My Wholly Heartbreaking Heretic

by Danielle Peterson

It was okay, I suppose. Skiing that is. We went to Mount Hood and I would have enjoyed it more had I been better at, and not awkwardly flailing about when I tried to stand up on skis for the first time (to her credit, Ma Bichette managed to suppress most of her laughter). I’ve gotten better at it as time wears on, we go from time to time because she rather enjoys it. But what was better than okay was the few days we spent together, particularly off the slopes. Regarding exactly what was said and done and how many times the said deed was done, I do not want to go into too much depth, since it was only forty years ago and is still fresh in my mind (as opposed to the older memories, which I do feel the need to preserve better via the written word). However, there was this wonderful moment in our hotel room, completely unspoiled by any environmental or internal factors, where she sighed happily, laid her perfect head with perfectly messy hair on my bare chest and said to me that she wanted to come and live with me.

  “I think that I should try to be the woman you deserve,” she slurred, as we had drank quite a bit of her wine. “For a while, at least.” She then burped like an angel would and turned on the television with the remote to watch the late show.

  Her statement was more cryptic than I believe she meant it to be, but at the time I didn’t interrupt it as such. I didn’t have to deliver my pitch outlining all the reasons why she should live with me again. She wanted to. She wants to. After what I did to her, she still loves me. How extraordinary, like a miracle performed just for me, time and time again.

  We spent more time at Mount Hood than we had planned, and by the time we arrived back, her followers were near mutinous. Ma Bichette had more or less given up on the illusion, so seeing their guru return with her gentlemen friend and saucy smile on her face must have been less than reassuring. I said nothing to them (because what I wanted to say would have been very uncouth) but she gave them a short impromptu sermon while I smoked a cigarette and leaned against the car.

  “My most respected and beloved friends,” she said in English (which is always a bit jarring for me to hear her speak), “I have very wondrous and joyous news! I have returned from a meditation session from the secreted temple of life. I have received a communication from my revered clan sister Tiamat. My astral forms of many beings require that my physical form of one chose a vessel in which to perform the greater ritual of tantra with!”

  Ma Bichette gestured up into the heavens. “Rejoice with me, for this is sacred day that I have long awaited and long foretold. Today is the beginning of the first day of the reign of Enlil, lord of storms and fire! Hasten to the meeting place and prepare your hearts and minds to receive the intentions of the divine plane!”

  I think she was awaiting a better reaction, because she stood in place, no doubt expecting the young men to run off in a hurry. However, they shuffled towards the stable slowly. You may be wondering why she is bothering to continue the act when it would have been more expedient and much less silly to just kill one of them and be done with it, but I think I have made it abundantly clear that she derives a lot of fun out of her little games, especially the ones that make her the focus of attention. Ma Bichette wanted to go out with a bang.

  I had a bottle of barbiturates in my bag and while Ma Bichette changed into one of her ceremonial outfits (which was more Sally Rand than Sister Aimee) I crushed them up and mixed them into a bottle of cheap champagne. Not enough to kill them, as killing your followers en masse would not come into vogue for a few years yet, but just enough to whisk them away into the dream world where pagan gods could whisper into their ears or some such rubbish.

  Ma Bichette came downstairs, swaddled in a heavy dressing gown. “You sure that it won’t kill them?” she asked. Not out of concern for them, but for herself, as she did not want to cause a national news story.

  “Ninety-nine percent sure,” I answered. The barbiturates had been my idea. She had just wanted to abduct Alan (that was the bearded one who had given me the most amount of sass mouth) after her swan song with them, but I thought this would be better, as no one would actually see us take him. We can work well together as a team, Ma Bichette and I, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean we always do.

  She shrugged. “Good enough. How’s my hair?”

  “Historically inaccurate, but other than that, fine.” I’m fairly certain perms were not invented three-thousand years ago. Her lovely (artificially) wavy hair was pulled back loosely, and secured with two primitive-looking lion shaped pins, one on either side of her head.

  “And the rest?” Ma Bichette dropped the robe.

  I was speechless for a second. It was black length of silk the breadth of my hand, and she had wrapped it about her parcels of prime real estate. Save for a few gold bracelets that she had chosen to accessorize with, that was all she had on.

  She grinned. “If it makes you pause I’m sure it will convince those morons to drink my draught.”

  I shook my head. “This, this here,” I said while gesturing at her, “this is why they want to have sex with you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I don’t wear it all the time, you prude. It isn’t even a real outfit, it’s a torn-up sheet. I made it just now.” Ma Bichette set the adulterated champagne bottle on a tray and then began to place a motley assortment of juice glasses on the tray as well.

  I blinked. “Wait, why have you got black silk sheets?”

  “I haven’t got them anymore, have I?” She picked up the tray. “I’ll come fetch you when I need you.”

  I watched her walk out towards the stable, which apparently had a room for ‘services’ sectioned off from the rest of the building. Yes, dressed like that, in such a salacious manner, and after telling them that tonight she would select one to…ugh, I can’t bring myself to type it. Needless to say, they would do anything she said, and having a sip of champagne before she announced her decision was but a trifle to ask of them.

  Originally, I did not have designs to possess her in the quotidian way that other men of my era (and other eras, naturally) wanted to possess a woman. She was/is a rare and beautiful thing, full of tenacity and fire, and I understood that trying to control her would be a failing proposition in many ways. At best she would leave me, and at worst I may actually succeed, and in the process extinguish from her the core elements that make her who she is. However, as she walked out that filthy barn to drug and harvest them, a lust for their blood, all of the blood of those young men, for daring to think of sullying her with their puerile lechery, frothed up in me.

  It was intoxicating. I didn’t care if they saw me. They had seen her, and that was enough. Now, I realize, that she exploits her sexuality for her own personal gains and she has no problem with it. But I have a huge problem with it, and I could not remain idle while they mentally degrade her. Ma Bichette need not do that anymore, she has me, and I will do whatever I can to save her from herself.

  I briskly walked towards the stable and unceremoniously threw the door open. All eyes fell upon me. It’s rare that I get the drop on Ma Bichette, but when I do I am almost proud of myself. “It’s over,” I told her in French so they would not understand us. “Now. Let us slaughter them all, let us end this dirty game, let us escape now.”

  She stared at me with extreme annoyance. “The Oarsman, shepherd of souls, son of Kek, consort of Erishkegal, father of Erecure,” she babbled in English, reciting a pantheon of culturally mismatched deities while struggling to come up with a story on the spot. “He has informed me that I should not dally any further.” She began to pour the spiked champagne into the glasses while shooting me icy daggers.

  “Look at them,” I hissed at her. “Animals. No better than dogs in heat.”

  “Females go into heat, not males,” she retorted in French to me, calm overcoming her. No doubt she was flattered that I was making such a chivalrous stance. “Nothing will happen, particularly since you are here.”

  Ma Bichette could handle them without me, I’m well aware, but the fact that she made the effort to both allay my
concern and soothe me when she very well could have been upset? It makes me melt for her more. “I-” I began to say, to try to vocalize more insecure and panicky thoughts about her imagined…oh, how her past profession haunts me, even to this day. I don’t hold it against her, never against my poor little doe, cast out, an orphan, a child bride with a child, but I certainly could charge the beasts who only wanted to use her.

  “It is but another act, another charade, to get what we need,” she murmured to me while meticulously pouring out evenly matched portions for the attendees.

  “I don’t like it,” I said loudly, still in French, although they stared at me still. “I want to be your only one.”

  “You are, mon canard. Do you get jealous of the cow when I milk it? Do you think that I pine for the chickens I braise?” It must have been very distracting to try to pacify me while also maintaining her poise and elegance and wearing what amounted to an oversized ribbon.

  “He informs me that the predetermined moment of inception draws near, ever near, and that Enlil’s revelation shall soon pierce the curtain of the primordial ether,” Ma Bichette said to them. I wonder if they caught on that the Oarsman and the Goddess were bickering in an archaic French dialect, and not the spoken form of Cuneiform.

  “Oh, it draws very near,” I muttered, and left the room via a door that connected to the quarters of the young men. I located a shovel lying next to the pitchfork I had seen earlier, and gripped it tightly in my hands.

  What I did that evening can be explained by several factors. Factor the first, it was smack dab in the middle of the cycle and I was already very agitated. Usually I devour the heart on the first possible day so I am not consumed with the mighty hunger that increases steadily as the new moon is born. (You don’t want to catch me on the last day of the cycle, I more or less have lost any semblance of sanity or reason). You know the feeling when you have quit smoking and all you can think about is cigarettes and you begin to do bizarre things like pantomime smoking and chewing on the ends of pencils to help alleviate your desire? Multiple that by every year I have been alive and you may begin to approach the ballpark of aching lust that consumes me, come the new moon.

  Secondly, Ma Bichette. Of course. My sweetest little doe who still labors under the misconception that she must exploit her sexuality to get what she wants. She even does it to me, still, when all she would need to do is ask. And when you love someone, sometimes you must protect them from the horrible things that they do to themselves. I saw in their eyes their presumptions, their carnal lusts, and I could no longer abide them to continue to draw breath when they had defiled her so in their thoughts. I knew what she was capable of, what unimaginable delights she can induce in a man, more than they could ever guess, and I was tormented so by flashes of visions of what they wanted from her.

  I marched back into the room. One of them was approaching Ma Bichette, who was holding out a glass of the spiked champagne to him. Without a word I advanced on him and then swung the business end of heavy metal farm tool into his head. He was killed instantly, his soft pink brain exposed to the dim light provided by a few bare light bulbs in the ceiling.

  She locked eyes with me and sighed. “Good work,” she said sarcastically while the rest of them gasped in thunderstruck horror. “We have to kill them all now, are you happy?”

  “Do I look happy?” I swung the shovel again, this time wildly in the direction of the kneeling adherents. The spade made contact with the jaw of one and he screamed in horror as the spell was broken.

  The scream spurred the rest of them to action. I swung again, this time striking one in the legs as he tried to flee. I had lost all sympathy for them as unique and sacrosanct human beings. Instead they were just vile things who wanted to do despicable things to Ma Bichette. He stumbled and I whacked him in the back of the neck. I looked up from my fresh kill just in time to see Alan (the sassy be-bearded one from earlier) rush out the door.

  “Shit!” I yelled (very ineloquently) and yanked the shovel out of the newly minted corpse.

  Ma Bichette ripped the shovel from my hands. “I will deal with the rest of them! You go get him!” She shouted at me before pushed me out the door and slammed it behind her.

  I gave chase. It was a moonless night (being the new moon and all) and I heard him rather than saw him, zeroing in on his terrified panting as he sprinted across the slight rise of the vineyard. I dashed across the muddy earth, slipping a few times and scampering up, looking less like the sort of monster a man should flee from and instead like…well, much like the dirty morons in the first place, albeit sans beard.

  “Help!” I heard him yelp from a few yard in front of me. “Murder!”

  He was closer than I thought. “Quiet,” I hissed at him. “I can hear you better when you yell.” I did not want anyone to hear him.

  He was heading for the main road. Off in the distance I saw a pair of headlights coming towards us. I swore again. How could I let my emotions get the better of me and make everything so complicated yet again? If he got to the road things would get messier than they already were. I pushed myself forward with the strength of pure will.

  Alan was running with the zeal that comes when you fear for your precious life. I was pursuing him with the zeal that comes from the fear of being iced out of a codependent relationship. The perceived safety of the headlights drew closer. I exerted a burst of speed and tackled him, slamming him into the slush and the mud.

  I think that it’s a fitting metaphor that I won that footrace, that the things that destroy you are often so much more powerful and tenacious than your own good sense. But there I go again, complaining about things I do to myself. How can I expect to be allotted understanding and mercy if I continue to exist by doing monstrous things?

  Alan moaned and struggled to save himself from me as I pinned him into the muck. The road was some fifty feet ahead of us. He made a valiant effort to reach out to the light, to signal that he needed help, but it was all too easy for me to push him back down. The car sailed by, blissfully unaware of the dark rituals that we committed, off to continue their lives unhindered by the boundless depravity that is my world.

  I do not relish a messy kill. Alan wanted what I wanted, but I had gotten there first, some two-hundred years previously. It could have been me. All of my victims, they all could have been myself. I’d say a little piece of me dies along with them each time, but I haven’t really got thousands and thousands of pieces of myself to throw away. One grows numb to it, feeling but only a tingling prick of remorse at the moment of the kill.

  Having to improvise is never fun. I knelt on his back and pushed his face into the mire, muttering that he should just stop fighting and accept it, that there was nothing he could do anymore, that it would all be over soon, and that he would soon be somewhere much better than the dirty little shack he had been living in for the past year. I don’t often do that, speak to them that is, but I was on a bit of an emotional high (so much more destructive than an ether one) and I needed an outlet.

  Once he stopped moving I crouched down and felt his neck for a pulse. I’ve had a few victims try and pull a fast one on me in the past and this was a situation that needed to be properly managed. When I was assured that he was indeed dead, I sat down in the mud as well, breathing quickly and trying to regain some composure before I trod back up to Ma Bichette. You may think it irresponsible of me to leave her with ten or so young men who were fighting for their very lives, but she is more than capable of handling herself. Ever see a mongoose go to town on a cobra? She is agile and coordinated and ferocious. Oddly enough, she was not like that in the beginning. Before our first breakup she was much more shy about killing and I had to do all of it myself, but...something happened after our first breakup. Something in her changed. But now is not the time for that story.

  I meandered through the rows of vines back towards the stable. I heard no yells and I reasoned (correctly) that she had slain the remaining followers. I pushed t
he door open and stumbled in.

  Ma Bichette stood in the midst of scene of the near-unimaginable carnage in which we are both accustomed. I do not want to get too graphic, both because I believe that gratuitous violence is in poor taste and because I just haven’t got room to write it all, but suffice to say there was a great deal of blood. I had not seen such carnage in a long time (I prefer less messy ways), and I was taken back for a second.

  She looked at me. Her outfit had fallen off and she wore nothing but blood. She laughed. “And you say I’m dramatic!”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I-”

  “Yeah, I know, you love me too much,” she said.

  “I told you I wanted nothing to do with this, and yet you insisted,” I said to her, taking a breath between each few words. “Why do you feel the need to keep punishing me?”

  She picked up one of the glasses that had miraculously managed to not be spilled during the slaughter. “I’m taking this,” she said, then reached down to one of the corpses. It was mangled so much that she had to exert little effort to pull the heart out. “And this. And then I am going to bed. Have this all cleaned up by the morning and then we’ll go to Reno.”

  I shut my eyes. In that instant I cursed everything that had even been, that had led me to this moment, that had lead me to supplicate myself before her. Then I opened them, she was gone, and I had an awful mess to clean up.