She held out a clear glass with brownish liquid in it. Something fizzed in the water, forming a white cloud. “Here,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Aspirin,” she said. “My mother always grinds it up and puts it in apple juice for me. It’s silly, I know, but it was the only way she could get me to take pills when I was a little kid.”
He shook his head. “I’m okay.”
She smiled. “It’s just pain medication. You’ll thank me later.”
What was she going to do? Why did he need pain medicine?
She tiled her head, smiled with just one corner of her mouth. “For me. Please.”
He drank half the glass and set it down. Beneath the apple taste lingered a bitter flavor that stung his throat. What little kid would drink that?
“Now what?”
“It’s time,” she said.
“How are you going to do it?”
Sasha raised the chalice like a priest about to bless the wine. “It’s all in the presentation.”
* * *
Sasha’s mother was downstairs, kneeling before her homemade altar. The red candles on the table gave the room a sickly glow that made the walls appear swollen. Tyler stopped at the bottom of the stairs, right behind Sasha.
“She’s deep in prayer,” Sasha whispered. “Don’t do anything sudden, she’ll go nuts.”
What constituted “nuts”? This was a woman who had threatened him with a knife, forced him to get naked, burned him with a hot blade. He didn’t see a knife on her altar, so she might have it under her own cloak. If she wielded a blade, Tyler could try to push Sasha into the blade and run. He could call the police and that would take care of everything. It would actually be much more convenient if it went down that way, though a cramp of nausea twisted in his stomach at the notion.
On tip-toes, Sasha approached her mother. Tyler stayed several feet behind her. The time between her steps grew longer and longer the closer she got. Sasha’s mother did not detect them. She sat slumped forward on her knees, head to her chest, her back rising and falling with slow, easy breaths.
Tyler froze with the next step. He heard something, faint, like a whisper only not decipherable. Sasha kept walking; she was only a few feet from her mother. The sound was a steady hum barely detectable. If Sasha heard it, she thought nothing of it. The hum was really smaller vibrations strung together. Those vibrations were words and they comprised a chant.
Or a curse.
“Sasha, wait,” Tyler said in a loud whisper.
She turned toward him, started to make an “it’s okay” gesture when her mother’s head sprung up and back. Her long, black hair whipped over her head and slapped her back with the hard thwap of a punch. The hum that was a nearly silent chant erupted from the woman’s mouth like a fire alarm. The words made no sense and might have been random consonant grunts, but whatever they were they bounced off the walls and reverberated in Tyler’s ears.
… sac rice luff chide …
He had retreated several steps toward the stairs and the safety of the front door beyond, but Sasha hadn’t moved, only covered her ears. She should use the blade to silence her mother once and for all. One swipe across the throat.
Her mother’s nonsensical cry faded quickly. She dropped her head, hair settling around her shoulders, and turned to face her daughter. Sasha lowered her hands, chalice in one, knife in the other. Their movements seemed lethargic, as if in slow-motion.
“This is the moment,” her mother said. Her throat sounded like it was full of rocks.
“Yes, mother,” Sasha said. She held out the cup. “We wish to offer our blood as a sacrifice for the love child we have created.”
Sasha’s mother bowed her head to the cup and then gently took it in both hands. “The Earth Goddess will be pleased.”
Sasha motioned for Tyler to join her. He did, slowly. His previous rush of excitement and sexual energy had fizzled into cold skin and a shriveled dick upon his shrunken scrotum. His legs were heavy, his head light.
When he stopped next to her, she raised her left hand before her and brought the blade of the knife toward her palm. He wanted to tell her to stop but he was too fascinated, or shocked, to say anything. He couldn’t believe this was really happening. Who was this girl?
Her mother moved the cup beneath Sasha’s left hand. The blade sliced into Sasha’s palm. She clenched her jaw against the pain and ran the full length of the blade across her hand. She tilted her hand sideways and blood began to drip off her skin and into the chalice. Each drop plopped into the cup.
“This offering I make to you, oh, mighty Earth Goddess,” Sasha said. “This is my blood, so that you might bless me and my child.”
The blood-drip became a steady stream. Sasha made a fist, stifling the flow. Then she wrapped her injured hand in her cloak and turned her large eyes on Tyler.
His hands were clenched together at his groin. His head grew lighter and lighter and he feared he might pass out. Keep it together. Her eyes softened, pleaded with him. This was the only way, they said. Just a little cut, some blood, and it’ll all be over.
He pried his scarred hand loose and held it out. With her free hand, Sasha’s mother seized his wrist. He pulled back but her grip, and all the weight behind that grip, held him in place. He made a fist, but his fingers didn’t curl completely into his hand. His muscles had gone loose. What was going on?
“You must make an equal offering,” Sasha’s mother said. “If not, you will suffer irrevocable trauma.”
What did that mean? Hadn’t he already endured enough pain? He tried to pull free again but he couldn’t do it unless he used his other hand to pry off her fingers. Or punch her in the face.
Sasha stepped right next to him. Her breasts pushed through the cloak and pressed against him. Her eyes had softened considerably. They were the eyes of a waiting lover, a young woman who wanted only to please her man. She took his hand gently and her mother let go. She brought it to her neck and then slowly dragged it over her breast. His hand opened; her nipple teased his palm. His crotch relaxed. He squeezed her breast gently. She moaned so slightly and delicately that he wanted to pounce on her and get her to make that innocent yet sexually loaded noise again and again.
The flickering light reflected off her snaggletooth—like a sabertooth tiger in the moonlight.
Sasha pulled his hand away and sliced open his palm so quickly that he didn’t fully register what had happened until his blood was joining Sasha’s in the chalice.
He back-pedaled rapidly, pulling free of Sasha’s grip. He stumbled and fell. He broke his fall with his hands and his freshly re-injured hand throbbed with hot pain. She had cut a mouth out of his palm. The skin curled back from the wound and bright red blood sluiced out. It was a gushing vagina or the mouth of a Satanic priest after eating of the animal sacrifice.
Sasha’s mother swirled the cup in front of her. “Now the blood is joined, now the sacrifice can be made. This I do for the blessing of the love child you have created.”
She brought the chalice to her mouth and took one long gulp.
He expected her to fall over immediately. All the drugs he had ground up in the Snapple were enough to knock out an elephant. That was wishful thinking, of course. The medicine needed to be absorbed into the blood stream; it would take a few minutes.
A few minutes. His head was ready to pop off his shoulders and float away. His muscles could barely keep him propped off the floor. The damn apple juice and the aspirin. She had drugged him. Her mother probably had a small pharmacy of her own.