"*****."

"What."

"He's on the **** dance floor, yo."

"Go, go, go."

"Can't. Gots to see if Ace or Eustace are here first. Gots to scope."

"Do it."

"Yo, floor is packed. Too risky."

"Want me to come? I'll **** make it happen, kid."

"Nope. Stand by, man. I'll be in touch."

Roach hit 'end' on Bone's call and slid out into the thick of it from her vantage on the steel staircase that wound up to the second level. She smiled at fellow party goers as she slunk deeper into the churning mix of bodies, feeling as the bass resonated up her legs, her spine and back down her arms to her fingers, as they splayed and curled at her side, like she could stretch the nerves in them away.

"I see you, you ****." She murmured, lost to the music. Side step, twist, duck, side step, and dance. She pulled the brim of the fedora low and drew the dark cloth around her throat up over her nose. "You fucking fuck."

Creeping closer, closer. Vincent. That damn rat. Making out with a slim brunette with pointed ears and skin covered in many glimmering stones. Christ, that was her skin. Behind him, she raises the gun and catches the girl's eyes with a subtle tip of her head that tells her to back off. This is risky as it goes. She knows it's dumb. She knows Ace or Eustace could be in the wings, but she doesn't care. He's here, she's ready. It's time to start -- and smack.

She feels the rush of air behind her; staggeringly cold, pure arctic, as she collapses to her knees. Feels the thick hand around her throat. The pain tearing through her head, her jaw, her chest until it spreads like obsession all through her body. She begins shaking, like she's having a fit, eyes rolling back.

Eustace pulls her into his arms as Menace steps from behind him with a grin. "So, now's all we need is a curator. Vincent, quit it. Time to roll."

This is magic. This is bad magic. She can taste it, fizzing at the back of her mouth. Under her tongue. Sees a black snake disappear unseen past feet, slithering, slithering into the dark.

No one intervenes. Not when one of the men is a small hill, covered in tattoos and with a sniper rifle across his back, his hips heavy with assorted iron. Not when the other is limned in ropes of crackling, blue light, his eyes inhuman, his gaze feral, and not too much smaller than the one in the wife beater. Vincent whips around from his hook up and trails the other men. He's smaller again, but he's still a problem. He's laughing like a hyena as they carry the writhing dreadlocked blonde in Eustace's arms out of the club.

The crowd falls back together, people continue dancing, like nothing happened. The song goes on.

And another one starts up in the swamps, out beyond New Orleans. Where some still danced to deadly drum. Where a knife slices open the throat of goat. Where the hooded ones pass around the chalice, filled with that blood, and the juice of the pomegranate. They chant. They scream. Persephone. Persephone.

http://66.media.tumblr.com/9fafd0d757a42dd5f7f6e2e831f150d0/tumblr_nahigbcmKN1qlx024o2_r1_500.gif


Candle, candle, on my clock
Oh Lord, I must have heard you knock me out of bed
As the flames licked my head
And my lungs filled up black in their tiny little shack
It was real and I repent
All those messages you sent, clear as day, but in the night
Oh, I couldn't get it right
Here is a church and here is a steeple
Open the doors there are the people
And all their little hearts at ease

A gas station, Somewhere Dark and Stormy, Louisiana, 8 30pm, Tuesday October 11th '16

"Eighty on number fifteen and this too, my man." Rope and duct tape to the counter.

"Thanks sir. Just a minute and I'll have your receipt."

"Actually, wait up." Menace nudged his cap up his forehead and peered behind the man. "Gimme a handful of Twizzlers and a pack of Marlborough Reds."

Thunder rolled like a low, low moan distantly on that off-blue sky. Mortuary blue. Grim and full of foreboding blue, creeping into grey.

"Right sir, no problem."

A minute later, with his bag in tow, a full tank waiting and a Twizzler hanging out of the corner of his thick mouth, the small hill of a man leisurely walked out to the waiting sedan where Vincent and Eustace stood against the car; the Samoan by the trunk, staring down an older man, with the weasel sort looking spooked and bothered with eyebrows jumping and mouth twitching like someone was pulling his cheeks with thread.

Nearby, a wiry, middle aged man with a dirty blonde goatee was filling his car and staring back at Eustace, saying something.

"What's goin' on over here, aye?" Menace opened the driver's side door and tossed the plastic bag with his goods in the front, tearing a bite off the red candy as he walked around to eyeball the stranger.

"I hear something in that boot is fucking what." The man looked unsettled as he wound back up the pump. "What's in the boot?" He was being testy about it but there was more white in his gaze than color; he was looking more and more unnerved by the second.

"How about you just get inside and pay up, eh." Menace smiled mirthlessly and strolled up closer until he was in his face.

"I heard something.." The man was even smaller beside Menace, his lack of height and weight pronounced in the difference, voice shrinking with his courage. He leaned up closer, trying to hold his ground before stepping back and rubbing his palm over his skull. "Look just.. forge--"

Thunder. Thunder in the the handle of the G17 across his face with a hard, wet sound and the man collapsing the ground in another hard crack. Lighting crawled across the sky and thunder bayed like a tortured hound. Vincent was in the passenger side, Eustace ducking his head underneath the roof as he got in back and Menace shook his head.

"People, man." He wiped the gun off on his baggy cargo's. "They never learn to mind their own business."

"Small town, yo" called out Vincent, arm out the window and beating the side of the car door. "Come on man, we gotta go."

For another week's disease
And eagle, eagle, talon, and scream
I never once left in between

But the small hill of a man continued over to the car in that same leisurely pace, tearing off another bite of his twizzler as he secured the gun around his lower back. He took his time getting in, even as the attendant rushed out from behind the counter screaming and pointing and flustering.

Menace gave the man a grin as he revved the engine and in a loud, piercing squeal of tires, tore out away from the pumps and straight out onto the empty street.

The attendant dialled emergency.

Blood pooled around the unconscious man's head on the concrete outside the Texaco, like an infernal halo.


I was on the fence and I never wanted your two cents
Down my throat, in to the pit, with my head upon the spit
Oh Reverend, please, can I chew your ear?
I've become what I most fear
And I know there's no such thing as ghosts
But I have seen the demon host

October 12th, '16 (Louisiana time)

"That girl yo, even in the fucking trunk, giving me a headache."

"Should have put that seal on her a little longer, my man. Oi, Ace, you even listening?"

Eustace and Vincent shared a joint and hung over the back seat peering in front, watching as the world went darker around the sedan. Nothing to do with the weather and all to do with the trees. Hundreds of them leaning in, leaning in close. Mucky trees, ugly trees, in tortured poses by the road resembling and not unlike the bound woman they had abducted.

And green. So much green. Drenching, drowning, suffocating green. A nightmare of verdancy that had the men go quiet as the oaks and dogwoods knitted closer, growing more dense.

"Fucking spooky ass fucking place, yo. Where in fuck are we taking her, Ace?"

"You'll see. Won't be much longer, cuz. Then we can really have some fun."

"You sure, man? You sure this is gonna bring Hades the fuck out here?"

"I'm sure. And I'm sure we'll have ourselves a little fun beforehand. Girl gotta know what's up."

"What in hell is that smell. Fuck. Put up the window, Vince. Smells like shit."

"Swamp, you foo's." Ace chuckled with a shake of his head and took off his Saints cap and scratched at his head as the humidity slipped right by the modest air conditioning abilities of the 70's metal and made his skull sweat. He turned up the volume on the CD player.

The two in back gave one another a high five and laughed around their smoke as the gravel road gave way to pure dirt for the next few miles ahead. Roach continued to beat against the trunk in a rage. Hysterical.


"Let me out you ******s! Let me out!"

But the green world of the bayou didn't answer Elizabeth Lee. It devoured her cries in heavy, buzzing, narcotic silence. The air too wet for her protests to get far. So too the gag still hanging half out her mouth. 'How to kill a man' by Cypress Hill seeing to the rest of it, the car vibrating with the sound as it disappeared into the thick of the dreary woodbine.