Season of the Witch

by Charlee Jacob

  Renae listened closer.

  “…madmen…” Wait. More like, “…madman…”

  “She thinks I’m a madman. She’s right. Who else would…?”

  Hard to make out his murmur. She caught stray phrases:

  …STAPLEGUN, BOLTCUTTERS, FISHERMAN’S KNIFE…

  …FINGER CIRCLES ROUND AND ROUND HER CLIT.

  …A GREASY GRAPE. SHE’D DIED ON HER STOMACH WHILE…

  BLOOD SANK INTO BREASTS, PUBES… ASS VERY WHITE!

  CHERRY PIT CUNT! ROLL HER OVER… KNIFE.

  SLOW PEEL BACK ACROSS THE HIPS… STAPLE TO FLOOR.

  NEXT LAYER… COMBO TAFFY AND CELLOPHANE.

  MADAME SLUTTERFLY… NOW CUTTERS. NIPPLEPICKLE.

  Then whole sentences:

  “If we weren’t meant to experiment, then why did God give humans the ability to manufacture so many death rituals? Look at the animals. They move on. No funerals. No autopsies. They don’t perform extreme memorials. Although they might lick a freshly deceased mate from ears to tail. I can picture a cat appearing on the shore for Charon, no coin for the boatman. Just preened with its asshole wet. Gotta pay for the trip somehow.”

  Renae didn’t want to hear this necro corpsefuck shit. Not that she was squeamish. She had kinks.

  “Don’t you like it?” he whispered into the phone, his kinky silver skull earrings grinning backward at Renae. She couldn’t see his eyebrows, yet heard their piercings, tinkling, giggling at a private joke. “Ever let a guy roll you over and fuck you in the ass? Never thought you’d die that way, smothered in carpet. He called his friends. One by one…”

  Renae heard screaming protests piping from the cell, a well-rehearsed moral outrage.

  She knew.

  He’d requested to provoke shock.

  What did it provoke in Renae? She shivered, her sphincter clenching as unwanted spasms stung. Her clitoris throbbed. For what? To be opened, a venal Necronomicon? Used, like Lenora by Renae’s dream-beastmen? Aggressive yet passive, night-bruised, and unrestrained from conventions. They do it to you; you do it back to them. It hurts, it feels good. It’s thunder.

  OR IT’S A BOMB.

  A BRIMSTONE BRIDE.

  Shadows danced in the hall, singing in late 1960’s acid rock: Oh no…! Must be the season of the witch! Must be the season… Tune in, turn on, spread ’em.

  It’s in Renae’s bloodline. Just look at her father. Her mother. Regular little American nuclear family, set for Armageddon.

  Shedu’s words cut in.

  “Think there’s really any such thing as a soul? Were you still there, baby, feeling our dicks in that radiant wound we made? Your pussy shimmered like sequins in the candlelight. Spread open, you’re a feast for the eyes. This is the Dark Mother’s womb for all to love. I see your soul in there. I see you.”

  Renae flushed with shame at the words, backing away. She allowed a wall to hold her up until the shudders—up and down the insides of her thighs like zippers—passed. She pushed away grisly images of a Dark Goddess revealed in a uterus flayed and stretched wide, some lude lepidopteran specimen on a botany plaque.

  She cleared her throat and knocked at the door.

  Shedu swung around. He blinked at her, face blushing as if he’d been caught jerking off into the water cooler. He pocketed his phone and motioned for her to enter.

  “Ready for this interview?” he asked.

  Renae nodded.

  “I’ve met the lady, very down to earth. Just a run-of-the-muck, I mean run-of-the-mill…,” Shedu smiled at his joke, “…horror movie. A small one, about twenty minutes run-time. Standard college course short film. I’ve seen it. Won’t be any surprises. Bit gory at the beginning. Nothing new.”

  Renae’s own smile hardened across her teeth. Forced. (Spread across both white cheeks and cold, the flayed and filleted pussy Necronomicon.)

  “You can handle it, right?” asked Shedu, just the producer now. Not some sick fucker whispering perversions over the phone.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. Hadn’t she played the same game?

  He didn’t seem creepy anymore, simply the same old Shedu—boyishly Gothic, a handsome white-blond, blue-eyed Norse god. Just wanted to do scary stuff that didn’t hurt anybody. Occasionally dress up in a flowing cape and suck a little blood donated by slightly twisted friends while party ghouls in PVC minis shrieked “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” No different than willingly succumbing to a deep hickey. Or sharing other bodily fluids: saliva, cum, clitslick.

  ««—»»

  Today’s interview: Shana Fugelman.

  Twenty-one and very pregnant, her bright hair frizzled around her freckled face, a cloud of strawberry wine. She waddled in wearing baggy maternity pants and a big T-shirt with an even bigger message:

  NOT HAPPY YOU REINCARNATED AS A TAPEWORM?

  NOTHING BUT COMPLAINTS ALONG THE KHARMIC WHEEL.

  LIFE IS DEATH AND THEN YOU BITCH.

  She wore a loose coat for warmth. Ready to pop, she didn’t want a summer cold.

  “Hi, I’m Shana,” she said, sailing onto the set. She smiled as if she were seven and just won the spelling bee.

  “Hi, Shana. I’m Renae. Welcome to The Goth Channel. I understand you’ve made quite a film which we’ll see today.”

  “Uh huh. It’s called F-A-G-s. As in, Eff-Ah-Geeze. I also wrote the script, short as it is, right?” Self-conscious peek at the camera.

  Renae felt relief. After what happened with the gangs, she’d had an unspoken nervousness about the interview. But this young woman was open, fresh-scrubbed, smelling of peaches. Noooo trouble talking. Renae remembered the others—they who wouldn’t speak, just prior to rampaging. This would be a breeze.

  “Your film started quite a controversy at the university’s film festival. It’s a mite over-the-top, more than the usual student project.”

  Shana thoughtfully stroked her swollen belly. “A mite, yeah. The school likes to think it’s producing future Sundance moviemakers, right? They want substance in neat packages, not strewn everywhere like the buffet line at Barbecue Bob’s.”

  Renae chuckled. “Is horror something you intend to make a career of—or is F-A-G-s a one-time excursion?” (The way the woman had done the title reminded Renae of a car’s vanity license plate.)

  “I think I’ve always liked scary stories, you know?” Shana answered with a shrug that half-mugged the camera. “I used to watch the old syndicated reruns of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, Thriller and Night Gallery, right? I was only about, let’s see, six or so I think, when splatterpunk titles showed up on store shelves. My older brother read them and, when he finished, I’d sneak ’em into my lunchbox and take ’em to school. Didn’t even read them, I only did it to mess with the nuns. We had this one nun, Sister Santiaga Katarina, and she’d get so mad she’d actually faint. All the kids competed to see who could get her to roll her eyes up to the whites. Isn’t that perfectly awful?”

  The young woman laughed, touching Renae’s hand. Renae found herself laughing, too. The girl surely didn’t need any prompting. “Eventually I did read the books. What was the fuss, you know? At one point, Sister Santiaga Katarina’s fainting spells caught up to us, and several of us got expelled. I got sent home, aaaaand, yeah, my parents saw the books. They ballisticated! And I couldn’t understand why, right? Kids see adults fluster, never knowing why. They just know something changes when folks go that crazy. Maybe it’s subtle, like not letting you stay up late for the Creature Feature anymore. Maybe it’s major, like removing you from parochial school and putting you in a regular class—or tearing through the house and finding out that your brother’s the one with the books, you know? And he’s also smoking a little dope, and now suddenly he’s in military school—what’s up with that? He dies during some stupid hazing stunt and your parents get a divorce because each blames the other and your father remarries some cheerleader only a decade older than his own daughter who calls him ‘daddy’, then she cheats on him until he gets the cla
p while your mom drinks herself to death. All because of a little fiction, some words thrown together to form a compelling sequence. So much for sticks and stones can break your bones, right?”

  Renae sat, stunned.

  Off-camera, Shedu made a face. Lenora clutched her chest in dramatic angst. Were they seriously trying not to crack up? The whole scene was like watching a circus clown stick his face at the opening to a toy cannon and having his brains blown all over some kid’s cotton candy. The kid keeps eating, and we get a laugh. Why? Why in God’s name do we laugh at such things?

  As for Shana, she shrugged, adding, “Anyway, somewhere along the line I became fascinated with upsetting equilibriums in my work. Making people question the entire process, of you know, life, right? See how far a small spark will carry them, right?” She shrugged again, her freckles the lit ends of tiny firecrackers.

  “Okay. Very interesting.” Renae managed to remain straight-faced. “How about we watch your film?”

  Shana beamed, casual about it all, no trace of psychic bruise—assuming that rattled confession had any truth to it. “Sure! Not too many words here to upset anybody. Mostly images. But that’s the nature of film, you know? We’ll see where that spark goes.”

  ««—»»

  FADE IN:

  EXT. BEACH

  A teenaged boy and girl frolic in the surf, lay on the beach, get physical. He takes her home only to find the apartment a mess.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  INT. APT

  Her father’s butchered her mother. There’s blood everywhere, body parts in small pieces scattered like an upturned trick-or-treat bag. There are also stray feathers, long and gray or white. Twiggybird feet are strewn around, talismans made from sticks. Her father is there, bloody, maniacal look in his eye.

  DAD

  All the pretty bits that make up the whole. All the pretty bits and what do they add up to?

  CUT TO:

  Porn everywhere, glued to gore, impaled upon broken bone ends. Other pages, too, without nasty cavernous beaver shots. Words written in longhand. From a journal?

  CUT TO; FLASH TO:

  Almost subliminal flashes of obscenities scrawled on these red fingerprinted pages.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  INT. APT. BEDROOM:

  The girl wanders to a mirror, stares where blood and brains are smeared across it until the glass reflects nothing. Flies buzz, drone maxed-up until the effect is eerie, all you hear for a minute or two as the camera drifts to show a window, faces of spectral fog outside.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  The girl in a mental hospital, total basketcase. Staring off into space, eyes reflecting letter-O… Drool dribbling from both corners of her mouth, sideways to form an X on her chin, some goofball had stuck glitter in it.

  CLOSE-UP:

  Her pupils. Reflected in them is the mirror at home, empty.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  She’s in a ward, wall to wall mirrors. Some gross old crone tugs at her sleeve, pointing to the glass, cackling.

  CRONE

  Looky here, looky here

  (Girl doesn’ look. She can’t.)

  CRONE

  Looky here, looky here

  CUT TO:

  Two guys in orderly whites hold the girl, forcing her face toward the glass. The camera pans back and we hear her shriek. When they turn her from the mirror again, she has no face.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  SENTENCE

  (at bottom of the screen)

  DID YOU SACRIFICE HER?

  FADE OUT.

  ««—»»

  Renae’s mouth went dry.

  She kept swallowing, and her ass and legs had gone numb. There didn’t seem to be a chair under her anymore.

  She turned to her guest. “Where did you get—that story?”

  Shana smiled. “That’s classified. If I told you, I’d have to lobotomize you.”

  Shana stood, reaching into one of the deep pockets of her jacket. She pulled out a knife and flicked open the blade.

  A very long blade.

  “Everything’s connected one way or another, right?” She turned toward the camera. “Did you feel something?” She brandished the knife. “A few images and it isn’t The Goth Channel anymore. It’s The Abortion Channel.”

  Shedu and Lenora ran forward. The cameraman leaped, too, the camera still going as he tried stop her.

  It amazed them how fast Shana Fugelman disemboweled herself.

  A lightning-flash slice down right to left, then left to right, creating a wide X in her belly. She plied her fingers into the juncture and pushed in, grabbing, then pulled out. A baby, perfect and almost ready to be born, rushed out with the visceral tide.

  Renae didn’t see it.

  She’d fainted, just like Sister Santiaga Katarina, eyes rolled up to the whites.

  ««—»»

  When Renae came to, hysteria surrounded her. Except for Shedu—he’d placed her on the couch used as part of the set. When he thought no one was looking… he leaned down and felt the swell of her breast. His thumb grazed her nipple. His hand trailed toward her crotch.

  She opened her eyes, glaring at him.

  He jumped. “Oh shit, Ren! I didn’t mean to…”

  She sat up, grabbed him, pulled him to her, face to face.

  Then sank her teeth into his lips.

  Shedu tried pushing her away. Shit! It hurt even more. He beat her with his fists. No good. “C’month, Ren!” he muffled through the pain. “It’th justth a copped ftheel!” Just a momentary lapse of decorum in his mind. A little necro feel of her corpse-like, unconscious pose. Possibly unforgiveable, but nothing to make her come at him like a shark.

  Shedu shrieked down her throat, flapping his arms like a chicken. Then hit her some more. Renae tasted rust, felt his flesh tear.

  Had enough?

  Her jaws dropped open as if on springy hinges, releasing him. Shedu fell backward, still screaming, both hands pressing his torn lips. Renae spat out a thick mouthful of blood.

  Lenora and the cameraman turned away from Shana Fugelman’s corpse. They stared in baffled shock, trying to understand why Renae attacked the producer.

  He’ll need stitches, Renae noted with satisfaction. A lot of them. Good. She stared at Shana; how much she resembled the Dark Goddess, womb spread for the world to see.

  “Ren…?” Lenora came forward from the ruin of their guest and the fetus on the floor.

  “Fucker groped me,” Renae said sharply.

  They stared, like a a slow motion film, as Shedu gawped and gargled, stumbling toward his office while a secretary dialed 911. And, good grief, was the camera still rolling?

  Must be another dream, thought Renae. She was really at home, Eddie’s arms around her. He stroked her hair. Just a nightmare. Wake up, darling.

  It must be a dream.

  That girl couldn’t’ve made a movie about Renae’s mother’s murder. About Renae in a mental institution. Could she have come across the story on the Internet? Shana’s watched The Goth Channel shows. One night, she felt like doing a search on Renae…

  What had Shana said about upsetting people’s equilibriums?

  Renae rose, barely able to feel her legs. She walked out of the studio and down the corridor, stopping in her dressing room—to throw a chair at the mirror, smashing it to pieces. Then she went to the back stairs which nearly everyone else ignored in favor of the elevators.

  When sirens came down the street, she never heard them.

  ««—»»

  But she did hear a baby crying.

  ««—»»

  Wolves in the distance.

  A perimeter of bare trees, heavy with unnatural fruit, swinging left… right… left…

  Renae had been in this place before. The beastmen staked Shedu naked and face down in a meadow where Renae carefully plucked all of the abundant flowers: crimson hibiscus, scarlet primrose, red poppy. These she laid in a circle around the outside of the meadow.

  Here the gro
und had been well-seasoned with Lenora’s decomposing scraps until everywhere blood and blossoms bloomed on engorged stems. Pollen hung heavy as smoke, forming a screen between earth and sky. There didn’t seem to be a sky—only a thin monochrome pall. It was acceptable as this place deserved nothing of heaven.

  Renae called and wept, Nothing? Why? What’s UP there? Or OUT there?

  You know, but you’ve forgotten, came the answer.

  She beat her breasts, pinching her nipples until they bled a pinkish milk, scratching long red nails up her arms, down her thighs and stomach to create deep wine furrows of grief. Through this gloom, vultures circled. The grass beyond the meadow rose in basalt spikes, black in eternal shadow beneath the invisible lists of crimes tattooed on each feather of the celestial creatures.

  There, the beastmen indulged themselves between Shedu’s legs, splayed until his hipbones cracked, not letting him die just yet… for he was a symbol.

  The dirt parted around him, far and wide, the ground rippling, shifting. Minute tremors did the mirage’s arabesque underfoot, momentum building, and bodies began to surface. They, symbols, too, like Shedu, gathering around him.