zombies of widgeroo – chapter three

chapter three – in which conjuring meets covens and sex magic competes with ritualised body-art to make an escape.

there are hundreds of thousands of tricks. thousands of these are potent. the rest are mere toys for the curious. they stand up to a silent study, but once you take deep interest, their mystique is shattered.

i met saint germain, once. it was in a hotel outside of bidgingannup. he didn’t recognise me, but if he saw me again, he would. i offered him some minties.

he said he didn’t eat . . . minties.

he was dressed in casual white shirt and black denim jeans. he wore a small charm on the end of a necklace, a sign of his power. he didn’t mind letting me have a look at it, but i would never have dared to touch it.

it was a small unicorn, delicately carved and hand-painted. he said he designed it, long ago. he said the small jewels in its eyes he had created.

i saw no reason to disbelieve him.

he didn’t look like a powerful man, but i saw him walk through an iron wall. i’ve never managed that trick. it’s too dimensional. it’s way too disturbing. but he did it without blinking. what’s more, he brought a cup of white gold back through the wall so i could taste his new recipe.

on the ground, at his feet, i scribbled my most treasured sign and turned his white gold into a jug of ice water. impressed, he tried to imitate my sign and managed to turn the icy water into dust. disappointed, he tried again, but the dust only turned into the rotten hand of a young girl.

“this is fucked,” he said.

i told him he wasn’t twirling the accent properly.

“you have to think of it as a living snail, sliding thickly down a clear window. it is very cold, and it has been raining, but there are no beads of water on the glass.”

he listened, and that was the thing i liked most.

on his third attempt, he made orange juice, and that was good enough for us both.

he gave me an address, and told me if i ever had any problems, to speak to the lady at the other end of the address. “she’ll know how to get in touch with me.”

i asked if she was a relative and he chuckled at me. “god, no. she’s a whore.”

“whores are the best secretaries,” i said.

“got that right. they know how to deal with nosy men.”

we played poker until dawn, and then went to our separate rooms. mine had red carpet. the red was too much and made my stomach lurch.

in the middle of the day, the enforcers came and dragged him away.

that night he escaped and has been on the run ever since.

i’ve never forgotten the last thing he ever told me, before we went to our rooms. “when in doubt, magnetise.”

it seemed so right, somehow. i always carried a magnet now, and when in doubt, i brushed it against metal until the metal was magnetised. then i ran it up and around my skull until my brain was polarised. i could feel the energy lift my cells into a new kind of blizzard of thought. the snow was thick, and the ideas flowed like slush down a mountain of crushing ice.

as i waited for meng to knock on my door, i rubbed my head with a magnet, feeling my neurons fizz and crackle beneath the bone. stray protons zipped up and down my spine, shooting into my chest and exploding like firecrackers.

i was totally positive when she knocked.

“enter,” i said.

she came in and bowed to me. she knelt before me and pressed her head against the floor. i touched the top of her hair.

“look at me,” i commanded, and she did. her eyes were the colour of punished jade.

“master, i have been waiting.”

i pointed at the bloody ceiling. “nice touch.”

“thank you.”

“pentagrams don’t work anymore, you know. they’re too passive.”

she blinked. “but, i thought -”

“they’re too passive.”

“yes, master.”

“here,” i handed her a biro. “draw me a sign of power.”

she stared at the pen, then at her hand. “i don’t know what to do.”

“draw.”

she stabbed the pen into her palm and blood spurted onto the carpet between us. she gritted her teeth then used her free hand to scrawl a pattern of fractions and algebraic equations. i smiled. “well done.”

“it just came to me! in my head, i mean.”

“of course. there is power in this room.”

“it’s not you, then?”

“of course it isn’t. now, take the pen from your hand and wash it clean. then give it to me. make sure not to give me your blood.”

“yes, master.”

she cleaned the blood with her tongue and swallowed each drop. she almost made an erotic show of it, but gave up halfway when i shook my head at her.

i told her to listen to the voices of the crickets.

“they tell you stuff,” i said. “if you listen, they’ll tell you what to do.”

she listened, and as she did, i began to unbutton her shirt. then her pants. i lay her back on the stain where i had pinned the demonette’s eyes to the carpet, and lay on top of her. i didn’t bother taking her panties off. instead i shifted the material aside and entered her as she lay there, unmoving, listening to the crickets.

“i hear them,” she whispered as i began the heavy rocking rhythm.

“hear them!” i grunted, pushing deeper.

i took hold of her breasts with both hands, and ripped at the bra until it tore away. it left red welts but these too would heal.

her eyes were a haze of faraway thoughts and she whispered too soft for me to hear.

the sex was a motion of images as the blood from the ceiling dripped down on us, slowly becoming a downpour. it rained in the room, heavy drops and then sheets of dark crimson. the smell of new blood and all its smoky fumes was an addictive collage of sound and image which left me baring my teeth at her.

her almond eyes watered and tears mingled with blood. she heard the voices of the crickets for the second time.

i kneaded at her breasts, leaving bruises. i reached down and grabbed her knees, pulling her legs up. she didn’t resist, she just lay there, a placcid doll. a dummy on show.

blood, sex and something else.

i didn’t feel the orgasm until it smashed into my balls with all the power of a rogue steam engine.

and, as i ejected some of my magic into her womb, i distinctly saw the vivid explosion of photographic pieces gluing themselves to my eyelids. i saw skinny, pressed against the wall, her arms chained, her legs spread wide. her hair was wet, plastered to her face. she cried out against the whip.

but i lashed her with it anyway.

meng suddenly erupted into a frenzy of motion and movement as my magic crawled into her. legs wrapped tighter around my waist and she ground herself against me, hissing and scratching at my back. “fuck me! fuck me!” she grunted, her teeth digging deep into my shoulder, my neck. she arced upward and gave a lurching shudder which ended up with a shrill cry.

when i rolled away, my magic poured out of her cunt and was swept down her legs by the slow shower of blood which still rained on us.

when the downpour gave in, she wept and cradled herself. “i couldn’t hold it in,” she cried. “it wouldn’t stay inside.”

i put my arms around her slender waist and ran my fingers down her small breasts. “don’t worry,” i said. “you kept enough. you will be a sorceress, soon.”

she looked down at me through her wet hair. blood had clotted here and there, and she was a vision. “really?”

i nodded, stretched, and yawned. “you can never keep it all, but only a little is needed. the magic is inside you now. it will never come out. of course, now you have to learn that these toys,” i pointed up at the pentagram. “are but shelters for imbeciles.”

she lowered her head and wept again.

the blood ceased to drip and the ceiling would never be wet again.

meng let me paint some signs into her skin, using the biro and the rusty nail. the rusty nail, i told her, would be magic. it had plenty of iron in it, so would be like an aphrodisiac to the blood.

she shivered as i scarred her flesh. it was delicious, she said.

i finished scratching a triangle into her back, its point reaching to the base of her skull, and began digging out the rough outline of the golden arches. “this will protect you,” i told her. “when the enforcers come, they’ll not see you. you will be a shadow in the dark. you will be like another stain on the wall. they won’t see you unless you make a noise. so you will learn the lesson of silence.”

“the enforcers are coming here?” she twitched and the nail dug deeper than it was supposed to, glancing off bone. she gasped and i leaned down to lick the spot where the nail went in, sucking the blood from the small wound. my tongue touched bone and she let out a sigh of relief.

i smiled. “they won’t arrive until i have left.”

“then don’t leave!”

i finished the outline of the golden arches and began stripping back the skin. “i have to. i have no choice. i must go on.”

“where are you going? can’t i come with you?”

i said no. i told her i had to find skinny. i had a message.

“what’s the message?”

“i don’t know yet.”

she left it at that and i finished the signs in silence.

we fucked again, but this time there was no magic. only a joining of two into one. there is, of course, a neat little trick to that, too, but it’s hardly a potent magic.

sex is never potent. it’s just a tool in the same way a car is.

it gets you from a to b, and will get you there quite nicely, too. at least, it’s better than walking. but much of the fun depends on whether you’re driving on your own, in a rolls, or a macdonalds delivery truck.

i tasted her skin in my teeth and thought her very pretty. she had nice eyes.

i told her so.

she didn’t believe me. “they make me look like a retard.”

i left her in my room and went down to where the bikies were gathered around a television, watching an italian vampire film.

one of the bikies looked up at me. “take a look at this,” he said. “this is so fake!”

i told him i liked the cape the vampire was wearing.

the bikie shook his head at me. “man, you’re fucked up. were you in the war, or something?”

“something.”

“front line?”

“maybe.”

“yeah, you look the type.”

“what type’s that?”

“the type who was there.”

“were you there?”

“no. i was too young. my daddy was, though. until the day he died, he still had the sliced guts to prove it.”

“then he told you what it was like?”

“he never told us, no. but we guessed.”

“then you’re wrong.”

the bikie sipped at his beer. “yeah, maybe you’re right. he talked a lot like you, too. full of shit, my old man.”

another bikie offered me a can, and i took it. i opened it up and let the beery smell waft into my nostrils. i didn’t drink it, though. “thank you.”

he sat down on the esky and drank from a bottle of bill gates. “fuckin’ good shit, man. fuckin’ aged ten minutes. fuck. can see stars, sometimes.”

the bikie who had wanted to give my head a smashing put his hand on my shoulder. “ready to go, are you?”

i nodded and gave him my can. he took it and finished it in one gulp. “well,” he grunts, wiping froth from his upper lip. “take any fuckin’ bike you like.”

i thanked him and went outside.

i remember jubei rode a bike, once. into the city of siddenee.

he rode at the head of his army, the reeking head of the city’s former arch-manager in his fist as a sign of his domination.

“you will bow to me, siddenee,” he cried. then he turned on the bike and grinned at me. “the world is ours, now. tonight, we summon one who will help us go universal.”

then: jubei, blood on his tie, seeds of hatred sewn with every syllable he spoke.

every word a curse aimed at me.

the bikes were lined up against the front verandah.

i picked an unpolished one. it seemed to have more character.

i used my biro to scratch a mark into its fuel tank. i opened the tank, spoke a word of power into it, and then closed it up again real tight. as i started the bike, a girl ran outside, leaped onto the back behind me, and put her arms around my waist.

“i’m getting the fuck out of here!” she shouted into my ear above the roar of the motorcycle
.
i nodded, and began slowly moving down the driveway onto the highway.

as we built up speed, she put her lips to my ear and said her name was skinny.

i half-turned to her, keeping my eyes on the road.

“i know.”

Tags: zombies of widgeroo