She Calls Me Seven

I used to wish that she would call me by my name. Just once, to know what it sounded like, what it felt like. Once I realized that I would be the only one she would ever call Seven, it made things bearable, not better, just bearable.
She says that I should consider myself lucky, even blessed to be where I am. She is demanding. But her love for me is genuine. I am and will ever be her only Seven. Tonight as I prepared myself to prepare another for her, I let my mind wander. Wander back to the first time I looked into her eyes and lost myself. The cerulean blue of her iris made the breath hitch in my throat. An intoxicating color I had never encountered in another’s eyes before. The ringlets of her thick dark hair appeared as though they moved independently and just out of step with reality. The moon seemed to hyper illuminate her skin. It gave her flesh the appearance of a master’s work in granite. Smooth and flawless, cool as winter winds, yet holding back the intensity of hell's flames, silently beckoning me to reach out to her. I stared in awe at perfection. I hung my head in shame knowing my imperfection in her presence somehow lessened her. She placed her fingertips under my chin and gently raised my head. The connection to her touch only appeared as a cool granite sculpture. The fire that traveled through her flesh and into my being electrified my mind and soul. At that moment she allowed me to know her and her plans for me.
Snapping back to the task at hand, I traced the blue veins under the skin of the man lying at my feet with the blade I held in quivering fingers. Men are always the easiest to bait. There is no caution in them, only the instinct to chase the prey. A smile, a kind word, a plea, the difficulty comes in the casting the right lure. I am relieved tonight she prefers a male. As I traced the faint lines in his skin, I smile at the terror in his eyes. He still lived but not for long. She would be here soon and that would be all of him. I didn’t pity him, I could not. I envied him. He would know the touch of her lips I have never felt. He would know the warmth of her breath I longed to feel against my skin. He would experience the ecstasy lost to me as she used him. His sole purpose in life had been shifted down into this, fulfilling her. A thing I would trade all I have ever know to do, just once. Fulfill her need.
She gave me that chance, once. Before I knew the need, the hunger to please her. I could not. It terrified me. She had come upon me during my work. Riding the razor. That was who I was then, and that was what my calling required of me, to Ride the Razor.
Ride the razor, along the lines I could see in the trembling terrified skin before me. Let the blade drink deep as I watched the blood well from the lines it left. I was looking for a thing. What, I can not remember. I just remember the ache of a fruitless search, again. A moment it had been sated. That briefest of moments just before the blade draws the red line as the skin responds to its pressure. In that smallest window of time, the space between handclaps, this was my place. This was my zen. I was on the edge of hope and satisfaction with what the cuts would bring. Nothing. I raised my hand to bring the blade down and stab at the mocking face that had deprived me. Her hand grabbed my wrist and stopped me. I was not startled, I was not afraid; I was... It was then, that moment the first time I lost myself in her eyes. I was where I belonged.
I learned that night my trophy had been the one she called Six. By a strange twist, I was to become her sustenance at his hands. He had underestimated me, not aware of who or what I really was. I would replace Six and continue in service to my master or I would join Six. The choice was mine and of my will. I chose my new master.
A slightly crooked grin creased the alabaster of her face. She was pleased and intrigued by her newest lackey. I was her first attendant of my gender and I intrigued her for the new and exciting possibilities of my servitude. It was clear from that moment on, our interactions were to be of a most disciplined and divided nature. In the most basic of terms, I procured anything she desired. I disposed of anything she no longer desired. And for this, I was kept. I have learned to accept my lot, yet in my darkest longing I wanted, needed to be the one that fulfills her. When I glimpse her visage, for I can not directly gaze upon her, I am already much too close to madness, a heat swells within me. I know then, I would hold nothing from her, everything is forfeit to her.
That was thirty years ago. And for all time I have longed for her embrace, her kiss, her lips, her touch of desire. Never to release. Never to be sated. I am seeing flaws in my visage. A small wrinkle here, a few grey hairs along my temple. It is these flaws that are the harbingers of my release, my reward. I don't know how I have maintained my youthful appearance all these decades. Perhaps it is her doing. Perhaps it is not, just a result of being in her thrall. Regardless, the few flaws, I see now, tell me my time is not unlimited as hers.
The night I chose her as my master. She took my kill, my trophy, from me. The one she called Six, looked at her with shame in his eyes and began to cry. She hushed him with a smile and a caress along his forehead and cheeks. She smiled and gazed at him with eyes that understood love, but did not love. His frown relaxed, the tears slowed, she allowed him a moment of peace for a lifetime of service. She took him and filled herself.
I hear her approach and I step aside, allowing the night’s offering to look upon her for the first and only time and he calms. I watch with intense jealousy as his gaze changes from abject horror to absolute willingness. He tilts his head and offers himself to her. She falls upon him and takes her desire; it gives him unimaginable ecstasy and finally death. I feel my heartbreak because I will never know that. If only ever once, I would. She rises and holds her hand out to me and she speaks.
“Leave him, Seven. What he has experienced tonight, does not come with dignity."
A shiver travels along my spine in a certain way, each time she calls me Seven. I long to hear her beckon me, and I am thankful for my new name.
M.Crace
1-2-2020

Carnivean Shades's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show

Foreword: Even though the formal attempts to produce and solicit stories were halted over two decades ago; the desire to create and tell never diminished.  Sometime around Halloween of 2006, I reread the classic "Something Wicked This Ways Comes".  I remember walking out the front door of my house one unseasonally cold and blustery October day.  The wind was pushing fallen leaves past when one landed at my feet.  It was an amazing color of burnt orange.  I remember thinking its wind-driven path resembled a discarded program advertising a mysterious event.  I could not get that image out of my head.  That night after everyone had fallen asleep, I wrote the following.  My attempt to pay homage to one of my all-time favorite books and its author.  Sorry Mr. Bradbury, but it is a work of love.  Except for the corrections to misspelled words;  this is the fable, story, poem, tale as I finished it that night. 


Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show

A brilliant carpet of orange, red and gold falls from autumn's sentinels; painting

the landscape, covering everything in a rich blanket of season.

Drawing a perfect map, a pathway to our town, leading them here, showing them the way to

a place where life lives to be sifted.  Leading them home again.

The harbingers come, wolf-jawed children dusting the skies with their screams, announcing

Carnivean Shade's Festival, with guttural mind slicing cries.

Voices chilling the blood and cutting the air until it bleeds away peace.

In their clawed footsteps follow hellish heralds trumpeting the Festival's approach; black peels 

of music, from hand-carved bone flutes, sing to all the approaching doom.

Hush now, quiet everyone, something from your nightmares this way comes,

hide your eyes, swallow your tears, isn't this what you wanted to hear?

The tents, the freaks, the sideshows, in October the stumbling clowns.

Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show has come to town.

Murderous minstrels painted in fresh blood red colors dance to the devil's tune, 

tossing goodies and prizes to girls and boys terrified of the dark treats.

Wagons of exotic animals follow close behind, things you have not seen in the darkest

of dreams: grotesque mammals, spectral raptors, blood-drinking rakes, fur-bearing

Amphibians with the eyes of men.  Wraiths from another time and space, another horrible place where terror paints the landscape.

Jack-o'-lanterns float along.  Hand-carved mouths snap at trembling fingers reaching to close to feel a nightmare.  Even the dragons have come to this October country dragging banners in their wake with obscene incantations and unholy sigils.  Their dark leathery wings beat a cold wind pushing them along an invisible path leading to us.

Hush now, quiet everyone, something terrifying this way comes,
Swallow your tears, hide in the trees, isn't this what you wanted to see?
The tents, the freaks, the sideshows, in October the cadaverous clowns.
Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show has come to town.

Ghostly minions, with tormented faces, pale with pain--pull the wagons along.  Weirding wagons labeled FEAR, HORROR, DEATH with markings and runes that steal the sanity of anyone who reads them this day.  Diseased dogs run alongside, snapping at bloody feet to herd the wagon pullers on their way.  Wagon wheels crush the skulls that appear as a roadway before them.

Leviathan, Behemoth and Shai'tan bellow their terrible calls.  The screams of a thousand tortured mind return the calls.  Pleading for the death that will release them to hell.  The living soul that hears the horrifying cries of that unholy trinity becomes insane.  Chirping songbirds drop out of trees dead where the shadows of the monsters fall.

Don't scream, quiet everyone.  This way your destiny comes.
Swallow your fears, fall to your knees, isn't this what you needed to see.
The horrors, the pains, the blood-soaked candy canes that make you frown.
Carnivean Shades Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show has come to town.

Then he comes too,  a dark coat and hat, holding a vertebrate cane.
Strolling along in boots made from exotic mangy hide.
Skeletal hands gloved in pale hairless leather.
Behind smoke and mirrored glasses cat eyes watch and glow, his forked tongue licks along the bright ivory fangs as he smiles in triumph.

A barbed-wire leash holds back his pet,  the hound waits to feed on the watchers at the side of the road flexing its blood-soaked claws and hissing anger.  Muscles rippling beneath scales that change in color with every stride.
He tips his hat to reveal his coif of scabrous roiling leeches. Wickedly, he smiles to greet the curious bystanders and begins.
"Come one, come all.  We have what your heart most longs for.  The stuff of wishes and dreams.  Most wondrous if our price you can pay".  He cries a bleak hypnotic pitch to bring the marks along.

Don't cry.  Listen everyone. To your life death has come.
Swallow your hope, cover your ears, run for your life, die with your fears.
The nightmares, the terrors, all this you wish to be a dream.
Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show will make you scream.

In the blink of an eye, the tents are there games, rides, and shows looking for marks.
Fallen Angels, take the tickets at the gateway and lead the carnival goers into the endless dark.
The scales are set to guess the weight of souls, throw a baseball and knock over the stack of shrunken heads.

Win a prize of goodies and gore, terrible teddy bears and oh so much more.  Again he is there, standing by the ticket booth for the one and only ride the festival has to offer.
He snaps bony fingers to gather everyone's attention.
"This is what you have sought, for what you have paid."
He draws back a dimensional curtain revealing the abyss and screams,
"Time to ride the blade! Time to ride the blade!"

Run away, don't look behind, insanity is all that you shall find.
Swallow your fear, cover your heart, your world will soon come apart, 
from pain and terror and suffering and blood and torment and oh so much more
Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show has opened its doors. 

1-1-2020  (Originally written October 2006)