Transcendence

by Benjamin Wilkins

  Uncle Allen had been the one to suggest she try to learn the whole out-of-body thing, but he’d never been able to do it himself. Maybe nobody ever actually has, she thought in her detached mind as the van bounced down the road toward Vedic City. Maybe everything she’d read was just fucking theoretical and she was the first person in the history of the universe to actually do it herself. There were days she thought enlightenment might actually be like that, because for all the descriptions of transcendence and bliss the old TM dudes—including her uncle Allen—talked about, for all their lectures on the power in those amazing states of bliss that can be found when the mind travels down to the very source of consciousness, for all the hopping the TM Sidhi-trained meditators did under the name of “yogic flying,” that oneness of universal consciousness, as far as she could tell, might just be something that can only be witnessed in glimpses out of the corner of your mind’s eye, not actually experienced.

  How can you know, ever really know, you are actually fully experiencing something? she wondered. What does it even mean to be enlightened? And yet, as the van doors opened and the pirates pulled the netting off them through the bars, she realized that she did know those answers. Recognizing the duality of knowing without knowing for the universal truth that it was suddenly allowed her to take the next step and switch the focus on her out-of-body self-projection from manual to automatic. Ironically, just like the authors of her books, she couldn’t have explained how the mechanics and the result were connected either. They just were. You had to experience it to understand it. You had to be doing it to be able to learn it.

  So, as she felt the hands of the man on her—the bastard her sister would momentarily be ripping the flesh from with her teeth—as she felt him pulling her against the bars of their cage by her breasts, as she felt the adrenaline explode inside her and push her inner chemistry past the tipping point, as she felt herself falling into the fugue berserker state she’d been so terrified of, she just flipped the switch in her consciousness. It was effortless. Her inability to articulate the hows and whys of it all did not impend her implementation of it in the slightest. Her focus fluttered for a split second and then, with an almost audible snap, sharpened automatically to perfection and stayed that way.

  In an instant there was no stress. She was perfectly calm. The adrenaline pump in her brain shut off. The monster inside her rolled over and settled back into its precarious slumber. Effortlessly, she turned and moved out of the weakened grip of her assailant and watched as he fell back. She smiled as her sister spit out the big chunk of his flesh and scrabbled to her arms.

  You are amazing, Jen thought, or said. It was hard to tell which in her current state. She watched as the crowd of evil men drew in around them. She watched as the man who had assaulted her was assaulted himself and shamed away into the coming cold dusk of the day. She watched one of the men get a hold of the collar around her sister’s neck and snap on a chain. She watched her get dragged against the cage wall, her hands trapped, making it impossible for her to defend herself. She watched as the groping, disgusting hands seemed to give birth to more and more of the same. She watched as Bobby-Leigh’s jumper-skirt started to tear. She watched as the little girl’s panties were ripped off her body and the evil men’s cocks started getting pulled out, stoked into erections, and pressed against Bobby-Leigh’s exposed skin. She watched as her sister closed her eyes and screamed.

  She looked at the beautiful whiteness of her sister’s teeth, and marveled that even in all this violence and filth and evil, her teeth could be so perfect. But even in her nearly transcendent state, she’d reached the point where she couldn’t just watch anymore—not when she could act.

  Like a switch, she flipped the focus button in her mind and snapped out of it—or back into it, as the case may be. Still in control of her inner demon but no longer floating away and above herself on a cloud of bliss, she pulled her own karambit blade from its hiding spot and started to cut.

  * * *

  When an erect penis is severed from the body of the man who was once attached to it, the spray of blood is not at all like a fire hose, as folks often think it would be. It is actually more akin to a water balloon exploding. The blood supply is ample, but the pressure, once released, is just not anything like what causes an arterial blood spray. This fact turns the mere seconds it takes to bleed out when folks have their jugulars severed into several minutes when their erect penises are removed. If the man in question kept a level head after the impromptu penectomy and was able to stop the bleeding and put the removed organ on ice, surgeons would most likely be able to reattach the member, just like if it was a finger.

  Vedic City did not have any surgeons, but even if the blood pirates had set up the most pristine surgical center possible in post-apocalyptic Iowa and filled it with the most highly decorated staff and the most sophisticated equipment money and violence could procure, not a single one of the bastards trying to rape Bobby-Leigh would have been able to get their cocks put back on. The chaos and confusion, to say nothing of the screaming and yelling, that followed Jennifer’s extremely targeted cutting left those motherfuckers’ dicks simply lying in the bloody mud to be trampled on by the crowd.

  The men who were once attached to those penises didn’t fare much better. Falling to the ground in horror, they were also trampled in the bedlam. All three men bled out and died before anybody realized what had actually happened. And even then, not a single pirate in the jeering crowd actually saw Jen’s knife. All they saw was the big (hot) sister rush to the little (creepy) one and start to pull her away from the onslaught of rapists groping her from the other side of the bars. Then, as far as any of them could tell, dicks just started exploding and falling off.

  The prevailing theory on the cause of the apocalypse among the blood pirates had up to that point been Who gives a flying fuck? But the old cultural and religious roots still ran deep even in these ungodly men. Not a man among them would have questioned the theory that berserkers were, in fact, demon possessed, nor for that matter would they have questioned a more scientific explanation. It had not been in their dark natures to wonder about the hows and the whys of things. Up until then, they’d existed only to take and to hurt—so much so that folks might even have said the blood pirates, not the berserkers, were the demonic agents of this particular apocalypse. But when penises seemingly just started to fall off of their own accord, leaving their rapist owners to bleed out screaming, suddenly it seemed there was an answer to the pirates’ prevailing Who gives a fuck question. Suddenly each and every one of them gave a very big flying fuck, because as it turns out, nothing makes a man start asking questions like lopping off the cock of the man next to him.

  As the men realized that several of their own had just lost their fun sticks right as the fuck party was about to get started, and the dots between those losses and their attempted violation of Bobby-Leigh got connected in their brains, a stunned calm swept through the crowd. Abruptly, no man there any longer dared to take the risk of losing his manhood to what they all suddenly and collectively concluded could only be magic.

  “Witches!” one screamed at them, already retreating.

  “Witches!” another echoed.

  It would take less than an hour for almost every single person in Vedic City to hear a version of the “witch girl” incident, and in turn pass it on with a few new, fantastic embellishments above and beyond what had happened. By the time the story got back to Beverly, the witch girls had gone from victims to perpetrators and the attempted gang rape had become a mass seduction wherein the sisters had lured ten poor, unsuspecting pirates in by stripping themselves naked and performing some kind of ritualized satanic lesbian sex act—a sex act that cast a spell on anybody there, a spell that would make any man’s penis that grew erect explode if he watched. From the common threads of the various ridiculous descriptions given of these witch girls, Beverly put together that the story could only be about the Kessler sisters, whom she knew with a go
od amount of certainly were not witches in any way.

  “How many boys lost their dicks?” she asked the two men in front of her for the second time.

  “At least ten,” one man said.

  “I think it was more like fifteen,” said the other.

  The blood bag she was swapping with was almost empty. The Man-in-Charge was still out learning to fly with Brennachecke. She knew that if the girls were significantly harmed the old solider would refuse to continue the flying lessons the MIC was so excited about. She might get to kill the old man then, or better yet pit him against one of the berserkers in the arena. But then the MIC would be all pouty, and she hated dealing with that shit. Absently she wondered (as she often did when the Man-in-Charge wasn’t actually with her) how much longer it would be until she felt secure enough in her authority over the pirate army there to finally take over and just get rid of the fucking waste of good berserker blood.

  Certainly not yet, but that day was coming.

  She smiled and pulled the IV line out of her arm. When she got up, her bloodstained cashmere robe opened, exposing glimpses of her unnaturally youthful and toned naked body to the two men who had been summoned to explain to her what the fuck all the commotion was over.

  “Alright, then, let’s go see what these two little fuck-cunts have to say for themselves,” she said.

  The men hesitated.

  “What? Are you morons fucking afraid of them too?” she asked, her tone sharp with ridicule.

  Neither man answered, but neither one moved either, which in its own way was answer enough. For all the positive effects berserker blood bestowed upon those who swapped it out with their own, patience was not one of them. Beverly desperately wanted each and every man in her pirate army to unquestionably obey any and all commands she gave. Every little hesitation was an affront to her position and more evidence of the fact she was constantly hoping would change in her favor: the men in Vedic City as a whole were simply not yet willing to follow her. It was just another reminder that even though she had actually ruled Vedic City from behind the scenes for some time now—the MIC really being just her little lapdog at the end of the day—the perception of the men she wanted dominion over was that she was just a blood-hungry whore.

  A familiar anger filled her temples, making her head hurt, but she knew what would calm her impatient soul. These two assholes just needed a little demonstration of her authority. After all, she thought, there is only one woman in Vedic City with enough real power to cut off a man’s cock and throw it away like the useless thing it is. And it wasn’t the fucking Kessler bitches. It was her, goddamn it.

  Her hand reached out and snatched the closest man’s hair. With the added strength from just having swapped blood, the small yank she gave was enough to pull the man off balance and drop him to his knees in front of her. She buried both her hands in his thick hair and smiled down at him.

  “There is only one woman in this city you ever need to be afraid of,” she said and twisted the man’s head savagely to the right, snapping his neck. As his body crumpled lifelessly onto the floor, she looked up at the other man, her wicked smile never wavering.

  “You do know who that woman is, right?” she asked the man who still lived.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said instantly, his fear now secured away in the right place.

  “Good. Now take me to those little cunts you morons think have magic powers.”

  There was no hesitation this time. Beverly was, at least for the moment, satisfied. She was actually excited to see the girls. So what if she couldn’t allow herself to hurt them physically? She could still sure as hell wipe the stupid innocence Brennachecke had so endeavored to safeguard in them off their pretty, stupid little faces. Since most of the folks that were snatched from the highway who didn’t turn out to have berserker blood flowing through their veins got left to the men as party favors, a reward for following orders, she had very few people to show off to when it came to all the work she’d put into the place. None of her people appreciated the cold precision she’d applied to Vedic City’s operations. None of them appreciated the recruitment trials she’d started up. In the few years she’d been secretly running the show, their band of pirates had grown from fewer than a hundred to almost a thousand. And she’d been the one who got the power turned back on. Sure, electricity wasn’t in all the buildings yet, but they had lights and hot water in the Raj almost 24/7, which was a significant improvement over the daylight emergency power shit they’d started with. She was the life force behind their current strength. She was the unappreciated proud mama bear of a literal army of degenerate cubs.

  Hell, if I hadn’t been there, she thought, the MIC probably would have just fucking killed Brennachecke when he’d showed up asking about the Kessler girls. So if they did end up getting airborne, she’d get to take credit for making that happen too. In short, she was a little light in the public-affirmation-and-awe department and was looking forward to collecting on some long-overdue bragging rights.

  * * *

  “Fucking witches!”

  The crowd of men around the girls’ cage had shifted from lecherous to fearful and angry. Jennifer and Bobby-Leigh hadn’t decided yet if that was actually a good thing or not. Nobody was reaching in to molest or violate them, but as the number of men grew, so did the boldness of the mob. Rapists were frankly easier to fight against.

  A rock bounced off the bars and landed just inside. This wasn’t the first thing that had been thrown at them since Jen had saved her sister from being fucked against her will, but it was the first thing to make it inside the cage. The crowd was a swirling, ever-shifting mass of male bodies. Jen kept expecting to get used to the smell of blood and body odor and shit (both of her now dickless victims had emptied their bowels as they bled out, and nobody seemed to care enough to remove their bodies, much less clean the mess up). It was impossible to identify who was throwing things at them. And even if they could see who it was, it was not like they were in a position to do much about it.

  Despite the impending violence, Jennifer Kessler felt in complete control. Whatever she’d discovered in the out-of-body self-projection she’d experienced while doing her TM practice under duress remained with her still. She could feel the focus ring of the lens inside her mind, and though she was back to manually controlling the field of view, she’d now have her finger on the auto button at all times and she knew she could flip it in a heartbeat if required. It was a powerful feeling after being at the mercy of losing control over what hid beneath for so long. If Jimmy had only lived another couple days, she found herself thinking, he might have never been in danger at all. It was a thought that weighed heavily on her heart, but those private, self-reflected lamentations would have to wait for quieter, calmer times to be addressed. Things were about to escalate—Jen could feel it in the air, and one look at Bobby-Leigh told her she could feel it too.

  “Burn them!” somebody in the mob shouted.

  “That’s not very original,” Bobby-Leigh said under her breath.

  She was pissed. The near gang rape wasn’t what was bothering her, though—at least not on the level at which she was mentally processing things; Jen cutting those fucks’ dicks off and leaving them to bleed out and shit themselves went a long way to even that particular score for her. But her clothes, and the image of herself that went with them, had been her armor against the evil in the world and had taken a long time to put together. Now her whole outfit was all torn to shit. Even her panties were ripped and hanging off her. To make matters worse, they’d taken her ax in the van, so now she was facing down these bastards with her ass literally and figuratively in the wind.

  Where am I going to find another outfit? she screamed in her own head. It had taken her almost a year to collect the pieces of this one. A fucking year! The gothic-subgenre anime styling she’d managed to pull off with the combination of the knee-high stockings and the vintage lacy jumper-skirt would have made Japan’s Harajuku girls proud. But n
ow this witty (and creepy) juxtaposition of Lolita, death, and innocence, which she had cultivated so painstakingly and wrapped up her mental image of herself so completely in, had been literally torn away. She was exposed. Vulnerable. Cold as hell. And she didn’t like it one bit.

  Bobby-Leigh was pissed, but she was not afraid. Jen seemed to have conquered the beast within her, and for Bobby-Leigh, that monster had been the only thing she was really afraid of. Not because it could kill her, but because whenever it got out, somebody or something Jen loved died—and she was pretty much the only thing her sister had left. Men with their nasty erections and probing fingers bled and died easily enough. Fire could be put out, burns treated, bullet holes sewn shut. Thoughts of pain, even death, didn’t make her lose any sleep. Those were just physical changes to the body. But the soul-crushing aftermath of Jen feeling responsible for what the berserker did? Any more of that would completely and irrevocably break her sister’s heart, and the fear of that is what kept Bobby-Leigh up at night—especially now that she knew she was too weak to put Jen down like she’d asked her to. As long as the berserker could stay locked away, Bobby-Leigh didn’t think she’d ever be afraid again.

  Fearlessness begot confidence and confidence begot peace. Peace in turn begot faith. This was not where she and Jen would die; though all evidence pointed to the contrary, she just knew it in her heart. So as a torch appeared in the crowd and was thrust between the bars and the pirate mob screamed for them to burn in hell, she just smiled. Jen shot her a look, eerily calm herself, and whipped her jacket off in a smooth motion. She deftly wrapped it around the torch as it came clumsily at them, smothering the flame.