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Day Eight: Wednesday, 26 July / Friday, July 12, 2001 – Dark Carousel III

I resist at first, but Laurabell-Beaujolais Grausamkeit leans in and brushes her lips across mine. I follow. She leads me past what I now know are the stage left stairs. Nobody sees us. We’re among picnic tables, turning right and going down three steps to a shadowed terrace. She draws me to the darkest corner, furthest from all sources of light. In the moment, goosebumps and arousal fight for dominion.

Re-visiting the memory, I’m galvanized by fear:

We’re on the rooftop picnic terrace above the mens’ dressing room.

As if on cue, a sound floats from the trees on the dark slope beyond:

“Ma-Ma … Ma-MA …”

It’s like a whisper; it could be mistaken for a night bird. I didn’t notice it at the time. My impulse, in the clarity of hindsight, is to turn and run. Only for some reason, I can’t flex this memory. I’m stuck. And Laurabell-Beaujolais Grausamkeit is kissing me, so it’s much easier to just give in.

“Close your eyes,” she says. I do. She says, “The moon is waning, did you know?”

“Yes,” I say. “My mom’s an astrologer – ”

She stops my mouth with another kiss, then says, “The moon is waning and the dust will blow.” Then she knees me in the balls.

I gasp, eyes popping open, as she blows something in my face. It’s powder or dust and I feel little bits of it get in my eyes and on my lips. I’m gasping, choking, sputtering. I can feel my eyes swelling up. The urge to rub them is overwhelming. “What the fuck was that?!” I say, raspy, coughing.

“The webs of fate have all been spun,” she says, and she sounds ecstatic. Euphoric. She puts something on her tongue and kisses me, shoving her tongue into my mouth as she pushes me to the cold hard concrete. I’m trying not to cough into her mouth, but whatever is on her tongue is in my mouth now, and it’s crunchy. Like, bugs crunchy.

At the time, I thought she was trying to be kinky. Clumsy, embarrassing, potentially fatal kinky, but still — sex.

Pulling up my shirt, she breaks the kiss. Knowing what I know now, I realize she isn’t really trying to undress me. The concrete is cold and rough on my low back. I want to tell her this is really uncomfortable, but it feels like my throat is closing up.

“Ma … ma?” from the shadows in the trees just beyond the terrace. It sounds excited.

She’s whispering, grinding against me, and I hear her words this time: “This day’s the last you’ve seen the sun. This day’s the last you’ve taken bread. This day’s your last, your end’s begun. The dark moon grows, your breath’s unspun, the webs are strong, you’ve lost the sun, your lust is crumbs, the bread is mold – ”

I want to tell her I’m surprised at her use of internal rhyme, because she’s strictly an ABAB kind of girl — but I’m distracted by the click of something metallic. I try to open my eyes. They’re swollen mostly shut. In spite of that, I can see movement now among the branches, in the darkness beyond the terrace. A shape is coming closer.

Laurabell-Beaujolais Grausamkeit puts a cold, sharp blade against my low back, on the left side. She says, “I promise you will Not.” The blade cuts into me. “Get.” I struggle back from her, trying to push her off, but her fingers are pressing, rubbing a stinging substance into the slice. “Old!”

Even with my eyes swollen mostly shut, I can see something strange in her face: her left eye has something shiny in it. Something … golden. I marvel at it a moment before the shape in the darkness raises up above and behind her. It looks like a fleshy scorpion’s tail, but all wrong. Unnatural and revolting. It jiggles as it moves with such wrongness that I sit up fast and straight – smacking my head into Laurabell-Beaujolais Grausamkeit’s nose.

She cries out, clutching her face.

Electric light floods the terrace. The thing of wrongness is gone. Blood is pouring down Laurabell-Beaujolais Grausamkeit’s face.

“What the hell’s going on here?” I hear a familiar voice. “Laurabell? Is that you?