Writing: The Devil's Dance

The pole dancer looked over the burning city in triumph. She cared not that her skin was dyed blue from the cold wind howling across the top of the tower block, nor that her forearms were streaked with blood from her split palms. Her enemies were burning and that was all that mattered.

Besides, the devil himself was coming to collect her soul shortly – what point would there be to start whining about a little chill now?

For the sheer hell of it, she climbed back on her pole and sun round once more, thankful that she’d invested in a rotating one rather than settling for static. Some of the other girls at the club might consider it cheating but she loved the speed she could accomplish easily on a rotating one, it made her feel like she could spin fast enough to throw the spirits that haunted her from her mind.

She laughed again to feel her hair whipping against her face, if she went fast enough she could blur out the arcane symbols written in blood below. Her blood.

Down below in the city, the flames roared.

-----

She and her elder brother had arrived here several years ago, fleeing something she did not understand. Her only knowledge of it her brothers urgency in the middle of the night, begging her to come with him, fleeing their parent’s house. His obvious terror.

She had loved her brother more than anyone back then. She surprised herself with how long that love had lasted.

Even now, she had no truth, no certain why he had left home, nor why he had taken her with him. Although now, after these years spent with him, she could hazard a guess.

It wasn’t long before her brother got himself into all kinds of trouble. Money trouble, drug trouble, women trouble. They had arrived here with little money, knowing no one, with scant resources to be able to protect themselves from the consequences of her brother’s actions.

It wasn’t long before she knew it was up to her to keep them safe, to provide for them. She had always been on the acrobatics team at school – pole dancing was simply another form of that she told herself. To her surprise, she actually enjoyed it – not the men leering at her but she found out that once she was on stage with the music pounding through her bones the rest of the world seemed to drain away, leaving nothing behind but her body and the music.

Her skills became so good she was recruited by one of the top clubs, and actually seemed to be able to keep one step ahead of the debt collectors her brother seemed to accrue like used condoms.

But, like all things so precariously balanced, you cannot hold such poise forever.

Her brother angered one mobster too many. She came home one day to find pieces of him scattered around the kitchen floor. She had slipped on his spilled and discarded guts, right into the arms of the awaiting debt collectors.

They had taken her to their boss, who calmly informed her that her brother’s debt now passed to her. Her brother’s blood drying and sticking to her skin through her socks, they had not given her time to change or out on shoes, she explained that she already was paying off his debt and that, given her current rate of pay, it should be cleared in a few months.

She believed it was shock that allowed her to speak to calmly to him. Also shock that prevented her from seeing – until he told that she was to work in one of his clubs and his alone, only that would satisfy the debt – that he was one of her regulars at the club.

From one of the top clubs in town she fell to a skeevy little bar right at the outskirts of it. The countertops were sticky and foul, the sound system of static and the poles stiff and unloved. The bouncers had little pride in keeping the girls safe and she learnt to be even quicker at dodging out of the way of the clienteles greasy, grasping fingers. She knew that she’d never earn enough to escape from here.

She also knew that was the point.

She would have considered killing herself, had she not wanted to grant the boss the opportunity to defile her corpse.

She had existed in a state of resigned despair, right up until a dreary Wednesday afternoon when the devil himself had come up to her and asked for a dance.

Or, to be more correct, he had asked for seven.

Back when she was first learning, back when she took a sort of pride in her dancing, maybe even when she still had a sense of humour she had come up with a long and complex dance routine entitled ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’. Few could afford to pay for it – the routine itself was too long, so she mainly danced it for herself, for her own amusement and perhaps salvation. It was this dance that had gotten her noticed by the top clubs.

She did not want to dance it anymore. The devil, sensing her hesitation, said

‘I can pay for it.’

And held out enough money to pay off a third of her debt.

Her mind made up she took him to one of the private rooms. He did nothing but sit there quietly, with a small smile, watching her dance. When she was done, he laid the money on the table and left equally quietly.

For soliciting a private dance, she received ten lashes of the whip from the boss. His face incoherent with rage. She was laid up in bed for two weeks from the pain, the pus seeping from her wounds to the sheets, staining them.

When she returned to work, the devil was there.

He asked for a dance. She accepted.

When the dance was over, instead of leaving immediately, as before, he asked her,

‘What do you want, more than anything?’

She felt the pull of breath in her lungs, choking on the fetid air of the club. The feel of blood mingling with her sweat as the exertion had reopened her whip wounds. She felt herself stand, in this dingy little room, in cheap and tawdry underwear in front of a man she didn’t know and said:

‘To see this city burn.’

She received 20 lashes this time.

After a week in bed, the postman delivered a parcel. A book, handwritten, full of strange symbols and dance routines. She looked at the illustrations.

She looked out the window of her tiny bedsit apartment. At a city that had never once loved or cared for her.

She stared again at the illustrations.

---

The gravel was almost comforting against her cheek. Why was there gravel against her cheek? Ah, she must have slipped and fallen from the pole; her limbs did feel suspiciously light.

She blinked, her vision blurred, there was a figure before her. The devil. So he had come for her soul after all. Very well, it was a fair bargain and he had held up his end admirably – even now, when everything was fading round the edges, she could still hear the city being devoured, as it had devoured her.

She smiled up at him, her devil, her saviour. His dark figure reaching down towards her the last thing she saw before her eyes eased shut.

Writing: Chopper

The tattered lace that hung down of the edge of the bed had faded to a hue of milky weak tea. The edges had started to come unravelled so what was once a delicate snowflake pattern had warped into a toddler's scribblings.

Lottie knew that entire toddler's scrawl in great detail. This is due to the fact that she had been hiding under the bed for at least an hour, desperately trying to blend into the dust and shadows, whilst around her she could hear the sounds of her home being chewed to pieces by the sharp fang of the axe.

She clamped her hands over her ears as once again the thing howled – an eerie unearthly noise.

It no longer sounded anything like her twin brother.

They had been playing out in the back garden. The warden had come by to see them with fresh food and some cast off clothes. They had been orphaned for a year now, their caravan having been set upon by bandits, their parents killed. The village they had fled to, arriving battered, bloodied and traumatised, had taken them in. They weren’t compassionate enough to take them into their own homes, but they were kind enough to give them use of an unoccupied cottage on the edge of town – and often sent them food and clothing. The cottage was run down but with no major damage and if this was not the life they had hoped for, then they comforted themselves with the fact that they were at least still alive, still had each other and their parents would be proud of them for carrying on.

The cottage was a little run down, a little shabby but it had everything they needed – a bedroom, a working kitchen, a roof. It even had an overgrown garden out the back with a tool shed. They had thought it was a little peculiar that the cottage was completed furnished but the villagers had told them that this was because the old lady who lived there before had died without any relatives to claim her belongings. So the villagers had left it as it was.

Lottie thought this to be rather wasteful – after all, there was a plethora of interesting books and herbs and ornaments scattered about the cottage, not to mention the basic linen and cooking equipment that she was sure someone would have found use for. But their loss was her gain; she had no issue about using a dead woman’s things.

The most peculiar thing was the tool shed. Unlike everything else in the cottage, this was sealed shut with shiny new chains and a padlock. They had asked their warden about this and he had shrugged, embarrassed. He had explained that the woman who lived here before knew she was going to die, so she requested from the elders that the tool shed was sealed shut after her death in exchange for the property and anything within it. Upon her death, the elders had complied with her wishes.

Lottie had looked back at the house.

“But nothing’s been taken.” She said

The man shrugged again. “She was a very influential woman. She needn’t have offered anything to get us to do it.” He grinned broadly. “But a stroke of luck for you two huh? Just don’t go near that shed, I’m sure she had her reasons for sealing it.”

“You mean you don’t even know why she wanted you to seal it?!” Her brother had interrupted a look of disbelief on his face.

“No. We all trusted her; she was a wise woman and knew what she was talking about. Plus, I don’t think any of us really wanted to know. I say again, do not go near that shed”

From that day forth Lottie’s brother had become obsessed with the shed.

It had started off innocently enough. A young boys desire to go somewhere he was forbidden. For a few days he kept fiddling with the lock – trying different things to try and smash it open. Lottie saw the exact moment it started to change into something darker. She was organising the kitchen when she happened to glance out through the window to her brother, leaning close to the door, trying to get a better look at the lock. She saw him tilt his head, as if he’d heard something and then something, some shadow of an expression, slide across his face.

It made her blood run cold.

From that day forth it was like the boy her brother was no longer existed. He wouldn’t eat, would barely sleep and even then she would wake in the night to see him standing by the window, bloodied fingers pressed against the glass from where he’d tried to claw his way in. He snarled at her whenever she asked a question, shoved her away whenever she tried to beg him to eat. And always, always he would have his head tilted towards the direction of the shed, as if listening to music only he could hear.

Lottie didn’t know what frightened her the most; that he would die from starvation and exhaustion or that he would manage to open the shed.

She daren’t speak to any of the villagers about it, she didn’t know what they would do to them if they found out her brother was trying to open the shed. The villager’s mercy would only stretch so far. Would they be driven out? There’s no way they’d survive in the surrounding wilderness for long. Would her brother even go? No, she knew there was no way he would ever now leave that shed; he would struggle against anyone trying to drag him away, perhaps be hurt or killed before he surrendered.

So Lottie, trapped in the cottage with an increasingly deranged brother, with no one to turn to, did the only thing she could think of. She started turning the cottage upside down in an attempt to find something, some diary or will, which would tell her what the thing in the shed was and how she might destroy it. She knew it was becoming a desperate race between her and her brother, perhaps she now looked just as crazy, but it was the only thing she could think of to save him. She tore through books and letter containing incantations, spells and enchantments, only now coming to the realisation that the women who lived her previously was a witch (how she cursed herself for her stupidity!).

She was just going through the pantry – there were various potions on the upper shelves. Probably well past their use by date but, having found no incantation or clue in the books, she was hoping one said ‘to use against thing in shed if your brother is dumb enough to try and open it.’ When there was a metallic clink against the pavestone floor. She looked down, she had knocked a key onto the floor.

The key, she knew beyond a doubt, that fitted the lock on the shed.

She reached down from the step stool when a sound from the doorway made her look up. Her brother was standing there, watching her.

She licked her suddenly dry lips, “brother…”

Too quick to follow he darted in and snatched the key, running out and slamming the pantry door shut behind him. It cost Lottie precious seconds to drag it back open and when she did she saw he was already by the shed. She ran to the garden door, knowing already that she was too late, but couldn’t stop herself from screaming, “brother no!”

He unlocked the padlock. There was an especially anticlimactic thump as the chains fell off and nothing happened. With a blissful smile her brother walked into the shed and came out cradling a shiny axe. He closed his eyes, gave a peaceful sigh and then the bones from his arms exploded through his skin.

Lottie’s knees gave way as she watched her twin brother, with much accompaniment of the sounds of cracking bones and sliding flesh, as he warped into a deformed shape. His limbs lengthened, his nails grew into wicked claws and his face – here was the worst for it bore no resemblance to her brother anymore, it looked more like the face of monstrous beast!

Finally the noises stopped – and then the thing that had been her brother looked at her.

Sobbing, Lottie fled into the house, barring the door behind her, knowing that if he caught her, she would be dead, torn to pieces with those claws. She ran upstairs, trying desperately to think, to hide. She heard him behind her, beneath her, destroying the house, chanting in a hideous voice

‘I was the wolf in the forest, I was the eater of little girl red, and I was the teeth in the dark of the night,

Now I am the shadow in men’s hearts, I am their glory in the strong hunting the weak,

 I am the wolf in the axeman’s blade!’

Hands clapped over her ears she caught sight of the bed. Ridiculousy draped with throws and old lace, the base of it was completely hidden. With no other idea, as quietly as possible, she crawled underneath. Trying to blend in with the dust in the space underneath.

And she waited, listening to the thing that had been her brother destroy their home.

After a nightmare age she heard him start to come up the stairs, banging his axe against the wall to mark each deliberate step.

“Lottie, Looooottie.” He called. Then he laughed. “Remember this game?”

"Here comes a Candle to light you to Bed
Here comes a Chopper to Chop off your Head
Chip chop chip chop - the Last Man's Dead."

Faster and faster, closer and closer until on ‘dead’ he threw the bed off of her. And Lottie, knowing now that she had no choice, had braced herself for this and had pulled from her petticoat the only thing she had found that might stop her brother.

So when the monster was framed before her, his hands occupied by throwing the bed. She shot him six times in the chest with her pistol.

Her father had trained her to be a crack shot. In the circus her family had owned, the twins had been the dare-devil knives and gun act.

The beast before her crumpled to the ground, the axe slipping from its lifeless grasp.

And finally, finally she heard what her brother had, all these weeks. The axe singing. It was beautiful and eerie and sung of blood spilt in vengeance, of righting wrongs and of protecting the future with strength.

She could see how it had appealed so much to her brother.

She stood, as if in a trance and walked over to it. It shone in the setting sun, smugly she thought, as if it knew it had already won. She calmly reloaded her pistol and emptied it out into the axe.

Oddly, for metal, it bled. Thick viscous blood that oozed out over the floor.

It also screamed.

When it was done, she went back to the pantry and soaked the whole building in paraffin. The shed too.

She watched the flames for a while.

Then she turned and walked down to the path to the village.

Writing: Rough Draft

My writing has gotten extremely rusty so I do apologise. I've had the following vignette in my head for some time - it was over staying its welcome so I put it down on paper before it walked out in a huff. I haven't done it justice at all but I hope to revamp it in the future. Enjoy

The unicorn-mermaid automaton shifted his grip on the Kalashnikov held in his hooves.

“I mean they tell you your hooves can lock into them” he grumbled to himself as his slithered along the interior corridor, nodding acknowledgment to the other sentries floating in the perimeter outside the dome. “, but they never fit right and who do you think they blame when it misfires huh? Never the manufacturers, oh no.”

The guard paused and looked into the first holding cell. He nodded to himself. All the virgins were there and accounted for.

A brief flash of light caught his eye from outside. The outer perimeter sentries were shooting at a merman. They had a colony nearby and in the beginning had often swum by to spy on the girls inside. The automatons had generally ignored them or shooed them off – seeing them as irritating voyeurs but as not a particular threat. Until one of the virgins had fallen for one. They never did figure out how he managed to defile her – and they could hardly ask her. The unicorn automatons had been chosen particularly for their ability to detect the virtue, or lack of, in women. As soon as a virgin became defiled in their presence they immediately switched to ‘purification mode.’

The ground meat had penetrated so far into the carpet it was impossible to clean – they had had to dispose of it in the end.

Since then they had kept close eye on the mermen and driven them off if they ever came near. Other than that the job itself was pretty dull. The girls were brought in, sometimes the collectors arrived to take samples, inspect the girls and perhaps choose one to take with them to the surface. But usually it was just the virgins and the automatons, miles and miles beneath the ocean waves.

“At least we can go outside.” Mused the sentry. “I’m not sure how the girls haven’t gone stir..”

He never did get to finish his almost charitable thought. Being shocked by several thousand volts of electricity had a tendency to shut down your hardware for good.

The slight, mousy girl behind him look down at his lifeless form impassively. She raised a radio to her lips “sector one clear”

The radio emitted a hiss. “All sectors clear – release holding cell one and head back to central command. Take off imminent.”

“Affirmative”

The girl hurried over to the holding cell and unlocked the door. The girls inside filed out calmly and started heading towards the central core.

The original mousy girl waited until the last one was out and then followed behind, glancing out the window to check on the sentries outside. The mermen were still keeping them busy – good.

She permitted herself a small smile. It had taken years of planning, of learning, of skulduggery and politics. The fact that they had bought the aid of the mermen with advice of how to woo women still made her shake her head but, she shrugged, whatever worked. Thanks to the mermen they had been able to be hooked up to an unlimited, unmonitored internet connection. Through that they had been able to indulge in a variety of long distance learning courses and access to all sorts of useful information – including the original schematics to their prison.

They learnt that their owners, being right cheapskates, had bought a disused spaceship and simply sunk it.

The girl felt the engines rumble and come online – long unused perhaps, but newly refurbished. Amazing what a little hacking on the supply orders can accomplish over a period of years.

She took one last long at the endless blue ocean outside the windows and then closed the blast door behind her.

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