Mestiza Blood, page 8
Pentagram Peep Show
No one needs a soul in this godless place.
The front of the house is lined with framed vintage horror and adult film posters from the 1970s and 80s, the glory days of porn. Big bushes, soft bodies and natural, uneven-sized tits. Blacula casts his sexy gaze upon all that enter. From the bar lit with multi-colored lava lamps, you can order a maximum of three drinks, because drunks can’t come and that’s what you’re here for. Don’t worry, performance anxiety is normal, and it will fade with a single mouth-to-mouth kiss. When our tongues meet, every desire hidden beneath the trap doors of your heart open to me, spread wide like inviting legs.
You wait at the bar. Shelves of liquor are attached to a glass case of skulls tightly packed next to each other. Eyes open, mouths clenched in a thirsty grimace. A single bartender serves drinks or offers edibles baked with enough THC to give you a slight high. Put away your money because it’s no good here. We deal in the currency of blood and desire. Your name will be called on a speaker that cracks with static. On the hardwood floor you follow arrows painted in gold leading away from the bar. Continue through an archway until you reach a wall of doors. Above each one, a round light blinks red or green. You must enter the one that switches to green. The rest are occupied.
Here at the Pentagram Peep Show you’ll get the fuck of your life for the small price of your soul. Under the red glow of lights, you can view others slip in and out of the ecstasy of heresy on a round bed in the center of a revolving stage. Their eyes glaze over until they are as black as a bloodstain. No sign of life will ever escape. Some might be put off because taking pleasure in promiscuity is the surest path to hell.
Men and women sign away eternity for their dreams. I like both; flesh is flesh. The roundness of a woman’s body is as delectable as the fresh oyster that lives between her legs. My lips on her lips while my tongue teases the pearl beneath the hood that causes her to shiver in my arms.
I will ride you fast and hard, feeling you about to crack inside. Hands grip my thighs while my nipples brush against your face. Almost there now. You scream “Jesus” just as your knuckles go white and your soul crumbles to ash. The tiny flakes float from your body into my mouth; manna that fills me. You are all mine now, forever and always. The next time you see me is after your death because your soul belongs to me. In a small room, within the infinite maze of hell, you will spend eternity watching others venture into my peep show. Some shout and claw at their hearts that it’s not worth it, while others watch in evil delight, knowing the torment that awaits.
Like I said, no one needs a soul in this godless place. I found that out the moment I tumbled through the atmosphere in a fireball of light. My head crashed against a rock; my virgin wings dissolved from the sun. My nakedness shocked humans as they gathered around to see what would emerge from the small crater created by my body. Some tried to grab me with a lecherous look in their eyes, others threw stones. It was only by the kindness of a woman by a well that I found shelter. She covered my body with the garment that had been draped around her head. I spurted grit as my mouth and tongue felt dry from dirt. Her wooden ladle and bucket of water washed my throat clean so I might try to speak in a manner she could understand. With one arm around my trembling shoulder she guided me back to her hut. She looked at me with pity, deep sorrow as she wiped the blood from my cut forehead, dabbed my singed back that emitted black eddies of smoke where wings once attached. The pain of her touch caused me to wince, and salt water leaked from my eyes. Blood coated my thighs from my draining body. How strange I would bleed from there.
“You have been cast down as a woman. Whatever did you do?”
I didn’t understand her words until she sent me on my way in the world.
“Demon. Fallen angel. Brown temptress,” I heard behind my back. I sucked my first soul from a goat herder who tried to make me his third wife.
There isn’t enough time to tell you how I ended up in Amsterdam. The blisters, the beds, the souls I reaped. How does anyone end up where they are? But here I am. The canals that lead to the red-light district are beautiful in spring. Tulips burst with color along cobbled streets. People on bikes ride peacefully by. Not far from my establishment of ill repute, you can visit the last home of Anne Frank. Every year I leave an offering. It reminds me why I do what I do and why I led the revolt against God. My back spasms where giant iridescent wings once sprouted as I cram my human body into the small spaces of the home turned museum. When I leave, I look to the sky as blue as God’s left eye and curse him once more.
“One day,” I whisper, “I will suck the glory from you until your eyes roll behind your head.”
With my hands in my pockets in a multicultural modern city, no one bothers me anymore. I slip into the unassuming brick building built in 1780, though the foundation is much older than that. All those Flemish painters who rose to fame passed through my doors. Rock stars, artists, writers, all the same. I killed a few Nazis in my day, luring them with entertainment. They expected a cabaret of local women and instead stared into the eyes of a horde of demons.
I sent my most pale, Rebecca, to offer the group of German soldiers an invitation to our show.
“Bring the officers,” she giggled, making sure to lick her lips, flick her blonde hair and give them a wink. Her hips swayed from side to side as she walked away.
Back then, the property looked like many of the older buildings, significantly smaller and narrow. Besides the bar in the main salon, it looked like a brothel. Candlelight on elegant candelabras illuminated the rooms. Bottles of champagne and whiskey greeted the cabal of soldiers expecting a jolly good time. We passed out cigarettes without care for rationing.
“Where is this show we’ve been promised?” said a sweaty officer with his jacket and shirt opened to the belly. Enough room for his guts to spill out, his breath heavy with cigar smoke and brandy.
I emerged from the top of the staircase, in gestapo boots and a short satin robe, bright lipstick glowing against my dusty, clay-colored skin. His eyes widened as the rest of us followed behind. Some were darker than me, their skin like molten lava, charred from free fall with the whites of their eyes glowing with malice. With every step, streaks of red cracked open then closed again. So beautiful as smoke rose from their bodies. Others had scales, and some had jagged teeth and beaks. You remember the painter Bosch?
The soldiers raised their guns but were disarmed in seconds by the others, who had been entertaining them for hours. The highest-ranking officer could not stand to face me as two of my fallen ones held him down with a single hand on each of his shoulders. Without their weapons and words of hate, they were nothing.
“All of you will die for this!” he spat.
I straddled his lap then cradled his face in my hands, my grip too strong for him to turn away.
“No, it’s you who will die. Eventually all that you stand for.”
Our wet lips carried pestilence to invade their cells as they attempted to invade the world. Boots stolen from Nazis we killed on the streets held them down by their necks while we watched them thrash in agony. The pestilence liquified them from the inside out. A small token, only a drop in the bucket that sloshed with all the evil in the world. Their bodies we burned, but their skulls we kept. They line the wall behind my bar with their souls trapped inside to forever watch the world turn without them in it. When the world ends, and it will, they will forever be locked inside the bodies of those they tormented, experiencing real hell for eternity. I consider them trophies and proof I must exist in this form.
I bet you never believed the Morning Star could be a woman, offering you things the other will not. But now it’s showtime, not for me, but for my daughter, the one wrongly named the Antichrist. It is a proud moment to see your child become elected to the Senate of the United States of America. All of this planned from my humble business called the Pentagram Peep Show.
Showtime.
The Cold Season
1
Tiny human bodies floated in their warm, amniotic-like fluid, dreaming away about nothing, while my cloned body grew inside a young Mexican woman named Juana. The only thing separating Juana and me were time, marriage and an angel’s coin toss deciding which border we would be born behind. Would we be Mexican or Mexican American?
As I watched the incubation tanks, I couldn’t help but become excited about my impending mind transference. No more mistakes, bad judgment or second guessing, because I would have lived one life before. Goodbye age spots, incontinence and back pain. My new birth was already paid and signed for. It’s a slow process to ensure enough brain activity is triggered in my old body to be copied, uploaded to a computer then inserted into my newborn clone. When the procedure is complete, the heart in my old body will be stopped.
All I had to do now was wait.
Instead of incubation, I chose a natural birth, because what would God think of these incubation tanks? I chose Juana because she wanted a better life. As opportunities for some continued to expand, the opportunities for a large portion of the population were contracting. Humans were being automated out of the work force, making flesh the only resource for some.
My guardians, Marissa and Penelope, eagerly awaited their new child: me. After a few failed rounds of IVF and out of cash, they turned to this new industry created by Erin Goring, great granddaughter of the great Elias Goring. We were the first pioneers of mind transference. By agreeing to care for me during childhood, they would have a baby and enough money for more IVF or an incubation tank for a biological child.
Originally, I wanted one of my three children to look after me, but they all declined. How soon they forgot all the years I sacrificed at home to cater to their developing lives, which would hopefully surpass my own accomplishments. I never had the opportunity to go to college.
At least my son was honest enough to look me in the eye and say, “Mom, I love you, but I always envisioned looking after you as a nice, frail old lady my children would call Abuelita. Now, you want me to take you into our home as a playmate for my kids and give you the opportunity to throw spaghetti in my face when you don’t want to eat your dinner? No thanks.”
Marissa and Penelope would be my guardians.
Today, I was having my final checkup before heading to the warmth of Mexico for the transference. I was still youngish, but I wanted my mind to be fully intact. It was imperative I saw a doctor because this year I couldn’t shake off a brutal cold. Every year, I received a flu shot and did everything recommended to avoid illness, but every year I had the same cold or flu. I guess some mysteries of life were never meant to be solved.
For what seemed like months, my chest ached, causing my head to ring with every cough. The general feeling of misery was only matched by that of each of my three pregnancies. This old body had long begun its process of decay and I was all too ready to be rid of stretched skin, darkened enlarged areolas and joints that creaked like the floorboards of my first home. Every year I made the promise I would move from the east coast following the great climate shift as the four seasons became too extreme for me. I loathed the cold and the winters were now marked by unpredictable vicious spells. The darkness was relentless, like the peak of a virus replicating without mercy in my body. The mother in me couldn’t bear to leave my children or grandchildren in case they needed me. I stayed in the cold, dark seasons for my family.
The doctor listened to my chest once, twice; took my pulse and temperature. He turned his back to me, took out his phone and sent a text to someone. God, was this cancer? Did he hear something so terrible he couldn’t look me in the eye any longer? I was used to getting that from men at my age. When I was younger that never happened. Cosmetic surgery only kept me looking good until about sixty. After that I just gave up until this new breed of science emerged. Unfortunately, my dear late husband was taken from this earth before the procedure was perfected. Did I mention my late husband worked for the software company that invested in the mind transference technology? This left us a hefty nest egg that suddenly felt pointless. Who would I share it with? I prayed to God, hoping for a miracle, but my husband passed away peacefully post stroke, surrounded by those who loved him best. I would go into this experiment alone. For the first time in my adult life I was alone.
Even if we chose to never meet as born-again children or adults, it would have been a comfort to know he was out there somewhere. Our marriage had grown from instant attraction and sex whenever possible to discussing toilet habits when they were abnormal. Selfishly, I looked forward to sleeping with other people in my younger body without being unfaithful. I never betrayed him with my body, but I’d be lying if I said my thoughts didn’t wander throughout the years when we weren’t getting along or the same positions recycled yet again became routine. My love never wavered, only my physical needs.
“Mrs. Brancroft, you can get dressed now. I need to speak to my colleague. Can we get you tea or coffee?”
Tea or coffee. Really? If I’m dying I don’t want to wait and I don’t want any fucking warm beverages. I want the truth, my new body, and a bottle of champagne because babies and children aren’t allowed to drink, dammit! But I can’t say that. “No thank you. I’ll wait.”
The doctor returned after half an hour with a tablet. Erin Goring was on the screen. “Hello, Mrs. Brancroft. How are you feeling?”
I managed a smile and wanted to scream, “I feel like hell, bitch, with a blow torch on full blast down my throat and chest!” Those words just tumbled around my head and I said something I didn’t mean.
“Oh, just fighting off a cold.” I had to smile because that’s the right thing to do in these situations.
She had a fake look of concern on her face. I didn’t doubt a word from my mouth would go unheard, because she was concentrating on what she would say next.
“Okay, I won’t draw this out. Seems like you have a rather nasty chest infection. At your age we’re worried it could become pneumonia. If we wait we might miss your birth. We would have to start from scratch, or we could go to Mexico today and implant your consciousness into your clone in utero, then induce your surrogate or perform a C-section.”
Wow, not what I was expecting at all. I hated pregnancy, so how would I take to being on the other side of the wall? Would this work? “What are your chances of success?”
Mrs. Goring looked uncomfortable and excited at the same time, with the wild look of an explorer finding El Dorado. “This would be the first in utero transference. Of course, we would reimburse you half the fee and cover any extra expenses, but the opportunity to see if this is possible is priceless. Imagine being able to tell us what it’s like inside. Closer to home, but just as scary as space.”
“Will this really work? What if I lose consciousness forever?”
A flash of worry in her eyes couldn’t hide behind a perfect smile. “I have no answer for that. It’s never been done.”
At least she didn’t bullshit me. I was tired. Tired of feeling sick with this damned cold and the creeping claw of age. My hearing in my left ear never fully recovered from the last infection. She said it herself, at my age.
“You need to be healthy enough for the procedure to be successful, meaning you won’t die.”
I didn’t want to endure another cold season or birthday in this body. “I’ll do it, but only if you give Juana the reimbursed portion of my fee and a resettlement pass if she wants one.”
Abandoning politeness, Mrs. Goring slapped her desk. The smile returned. “I’ll fly down and meet you in Mexico myself. Do you want your family there? What about your guardians?”
My family. My children. I loved them so and they were one of the reasons I was going through this strange process. The thought of the world turning while I could not partake in any of its delights brought on nauseating fear. I wanted to see every moment of their lives; despite the fact they now had their own lives. I’m sure my death would be a frantic disruption to their busy schedules. If it went well then it would be a pleasant surprise. If it didn’t, they still had their own spouses and children for comfort. I’d be sitting on a cloud, explaining myself to Christ.
I didn’t need to go home and pack a bag because my guardians already picked out tiny pink sleepers and booties for me. I’d be their baby for the time being.
My guardians were panicked when I called. They were afraid I had backed out of the procedure or something had happened to Juana, but when they learned they would begin their journey into parenthood, they screamed through the phone, forgetting I was there. It didn’t matter much because my cough was getting worse, making it difficult to speak. Not long now; one way or another it would be gone.
* * *
The hospital was new and smelled sterile, unlike the world outside. Mexico was just recovering from the border wars with the US and the world trying to pull itself from global recession triggered by the trade and trash wars. You heard that right. We lost viable options of places to put humanity’s garbage and it sparked a series of embargos. The Goring Corporation stepped in, for a hefty price, to shoot it all into space. There isn’t a problem coin can’t fix even if it means bankrupting governments that were on their last legs anyway.
My original plan was to check myself into one of the remaining resorts in Mexico selling rooms at coin-bottom prices with the lobster BBQs on the beach and bottomless margaritas. Plans don’t often work out the way we anticipate. I was too sick and needed an empty stomach before the procedure. Here’s to having another lifetime to indulge.
