The Abyssal Pt. 01

'Maddy won't tell me anything. She said she will in time, but I think she's lying. I think she's waiting for me to give up and run back home.'

Katie rose to her feet, massaging her hip where Violetta had drilled her into the floor. 'Honestly,' she said, 'can you blame her? If you switched places, even knowing as little as you do now, wouldn't you rather she weren't here? For her own safety?'

Violetta wanted to get up, but could only sit on her ass. For God's sake, the little chippie was actually right.

'Anyway, I haven't left her with much choice but to tell you everything now,' Katie said. 'She might be pissed at me, but she's pissed at me anyway, our time together hasn't been exactly hunky-dory. But we can't wait on this any longer, you have a lot to learn and—'

She had no time to finish before the iron door swung open, and Katie was thrown violently off her feet.

Interlude: Lauren

You've been waiting for me to show you magic. I know, I can see it in your eyes. You're a practical girl, and what I've been showing you is practical magic, the kind of practice that witches use in everyday life. It's what I told you is that mixture of chemistry and psychology and earth magic that affects us humans on a kind of unconscious level. It's the magic created by the handmaids and nurse maids of to help them better care for their charges during days when technology and real medical knowledge were scarce. This is important, don't get me wrong, it's the basis for everything we do, the foundation of who we are.

But I know you want to see more, you want to see the magic that goes beyond the realm of possibility. Only it doesn't really exist because in all of existence, in all of the worlds, anything is possible. Anything, and this is what you have to open your mind to above all. Anything and everything is possible, Maddalena.

I'm telling you this because what I'm about to show you might frighten you. In fact, seeing what I have to show you without any kind of warning might scare the living shit out of you. And I don't want you to be afraid; I want you so badly to trust me... and to love me like I love you.

This is hard for me, so very, very hard you see, because I've been here before. With Jakey's father. He was under my care and protection as well, but I failed him. I let him slip from me for—for moments. We were lost in the woods—I won't even tell you why or how we were there—and when we found our way again, we stopped to rest. And we made love. Because I was a horny college girl and he was beautiful... and because I loved him. Not all that different from why I'm here with you now.

I can't help but think if I had been a little less greedy that night, he'd still be here but, well, that's it. We made love and it was wonderful and I fell asleep afterwards. The creatures from the other side, they lured him away from me. They wanted power he didn't even know he had, power he had lived with for years without knowing it. A gift from his true love, his first and only girlfriend from high school. She was to him what I never was, and she gave him something I couldn't. She was a witch too, and she transferred her power to him, suspecting, or maybe knowing, that her days were numbered.

She never had the chance to tell him about what she had done, and that's why I'm telling you now. Because I've done the same for you. I've done the same for you, Maddalena.

I've given you everything I have.

Chapter 17

Katie screamed as she was flung against the wall, driven there by some force that could not be seen. Violetta was frozen on the spot, gazing stupidly at the blonde girl now hanging from the wall as if attached by velcro. Katie's mouth was curled in a sneer of pain, but her eyes were open and furious.

'Violetta,' Katie hissed, 'get the fuck out of here!'

'No, Violetta,' a man's voice, somehow familiar, boomed from the doorway, 'please stay.'

A senseless babble of unfamiliar words in an unfamiliar tongue came streaming from Katie's lips and Violetta could feel something pass through the room following them, a change in sound, a change in atmosphere, something. Everything felt highly electrified for a short moment, and then the large iron door slammed shut violently. The man, not much more than a shadow from Violetta's point of view, shot his hands out suddenly. She was certain the bones in his fingers would be shattered—whatever had closed the door had done it with tremendous force—but the door only jolted to a stop in his impossibly strong hands.

The man shoved the door open again just enough to slip through before it slammed shut behind him, making the walls shake with the impact.

'How very rude,' he said, his tone rife with amusement. Now Violetta recognized him as the man she had run into on the street, the strange man with the scent of dead sea, which he brought into the room with him. As he stepped out of the shadows, Katie cursed and struggled as she hung from the wall.

Violetta finally found the will to jump to her feet. She ran to Katie, grabbed her hand. The girl tried to shake her off.

'Get away from here, Violetta,' she said, not much strength left in her voice. 'I can hold him off long enough. It'll be a waste if we both die.'

If we both die, Violetta thought, God, can this really be happening?

'Now, now, ladies,' the man said, 'is all this whispering and secret-keeping really necessary? We are all friends here.'

'You get the fuck out of here,' Violetta said, frantically yanking at Katie, who was not budging an inch against whatever was holding her there. Magic, Violetta assumed, though her logical mind rebelled against the very idea. Her logical mind wanted to refuse everything that had happened in the past twenty minutes, as a matter of fact, but here it all was, occurring before her very eyes. She was quite sure she was not dreaming, even more sure she was completely sane. Yet before her, insanity. Nightmares come to life.

'Is that how you speak to old friends?' the man said in a taunting way that made Violetta's blood boil.

'I don't even know you.'

'Ah, but I know you. I've been watching you for quite some time, you see. First from one shore, then from its opposite, and until now, except for your family, you've had nothing of interest to me. Nothing of use... until now.'

'What do you w—'

'Something has been passed to you,' he interrupted sharply, as if offended by Violetta's attempt to speak over him. 'Some little piece of your family's dark secret. Probably passed on quietly. Without your knowledge. And now you interest me. Now you have something that I want and your hussy friend cannot stand in the way of me getting it.'

The man tilted his head downward just a little, a seemingly innocuous gesture, but Katie screamed. Violetta turned back to her, saw how her head seemed to be turning against her will, how it was being turned, the cords in her neck popping. By God, she could hear those cords creaking as if they were on the verge of snapping. The strain on the girl's face was horrendous and her scream was no longer a scream but a ragged, gravelly grunt of sheer pain and exertion that was almost worse. It was the sound of someone fighting with all of their will not to die. Violetta had not heard anything quite like it before and it made her feel ill.

'Stop it,' Violetta cried, 'stop it! Stop hurting her, I'll give you whatever you want!'

And for a miracle, whatever had been happening to Katie stopped. She issued a slight cry as she turned her head back to normal, and she panted as if finishing a marathon, but there seemed to be no permanent damage. Still, tears streamed down her shining pink face.

'So,' the man said, looking around the room as if nothing had happened, 'this is where it all happens, eh? This is where the magic begins, where generations of witches gather to train and...' he sniffs the air, 'is that sex I smell? Is this... is this where you all come to lick each other's cunnies? Where the great and powerful magic users of your family come to taste of each other's juices? How absolutely wonderful, and to think of me, standing here in the middle of it all. All that magic...' and here his voice took on a kind of primal hunger, 'passed from user to user, witch to witch, and then... to me. And I eat gratefully of its sweet pulp.'

Violetta felt slow and stupid because right now she truly was slow and stupid, but this state made her laugh with a slightly frantic tone.

'What the fuck are you talking about?' she spat through nervous chuckles that felt to her like the crackling of a fire in a dry field.

The slight smile faded from the man's pale face and he gazed at her plaintively, his expression not unlike that of a disappointed parent on a mildly retarded child, and Violetta did not necessarily blame him for that look.

'Violetta, you've always been the wild one, haven't you? The one they kept in the dark, the little girl shielded from all the bad, bad things in the big bad world. Willfully ignorant and wantonly naïve. You never thought much about what could be going on behind the secrets walls of this world, did you? You have your own world that you live in alone and care not for things that happen outside of it—'

'Don't listen to him,' Katie interrupted, 'he's trying to get you to—' but she was cut off by a fresh bout of that horrible head twisting, the nauseating creaking noise coming from within her again and the gravelly, awful moan oozing through her lips.

'The things that happen outside of your world,' the man continued insistently, 'completely out of your mind. Even as your mother lay dying—'

Katie's grunts became more labored, more panicked.

'—you stayed in Los Angeles because her health and her well-being fell outside the scope of your world. And it was me, Violetta, who ate away her will and her power—'

Now a blood-curdling, high-pitched squeal sounded from Katie, and Violetta could see her head was at a horrifying angle, much too far to the left, turned up much too high. Tears and sweat coated her face, which was now a wretched and unnatural light purple shade. Violetta ran to her again, reached up and clutched the girl's head in her hands. It was burning hot and slick with moisture, but she tried to turn it, tried to relieve some of the enormous pressure being exerted on it, but her efforts were no good. It was like trying to turn the head off a bronze statue.

'—and now,' the stranger continued, once again completely oblivious to what was happening to Katie or completely uncaring, 'thanks to her, thanks to you, thanks to your sister and her little... friends, I am more powerful than I have ever been. So many of them, from the very beginning, have lined up like lambs to the slaughter, and trying to protect the world from me, they have unwittingly made me stronger. Now I am possessed of power they could never imagine except in their nightmares. Would you like to see?'

No, Violetta did not want to see, not at all. In fact, a demonstration of his—it's—power was about the last thing in this great wide world she wanted to see. Had she, Violetta, remained willfully ignorant and wantonly naïve to the possibilities of worlds beyond this, as he had accused? Yes, she had, and with any choice in the matter, she would happily remain so throughout the rest of her short and hopefully meaningless life. She would probably return to Hollywood and produce movies that would be forgotten in twenty years, make shameless amounts of money hand over fist, money to be squandered on inanity. She would live a hollow and wasteful life, and do so happily, ignorant of the fact that a day like today could ever happen.

Of course, she had no choice now, did she? She could no longer deny the secrets of this world. They had been revealed to her violently, shockingly, and would lay themselves open at her feet.

They would do so now.

* * *

When it happened, when she got her demonstration of this thing's power, the sound was reminiscent of an uncooked chicken being torn apart. It was the wet pop of cartilage and ligaments being ripped, bones being wrenched from their sockets. She saw a red gash open in Katie's neck and a jet of bright red arterial blood hit Violetta in the face. She barely noticed the hot liquid soak her, almost fascinated as she watched Katie's head being torn from her neck, as she saw how the girl's fists still clenched and her feet still kicked and her body continued to fight against the horror. And the man, the stranger, the supposed cause of this, only stood stark still and quiet, a look of vague amusement on his white face.

The last bit of flesh holding the head on its stump let go easily. Katie's body, still spewing blood, dropped heavily to the floor, but her head stayed put, now hanging directly before Violetta's eyes. It stayed so that Violetta could see the lips pull back gradually from blood stained teeth in a death grimace, which was slowly replaced by her protruding tongue. And her eyes, how the lids drooped slightly...

Violetta wretched and then vomited and then began to cry. And she had not cried in as long as she could remember, not when Roger left, not when her mother died, and not when she had left her family behind. Now though, it felt easy. When tears of panic, fright and disgust all came together, they flowed easily and without shame. They were for Katie, who suffered and died horribly at the end of an incredibly short life, for herself who would no doubt die the same way, and for her sister, for Maddalena, who would have to find out about them both and live with it. If she got to live at all, that was. Violetta cried for that as well, for her twin sister who had to live with all of this death and then die herself, either die quickly and violently, or die alone.

'Oh, no, no, no, no, my dear,' the man intoned behind her, and the anger she felt for the sadistic amusement in his voice made her cry harder, 'my dear, dear Violetta. I've showed you too much too quickly and now I've upset you. Please forgive me, my darling.'

Violetta could not control the stutter that trembled through her lips. 'Y-y-y-you... k-k-killed her!'

'Oh, no, my sweet. The human anatomy is a delicate thing. Heads fall off all the time.'

And then, for all that was good and holy, he laughed. If Violetta had never imagined evil before, she was certain she was staring it in the face now, evil in its purest and most cruel form. Here was a man, a creature, that would stop at absolutely nothing to get what it wanted, and what it wanted was completely beyond her knowledge. It loved games and riddles, and she was the object of both. Was it Violetta herself that this creature intended to have, and if so, why? He seemed to think that she had been given something, but she had, as far as she knew, been given nothing. She was nobody, nothing. Or was that what she wanted to think?

He stepped closer to her, the smell of old seawater that followed him cloying and overpowering, not at all helping her already ruined stomach. Her breath hitched and hiccupped in sharp sobs that hurt her burning throat, and the stranger seemed to enjoy this. A smile spread across his face, an awful smile full of blackened and crooked teeth, teeth that had been straight and white earlier, and now she knew these were not the teeth of a heavy smoking, tobacco chewing dock worker. These were a glimpse at something more rotten and putrid inside.

'Now, now, my dear, no reason to cry,' he cooed, and to her horror, he put his arms around her in an embrace that was meant to be soothing, but that was only repugnant. She was engulfed in his swampy smell, his slick and cool skin on her own. She shuddered violently, but he only held her tighter. 'You have what I want, Violetta,' he whispered in her ear, the gravelly sound of seashells on sand rattling in his voice. 'I'll take you away, fill you up with the sea and make you my bride.'

Violetta was struck by sudden familiarity, feeling like she had heard this before, which was quickly followed by near paralyzing dread. She tried to squirm out of his embrace, but his arms were like oak and hardly budged when she moved.

'Why don't you take what you want and leave me alone?' she asked.

'It doesn't work that way. I need you, Violetta, and I can offer you a life you never imagined. I can offer you power beyond reckoning in a world where power and magic are worshipped. You will, Violetta, be a goddess.'

She looked up into his oil-slick eyes and shook her head. 'I don't want to be a goddess, I just want to be home, I just want go home and be normal.'

The stranger sighed in disappointment and his arms tightened into a vice around her. Her lungs were constricted, and gray spots quickly appeared before her eyes.

'Then your only option,' he said, 'is death.'

And though a shock of red pain surged through her body, she was somehow able to find the air to scream.

* * *

A lot of things happened in a blurred sequence of events in Violetta's mind. The pain, like steel nails being hammered into various parts of her spine and her brain, was a revelation, the kind of sensation that every pain in her life had led up to. Everything else was a rehearsal; this was the big show. Perhaps the most brilliant characteristic of this pain, aside from the intensity, was that it did not seem to be stopping, or even waning. Every moment was a thrash of brilliant stars, an infinite cosmos of suffering. She wondered when her senses would overload with the pain and make her mercifully pass out, and yet moment after moment, it was not happening. She had screamed in the beginning, but found she could not do so now, her mouth only hanging open in silent agony, drool running from her lips.

The stranger let her go and she dropped to the floor, barely feeling the impact through the pain that engulfed her. She could only lie still and silent as thousands of screws continued turning, digging deeper and deeper into her body.

'You see what I can do with just a touch,' the stranger said. 'I can stop it at any time, of course, but I like the thought that you might learn something from this. Perhaps you're learning something right now, about yourself, about your limitations.'

The screws turn tighter and tighter, and while the pain did not exactly intensify—it was already as bad as it could be—the feeling of pressure grew stronger, and Violetta's eyeballs began throbbing in her head. A gush of warm blood rushed from her nostrils; she could taste its metallic tang on her tongue. He was not planning on tearing her head off like he had done to Katie, but crushing her alive in some invisible vice. This, she knew, would not be pretty, she only wished she would pass out soon and die quickly.

Only, wasn't there something he wanted from her? And hadn't he given her the impression that she needed to be alive to be of any use to him? If she was here and she was alive, why didn't he just take what he needed rather than torturing her? She was more than willing—and she believed she had made this perfectly clear—that she would give him whatever he was looking for.

'We can go on like this forever, Violetta,' he said, though there was something in his voice, a kind of urgency, that suggested to her he might be lying. She could hear it in spite of the pain, and it gave her hope that something in all of this might not be going exactly the way he expected. He was waiting for her to give something up, but she couldn't, she did not even know what he was looking for, what she had. He must have thought she was lying, trying to hide something, thus the torture, yet he knew he could not kill her, otherwise her head would be on the floor next to Katie's. It was a seemingly endless dilemma and here they were dancing around the middle of it, here she was on the floor racked with pain, definitely on the receiving end of the short stick in the situation.