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She was young, pretty, and best of all, she was naked in his arms. Benny smiled into the petite blonde's sea-green eyes and kissed the small nose. This was Sue, his dream-girl. He had dreams about her since he was only five, and now, in his coma, he could almost believe she was real.
"You're so beautiful," he murmured and it was only the truth. In his dream she smiled back, her full, pretty lips curved for him and him alone and she sighed his name, "Benny."
So many things troubled them. They were a pair of lucky losers. The very things that were done to them in the hope of breaking their spirits were what drew them together.
As Benny lay there, his nose just touching hers, he stroked her back and felt the welts and the scars.
She winced, but was too brave to cry out as callused hands scratched the fresh marks on her back. "Please," she said, a catch in her voice. Benny felt a black, ominous rage well up. He had to protect her, Sue was his only vulnerable spot left.
"Don't let them hurt me anymore, Benny." Troubled eyes told him of the things she had been subjected to only moments before he arrived. "Don't leave me, Benny."
"Never." He brushed his lips across her eyelids and tasted the bitter moisture there. "Not if they skin me alive. I love you, babe." A desperate plea in his voice, he said, "Please, love me."
"How's our patient, Nurse?"
Belle Dellacourt looked up from her paperwork and nodded at the doctor.
"Still out, bud, what did you expect? He moans and groans and sighs, and that's about it."
She eyed him. "Hey, who're you?" Dellacourt frowned and lowered her feet from the arm of the chair. She wracked her brain, but couldn't place the tall, thin man. The knife scars on her face brought a shudder to her body.
"Doctor Drobnicki. I just got back from vacation." He flashed a grin. "You know. Green hell." He motioned at the door. "I need to examine our boy here."
"Not on your life," she snapped. "I'm not to leave this kid's side or old Boyde and Crazy Myers will have my ovaries for breakfast."
"I'm afraid I'll have to insist. What I'm about to do is something highly unorthodox, and no one in the . . . Shall we say practice?, should see. Something I picked up in prison camp." His smile was brief and unpleasant. Drobnicki took the nurse by the elbow and shoved her from the room.
Dellacourt turned to protest and the door thumped shut in her face, then the lock snapped and she raised her fist to demand she be let back in. It was quiet. Dead quiet, and she shivered, unwilling to break the silence. So many had problems sleeping, the least little noises sent them back to the jungles and memories of the things they saw and did.
She crouched on a bench beside the door, her gaze stark, waiting permission to enter.
Long minutes past and she stood, pacing before the room.
The room was dim and poorly lit. Drobnicki smiled at the patient. 'Very good. It goes well,' hissed in his ear. 'For this is that which is best done in the dark.' He pulled a roll of stained and rank smelling parchment from the pocket of the white overcoat. The stethoscope still lay wrapped around the throat of his victim, down in the utility room.
He lay the roll beside the patient, watching the slow rise and fall of Benny's chest. "Yo, Benn-ee, dude," Drobnicki whispered. "How you doin', bud? Remember me? I'm the jerk your mother cut up with the knife the night she murdered your grandfather, old man Grey." Tommy shook his head. What a night that had been. He still dreamed of it. Benny's father, dead six years and some months, rising from the grave at the Sandy Valley crossroads. Christ, what a night.
Of its own accord, the roll of parchment flattened and lay bare to his eyes a skean-dubh, a knife of incredible antiquity from the dark forests of Moldavia. Its balance rotated and opened to reveal a blood-shot eye. The knife hissed. Tommy bent to give a reverent kiss to the black handle. He moved with infinite caution, for it made little difference to the knife which man it fed on.
He took the blade in his right hand and with his left he drew down the sheet that covered his victim.
Benny kissed Sue. His tongue ran over her lips, sought to enter them.
She groaned and pushed away from Benny.
"Please, don't. Don't make me do it, Benny. I'm too sore."
He groaned and flopped onto his back, riding up and down on the cheap, squeaking army surplus cot. A single bulb hung naked from corroding green wires. Benny stared at it, watching the scant light sway in the drafts, the light flickering and snapping in the unheated room. He pulled a scratchy blanket over them both.
A faint scuffle came from the dark hall and a man appeared in the doorway.
"Take this unworthy offering, Master of the Night."
Harsh and strong that night came back to him. Tommy saw old man Grey, his frail body naked against the blackness of massive hemlocks. The Witch's Stone with a six-year-old, Benny Wya Grey, bound with leather from past human victims lying atop it. Tommy smiled, his nostrils flared, remembering the stench of fear on the kid's skin. Or had it been his own fear?
Up until that night the coven was just a way to get an easy lay, to get stoned off the dope Mr. Grey bought them. That night brought the terrifying reality of what they were doing, and his heart surged with an unholy glee.
The tip of the knife traced the old scars, the one Grey had carved in the flesh of his grandson.
First, the Mark of the Beast. Tommy gave a hollow laugh as the scars glowed under the knife. The faint chanting continued, it muttered on and on and the tip of the knife quivered, hungry after too long a time without being fed. He moved on to the Mark of the Demon, the Owl. Two diagonal lines that slashed through the first mark, proving the Owl was over-lord of all the world.
Now the marks glowered, faint puffs of smoke arose as the flesh scorched and cooked again.
Tommy sniffed greedily at the rank odor of burning flesh. He finished the preparatory chant and raised his eyes to the window. Just beyond the pane of glass hung the Owl, his yellow eyes bright with anticipation for the final stroke, the one that would slice young Grey's heart in two and give his corpse to the Owl for his flesh in this world.
"I will rule," the Owl whispered. "Aye, and all of the Creator-Mother's yi shall bow down to me."
Tommy raised the knife.
"What the hell is going on here?"
Sue began to weep and Benny yelped, scurrying for clothes that were never there.
The first blow caught him on the side of the head. The next sent him reeling onto the warped dresser, scattering the cheap perfumes and make-up kits that marked his Sue for what she was.
"No, Daddy, don't hurt him," Sue cried and launched herself at JJ Hanna's fleshy back. Sue raged, sinking her teeth into the maggoty white, unwashed back and fought like a tiger.
Benny felt a searing pain in his chest, then another. He dropped to the floor and stared in horror at Sue as he began to fade.
"Christ," JJ muttered, shaking his head. "I'm having detox." JJ turned and knocked his daughter to the floor with one vicious slap.
She watched with dull eyes as her father smiled and stripped off his pants. JJ shoved her to the bed.
"And don't you-all give me none of your sass, you slut."
Benny shot a look at his guardian, Two Swords. He moved towards his body, fists clenched in helpless rage at his sides. The first tug jerked Benny almost in two. Benny gaped at his middle. A silver cord ran from it to his body. The cord tightened, pulling now, slight, insistent, but dragging him back towards his body by the power of the knife.
"Tommy? Tommy Drobnicki? Is that you, man?" Benny stared in wonder. The years had changed Tommy, destroying anything human in him and it showed on the knife-scarred face.
"Why you doing this to me, Tommy? Don't you remember, you used to take me fishing and stuff like that. I thought we were friends." A chill crept up his back and he turned and shivered at the face of the Owl, smiling its thin, calculating smile at him. The Owl nodded. Benny spun back to the man hovering above his flesh.
Tommy glanced at the Owl. His gaze flickered and widened as the Owl allowed him to see Benny standing near him. Tommy smiled and it matched the Owl's.
"'Bye, man, and good riddance for all the shit your mom put me through."
"Don't do it, Tommy, please?" Close to begging. Benny scowled and straightened. "My mother helped your family every time they needed it, even when old man Grey beat her for it."
The knife raised for the third and final stroke, the one that would slice through the heart and tap into the life reserves, allow the imp-blade to feed, to entrap the spirit within the decaying flesh for however long the master decided.
"Tommy," Benny said in a breathless whisper. "No, man. I though we were bros."
Tom hesitated. He pressed his groin against the side of the bed. A shiver passed through him. Tom shook his head at any second thoughts and struck downwards.
A bedpan clanged on Tommy's head. Caught up in the erotic, almost sensual ecstasy of the sacrifice, Tommy screamed with pain and hate as a bolt of fire scorched up from his groin.
Clutching at his cramping groin, Tom slashed the skean-dubh at the nurse. She leaped back, darting into the hall and shrieked her lungs out for the MPs.
Giving Benny one last, hungry glance, Tom spat on the floor.
"I'll be back, creep."
"I'll be here, man. I'll be friggin waiting, you prick."
Tom smiled thinly. He gave a small nod. Getting on his knees, he rolled the hissing knife back in its protective layer of human skin. He rose and strode from the room.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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