Illicite, narcotic, pretentious romantic; seeks unattractive girl for amusing
prank’ I placed the add and waited.
Aristotle thought tragedies should be limited to a small number of families where horrors have occurred. But life is tragic, and no few have had their family decompose, the stench of bitterness and betrayal in the air…and so I hit upon the idea of honesty, complete and permanent. For if i was to condemn humans to my cruel wit and often sadistic pleasures, they should at least enter the tunnel with open eyes.
The girl was short, under confident, and eager to please…I touched her knowingly and told her I had everything planned - which was true. ‘Relax’, I coaxed - gently, mildly and firmly -, and she did in her way. Little hands playing a tap-dance on the table top. Large reflective eyes, as if by
accident, occasionally glancing into mine.
The small blue tablet, flicked rapidly, so she couldn’t see - fizzed, bubbled and disappeared in wine…and soon she was asleep. I carried her near lifeless body to the car, trunk clicking satisfactorily closed, and touched rubber to creamy tarmac.
The highway shortened in our wake with near manic velocity, as the car sped through the falling curtain of dark. Misted windows whispering to the night. I checked the radio and it spit vapid noise for a moment before groping a rough and broken signal, theming our journey to country angst and gravely harmonics. The night seemed short, the dregs of an earlier coffee and sheer excitement tingling me awake if my mind dared relax, the road whipping inches below my feet, heading inexorably south along the banks of the thick, tepid, wise old Mississippi.
Morning clung to its slight purchase of the sky as I pulled the car, a weary but still new sedan, onto the track. The machine gouging a path through the mud, tearing chunks of sparse turf and riding the wave till it stopped and I got out, judging cruelly the dawns orange picture of a cabin and failing to ignore the rhythmic thumping from the trunk. Our victim had awoken.
The good ole boys gathered round, fat eager maws slack with unconcealed desire, bored and wicked eyes drooping a wet tribute to perversity. ‘He ! He ! He ! Boss’, puked one loathsome assistant.
‘You gona use this one in the Cer - a - mon - ee ?’ I struck the contemptible wretch a glancing blow and barked a command to the massed savages. As they loped off to obey I poured a drink, considering the oily wooded bitter of a good Jack Daniels. Tonight, I thought..tonight.
The pentagram was sunken, reclaimed by the wet gray marsh, vile septic mists clinging to each uncertain point. My assistants, hooded now, each one a faceless specter in the deep dark southern night, lit candles in each of the points, binding and gagging the girl to the center of the star. Gradually they withdrew..chanting a bass subliminal fear whittled from ancestral memory. The time was growing close; each second burned now, each moment throbbed in my veins.
Drawing a white dagger, sharpened from a great white tooth, I gazed adoringly into the eye of the pole star and incanted a spell. Nonsense words, spun by a master, they reached the ears of the girl, turning her struggle to a futile maelstrom, as I stepped forward and with a great flourish cut her bonds.
‘Run’, I screamed needlessly, for at the very moment of release a hurtling bundle, too quick for the eye to follow had shot into the night; fearing its destination yet far far more afraid of its pursuit.
I smiled, and walked slowly back to the cabin. She knew now the futility of trust. Would perhaps be a tad more cautious, a fraction more wary. It was all I could do, my little charity; waking the innocents from their rose tinted fantasy. One day she would meet a real danger and be ready. Her fools paradise had sunk beneath the waves of consciousness. The great lie of society, its belief in its immortality was revealed, immorality the truth had supplanted fiction. Life, the tale told by a madman, would never for her, be the same. My work here was done.