“You’re not into some satanic cult shit are you?”
Jamie smiled nervously.
“Yes. I am. And tonight at midnight, I’m going to sacrifice you to the goddess Kali or maybe the sun god Ra or maybe even Pele’ or Huitzilopochtli. He’s a particularly blood-thirsty Aztec deity, but then, he’s partial to virgins. I don’t suppose you happen to be a…”
“Not by a long shot.” The girl laughed.
“Oh well, I guess there won’t be any sacrifices tonight.”
“My name is Katherine. My friends call me Kitten.”
“Hello, Kitten. My name is Jamie.”
“You own this place or just run it?”
“My family owns it, my two brothers, my sister, and I. But since I’m the only one who didn’t want to sell the place and divide up the money when my parents died, I run it by myself. Once I croak they’ll liquidate everything, but for now it’s mine.”
“Cool. Mind If I take a look at that apartment?”
“Sure. Follow me.”
They walked to the back of the shop, past the register and up a flight of stairs to Jamie’s apartment door.
Jamie fumbled with his keys while he tried to figure out what to do.
“How long have you lived up here?”
“Since high school. This was my first apartment and it looks like it’ll be my last.”
Kitten smiled sympathetically, but said nothing. Jamie opened the door and the smell of incense and candles wafted out followed by the smell of animals. Kitten stepped inside and winced when the door slammed shut behind her.
THROUGH THE FOG OF incense she spotted the walls covered in blood spatters and scrawled prayers. She saw the cages upon cages of animals from rats to monkeys to snakes to goats and the multitude of statues, icons, totems, and altars. When she heard the sound of a muffled human voice coming from inside a locked room down the hall, Kitten knew something was wrong. She heard the door lock behind her, heard the footsteps approaching, saw the bowls of entrails atop the various altars, and felt the bile rise up to scald the back of her throat. Her eyes watered as she recalled the dozens of horror films she’d seen as a kid. They always culminated in a moment like this, the audience shouting for the heroine/victim to get out of there while the killer crept up behind her. For the second night, she had placed her life in jeopardy.
“Why does this shit always happen to me?” she said out loud as she turned back towards Jamie, already anticipating his attack. Her body dumped a gallon of adrenalin into her bloodstream in preparation to run or fight for her life. But it was too late. She wilted to the carpet as Jamie brought the sixty-pound brass Buddha down onto her skull. Minutes later she was hog-tied and gagged, locked in a room with two other girls her age and a boy no older than fourteen who appeared to be as sick as Jamie. She began to weep then stopped when she realized it would do her no good. She just had to wait for Jamie to get back so she could try to reason with him and seize any opportunity to escape.
JAMIE SAT WITH HIS back to the locked door as he listened to Kitten’s muffled screams. He had been sitting there for hours, watching with dread as the sun traveled across the sky, trying to work up the nerve to sacrifice one of his captives before nightfall. The winter solstice was drawing near. The shadows were increasing and they were hungry. He could see the bloodlust in their fiery red eyes as they glared at him from every dark corner.
The room began to shake as the shadows continued to multiply, thrashing about in fits of rage, eager to get at Jamie or the sacrifices he held locked behind the door. The floor bounced and rattled like a rollercoaster as the screams and roars of the demons drowned out the sounds of Kitten’s weeping. Jamie clamped his hands over his ears again, trying to shut them out.
“Go away. Go away. Go away! I won’t do it. I can’t! Not yet! I…I’m not ready yet. She’s not right. She’s too alive. I’ll find you someone better. I’ll find someone tonight.”
Jamie grabbed his coat and hat as he walked out of his occult shop and locked it up for the evening. He had to get out of there. He needed to think, to figure out what to do, and he needed to find more sacrifices.
As confusing as his life had become, his compulsive prayers and rituals at least made him feel like he was doing something to save himself. It made him feel as if he were taking control of his life. Kidnapping girls made him feel powerful. He just wasn’t sure he could take it to the next level, not until he was positive that this was what God, or Gods, or the Goddess wanted.
Jamie scratched absentmindedly at the raspberry-red melanoma spreading across his cheek as he pulled the collar of his jacket up against the cold. There was no parking lot on this street and parking meters lined the block in both directions checked almost compulsively by ticket-happy meter-maids, so he parked his ‘77 VW Beetle nearly two blocks away. As he walked, he smiled up at Ra as the fiery sun god struggled to break free of the clouds even as he hurtled towards the horizon. Jamie turned away as the dark clouds began to form hideous faces, human faces with horns and fangs and odd growths and tumors protruding from their skin. Reptilian eyes turned toward him as their mouths split wide with ear piercing shrieks. Jamie was pissing The Gods off with his refusal to act. But he just wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.
Jamie studied every face that passed him. In some he saw the same taint of death that marred his own dour features. Others bristled with life so brilliantly that it was almost blinding. Jamie chastised himself for his jealousy as he scowled at them and imagined sacrificing them to the Sky Gods. But Jamie knew he didn’t have the heart to sacrifice anyone so alive. If he did manage to kill, it had to be something more like euthanasia. The three whores he had locked up in his room were all drug addicted street walkers who would have doubtlessly killed themselves in some way had he not interceded. The boy was dying from multiple sclerosis and was already partially paralyzed. Their deaths would be a mercy.
But would it be enough to appease the Gods?
The latest religion Jamie had adopted believed that without a human blood-sacrifice, the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli would be depleted of tonally and all movement in the universe would cease. The prospect so terrified Jamie that it haunted his dreams. Night after night he awakened screaming, throwing off his sweat-drenched sheets, grabbing for one of the hundreds of idols, amulets, and totems that guarded his bedside against evil and death.
In the morning he’d run panicked for his window afraid the earth had ceased its rotation, only relieved once he’d seen the sun rise. Last week he’d nearly fainted when he’d stepped out of his shop into the street only to find the road empty of cars and people and not so much as a breeze stirring the air. He’d thought that his procrastination had doomed the earth to inertia. That had decided the matter for him. He began collecting sacrifices that very same evening.
He’d picked up Naomi in a crack-house. He just walked in while she was nodding from a nose full of heroin and just about to chase it with a hit of rock cocaine, scooped her up into his arms, and carried her to his car. She slurred against his neck as he carried her, already negotiating for the next hit, heedless of any peril she might be in.
“Yooooou want to fuck? You can do anything you want for fifty bucks. Or I’ll suck your dick for ten. For ten more I’ll even let you fuck me in the ass. Just let me finish this last hit and I’ll go anywhere you want. Hey!”
She cried out as he folded her anemic body up into the trunk of his beetle and slammed it shut. He had to sit on it like he was closing an overstuffed suitcase in order to get the trunk to close. He dislocated her hip and broke three of her ribs but he made her fit. He could hear her cry out as her body collapsed in on itself and the trunk locked in place.