Blood Sacrifice (9 page)
2004
Elise has two mirrors in her apartment and hung neither of them herself. The first is built into her medicine cabinet (a metal thing circa 1930). The second is a full-length one sunk into her front closet door. She doesn’t like mirrors, but accepts their necessity. How else will she know if she has applied eye shadow or lipstick correctly, or if the seams on her stockings are straight?
Otherwise, Elise has grown to hate them. Their silvered surfaces often throw back a person she used to be, someone with ruddy cheeks, lustrous hair, and an irrepressible smile. Now, there are times when she stands for long periods in front of the medicine cabinet mirror, scissors in hand, ready to hack away at the mane of reddish-brown hair that has always inspired envy and desire. It is only fatigue and depression that prevent her from following through on her resolve to make herself ugly. There is also the matter of fear: if she could cut off her hair, why not slash at her face with the scissors? Scars would make the men turn away in droves.
Gradually, she learned to stop looking at herself. Gradually, she became accustomed to the fact that, although her beauty probably remained somewhere in her features, most people saw her now as a nasty streetwalker, a used-up whore who would feel gritty to the touch.
She doesn’t want that persona tonight. She leans over the sink, bringing her reflection in close. It is almost like looking at another person. Elise asks this person, “What have you gotten yourself into?” Her reflection stares back, dumbfounded, unable to provide an answer.
Elise has pulled her auburn hair away from her face, pulling it into a French twist. The style gives her the look of a Hitchcock heroine, elegant and cool. It also makes her eyes stand out: wide-set, rimmed in black lashes so long she has been accused more than once of wearing false ones. Without her hair obscuring her face, her cheekbones and the fine line of her jaw also stand out, defining and framing a face that Elise has so often felt betrayed by: why not give this beauty to someone else? Someone with a kind heart, who deserves it more than she?
She has spent the last several months perfecting her face as a canvas for a work called “The Whore By Night,” using lurid colors around her eyes—one night a neon lime green with Cleopatra slashes of eyeliner and brilliant crimson lipstick on her lips, another night, the pairing for eyes and mouth is blue eye shadow and bubblegum pink lip gloss of a white-trash Lolita. But tonight she yearns for a subtler effect. The makeup brings out the definition of her cheekbones, the fullness of her lips, the oval shape of her face…just a touch of mascara to showcase the green of her eyes. She wears a long green silk dress, with oak leaves embroidered into the fabric. She steps back and is surprised by the transformation; surprised and grateful that she isn’t so far gone that she can’t recapture a healthy, youthful look. “Looking your best tonight,” she whispers to her reflection.
It has been a long, long time since Elise has wanted to look good for someone, as opposed to wanting to look good as a tool of her trade.
All day she has cleaned; scrubbed Linoleum, dusted what little furniture she has, changed sheets and moved her works in progress to a corner, secreted behind a bookcase. Her best she has put on display, the few pieces she has bothered to frame positioned along the baseboard around the circumference of the studio apartment. Maria will have to squat down to look at her work: the graying strokes of gunshot victims, stabbings, stranglings, and car accidents. Looking around, Elise finds it hard to believe there was ever a time when she used color (pastels, acrylics, watercolors, and oils) or employed cheerier subjects for her art. The person who created a watery, bursting-with-color vision of a Mexican street vendor holding aloft a mango cut just so and garnished with lime and red pepper seems another artist entirely. A dead one.
Elise takes one final tour around the little room she calls home. Electricity throbs within her and the feeling is alien. She hasn’t experienced this in so long it almost feels like something drug-induced. There’s a dizziness, a rush of emotion. What is it people call this?
Oh yes. Anticipation
. Elise shrugs; she’d thought that the emotion had flown the coop, having more to do with ketchup than with her.
The bass of a motorcycle engine trumpets Maria’s arrival. Elise turns off the overhead light and hurries to the window to watch. Outside, Maria straddles the Harley. The bike’s chrome glints yellow in the sodium vapor light. Maria dismounts, shakes her black, windblown hair. Elise cannot see what she is wearing; darkness shrouds her. With careful movements, she locks up the bike.
Elise feels an unfamiliar sensation break across her features, an odd tightening of muscles. She is smiling.
She hurries around the apartment, using a disposable lighter to light candles she has positioned on every surface. The question comes to her:
Am I a lesbian? Is this the real reason I found, ultimately, no comfort with a man? But why hasn’t there been anyone before? Why has this woman in particular captivated me so much?
And then she sees Maria in her mind’s eye. The vision is startling: black hair contrasted with skin so pale it’s almost translucent. Her hair has a blue sheen. Her eyes are so black, Elise could tumble into them, happily lost forever.
The bark of the door buzzer startles her.
Elise hurries to press the button that will admit Maria. “Why did I do this?” She thinks she should be on the street, working. She thinks—for a moment, almost as if the thought came from someone else—that the streets would be a safer place than the territory she is about to travel into.
It is the first time in a long time Elise has actually decided to let someone peer into the world she has created with her art. Fear is part of the reason she wants to keep the light in the room dim. Like a disfigured or merely unattractive person, Elise figures the candlelight will accentuate what’s good about her work while hiding its flaws.
It bothers her, as she moves to the door, that she cares so much about what this woman whom she barely knows will think of her work.
Why should it matter? Even if she hates your work, she could still like you.
No. Love me, love my work
. There can be no distinction between the two.
Elise opens the door.
Maria is cloaked in leather. Tight leather pants, a zippered shirt of thin, pliable hide, dark leather boots. The black offers a striking contrast to her skin. Elise swears her heart stops beating.
Maria brushes her lips, cool, across Elise’s. “I brought you some wine.” Maria sets a bottle of cabernet on the kitchen counter. “And this.” She holds up a carved wooden pipe. The pipe is similar to the one Terence had, but the carving on this one is different: a cat’s face. Not a domestic cat, something more like a lion or cougar. The choice of beast suits Maria.
Elise breathes in sharply, regarding the pipe, already stuffed with redolent sinsemilla. She can smell its acrid tang rising up from the bowl, like incense. Maria sets the pipe next to the bottle of wine.
“Is that the same stuff Terence had?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if I can handle it. Especially with wine.” Elise giggles. “I’ll be comatose.”
Maria has still not looked at any of her art. “We wouldn’t want that. I find that, if we use it correctly, it can make us more attuned.” Maria regards her. “Drugs can be used to enlighten and inform the senses, you know.”
Elise nods. To give herself something to do, she picks up the bottle of wine, reads the label. Out of the corner of her eye, she regards the bowl. “Where do you get it?”
“We grow it ourselves.” Maria grins. “Ancient Chinese secret.” She fires up the bowl and inhales, then passes Elise the pipe. Not wanting to disappoint, Elise draws in a lungful of smoke, though she knows it will numb her almost beyond reason. She wonders if the pot is cut with something more powerful.
The women pass the pipe back and forth. Three hits for Maria. One for Elise.
Maria, whose gaze has been on Elise since she entered, turns finally. “Your art. Terence tells me you’re a genius. I want to see.” Maria’s voice comes to Elise through a tunnel, and in response, she gestures to the work positioned along the wall. Elise feels as though her movements are traveling through glue. Her heartbeat has slowed to the point where it’s an eternity between beats.
It seems as if hours pass. Maria stops before each piece, black eyes intent, drinking it in. It’s as if she’s devouring the art, much the same way Terence did. There is a difference though: this time it is not a violation, not a rape. Elise wants to give, to open herself and her creations up to Maria. She wants to explain what she’s doing, her process, but her tongue is thick in her mouth, and words are beyond the capacity of her languid breath. She then has the revelation that—if her art is doing its job, as her incapacitated mind puts it—she doesn’t need to explain process or intent. All the answers should be there, on the paper, written in charcoal.
She knows Maria will see.
After a while, the walls melt, and Elise sees only Maria, standing in a dark void, her work suspended before her, work that has slouched toward life: three-dimensional, breaking chains of paper and canvas. Finally, Maria turns to her, and Elise tumbles into the blackness of her gaze. Maria nods. She understands.
Time, having stretched, now rushes forward, and Elise is in Maria’s arms. Those dark eyes that have swallowed all her art now reach for the artist, claiming, capturing. Compelling. Elise fears the power of those eyes, the lure—fears being swept away, fears getting carried away. Fears losing herself to temptation.
I am already lost.
Lips merge: soft flesh, cold and hot. Tongues intertwine, dueling. Blood races through Elise’s veins, heating her core; her vision dims. Maria’s flesh is icy fire, glowing in the dim light, the only real thing in the room. Whiter than the sheets they lie upon.
Maria nuzzles Elise’s thighs, cold caress calling hot fluid forth. Her tongue darts and circles Elise’s clitoris, teasing, toying, probing. Traces a torturous path down. Elise grabs a handful of night-dark hair and pulls. Hard enough to hurt.
Maria only laughs, chill breath a different sort of kiss. And then she rises, writhing upward, to hold herself above Elise—hair swinging down, tickling brush against cheeks and shoulders—and slides down again, slowly, to Elise’s breast.
Kissing, suckling, licking. Biting.
A gasp as the tender skin of Elise’s areola is broken by tiny, razor teeth. Spots of bright red blood rise against salmon skin. Elise’s command of language is gone and she whimpers as Maria’s tongue, rough and cold, a cat’s, laps away the blood.
“Just a taste,” Maria’s voice floats above her. “I must have a taste. But that is all. That is all. I would never harm you…my love.”
Elise surrenders to the darkness of her pleasure.
1954
The
thunk
of the taxi door closing isolated them. Edward sat stiffly against the cloth seat; the noise and bustle of the city shut out. The cab was silent and—oddly—cool. Edward leaned to peer at the traffic going by and didn’t see a single cab that did not have its windows rolled down in an attempt to circulate the hot, heavy air, but this cab was sealed shut against the night, almost as if it existed in a different realm. There was no rearview mirror mounted on the windshield, so Edward couldn’t make out the face, or even the eyes, of the cab driver. He could only stare at the almost silhouetted shape of the back of a head, broad shoulders. “Where are we going?” He had an urge to grab Terence’s hand, an urge born of fear, born of a desire to possess. Terence hadn’t said a word as the cab pulled away from the curb, yet the driver seemed to know exactly where to take them.
They cruised through Manhattan, toward Brooklyn. Terence was silent, and if Edward hadn’t turned to look at him, he wouldn’t have even known he was there. No warmth emanated from his still form. The chill should have frightened Edward, should have had him groping for the door handle, so he could fling it open at the next light and flee into the night.
So why was Edward staying? Why wasn’t he screaming and beating on the windows to be set free? Why did he feel that what was ahead of him should be met with anticipation rather than dread?
If he knew the answers to such questions, he would have a better hold on why he was sitting quietly in this silent, cool car with what seemed like an animated corpse. Where was he being taken? And for what purpose?
Edward swallowed and let himself lean back against the upholstery. “Got a cig?” he mumbled to Terence.
Terence offered a Lucky and Edward took it. The silver lighter appeared, flashed, and Edward closed his eyes, sucking in a huge lungful of smoke.
When the cigarette had burned down to the point where it would burn Edward’s fingertips, Terence plucked the butt from him, lowered the window just enough to fling it out, and turned to Edward. He held the small pipe he had offered in Edward’s apartment the other night in his hand. Edward didn’t see him reach in a pocket; the pipe was just…
there
.
“Why smoke cigarettes when you can have this?” Terence lifted the pipe so Edward could catch a whiff of the sticky bud pressed inside its bowl. The smell was bitter, pungent, and strangely attractive. “Cigarettes are so pedestrian. Will you join me in a real smoke?”
Terence fired up the bowl and drew in, making the bud glow a brighter orange in the cab’s dim interior. He held the smoke in, released it through his nostrils, then handed the bowl and sterling silver lighter to Edward. “Here.”
“I remember the last time. I’m not so sure I should.” Edward was already reaching.
“Moderation is the key. A little goes a long way. It will make the evening so much more pleasant. You’ll see.”
One hit was all it took. The brownstones and shuttered storefronts dissolved from Edward’s view. The cab came to a halt outside a subway station. Edward looked up and through dry and blurred vision saw a sign for Church Street. “Where the fuck…”
“We’re in Brooklyn, sweetheart. Now get out of the cab. The meter’s running.”
The two men exited the cab and it sped off. Edward saw no attempt to pay the driver.
“Come.” Terence grabbed Edward’s hand and his cold touch was electric.
Edward could barely keep up; it seemed Terence was gliding on casters. They went down a flight of stairs into a subway station. Edward thought he saw the name “Bergen” formed from tile on the walls of the station, yet there was no one below. There was no rumble of trains either. The station appeared deserted.
Edward drew on his rudimentary knowledge of the New York City network of subway stations and asked, “Where are we going? Coney Island?” The absurdity of the question tickled him and he giggled. Or maybe he was just trying to avoid the vague terror at the back of his mind.
Why is he leading me into what looks like an abandoned subway station? Bigger question: why am I following?
“Come.” Terence pulled him further into shadows.
Edward pulled himself away, trembling. This was going too far. “No! Wait a minute! What are we doing here? No trains come through here. It’s silent. There are no passengers. We didn’t pay to get in here.” In the shadows, Edward sought to make a connection with Terence’s pale eyes. Once he felt he had his attention: “I want to know. I’m not going any further.”
Visions of murder danced in his head. A body that wouldn’t be found for weeks until its rotting corpse was discovered by a wine-swilling bum who wandered into this empty station seeking shelter from a storm….
“Trust me, Edward. There’s someone you should meet.”
The drug he had smoked clouded his brain. He had already forgotten what he had asked. His mind pondered another question: if this was truly an abandoned station, how could they have gotten in? Wouldn’t such a place be locked and barricaded against the public?
But that question, too, vanished into a hemp haze.
Mutely, he followed Terence to the end of the platform. It was even darker there, but the darkness was fragmented by a sharp line of yellow light, shining out from under two huge metal doors.
“What’s behind the doors?” Edward felt a sharp stab of fear. It caused his heart to beat faster and made his face grow slick with sweat. He noticed for the first time the musty air that smelled mildewed, as if it hadn’t been disturbed by anything living in years. To defy him, a rat the size of a small dog scampered across the platform before him and disappeared into a tunnel. “I don’t like this,” he said, reverting to a child’s protests. “I want to go home.”
Terence presented him with his most seductive smile, the tiny, pearlescent teeth almost glowing. “But, darling, we’ve come this far. And Maria is expecting us.”
“Maria?”
Terence stooped and his hands moved near the bottom of the door. There was a click. Terence stood and rubbed his hands together, then wedged a fingertip into the slim line separating the doors, which swung open, releasing the very essence of dankness and a pale lemony light from a wall-mounted lamp, nearly blinding after the gloom Edward had grown accustomed to.
The two men stood at the top of a wide flight of stairs. They descended into blackness. Edward shivered. He could not see where the stairs ended.
A strain of music floated up the stairs. Edward cocked his head. Was it Vivaldi?
Terence put his arm around him, urging him to the first step. “There’s another station below this one.”
“And what’s down there?” Edward reluctantly let his feet descend two steps.
“Maria. And our home. I’ve visited your home. It’s only gracious that I have you to mine.”
Edward swallowed hard and let Terence guide him into the pitch.