Voices of the Damned

by Barbie Wilde

  “I can’t tell you how scared I was. I knew that I should get out of that cursed place, but I was rooted to the ground. I also felt stirrings deep inside that I’d never experienced before. I later realized that I was becoming sexually aroused. (This had never happened with Jeromie my husband, sad to say. One of the reasons that I had to dispose of him later, but that’s another story.)

  “The man in the goat mask walked up some steps and then knelt on the altar in front of the woman. I noticed with a thrill that his member was hard and erect. He went down on her and began to give her oral pleasure. I’d never seen that sexual act before and I was almost frantic with longing. I wanted to be her. I wanted to be sacrificed to whatever dark god they were worshipping. I wanted to leave my powerless life behind and become whatever these people were.

  “I hitched up my dress and as I continued to watch—I put my fingers inside myself and masturbated, not really knowing what I was doing, as I was so ignorant at the time about sexual matters.

  “Then the Goat Man entered the woman and she shrieked with even wilder abandon. My eyes were squeezed shut and I was close to coming for the first time in my life. Then someone’s hand pushed mine away and thrust his fingers deep inside me. My eyes popped open in horror to find a tall dark man pushing me against the tree. Although I was in terror of my life, he made me come. The Dark Man easily picked me up in his arms and took me through the crowd of worshippers, who were in various stages of copulation on the grassy meadow.

  “The Goat Man was in the final throes of his ritual. He and the woman came at the same time and their cries of pleasure were echoed by the others. He quickly disengaged from the woman, who was begging for more. Two men came and dragged her away. The Dark Man brought me to the Goat Man.

  “They stripped me naked and laid me out on the altar. The Goat Man retreated and the Dark Man mounted me. Previously, I’d avoided looking into his face, but as soon as I did, I knew that my life would never be the same. For I was looking into the face of the Devil and he was beautiful.

  “The Dark Man penetrated me. He whispered in my ear: spells and promises of power beyond my wildest dreams. He enchanted me and I gladly gave up my soul for him. Why suffer a life of misery and enslavement to a woman-hating God of the Christians when you could give yourself to a fallen angel? To become a follower of sensuality, supremacy and the beautiful darkness of evil.

  “It was the best sex I’d ever had and I happily gave up the child that I later bore him. Not to be sacrificed, but to be brought up to be a man of influence and power. I had a little run in with the authorities, as I mentioned to you, but for the most part, my Dark Man protected me and our child and ... we lived happily ever after for ever and ever.”

  With utter fascination, Bart had been looking up at Lora as she told her story. She was literally living through the telling of it.

  “But why me ... why do you want to help me?” Bart asked.

  “I get so bored sometimes,” Lora replied. “It’s no picnic living for centuries. You become jaded. You’ve seen everything and you soon realize that members of the human race—except for a very privileged intelligent few—are violent, primitive animals who deserve an early death. But occasionally, someone comes along who amuses me and your first novel, Vendetta for a Dead Man, really struck a chord in my heart, blackened as it is after all these years.

  “You’re special and I want to help you. I want you to become a literary superstar and I will make you one. Do you want to come with me, Bartholomew? Are you willing to give up your immortal soul to accompany me on my great adventure?”

  It was obvious to Bart that Lora was totally mad, but what a madness! He didn’t believe in immortal souls or the Devil, so what was the harm of stringing the poor girl along? He just hoped that he would survive their encounter.

  “I feel as you do,” Bart said. “I want something different in life. Let’s do the ritual, or the spell, or whatever and I can break free from this stultifying existence.” He sincerely hoped that sounded suitably dramatic enough for her.

  “Yes!” Lora said and she began to undulate more vigorously, if that was possible. She looked at her watch. “We must come together at the first chime of midnight. Can you wait that long?”

  Bart nodded enthusiastically without speaking. He didn’t want to lose his focus. Lora grabbed his throat again, tightening her grip. Yet again, he was so close, but her eyes were pleading with him to stay with her—to hold out that little bit longer. Then the chimes of the church bells across the square began to ring out.

  “Now! Beltane has come!” Lora cried out triumphantly and Bart let go of his load, with enormous relief. He could almost feel his sperm shooting into her. He looked up at that exquisitely beautiful face and felt the most profound feelings of ... well, it wasn’t love, not yet, but a sexual intensity bordering on adoration.

  Then Lora glared down at Bart and he sensed something had changed: her eyes were glowing a brighter green and she was now moving so furiously that Bart began to fear for her. She began making sounds that were unworldly, animalistic and the fear turned to one for his own safety.

  “Stop Lora, you have to stop now!” he cried, but she roared at him: “NO!”

  Lora road him harder and harder. She lifted her hands to her face and began to rip the skin off her perfect cheeks. As she tore into herself, she shrieked: “No, not yet! Don’t betray me! You promised me I could tell my story to him! It’s not fair ...” Words that froze Bart’s blood.

  Bart frantically tugged at the red scarves binding his wrists, desperately wanting to be free, regretting the moment that he foolishly surrendered to this demonically crazy woman. But then he realized that what was fucking him wasn’t a woman at all.

  Lora’s blood was spurting from every orifice, then something thrust forth from her chest, Alien-style, stopping her screams dead. With utter horror, Bart realized it was a man’s hand.

  Lora’s body spectacularly exploded in slo-mo from within, revealing another diabolical creature inside her that quickly metamorphosed into the Dark Man of her description. Ruby red eyes burned in his saturnine face and hairy brutish crimson-stained hands gripped Bart by the throat.

  The Dark Man slid his pelvis back and Bart glanced down to see an enormous cock gliding out of what used to be Lora’s sublimely sweet vagina. Bart couldn’t cry out anymore and he was just about to black out, when the Dark Man loosened his grip for a moment and leaned over Bart’s face—inches away.

  “Are you a movie buff?” The Dark Man asked in an excrementally scented voice so low it sounded like it was coated in velour.

  “What the fuck?” Bart croaked.

  “You want to know my all-time favorite line from the movies?”

  Bart could only gurgle helplessly with fear.

  “Here’s the line. You have to tell me which movie it’s from: ‘The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.’”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Come on, Bart, put a bit of effort into it. After all, you’re a writer. Here’s a hint: Christopher McQuarrie won an Oscar for the screenplay,” the Dark Man said.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Unusual Suspects? Is that it? Will you let me go now?”

  “WRONG!!!” the Dark Man brayed, with forked tongue protruding and flies coming out of his mouth like spittle. “You blew it, Bart! It’s The Usual Suspects. I love that film. ‘The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.’ You didn’t think I existed either, did you, Bart? And now I’m dragging you and your sorry ass to hell.”

  “But Lora promised me that I’d become a superstar author. You haven’t kept your part of the bargain.”

  The Dark Man laughed and laughed—and more flies swarmed and buzzed out of his horrendous scarlet maw of a mouth. “We haven’t finished the ritual yet. Do you really want to
be a world famous writer that bad? Okay, I’ll make you famous. Unfortunately, it will be posthumously famous. Your books are going to sell like hotcakes after the authorities find what’s left of you, my friend. They’ll have to pick you up with a sponge!”

  Bart tried to protest, but the Dark Man’s hands tightened again and then he viciously plunged his colossal cock up Bart’s ass and shattered him in two in the most grotesquely painful way possible. Luckily for Bart, the Dark Man strangled him to death before his infernal penis reached up to pop open Bart’s liver like a birthday piñata.

  The Dark Man left Bart as he was, with Bart’s entrails artistically draped over his right shoulder in a cute little tribute to Catherine Eddowes, one of Jack the Ripper’s victims back in the gory glory days of 1888. He took a cold shower, borrowed some of Bart’s clothes and then left Lora’s room.

  The Dark Man got into the elevator on the 6th floor, but when it reached the basement, the elevator was empty.

  The inhabitants along the corridor were far too soused in booze to have been disturbed by the nighttime shenanigans in the gore-splattered luxury twin on the 6th floor, but the maid did get a bit of a shock the next morning.

  And the Dark Man was right. Bart’s books did sell like hotcakes—flying off the shelves. And he finally made the papers, the front page no less: “Author Butchered in Berserk Brighton Bloodbath.”

  Bart would have been so proud.

  The Cilicium Rebellion

  (Part III of The Cilicium Trilogy)

  “Queen of the Labyrinth”

  The air reeked with the dying breaths of corruption. No smothering of the obscene birthday cake-like perfumes of vanilla and cinnamon could obscure the overwhelming stench of the grave that permeated the already fetid gases of the Labyrinth. The prevailing odor was of canned beetroot, one of the few smells that Sister Cilice recalled with particular horror from her previous life as a human, shuddering at the memory of shouted threats at the dinner table unless she finished her plate. Then Sister Cilice laughed ... the mirthless laughter of the dead. With so much destruction laid before her, her delicate shivers at the thought of the repulsive Beta vulgaris were ironic, to say the least.

  For the congealed lakes and rivers of Hell were stained black-red with the blood of the Cenobites who refused to bow to her will, along with the Females who had supported her. The cypress trees that lined the highways and byways were bent double by the obsidian winds of change. Crows and ravens flew up squawking to the glowering metallic sky, swirling patterns of revolution and hate and triumph. Sister Cilice had won, but at what cost? She was now the one in power, but dominion over what? Who was left for her to lead? Even her elite team of Female Cenobites had been melded into the atoms of another being more powerful than they could ever have imagined. The devastation was total. There was a tinge of sadness to see the old regime overthrown, but to have been the cause of such total annihilation of her kind was, in a strange way, oddly satisfying.

  * * *

  When Sister Cilice was alive in her previous existence, it felt like her mind was drowning in a sea of spiders. Thoughts always racing, scuttling here and there, picking over things, dissecting her digressions, her transgressions. She had longed for freedom from the hideous monotony of her life. The emptiness inside her could not be filled. All she longed for was release.

  When her transformation came, as it came to all those who called the Order of the Gash, it tore her apart and put her back together again into a new form: strong and beautiful; ripped and cruel. Sister Cilice was no longer the pathetic human that everyone, including herself, despised, but something else: better, brighter, more purposeful. Someone who was in control.

  This took a long time to achieve, of course. No one is invited to the top table in a day. Decades went past before she was accepted as one of the elite. Her mind, her earlier life (if you could call it that), was just a burned out remnant, but there was still a whisper of a personality in there, someone who took joy in her work. She wasn’t just an underling who slavishly took orders from her betters. After all, that’s what she’d escaped from back in her old life, her alive but dead life. Now that she was dead, but oh-so-alive, she was aware of so many possibilities.

  She was mostly left on her own to pick and choose those who sought them out. It was rare when a human needed the attention of more than one of her kind. She sent out her thoughts, like the delicate tendrils of a spider’s web—any little quiver on the line and she would concentrate her attention on the prey. They were so questing and curious these mortals. Not content with a roof over their heads, food, sex and money. They longed for power too, and sensation, and other things that being comfortable and happy wouldn’t allow them to possess. They were the discontented ones, the travelers, the explorers, the ones who lived in-between the cracks of normal society.

  After the creation of her own secret Cilicium Pandoric—one that would only metamorphose Female Cenobites—Sister Cilice slowly accrued like-minded creatures who would happily follow her to the depths of desire and sensuality. But she wanted something more. Something more meaningful than what she had achieved already. She wanted total dominion.

  She walked up and down her lead-lined ascetic cell in the deepest confines of the Labyrinth, conveniently located next to a viscous black lake of blood and guilt. (Uncannily, especially since his Inferno was a work of fiction, Dante got the 9th Circle of Hell absolutely right.) Although outwardly cool and tranquil, Sister Cilice’s mind raged with a white heat, generated by years of poisonous emotions that had fuelled a thousand wars up in the human world: anger, jealousy and humiliation. Strange to think that she had hit the proverbial glass ceiling down in Hell, but that’s exactly what had happened. The Lead Cenobite prevented any further advancement for Females in Hell. Why? Just because he could. Because it pleased him to annoy his colleagues. Because he was the one who wanted all the power. He enjoyed putting obstacles in the way of the desires of Sister Cilice, who was more ambitious than the rest of the Females.

  So she plotted and paced her narrow room, dreaming of revenge and rebellion, accompanied by the raucous caws of her pet crow, Xibalbá.

  * * *

  Finally, to fulfill her dreams of domination, Sister Cilice devised a simple plan: who, what, where, when.

  Who? A carefully picked team of the most lethal Females that she could find in the Labyrinth.

  What? To conceive of a rebellion that would shake the foundations of Hell and usurp the Lead Cenobite who presently ruled.

  Where and When? Sister Cilice planned an assault during the next Grand Conference of Cenobites at Plato’s Retreat—sardonically named after the infamous 1980s nightclub in the ultimate of sin cities, New York.

  The first thing to do was pick her team. To Sister Cilice, there could be only four other inhabitants of Hell that would fit the bill to be co-leaders of her small but well-trained Female Cenobite army: Lilith, Eve, Cleopatra the Alchemist and Joan of Arc.

  Lilith, the first wife of Adam and an eternal seductress and child murderer, was experienced, clever and voracious. Having been booted out of the Garden of Eden for being an independent soul, she still had a considerable chip on her winged shoulder.

  Eve, still smarting for being blamed for Original Sin, had been bubbling with rage and passion for millennia. If these emotions could be harnessed, she would be a ferocious opponent.

  Cleopatra the Alchemist was no relation to the well-known historic Queen of Egypt. No, this Cleopatra had lived in the 3rd Century AD and she was one of the few alchemists who truly possessed the knowledge of creating the Philosopher’s Stone—turning base metals into gold or silver for her grateful clients. A magician and scientist of the highest order, Cleopatra would be of great assistance to the rebellion.

  And finally, the not-so-saintly Joan of Arc, who used her experience leading the armies of the French in 1429 to become a fine military tactician
in the Labyrinth. Before being burned at the stake, Joan was unfortunately influenced by her emotionally debauched compatriot, Maréchal de France Gilles de Rais. She rather smudged her image as a devout farm girl by taking part in some rituals devised to bring forth demons to assist the French in their battle to expel the English from their lands. So being burned as a witch was actually not so unjust as it appeared.

  * * *

  It was in one of their group Female Cenobite preparatory meetings that Cleopatra had a brainstorm. Why not tinker with the Cilicium Pandoric and twist its function from the creation of Female Cenobites into something far more diabolical: draining the power and strength from the targeted Male Cenobites? It would be so much more satisfying to leave them helpless, than to simply destroy them. Especially since the Lead Cenobite had the annoying habit of reconstituting himself even after his countless and inexplicable obliterations over the years.

  Cleopatra took the Pandoric to her laboratory, where she worked for days carefully experimenting on its internal mechanisms: moving levers and adjusting tempos and balances, as well as altering its all-important melody. The music of the Pandoric was vital to its function, as the tinkling and sinuous notes would not only trigger the gateways of Hell to open and allow access to other dimensions, but also to funnel the Labyrinthine energy needed to torment and transform the chosen ones.

  The leaders of the Rebellion met in Sister Cilice’s cell when Cleopatra was ready to present her revamped version of the Cilicium Pandoric. Its inner workings had been modified to accommodate its new purpose: the subjugation of the Male Cenobites and the castration of their powers.

  Sister Cilice was thrilled with the new device, although caution weighed on her mind. Females were outnumbered in Hell, for the simple reason that women just weren’t as deadly or dissolute as men. If they were to attack, it had to be a devastating first assault. She’d learned from her readings of Italian philosopher Machiavelli that one had to utterly destroy one’s enemies in the first instance, so they couldn’t regroup and come back to wreak a terrible revenge on their tormentors.