Does it matter how she found the box?
They had moved to Lawndale when she was fifteen, their family following her mother's career, and she had made a grand total of zero new friends.
Lawndale was the heat death of culture, a lack of stimulation that made it harder to think with each passing day. She had walled herself off within books, defined herself by her intellect. But with every A+ report card, every ribbon for a spelling bee or a quiz bowl or a debate tournament, she felt her intellect count for less. Prizes were just ways that adults congratulated one another for having a good school district, for raising the right kind of children. She pushed herself less and less and then not at all, washing into Lawndale State after three years of making, she realized, no impression to speak of.
She met the two of them the first weekend of winter term. She had learned of a little bookstore that sold used copies of the textbooks she needed, off campus, tucked in at the end of Dega Street. She was leaving the store with her books just when Trent and Monique were leaving the piercing shop with matching eyebrow rings. It was Monique who noticed her — perhaps seeing potential within her, or perhaps only recognizing how pathetically easy she would be to pull.
Had there only been Trent, she would have drifted away soon enough. Their first fight, and he would have done nothing to hold onto her, to make it up to her, to give her a reason to stay. Monique brought the structure.
Trent liked that she kept the house clean. Monique was the one who liked to give orders.
Daria enjoyed the pain. This surprised her — and surprise was a good thing to feel, a thing nearly forgotten — because of how badly she reacted to a stubbed toe or an accidental brush against a hot stove. Any other pain reduced her to a shrinking violet, but Monique leaving marks, Monique making her an expression of a covetous will... That pleased her. And the pleasure was satisfying, affirming. I must be a submissive little plaything, if I like this feeling. And a submissive little plaything belongs on her knees.
She belonged.
For all that he looked like a bad boy, Trent was genial, and genially indolent. And beneath the lassitude was a strange kind of emotional intelligence, a perception that for damn sure never showed through his song lyrics, but which recognized what Daria needed. She was grateful to find that in him... And how do little toys best show their gratitude?
Trent had known loss. That much she could tell: There was hurt within him from which he resolutely steered away, because he had no other choice. It was not her place to ask.
They picked out clothes for her. A maid's outfit, because why shouldn't chores be fun? A distressed grunge cheerleader uniform, so that the band could have a pretty prop in the audience. They cleared a space for her in the basement. A mattress, a few shelves, a cage for special nights. For the first time in years, she felt reassurance in accumulating books.
Had there only been Trent, Monique would have left soon enough. Fight, reconciliation, fight again. Ambitions pointing in different directions, and neither of them able to admit it except in moments of anger.
Daria worked harder to serve, begged to be marked, begged to be owned by them both so that they would stay and she could stay and everything would last, but she knew that it could not.
It was a humid summer night when Monique stormed out and Trent collapsed, stoned and drunk, and Daria descended the basement stairs alone.
There were cardboard boxes under a bedsheet against the far wall. Some of them were labeled with mundane lettering — spare kitchen tools and Christmas lights and old camera gear. One box had no label. She brought it to her mattress.
Black boots and muddy running shoes and a red jacket, and under all that, a wooden cube.
She held it under her reading lamp. Inlaid angularities of light and dark, suggestions of ridges and seams.
A souvenir, perhaps, from Trent's world-wandering parents.
Daria ran her finger along one edge, pushed slightly, and saw the corner turn.
Twist, push, release. Bits of the puzzle box slid out and offered themselves for adjustment, opening new possibilities when she turned and folded and realigned them.
She rested on her mattress, paced, curled into her cage, rose to pace again, all the while carrying the puzzle box, testing it, letting it test her.
From within it, she began to hear music. Atonal, insistent, compulsive.
And then, keeping time with the music, as though from behind the basement wall, the ticking of a clock.
Holding the puzzle box in both hands, she approached the wall, rested her ear against it.
The bricks of the wall began to push in, pull out, rotate, in time with the ticking of the clock and the music from the puzzle box. They moved aside to make way for the darkness and cold beyond.
Behind her, the rattle of a chain.
She turned, a convulsive spin upon her heel, and saw the figure only an arm's reach away.
"You called me, and I have returned."
Leather draping their body, cutouts framing the sections of their chest where the skin had been peeled back and sewn to their garment with wires like nerves. Their scalp hairless and gridded with incisions, a diamond-tipped pin inserted into each crossover point.
"We have such sights to show you, Daria Morgendorffer."
The chains reached out from behind her like they were falling under a gravity all their own, curled around her, pulled her legs apart and her hair back and her arms into a position of prayer. The hooks intruded through skin and muscle.
She smelled her own blood.
"Please," she whispered. "Do this to me in my cage—"
Tommy Sherman could not believe his luck.
He was coming out of the Beer Barge with a case of the good stuff, and the chick was right there, stepping out of the Chinese place next door. Platform heels, white slacks that weren't too slack to show off her legs, blouse that was a bit frilly. Like she wanted to look classy, but she knew she had it, and she was gonna flaunt it. Perfect ass, perfect tits, and Hell he wasn't a hair man but hers was damn fine at that, reddish-orange and falling halfway down her back.
She spoke first. "Oh my gosh! You're Tommy Sherman, aren't you?"
"That's my name," he said. He hefted the case onto his shoulder like it was nothing. "And who might you be, li'l darlin'?"
"I go to Lawndale High. Well actually I'm about to graduate from Lawndale High. Oh, my name's Quinn!"
"Cool name."
"This is just so perfect. Would you like to come with me to a party tonight? My ride totally flaked. But I promise you'll be the man of the hour."
And so it came to pass that he loaded the beer into the back of his truck — the one with the Terrorist Hunting License, the These-Colors-Don't-Run flag and the pissing Calvin sticker — and opened the door for Quinn to climb into the passenger side. He gave her a push at the small of her back to boost her up into the cab.
"We're gonna be early," Quinn said. "But we can, you know, hang out until my friends get there."
He parked the truck in front of a yellow house with a whirligig of some kind by the mailbox. Quinn hopped out and damn near skipped around to the driver side, calling out to him, "Come on, let's bring the beer and put it in the basement fridge. Last one in's a rotten egg!"
The music was loud enough that he started hearing it just before she opened the front door. "Sweet dreams are made of these..." He didn't see anyone in the living room, but to be fair, he was staring at Quinn's ass under those white slacks. He followed her down the wooden steps. She was saying some damn irrelevant thing — "The fridge is full of ginger slices, but we can move those out of the way" — and the music was louder here, coming from big old speakers right next to the ... metal cage?
"Whoa," he yelled over the song, "Your friends into freaky shit?"
And then, a new voice, dry and flat and right in his ear. "No more than your mother was last night, Trebek."
The thing grabbed him from behind, crushed his ribs between arms that were too strong for their thinness to be human, skinless arms that closed like a steel trap and smeared blood across his shirt. He dropped the beer case, and cans spilled out. A few of them rolled towards Quinn, who resolutely faced away, holding her fingers to her forehead and taking deep, deliberate breaths.
The skinless thing swarmed over him. Its legs were around his waist, its hands around his throat, its eyes staring into his. He tried to break its hold, to push it away, but already he could not draw breath. "Don't worry," it said. "This is how every girl looks beneath her clothes."
His knees buckled. His back hit the wooden stair-steps as he went down. Its hands released his throat, and he gasped for air and groaned in pain. And then its fist slammed into his solar plexus, and he saw white.
The thing was dragging him, now, away from the stairs and into the middle of the concrete floor.
It paused beneath a swinging bare bulb, reached one hand behind its head, and undid a scrunchie. Brown hair fell loosely over its shoulders. "Hate to say it, but that look was just not me."
He had just regained the wind to move again when the thing straddled him. It seized him by the hair and cracked his head backwards against the concrete. "Dear Penthouse Forum," it said. "I never believed that all those lessons about the circulatory system could be so useful."
He swung at it, a pitiful attempt at a blow that the thing intercepted with a slap of skin against flesh. The ruin of a face then bent over his wrist. Its teeth broke through to his vein.
With its right hand, it muffled his scream. Then it lifted its head and clamped its left hand around the wound. It leaned over him. A drop of his blood escaped its mouth and landed on his cheek, just beneath his eye.
Its right hand moved from his lips to his nose. Forefinger and index clamped off his air. His mouth gasped open, seeking oxygen by reflex, and he remembered being given medicine. The thing fed him his own blood, and he swallowed. He coughed, aspirating his blood back into the cold air.
"See, I gave it back," the thing said. "Do you not want it?"
* * *
It was not too many minutes later when Quinn turned around. Nothing remained of Tommy Sherman except scraps of clothes and fragments of bone — or rather, the mineral components of bone, stripped of activity down to the cellular level.
Daria sat beside the leftovers, skin whole and unblemished.
"I'm sorry that he touched you," Daria said.
Jake Morgendorffer rattled the morning paper. "Listen to this, honey. (Ahem.) 'Double disappearances at Lawndale High. Police have hit a dead end in the search for Angela Li, the missing Lawndale High School principal, as well as Ken Edwards, a substitute teacher employed by the district. According to sources within the Police Department who spoke on condition of anonymity, all the leads they have followed to date have 'dried up'. It even remains unknown whether the two disappearances are linked.'" He looked up and let the paper droop. "Spooky stuff, right?"
"I'm just glad," replied Helen, "that sometimes the story of a disappearance comes to an end."
"You say that now." Daria ambled in from the living room and headed for the refrigerator. "But just wait until you find that I'm the one who's been replacing your coffee with instant crystals."
"Morning, sweetie," said Helen.
"Hi, kiddo!" exclaimed Jake.
"Dad, I've been back for weeks. Surely the novelty has worn off by now."
Helen sighed, but a rather happy sigh. She leaned over Daria and planted a kiss through her daughter's hair. "Whatever happened to you, at least you came back the same."
"Actually, Mom, Dad, I'd like to talk to you about that. I think I'm ready to go back to school, and..."
Jake burst in. "That's wonderful, Daria!"
"And I'd like to change my major. Declare something more demanding, even work towards transferring to another university. I've been giving it a lot of thought, and I want to study languages. And then maybe even..." Daria paused. "Use what I learn and travel the world. I can't explain it very well, but maybe something that happened while I was ... away made me want to see as much of the world as I can."
"Well." Helen was visibly schooling a rapid sequence of emotions into a polite facial expression. "Just don't go on your world tour too quickly, all right?"
A happy thought lit up Jake's eyes. "And see if you can get a job someplace tropical, so that we can come visit!"
* * *
It was easy to nod along with the doctors when they said things like traumatic amnesia and fugue state. They had no idea, which was obvious enough from how many times they returned to idiopathic, but Daria had no intention of interrupting their pallid excuses for what they could not understand. Their explanation-shaped noises covered over the disruption. The truth was far simpler. Daria had neither temptation nor permission to share it.
Quinn had helped bring Daria back. But like the mercy of memory dimming the pain of a medical treatment, she was finding it harder to recall how. The experiences simply did not fit into the weave of life as she had understood it. Her sense of how long ago each step in the process had transpired was turning vague. She found herself having to consciously figure out where she must have been, deducing the contours of empty spaces in a mental jigsaw with fewer and fewer remaining pieces.
* * *
Daria recalled that when they had first moved into this house, the walls of this bedroom had been padded. Relics of a schizophrenic shut-in housed by the previous residents, those had not lasted; Daria had not felt the drive to fight for keeping them. Now, one wall boasted a floor-to-ceiling set of bookshelves, filling up apace, while another set was given over to music — narrow gauge up top for CDs, wider spacing down below for vinyl.
Daria locked the door and stood before the music library, needing something that could settle nerves. Because this was to be a special night.
Pamela Z's "Bone Music" felt too self-consciously experimental for the occasion. Likewise the Steve Reich — this was not quite a "Come Out" night, but it wasn't far from that, either. After a contemplative moment, Daria lifted the CD of Britten's War Requiem out of the player, returned it carefully to the proper case, and inserted Beethoven's Seventh, advancing to the allegretto.
Some things were classics for a reason.
Eyes closed. One hand keeping time to the pulse. And then, a voice that made Daria ache with longing.
"Long ago, my mother told me, if you love something, let it go."
Daria turned. Jane was there, sitting on the bed and holding Daria's diary. The jewels on the pins driven into their face and skull caught the light and gleamed. Their neck was bare down to muscle. Metal insignia of their office were planted over their trachea, just as before. They had forsaken the leather longcoat during their sessions with Daria. Now their vestments left most of their chest bare. The skin that draped over their legs had in part been their own; the rest they had harvested from Daria.
"You knew," Daria said, "that i would come back."
"I had a strong suspicion." Jane opened the diary and began to read. "'i try my best not to mind when they call me she and her. They do not know any better, and it would be foolish to try correcting them even were i not forbidden to speak of my time of revelation... But God has declared me it and slave. One does not argue against the Word of God. For the Word is what all argument must proceed from. Leviathan has spoken, and the Order implemented the blessing of Leviathan upon me.'" Jane closed the book. Their eyes were ice-blue within midnight black.
Daria blushed. "i was hoping that You would read that one day," it said.
Jane stood, crossed the room with two deliberate, stately steps, and took its face in their hands. "Do you understand what the Order asks of you?"
"i am to be the courier for the puzzle box, to find those whose opening it will serve the Order's purposes, to see what most humans cannot, to take payment in human currency, to recover the box when the Order has had their fill."
Jane leaned in and met its lips. For a moment, Daria flashed back to the first kiss the two had shared, and the discovery that the pins were much less an obstacle than anticipated, and then all of its consciousness was this moment with Jane.
"I missed you so bloody much," Jane whispered.
"Likewise," it whispered back.
The two kissed again, slave and trainer, novice and prior, convert and apostle.
Daria caressed the steel sutures along Jane's waist, where the harvested skin had been joined to Jane's own. "i told your brother that you were well," it said. "That was better for him than i ever could have been."
"Daria Morgendorffer, considerate of feelings? You never fail to surprise me."
Jane moved back a half step, holding Daria's arm at the elbow. With their free hand, they withdrew the pin from the center of their forehead. "Where," they asked, "would you like the first insertion?"
Daria had dreamed of this moment, wondered if Jane would make it beg, wondered what it would choose when the night finally came. "Lumbar," it said, voice gone rough.
"Not what I had expected," Jane observed, smiling. "You're a twisted little cruller." They cocked their head towards the bed. "Remove your jacket and shirt. Lie down on your side and hold your knees to your chest."
Daria obeyed with almost unseemly alacrity. It felt Jane's fingers explore its spine. "Sensation," it said, "means so much more when... aligned with emotion." And now Jane's fingers were spreading, stretching its skin.
"I love you," Jane said, and slipped the needle into Daria's spine.
It moaned, then felt abashed at releasing such a signal of arousal so quickly. "Love — You — too."
Jane caressed its scalp, gave admiring attentions to its bare shoulders. Then their focus moved to its hands, clamped down upon its knees as instructed. The second insertion pierced its right hand, passing through the thin tegument between thumb and forefinger, then entering under its kneecap.
It moaned again. Jane brushed its hair back from its forehead. "You're doing so well. Even better than before."
"This — slave — lives — serve..."
"To serve God and the Order," Jane agreed. They inserted the third pin between Daria's pinky and ring finger.
"Slave — offers — its body — as — adoration."
Daria had waited so long to know this intensity of obedience again, to offer its body as a living canvas for an artist, ennobled by the grace of God, to paint with pain and bliss a vision that praises the glory of God.
"Hold that smile," Jane said.
The next pin joined Daria's upper and lower lips at their midpoint. Then, the left corner of its mouth, and then the right.
Jane leaned down close and whispered in Daria's ear. "The slave is so beautiful," they said. "If it keeps doing this well, it will get a little treat." Jane extracted a pin from their cheek and traced it lightly over Daria's. "I might just put the clockwork inside it again."
Daria shivered with joy.
The long wait had been worthwhile.
Alison felt like several varieties of warmed-over garbage. Not enough sleep, not enough water, not enough serotonin or vitamins or some such damn thing after partying with Daniel and his black bag of research chemicals. She hated bus rides of shame. Her best hope was at this hour, well into the morning, there would be enough empty space that no one would sit beside her and judge the miasma she felt in her pores.
The weather shelter at the bus stop was empty, at least, thank the fucking stars. She let herself slump onto the corrugated metal bench and took a minute to seriously rub her eyes.
Was Daniel even worth it these days? Sure, riding on his arm had opened more than a few doors for her, and all it had cost was a groaning --- not even a price, really. They'd had a real heat when they started. And he still didn't hesitate when she rolled up. But his ego needed that element of conquest. Slutty goth painter girl was good for a dependable lay, but a dependable lay didn't drive him the extra mile. She'd invited him to talk dirtier all through it, egging him on to find the limits of the verbal abuse she'd take. Escalating to toys was easy, but he lacked the imagination or the dedication, either, to get serious about learning which ones worked for her and why. They tried mixing it up with drugs. Weed slowed everything down and made it almost tender; amphetamine left them both unable to climax, and they spent a long Sunday at jittery fondling. Now they were into the weird laboratory shit, alphabet soup without street names. None of it made the sex good, but it made the night something other than boring. And it was an extra inducement to Paris or Nikita or ... Marie-Baguette, whoever Daniel had picked out from the admiring, aspiring, soulful students, all too jaded to know how naive they were, all too independent and innovative to recognize the part they played in the old, old story.
Picking up new pieces was a thrill they could share, at least. She wondered if Daniel would pass her up for something they acquired together. Perhaps, eventually, but Therese and Jacqueline and Beth Ann Bubblegum hadn't had her talent, her actual skill on the canvas. She had fans of her own, and he would not diminish his own social standing by pairing up with an art chick who could not deliver on the art.
Would it hurt when it ended? Should she care more now? Was she already "in too deep", or did her lack of affect mean that she was already plenty broken when they began?
Christ on a moped, she was tired.
"Would you like a clementine?"
The woman was sitting next to her --- when had that happened?! --- and she was holding out what looked for all the world like a real fruit.
"You look like you need it," the woman said.
Woman? Girl? Younger than she had looked at first. The suit, severely tailored in black and green, added a few years. An academic of some kind? Women in business didn't wear glasses like that, big and round and bold and black.
"Thanks," Alison said, and took the fruit. She edged her thumbnail into it and started to remove the peel. "It's been a heckuva morning. I'm Alison."
"Daria."
The clementine was sweet and rich with juice. The first wedge was an explosion of well-being in her mouth, and she quickly popped another.
"Job, family or significant other?" Daria asked. "At this hour, I'd guess either of the latter two."
"That last one. Well, maybe the job too --- when you work in the same field, they don't always stay nice and separate."
Daria's gaze skimmed over her. "I'll hazard a guess that you're not both elevator operators or certified accountants. Painting, or sculpture?"
Alison laughed. "I paint, he paints sculpture." She swallowed the last of the clementine. "And you? If your first guess runs to artist, what does that make you?"
"I," Daria said, "deal in rare antiquities." She hefted a briefcase onto her lap and worked the latches.
The box was old, Alison could tell, and wrought with delicacy. The filigree of golden tracings invited a tactile exploration. It was meant to be held, to be investigated.
"Wow," Alison said.
"Lemarchand's Configuration," Daria replied, by way of agreement. "Crafted by a master obsessed with the pursuit of new sensations. I have heard," Daria continued, "that someone you know has expressed interest in a device along these lines."
So. This meeting had been no accident. If Alison hadn't been half-trashed, she might have picked up on the vibe much sooner, she realized. She had missed the opening gambit, but damn, this was starting to feel like a game worth playing.
Alison laughed again. "Let me go home and get myself civilized. Then we can talk business."
"And/or pleasure," Daria added.
Well. That was innuendo as subtle as a lead pipe. And Daria was not un-pretty. There was something petite under all that severity, something that Alison was just growing awake enough to appreciate.
Perhaps Daniel would be very pleased indeed when she brought this odd little dealer to his chambers.
Daria came down the stairs carrying a winter coat and strolled into the kitchen to fetch the box of heavy-duty garbage bags from the cabinet under the sink.
Helen popped her head around the dining-room corner just in time to see Daria closing the zipper on a backpack. "Going out?" she asked.
"Just taking a stroll in the woods. Or such woods as we have, anyway."
"Are those sisters of mine being too much again?"
"No, not really," Daria deadpanned, "but if you'd like to guilt Rita by telling her that her overbearing solicitousness is re-traumatizing me, more power to you."
Helen chuckled and turned away, and Daria pulled on the coat and headed for the door.
Christmas in Lawndale was a flat gray sky over frozen mud. Daria was quietly eager to leave the town behind, but first the business with Dotson had to be brought to its proper conclusion.
To the end of the block, a turn, crossing the street, and past the new houses to the concrete drainage ditch, then following it to the point where it entered the creek. A bike path of sorts hugged the side of the waterway. Daria followed it downstream into the copse, where the leaves had long since fallen, and scraps of fog blurred whatever lay beyond the trees.
Daria sighed, pulled out one of the black plastic contractor bags, and began stuffing litter into it.
After it had filled the first bag, Daria figured that this stretch looked decently nice. It pulled the drawstrings and tied the bag off, discreetly left the refuse by the path to be collected on its return trip, and clambered over the fallen branches into the forest. A tree stump a little way up the modest rise made for a convenient enough seat. Daria shrugged off its backpack and settled down to wait.
Distant bells, growing closer; and then, the displacement of wet leaves.
"Afternoon," it said.
"Buenas tardes, amiga," said the Cenobite.
* * *
Jane had brought food. "One of the boxes was opened in Athens," they explained. "The opener fancied himself a man of wealth and taste."
Daria made itself a platter of warm, crusty fresh bread, spiced olives, roasted garlic and chunks of dark chocolate.
"Here's a thought," it said. "Have You ever forced someone to eat pineapple on pizza?"
"It's never seemed fitting," Jane replied. "But I will add it to the list."
Daria unzipped its backpack and withdrew the gift that it had brought. "Compliments of the season," it said, offering the heavy book to Jane. "Turns out that playing the part of an antiquarian means finding some antiques."
"The Life's Work of Gaetano Giulio Zumbo," Jane read.
"i thought that You might find it inspirational. And, well, what's the right gift for a being who has everything?"
Jane turned the pages with fingers flayed and whole. They smiled and reached over to Daria, teasing a strand of its hair away from the others and gently arranging it to fall over Daria's face. "I do have everything, don't I?"
"That gesture just earned You twenty minutes of oral sex," Daria said.
Daria had politely but neutrally refused a drink. Fine, thought Alison. The night is early yet, and I'll have more to work with later. A glass of something red and classy to celebrate the business transaction, then the ambient pressure of the party, cocktails flowing down throats to ring in the New Year. Yes, this one called for working deliberately. Daria looked like the type who would nurse a ginger ale for an hour. Unwinding her would feel all the sweeter for it.
Daniel was returning with the money. She and Daria were waiting in the side hall of his converted warehouse space, where her own paintings and prints were on display. Daria was flipping through the rack of prints, the heavy case for Lemarchand's Configuration slung on a leather strap over her shoulder, making her look almost comically small. Alison watched as the younger woman turned through the posterboards, giving each one what looked to be real concentration, apparently unfazed by the subtly sensuous suggestions and — another turn — by the pony-play watercolor. Near the back of the stack, Daria paused for longer.
"This one is different," Daria said.
It was a miniature, Alison recalled, one that had not turned out how she had hoped. Just a landscape, from memory, on what felt when she was done like the wrong canvas size, or the wrong medium to begin with. A Mediterranean village, built going up a hill that was almost a cliff, pastel at sunset.
"Rocamadour?" Daria asked.
"That's right," Alison said. "Me and some friends in French club, we took a trip after we graduated high school. Stayed there a day and a night. Odd, how the memories come back, isn't it?"
"On a schedule of their own choosing," Daria agreed.
"God, what a trip. Paris of course, Chartres, Aigues-Mortes..."
The front door swung open and clanged shut.
Good, thought Alison. Saves me the trouble of opening up there.
"Good evening, good evening," Daniel said. Smiling. "I see our guest has decided against being fashionably late."
Daria deadpanned back, "I've seldom been accused of being fashionably anything."
Daniel chuckled — the man could always do a good, warm chuckle. "Alison, dear, while our guest is busy selling herself short in the style department, would you fetch us some refreshments from the kitchen? I suggest we conclude the tawdry portion of the evening's affairs as quickly as possible."
By the time she returned with a tray of drinks and hors d'oeuvres, Daria was closing the briefcase of money, and Daniel was lifting the Configuration in his hands.
"Uh-oh," Alison said. "That look in his eye. He's going to neglect the party, isn't he?" Her tone trying to pass the remark off as a joke.
"Hmm?" Daniel looked up at her. "Well, yes, this will be quite the conversation piece. Don't you think?" His voice was velvet, even now, damn the man.
"I do hope you'll stay for the festivities," Alison told Daria. "We've got people coming who have been all around the world. I'm sure you'll love it."
This time, Daria accepted the glass. "And give you a chance to recall your schoolgirl French."
"Bonne année," said Alison, raising hers.
"Au plaisir, on espère," Daria replied.
Alison ran for her life.
Her legs burned, her lungs burned, her whole body screamed with panic. Daniel was two paces ahead of her, not looking back, until he landed wrong dropping from the curb and stumbled into the street. Skidding tires, swerving lights, the blast of a horn — and now Alison registered the odd looks from the pedestrians, how everyone else on the street was unaware of the eyeless thing, the thing with the chattering teeth, the thing following them.
Alison grabbed at Daniel's arm, pulled him up and towards the other side of the street, not sparing the breath to scream Come on, you bastard! Realizing as they reached the far side that she should have left him to die.
Another one of them stood on the sidewalk, hulking, looming, its limbs divided, reaching out to them with too many hands.
They turned and ran down the side street. There was a vest-pocket city park here, she remembered now. Daniel pulled ahead of her again, then stopped and cast wildly about himself. He had leapt the iron fence into the park before she saw the model-tall, death-pale figure under the streetlamp.
They had crossed halfway through the park when the air changed.
The noise of the city dropped away. The dry cold of winter had become the humidity of a summer afternoon promising a thunderstorm. The lights along the park path burned impossibly bright, once, twice, and then flared into nothing.
In the distance, now, Alison heard the tolling of a bell.
Light returned by degrees. Dusk in August, not morning in January. Daniel was beside her, bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath.
The path now led down a hill, a hill so steep it was almost a cliff, through a village of brick and stone.
"You have every right," Daria said, "to feel insulted." The young woman was lounging midway up a steep flight of stairs alongside an empty café. Gesturing at Daniel, staring at Alison: "He was so bored with you that he summoned them."
Calf-high Docs, thrift-store punk schoolgirl jacket and skirt, the same glasses. It was a good look and a half.
Daria stood and approached them, the very soul of casualness. "i picked this spot in the Labyrinth for you."
The things were converging upon them now, one deliberate step at a time.
"Who are you?" Daniel demanded.
"Me? An aspiring world traveler," Daria told him. "Them? They are the Order of the Gash, theologians in service of Leviathan, travelers in the outer rim of sensation. And they are more pleased to meet you than anyone you have seen in a long, long time."
A thin metal wire sprouted through the air between Alison and Daniel. Another followed, razor-sharp as the first, then a third and a fourth. Alison stepped back, fairly leapt back, to avoid being sliced open. She turned to the direction from which they had come and saw that they emanated from the woman-creature, the figure with her throat laid open, bits of her affixed to other bits with pearl-headed nails.
"It says we should wait to cut you," the creature hissed at Alison. "I would like to start soon."
"The Priest agrees with me," Daria said. (It?) "He learned the promises of the Configuration. He chose to open it." A little nod at Alison. "She is not innocent. Or entirely a bystander. But that's the way the night unfolded."
"The night is young," the creature said.
Daria shrugged. "Well, it's no skin off my teeth."
And then the chains came.
Descending, rising, lashing out from the shadows with the alacrity of life.
Each chain ended in a hook, and each hook buried itself into Daniel.
They pulled his hips forward and his shoulders and legs backward, curving him almost double as they lifted him above the cobblestone road.
He screamed. He could do nothing else.
Alison stood rooted in place. The razor wires would have stopped her anyway, she thought.
Daniel's screams faded in volume and then took the shape of words. "Oh, God, oh fuck, oh fucking Christ..."
And then a new voice: "Indeed."
Another woman, or thing in the shape of a woman, very much in command — the rest of the Order of the Gash took a deferential step back — oh, God, the pins.
"You know," Daria said conversationally, "when William James was caught in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, he wanted to scream, Go it, and go it stronger!"
"Wha?" was all that Alison managed to say.
"A thrill," Daria elaborated, "is an appropriate response to the sublime."
The Priest approached Daria, lifted its face to theirs, and kissed it.
Alison could not remember being kissed like that, not in a long, long time.
Another of the Priest's chains curled around Daria's waist, wrapped upwards over its torso, weaving into a harness before settling around its neck.
The Priest broke the kiss and gently brushed Daria's face with a pair of fingers, one with skin and the other without. "Watch and learn."
And then they turned towards Daniel.
"What's going on?" Alison asked.
The Priest stilled Daniel's incoherent sobs with a finger to his lips. Then, from a fold in their vestments of flesh and skin, they withdrew a blade of sharpened bone.
Daria explained, "Involving him in actual art for the first time."
The Priest drew the bone across his chest, and he screamed again.
"No more tedium," the Priest said. "No more postures." They examined the blood that had accumulated on the knife, gave it calm consideration, then turned and flicked it towards a bare stone wall, scattering a spray of droplets. Leaning over him again, they continued, "Only truth. Only art."
Alison looked away from the second cut, stayed looking away during the third and fourth.
With a clinking of metal, Daria was standing beside her.
"Don't you feel anything," Alison asked, "when they do that to a man?"
"Of course i do," Daria said. "And of course they do. After all, they remember what it was like to be human."
"They remember?"
"Naturally. They have to. Otherwise, how would they know how unworthy they were to receive the blessing of Leviathan?" Daria raised an eyebrow. "You're looking at me like i'm a cultist accosting you in the park. But..." It tapped a finger lightly against the floating razor wire. "You fell down a hole in what you thought was reality. Metal that brings pain has a special dispensation against gravity. You stayed up wondering if there was a God? Well, now you know. This is how the story goes when God shows up."
Daria reached between the razor wires and rested a hand, gently, upon Alison's shoulder. Alison did not know whether it was meant as comfort, but the contact registered that way regardless.
Daria spoke again. "Every flaw in humanity, all our weaknesses, all our willingness to serve a leader... This puts us to a good purpose instead. A deserving purpose. This is our redemption. Which, frankly, we didn't have the rights to hope for."
Alison looked up from the pavement, faced Daria, blinked hard. Then she turned to watch the Priest working upon Daniel Dotson.
The blood spatter on the wall beyond had taken the shape of a palm frond.
"So unworthy," declared the Priest. "As are we all." They cast a fond smile at Daria and then pinned Alison with eyes of ice blue against midnight black. "Perhaps you begin to understand. And understanding never ends."
They lifted a hand and turned their fingers. The chain holding Daria grew taut and pulled it away from Alison.
"All right, all right," Daria said. "Jealous much?"
"When I was human? Very."
Another chain pulled at Daria's booted feet, bringing it to its knees, while a third clasped its wrists together.
The Priest rested a hand on Daria's hair. Then they gestured downward, to their feet, where they had trod in Daniel's blood.
"Thought You'd never ask," Daria said, and then bent forward to set about licking them clean.
The Priest watched with fondness on their sublime features.
The one who controlled the razor wire spoke. "You like what you see?"
The chains lifted Daria back into a kneeling pose. Clasping their hands before their waist, the Priest faced Alison, locking that stare upon her again. "Would you like to have it?"
"Hmm?" went Daria, investing that single noise with a whole question about where the Priest was going with this.
"I could return you both," they said, "and leave it in your bed for the night. It would do anything to please you, if I were to ask." Daria shrugged, as though to admit the futility of denial. And then the Priest's chain tightened on its neck, relaxed, tightened again, establishing a rhythm to control its breath, and its eyes unfocused. Alison watched as Daria fogged out into pure bliss. "The only price," the Priest said, "is living with the fact that you said yes."
The device spun in the air above Jane's open hand. "Lovely, isn't it?" she asked him. "This will provide oxygen to your blood after we pull your lungs through your back to make wings. So that the falling angel may meet the rising ape."
Having witnesses to the holy work brought a whole new level to the fugue, they thought. Perhaps that was a flaw in Lemarchand's handiwork — that the puzzle box could be opened by one person alone.
Perhaps it was time for a new Configuration. One that wove lives together, even as the rearrangement of its pieces provided the template for the rearrangement of reality that cleared the path for the Cenobites.
Yes, Jane thought, as they moved the device over him.
Time indeed.