Satan's Breath

by Temple Madison

  Blaze’s smile disappeared. “You mean relive them?”

  “In a sense. For you, it will seem as if you’re reliving them, but I can bring you out anytime I find it too difficult for you.”

  “My God, go back there again?” Fear rushed through her. “I don’t think I can, Doc.”

  “There’s really nothing to worry about, dear. This dream-like state you’ll be in can be controlled from here. I’ll lead you back through the years until we find where the damage took place.”

  “Hell, Doc, I can tell you where the damage took place. It was when he forced his—”

  “Blaze,” the doctor looked at her with a reprimand in her eyes, “I’m the doctor here, and I must ask you to cooperate.” She looked at Blaze closely. “Okay?”

  Blaze let out a pent up breath. “I suppose.”

  “Now, I have to be honest with you, I’ll want to bring Dr. Spencer in with me to observe you, and it’ll take more than one session. But it’ll be worth it, Blaze. I can promise you that.”

  “Dr. Spencer? I don’t know. You said—”

  “Yes, I know, but there’s a reason I want him here.”

  Blaze looked down at her hands, wringing them uneasily, and thinking.

  “All right, Blaze,” the doctor reached out and patted her hand. “If you don’t think you can—”

  “No, no, I suppose it’ll be all right.” She looked up at Dr. Stone and gave her a quavering smile. “I’m just a little nervous, that’s all.” Blaze hesitated a moment, and then asked, “Why do you feel this is necessary?”

  “Hypnotism is a shortcut that can replace months of in-depth therapy. It’s only used on the more difficult cases. Those that really need it.”

  “The nutcases, huh?”

  “Blaze, don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t mean that at all. I will admit that it most likely will be very hard on you, after all, you’re going back to where it all happened, but I promise that the outcome will do wonders for you.” The doctor took her time and watched Blaze for a moment. “You have to be sure, Blaze. We can go the long route if you want, but I very definitely recommend that we try hypnotism.”

  The reassuring words of the doctor did nothing for Blaze. She still felt uncertain, her hands raking through her hair, the familiar fear inside her causing sweat to break out along her forehead. Finally, she rose from the couch and began to pace. Nothing seemed to help, so she sat down again.

  The doctor took Blaze’s trembling hands and spoke to her in a concerned voice. “Blaze, I know this is hard, but we need to clean you up inside. Just imagine that somewhere inside you there is a large cup full of everything in your life that has ever hurt you. When we’re born, that cup is empty, but as we grow, it fills up slowly. A drop here, a drop there. Each hurt that we experience causes the contents to rise a little at a time. By the time we’re adults, we have within us a large cup of pain that causes us to act the way we do. Now imagine what happens when that cup gets full. Naturally, after a while, those hurts begin to spill over the side and show up in many ways.”

  She peered at Blaze closely. “A rebellious attitude, for instance. Bitterness, hate, anger. Where do you think we get our hardcore criminals such as serial killers, rapists—?”

  “You’re comparing me to—”

  “No, of course I’m not. The nature of your problem has taken you in a different direction. Frigidity.”

  Blaze’s eyes opened wide in surprise at the awful word.

  “In some women, it might mean that they won’t wear makeup, or prefer loose clothing. In their minds, they don’t want to do anything to attract a man’s attentions. They strive to look plain, unadorned.”

  “But frigid!” Blaze spat, looking at the doctor, appalled. “Me?”

  “A woman that can’t submit to a man? Of course she’s frigid. It’s not normal to resist a man’s touch. A young, healthy woman like yourself should unfold like a flower beneath a man’s touch. Especially the man she loves.”

  Blaze’s eyes lowered, a mixture of pain and confusion in them. Finally, she gave a slight shrug. “Then I guess you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right, Blaze. Someone once told me that they felt as if they were walking around with a big cup full of anger, trying not to spill it.” The doctor looked closely at Blaze, trying to gauge her reactions to what she was saying. “He didn’t realize it, but in saying that, he proved exactly what I had always known.”

  Blaze shook her head. “God, Doc, why don’t you just give up? I’m hopeless and we both know it.”

  “Nonsense. Everyone feels their problem is special.”

  “Special?”

  “Yes. Unusual, extraordinary. Tell me, Blaze, why do you think your problem is so special?”

  “I don’t know. I guess because I feel that no one has ever had a problem like mine before. It was my fault, you know. I guess I really am trash.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because of where I come from, the way I dressed. The shack gave almost no privacy. The walls were thin, and only a curtain separated my room from the rest of the house.”

  “He was family, Blaze. People go around half-dressed all the time in front of family members. It shouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Then why did it?”

  “Because the problem resided in him from the beginning. Who knows why he did what he did? Maybe he had an affinity for young girls, children, who knows?” The doctor gazed at Blaze intently. “Blaze, do you understand what I’m saying? The problem was with your uncle, not you. And I’m going to help you because you’re worth it. You’re a wonderful woman who deserves every good thing life has to offer. Every one of your fans thinks so. Now, it’s time for you to think so, too.”

  Blaze thought about what the doctor was saying, and wanted to hold onto it, but in her imagination, she could see her uncle’s ugly face and feel his rough hands as he struggled to grab her between the legs. The memory stabbed Blaze, and pain gushed inside her like blood, causing her to cry softly while murmuring, “Bad girl, bad girl!”

  The doctor rose, moving to the couch to take Blaze in her arms. “Sure, if you were going to be labeled a bad girl, why not act like one, right?”

  “But he told me I was bad. For years, every time he touched me.”

  “Blaze, to him you were bad because your body tempted him. It had nothing to do with who you were, where you came from, your past, or anything of the kind. Don’t you see that deep down, he knew he was to blame, but because you made him feel the way he did, it was easy to shift the blame on you. All degenerates do that. It’s the most natural thing in the world for them.” She held Blaze for a while, and then turned Blaze’s face toward her and looked deep into her eyes. “Blaze, you’re not a bad girl, and you never were.”

  The doctor’s soft arms reminded Blaze of her aunt, and the night that those soft arms were taken away forever.

  “You were simply convinced, Blaze. Your head was constantly being filled with lies about how bad your mother was, and that you were a bad seed. Suddenly, one day that cup began spilling over. Little by little, it began to color your personality until you didn’t feel good enough for the rest of the world, so before they rejected you, you rejected them.

  “Early in life, that icy defense began rising, and by the time you found yourself walking down that old dirt road, the transformation was complete. The helpless teen was gone, and the Blaze Alexander the world came to know was born. She walked steadily into her future filled with a grim determination to never let anything touch her again.

  “That night you thought it was all over, but unfortunately, it wasn’t, because along with your ragged old suitcase, you carried your memories. Memories of your uncle’s attacks on your body, your aunt’s suicide, and the knowledge that your uncle’s body is lying at the bottom of a well…and that you put him there. But it was enough for you. Enough to take you through life daring anyone to get close. The bad news is, now that you know, Blaze, now that your eyes have been
opened, the blame shifts to you. You can go through life continuing to feel sorry for yourself, or you can let me help you remove that dark cloud that’s been following you around all your life.”

  Blaze dabbed at her eyes, feeling as broken inside as one could get.

  “I’m sorry, Blaze, but sometimes a therapist has to be brutally honest. Are you okay? Can we continue?”

  “I guess so,” Blaze said quietly, and then at the doctor’s invitation eased herself down on the couch and became resigned to seeing her uncle Ralph at least one more time.

  The doctor took the chair opposite Blaze and began slowly talking to her with a soothing voice.

  Before Blaze realized it, she could hear the words coming to her as if from a deep well. She felt safe with the voice guiding her, but came to the point where she knew she must turn from it and enter a dark tunnel.

  Slowly, she walked, darkness shrouding her. Scenes from her life flickered around her. She became mesmerized, staring at one and then the other until suddenly it stopped, one spreading predominantly before her. It was like a movie screen where the action had been stopped and held in freeze frame.

  The people were flat, unreal, unmoving, but they were people she recognized. Slowly, she walked toward them until she found herself surrounded by the other world. She looked around, watching as the flat, still scene took on depth and the people became rounded, and real. Suddenly, the peaceful silence of her mind was suddenly filled with the sexy music of the slide trombone.

  “Hey, baby, get out there and do something.”

  Blaze turned to see a woman looking at her with a big smile. “Minnie!” Blaze exclaimed. “My gosh, how—”

  “Blaze, gal you always did talk too much. Now get out there and shake them shoulders, and wiggle that cute, little ass o’ yo’rn.”

  Suddenly, the floor emptied of everyone but her. She felt strange at first, and then suddenly the music grabbed her, and she began moving to the sound of it. She knew where she was. It was Porky’s Place. It was a honky-tonk she used to go to when she sneaked out of the house to get away from her uncle Ralph. It was always filled with black people. Horns wailed, the notes of the slide trombone long and lazy as they slid up and down, bouncing and climbing again, wailing into the night. It was here that she learned to love the music of the Mississippi Delta.

  By this time, Dr. Spencer had joined Dr. Stone. When Blaze’s beautiful body began moving suggestively, he looked over at Dr. Stone and smiled a bit sheepishly, his face flushing from slight embarrassment.

  “Ohhhh,” Blaze squealed when she heard the deep plunges of the horn dipping, and then rising as if to the highest peak of an orgasm. “Ohhh, do it to me, Mr. Slide Trombone, ohhh, do…it…to…me!”

  “Blaze…”

  “No, wait.” Dr. Spencer said, his eyes following Blaze’s suggestive movements with an interested smile.

  Blaze, surrounded by the sounds she’d grown up with, writhed seductively to the music. The wild rhythm, and the long, sensuous notes were being pushed through a horn that grabbed deep inside her and pulled out the most erotic feelings she’d ever felt. It was here the words were born, the words that shaped her future. She said what she felt, described what the music did to her, what it made her feel. What came out weren’t the words of a fourteen-year-old, but the well-known dark, sliding whiskey voice of Blaze Alexander, the Queen of Steam.

  “Hey, all you lovers out there, hear that slow-movin’ ‘bone? Doesn’t it do somethin’ to you? It makes me feel all hot and sexy inside. It calls to me, suga’. It’s callin’ now. Reachin’ down deep inside, yeah, deep, real deep inside. Come on, let’s do it, huh? Only let’s do it the way it’s supposed to be done. That’s right. Oh, it’s so good—”

  Finally ignoring Dr. Spencer’s suggestion to let her play the scene out, Dr. Stone called out loudly, “Blaze!”

  Blaze stopped abruptly and looked around. She seemed compelled to listen as the strange voice reverberated around the room.

  “Blaze, go home.”

  “But…”

  “Go home, Blaze! Now!”

  With a slight hesitation, Blaze found herself easing out of the picture, and then moving down the old Georgian road back toward home. She hadn’t gone far when she saw the ash-gray shack gradually materialize out of the darkness. She’d always remembered it bigger than it appeared. Now it seemed to lean, the planks paper thin, and the screens on the windows torn and hanging. She looked around at the red Georgian dirt, and then up at the sky.

  The nights were always dark as sin, and Satan’s Breath pushed impatiently at her back. Her steps slowed a bit when she recalled the number of times she had sat on those old, broken steps with her back rubbing up against the rough shards of peeling paint. She’d look up at the big Georgian moon while listening to the far off haunting music from Porky’s Place.

  Slowly, she walked into the yard, knowing that she was going to have to climb the splintery, creaking steps and open the door. She hesitated, remembering the last time she’d tried to open it. Her aunt had been on the other side, lying in a pool of blood. Remembering made the terror of that night rise up in her. She stopped, her feet refusing to move. She couldn’t go in there. She couldn’t go through it. Not now, not again!

  But the voice guided her, and somehow one foot moved in front of the other and she climbed each step. The closer she came to the door, the harder her heart pounded. She put her hand out, seeing it tremble as she laid it on the rusty old knob.

  When she finally turned it and the door opened, she got the first glimpse of what was inside. At first, she was looking at her fourteen-year-old image, but only for a split second. Suddenly, she wasn’t on the porch anymore, but sucked into the picture and caught in between two people who seemed to be fighting over her, their voices raised in anger. On one side was her aunt, dressed in a familiar thin dress with the same tiny blue and white checks, and the same stained apron Blaze had seen every day of her life.

  On the other side was her ugly, sweaty uncle Ralph. Seeing him again was too much for her. She wanted out. With waves of fear gushing through her, she leaned forward, quickly reaching for the door she had come through. But suddenly, she felt a rough hand on her arm. “Where d’ya think your goin’?”

  The moment her uncle Ralph put his hand on her, all memories of a connection to something outside herself left her mind, and she was fourteen again. She was back in that run down shack on Ash Lane as if she’d never left, the old house shaking as if it were going to fall down every time a train came whistling by, rattling the dishes in the cupboard.

  “Get your greasy hands off me, you bastard!”

  “That’s right.” He pushed himself up behind her and put his face next to hers. “Treat me rough. I like it that way. Never did like a woman that was too easy.”

  “She ain’t no woman, Ralph. She’s just a kid barely fourteen and flat as a pancake. Why don’t you leave her alone?”

  “Oh, she ain’t flat, Rachel,” her uncle said as he suddenly ripped the front of Blaze’s dress open, exposing her developing breasts. “Look at that. When she gets to be eighteen, those things’ll be as fat as melons, and twice as sweet.”

  “But she ain’t eighteen, so leave her be!”

  Suddenly, her uncle Ralph’s hand swung out and backhanded Rachel, sending her to the floor where she struck her head on the corner of the couch. He turned and jerked Blaze to him, his sour breath on her face as he said, “Now we can get down to business.”

  Blaze struggled and somehow managed to get away. She ran toward her bedroom, threw the tattered curtain aside, and lunged for her bed. She reached underneath her pillow and pulled out a large kitchen knife, and then turned. There he was, his evil eyes glinting in the darkness. She held the glittering blade toward him. “Get away, or I swear I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” His gravelly voice grew husky. “You ain’t gonna push that thing into me. Not tonight. You and me, we’re gonna have some fun.”

  Just then, Blaze
heard a big gust of wind push against the window drowning out his words. The loose pane rattled, and the screech sounded high and lonely as it blew through the cracks. She knew what it was. It was Satan’s Breath coming right up from the bowels of hell, carrying with it the stench of death. It roamed the dark valleys, climbed the tall hills, and then swept down deep into the gullies. It was then that she began to smell it. It was on the breeze that snaked its way through the cracks, coiling around—choosing a victim.

  He crept slowly toward her, watching the knife in her hand when suddenly he stumbled and fell toward her on the knife! His heavy body fell solidly against her before he began to slide, and then she heard his weight thud against the floor. She stood there staring at her uncle’s unseeing eyes, at the blood that spurted—sprayed. Blaze gagged at the scene—the blood—her uncle on the floor before her. She could feel her mind slipping into some kind of semi-consciousness, and then—

  “Blaze, don’t!”

  She came back, her gaze rising toward the ceiling. The voice, where did it come from? Somehow compelled by the words that were speaking to her mind, she moved out of the fourteen-year-old image of herself, stepped away from the body, and walked into the living room. She saw her aunt sitting up and holding her head, but she knew the woman couldn’t see her.

  She was heading toward the front door when she suddenly remembered something. Her head turned and she looked at the tattered old rug that she knew covered a loose plank in the floor. She knew precisely where the gun was that would kill her aunt that night. She ran toward it.

  “Blaze, no! Leave it! It has to play out exactly the way it did twelve years ago. Let it lay. You can’t save your aunt, and on this night twelve years ago both your aunt and uncle died. But you didn’t, Blaze. Do you hear me? You did not! You’re still the sweet, young girl you were then. No ice formed around your heart. Your soul is not scarred. You simply have an inborn will to survive as we all do.