The completed version of
A Halloween Tale
A Halloween Tale
High priestess. Of the sisters of Satan. In the dark bedroom I sat frozen to attention. "Come new initiate... make your vows" was messaged on my screen. It was a great honor. Head turning for someone deprived utterly of power, of some measure of control over her life. Eighteen orphaned years of fiefdom to an unpleasant uncke and a ruthless slave mistress aunt. And any number of pious do gooders with miniscule imagination and sensitivity who always did the very worst imaginable.
This was about to change. Right about now. No more sitting on the fence of what could've been.
Dazed I asked what was required of me. The chilling answer...kill one who was dear to you and vow on the spilled blood.
Tears threatened to explode my vision.
My one dearest possession and comfort. I was going to have to dispose of Jack. My three month old precocious pug.
The night was seductive. The full moon rotund. I had been summoned. My duty was clear. Today I would obey the dark Lord as Abraham had obeyed God. A woman and life giver I would test my abhorrence for blood.
Jack whimpered as we melted our deep chocolate eyes into each other.
The next day I performed the required rites and took my unconscious dog previously fed a doctored meal to the nearby woods.
"Vile and vicious
All mercy illusion
Blood is real
Death is my vision
And I expunge your life
For such is required
Life taking life
The portal acquired...
As you gasp and choke
And die
I arise from darkest prophesy
Your unholy priestess
Zarah most High.
The chant was over. And Jack in the last throes of death. Strangled choked, his carcass still heaving in the moonlight like a hideous demon.
My eyes underwent a change
Suddenly the world turned silver and charcoal daguerrotype. Like an ancient photograph that showed the whole world, the woods from another ghastly time.
Where the limbs of trees stretched lecherous langor and promised many vile blasphemies. And only the caucus of unholy stars were oily vermilion on a dirt canvas of grey shifting to silver then black.
His highness, the link between the prince of the underworld and all his loyal devotees appeared. A long time passed as he contemplated my demented terror. Then with a leering
grin of desecration, at my state he stretched out a skeletal arm and commanded, "Arise, Welcome High priestess of Hell."
Mute but steadfast I took his beckoning hand. In that moment like a thunderclap I knew whatever I was now, I had lost my humanity.
I was now obliged and yoked to a different Maker for my creation.
I remember going down through a bottomless chute deep into the bowels of the earth. There was a strange feeling of being atop a thin crust, an unstable veneer of solidity with something boiling furiously underneath. The walls glowed red and were uncomfortably warm.
All around me were creatures with thick red scales to protect their skin from the heat, to deflect it and cool off.
I felt my skin start to get raddled singed by the scorching heated air...boils and blusters breaking out and an intense pain as if I were surrounded by walls of fire.
My new dark Lord glowered and told me to lie down supine on the floor.
"How do you feel?, safe and warm?", he said it strangely, menacingly.
I couldn't voice my fears. My very discomfort melted in a trickle down my
spine as I felt myself sprouting the same hideous scaly skin and corruscated fleshy wings that were thick pendulous and veined. To my astonishment I felt my body move in an undulating whiplash as I seemed to have become a sinuous serpentine being with a segmented forked tail.
A stranger inside me fast diminished as I felt unusual new emotions. Chiefly a deep sense of fatality and acceptance and a gratuitous loyalty that threatened to overwhelm me while the initial horror receded. Into unreality and futility.
Change was such a terribly powerful one that the metamorphosis engendered a new vision. Where terror was rendered redundant. I literally saw myself through new eyes and what I witnessed was my evolution into something that couldn't but exist in a place like this.
I was at home at last. And sheathed in my new avtar I submitted to pay homage to my new master.
As I prostrated my pale underbelly on the rough floor I heard my own heartbeat echoed back from the heart of the magma cave. And it was a horrific escalating pulse of an eternity of doom.
Hypnotic mesmerizing it addled my brain and thinking itself narrowed into an intense bestial beat of cruelty.
I wanted to eat devour and pulverize living flesh. I longed to mangle and crush the living into putrid jelly.
"Arise high priestess Zarah, worthy of worthiest amongst us, fulfill your purpose and unleash yourself to express the true you.
The time comes. "
The incantatory intonation of my dark lord droned on and drowning into his commands I became a committed creature, of mindless fleshy evil.
It was as it should be.
In this necrotic netherworld below the skin of superfluities, far away from the hypocrisy of those above.
Jack whimpered above the surface and sat up. He feebly shook his tail and shivered at his narrow escape. The deep strangle marks of my vicious fingers caused him such immense pain even to whimper was excruciating.
The pup was terrified confused and disoriented but he was still alive.
The high priestess Zarah had failed in her initiation rites...of taking her very first life...of her dearly loved pet.
The little puppy sniffed piteously then coughed up blood. But he had caught a whiff of tell tale scent. Of his demented murderous mistress.
Jack was too dazed and traumatized to reflect that the mistress he adored and worshipped had tried to brutally end his life.
Instead he loped, head down, picking up her scent from a narrow dark shaft that led underground.
Without hesitation he scratched and scrambled his way in, then rapidly descended down a steep inclined trail that seemed to lead to the pits of hell itself.
The air was sulpherous and singed the puppy dog's fur but he didn't stop.
A final sharp turn and Jack was in a crevice of a vast cave which felt like the womb of the dark leviathan with pulsating eerie lighting sparks and green vaporous mists.
Jack whimpered and started quivering as if in a strange fever or delirium. His little tail was immobile between his legs.
He felt his mistress rather than saw her, for his eyes couldn't make sense of the scaly dragon like hag his mistress seemed to have become....blood in his poor brain sizzled and he spat out salty blood through his teeth and inhaled.
There could be no doubt. It was she but something unnerving was happening to her.
The sweet young woman seemed to be disappearing and a foul smell of an unnamed haggish creature emanated from her frame .
Zarah turned her bright ember red eyes on her pet and turned to stone. Her Dark Lord frowned then turned in fury towards Jack.
Hackles up Jack growled softly but stood his ground. And suddenly the Dark Lord relaxed and narrowed his eyes to watch whether the dog feared his own mistress or if his loyalty and love overcame his fears.
Jack sprang at the chance and grabbed remnants of Zarah's tattered robes and tugged at it. Leaping with effort he nipped her scaly wing tips which were once her hands. He wouldn't leave her.
Some things are inexplicable as a dog's love for the first human who has reared it. And other things are even more Inexplicable. How unconditional love freely given and undeserved generates human feelings in the most beastly of hearts.
Zarah felt her transformation in her eyes first.... As suddenly her gaze turned liquid, like wine warm and tremulous, and yet tranquil. . She saw Jack's earnest plea glowing in his eyes and her clawed feet moved towards her pet.
Jack pulled her towards the uphill exit with all his might. Turning only once or twice to see her following as if in a hesitant dream and gambolling back and tugging to urge her along he moved towards sunlight and the world above.
With a howl of fury the Dark Lord reached out a skeletal arm to restrain his own witch. Zarah's howl was of such perplexed dismay that Jack leapt at her new master's throat.
Then fell back into a stuporous coma frothing at the mouth eyes rolling.
Zarah took Jack to her breast abd sobbing started to murmer
Looking into the eyes of her monstrous liege.
Thy chant enchants me
I cannot refuse thee
But love of the innocent beast
Doth bind me still
To my mortal lot
I am forced to recant thee
Unlearn thy charm
And let me be
This moment to eternity
By you forgot"
........
Through whose eyes?...
The morning's dewy sunshined brushed scaly tears encrusted on her pale cheeks. Her eyes were like ghouls reddened by sunrise.
In her icy arms was the lifeless body of the bravest most noble creation of light and love. Her faithful Jack now truly dead to sunshine and hope but not
as ritual sacrifice to evil. But dead as willing ransom for his beloved mistress.
Redeeming and releasing his eighteen year old mistresss back to humanity.
With a start Lisa for that was her real name, checked her extremities. Yes she was an young woman again with two arms and legs and not a scale to deform her youthful perfection.
Weeping softly Lisa carried Jack's little form back home for the burial.
(c) Amrita Valan 2015
