissing the wife, a click of the teeth when too much pressure was applied by Eric, the eager eater. The similarity was in retching, Marybelle throwing herself around to bend in the heat above the flames akin to those that had burned her friends, bend above the hot gasses to expel magic into the glass pot for melding, the Dentons’ vomitous body parts together again, as though married folk rejoined.
Both sinner and witch squatted on their shins with noxious mouths. Not so ill and weak were the pair as to be senseless, for Eric could smell himself and recall Marybelle’s taste, noticing that the elder witch was so unsocial as to allow her head a comfortable cant toward her shoulder, her half-clasped hands resting on her skirt in a reminiscent twist. Though staring away from the fire, Marybelle was near enough the hated element to sense its incorrectness.
“Too much heat,” she said. “You must temper the flame with your scar.”
As though in a dream, dazed Eric envisioned himself straddling the fire nude, bending his legs to smother the flames with his groin, for there his only scar was situated. Would he thereby re-cauterize the urethra again, the hole closed so completely as to cure Eric of urinating? What physician was this Marybelle to heal so base a need?
“Stand at the fire and pee there, male. I know you’ve a sinner’s piss in you in that I smell it. A wicked fluid it can be if left too long inside. So let’s get it out and be on with our magic.”
No hesitation had Eric, but no strength either, so his rising was slow as he stepped to the flames. No concern had he at having to lower his breeches instead of merely opening the front flap, for his scar would not fit through the gap. Considering his previous consumption, Eric found no shame in standing nude near the flames to squeeze his scab this way and that to better control the spewing as he wetted the fire and dripped within the bowl. Though the man desired that meal in his hand again, attached instead of that scar to his body, he nevertheless fulfilled Miss Marybelle’s directive, and Hell have all his shame.
As though displeased with his success, Marybelle ran to Eric and grasped his buttocks, pulling him toward her to bite his body, bite his scar, coming away with blood and urine, which she spat into the bowl as Eric screeched and stumbled backward, tripped by his own clothing. What now was left for him to feel? After perversion had come pain, after eating himself for Alba came Marybelle eating him, Eric on his backside reaching for his breeches, looking upward but not seeing God though his goal in this magic was righteousness, Eric with new misery recalling worse pain, greater torture between his legs. But even with this blatant evil, Satan was not found.
Next for him to feel was either God’s glory of shared sexual love or Satan’s wickedness of sex gone cruel and selfish; but was not Marybelle seeking to aid a sister when she sat on Eric’s face? When pressing her vulva against Eric’s mouth, certainly she sought no pleasure for herself, for this decent witch was naturally revolted by gratuitous sex.
His naked legs and blank bottom twitching on the dirt, his useless testicles caressing the soil as though kissing the wife’s cleft, Eric found no sensation in Marybelle’s skirt to equal Alba’s, only a rancid smell and hair like bristle, loose flaps of tissue unseen in the darkness, her folds and clitoral bulge filling his mouth, clogging his nose, gentle Eric waiting until devoid of breath before biting. Drowning in her vagina, he bit the woman, eliciting from Marybelle a trebled ejaculation: a gasping shudder from above, and from below, drips of blood and a second fluid. And, yes, the bite made her move from him, the witch dragging weak Eric like a log to the fire to have him spit their shared fluids into the bowl that cooked for me, only me.
No more presumption would come to Eric. As Marybelle dropped him, his arm near enough the fire for more hair to be singed, Eric was fully resigned toward further torment even as the trial ended. Even as he surrendered to the magic, he found his aspect ending, the magic released on its own perusal of the world.
Persons in a wagon approached these people magicking, but could not near, could not travel the usual road leading to their home. Even as their horse, the people sensed a smell to be avoided, all the animals turning to a new route naturally, in the manner of sensible folk near a flame retaining their distance without deep cogitation. Only persons sinister with passion enter the evil parts of fire existing within us all, while those of God and normal sense remain removed.
Marybelle had moved. Shortly after settling, Eric came aware that the witch had looked to him, then walked away as though intentionally leaving his sight. Soundless she was, Eric assuming her still, not expecting further attack from the magician though not likely to be surprised by the next bite or blow, by any upcoming perversion.
He found himself waiting. Though unable to sense Marybelle behind, Eric yet had her taste in his mouth, had her smell on his face as though a lady’s grease for social occasions. Then came innocence returned, Eric thinking that never in his youth when a future family of his own seemed desirable had he presumed perversion. Never when considering the potential joy of marital sex had he imagined sucking an ancient witch’s fetid crotch. How normal that inverted intercourse with the wife now seemed. Of course, that would never again transpire, history itself, as useless as his boyhood thoughts. No intercourse, common or queer, would he accomplish with his scar, with that ubiquitous prick now boiling. To accommodate his future passion, Eric knew he would have to resort to kissing the wife’s unscarred bottom. But after that more recent witch, sex seemed no more desirable than any other illness.
No dream held Eric when he sensed himself in London. He breathed as though sleeping, and noticed this respiring, but awake he remained and newly aware of himself, of his locale. Before him was the River Thames, wide here with weedy, boring banks. To the far side and beyond were low buildings with no people seen. Deeper into London was the prison that held him, held his life in a legal spell by having captured his wife existentially. Then along the river’s flow he viewed, a swift and accurate move compared to the water’s bobbling transport, Eric looking seaward where, beyond his sight, docks of a major port expected his departure. And he was stunned again, for within him were thoughts of a lifetime, Eric recalling that this very day he and his family were scheduled to board a ship and leave their homeland to never return. But with all of this disruption before him, Eric nevertheless had no need to panic, for no family had he as long as the wife remained in Montclaire. Yet no move the husband and racial sister made for her release, only perverse fucking and puking as though in self-castigation, as though for entertainment.
Without turning toward her, Eric became attentive only to Marybelle. He wondered of his leader’s next contest or composition, for in his family whose center was Alba, this sister had become the prime member. Out of his senses, however, she seemed out of his life, yet he denied her no control, for her means were also beyond him. Then she was beyond his contemplation, for Eric was asleep, exactly as in his most recent life having no influence over his dreams.
He walked within the prison. Surprised he was to find this building identical to his grandfather’s home. The servants here wore drab jerkins, however, and each was a criminal seen before in Penstone Place, though in this building they were employed by English law. Each of these dishonest, powerful men stood before a door behind which lay Alba, the guards securing one another’s legal privacy as in turn they had violent sex with the wife, conventional sex with common penises and not the first death, though Eric could hear their reciprocation as they moved toward their pleasure, away from her peace, toward their lust, away from her health, and so on. Scarcely could the husband wait to be stabbing these commoners, but they were so tall that Eric would need to reach up for their bellies. And though eager to be leaping with his large fork made for skewering meat above a flame, Eric would be disallowed this magic by his parents’ parent, since Grandmother
Marybelle refused the eating of meat within her home—and what a resurrection, for Grand’s wife had been dead since Eric’s infancy, even as his parents were dead within his current life, yet here she was returned as a witch to stop his stabbing, because his implement was made for fire, and fire was made for killing witches, not saving them.
Then came a guest to the door. Sir Jacob had come to deny Eric his wife’s release in that Eric had come for a witch, and their pale woman could not be proven so because the tide had gone out, taking with it so much water to the sea that the River Thames was too low for any wet proof by God’s permanent creatures. Then Eric turned to his grandmum to ask what further, following magic she had to save her sister, considering this latest event. In fact, Eric turned to describe their magic’s condition, for he awoke to give Marybelle a charm.
She was looking toward him. The fire had gone out, and the Queen’s Flight would soon follow the departing tide. Time enough had passed for Marybelle’s fumes to infiltrate the air, and Eric was her clock. With no word, he looked to her and provided this knowledge. The two then rose together like that bodily, emotional mist they had injected into the atmosphere, and follow it they did, toward magic and toward me.