“ΧΑΨΗΟΒΗΟ” whispers Tiny Doom and spits. She’s got a good wad going, and it hits the Minion right on the snout.
The Minion howls and drops her. She lands on stingy sleepy feet, falls over, and then scrambles up, stamping. The Minion is also stamping, and holding his hairy hands to his face; under his clawing fingers smoke is steaming. He careens this way and that, Doom dodging around his staggers, and then she scoots by him and back the way they had just come.
Tiny Doom runs as fast as her fat little legs will run, her heart pounding because she is now in Big Trouble, and she knows if the Minion quits dancing and starts chasing, she’s going to be Eaten, too. The hot word she spit burned her tongue, and that hurts, too, and where’s Pig? She goes around another corner, thinking she’ll see the stairs that they came down, but she doesn’t, she sees another long hallway. She turns around to go back, and then the Minion blunders towards her, his face a melt-y mess, and she reverses, speedily.
“I dance around in a ring and suppose and the secret sits in the middle and knows,” she sings very quietly to herself as she runs.
Carpet silent under her feet; a brief glimpse of another running Doom reflected off a glass curio cabinet; by a closed door, the knob turns but the door will not open. She can feel the wind of closing in beating against her back, but she keeps going. The demon is shouting mean things at her, but she keeps going.
“You dance around in a ring and suppose and the secret sits in the middle and knows.”
A door opens and a were-flamingo trips out, stretching its long neck out; Doom dodges around its spindly legs, ignoring yelps. Ahead, more stairs, and there she aims, having no other options, can’t go back and there’s nowhere to go sideways.
At the top of the stairs, Doom pauses and finally looks behind. The Minion has wiped most of his melt off, livid red flares burn in his eye sockets and he looks pretty mad. The were-flamingo has halted him, and they are wrangling, flapping wings against flapping ears. The Minion is bigger but the were-flamingo has a sharp beak—rapidfire pecking at the Minion’s head. The Minion punches one humongous fist and down the flamingo goes, in a flutter of pink feathers.
“I snack you, spitty baby!” the Minion howls and other things too mean for Doom to hear.
“We dance around in a ring and suppose and the secret sits in the middle and knows.”
Doom hoists herself up on the banister, squeezing her tummy against the rail. The banister on the Stairs of Infinite Demonstration, Bilskinir’s main staircase, is fully sixty feet long. Many is the time that Doom has swooped down its super-polished length, flying miles through the air, at the end to be received by Paimon’s perfect catch. This rail is much shorter, and there’s no Paimon waiting, but here we go!
She flings her legs over and slides off. Down she goes, lickety-split, bumping over splinters but still getting up a pretty good whoosh. Here comes the demon, waving angry arms; he’s too big to slide, so he galumphs down the stairs, clumpty clump, getting closer. Doom hits the end of the banister and soars onward another five feet or so, then ooph, hits the ground, owww. She bounces back upward and darts through the foyer and into the mudroom beyond, pulling open her pockets as she goes.
Choco-Sniffs and jacksnaps skitter across the parquet floor, rattling and rolling. Sugarbunnies and beady-eyes, jimjoos and honeybuttons scatter like shot. Good-bye crappy candy, good-bye yummy candy, good-bye.
“I DANCE AROUND A RING AND SUPPOSE AND THE SECRET SITS IN THE MIDDLE AND KNOWS.”
Ahead, a big red door, well barred and bolted, but surely leading Out. The bottom bolt snaps back under her tiny fingers, but the chains are too high and tippy-toe, hopping, jumping will not reach them. The Demon is down the stairs, he’s still shouting and steaming, and the smell of charred flesh is stinky indeed.
A wall rack hangs by the door, and from it coats and cloaks dangle like discarded skins; Doom dives into the folds of cloth and becomes very small and silent. She’s a good hider, Tiny Doom, she’s learned against the best (Paimon).
Her heart pounds thunder in her ears, and she swallows her panting. When Paimon makes discovery (if he makes discovery), it means only bath-time, or mushy peas, or toenail clipping. If the demon finds her, Pontifexina or not, it’s snicky-snack time for sure. She really did have to potty too, pretty bad. She crosses her ankles and jiggles her feet, holding.
In the other room, out of sight, comes yelling, shouting, roaring, and then a heavy thud that seems to shake the very walls. The thud reverberates and then fades away.
Silence.
Stillness.
Tiny Doom peeks between the folds. Through the archway she sees rolling candy and part of a sprawled bulk. Then the bulk heaves, hooves kicking. The demon’s lungs have re-inflated and he lets out a mighty horrible roar—the nastiest swear word that Tiny Doom has ever heard. Doom, who had poked her head all the way out for a better view, yanks back, just in time. The Word, roiling like mercury, howls by her, trailing sparks and smelling of shit.
A second roar is gulped off in mid-growl, and turns into a shriek, which is then muffled in thumping and slurping, ripping, and chomping. Doom peeks again: the demon’s legs are writhing, wiggling, and kicking. A thick stain spreads through the archway, gooey and green. Tiny Doom wiggles her way out of the velvet and runs happily towards the slurping sound.
XI. Desire Gratified
Inside the Goddess’s embrace, Hardhands is dying, he’s crying, he’s screaming with pleasure, with joy, crying his broken heart out. He’s womb-enclosed, hot and smothering, and reduced to his pure essence. He has collapsed to a single piercing pulsing point of pleasure. He has lost himself, but he has found everything else.
And then his ecstasy is interrupted by another piercing sensation: pain. Not the exquisite pain of a well-placed needle, or perfectly laid lash, but an ugly pain that gnaws into his pleasurable non-existence in an urgent painful way. He wiggles, tossing, but the pain will not go away, it only gnaws deeper, and with each razor nibble it slices away at his ecstasy. And as he is torn away from the Goddess’s pleasure, he is forced back into himself, and the wiggly body-bound part of himself realizes that the Goddess is sucking him out of life. The love-torn spirit part of him does not care. He struggles, trying to dive down deeper into the bottomless divine love, but that gnawing pain is tethering him to the Waking World, and he can’t kick it free.
Then the Goddess’s attention lifts from him, like a blanket torn away. He lies on the ground, the stones slick and cold against his bare skin. The echo of his loss pounds in his head, farrier-like, stunning him. A shrill noise pierces his agony, cuts through the thunder, a familiar high-pitched whine:
“Ya! Ya! Ya!”
His eyes are filled with sand; it takes a moment of effort before his nerveless hands can find his face and knuckle his vision clear. Immediately he sees: Tiny Doom, dancing with the bear-headed Minion. Sieur Oso is doing the Mazorca, a dance which requires a great deal of jumping and stamping, and he’s got the perfect boots to make the noise, each one as big as horse’s head. Tiny Doom is doing the Ronde-loo, weaving round and round Sieur Oso, her circular motion too sick-making for Hardhands to follow.
Then he realizes: no, they are not dancing, Sieur Oso is trying to squash Tiny Doom like a bug, and she, rather than run like a sensible child, is actually taunting him on. Oh Haðraaða!
Dimly Tiny Doom’s husband sparks the thought that perhaps he should help her, and he’s trying to figure out where his feet are, so as to arise to this duty, when his attention is caught by a whirl, not a whirl, a Vortex the likes of which he has never before seen, a Vortex as black as ink, but streaked hot pink, and furious furious. Though he can see nothing but the cutting blur of the spin, he can feel the force of the fight within; the Goddess is battling it out with something, something strong enough to give her a run for her divas, something tenacious and tough.
“Bwannie! Bwannie!” cries Doom. She is still spinning, and the Minion is starting to look tuckered, his st
omps not so stompy anymore, and his jeers turned to huffy puffs. Foam is dribbling from his muzzle like whipped cream.
Hardhands ignores Tiny Doom.
“ΑΠΕΞ!” Hardhands grates, trying to throw a Word of encouragement into the mix, to come to his darling’s aid. The Word is a strong one, even his weakened state, but it bounces off the Vortex, harmless, spurned, just as he has been spurned. The Goddess cares nothing for Hardhands’ love, for his desire; he chokes back tears and staggers to his feet, determined to help somehow, even if he must cast himself into the fire to do so.
Before he can do anything so drastic, there is the enormous sound of suction sucking in. For a split second, Hardhands feels himself go as flat as paper; his lungs suck against his chest, his bones slap into ribands, his flesh becomes as thin as jerky. The Current pops like a cork, the world re-inflates, and Hardhands is round and substantial again, although now truly bereft. The Goddess is gone.
The Vortex has blushed pink now, and its spin is slowing, slower, slower, until it is no longer a Vortex, but a little pink blur, balanced on pointy toes, ears flopping—what the hell? Pig?
He has gone insane? In one dainty pirouette Pig has soared across the room and latched himself to the Minion’s scraggly throat. Suddenly invigorated, Sieur Oso does a pirouette of his own, upward, gurgling.
“What is going on—!” Madam Rose’s voice raises high above the mayhem noises, then it chokes. She has stalled in the doorway, more minions peering from behind her safety. Tiny Doom has now attached to Sieur Oso’s hairy ankle, and her grip—hands and teeth—is not dislodged by his antic kicking, though whether the minion is now dancing because Tiny Doom is gnawing on his ankle or because his throat is a massive chewy-mess, it’s hard to say. Pig disengages from Sieur Oso and leaps to Madam Rose, who clutches him to her bosom in a maternal way, but jerkily, as though she wants less of his love, not more. Her other slaveys have scarpered, and now that the Goddess is gone, Hardhands sees no particular reason to linger, either.
He flings one very hard Gramatica word edgewise at the antic bear. Sieur Oso jerks upward, and his surprised head sails backwards, tears through the tent wall, and is gone. Coldfire founts up from the stump of his neck, sizzling and sparky. Hardhands grabs Tiny Doom away from the Minion’s forward fall, and she grasps onto him monkey-wise, clinging to his shoulders.
“Pig!” she screams. “Pig!”
Madam Rose manages to disentangle Pig, and flings him towards Hardhands and Tiny Doom. Pig sails through the air, his ears like wings, and hits Hardhands’ chest with a soggy thud and then tumbles downward. Madam Rose staggers. She is clutching her throat; her hair has fallen down, drippy red. Above her, the tent ceiling is flickering with tendrils of coldfire; it pours down around her like fireworks falling from the sky, sheathing her bones in glittering flickering flesh. The coldfire has spread to the ceiling now, scorching the raven angels, and the whole place is going to go: coldfire doesn’t burn like non-magickal fire, but it is hungry and does consume, and Hardhands has had enough consumption for tonight. Hefting Tiny Doom up higher on his shoulder, he turns about to retreat (run away).
“Pig! Pig!” Tiny Doom beats at his head as he ducks under the now flickering threshold. “PIG!”
The coldfire has raced across the roof beyond him, and the antechamber before him is a heaving weaving maelstrom of magick, the Current bubbling and sucking, oh it’s a shame to let such yummy power go to waste, but now is perhaps not the time to further test his control. Madam Rose staggers out of the flames; the very air around her is bubbling and cracking, spitting Abyss through cracks in the Current, black tendrils that coil and smoke.
Tiny Doom, still screaming: “Pig!”
Hardhands jumps and weaves through the tentacles of flame, flinging banishings as he goes, and the tendrils snap away. He’s not going to stop for Pig, Pig is on his own, Hardhands can feel the Current boiling, in a moment there will be too much magick for the space to contain, there is going to be a giant implosion and he’s had enough implosions for one night, too. Through the dining room they run, scattering cheese platters, waiters, cocktails, and conservationists, crunching crackers underfoot, knocking down a minion—there—open veranda doors, and beyond those doors the sparkle of hurdy-gurdy lights. Doom clinging to his head like a pinchy hat, he leaps over the bar, through breaking bottles and scattered ice, and through the doors, into blessed cool air. There ahead—the back of the Monkey’s Head—keeping running, through gasps and a pain in his side.
Through the dark throat—for a second Hardhands thinks that for sure the Grin will snap shut, and they will be swallowed forever, but no, he leaps the tombstone teeth and they are clear. The sky above turns sheet white, and the ground shifts beneath his feet in a sudden bass roll. He sits down hard in the springy grass, lungs gasping. Tiny Doom collapses from his grasp and rolls like a little barrel across the springy turf. The stars wink back in, as though a veil has been drawn back, and suddenly Hardhands is limp with exhaustion. The Current is gone. The Monkey’s Grin still grins, but his glittering letter halo is gone, and his eyes are dim. Madam Rose’s is gone, as well.
Well, good riddance, good-bye, adios, farewell. From the Monkey’s Grin, Pig tippy-dances, pirouetting towards Doom, who receives him with happy cries of joy.
Hardhands lies on the grass and stares upward at the starry sky, and he moves his head back and forth, drums his feet upon the ground, wiggles his fingers just because he can. He feels drained and empty, and sore as hell. The grass is crispy cool beneath his bare sweaty back, and he could just lie there forever. Behind the relief of freedom, however, there’s a sour sour taste.
He was set up. The whole evening was nothing but a gag. His grandmother, his darling sweet grandmother whom he did not kill out of love, respect, and honor, whom he pulled back from the brink of assassination because he held her so dear, his grandmamma sold him to Madam Rose.
Him, Hardhands, sold!
The Pontifexa has played them masterfully: Relais’ incompetence, Tiny Doom’s greed, Madam Rose’s cunning, and his own sense of duty and loyalty. He’d gone blindly in to save Tiny Doom and she was the bait and he the stupid stupid prey, all along.
He, Hardhands, expendable! Can he believe it?
Tiny Doom is ignored, but she is also insistent: “Bwannie—get up! Pig wants to go home!”
For a second our hero is wracked with sorrow; he takes a deep breath that judders his bones, and closes his eyes. The darkness is sparked with stars, flares of light caused by the pressure of holding the tears back. But under the surface of his sorrow, he feels an immense longing, longing not for the Pontifexa, or hot water, or for Relais’ comforting embrace, or even for waffles. Compared to this longing, the rest of his feelings—anger, sorrow, guilt, love—are nothing. He should be already plotting his revenge, his payback, his turn-about-is-fair-play, but instead he is alive with thoughts of sweeping black wings, and spiraling hair, and the unutterable blissful agony of Desire.
“Pig wants a waffle, Bwannie! And I must potty, I gotta potty now!”
Hardhands opens his eyes to a dangly pink snout. Pig’s eyes are small black beads, and his cotton-stitched mouth is a bit red around the edges, as though he’s smeared his lipstick. He smells of salty-iron blood and the peachy whiff of stale coldfire. He looks satisfied.
“Would you please get Pig out of my face?” Hardhands says wearily. The mystery of how Pig fought and defeated a goddess is beyond him right now; he’ll consider that later.
Tiny Doom pokes him. She is jiggling and bobbing, with her free hand tightly pressed. She has desires ungratified of her own; her bladder may be full, but her candy sack is empty. “Pig wants you to get up. He says Get Up Now, Banastre!”
Hardhands, thinking of desire gratified, gets up.
Afterword to “The Lineaments of Gratified Desire”
More twaddle from the hand of the previous historiographer—nay, that title is wasted on such, rather call hir a fabulist of the worst possible ki
nd. It goes without saying that none of the events in this story can be substantiated; hardly surprising, as they never happened. Clearly propaganda. The petulant magicks of the teenage Banastre and the incessant whining of the child Cyrenanica, tagged with a preposterous nickname, are designed to make the reader shudder. The events described are fantastic. Should we believe that the Pontifexina could slip the notice of the Denizen of her House and run riot in the streets alone? That the Pontifexa might well sell her precious grandson, her pride and hope? That a possessed plush pink pig might defeat a deity?[1] Such suppositions are preposterous!
Still, the story does have the saving grace of being inventive and lively, and the Hot Corn girls are truly terrifying. Pirates Parade, of course, is still celebrated today, although its revels are now confined to the children’s sphere, and we are happily free of the riotous behavior described here. Woodward’s Garden rests beneath the waves; it is said that on still days, the fun-fair’s spires and monkey head can still be seen, deep within the water, their lines grotesquely deformed by barnacles and sea-urchins. All else in this story is puffery.
[1] A moth-eaten plush pig may be seen on display with other Brakespeare artifacts at the Museo Anthropologico in Cuidad Xochi, but the pig’s provenance is murky, and so it cannot be determined with certainty that it is the same pig. In any event, it has shown no signs of aggression.
Lovelocks
I. Skinners
Here sit nine officers in sangyn uniforms behind an oaken table which has been well polished to a gleaming bronzy shine. They are in full dress kit, a gleaming bloody sight. Crimson lips with crimson wigs to match, silver gorgets gleaming around stiff necks. Glittering silver aiguillettes drape in a profusion of flourishes over glossy frock-coat fronts. Livid scars, one to each cheek, slash downward on each officer’s grim face; by these marks the members of the Alacrán Regiment are always recognized; from these marks they can never hide. This regiment is the beauty of the Army of Califa, red as blood and as hard as hate.
Prophecies, Libels & Dreams Page 14