Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers

Black Soul Bitches By Erin Cole

Black Soul Bitches

We called our coven, The Black Heart Bitches, and we were Detroit’s best and ‘baddest’dark witches, seeking justice for the murder of our sister, Lauren Mills.  We knew there were others, all victims of Marsha Stein, a radical, religious nutcase.  But technicalities allowed her to walk—fortunately, right into the spell of nine, angry, skyclad women.  She now laid naked on a walnut table, circled by thirteen black candles; four witches’ bottle; a pentacle of myrrh, frankincense, and salt from the Dead Sea; and the horns of a wildebeest—she was fucked.

“The Gods and Goddesses are present, the circle is cast,” Zoe, our priestess says, pausing to smile at Marsha’s ballooned, glassy eyeballs darting face to face.  Had they popped from her eye sockets, I imagined they would float and cling to the ceiling, dangling the bloody optic nerves like strands of ribbon. 

Zoe holds the athame tip to the left of her cinnamon-colored nipple, indenting flesh where a pool of blood will soon flow like wine from our cauldron.  “It is time for the sacrifice.”  She nods at me, and I stuff Marsha’s underwear in her mouth.  “May the deities be more forgiving of you than we are, Marsha Stein!” 

The spearing of soft flesh elicits muted screams from Marsha, and spasms quake through her tattooed body.  Blood decants and spurts, and though some of us want to recoil, we remember Lauren, and keep our abhorrence vigilant upon Marsha’s suffering. 

Zoe cuts and pries, dismantling her chest, however much unlike our other paroled victims.  All of us look on with anxious faces, clenching tight to each other’s hands.  The blade finally sinks through rib tendons, and Zoe wrenches bone and cartilage aside.  She peers inside the chest cavity, looking to extract the heart, but her eyes seem to be searching for it.  Dropping the athame to the floor, she backs away from the table.  “There’s no heart.” 

“What!”  one of the sister’s shouts.  “That can’t be.”

Zoe only nods.  I know her well enough to know that she believes we have made a big mistake.

Like a bad dream, Marsha coughs with laughter, resounding darker than the fluid flowing from her shredded ribcage.  Latin vocals spew from her blood-caked lips, and a crackling noise gathers around us…like beads falling on hardwoods. 

A sister screams and points to the floor.  It is teeming with skittering, black bugs.  Everyone shrieks as the insects charge our naked bodies and scurry up our legs, eager to crawl inside our every orifice.  We all stampede from the house, while Zoe locks herself in her bedroom.  I don’t worry about her, surrounded by a plethora of voodoo tools.  Instead, I fret over what we’ve done—who we’ve picked a fight with. 

Hiding behind a Volkswagen with another sister, I watch the bugs untie Marsha and eat through the ropes.  Then, they scamper inside her chest, and her mutilated frame metamorphoses back into beautiful breasts.

“What the hell is she?”  I ask Jenny.

“Pure evil?”

“I thought she was a Christian.”

“Apparently, she ministers to the other side.”

I turn to Jenny.  “She doesn’t have a heart, but maybe she has a soul.” 

Jenny shrugs.  “My husband has a penis and no brain.”

                                                                                                                                           

I smile and flick a beetle off her shoulder.  “Only one way to know.  Black Soul Bitches unite.”

*          *          *

And we did, under the next full moon.  Unable to track Marsha by magical means, we decided to use ourselves as bait, circling skyclad on a lake cliff she’d been known to frequent.  Below, the water roared in turbulent splashes of cold spray that fanned over the granite crags.  Trees crooked in the wind like angry ogres, and dark clouds gusted overhead, as if something were chasing them too. 

Ducking against the elemental onslaught, we position a cedar box containing Lauren’s ashes in the middle of our sacred circle, hoping to trap Marsha Stein.  Once inside our consecrated space, Lauren’s spirit could possess Marsha’s body, and take her back into the Underworld from where she came. 

“Wait for my signal,” Zoe calls out.

Above, the tree limbs shift and matter, camouflaged by the rustle of foliage, materializes as a separate entity—Marsha Stein.  She looms over our circle wearing a grin that looks hungry enough to eat the world. 

“Look, Detroit’s pudgy little perverts are back,” she derides.  “How nice.”  Crouched on a branch, she swings her legs casually, as if unthreatened by us.

“We’re gonna take you down, Marsha,” a sister remarks.

She laughs.  “You already did—and failed.” 

In the distance, a buzzing sound nears, threatening in its aberration like a dark omen.

“Looks like you girls are going to need some bug spray,” Marsha giggles.

But it is too late.  A haze of bees storms our circle.  Shouts erupt as we all dodge the stinging assassins, with waggling mounds of flesh that defy gravity.  Sharp pain pierces into my back and legs, burning and itching with an unfathomable ache.  I shield my face to orient myself in Marsha’s sadistic tumult.

Zoe runs toward the chest.  “Now!”  she shouts over the ruckus. 

Jenny dives for the chest and flips the lid open.  A bright, blue light beams into the tempestuous sky above.  Marsha’s smirk twists into a grimace as she looks up from her perch.  Blue particles melt into black stars, and then swirl overhead like a tornado, sucking the bees into it. 

“Don’t look at it!”  Zoe hollers through the storm.  But I’m already engrossed by a red cloud mushrooming out.  Lightning cracks and then Marsha falls, like a traitor from hell, straight into the chest below.

“Shut the lid!”  I yell. 

We all lunge at the chest, a pileup of flesh pinning it secure, until Zoe can bolt it down with the lock.  

The winds quiet.  The sea calms.  And Marsha is nowhere in sight.  We all stand and retreat from the chest with outstretched hands, ready for the unpredictable.  The chest shudders and a nasally whine coons from inside. 

“The sea looks hungry to me,” Jenny says.  She shoves the chest toward the side of the cliff, and we all help her scoot the cedar box over the edge.  It splashes into the dark water, in massive ringed-waves.  One of the sisters passes a smoke in honor of our successful deed.

“That’s it,” Zoe says.  “She can’t escape that.”  Yet, no sooner than she spoke, a bright light zigzags across the sky.

“Oh, shit,” I think aloud.

“Marsha?”  Jenny says.

“No,” Zoe replies.  “It’s the cops—RUN!”

2010 © Erin Cole