Orfeo

by M. J. Lawless

“Where are the rescue teams? Where’s the army?” Ardyce murmured, staring in frank confusion at the empty, damaged cityscape around them. “Why haven’t they started cleaning up?”

  Orfeo had no answer but, instead, stared at her with a frown as her face twisted in a spasm of pain and she rubbed her stomach. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I still get the occasional withdrawal symptom. I’ll be okay though. Honest.”

  Staring at her for a while, and clearly not entirely believing her, at last Orfeo looked around. “We’re the other side of the canal now and the junction’s up ahead. Maybe we can find somewhere to rest in the Pines.”

  That part of the city, east of the industrial canal that led to Lake Ponchartrain, still remained flooded, however, and so it was not until they had trudged on for another two hours that they finally found somewhere suitable closer to Westlake Forest. The buildings were deserted and Orfeo easily broke into an apartment up above the streets, helping Ardyce into a bed while he went out to scout the empty rooms nearby. “I don’t suppose anyone will really mind if we help ourselves to something. It won’t be much like looting.”

  He smiled a little grimly and Ardyce touched his cheek again, nodding at him to indicate that she would be fine. After he left she lay there for a little while, feeling the sweat on her skin and the cramps in her body, not all of them caused by the arduousness of their trek out of the city. Part of her longed for just a taste of heroin, anything to ease the sickness inside her, but she gritted her teeth as the thought entered her head. No, she told herself, that was not her path now.

  She was, however, famished. She had not eaten properly for weeks, her hunger dulled by the drugs Earl had given her, but after walking such a distance she was desperate for food. Second to that, she longed for a hot bath, though she suspected that it would be some time before she would see one of those. As such she ignored her sense of self-disgust and lay there, waiting for Orfeo to return with hoped-for supplies.

  As she rested, she pondered as to why she wanted to return to Xanadu. Both of them had initially thought that joining any other refugees of the hurricane at the Superdome had been a good idea, but even without Horse there she would have doubted the wisdom of that judgment in a very short time. Part of her hoped for rescue, of course, and again she asked herself the nagging question: where was the army? Why wasn’t more being done—had New Orleans really been abandoned?

  Such thoughts threatened to fill her with depression, so instead she turned her attention back to her original concern as to why Xanadu was attracting her like a magnet. The answer, almost ineffable, was also very simple. Xanadu was home, and she had a suspicion that she would not see it again after they left New Orleans. She wanted to go there one last time.

  Entering the room again, Orfeo sat on the bed beside her and placed a couple of cans at his feet on the floor while he fumbled with an opener. “I thought it best to stick to these,” he told her. As he opened one the smell of some kind of fruit assaulted her nostrils and she sat up eagerly, the pains in her abdomen forgotten.

  It was a tin of peach slices, slivers of pale orange fruit floating in a thick, syrupy liquid. Orfeo looked around for anything for her to eat them with, but Ardyce ignored such simple refinement, instead dipping her fingers into the syrup and fishing out a wriggling slice while taking care not to cut herself. As she tipped her head back and let the peach slide between her lips, her mouth erupted with a multitude of sensations. Orfeo laughed at her, enjoying her ravenous appetite as she she pushed piece after piece of the soft pulpy flesh into her mouth, the sugar water dribbling down her chin.

  Those peaches, as well as the tinned meat he gave her, formed one of the most delicious meals she had ever tasted, her body crying out for sustenance. Watching Orfeo eat, though in a somewhat more gentlemanly fashion than she had displayed, all disgust at her sweating body was pushed to one side. Her hunger was for more than this simple fare and she caused him to stare at her in surprise as she slid her hand into his boiler suit, opening buttons and letting her fingers caress his chest, her green eyes shining as she moved a leg across him.

  Their diversions were short-lived though both of them slept well afterwards and thus were refreshed the next morning.

  Sticking to their original plan, they continued to follow the freeway as it headed out east. They had covered most of the ground the day previously, and so while the walk was slow and monotonous it was not the same feat of endurance that they had already undergone.

  As they came closer to her home Ardyce looked around her in grief. Once upon a time she had loathed Xanadu, rebelled against everything it stood for—but those feelings lay long in the past and now she was horrified to see the wrecked buildings and drowned vehicles petering out to the fields and grounds that surrounded them.

  The road that led to Xanadu itself was sufficiently raised above the water to allow them to slowly make their way forward, though in one or two places it remained flooded and Orfeo carried Ardyce on his shoulders, wading through carefully. At last they stood in front of her old home and he remained beside her silently as she looked up at it sadly.

  The hurricane had wreaked havoc on the old building, exposed as it was without other houses nearby. Though the floodwaters that must have filled it after the storm struck had largely drained away, leaving behind only murky pools, thick marks of scum indicated the water’s highest mark and debris lay scattered around. Many of the windows were broken and part of the roof had caved in, the damage caused by a fallen tree.

  Inside the wreckage was considerably worse. Orfeo had only seen most of the house once before, yet even he was astonished by the carnage that lay before them and could only guess at the distress that Ardyce was feeling now. She said nothing, but pale and mute clung to his hand as they climbed over broken beams and smashed furniture that littered the floor. The grand hallway was smeared with mud and sand and parts of the balustrade leading up to the floor above was broken away.

  It was only when they entered the drawing room that Ardyce broke her silence. “This was where I last saw him, before we came to find you, to warn you that Earl was going to kill you.” The window seat where she had received Baptiste was torn and sodden, a wreck of its former self. She cried a little as she looked at it and Orfeo came to stand beside her, placing a strong, comforting arm around her.

  “I doubt there’s anyone here,” he said at last. “They would have heard us by now, I’m sure. It doesn’t look as though your home’s been looted in any case, though they wouldn’t have done as much damage as this.” His laugh was dry and humorless. “I’m sure you can get it rebuilt as it was before.”

  Wiping away a tear, Ardyce shook her head sadly. “No,” she said quietly at last. “I remember it too much as it used to be. Daddy would sometimes play with me in this room, and mother would be giving her orders to the staff. It can never be anything like that again.”

  “You miss them?”

  She smiled sadly. “Of course. They were good people. My grandfather—now there was a piece of work you didn’t want to mess with. I think he’d have given even Earl something to reckon with.”

  This made Orfeo laugh. “So that’s where you get the Dubois steel.”

  Her smile was deeper this time. “Yes,” she admitted at last. “You’re right, though. I think everyone else has gone. I hope they made it to safety.” She paused and then held his hand. “Come on. I want to see our room again, just one last time.” Her smile changed for a third time, now with a touch of shyness entering her eyes when she held his hand.

  As they climbed the stairs, Orfeo took in the full extent of the destruction that had been caused in the once grand house, hollowing it out and leaving a shell of a home behind. Ardyce was staring ahead of her, refusing to look back as she led him upstairs, and so she did not see the shadow of a figure that appeared in the doorway to the house, its features shrouded in darkness as it stood silhouetted against the sunlight that streamed in across the mud-covered tiles.
Then the figure took a step forward, its hand outstretched with a knife gleaming in its fingers, and as it entered a pool of light that filtered through a broken window Orfeo saw Snake’s tattooed face looking straight at him with an evil, tormented grimace of hate.

  Chapter Twenty

  On that first night of the hurricane, she had thought she would die. As she staggered between the buildings, unable to see as the venomous rain and destructive winds hurtled upon her, she knew more fear than she had ever known in her life. Not since she’d been a child had she experienced anything like this terror, and even that—something she had thought would never be surpassed—was as nothing next to it.

  Eventually, drenched and half-drowned, she had broken into a house and lay there, trembling and crying, almost shitting herself as the demons outside screamed for her blood. There was no way she could return to Hades: if nothing else, should Earl and the other loa see her like this she was finished.

  She barely slept until, at last, exhaustion caused her to doze. When she woke her night terrors had diminished, only to be replaced by a different sort of wonder and trembling when she looked from the window and saw a great lake of muddy-brown water extending far between the buildings.

  Everything she’d known had turned upside down, but at the same time she realized she had to keep going. For a day she squatted in the building, unsure of how to get in or out, breaking into other apartments there and raiding whatever food or water she could find. Then her luck had changed when she saw a boat with two men, its small motor churning up the silent waters as it came through the street where she was hiding.

  They’d called out to her when they saw and heard her. Do-gooders of some kind, mouthing platitudes about Jesus or whatever. They’d looked aghast when they saw her tattoos—everyone did that: it was why she had them—but God told them to keep on coming. That was fine by her. She didn’t believe in their God.

  After she killed them and took their boat she knew where to go. Sooner or later Ardyce would return to Xanadu—she was sure of that. As she powered the boat east she reached into her coat and pulled out her cell phone. Papa had tried to call her sometime during the night but she’d been unable to hear anything above the din of the storm. Not that it mattered now: she didn’t want to speak to anyone else but Earl, and then only when she had the girl. The battery was a quarter charged, and Snake suspected it would be a very long time before she was able to power it up again. As such, she switched it off, prepared to save what little juice there was for one last call.

  The boat had made it to Xanadu, though she was shocked when she saw the state of the building. The winds had battered away great chunks of the roof, and even though the house was constructed on a slightly higher bluff than the flat lands all around water had poured through the ground floor, forcing her to wade through past her knees. After her initial surprise, Snake took considerable pleasure in the state of the place: the last time she’d been here with Earl that bitch had shown them nothing but arrogance and disdain. Without Xanadu, Ardyce was nothing.

  She hunted around for food but everything in the kitchens had been spoiled. Eventually she managed to locate water in tanks that had not been polluted by the hurricane-driven floods: it was a little brackish, but at least she wouldn’t die of thirst. Most of the rooms upstairs had been damaged by the storm, detritus scattered everywhere. In one bedroom she found some of what must have been Ardyce’s clothes. Many were wrecked and of those elegant pieces that survived Snake realized that none of them would fit her to replace her own dirty garments. There were, however, some men’s clothes which were more suitable for Snake’s powerful frame: she would have appreciated a bath as well, but at least she could change into something cleaner.

  And so she waited. Day was followed by night, and night by day. Snake had never been one much for introspection and in that regard was closer to Earl than the other loa. Papa had his own plans and machinations, and sometimes she thought that Horse would be able to wait until judgment day without moving a muscle, but to sit and do nothing was bad for Snake.

  In fact, she could never remember how long ago it had been when she’d been forced to wait like this. The house was almost silent—disturbed only by the occasional groan of broken timbers, straining to take the weight of damaged walls—and after a day of this she began to have strange thoughts. Those thoughts stopped her sleeping too well, added to which she was starting to get very hungry.

  She thought about the two men she’d killed to get the boat. One was fat-faced—complacent perhaps, but not too bad looking if you cared for such types. His companion had been long-featured and melancholy, a bit like a horse, but the chubby guy had kind eyes that turned to terror when she stuck the knife in him. Snake wondered why she kept thinking about the two men: that wasn’t like her at all. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the image of both of them floating away in the water out of her head and experienced a strange sensation in her guts, that maybe she shouldn’t have killed them after all.

  How many men had died at her hands? Dozens? Hundreds? She couldn’t remember, though she knew that every single one of them had been killed with a blade. That was what Snake did, that was how she struck—ever since the first time. She might have forgotten most of her kills, but never the first one.

  She was thirteen and she still remembered the day as clearly as though it had been yesterday rather than nearly fifteen years previously. She could not recall as clearly when he’d first started terrorizing her, but then she’d been a very young girl when he’d first started to touch her. She guessed she must have been about eight when he first raped her, and so it had continued: long nights of fear and loathing until, one day, she’d picked up a knife in the kitchen and stabbed him deep in the stomach. She was so frightened of what she’d done that she dropped the knife and watched, a terrified teenager, as her father slowly died in front of her. It was the unexpectedness of it all, she realized later, that had shocked her. She never regretted stabbing him—if that was the only way she could stop the torture, so be it, and when she saw the knife, all gleaming steel smeared with blood, she knew that she would follow the way of the blade.

  She fled, of course. Young women killing their fathers tended not to be looked on kindly in Texas, even if that father had been raping his daughter for many years. She took up with gangs and began to cover herself in tattoos, at first to disguise herself, then to make herself look ugly so that men would hide their disgusting urges, and finally as a means to terrify her victims. She also realized that the swirls and lines that covered her torso, her limbs, her face, did not disgust all men: indeed, some it attracted even more and Snake realized she could use that to her advantage.

  It wasn’t until five years later that she finally came to New Orleans. Earl recognized her talents immediately, treating her with a respect that made her look on the world anew. She would follow him to the ends of the earth, and if capturing Ardyce and killing Orfeo was the means to regain Earl’s admiration then she’d endure any amount of hunger and boredom to do it.

  Part of her wished that she’d been able to kill both of them. That bitch had insulted Earl too many times and Snake didn’t know why her boss put up with it. If anything, Ardyce should die and Orfeo should live—at least for a little while. But then, out here no-one would know what she got up to and she could have plenty of fun before she knifed him. She wondered if he had a big cock, a thought that made her leer. She bet he did have a big one. Perhaps she’d castrate him after she’d finished with him: it wouldn’t be the first time, and a nice, big, black cock would be a fine memento of her twisted pleasures.

  But it wasn’t working so well for her this time. Every time she tried to sink into one of her bloody fantasies, she saw the chubby face of that fucking do-gooder she’d killed and his donkey-faced companion. Why wouldn’t they go away? She wanted to shout out at them to leave her alone, but of course they were dead and they couldn’t hear her. Nor was that the worst of it. She started seeing the queer cocksucker she�
��d knifed the night he came to Hades with Orfeo. Why the hell should she start thinking about that bastard now?

  She started to feel she was going mad. The floodwaters had long drained away from the house, and she was stalking through the rooms, nervous and anxious. She was famished and this, combined with lack of sleep, made her jittery and jumpy. When she entered the drawing room, with its smashed furniture and rain-damaged walls, her heart leaped up in her chest.

  Baptiste was sitting on the one chair that had not been smashed. He was impeccably dressed, as the queer bastard had always been, his thin moustache neatly trimmed, his demeanor dapper and trim. There was something wrong with him, though. His skin was too pale, as though all the blood had been drained away. When he turned and looked at her his eyes didn’t give any signs of life at all: they just stared in her direction.

  She ran out of there, running toward the stairs, heading back to her room. He was at the top of the landing, standing completely still. Now she could see why he looked so pale: one shoulder of his suit was stained with blood from the wound that had killed him. He didn’t speak nor give any expression that he recognized her but simply waited there in silence.

  She gasped as she turned away, and when she almost ran into him standing by the door she did scream out loud. The flesh on his face was sunken, his eyes unmoving. There was something waxy about his complexion and the red stain on his clothes was dreadful to behold. Her heart beating faster than she had ever known it to, Snake ran out into the open air, not stopping until she had dashed through deep, sodden puddles, sinking at last into the mud and water and sobbing uncontrollably.

  When she finally calmed down she chastised herself for being such a fool. She hadn’t eaten in days, nor had she slept properly. She was hallucinating, that was all. But why him? And why now? After so many years when her heart had been as hard as one of her steel blades why should she develop a conscience and suffer guilt now?