An hour later, after General Jorge Javier Paragone’s cries of disbelief and horror, just before he lost his lips and tongue to his zombie hosts, the Zombie King watched his troops dismember the last of the men responsible for thousands of kidnappings and killings of Argentine citizens. He saw Mama Luigi stick her large fist inside the general’s torso and, after a few twists, it reappeared with the old man’s heart. Zach laughed because he just remembered that it was Valentine’s Day.
As he chuckled, his vision began to fade to…white? At first he thought he was passing out, an event that had become an all too common occurrence since he met Angelina, but he wasn’t fading to darkness, everything was becoming light. His army of zombie’s were gone, Mama Luigi and the rest of them. In fact, everything was gone, even he was not here from what he could see. He looked down at himself and saw nothing, not even his nose.
His first thought was to Angelina, wondering what sort of super-serum she had injected him with and what he had transformed into this time. Am I a bug? A frog? Am I in a jar?
He sensed the presence of another person, two people: one was close and the other was very far away. He could tell the nearest was a woman. The color blue came to his mind and the curve of her hip but he still could not visualize her. The antidote in his veins made him lust for her. He needed to say something, start some kind of dialog…make time with her.
It was she who initiated the conversation, however short it was.
“Who are you?” She asked.
He replied, “Zach. Where am I?”
Then she was gone. He felt her absence but he could tell she was not totally gone, her essence lingered. His thoughts turned to the other. He sensed its anger, its shape, its physical form. Something told him the other was not entirely in the same dimension, that it was trying to make its way into this one.
He was coming after his girls, he thought. Did I just say, “girls?” he asked himself. He queried his mind, not sure of who or even what he was. Nina’s face appeared before him, just as she was being torn to bits by his zombie gang. His mind raced to the woman in blue he just encountered, to Drusilla, the vampire and to Angelina. When he thought about the doctor, his heart ached and suddenly the other was aware of him.
A wave of malicious thoughts hit him like a giant wave breaking upon the sand, rolling his non-corporeal form over and over on an unseen surface. When the water receded, he felt the other’s eyes upon him, watching him; unseen nostrils breathed him into lungs that sifted the air for signs of something….signs of fear.
But he was not afraid. Not after what he’d been through the last couple of months: gunshots to the chest, watching Mama Luigi pounding an actual heart down her huge gullet. No he was not afraid. The hidden lungs exhaled and that’s when he felt what it had been searching for: fear. Maybe, he thought, he was king here, too.
Then it was gone and he was all alone except for the essence of the blue-colored female with the nice hips, at least he imagined her as having nice hips and that was not enough to sustain him. He blinked and found himself on the floor of a warehouse belonging to Big Eddy, the Tire King of Philadelphia. Mama Luigi had his elbow in her mouth, trying to gnaw her way to an easy meal.
He cast her off and she shrank back to the cold concrete floor with a shrug, expressionless, her legs spread before her like a rag doll.
Getting up, he strode to a tiny door and made his way into the night, walking the streets of his hometown, wondering what had just happened. This much he knew for sure, Angelina was not involved but the other presence knew her. His thoughts turned to Drusilla and the female presence. The antidote burned in his veins and he felt himself drawn to them. His loins ached for the female presence’s hips, though he had no image to associate to her. He felt dirty, like he was a pervert, attracted to what he guessed must be some smurf-like creature from another dimension.
He needed a better place to think so he made his way back to his makeshift throne in the janitor’s closet on the third floor of the science building at the University of Pennsylvania. With a large bottle of 5 Hour Energy in one hand and a king-size Hershey Bar with Almonds, in the other, he stared into the darkness while sitting on the recliner.
In the black, he sensed of force spewing from the ground at a place a few miles north of his current location. He hadn’t noticed it before. He saw a park with lots of benches and even more oak trees. The trees were large, their trunks were thick and each seemed to have eyes peering back at him in the darkness, watching him watching them. The perimeter of the green space was shaped like a pentagram. Moderate-sized apartment buildings surrounded it.
As he stared at the scene, trying to make sense of it, a wind blew, a wind that seemed to spring forth from the giant oak guardians of the park, and it blew a thick white mist at him until he could see nothing.
Frustrated, he sat back in the chair and racked his brain for a course of action, he needed to keep moving. He was not tired and dawn was fast approaching. Maybe, he thought, in the light of day something would come to him.
A flicker of light caught his eye and he turned his gaze upon it. He saw Drusilla rolling dough in what looked like a pizzeria. She had a strange glow on her face. He blinked his eyes and the flicker vanished.
Back on Chestnut St. it was still dark outside. The air was chill as he stood and decided upon a direction. Turning his head towards the skyline across the river, he briefly considered heading that way but felt compelled to head north. He sensed something lie waiting for him there, a challenge, a battle against an opponent more worthy than an octogenarian general already waiting to die. Lust burned in his pelvis; a prize waited for him there and he needed to claim it. As the first rays of the sun petitioned the earth’s horizon to breach the night, the muscular outline of Zach, the Zombie King could be seen striding across the hillsides north of the city. He cut a path straight through to his objective, right through the Zoological Gardens, causing a near stampede of animals: lions, tigers and bears, to rush their enclosures, to break through and follow him, to be wild and free, once more, like him.
Ceci looked up at the twelve angry faces hovering right above her. She was confused. What just happened, she thought. One moment she was being hounded by a tall witch from the shades of green, then the witch was gone and she found herself in a white room, bodiless but not alone. Recalling the two presences there, she trembled when she remembered the brown man in the loincloth. Then she remembered the young man who said his name was Zach, and a warm feeling came over her, like the sensation she got when she danced with The Councilman.
The heads had her pinned to the ground. She smelled blood dripping from the imaginations of some of the women and terror escaping like steam from the minds of the others. Yet she was not afraid. Eighteen years of marriage to a man who promised to beat the hell out of her every night and he was a man who kept his promises, at least half of the time, had innured her to fear of physical harm. Taking a deep breath she met the glare of each and every one of them.
She could tell from the eyes that four of the women were from shades of grey: two blacks, onyx and Nadja’s Black Sea pupils; two ghostly white mugs held light and dark greys; the emerald greens of her initial attacker and a pair of yellow/green eyes, three shades of brown and three of different shades of blue. As she met the gaze of the blue eyes she could tell there was no malice in them and that she could count on their support.
Big Green Eyes yelled, “Okay, ladies, let’s get her into the house!”
“Which house, Eileen?” asked one of the blue-eyed wickens.
“Sister Basil’s, of course, you blue-eyed fairie!” Big Green Eyes retorted impatiently.
Ten sets of hands grabbed her arms and legs, four hands dove into her hair and all pulled her off the ground and carried her towards the end of the park where Sister Basil Phillipa’s dark house lay. Going through the door, her head slammed a post on the way in and she was sure it was not done accidently.
The twelve angry witches pounded through the house and into the bedroom where Sister Basil was sitting upright with her legs still under the covers. They tossed her on the floor at the foot of the huge baseboard with such a force, Ceci rolled over and into the wall before her body lost momentum. She lay there, dazed and confused, not even caring to try and figure out what was happening.
The flustered coven were chatteing all at once, looking towards their Elder for affirmation of what crime they believed had been committed and what the punishment should be. Suddenly, the apparition of the old nun appeared above the bed and commanded silence.
“You think your sister was trying to entrap you with a spell, don’t you?” The translucent figure asked. “She’s been among us for less than a season and you’re all so jealous you want to tear her to pieces for a crime she didn’t commit. But listen to me, there is no malice in her heart. What she has done was unintended but also, incredible. Without intending, she has harnessed the power of the vortex from which we all get our power, our strength, our connection to God and the universe! You think she would use it to harm you for you would do the same to her, wouldn’t you?”
The apparition stopped talking and took a moment to meet each woman’s stare. Each lady shrank before her glare and was humbled, all except Eileen.
“We should kill her now!” Eileen shouted, angrily.
The apparition vanished and the body of the Sister Basil became animated, her eyes opened wide as she looked to Eileen, now visibly perturbed.
She spoke in a hoarse but audible whisper, “Foolish witch! Do you wish to bring down harm upon aaaaalllllll of us? Do you not know that she is connected to it? If you try to harm her you could die and imperil the rest of our lives! We…are on the verge of a great event, something is going to happen, very, very soon and we must begin to prepare henceforth. Go into the kitchen, my impetulant child and put some water on for tea. We are going to cast spells and fortify ourselves against that which is coming. He sees us now and he is heading in our direction.”
Confusion set in on the coven and they all began conversing at once at what their sister’s words meant. The blue witches made their way to their fallen comrade and comforted her with healing words and their soft touch. Ceci assured them she was alright but just as baffled as the rest of them as to what was happening and who this man was that was heading their way.
The old crone made her way out of the bed as one of the grey witches assisted her with her robes. Then she made her way to the kitchen, ignoring a myriad of questions as to who was coming and the meaning of ‘prepare’.
At the table, she commanded everyone to sit and join hands. All except Ceci, who was instructed to sit on the edge of the bed and wait.
Ceci watched, ambivalent, as the thirteen females chanted through the night, taking a few breaks to sip tea and regain their strength. As they chanted together, sometimes the light seemed to flicker and dim, as if their words were causing the electricity running through the light bulbs to bend to their collective wills.
A rooster crowed from the back yard as dawn arrived. Eileen rose from her chair and disappeared out the back door, only to reappear moments later, clasping the feet of a red-throated rooster.
“Someone get a cauldron on the table,” she commanded. One of the brown witches complied and set a large black cast iron kettle at the center of the table. The green-eyed wicken opened a drawer and a grabbed a large butcher’s knife. In one step she was at the table’s edge. She slammed the cock down upon the table, momentarily knocking the wind out of him. Before the bird could recover, the huge blade swung down and cut off its head. Blood spurted everywhere as Eileen tossed the headless body and the head into the pot.
She rejoined the group and they all began chanting again, a strange and powerful incantation. When they stopped, the front door opened and the figure of a man could be seen silhouetted by the rising sun. He was tall, with long dark black hair, dressed only in blue jeans and shirtless. His muscles rippled in anticipation of battle.
“He came in…” remarked a dark-eyed witch, “in…in spite of our spells…all our spells. Even with Sister Basil…”
Frantically, the entire group of women cast individual spells of their own, spells they had used to survive the ages in a world of creatures unknown to the The Peoples. The old woman pushed back her chair and walked, hunch-backed, chanting ancient incantations in Latin, her staff and gnarled left hand stretched out towards the intruder.
Zach walked down the hallway towards the old woman who tried to block his way but he brushed her aside with a simple swipe of his arm, sending her into the wall. He looked to the prattling gaggle of women in the kitchen and was disappointed. These were not the warriors he had expected. Then he turned his head to the right and saw Ceci staring back at him in awe. The Prize, he thought, she was definitely the Prize.
As he stood there, legs spread, prepared to meet any enemy, an oak staff, nearly two inches in thickness, slammed into his groin from an assailant behind him. It was the old woman.
As the Zombie King dropped to the ground, an exuberant Sister Basil exclaimed, “He’s immune to our spells but not our sticks. Get him, girls!
Twelve bodies lunged once, staffs in hand, swinging up and down upon the fallen young man. He managed to grab a rod from one of them and fought his way to the kitchen table where he grabbed the cauldron. He swung the heavy metal vessel and took out three witches in one shot. Five more fell facing his onslaught, barely breathing, before the others beat a hasty retreat out the back door. Blood from the rooster and the wickens covered the walls.
Zach stood in the hallway between the kitchen and the bedroom. He turned to the old woman behind him but she was cowering in fear, leaning up against the wall for support. Then he cast his sights on the bedroom. The Prize was waiting for him, her mouth slack-jawed.
Ceci saw Zach looking at her with a hunger in his eyes that made her swoon. He was powerful but not like The Councilman. He was powerful in ways that were useful to her in this world full of witches and men. He was physically strong, immune to magic and she was sure he was the man she had met in the white light. Lust oozed over her body like a thick brown gravy over a mountain of mashed potatoes. The feeling dripped down from her chin, down her torso to her hips as he made his way towards her and ripped off her clothes, ravishing her with his thick, strong hands.
She feigned submissiveness and clandestinely cast a spell on the door to hold it shut should anyone try to come through.
He was covered in blood but she hardly noticed, in fact, the blood increased her attraction. The lust poured down past her open thighs as he slid between them, finding its way to her toes. She now felt like she was covered in a hot creamy liquid as she quickly lost her mind to the throes of his passion. Her consciousness drifted back and forth between cosmic planes, from the present, to the intuitive, to the plane of the white light. She reached behind her to grab handfuls of sheets to keep herself from sliding away after each of his powerful thrusts.
Zach’s hunger for the Prize could not be quenched in a few simple thrusts. He was enjoying this too much: the journey through the zoo, the battle with the witches and now, the conquest of the Prize. She was petite, not like Angelina and Drusilla. She seemed frail, as if he might crush her with each hungry lunge into that hot sweet spot between her legs. But she didn’t, instead, to his surprise and delight, she absorbed the blow and seemingly tried to get more from him, like he wasn’t enough, clasping her legs in vain around his muscular thighs.
Lost in the heat of passion, he, also, could feel himself being swept into the place of the white light. He didn’t notice the door bursting free of Ceci’s spell and the old crone coming up behind him. He was almost completely in the other world when she struck the back of his head with her staff. The shaft splintered and broke in two, one end ricocheting off the bedpost and striking Sister Basil in the chest so deep it protruded from her back.
The blow sent him into the white light and he orgasmed. He was there, with her. He was inside her and they were occupying the same space. Next to him, lay the spirit of the elder witch, severely wounded and gasping for air. He could see into her mind, she was experiencing a revelation, an epiphany. His body spasmed at the thought of vanquishing one more enemy while he claimed his Prize. Then he collapsed and pulled them all back into the present, into the bedroom and onto the bed.
The wounded body of the nun lay beside them and Eileen, Big Green Eyes, stood above them, poised to swing the large axe held at the end of her outstretched arms.
“Wait!” the dying old lady commanded. “I have seen the light and we are meant to protect the baby.”
Perplexed, Eileen met her gaze but did not drop her weapon.
“He has given her a child,” she explained, “and we are going to have to protect it. He is part of a plan, part of God’s plan, and we must do his bidding.” Breathing in one last breath, she said, as she exhaled, “this will be our greatest gift.”
Eileen lowered the hatchet and stared at the horrifying sight on the bed before her. Zach finally lost consciousness as the blow from the old woman’s staff finally caught up to him in the present plane. Ceci lay beneath him, lost in an incredible feeling of euphoria, buried in a pile of sweaty man flesh, thick sheets and soft blankets.
I like this bed, she said to herself. Then she shut her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
