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Aug 11, 2020 03:55
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| # ¿ May 20, 2024 21:03 |
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Do as the Witches Do 1831 words--lamb fat When Brooke invited me to a ritual Satanic sacrifice with her coven of actual witches, she made it extremely clear that it wasn't a date. That didn't stop me from dressing in my handsomest outfit. "Are you sure this is a button-down and corduroys sort of thing?" said my brother Ty as I tightened my suspenders. "Sounds like more of a ceremonial robe or naked deal." "I don't have a ceremonial robe, and if I'm supposed to be naked, I can just take it off. It'll be fine." "How're you feeling about the orgy component?" Brooke had mentioned there would be a brief, casual orgy after dinner. It was not how I expected or exactly wanted to lose my virginity, but I certainly didn't want Brooke to think I was lame. "I dunno man, I feel like it'll be weird if I gently caress Brooke during the orgy, because she was so quick to point out it wasn't a date, but then again, it'll be weird if I don't, because like, she did invite me to a witch orgy, you know?" "You're probably gonna have to do some gay stuff," said Ty. "Yeah, I figure I'll just suck a dick or two, can't be the worst thing in the world, plenty of people do it." The doorbell of my parents' place rang. Ty wished me luck, and I opened the door. Brooke was dressed in a ceremonial robe, and my God, did she pull it off, with her red hair pouring out from the front of her hood and her rope belt tied at just the right point of her waist. Brooke wasn't a cheerleader, and she didn't hang out with the popular girls or the other witches, but she was cooler than all of them. Brooke wasn't in my group of friends, per se, but she would show up sometimes, turn someone into a goat for a quick laugh, smoke with the kids who smoked, turn the goat back, then be off to do the same thing at another party. "Hey sorry, I don't have a robe," I said. "It's fine, they provide a few extras for guests," she said. "Come on, let's go." I walked out of the house. There were two broomsticks leaning against my car. "Oh. Are we flying? I figured I could just drive, seeing as how I don't know how to do any magick or anything." "No, I invited you to a witch thing, man, you're gonna do witch stuff. Let me just program the broom to take you where we're going. There's a pit stop on the way; I told the gang I'd provide the lamb." She said some backwards Latin to the broomstick. "That should do it." "Hey," I said. "About the sacrifice…" "No, we're not sacrificing you, dude. We're sacrificing an actual lamb. We only do human sacrifices on getting-murdered fetishists we find on Craigslist; they have to be voluntary. You don't have a getting-murdered fetish, do you?" "Uh, no, I don't, actually," I said. "Then you're all dandy, pal!" she said chipperly. "Is there any specific way I'm supposed to get on this broom?" I said. "Like a cartoon you saw in kindergarten. Don't overthink it." I did that and it took off and it was real scary. "I think I would have rather driven," I said as we landed by the road outside a farm. "Don't be a Kyle tonight, please. Alright, I need you to do me a favor. Farmer Karlsen here has the fattest lambs in the county. But he also has these." She pointed to a series of runes etched into the fence. "If I step foot in his sheep field, I'll go all Wizard of Oz on you. So I need you to go in, snag the fattest lamb you can find, and then get back here. Watch out for Farmer Karlsen. He's a little shotgunny." drat it. She brought me only because she knew I had a crush on her and might do something dangerous and illegal for her. Obviously, I did it. I didn't run into the supposedly shotgunny Farmer Karlsen. The fattest lamb of the farmer known for having fat lambs was, as a matter of fact, pretty fat, so I came out much slower than I went in. "Nice, man!" Brooke said. "You're a champ." She looked at the fat lamb, and then at the broomsticks, and then back at the morbidly obese lamb. "You know what, I think we might have a problem here. You're right. We should have just taken your car. My B." "poo poo," I said. "Do we have to just show up without it?" "No, that would be bad. This isn't gonna be elegant." She recited an incantation and a long black rope appeared in her hands. She tied the lamb's leg to the end of my broomstick. "Is that gonna be able to carry her?" I said. "For God sakes man, you were carrying him with his dick on your neck for a quarter of a mile and you think it's a girl?" said Brooke. "Um, uh, I thought gender wasn't necessarily dependent on genitalia." She laughed. Huh. Maybe I'm having a good night. "The broom could probably carry a car if it needed to, but that's pushing it," said Brooke. "If you could carry the lamb, it can. Alright. Let's roll." The next stretch of broom-ride might have been actually fun; the full moon was out, and the landscape had an energetic glow. The wind was in my hair, and I was more alive than I'd ever known before. I was with a beautiful friend on a sort of adventure I never thought I'd ever experience. The screams of the lamb I was dragging through the sky ruined literally all of it. We landed on a moonlit trail weaving through overgrown and decaying woods. The lamb hit the dirt with a thud, then baahed proof of its survival. "Alright," said Brooke. "The altar is a mile from here. Trust me, flying all the way there makes you look like a bitch. Come on, nice walk through a spooky woods. Sounds fun, doesn't it?" It kind of did. Still… "Can I ask? Why did you invite me here instead of, I don't know, literally anybody else?" "It seems like you could use it." She gestured us forward. I followed her into the dark, holding the broom with the leashed lamb. "Look, Kyle," she said. "You're just about the most wound-up person I know. You're always studying for the SATs, if you don't get an A on the trig test you're not gonna get into college, having a sip of beer at a party will get you addicted. Dude, what if you gave yourself a night to not be stressed about any of that? Just drink and eat and gently caress, man, just tonight. It's not gonna kill you." "I mean, I was planning to. Just, I don't know. It feels awkward." "Do you like, like like me? I honestly can't tell with you, man." I paused. "I don't know. I think so? I know I feel cool when I'm with you." "Look," she said. "I want to stay as friends. Is that cool with you?" "Yes," I said. I was being honest, probably. "That is extremely cool with me. Just, there's an orgy…" "Yeah. That part's weird. I was gonna ditch and smoke while everyone's doing that. I think you should stay. It'll be good for you." "That's...okay. Cool. Thanks." I meant it. "Still, it's gonna be awkward. Do you have a confidence spell or anything?" "If I had a confidence spell, I would've cast it at the lamb farm. I do think I have a solution, though." She pulled out a flask. "Tequila. I can conjure a lime if you need it." "Uh, does tequila go with lime?" "Okay, so not only have you never drank, you've never listened to a Jimmy Buffet song. You definitely need a lime." As I struggled to keep the tequila down, Brooke said, "Do you know what the coven does after the sacrifice?" "Uh, gently caress?" "No, no. Before that. We eat the lamb. It's not a sacrifice at all. God doesn't take, God only gives. God gives us the blessing of existing on this Earth, of delighting in its bounty." "God? I thought you witches were more Devil people." Brooke stopped by a big, misty pond. "This is a bit of a hot take among the witch community, but I think they're all the same. Look at these woods. Dying and overflowing with life. Thriving hives of termites and spiders living in the bones of dead trees. The life and the death, the order and the chaos, they're not different sides of the same coin. They're the same thing, period. So it is with God." We stood there for a moment, listening to the crickets and bullfrogs and coyotes, and again the beautiful moment was ruined by the lamb's dumb bleating. We approached the clearing where the witches and warlocks had gathered. I saw a group of the other plus-ones, huddled and chatting timidly, but I approached the high priestess, an old lady with a big witchy wart on her nose. I introduced myself. She complimented the lamb's plumpness, then gave me a robe and told me it would be more convenient if I were naked underneath. I undressed and changed into the robe in front of everyone; it seemed like the when-in-Rome thing to do. For the sacrifice itself, the magickless were given a little printout of all of the ancient chants we were supposed to say, and I think I could feel magick rise in me as the lamb's blood poured from its neck into the bowl of the altar. They skinned the lamb, then cut away its fat and threw the fat into a cauldron filled with bubbling oil. They glazed the rest with blackberry juice and maple syrup, then they deep-fried all the meat and guts in a stew of its own fat with fresh ginger and mint leaves. They set the whole roast on a platter, which they topped with berries and chopped habaneros. I was overwhelmed with the taste of fat and salt and sweet and spice. I could not stop myself from eating, nor from drinking from my magickally bottomless goblet of sweet red wine. Then the robes came flying off, and I saw Brooke slink away from the crowd. I looked back at the naked bodies, writhing with beckoning ecstacy, and as confident and strong and powerful and alive as I felt in that moment, the night was glowing with energy and life and to end it entangled in fleshy pleasure felt like a disrespect to the moon. I went into the woods, where I found Brooke lighting a joint on a log. Wordlessly, I sat down next to her, and just as silently, she passed me the joint.
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Aug 17, 2020 01:24
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In flash
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Sep 1, 2020 15:29
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Crit for "Quiet" by nut "This certainly is good acid," said David Lynch, sitting on the floor of the joyously trashed motel room. "Well, you know I always say: the best acid contains plenty of meth," said Charlie Kaufman. "Oh poo poo," said David Lynch. "We spent all of the several million dollars the studio gave us for our first collaborative film project on the drugs we took half an hour ago. What are we gonna do? We're so screwed!" "Oh gently caress!" said Charlie. "I was so excited about buying the solid gold dumpster truck filled with drugs that I totally forgot we were supposed to make a movie!" "It's okay, we got this," said David. "What if instead of a movie, we wrote a piece of experimental flash fiction, and filmed the process? That's exactly the sort of self-referencial bullshit the studio expects from us." "Okay," said Charlie, pulling out his laptop. "So would should the plot of this story be?" "Plot? We're well past that," said David. "Let's just write a series of kaleidoscopic images that fail to have any coherent meaning when taken as a whole." "So like the last half hour of 2001: A Space Odyssey without any of the story to give it any context?" said Charlie. "Well, maybe there should be a plot, but it's so buried underneath the imagery that it's impossible to discern," said David. "Okay, so I'll put in a little something. Do you care what is?" "Not at all." "Neither do I," said Charlie. "What about the prose itself?" "Hmmm, that's a good question," said David. "I was thinking of just writing really long, dense sentences. Like, three separate insane things happen every sentence. Enough magic realism for a thousand-page book stuffed into like three pages. I wanna make every sentence its own special chore to get through." "Right," said David. "Make sure the reader has no room to breathe, just make this thing as difficult to get oriented in as we possibly can." "Right, I'm making this utterly unreadable," said Charlie. "Not in the sense that you can read it but it sucks, just like, you literally can't read it." "Perfect!" said David. "It'll be so kaleidoscopic!" "What about the title?" said Charlie, typing furiously. "Hmmm. What about something simple, enigmatic, a single word that embodies the artistic meaning of the art we are creating?" "Nah, let's just call it 'Quiet' and call it a day," said Charlie. "Hell yeah!" said David. "Now that that's done, let's stare at a wall for four hours!" They did that.
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Sep 4, 2020 17:37
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The Third Annual Minneapolis Creepy Thrift Competition 1700 words--Jenglot “What are you bringing to the Creepy Thrift contest?” says Brent on the other line of the XBox live-chat. “Oh boy, you’re just gonna have to see it. You?” I say. I look over at the doll on my bedside table. It looks like a taxidermied monkey--and it probably is--but with wolfish fur and long, sharkishly bat-like teeth. I was excited to find it for a buck ninety-nine at the 60th-and-Nicollet Goodwill, knowing my competition would just bring clown toys and old racist knick-knacks. “I found a Mitt Romney Chia Pet, I figured I’d put some nails in its eyes or something," says Brent. “That’s cheating. Respect the integrity of the game,” I say. “What’s cheating is you camping with your sniper, bro,” says Brent. “Oh hey, heads up, Janet’s gonna be at Creepy Thrift.” “Janet? Oh wait, she was that girl at Jake’s birthday, right? She’s cute.” “Yeah, man. Word on the street is that she remembers you better than you remember her. You might wanna comb your hair on Friday. Play your cards right, ya know?” “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll impress her by crushing y’all at Creepy Thrift.” --- That night I have a dream where I cut deep into my arm and let the blood flow into a big bowl. I set the bowl on my kitchen counter in a big tropical forest with palm trees the size of redwoods. Then I go to my dream-bed, and my dream-within-a-dream is about like a spaceship or something. “Hey are you okay?” says my boss Nick as I enter attendance data into Excel. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m fine. Why?” He shrugs. “I don’t know, you look kinda sick. Maybe you’re pale? Any COVID symptoms?” “Nah, I got the vaccine last month.” “Cool. If you need to take a breather, go ahead.” “Thanks,” I say. I take the opportunity. The fresh air actually is nice. Maybe my allergies are flaring up. --- I wake up in the middle of the night and the scary monkey doll is gone and I check the time on my alarm clock wait I don’t have an alarm clock, but there's one there and it says it's 72:33 no 15:61 no 00:eleven-0, ok I know my bed isn’t in the woods, how many fingers do I have ok that’s way too many thumbs, I’m still dreaming and oh hey there’s scary monkey friend, he’s got a little straw, that’s adorable, oh he’s putting it into my face I guess. I wake up feeling fine but weak. I go to the fridge and grab some orange juice, but it tastes like sand. I throw it out, put on last night’s clothes from the floor, and go to work. “Okay, you’re definitely sick,” says Nick. “You don’t want to take any PTO?” “I used all my PTO when you made me quarantine after my landlord got COVID,” I say. “It’s fine, I don’t have to be in peak physical condition to fill out grant applications.” Later in the day, Nick brings me a coffee and it tastes just like the orange juice. --- “Making a lot of burgers?” says the grocery store cashier, and I notice that the only thing in my cart is seventeen pounds of ground beef. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m feeling a bit off today.” I go and get some actual groceries, rice and kale and grapes and-- “Sir, are you sure you just want thirty-one pounds of ground beef?” says the cashier. Oh, I guess that is what I got. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m having a real big barbecue.” When I get home, I search around for some hamburger buns and find some kinda stale but not-moldy ones in the cupboard. I guess I’m just craving protein. I start up the stove and reach for a tube of beef, but it’s already empty. Who stole my meat?, but I can feel the blood trickling down my chin. I lick it up. “It’s time,” says the monkey doll. “Come on, man,” I say. “I don’t have much to give.” I look over at the kitchen counter, and there are two empty beef tubes now. “You have enough,” says the doll. “It’s time.” There’s a bowl on the counter, and a knife. “No, I need it,” I plead, but the bowl is already filled with blood and my forearm is bleeding, and by the time I’m back from taping paper towels to my arm in the bathroom the bowl is empty. I rip the towels off my arm and the cut is gone. I count my fingers, and there are, unshiftingly, five of them. My phone rings. It's an unknown number, but it's a six-one-two, so I know it's local. "Yo, Victor speaking." "Hey! It's Janet. We met at Jake's birthday thing, remember? Brent gave me your number." "Oh, um, cool. Hi." "I was thinking, after Creepy Thrift tomorrow, if you wanna come with me to grab a drink at the CC?" "Um, yeah. That sounds, um, awesome." "Yay! I'm so excited! I dunno, do you wanna like, talk now? What do people do after successfully asking someone out?" "I'm sorry, um, Janet. I'm in the middle of something. I'll see you tomorrow." I do my best to imitate a kissing sound over the phone and hang up. "It's time," says the doll. "Come on! I just gave you some!" "That was yesterday," says the doll. Wait, why is there so much light in here? It's nighttime. Right? Isn't it? I need blood. I don't have any. You don't notice how loud the flow of it is inside you until it's gone. The rumbling of my stomach is like a metallic crank. I climb towards the fridge. I don't know how many beef tubes I go through. However many it is, it's too few. What day is it? Friday, says my phone. Okay, so I have work, and Creepy Thrift, and that date with Janet, poo poo I won't have time to get home to feed the doll, no, what am I talking about, I don't have enough for that. I look into my bathroom mirror. I'm supposed to do something here. Comb my hair, that's it. I'm supposed to comb my hair today. It comes out as I run the comb through. Still, I do it. Nick looks so plump, so full of blood, you can hear him sloshing like a water balloon as he approaches my desk. "Dude, go the gently caress home," he says. "You look like poo poo. I'm pretty sure we can get sued letting you work." I'm at home. How did I get here? Oh, I took a Lyft, apparently? "It's time," says the doll. "I can't," I say. "I'm dry." "What?" says Brent, finishing off a beer. "I said it's time to head over to the party, but like, I think you should stay home, you look sick as poo poo and have been acting super weird ever since I got here. Look, Janet will understand, she's…" "No," I say. How long has Brent been here? "I'm going." "You sure? I'm not sure if you knew this, but 2021 isn't the best year to be going out looking sickly. Whatever. Nice creepy doll, by the way, I'm sure you're the one to beat. Way better than…" he taps on his clay Romney. "Let's roll." We're by an apartment door. Whose? Right, Desmond. He's hosting this year. I'm clutching the monkey doll. Brent rings the doorbell. Desmond welcomes us in. There are so many people here, the sound of their blood is like a waterfall. A girl is talking to me, it's whatsherface, Janet. I can barely hear her over the bloodflow. She looks delicious. "What?" I say. "Looks like everyone brought a baby clown doll, you might just win by default," says Janet. "Nice zombie costume, by the way, didn't know people were dressing up for this, but I dig it. Do you do special-effects makeup? I might need some help for something I'm working on for one of my film classes." poo poo, what would a person say in this situation? Oh God I can see the blood under her skin, she's so red. What did she just say? Where are we? Creepy Thrift, right. "Uh, what did you bring?" "That old Civil War portrait. I dunno, it's fine. Hey, let's go get a drink," she says. She grabs my hand and pulls me toward the kitchen. I can feel her pulse, and I am filled with envy. She pours two glasses with the tequila on the counter and grabs a lime and a knife. She starts cutting the lime against the counter, before saying, "Silly me. No cutting board." She holds the lime in one hand and cuts into it in the other until… It's the thinnest, shallowest cut in her skin, but I can see so deep into it. She lurches back and drops the knife. The blood is climbing the walls of the cut, a swift flooding river, and... Oh my God. This is so good. This is the best thing I've ever tasted. "WHAT THE gently caress DUDE?" Janet screams, pulling her hand away from my mouth. gently caress her, she doesn't know how badly I need this. I grab her wrist and pull her hand back and start chewing at the cut and now everyone's in here and trying to pull me off her but my teeth are too deep in for anyone to take me away until I feel something shattering against the back of my head and see the clay bits of Mitt Romney's head fall to the tile. The finger drops from my mouth, and I pounce after it and drink from it until they can finally drag me away. Oh no. Oh God. What did I do? Jesus Christ, that's a lot of cops. Is Janet okay? Okay, some paramedics are wrapping up her hand. I'M SORRY! I'M SO SORRY! HEY, ARE WILL STILL ON FOR THE C.C. CLUB? As I'm led out the door in cuffs, Brent picks up the monkey doll from the bloodied kitchen floor. "Guys," he says. "I'm pretty sure we have a winner."
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Sep 6, 2020 01:45
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In, flash.
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Oct 7, 2020 15:08
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| # ¿ May 20, 2024 21:03 |
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In with 338- places of power,  (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 8, 2020 22:54
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