by Barbie Wilde
Although Cleopatra had theoretically tested the pandoric in her laboratory, she recommended that they should try the device out practically, but where and on whom? Eve suggested that they use the neglected basement of Plato’s Retreat. Fortunately, she still possessed the keys to the place from her younger, wilder days as a topless waitress and burlesque artist there. The Five Females agreed to meet on Monday night (when Plato’s was closed) at the stroke of 4 a.m.—that special time beloved of demons when they were at their most powerful and where they could easily enter the minds of humans and cause chaos.
The second problem was who to choose as their guinea pig. Lilith proposed a Male Cenobite who had been pursuing her for decades. She often had dreams of destroying him, because he was so annoying and pathetic in his adoration of her, so he would be easy prey.
The Five Females split up and amused themselves until the appointed day and hour, when they arrived at Plato’s Retreat. They entered the deserted baroque style nightclub by the back entrance, moving silently and directly to the door of the basement.
Descending the stairs, Joan directed the other Females to fan out and hide, leaving Lilith in the center of the room, lit by a single flickering bare light bulb.
And so they waited ...
At 4:30 a.m., they heard the clumping sounds of the Male Cenobite arriving for his amorous tryst. Lilith’s bird feet scrabbled on the stone floor, eagerly anticipating the glorious end to her cloying admirer.
The Male entered. His name was Malachi and his main job was as an overweight leather-clad messenger boy and acolyte to the Lead Cenobite. His tongue was almost hanging out in desire, very unseemly for one of their kind, and all the Females were eager to see what the Cilicium Pandoric had in store for him.
Lilith couldn’t resist a bit of seduction, so without a word she walked up to Malachi and hungrily kissed him on his ruined and disfigured lips. He responded enthusiastically and she forced him down to his knees. He buried his head in her muscular thighs. That’s when Sister Cilice gave Lilith a sign. Lilith grabbed Malachi’s thinning hair, pulled his head back and viciously slashed Malachi across the face with a hidden dagger, slicing his eyeballs in half. He shrieked and covered his face with pierced and tattooed hands.
Lilith slipped back into the shadows and Sister Cilice moved into position with the Cilicium Pandoric. This was the moment they’d all been waiting for. She followed Cleopatra’s instructions to the letter, setting the Pandoric into motion and placing it on the floor between the blinded Male Cenobite’s knees.
The Pandoric danced and sighed its charmingly discordant tunes. Malachi was too distracted with pain to notice. Then the top of the Pandoric sprung open and thin chains of silvery platinum shot out from its darkly intricate interior, the hooks at the ends of the chains embedding themselves into Malachi’s leather clad genitalia. Blood seeped out and trickled down the chains into the depths of the Pandoric, awakening what lay inside. Malachi shrieked again and tried to pull the hooks out, but that only caused him more pain and, perversely, more pleasure.
Then something else issued forth from the Pandoric. A light blinked on, a twirling blinding light. Too late, the Five Females realized that the Schism had opened up and released a diminutive creature that could not have come from the humans’ Earth, but from some other dimension not known to them. The creature popped out from the Pandoric like a cosmic jack-in-the-box, which it faintly resembled, but the demonic Punch lookalike didn’t stay there for long. Abseiling up the silver chains, the creature attached itself and then violently hugged Malachi’s blood-soaked crotch.
A diabolical hug, as it turned out. Malachi’s moans of pleasure and pain gurgled to a halt. He fell back supine on the ground, legs akimbo, and as the thing squeezed harder, Malachi’s body rapidly softened and liquefied like a leather-clad snowman on a hot summer’s day. His mouth slacked open and his tongue oozed out, shrinking into an oily slug-like apparition on his face. The creature grew alarmingly in size as it became more engorged with Malachi’s personality, power, blood and desiccated organs, while Malachi dissolved into a greasy sludge.
The Females were stunned to say the least. All they were expecting was an entertaining and gruesome castration, not a demonic blood-sucking puppet. Although it was hardly puppet-sized anymore. They should have fled the scene for their own protection, but the Females were too fascinated by the sight to budge from their hiding places.
The creature finished slurping up the remaining Cenobite slime on the floor, then stood and turned around to face them. Its visage had changed, looking less like Punch and more like a mix of the hapless Malachi and a squashed face of a boxer dog. It was human-like in its body shape and the color of its skin was as silvery and metallic looking as the chains that originally sprung from the Cilicium Pandoric to ensnare Malachi’s privates.
Sister Cilice hissed to Cleopatra: “Cleo, what have you done? This thing could destroy us all!”
Cleopatra replied: “All I did was create a device to castrate the males. What this creature is, or where it’s from, I have no idea.”
Lilith decided that she wanted a closer look at the newcomer and came forward to reveal herself in the light as the ferocious she-demon that she was: winged, buxom and blood-thirsty. Lilith thundered: “Who are you and what do you want?”
The silvery creature sniggered and said: “Lilith, Queen of the Demons, I salute you for your audacity. My name is Mastema. I am the Angel of All Disasters, a punisher of those who offend the powers that be and a flatterer of the first order. You are truly the most splendid of all the lady demons here ... But you, Sister Cilice, you are of such great beauty that my breath is taken away. Of course, Eve and Joan are beyond such measly words as beauty.”
Without hesitation, Joan unsheathed her sword and attacked Mastema. She screamed in warning to the others: “He is the father of all evil. I recognize his name from the old books!”
Her sword thrust through Mastema’s silvery skin like it was butter. The creature looked down in surprise and disappointment at the weapon lodged in his belly and then laughed merrily.
“I see that I shall have to make another demonstration of my power.”
Mastema removed Joan’s sword, leapt forward and embraced her with such strength that she had no time to cry out. He entwined himself around her like a lover and she melted into his arms and diminished with each second until her armor fell to the ground, empty.
Now Mastema’s face was an obscene mash-up of Malachi, Joan and the boxer dog and he had grown to twice his previous size. Sister Cilice was contemplating a speedy retreat, when the creature spoke:
“Joan wasn’t really one of you, was she? Rather ineffectual while she was alive, never really achieved anything of note down here. I think that I’ve done you a favor. Your group is all the stronger for the pruning of its weakest member.”
Eve stepped forward: “So what do you offer us then?”
Mastema said: “Dominion. Isn’t that what you all want? No more kowtowing to the big boys? I really admire your plan and I’m more than willing to help.”
“Why should we trust you?” Lilith snarled.
Mastema giggled and said: “You can’t. Isn’t that delicious?”
“What is your plan?” Sister Cilice asked.
Mastema beamed with delight: “How does total and utter destruction suit you?”
So the Females made their infernal pact with Mastema, not realizing that he had a hidden agenda of his own. At first, all went well. Sister Cilice gave Mastema one of the Lead Cenobite’s leather gauntlets (a trophy from one of their rare moments of mutual sensuality) and Mastema snuffled up the Lead Cenobite’s scent and demonic DNA in an instant.
Mastema scampered off like an eager bloodhound, seeking out the Lead Cenobite, taking him unawares in his quarters and enveloping him in one of his terminal embraces. However, the Lead Cenobite was
no pushover and fought viciously against Mastema, ripping his left arm off in the struggle. Salamander-like, Mastema’s arm grew right back and the brutal battle continued. In the end—his strength sapped by Mastema’s relentless attack—the weakened Lead Cenobite collapsed and Mastema absorbed every cynical particle of his being.
The other Male Cenobites got wind of the interloper and a gruesome bloody war of the sexes ensued. Pandorics were thrown like a whole new dimension of fragmentation grenades. Chains and hooks flew through the air, cutting into and ripping the flesh of both Males and Females alike.
Cleopatra was the first to perish, shredded into tiny pieces by the very Pandorics that so fascinated her. The ground was slimed with the gushing, steaming Cenobite gore and Eve slipped and fell—to be decapitated in an instant by a blood-crazed Male wielding an ancient Viking battle ax. Lilith held out the longest, but she eventually expired with feathered wings plucked and burned, and eyes gouged out, ironically echoing her punishment of Malachi’s adoration. Even though the Sisterhood was defeated, Sister Cilice fought on, taking no prisoners, slashing and skewering her opponents like a diabolical feminine version of Vlad the Impaler.
In the midst of it all, Mastema fought like a deranged gargantuan ninja warrior, although instead of a samurai sword, his weapon was the fatal touch of his arms and hands, which withered and soaked up Cenobites whenever he came into contact with them.
* * *
So, instead of the glorious enslavement of the Males, all was blackness, annihilation and the death of the already dead. The only two left standing were Mastema—now enormous, bloated and decorated with the faces of countless Cenobites, with the abiding boxer dog face still the strongest image—and a battle-weary Sister Cilice, surrounded by her murder of crows and ravens.
She realized now that she had been tricked by Mastema. The Labyrinth was an empty smoldering wreck and she was to blame. She wondered why she had been spared Mastema’s lethal embraces.
As Sister Cilice surveyed the smoking ruins of Hell, she felt a presence behind her. Her time had come. Well, she would greet oblivion with grace. It was the least she could do.
She turned and looked up. Mastema towered over her, his gluttonous belly swollen with the essences of thousands of her fellow Cenobites. He looked at her fondly, which she found rather disgusting.
“I have always admired you, Sister Cilice,” Mastema said. “Your adoration of suffering and torture was second to none and your wonderful back story of being a former nun and willingly giving up your humanity to become a Cenobite always intrigued me. Of course, we knew about your little plot from the beginning, which is why I was inserted into the Cilicium Pandoric as the Toymaker was creating it for you all those centuries ago. Malachi’s blood and XY chromosomes awakened me and I knew that the game was afoot. Well, what do you think of your Rebellion of the Female Cenobites now?”
“You have destroyed us. I have dominion over nothing. Do what you must and let me follow my fellow Cenobites into the void.”
“Oh, my dear, you give up so easily! I was expecting some kind of thrilling, violent, final gesture that would go into the annals of Hell, at the very least.”
“Please, just get on with it,” she growled.
“You don’t understand. I have no intention of destroying you. I love you with all my heart, but sadly, I cannot caress your beautiful, blue and scarified corpse flesh. I can only yearn for your touch from afar like a pimply adolescent schoolboy.”
“So you leave me here alone in Hell, destined for an existence of solitude forever?”
“Oh, no, I have plans for you. I have left you a little gift. It’s contained within your exquisite Cilicium Pandoric. Here it is. Take it back. It was always yours.” He offered her the Pandoric, dropping it into her outstretched hand.
“There are many surprises inside. All you have to do is solve the puzzle and you will experience the ultimate in sensual suffering—what you always offered your victims. Although it’s more like sensuality and then suffering.”
“What kind of gift lies inside?” asked Sister Cilice.
The creature’s laughter was filled to the brim with the screaming cacophony of dead Cenobites, a deeply unpleasant sound. “My sperm! Yes, you can repopulate Hell all on your own. You will be the Mother of All Demons. Think of it: you will no longer be a mere factotum, you will be Queen of the Labyrinth. When you insert the Pandoric, millions of demonic seeds will flow and infest your withered womb. I promise that the sensations will be legendary.”
“And the suffering?”
Mestema laughed again. “As I just said, you will be the mother of legions of new demons. If the Curse of Eve and the pain of childbirth doesn’t kill you, it will make you so strong that you will reign here for eternity. It’s your choice: solitude—or the temporary servitude of motherhood, followed by complete domination.”
“And you... ?”
“Oh, I will change. I will surround you and our children, guard you and protect you. Do you accept the covenant?”
Sister Cilice did not hesitate: “Yes ...”
“Excellent! Remember that I will always be here with you—albeit in another form. Farewell, sweet Cenobite!”
Mastema turned away, gently rising up like a giant gothic balloon—serenely drifting across the blighted landscape. As Sister Cilice watched, his bulk gradually deflated and spread out like a flying carpet, which then began to spin faster and faster. Eventually, Mastema’s whirling body shattered into millions of scintillating snowflakes, which eventually drifted down and covered the blasted ground like a silvery shroud.
Sister Cilice crunched over the icy shards of Mastema’s last physical remains. The fires of Hell were quenched and the scenery was beautiful: a new frosty platinum world, an ice cave of wonders—all repainted in her favorite Cilicium Pandoric colors of silver, black and red, since the rivers still flowed with the cornelian-colored blood of the expired Cenobites.
Sister Cilice smiled. It hadn’t been a tough choice. She played with the Pandoric, sliding her cold fingers over the surface. In the distance, a lonely bell tolled and the conflicted harmonies of the Pandoric’s melodies started to play deep inside the confines of the Box. Then the Pandoric started to change ... and Hell began all over again.
AFTERWORD
The Soska Sisters
There you have it, friends. Thank you, Barbie, we now know another use for plastic ties if we ever have a break in.
Like a feverish perverse dream that embarrasses & delights the dreamer, but one that’s underlying terrors is too frightening to be shared, Barbie Wilde’s Voices of the Damned is the prolific writer at her best. Repulsion, titillation, and truth crawls under the skin, horror over a glorious backdrop of worlds so rich and real, it is as if with each page, the reader can safely dip their toe into the macabre, exist in that place, and still return with foot intact. That is the devilish treat that is Wilde’s collection of short stories brilliantly matched with the visual spectacle of some of horror’s most brilliant minds’ artwork.
Good literature is an adventure, the author is your guide. In Wilde’swritings, the reader is feasted to worlds familiar but so fantastical in her very capable hands. A vacation not only from reality, but a full sabbatical from the humdrum of daily routine to a realm that isn’t so different from ours which makes the entrance of horror within it so much more delicious. Where else could a train ride become the grounds for an erotic Zulu zombie encounter? Where else does an aging woman not fall victim to a break and enter of today’s notoriously ignorant youth but rather repurpose her would be attackers into the fuel that births an angry Goddess? Where else would writer’s block end with the unclogging of a rectum courtesy of the devil himself? With artistically homicidal whimsy and a sense of horror punk rock abandon, Wilde’s worlds grab you & hold you close until they are done with you.
So here we a
re at the afterword, the postcoitus of the short story compilation. The neurochemistry of your own mind really decides how you have been affected, but a kaleidoscope of feelings, thoughts, and emotions may have been shaken loose by what you have just experienced on these pages. So many people say that you can tell a lot from a person based on the books on their shelves, we say you can tell a lot from a person by the kinds of books that they gift people. Voices of the Damned makes for a very lovely gift for someone dear who strays from the herd in the most imaginative and liberated way or who aspires to in their most secretive of feverish dirty dreams. The kind that they never tell anyone about.
—Jen & Sylv
BARBIE WILDE
www.barbiewilde.com
Barbie Wilde is best known for playing the Female Cenobite in Clive Barker’s classic British cult horror movie, Hellbound: Hellraiser II. Before moving to the UK, Wilde attended Syracuse University in New York State, majoring in Drama and Anthropology. She continued her education in London, studying Drama, Classical Mime and Art History, before joining Britain’s largest classical mime troupe, SILENTS.
Wilde has also performed in cabaret in Bangkok, Thailand; danced in the Indian blockbuster, Janbaaz; was a vicious thug in Michael Winner’s Death Wish 3; and played a drummer for an electronica band in the so-called “Holy Grail of unfinished and unreleased 80’s horror”: Grizzly II: The Concert, which also featured then unknowns George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen.
In the early 1980s, Wilde danced professionally at the top nightclubs and rock venues of New York, London and Amsterdam with her group, SHOCK. SHOCK supported such artists as Gary Numan, Ultravox, Depeche Mode and Adam and the Ants. They released two singles on RCA Records: “Angel Face” and “Dynamo Beat.”