Vulture

“Your star’s the brightest tonight, V. You know what to do,” announces in a stealthy hiss Sorcerer Ophiuchus’ voice from within a small serpent rolled onto V’s wrist who stands in the vacant backyard of the circus, practicing fire-breathing, holding a bottle of oil in one hand and wearing a glove of metal claws in the other.

Sans an infinitesimal tremor of hesitation, V’s throat jostles, and her mouth spurts oil that flares rocketing into fire spreading on the infinite dark face of the sky. As the transient cloud of fire moulds itself into a momentary large heart, her whiskey eyes glow, almost swallowing her pupils, and she hashes an approaching cockroach under her leather-strapped sandal. “I’ll follow my heart,” she responds, gazing at the sky.

One Week Ago

“I deciphered your birth chart last Saturday, for it was a moonless night, and Devil be praised, my star was the brightest then! Most of your planets cluster in the lower hemisphere—the Southwestern hemisphere—Subjectivity blended with Freedom. Most of your battles are the inner ones. Your South Note is Leo, and the North, Aquarius. Ignoring your Sun Sign and Moon Sign, your Rising Sign is of a dreamer and an outstanding circus performer,” Sorcerer Ophiuchus elicits from her study.

Confused, V asks, “I don’t understand. What do I do?”

“Be glad. I can’t enchant fate. You have all the liberty to create.”

“And?”

“Your fate—you create it for yourself, can form a syzygy with your ‘self,’” Sorcerer Ophiuchus’ dark protruding eyes leap from the cards at the ground to meet V’s, and she continues. “All you need to do is to scramble these cards enchanted by me especially in your favour and choose one to find your calling. Remember to separate the light—soul: your nemesis, from the dark—body: your redeemer. The serpents’ venom can now do you no harm. You have the essence of my soul now. Your destination awaits you, V.”

V does as told, and ogles the face of the card in her hand. The card hisses, and she discerns a serpent’s stomach slither on her palm and fingertips while her hand holds it.

“The hiss! That hiss! Eureka! You’ve discovered it!” remarks the sorcerer, and she explains. “It’s a sign. Always listen out for the hisses. Chase your dream. If your dream be your passion—your fixation, your wish will be a reality!”

“Any wish? I want my husband to regain his sight,” her heart implores with an earnestness of a pure soul.

“Any dream, but mind you, you must submit to your desire at impulse.”

“Arousing! Palatable! It smells magical! What a cadence in the rhythm of the serenades of my desire!” V chortles with avarice and continues while beaming at the sorcerer. “Ophiuchus! Look!”, confronts her with the face of the card she had flipped as per her intuition.

The card has a picture of an open window with sprays of blood adorning the windowpane in random patterns, and a vista of a graveyard partially obscured with ebony smoke from where a dusty hand raising up can be seen. The sorcerer scrutinises the card.

No sooner does the sorcerer poise her hand in the bonfire that was fringed by cracked ashen sconces than the plumes of its flames turn sanguine giving off smoky blood petals. “Hail, V!” her husky voice creaks, and her eyes widen with a sense of vague estrangement of V’s fate, “Hail! Hearken to the hiss of the serpent in my hand!” Her hand shivers. “It assents! It assents to blood! Blood is your calling!”

“Sounds stupid, no? Like, it could be butchery, dying, or even—”

“Follow your heart!” interrupts the sorcerer disconcertingly.

V gets up from the ground with an air of irksome hauteur, her glossy conic pendant heaves between her collarbones, and she glares at the sorcerer. “You make it sound as if it weren’t obvious. I can’t believe I drove all the way to this stink bomb of yours to hear a freaking follow-your-heart nonsense. It’s just—”

“Do you ever bother to think? Just do whatever­ you feel like. Don’t let go of the impulse.”

“But that’s—”

“Do as told.”

Present Night

“Let’s begin the show! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our fearless dragon, V!” announces the host, and the halls resonates with immense applause and shouts.

V hears her name being called out, slips off her metal claws, scurries from the backyard to the backstage, enters as the music plays, and performs. The fire she lets out of her mouth amazes children, but they shout, “MJ’s better!”

Contortionists enter from the sides, rolling to the front, stand. They turn and twist their back, display their static and dynamic balance, coupling their performance with a dance, and form human pyramid. Escape artists follow.

V then comes with her metal claws and stabs the wooden slab with the blades, from behind, to which a person is chained. The audience gets scared as the act heralds a painful murder full of stabs, but nothing like this happens. After the performance, she leaves the big top and follows a performer.

“Hey, listen, MJ!”

“Oh? V? What is it?”

“Could you please drop me off to a big top afar? It’s in a secluded area, and I haven’t got my car tonight.”

“Oh sure!”

V guides him the way, MJ drives, and they park outside a cemetery in a middle of nowhere. “You said that it’s a secluded place. Sounds pretty crowded to me,” he chuckles.

“Come along. I’ll show you something.”

“Oh no, please. I stay away from ghosts.”

“Holy shit! What’s that?” V screams horrendously, pointing in the direction opposite to MJ.

“Oh? What?” he looks there, and V clasps his nape, the serpent on her wrist touches his nape, turning his nape poisonous blue, he sees phosphenes on attempting to force his eyes open, but he passes out. She drags him into the foggy cemetery. Near a grave, with a slash of the metal claws, she rips his shirt open.

With countless pricks and slashes made by her metal claws, she punctures his abdomen into that of a glass sponge! Her claw-like teeth manoeuvre through his perforated flesh ripping it apart; her teeth seem like wild fangs of a lion, a poignant blade of a butcher, a serrated metallic spear piercing his body—her teeth—a nightmare! Another rip! Her metal claws slash the air with a whipping sound! She drools and grins excitedly at the arousing sight of his tattered flesh. “Tantalising!” she remarks. The razor-like claws lacerate through his abdomen scooping out bits of flesh and ladles of blood. “Orgiastic! I’ve never been wrong when it comes to you!” exclaims she with a moan, “You belong to no one else but me! Your essence is now mine! I have all the dominance over you! Blood is my calling! You are the first step in the divine ladder to the pursuit of my reveries!” She makes a deep gash in the middle of his chest that tilts towards the location of his heart.

“Mine! You’re all mine! Your essence, your body, your eyes, and oh!” she licks her lips, “That strong heart! Ohm how it stops trembling when it alights in my hands!” while snuffling his bloody heart impatiently, “Amatory!” she splutters, licking it—her mouth looking like a brim-full glass of blood. She gazes at his body with serpentine eyes, attempting to conjecture until when she can consume her prey. With the perfection of an eagle’s eye, she scans his blood-drenched body—cut open from the chest—the gash resembling a crucifix, some of the left upper ribs amputated from the breastbone having a well of blood dug. Stooping down, she rolls her tongue over his chest and sweeps her lips onto the gash, “What a delight to my palate!” dunking her tongue into the gash, discerning his breastbone with tip of her tongue, “Oh divine! Oh, so divine!” she vacillates her tongue into that ocean of blood and drinks from it, “A taste descended from heavens! What an unearthly flavour! You were especially concocted for MY tongue to savour!”

She nibbles a bit of flesh from his chest. Champ. Chomp. Gobble. Swallow. Another bite. Chomp. Swallow. “Woah! How chewy! Rubbery, but tasty nonetheless! What a ripple of spark do I feel! Real ecstasy!” she says with a wave of wonder in her voice. After spending a night eating his flesh and drinking his blood from the abdomen, chest, and neck, she beheads him, rips off skin and eyes from his skull ineptly, and picks it up, slipping it into her bag. She rushes back to his car as she hears a hiss from the serpent on her wrist, and the thrushes in the trees sing to welcome the break of dawn.

“You home, V? I didn’t hear your footsteps last night. I thought you been sleeping,” asks her husband. V hugs him and says, “Life’s so busy, my hydra, but I’m glad now that I’m making the best out of it.”

“May the odds be ever in your favour, my juggler.” He fumbles for her cheek and caresses it.

“Come on, K. I’ve told you a million—”

“Why does your face feel sticky?”

“Uh…it’s just paint.”

“Uh-huh? Smells like a rotten rat’s carcass. Anyway, you know, V, I miss the sight of you. I miss our teenage—how we talked, how I’d paint things for you, how I’d admire your eyes, and how we eloped!”

V’s eyes well up; she hugs him again. “I miss all that too. Just pray for me, and I’ll find the best ophthalmologist for you, I promise.”

“Aww I always pray for you. By the way, did the audience shower you with greenbacks this time too while you performed?” he asks excitedly. “Oh, say yes! Say yes!”

“No.”

“Why not? Aren’t you their fav?”

“People think MJ’s better.”

“Aww…but you deserve your fair share of appreciation for your art, too. By the way, who’s MJ? You never told me about him,”

“That has nothing to do with you.”

“Since when did you start hiding things from me?”

V remains silent.

“You know, it’s okay to feel jeal—”

“What’s wrong with you, eh? Are you out of your mind? I think this blindness of yours has started to affect your useless mind too. You need money, you’ll get it, so you better not be such a leech to me!” She slams the door behind her as she leaves the room.

“I’ll find out what’s up with you, V,” he snivels as tears trickle down his cheeks.

The Next Day

“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen…”

Screams and shouts at the big top. V sits among the audience following her heart, and she notices a provocative woman. Galvanic! she thinks to herself. The serpent hisses. “A sign! I’m a step further now! What an incarnation of Adamatism would she be! What undulant patterns are the flanks! What slenderness! What protuberance! What a perfection in the suave shapeliness of that svelte figure! Who says eating human flesh is a sin? I’m merely reducing the amount of sinners!” her essence whispers, worming its way into her heart.

She circuits around her in a spiral motion, finally confronting her. Their tête-à-tête begins.

“You look pretty enthralling,” says V, eyeing at her from head to toe.

The woman chuckles. “I’m Pink. Wanna come over to my place?”

V’s eyes widen seeing her prey inviting her. “V. Why not?”

When they both reach her room, their faces appear rosy. Tons of photons of pink light pervade in the room. V places her bag in a chair.

“Looks like we’re locked in a pig hide!” exclaims V, and laughs.

“Respect the choices! Anyway, follow me. Let’s party!” She pours wine in a Burgundy, and extends it to V who says, “Just a sec.”

V fetches her bag, and wears her metal claws. She uses her serpent to make her prey faint, thinks of MJ, and does the same to Pink who is almost dozing off now. V’s eyes seem like that of a vulture—shapely hails of whiskey glowing with a peculiar menacing pith of gamma—excruciating; she was like a vulture—obsessed with circling around her target, fixated on smearing her face with stale blood, gobbling lumps and lumps of flesh and offal too, so swiftly as if they were morsels; indeed, she was a vulture—picking on the dead, the fragile, the ailed—all carrions.

Lastly, she beheads her, and slips her head into her bag. Her essence screeches her heart from within and says, “I’m now the demon of dominance and Venusian impulse! Thanks to the sorcerer. I’ll now become the god of all circus art! I’ll be a billionaire! I’ll present these sconces to Ophiuchus for the gift of passion she has given me.”

She exhales a breath in her palm. “Does my breath stink? Oh, maybe because the creature I just ate was a trashcan!” She heads to Pink’s wardrobe, changes her attire, and leaves.

This goes on with frequency for about a month. If no corpse is found beheaded every other day, a grave is surely dug, and the corpse resting in its coffin is found beheaded, having a thousand slashes and gashes, bitten and blood-smeared.

A Month Later

K wakes up to magic! To his surprise, he sees floaters. This astonishes him, and he exclaims, “Damn! I’ll sing to my V today!” He had stopped singing long ago—ever since he was not able to see whom he would sing for: V.

“What’s this stench? Gross!”

He looks around and is dumbfounded to see blood-blotted clothes scattered here and there. “What’s been happening in here?” He sees cloth bags thrown on the floor and exclaims with disgust and disbelief, “Dang! What the—.”  The phone rings. He rushes to the phone, dodging the mess, and picks up.

“Mr. K?’

“Yeah. Who’s there?”

“My condolences at your loss, young man.”

“What loss?”

“Your widowed mother passed away a day before yesterday, and—”

“What the hell? Why didn’t you—“

“I live in the neighbourhood. I got your number just now from one of your acquaintances. My wife and I had arranged her funeral.”

Jim’s wits begin to dim with intensity of successive shocks. He retrospects how he had eloped with V leaving his parents behind. V was an orphan. Running away was never a big deal for her. He falls silent.

“Mr. K? Do you hear me?”

“I do.”

“So, I was saying that I’m sorry to tell you that your mother’s corpse was found exhumed, slashed, and half-eaten.”

K’s head begins to explode with a vehement ache, and he bursts into a fit of tears. “Huh? How did that happen? Where is she now?”

“So…yeah…tragic is that even the offal was missing, and the slashes were made by a blade. Must be some necrophiliac cannib—”

K hangs up.

He heads towards the kitchen to drink some juice, trying to stay calm and patient. He enters the kitchen, sees the floor stained with dried blood and shrivelling stomachs and intestines.

“The hell? Looks like a butcher’s shop!”

He opens the fridge and shrinks away with disgust on seeing a bowl of blood in it. Curiosity pushes him to check the freezer, and boom! More than a dozen human heads!

He makes a call via telephone, and while talking, flops to the floor with a sudden heartache.

The struggles were over. Time was petrified. It had fallen into an abyss of reverberant shrieks of despairing apathy. Not a single emotion to ornament the face for it was an ocean—still, silent, but deep—deeper than the meaning of life, deeper than the pain of death, deeper than the profundity of heart. His eyes were now metamorphosing into ice that melted in guttate secretions on his temples. The moment was timeless, empty, reminiscent of life, herald to goodbyes of breaths that flowed through him in and out as a bird in and out of its nest throughout the day. The Reaper had now alighted beside him.

V reaches home, slams the door behind her, and locks it. She sits in the couch. “K?”

“According to our records, every funeral in the town has been followed by a news of exhumation of a corpse. Lists of people murdered, and corpses excavated outnumber 25 in one month! Every corpse in the town has a poisonous blue mark on its nape.”

V turns around, saying, “K?”

Before she could stand, cops from behind the couch trap her, and cuff her hands. “Let me go! What did I do?”

“He told us everything, young lady.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have all the evidence against you, you bloody cannibal!”

“The hell? Where’s my husband?”

“In heaven.”

“You can’t kill my husband! I loved him! I want him back!” she snivels and cries. “How dare you—”

The head cop shoots her in the temple.

Fade out. Light.

Flashback one:

“You know, you’ve changed, V,” says K gloomily.

“So? Everyone changes with time.”

“I miss the past. Is there anything you’re hiding from me?’

Flashback two:

“V, do you still love me when I’m blind?”

“Of course.”

She limps.

Flashback three:

“I can’t believe we made it to this place, K.”

“Leaving behind a family isn’t easy, you know.”

“Leaving behind an orphanage neither.”

Flashback four:

“I’ll now become the god of all circus art! I’ll be a billionaire! I’ll hand these sconces to Ophiuchus for the gift of passion that she has given me.”

She falls.

Flashback five:

K, MJ—her first prey. Ophiuchus. Serpent—her essence.

Flashback six:

K’s mother’s corpse—her last prey.

Last:

“You’ve not changed, V. I just couldn’t fathom a side so dark of yours.”

Breath abandons her body. Her Light leaves her, her Dark remains. Her essence becomes a part of Sorcerer Ophiuchus.