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Next Chapter: I am the one who cracks the whip

  Previous Chapter: Daughter of the Immaculate Machine

Beginning Chapter: I am the one who see's uncertain futures

  Katelyn flung open the closet door, throwing garments in a heap and digging through her old things as if scrambling to find gold in a riverbed. She wiped the sweat from her brow and scattered jewelry across the wood floor, her fingers twitching, pinky missing from her left hand. It was an accident. With her, it was always an accident. No, not the kind that left soiled bedsheets, but shallow graves and absent family pets.

  She never told her parents. After all, what would mom think if she knew the daisies had died because of her? What would father think if he found the bones buried in the back next to the shit from the outhouse? But, most importantly, her nightly activities were none of their damn business.

  “Sister, please don’t.” Katelyn’s younger brother, Samuel, tugged at her sleeve.

  “Shut up, Sam!“

  She shoved him to the ground, returning to the closet and tossing out a pair of shoes.

  Samuel was her shadow. That snot-nosed little kid never seemed to give up. They shared that tenacity. Well, they shared many things: short brown hair, powder blue eyes, a tiny cross-shaped birthmark under their right armpits, and a kidney. Oh yes, a kidney. Katelyn was only born with one, and a defective one at that. She was eight years old when father noticed her swelling ankle and unquenchable thirst. Well, mom and dad raised a camel, a fine family joke. At least, until they learned she was dying. Nobody was laughing after that. Nobody was laughing when the chirurgeons offered to put her down like a rabid dog.

  Oh, there wouldn’t be pain. They at least promised that—just a little something in her drink to help her sleep, permanently. Father was furious. A devout worshipper of Dūramgama, indeed.

  All life is sacred, no matter how ephemeral!

  “That’s just great, daddy.” She said under her breath, splitting her nail on a skirt’s seam.

  Maybe things would have turned out better had she died early. At least then, the neighbors would still have a dog, and mother wouldn’t have lost years panicking over her bloody stump of a finger.

  Well, mother shared some of the blame. Once, she was a practicing witch whose power came from Vesica-Gayzu, the father of beasts and filth. Her will was weak, so easily converting to the bounty of nature and the will of that pathetic goddess Dūramgama. Both she and her father now made the mistake of worshipping the creation and not the creator. That’s why Katelyn was born with a single kidney. A beastly organ that was green and shaped like a sickle incapable of serving a mortal purpose.

  Dūramgama didn’t save her, no matter how her parents prayed. No, the goddess of the earth only answered in metaphors and slight changes in the wind’s course. But mother knew another way. Digging up a past she wished to forget; her mom read a spell from the book of babel, a simple incantation that required only a drop of blood, a pigeon’s skull, and the dried powder of Katelyn’s umbilical cord.

  Old habits die hard.

  Katelyn’s fever broke a week later, and she woke needing to pee so badly she didn’t make it to the outhouse. Out of the blue, her kidney was working full stop. What manner of spell could right such a wrong? No, she was mistaken. A wrong hadn’t been righted but swapped.

  Mother’s spell was a valuable lesson. Even the simplest incantations came with a price. Katelyn saw it in her brother. A sudden change turned his skin pale and made him scream at night with back pain that cut like a knife. She knew then where her bestial kidney had gone. Father knew too. Her parents argued over it, breaking the dining room chair. Finally, he threatened to persecute her, turn her into the inquisition. They’d hang a practicing witch without question.

  All life is precious indeed, at least until they learn you don’t worship the same god as they do.

  Katelyn knew her father wasn’t sincere. After all, he was the man who crossed the icy fjord, plucked a jade iris out of season, and slew a golden stag for her hand. Father knew she was a practicing witch, begged her to convert. The inquisition had little room for forgiveness, but he kept her secret all the same. How could a man betray the woman he loved because she sinned on behalf of her daughter? He couldn’t. However, the knife cut deep all the same, and her mom fled to the riverbank and tossed the book of babel into the white-water rapids. She thought she was alone, but she wasn’t. Katelyn found the book some distance down, pages untouched by hissing waters. The front of the book was puckered like stretched leather and felt like a lizard’s skin.

  The incantations within were too enticing for a frail young girl to ignore.

  A spell to conjure fire.

  A spell to turn water into wine.

  A spell to seal her first kiss.

  Katelyn wasn’t interested in sex until she turned fourteen. That’s when she noticed the boy across the street, the one with silver hair that played with a wooden sword and led the neighborhood kids with stories of knights and dragons. He braved the darkness to slay the monster and always had a smile on his face. She looked up to him, wanted to be like him, and fell in love with him.

  Oh, Katelyn didn’t really want to go all the way. They were too young, and she knew better than to act like a fool. All Katelyn wanted was for him to notice her, to blush and kiss her behind the amber shack. Yet, he didn’t seem to recognize her subtle advances.

  Sometimes she had to do everything herself.

  The book of babel didn’t have spells for love. No, only incantations for sexual intent. Hexes for prostitutes and whores, women who wished to bear the child of a man who didn’t love them. Katelyn had to rewrite the inscription for her purposes.

  Just a kiss, that’s all she wanted, just one kiss.

  That’s when the neighbor dog went missing. The daisies wilted into dust, and her pinky finger fell off like a snake’s skin. The spell backfired, of course. Katelyn was naïve, thinking knowledge older than time could be changed. Then, the neighbor boy with silver hair and a glowing smile broke through her bedroom window and forced her down onto the bed. She screamed, clawing and kicking at his face as he tore her skirt and pushed her head against the pillow.

  They say it took three men to subdue the boy, her father, and two neighbors who heard the commotion. That night was still hazy, but she remembered the howls and the way he moved like a rabid animal. Still, it was his eyes that haunted her the most. That pleading look and glint of awareness, like he knew what he was doing but couldn’t stop. Well, her mother knew. She never said a word, just shook her finger as if catching Katelyn with her hand in the cookie jar. The lecture never came because it wasn’t necessary. Katelyn’s action came with its own punishment.

  Samuel knew too. He was her shadow, after all. Katelyn couldn’t crack an egg, split her finger, or stab a pigeon without him knowing. He had long guessed why his back spasmed, and his skin turned pale white. A part of her was literally eating away at him inside, but it also imparted her tenacity. Samuel became more like Katelyn, growing single-minded and devout in his way. Yet, while the father of filth’s power seduced her, he became a paladin of Dūramgama.

  Father was so proud when he took up the knife and recited the words of the 8th inquisition. Another paladin in the family. Samuel would take the mantle, hang witches, and burn warlocks while chanting about how life was precious. They were hypocrites following the will of an absentee goddess. After all, the only way to spare the soul of a practicing heathen was to kill them with the blessed torch of Dūramgama. Hypocrites indeed, Katelyn wasn’t the one who needed saving.

  It was them.

  “Please, sister. You promised never to do it again!“ Samuel grabbed hold of her sleeve once more.

  “I said, shut up!“ Katelyn spit. “Do you want to die, sam!“

  He sat with his mouth hanging open, his right hand trembling as he sweat clean through his shirt.

  Yeah, that’s what she thought.

  Pulling up the wooden floorboards of her closet, she retrieved the old leather-bound book and brushed the dust off the cover. Samuel recoiled, pushing his back against the wall as Katelyn tossed the tome on her bed and cut her finger when flipping through the pages. She never noticed the blood, her heart damn near beating out of her chest.

  They could hear their parent’s voices from down the hall chanting some useless prayer. Dūramgama would not save them, not before, and certainly not now. Mother screamed when the front door cracked, and stones pelted the windows. Father boarded them up, but their fortifications wouldn’t last long.

  It turns out, when you hang one heretic too many, the rest come to beat down the door.

  At least Samuel and their dad were in for a quick death, but not their mom, and certainly not Katelyn. At best, they would be killed, but, at worst? She was nearly raped before and wasn’t about to let that happen again, no matter the cost.

  A summoning spell would do the trick. She had seen this page before, but was too afraid to try it. The denizens of the crimson plain didn’t belong here and were tricky to control—still, no time for hesitation.

  “existentia, infinita, et tenebrae aeternae.“

  Katelyn cut her finger and ran a line of crimson along the bleached jaw of a dog before snapping the bone in two. The book of babel trembled as they bathed in the winds of the scarlet realm. Then, the pages stretched like a thin film, a jaw visible from the other side. She had opened the gate, and a monster came through.

  The creature burst from the pages like a whale surfacing from the ocean. Its skin was as pale as moonlight with jade-colored eyes and a maw so wide it could’ve swallowed her bed whole. A hundred limbs squeezed through the leather-bound gate, growing and scratching the walls until a dozen pincers anchored it to the floor. Finally, the beast bellowed a cry that shook the ground and knocked over the walls of her bedroom, body spilling into the living room like intestines from an opened gut.

  “Kill them all!“ Katelyn screamed as the first of the mob burst through the front door.

  They never saw it coming, running headfirst into the cavernous maw of the crimson fiend. The crowd screamed, unable to free themselves from a sea of curved needles that sunk deeper as its prey struggled. Then, worm-like limbs spilled forth, pulling in hapless victims, and splitting the ringleader in two. A shower of blood and viscera was raining down from the ceiling. That’s when Katelyn heard a gurgling noise, demonic laughter from that bloated maggot. It brought a feather, tickling the back of its throat to vomit a mass of red tissue, making room for more.

  “Make it stop!“ Samuel shouted, but Katelyn couldn’t hear him as the roof collapsed from a swelling yellow sack.

  Mother and Father were next. Pale limbs wrapped around their ankles, dragging them towards the maggot’s open maw. Their mother screamed, nails digging into the wood floor, leaving tracks behind.

  “Make it stop!“ Samuel shouted once more, slapping Katelyn across the cheek.

  “I, I don’t know how!“

  Katelyn fell to her knees, watching as her parents struggled against a crimson wave. Broken ankles added to that twisted orgy of dangling flesh and pierced livers.

  “I don’t know how!“

  Yes, but Samuel did.

  With seconds to spare, he lunged at her, grabbing hold of Katelyn’s red choker, and pulling as hard as he could. She sputtered, coughing as the chain dug into her throat. Katelyn struggled, kicking her brother’s sides, and digging her nails into his arm, but he never let go.

  “W, wh, y?” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks as her fingers went numb.

  The crimson fiend howled as if struck by iron, its twisted otherworldly pleasures interrupted by a gnat. The maggot spun around, lunging into the bedroom once more, but its full belly couldn’t fit through the hole in the wall.

  “I’m so sorry.“ Samuel said, pulling the chain harder until her neck bled. “May the goddess spare your soul!“

  As the light in her eyes faded and a hail of teeth rained down from the ceiling, Katelyn’s last thoughts were of a prayer her father had taught her long ago.

  Maybe, just maybe, that bitch Dūramgama would answer her.

Description

Next Chapter: I am the one who cracks the whip

  Previous Chapter: Daughter of the Immaculate Machine

Beginning Chapter: I am the one who see's uncertain futures

  Katelyn flung open the closet door, throwing garments in a heap and digging through her old things as if scrambling to find gold in a riverbed. She wiped the sweat from her brow and scattered jewelry across the wood floor, her fingers twitching, pinky missing from her left hand. It was an accident. With her, it was always an accident. No, not the kind that left soiled bedsheets, but shallow graves and absent family pets.

  She never told her parents. After all, what would mom think if she knew the daisies had died because of her? What would father think if he found the bones buried in the back next to the shit from the outhouse? But, most importantly, her nightly activities were none of their damn business.

  “Sister, please don’t.” Katelyn’s younger brother, Samuel, tugged at her sleeve.

  “Shut up, Sam!“

  She shoved him to the ground, returning to the closet and tossing out a pair of shoes.

  Samuel was her shadow. That snot-nosed little kid never seemed to give up. They shared that tenacity. Well, they shared many things: short brown hair, powder blue eyes, a tiny cross-shaped birthmark under their right armpits, and a kidney. Oh yes, a kidney. Katelyn was only born with one, and a defective one at that. She was eight years old when father noticed her swelling ankle and unquenchable thirst. Well, mom and dad raised a camel, a fine family joke. At least, until they learned she was dying. Nobody was laughing after that. Nobody was laughing when the chirurgeons offered to put her down like a rabid dog.

  Oh, there wouldn’t be pain. They at least promised that—just a little something in her drink to help her sleep, permanently. Father was furious. A devout worshipper of Dūramgama, indeed.

  All life is sacred, no matter how ephemeral!

  “That’s just great, daddy.” She said under her breath, splitting her nail on a skirt’s seam.

  Maybe things would have turned out better had she died early. At least then, the neighbors would still have a dog, and mother wouldn’t have lost years panicking over her bloody stump of a finger.

  Well, mother shared some of the blame. Once, she was a practicing witch whose power came from Vesica-Gayzu, the father of beasts and filth. Her will was weak, so easily converting to the bounty of nature and the will of that pathetic goddess Dūramgama. Both she and her father now made the mistake of worshipping the creation and not the creator. That’s why Katelyn was born with a single kidney. A beastly organ that was green and shaped like a sickle incapable of serving a mortal purpose.

  Dūramgama didn’t save her, no matter how her parents prayed. No, the goddess of the earth only answered in metaphors and slight changes in the wind’s course. But mother knew another way. Digging up a past she wished to forget; her mom read a spell from the book of babel, a simple incantation that required only a drop of blood, a pigeon’s skull, and the dried powder of Katelyn’s umbilical cord.

  Old habits die hard.

  Katelyn’s fever broke a week later, and she woke needing to pee so badly she didn’t make it to the outhouse. Out of the blue, her kidney was working full stop. What manner of spell could right such a wrong? No, she was mistaken. A wrong hadn’t been righted but swapped.

  Mother’s spell was a valuable lesson. Even the simplest incantations came with a price. Katelyn saw it in her brother. A sudden change turned his skin pale and made him scream at night with back pain that cut like a knife. She knew then where her bestial kidney had gone. Father knew too. Her parents argued over it, breaking the dining room chair. Finally, he threatened to persecute her, turn her into the inquisition. They’d hang a practicing witch without question.

  All life is precious indeed, at least until they learn you don’t worship the same god as they do.

  Katelyn knew her father wasn’t sincere. After all, he was the man who crossed the icy fjord, plucked a jade iris out of season, and slew a golden stag for her hand. Father knew she was a practicing witch, begged her to convert. The inquisition had little room for forgiveness, but he kept her secret all the same. How could a man betray the woman he loved because she sinned on behalf of her daughter? He couldn’t. However, the knife cut deep all the same, and her mom fled to the riverbank and tossed the book of babel into the white-water rapids. She thought she was alone, but she wasn’t. Katelyn found the book some distance down, pages untouched by hissing waters. The front of the book was puckered like stretched leather and felt like a lizard’s skin.

  The incantations within were too enticing for a frail young girl to ignore.

  A spell to conjure fire.

  A spell to turn water into wine.

  A spell to seal her first kiss.

  Katelyn wasn’t interested in sex until she turned fourteen. That’s when she noticed the boy across the street, the one with silver hair that played with a wooden sword and led the neighborhood kids with stories of knights and dragons. He braved the darkness to slay the monster and always had a smile on his face. She looked up to him, wanted to be like him, and fell in love with him.

  Oh, Katelyn didn’t really want to go all the way. They were too young, and she knew better than to act like a fool. All Katelyn wanted was for him to notice her, to blush and kiss her behind the amber shack. Yet, he didn’t seem to recognize her subtle advances.

  Sometimes she had to do everything herself.

  The book of babel didn’t have spells for love. No, only incantations for sexual intent. Hexes for prostitutes and whores, women who wished to bear the child of a man who didn’t love them. Katelyn had to rewrite the inscription for her purposes.

  Just a kiss, that’s all she wanted, just one kiss.

  That’s when the neighbor dog went missing. The daisies wilted into dust, and her pinky finger fell off like a snake’s skin. The spell backfired, of course. Katelyn was naïve, thinking knowledge older than time could be changed. Then, the neighbor boy with silver hair and a glowing smile broke through her bedroom window and forced her down onto the bed. She screamed, clawing and kicking at his face as he tore her skirt and pushed her head against the pillow.

  They say it took three men to subdue the boy, her father, and two neighbors who heard the commotion. That night was still hazy, but she remembered the howls and the way he moved like a rabid animal. Still, it was his eyes that haunted her the most. That pleading look and glint of awareness, like he knew what he was doing but couldn’t stop. Well, her mother knew. She never said a word, just shook her finger as if catching Katelyn with her hand in the cookie jar. The lecture never came because it wasn’t necessary. Katelyn’s action came with its own punishment.

  Samuel knew too. He was her shadow, after all. Katelyn couldn’t crack an egg, split her finger, or stab a pigeon without him knowing. He had long guessed why his back spasmed, and his skin turned pale white. A part of her was literally eating away at him inside, but it also imparted her tenacity. Samuel became more like Katelyn, growing single-minded and devout in his way. Yet, while the father of filth’s power seduced her, he became a paladin of Dūramgama.

  Father was so proud when he took up the knife and recited the words of the 8th inquisition. Another paladin in the family. Samuel would take the mantle, hang witches, and burn warlocks while chanting about how life was precious. They were hypocrites following the will of an absentee goddess. After all, the only way to spare the soul of a practicing heathen was to kill them with the blessed torch of Dūramgama. Hypocrites indeed, Katelyn wasn’t the one who needed saving.

  It was them.

  “Please, sister. You promised never to do it again!“ Samuel grabbed hold of her sleeve once more.

  “I said, shut up!“ Katelyn spit. “Do you want to die, sam!“

  He sat with his mouth hanging open, his right hand trembling as he sweat clean through his shirt.

  Yeah, that’s what she thought.

  Pulling up the wooden floorboards of her closet, she retrieved the old leather-bound book and brushed the dust off the cover. Samuel recoiled, pushing his back against the wall as Katelyn tossed the tome on her bed and cut her finger when flipping through the pages. She never noticed the blood, her heart damn near beating out of her chest.

  They could hear their parent’s voices from down the hall chanting some useless prayer. Dūramgama would not save them, not before, and certainly not now. Mother screamed when the front door cracked, and stones pelted the windows. Father boarded them up, but their fortifications wouldn’t last long.

  It turns out, when you hang one heretic too many, the rest come to beat down the door.

  At least Samuel and their dad were in for a quick death, but not their mom, and certainly not Katelyn. At best, they would be killed, but, at worst? She was nearly raped before and wasn’t about to let that happen again, no matter the cost.

  A summoning spell would do the trick. She had seen this page before, but was too afraid to try it. The denizens of the crimson plain didn’t belong here and were tricky to control—still, no time for hesitation.

  “existentia, infinita, et tenebrae aeternae.“

  Katelyn cut her finger and ran a line of crimson along the bleached jaw of a dog before snapping the bone in two. The book of babel trembled as they bathed in the winds of the scarlet realm. Then, the pages stretched like a thin film, a jaw visible from the other side. She had opened the gate, and a monster came through.

  The creature burst from the pages like a whale surfacing from the ocean. Its skin was as pale as moonlight with jade-colored eyes and a maw so wide it could’ve swallowed her bed whole. A hundred limbs squeezed through the leather-bound gate, growing and scratching the walls until a dozen pincers anchored it to the floor. Finally, the beast bellowed a cry that shook the ground and knocked over the walls of her bedroom, body spilling into the living room like intestines from an opened gut.

  “Kill them all!“ Katelyn screamed as the first of the mob burst through the front door.

  They never saw it coming, running headfirst into the cavernous maw of the crimson fiend. The crowd screamed, unable to free themselves from a sea of curved needles that sunk deeper as its prey struggled. Then, worm-like limbs spilled forth, pulling in hapless victims, and splitting the ringleader in two. A shower of blood and viscera was raining down from the ceiling. That’s when Katelyn heard a gurgling noise, demonic laughter from that bloated maggot. It brought a feather, tickling the back of its throat to vomit a mass of red tissue, making room for more.

  “Make it stop!“ Samuel shouted, but Katelyn couldn’t hear him as the roof collapsed from a swelling yellow sack.

  Mother and Father were next. Pale limbs wrapped around their ankles, dragging them towards the maggot’s open maw. Their mother screamed, nails digging into the wood floor, leaving tracks behind.

  “Make it stop!“ Samuel shouted once more, slapping Katelyn across the cheek.

  “I, I don’t know how!“

  Katelyn fell to her knees, watching as her parents struggled against a crimson wave. Broken ankles added to that twisted orgy of dangling flesh and pierced livers.

  “I don’t know how!“

  Yes, but Samuel did.

  With seconds to spare, he lunged at her, grabbing hold of Katelyn’s red choker, and pulling as hard as he could. She sputtered, coughing as the chain dug into her throat. Katelyn struggled, kicking her brother’s sides, and digging her nails into his arm, but he never let go.

  “W, wh, y?” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks as her fingers went numb.

  The crimson fiend howled as if struck by iron, its twisted otherworldly pleasures interrupted by a gnat. The maggot spun around, lunging into the bedroom once more, but its full belly couldn’t fit through the hole in the wall.

  “I’m so sorry.“ Samuel said, pulling the chain harder until her neck bled. “May the goddess spare your soul!“

  As the light in her eyes faded and a hail of teeth rained down from the ceiling, Katelyn’s last thoughts were of a prayer her father had taught her long ago.

  Maybe, just maybe, that bitch Dūramgama would answer her.