XVIII. The One-Eyed Woman Who Be Queen

9

THE HABSBURG CATACOMBS

Robin

Vinci, Louisiana

October 31st, 2014

Time: 8:30 AM

_____________________________

"–ABSOLUTE HELL WAS THAT?"

Lafayette, hysterical, shrunk into the wall and made signed the cross over his heart. Robin leaned back with him, panting, the cold air and closed her eyes. She felt the sensations of frothy, frosty beads of sweat trickling down her face in heavy buckets as she rested along the floor. They were portly droplets, fat droplets, clinging to her like a second skin and baptizing the little morsels of her damned, dirt-ridden skin.

"That was Hevene; the Bath of Purity. Itʼs where we go when we die, you and me. Purgatory on earth. When my ancestors settled into the States, there were rumors of a place. A hellish paradise, here on earth, hidden away. Where the boundaries between this world and the next were breached and you could talk to the dead. Louisiana is the deadʼs state. Where the living are slaughtered for game. I figured the thing that killed that woman was there. I took a shot," Robin told him, caressing her left palm as more blood leaked from the wrapped wound.

"I took a shot?" Lafayette spluttered "A shot? You damned near killed yourself, killed me, all for what? The chance to tell some...bruja that you the bigger b*tch in this joint?"

Robinʼs head clapped against the wall, goosebumps erupting all over her skin and la vozʼs vision came back into her mind, only new-and-improved.

Like a predator – a predator with eyes black as the night – Robin staggered over Annoraʼs corpse. Her gray curls spilling over her hourglass form, rotting her gilded physique with the ruin of Robinʼs knife. But instead of a calm that fluttered over her as the witchʼs body stilled into a murmur of labored breath and weakening respirations, there was a storm. An anger that only festered, only grew, only made her hungrier. Panting, she imagined her knife diving into Annoraʼs skull. Ruthless, merciless, blackening her face with the rot and ruin of her flesh. One day. One day, one day, one day.

"That bruja was my great-aunt. Annora Love."

When Lafayette panted with her, he stared, sad. Robin, in return, flashed Lafayette a pained expression, that was etched with glimpses of vulnerability, and she shook her head with...vulnerability. A morose, bitter taste on her tongue. The two of them stared into the abyss, the chills of the Catacombs running up-and-down their spine, and in their silence, they watched the day get brighter and the dead grow darker.

Pulling a packet of Marlboro red (the good stuff, the vintage stuff, the hit-me-when-your-ready stuff), from her sack, Robin smoked like a gypsy. High off of the nicotine, numbed by reality.

"Trailer park. 1994, like a d*mn country music record. I was six. The sun like a heat oʼ a thousand fires. It was like I was in a f*cking fairytale. Five days. The authorities told my dad that my brother, Roberto, and I were deprived of water and food for five days. The authorities told my mom that I would be bleedinʼ for a few days, that my girly parts were mutilated, for five days. But I donʼt remember it, maybe, maybe I blocked it out.

"I donʼt really remember the details except for the blood pooled ʼround my thighs, my brotherʼs Dora-the-Explorer underwear bunched around his ankles and sh*t caked around the backs of his thighs. Yʼknow, the ones you tell the cops ʼcause your mom doesnʼt want to get deported, ʼcause she doesnʼt want men with big egos and puny d*cks tearing your life apart over a crime that she, as an undocumented Cuban woman, didnʼt commit.

"Annora pinned the entire thing on her, and Desdemona pushed my father to hire the man that...that did all oʼ that to me, and Roberto, when they were sleeping together. But you know the sickest part of it all?"

Robin stared at him, her lips shaking against the cigarette.

"I remember it, I remember it all. The man, Lyman Bycroft, he didnʼt force me. He didnʼt have to touch me. He just had to call me pretty. He called me pretty. And it made me feel, I, I liked..."

Robin gritted her teeth.

"He didnʼt even get near me. He called me pretty. I liked that he called me pretty. I liked the feeling, the pride, I felt when he called me pretty. I was proud that a p*dophile thought I was pretty."

"Baby girl, it wasnʼt your fault," Lafayette told her, angry. "Donʼt defend him and his repulsive motherfuckinʼ actions. It, was not, your fault."

They smashed the butts of their cigarettes against the ground, tired.

There was a crack.

"With Desdemona and one of the Prince familyʼs saers, priests ordained by the Order, Annora accused my mom of pimpinʼ out minors for cash. I got deported; was supposed to go with my mother to C-uba. She killed herself. Roberto got tossed into a s*x slave trade in Canada.

"Remedios and Rodrigo, my other brothers, one got involved with the cartel in California, the other forced into blood diamond mining in Africa. My dad...he vanished a lilʼ after that. So yes, Lafayette, it was my fault. I played with fire, and the hell I went through in C-uba, it was the universe paying me back.

"I am not a good person, I am cold and ruthless and violent, but whatever kindness I have leftover, I give to my children, I owe them, Lafayette, I owe them a chance at happiness; I owe them a chance at the life I never had. The American dream, right?"

He hugged her.

Fiercely.

As Robin melted into Lafayette, the brutish Robin DeMarcus that commanded the South in her arms was gone, and the vulnerable six-year-old girl that lost it all reared her head instead, cocooned in a blanket of security and warmth she had fantasized about for so many years. Squeezing her shoulder-blade, Lafayette crested into her and smiled when her dainty, petal-like fingers lightly tapped the curves on his back. His touch made the cold, damp caverns of hell a little warmer somehow, her caresses making the bleak future a little more brighter, and that, frankly, was all that mattered.

"Letʼs get the hell out this joint," Lafayette proposed. "I got some sweet olʼ omelettes back at Allureʼs and a few reruns oʼ Desperate Housewives I gotta get through, and you could use the company. After the sh*t I seen today, we about to take a week oʼ goddamn vacation."

Robin kissed his cheek, smiling softly.

"Iʼm right behind you," Robin murmured softly as she watched him head out.

There was another crack.

In the air. It was a soft crackling sound, a rattle of sorts, the wind teasing the rocks, the whisper of the dead – but Robin heard it. Shifting the gears in her assault rifle, the flashlight flickering madly, Robin stepped cautiously to the side. She leveled her breath as she moved, creeping amongst the shadows, and as she moved, she heard whimpering. A dying breath.

Blood curdled around Reina Santiagoʼs coffin and it fed a dizzying fiction of Robinʼs: one where she assumed one member of the Order that was gunning for her, or Desdemona Prince figured out who she really was and was ready to sabotage her engagement to Sebastian, or the Hellbenders had found a seductive, murderous patsy to play her part. But when she listened to the wheezing breath of the thing behind the coffin, she only felt the façade of the night call to her. She steadied her rifle, the light flickering more rapidly, more quickly, brr brr brrʼing against her rifle, and froze. When she saw the silhouette of wings: feathery like swan feathers, but framed with the bones and cartilage of bats, she froze.

Demon.

And still, the night called to her, disguised by the arms of the morning. Effervescent, omnipotent. As Robinʼs flashlight illuminated the shape of the demonʼs dying body, she stared deeply at her obsidian locks, matted in blood. Her nipple clamps a shiny silver, her eyes cradling blood. She was pale, sickly pale, a Desdemona type-of-pale, and in a crimson fur coat and high heels that were way to high, most would have mistaken the demon as a run-of-the-mill call girl.

But Robin had been there, played the part, and this demon didnʼt emasculate hunger. Didnʼt wield any form of hypnotic influence. She was an imitator, and a cheap one at that, but somehow, she knew this woman...

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen, my little robin.

En tierra de ciegos, la tuerta es reina, mi pequeño petirrojo.

Em terra de cegos, tem um olho é rei, meu pequeno robin.

Robin screamed. It was bloodcurdling, it was ear-deafening, it was overwhelming, it was so loud it burned the shrillness into its memory. Cupping her ears and dropping the assault rifle, Robin felt la voz tearing at her brain: flaying it, skinning it alive, and a burning hot sensation...it ate her alive. La voz commanded pain in her mind the way bladelike teeth would command flesh-eating bites, exerting more pressure on her head until blood staggered out of her lips, suffocating her in heavy rills as her motor functions began to shut down. The world became blurrier, bloodier, and as her screams became more distinct, her panic blanketed her in blackness.

And then she saw fire.

"Você vai queimar!"

It was a shout, a staggered, stuttered cry in Portuguese.

Rippling in arctic pools, frosting over the skin as it consumed it inwardly, Robin watched as a witch: young, beautiful, burned at the stake. Her vice, her virtue, her voracious devil, her violent death. It came down behind her eyes in hit, blindingly white pillars, molding in unison with the ragged screams of torturous agony, and as she saw the fire drip down a womanʼs body – a woman that wore her face, wore Robinʼs face – Robin watched, wordless. The womanʼs skin bubbled before the smoke inhalation, bubbled and boiled and bursted at the seams, the tint blackening, her throat hardening, her screams worsening. As the droplets of fire morphed into shards of acid, acid that whipped and lashed and sliced at her back, the woman shrieked.

The black paint streaking her cheeks marked her as a witch, a heretic, and as she gasped her prayers in Latin, her curses, her daily doses of fresh hell, she sobbed. Full of hatred, full of defiance, full of fear that sweetened her blood. The fires raped her skin, violating the sanctity of her unborn child, desecrating her, and as the whiteness of her dress turned to ash, the woman clutched the stake that killed her with a bloody vengeance.

"Você vai queimar pelos seus pecados!"

Her migraine burst out of her skull. It throbbed cruelly, relentlessly, a torture on earth that knew no bounds and as she stared at the ground, her temples shrieked in agony. The demon continued to pant on the floor, and as Robin clutched the edge of the coffin and pressed her palm against her forehead, she found that her breathing was labored. Her vision was blurred. La voz castrated her mind, sterilizing its efficiency for the time being, and as she stared back at the demon...

...it stared back at her, gelatinous black eyes covetous. Hungry, in a way. Wincing, Robin noticed that her pubic area was bleeding, smothering the pale skin above her abdomen and excreting squishy, wet chunks of vaginal meat, Robin resisted the urge to puke and tried to ignore the unnerving look the demon gave her.

"What...what is your name?" the demon asked, hoarse, choking on its coughs.

"Whatʼs yours?" Robin countered hotly.

Her head shrieked again.

In the depraving depths of the audience, aside from the fire, the demon that was crippled before her was drawn to the enticingly hot flames like a moth, in the vision. Leeching, taking. As the fire swallowed the woman whole, ebbing away the flesh and bone with the sharpness of a knife, Robin watched her smile.

Her eyes glowed crimson as she watched the fire dance erotically, the darkness that plagued the scene, the murder, a temptation: a challenge from God, an invitation from the Devil, and she stoked the flames. Made them stronger. Setting the womanʼs torso ablaze, the demon watched as the fire tore apart the womanʼs skin.

Ligament by ligament, bone-by-bloody bone. The muscle in her neck and face came undone, unfurling, the fireʼs pincers dragging into the flesh that stuffed her bone, and with a wickedly hungry smirk, she watched the woman...flayed alive, the skin shredding from her bone, peeling off slowly.

The demon grabbed her face with her bony, bloody fingers, desperately, yanking her out of the vision and into reality, and as Robin held her gaze, she saw the demonʼs fear. Pure and raw in its most appetizing form.

"Decarabia," the demon rasped. "My name is Decarabia."