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CALLASSA CALLASSA
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Ursula Lawrence
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For as long as Ursula Lawrence occupies the attic room at the Old Lantern, the morning light in its dialogue with the air, will enter with myriad moods into her space. Thus, it will harbour the beauty emergent, the touching that becomes colour to her eyes, the beyond, the magisterial symphony, silent, omnipresent, ne’er to be born, nor e’er to pass away
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Extract No. I
At the Graveyard
After taking the rear entrance I saw there were many graves. There was a road which traversed the side and likely the one that had brought me here. The first stone was that of a girl Josey Wilkes, who had died in 1879 at age ten, of the effects of bleeding due to the amputation of the fore finger and thumb of her right hand. She’d really died of poisoning. The second, that of Kathleen Herbert who’d died in 1878, at age eighteen months. There was no cause of death stated. The girl had actually died of malnutrition. The stones did not offer happy reading.
I walked on, ignoring of their message, even though it were as though they were reaching out to me, reaching with grasping hands.
“Hello there,” the calling voice had said.
I turned, having already been aware that there was someone behind. Luckily for him he hadn’t come to stand too close. It was the same Vicar who I’d seen earlier standing at the door of the church. Apparently there was no ceremony after all. Now, I was wondering whether he’d followed me, but what of the parishioners?
“Hi,” said I, in reply.
He was smiling brightly and proffering his hand.
“John,” he announced and catching my eye. “John Blake.”
“Ursula Lawrence,” I told him and while taking the hand offered. His shaking of mine was vigorous and overly long. His hand was warm and soft.
“I’m the Vicar here, at Saint Biddulphs.”
“Yes,” was my reply to his statement of association. In view of the plural was there more than one Biddulph? “I was just taking a look at the grave stones,” I told him and so to disengage myself from his gaze. “I was at the pub over there, having a drink.”
“I saw you,” he declared, as though his having seen me was a great achievement. “Might you be a local? I don’t think I’ve seen you before. If I had, I’d know.”
The question of why he was so receiving of me had become paramount in my mind. He was pleasant in manner and though a vocal dramatist, was not threatening to my mood in the least. I was fast becoming confused. He was the same height as me, with dark brown hair. His accent was not suggestive of the North, rather, was that of the west country, perhaps Devon. He’d seen the gold pentagram hanging from my neck and not outwardly reacted to its symbol at all, nor to the counter convention of my attire. I was attired in black, as was he, almost. I was wearing black lipstick. I was trying to ‘see’ into him, but the laden dynamics around what he was in relation to me, had gotten in my way.
He smiled almost continually and his enthusiasm began affecting me, in a surface manner.
“I was teaching a course at the church,” he told me. “But you’ll never guess what, I left all the materials at home, so had to call the whole thing off. Silly me.”
“I see,” was my reply.
What to do was my dilemma. Yes, what? Was it to say good bye and walk away, or engage him in conversation? But how could I? How?
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Extract No. II
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. . . and worst of all and most certainly (besides disapproving of my bi-sexuality), he will argue through the sanctity of a monotheism and its plastic God, that all humans, irrespective, are immortal. What pewk. What shit. What French!
“Ursula,” said he. “That’s a very pretty name if you don’t mind me saying so. It has much of the Victorian about it. Frilly dresses, large hats and long gone elegance, that sort of thing.”
I was wondering whether he was an upper-class twit, with a job that demanded little if any of his potential? He had that well-educated bearing. He was very different for this quality than those I knew. Still, I was unsure how to continue the conversation, in fact whether to continue it at all.
“May I enquire as to your provenance?” he asked.
He obviously wasn’t going to leave me standing alone, so I told him, knowing full well he’d ask where it was (my provenance) and what it was like there and so, even if he already knew.
“Well,” I began. “I’m not really local. I’m from Little Hampton. I have an apartment there, on the upper floor of a pub, the Old Lantern. I guess it would be about seventy miles or so away. I was just taking a drive and I got lost. I’m not sure where I am.” He was listening attentively and appeared to savour my smiling admission that I was lost. I almost continued and asked him if he had nothing to do, but the question would have appeared hostile. There was little point in being that way. Not yet. His dog collar seemed to me an uncomfortable accessory to wear, that and a pointless artefact.
“Anglican Church,” he pronounced, conscious of my attention on his attire.
“Yes,” was my answer. There wasn’t anything more to say about it.
“Look,” he said, obviously eager to keep the conversation alive. “I can show you the grave stones. There’s a few that might be interesting. I…I…was going to ask you if you would like to share afternoon tea? I hope you don’t mind me being so forward Ursula, dear Ursula, but you see I brewed a fresh pot for the class and it’ll all go to waste.”
What I wanted to say was that it was the last thing I would like to do. Additionally, that tea would make me need to pee with a velocity out of character for a cultured woman, har, har. Where he was gesturing we go for the tea held no fascination for me either. I was likely, nay certainly, the last person on planet earth he ought to share tea with.
“That would be very nice, John,” I said and wishing that I hadn’t. Why on earth had I? This was a question I was asking myself while standing there, looking at him.
“Splendid what!” was his response to my agreement about the tea. “Do you mind if I ask if you’re of a denomination?”
“No, not really,” said I, as he began leading me toward the road that was likely a shorter route to the church.
“Well, I can tell you a bit about the church,” he said. “It’s over two hundred years old now, as you’ll see. The roof has holes and the bell is falling from its housing. We’ll get by.”
“I’m sorry to hear about the roof,” I said.
“Oh yes, and we need supports outside the glass windows. We’re having garden parties to raise the money. But you know what it’s like.”
At the road, a passenger in a car waved to him. There was no footpath and he’d taken to walking behind me. No more vehicles past by us so his over-concern was unnecessary. This was a rural backwater and it was likely everyone knew each other. I’d become preoccupied with the question whether he was married, or had a girlfriend? He was greatly interested in a stranger, which suggested he had neither.
Who goes chatting up girls in graveyards and offers them tea? Perhaps there was nothing to see in him? Perhaps my powers were being curtailed, for a while?
As I had assumed while at the graveyard, the church wasn’t so far away. Now there was a path and also people approaching.
“Can I introduce you to Miss. Ursula Lawrence,” he volunteered to the passers-by. They were an elderly couple whom he obviously knew well and who were going to ask anyway.
“I’m delighted to meet you,” replied the woman.
The man who’d been scrutinizing me and not indiscreetly said,
“What a lovely girl, John. It’s very nice to meet you, Miss. Lawrence. Are you from here? What do you do? ‘Have you known the Reverend for
long? Hmm?”
I was taken aback by the stream of questions and elected to answer only the last one. “Sir, we’ve just met actually. We were discussing the church.”
“The Church! Arrr, was his reply. “It needs a lot of work.”
He was being beckoned by his wife to carry on their walk. He wanted to remain. He wanted to subtly ask me if I had designs on the Reverend. There was more I could see. My powers hadn’t been curtailed as far as this man was concerned. He was seeing me naked in his mind. Behind his necessary facade, he often thought of naked young women, forcibly held still, equally forcibly sexed. The two elderly residents bade me good bye. I was pleased by their going. The man would constantly be a source of questions without answers.
“I’m sorry about that,” came John’s apology. “The Farquars are such a sweet couple and do give generously. He was in the Army, you know, a Captain actually, in Aden.”
I wasn’t listening to him. I was asking myself why I could know the old man’s psyche, but not his. This was not the norm and it ruffled me.
“It’s Saxonby, by the way.”
His comment served to focus the greater of my attention back onto him.
“Oh,” was all I said in response to the name of the place where I was.
“Where we are my dear, you said you didn’t know.”
“Oh, yes.”
I laughed because the admission had made me appear vulnerable and he some kind of rescuer.
The church door wasn’t bolted. Upon the door’s bulky and overly wide shape was a wooden cross. It was at the height of my eyes. Within, the church supported a held still fusty odour. There was also dust in the air. I was sensitive about such things. The windows were tall and their coloured glass was speckled with holes. Above, there were lines of painted wooden ornament of biblical association. The altar was extremely ornate and was of three carved scenes. There was a brass cross standing in the centre. The altar had three steps higher than the aisle. He was watching my reactions as I walked and as my head moved here and there as different items caught my eye. It was dark in here and this had the effect of making the space appear smaller, the ornament closer. My shoes made sounds upon the stone floor as I moved from the long carpet that lined the aisle. I moved because there was a carving of a rat in the side of a line of pews.
“A trademark,” he told me.
I walked toward the altar, leaving him behind. After having taken the three steps I turned and stood with my back facing the altar and cross. I was gazing at the lines of pews, empty of their congregation. I was facing him, as he walked quickly toward me.
“I say, Ursula, what do you think of it all?”
He was standing there, eager for an answer. I met his eye, there was tenderness within and it pricked something within me.
I said nothing to him. In my mind I held the statement that
I thought nothing whatsoever. That not only did the church have no significance to me, but it was of no significance.
“Thank you Reverend, for showing me,” was my reply.
He was quick to answer. I thought it was because he suspected I wish to leave. I did.
“The tea,” he announced, as though to keep me here.
He’d hurried up the steps. There were doors at the rear of the altar. There were stairs that I hadn’t seen and they led to a pulpit. He turned on a light and opened one of the doors. He turned on another light and beckoned me inside.
The room was small, equally as fusty and was a relic of the past in its every facet. There were tall bookcases, an old table, cupboards; boxes piled one atop the other. Upon the table there stood a large teapot with a dent in its side. There were mugs, a milk jug and sugar bowl. Whoever used the room was forgiving, was my reaction.
He didn’t close the door. When he bade me to sit it was so I could view the church interior and perhaps that I wouldn’t feel intimidated because others could see into the room, should they enter the church. He was sitting too and fumbling with the teapot.
“Ursula,” he said while pouring tea into one of the mugs. “What do you do, my girl?”
I was scrutinising him for his reaction to what I was going to say.
“My husband died two weeks ago”. A fact which was true, but not by any stretch of the imagination had the moron left the planet via a conventional way.
“I am not doing anything at the moment.” I told him.
He’d slammed down the pot as though it were about to explode. “I’m sorry…..Really very sorry. Please, please, accept my condolences. It must be…..”
I cut him short.
“No,” I said. “Don’t. He was a very cruel man. It’s better for me this way.”
He was passing me the mug and staring with an intensity that was disconcerting. I wanted to tell him more. That the man had been a sadistic psychopath, but didn’t.
“You can tell me,” he said and in a manner that I thought was inappropriate, not just because of the truth of my husband’s cruelty, but that I and he were total strangers. My life was personal. So was his.
“I’d rather not,” was my reply. “Do you mind if I have sugar and milk? Please.”
He moved the milk and sugar closer to me, then reached for the only spoon, an oversized and stupid looking thing that made me laugh when I saw it. He nodded to my laughter and was admiring of the long and shapely line of my legs. I knew that in truth, he was pleased by me not being married.
“Well, this is where we store our books. See, we have quite a collection going on. We were bequeathed quite a lot by other parishes, you know.”
“Yes.”
The tea was cold and stewed. No one would expect a guest to drink tea like this. The pot was full too. He poured himself a mug. Its grossly deteriorated state had no impact on him.
“I do like your nails,” he said.
“Thank you.”
Again he was admiring of me. He’d watched me walk down the aisle and while bending to see the carving. Such was natural. He was inspired by my shapely beauty.
“I’m putting my lipstick on your cup,” I said and while smiling at him. Black lipstick, a gift from my lips, yes and already I knew how he’d respond.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Please, please don’t worry about it.”
There was a large Bible at the end of the table. It was open and the pages appeared to be greatly embellished. He wasn’t going to ask me what I thought of it, nor much else because he was overcome by the extent of my beauty and presence. I was more than the whole institution could be if not only because I represented the consummation that was human life’s fullness and meaning. With him upon and inside my body he would lose himself completely. When I departed from here, he would think of me and nothing else. I knew this much. This injection of womanly beauty, warmth and mystery into his musty adored and cloistered world would grow and eventually take him over completely. Thus, I was a literal devastation.
“I say,” he began. “I was wondering … whether you played tennis? I mean, I’m a cricket man myself … and I know … I’m a nosey bounder, really.”
“Yes, I can play,” was my response. I could also play cricket too and soccer. Rugby had always eluded me, but I’d give that my best too, if asked.
“Spiffing! Listen, Ursula, I’m so very pleased with this chance encounter. Do you like music? Do you? What kind of things do you like? You can tell me to mind my own business if you want.”
“Well I like ……”
He didn’t give me the chance to complete what I was going to say. He’d got up and was reaching beneath the table. Once retrieved, he placed the filthy looking and out of date cassette player on the table top. It was already connected up because its green light was glowing. He pressed one of its buttons.
“What is this?” I asked. The music and the voice were totally unfamiliar to me, their impact one that I would have no choice in allowing into my depthless being. The fact that I’d immediately taken a liking to it pleased me. He’d introduced me to something I actually liked. My warming for him was growing. Yes and would you believe that?
“Donna non vidi mai,” he told me. “It’s from Puccini’s opera, Tosca. The singer is Enrico Caruso. I love to listen when I’m in here. It helps me to … Well, never mind. Hey, Ursula, I’m telling you my life history! I do apologise.”
“That’s all right,” was my answer to his apology. I wanted to listen, for him to say more.
Because of the singer’s voice the tea didn’t now seem anything like as insipid as it had.
“Is it old?” I asked, because the recording certainly appeared so. There were scratches and the sound quality was very poor.
“Oh, yes, quite old,” he began to explain. “It’s one of the very first recordings. I think he was singing from behind a screen and into a tube. He had to because there was no patent on the machine at the time. This is taken from a phonograph, I mean a cylindrical recording. Isn’t that just something Ursula … Don’t you just think so?”
“So it’s older than me, then?” was my reply.
He laughed and I watched him closely. He would eat from my hand if I wished it. I liked this sensation, this, what had been born not thirty minutes ago. What to do? What to do? This was the question that had begun to cloud my thoughts. I was quickly becoming ensconced. He would want to see me again. What then? How on earth could this be? Again, I was thinking him an attractive boy, with cute and very teenage ways about him. Really, truth be told I adored the boy within the man and that, which I felt mothering toward. What of his contaminated mind though, his religious subordinating of me, to touch not even the surface of the enormity? However could I negotiate that? He was sitting closer and I liked him near.
“I live on a barge, you know, a houseboat as some call it. The old girl is moored on a canal by the old foundry. I’ve been up North for a year now. Truro’s my home. I was at Cambridge. I read ancient history … Between the odd stint of sailing and squash. I took a sabbatical and spent a year in Barcelona. I was at Sandhurst for a bash too. I’m twenty-six.”
He was moving much too quickly for me to assimilate all the details of his life. They were so very different than those of all the other people who had ever been my friends. He was waiting for a response from me.
“I’m very impressed,” was what I did say. It was true, I was.
I sat looking at him, now silent in my repose. The act of my drinking and the heavy mug a convenient barrier between myself and the man who I could so easily make worship me and I reciprocate. Yes, I knew this now, so very, very quickly to this conclusion and so surely.
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Extract No. III
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It had been when I began my return walk and in a slightly different direction that I had, without warning, made a horrifying discovery. Upon unkempt land, I stood for a short while, a place where long grass and stones had caused me to stumble. Beneath my feet and superficially buried lay the remains of a woman. Upon the woman’s face was a cellophane bag and this had caused her face to be preserved. There were more women. There were six in all, yes six, buried almost in a straight line. All of them had the same cellophane tightly drawn across their faces and fastened around their throats with tape. I knew that while frantic, gasping for air and dying, the women had been raped. The women were young, as was I. There was much more about them, made lost in torment had been they.
In what were dark, rage-filled moments, I paced the ground and tried without success to rid my mind of the terrible scenes that had, suddenly and most cruelly beset me. The scenes were horrendous and the psycho-killer as an adversary to me did spew his own rage within. I could see the man. I knew who he was. I knew where he was. My power to know had to be contained, lest I be driven insane. The scenes that I was battling with were very quickly and very effectively driving me to that point. The women had been torn from their precious time, humiliated in tortured and destroyed. This was so in abomination that knew no bounds.
I screamed into the sky and to all that was beyond, thus;
“I AM COMPLETE LOVE. I AM ALL OF EXISTENCE. I AM IMMORTAL REALM. I AM THE MOTHER AND I AM THE FATHER. I AM THE GHOST. I AM THEIR MESSENGER HERE AND I AM THEIR DEATH MAKER. I AM THEIR DEATH-MAKER. I AM THEIR DEATH-MAKER.”
Now hurting tirelessly and long, I stepped away from where the bodies of the women lay. Then I began to move away from their presence altogether. I knew that I could move even though my legs were still. Hitherto I’d held back this most uncharacteristic inclination to my body’s habit, because of the extreme difference that the ‘supernaturally’ instilled motion did display. I was being moved along very quickly and nonetheless, I was in a state of torment. This was not the first time I’d held the urge to kill a human. However, the urge was now overpowering me. There was something seeping through and it was making me confused in this most necessary and natural desire. The culprit was a Doctor, a surgeon, no less and through his actions, he actually saved the lives of women. He killed certain women because he wanted to and felt that his saving others from death offset his doing so. The ‘ungodly and ‘sin-filled’ ones he killed were in his deluded and sanctimonious vision, not worthy of life. This was to be my initiation. I was in the microcosm where good was evil. I was in that, which played itself out on a greater worldly stage. Proclamations of good intent were motivations for evil. They all were. What was I to do in my power and my glory? I was not human and whatever I did do would be indicative of this truth. It would be indicative of a power that was monstrous.
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Extract No. IV
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“I know who you are,” were the words I spat into the night. “Can you hear me? I am coming for you shortly, Doctor Jennings. Yes, I am. I am coming to visit you, because you are the point where I am to begin my mission. CAN YOU HEAR ME…..YOU, YOU IN SLEEP? I am making you know what I am. Forthwith. Forthwith…..You deluded human vermin who sees fit to degrade and murder women you deem unclean. I AM OF THE ONLY GOD, YOU CRETIN. I AM INCARNATE HERE AND I, AM THE ALL POWERFUL. I AM THE ADVERSARY, I AM ALL POWERFUL. THIS, YOU SHALL SOON KNOW AS KNOWING BE.”
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Extract No. V
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It was mid-morning of the following day. The fact of the police surveillance had not slipped my mind. This posed a danger to me and also a challenge to my cunning. The execution of the sentence passed by the Criminals Court, on Doctor Jennings held at the pub (or what of it I had in mind) would have to be most discreet. There was no point leading the police straight to the scene of my crime, if indeed ‘crime’ is what it be. Yes, a crime to they but not to me. This called for a high degree of calculation on my part and the lending of my beloved ultra-black, BMW to Maisie. The reason why Maisie was being asked to dress in my clothes and drive my car twice to Middlesborough, was not to be disclosed. This arrangement would not suffice as being adequate decoy; because those carrying out the surveillance were very sophisticated people, their abilities not to be underestimated. It wouldn’t do just to depend on Maisie’s contribution. However, the on the face of it drive up north to Middlesborough would serve as an addition to that of the ‘supernatural,’ ‘the occult’ that I would call upon in making surreptitious both my journey to and my presence at the ‘execution’ and to an extreme degree.
Today was not the execution day, this was tomorrow. This evening was to be a meeting with the condemned man, just for the Hell of it. Har. Har. He was employed at York District General Hospital and lived in Wetherby, a rural town not far away. I knew precisely where he lived. Today, I would engage the psycho-killer, the pious nut-case, as he was leaving work
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Extract No. VI
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The Occultant was wearing a black silk scull-cap. My lipstick was black and my eyeliner too was black. The clothes I was wearing were black. The hair of my blonde wig was long and luscious. This was the car park of the hospital and I was leaning upon a white Cadillac. My own borrowed car was parked well away from the building. I blended in to the darkened space. His vehicle was a left-hand drive and because of its size, I judged it unsuitable for this country and an odd choice. It was American and so was its owner. There was a fish symbol on the rear of the vehicle and I’d pulled it off.
There was not the time to wait here for long and as voices appeared, I hedged into the darkness. No one had seen me arrive. No one could see me now because I had moved the security camera’s angle. Such was my skill. The Doctor could have extended his shift, but I knew he hadn’t.
Jennings ended his shift at ten pm. He would be here very soon, because I knew that he was walking toward the car park after leaving the building. The fact that I could know without being told warmed me. I leaned against the rear of his car in readiness. Unfortunately and an obvious factor I hadn’t taken into consideration, was that he would not be alone. This and there were other people in the car park too, their presence encroaching. I could hear their voices. There were choices; I could leave, I could make it appear that this was a mere casual conversation. He was about thirty feet away, having just exited the escalator.
It took about thirty seconds for the Doctor to arrive in proximity of his car. He was carrying a large bag, a suit wrapped in cellophane and a small cardboard box. The person he’d been speaking with had walked toward another parked vehicle. Its engine soon began, but it would not pass by here during its exit from the building.
The Doctor stopped in his tracks when he saw that there was a woman leaning upon the trunk of his car. Squinting, it would take him a few seconds to adjust to the unexpected, standing here and almost unseeable. I swept my eyes across his features and stature. I guessed his hair was darker than originally thought. He was attractive, slim and tall. He took great care of himself was my assumption and made before he said anything to me.
“Hi,” he offered in overly jocund fashion and while still about ten strides distant. “Is there a problem? If there is, may I be of assistance?”
He began a tentative walk so to be closer to me. Now he could see my features more clearly. His stare was fully engaging and I sensed a trepidation emerging.
Rather than wait for him to be close I moved toward him. When within arm’s reach, I said calmly, “The woman called Jane who you took from Bradford. She got free and hit you. Did it hurt?”
I could see that he was absolutely dumbfounded. With an exaggerated expression he responded with, “What on earth are you talking about?”
“I know where you buried them. Well, six bodies. I know precisely how you killed them, too.”
He responded with, “This is ridiculous. Get yje Hell out of my way before I call security.”
“You’re not calling anyone. Look at me. Yes, that way. Don’t tell me lies. Don’t tell me anything. I know you and your racial and religious diatribe, your concocted enemies not dissimilar from the tried and the tested falsehood of humanity. And you, yes, you . . . are one of those who have put their warped ideologies into practice. You are coming to know me better. Yes.”
“I don’t know you. You’re a stupid idiot. Would you kindly move yourself from my car. I won’t ask you again.”
“You took something from Wendy Miller, didn’t you? I know where you put it.”
I was watching his expression. It was a combination of complete bewilderment and grief at having been found out. He would react with anger very soon. He would attack the woman revealing him. He would try. He let go of his bag and it fell to the floor. First, I would attack him with words.
“You, in your piety, your sanctimonious delusion,” I spat at him. “You see yourself as some kind of saviour.”
“They deserved it,” was his grim faced and very cautious reply.
I continued engaging his stare. He hated me with a hate far
surpassing even that of my late husband toward me. He would be
uncontrollable, vicious and raging with delusion, the delusion that judged others to be of evil nature, a judgment and sacred mission sanctioned by the many same as he. He saw the women he’d killed as whores, as sinners before God. He was delivering their sin to the foot of a deity that existed only in fallacy and made-afflicted minds. He saw the woman revealing him as the epitome of that evil. He didn’t know me fully yet, as I, the emancipated from human state. Forthwith, he would.
“I didn’t expect you to confess,” I said, now almost touching his face. “Not yet.”
“I couldn’t care less,” was his response. He was going to grab me.
I’d become aware that my knowing of this man was still of a
surface nature. He’d actually murdered many, many women. Neither did he save all the lives of women in his work. He made an association with a sex act he despised, a sex act beyond the sanctity of marriage.
“You,” I said, without emotion and into his eyes. “You know me for who I am. I have been delivered here as messenger. I am of what you cannot know. I am your destiny. I am sorry for your dying, but I am not sorry for the reason.”
“You’re the Devil,” was his announcement, now an arm’s length away.
He was terrified of me.
“I am so. I am more than can be explained and I deny the Trinity. I bid you fare well.”
I turned my back and began my walk away. He would not be able to lunge at me. He would not be able to do anything at all, until I’d gone.
It was about two minutes later that I knew he was beating the roof of his car with his fists. He was no adversary. He was human, he was nothing. Soon, he would die in an awful way for his insult before nature. I was already chanting torment into his mind. A torment that would continue; “Tra lar lar. Stand where the wandering winds wait. Stand where Satan breathes at the brink with cold and colourless state. Stand where the land is made wet. Stand at the place where beauty can be met. Stand where the winged one weaves wonderment and holds it all in a circular net. Hail Satan. Tra lar lar…..Stand where……“
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Extract No. VII
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It was two days later. Maisie had been dispatched to the smoky city of Middlesborough three times in all and on each occasion wearing a black wig and ultra-fine black outfits. It needed to appear as though a pattern was in motion. Today was the day of the ‘execution’. Maisie had already left.
I had taken a different vehicle on each occasion of my leaving. The small Ford Fiesta I was going to use would become compressed scrap and likely melted during the evening, as a special request of Rennerd. This day I was attired in a man’s tweed jacket, baggy green trousers and flat cap. I looked like any of the better off male visitors who by accident happened to linger at Little Hampton.
It was important that Maisie was being tailed and not me. Of course, if it should be the case that I was being followed, it would be apparent to me, however clandestine. I was going to drive to the town of Wetherby, to the residence of Doctor Jennings. In my breast pocket was a virgin hacksaw blade. It’s long and serrated edge felt hard against my breasts. It had pricked me occasionally as I drove the car.
During the past hours I’d felt a very powerful compulsion to be alone. I had been avoiding my friends and confidants. There could not be any voices between me and what I was intending to do, nor any regard paid to the surrounding beauty that I was passing through, in fact no other preoccupation of mind whatsoever. This was to be my rite of initiation. The residence of Doctor Jennings was prestigious. It was new, large and detached. The garden was meticulously kept. The privet hedges that bordered the drive were neatly trimmed, so to appear as a miniature castle wall it seemed to me. It was very cloistered. I would park the tiny Ford where it was easily hidden from the view of anyone passing by, should they choose to peer down the drive. There was a sense of greater urgency now. I had precious little time at my disposal.
Once the car was stationary I pushed open the door, quietly closed it and ran toward the house. By the front door was parked the white Cadillac. There were no other vehicles, though it was unlikely his wife would be out. The woman would not wake from her sleep until done so by the screams of her husband and when I had departed.
The front door with its ornamental window was not locked. It wouldn’t have made any difference if it had been. Once opened, I ran inside and took the stairs which I already knew led to a bedroom. There, the killer of women would be lying. Yes, lying as though he had all the life in the world, life amid death. The only reaction to me would be the one of exaggerated terror he already felt because he knew me intimately now. He knew mywhispered statements sent into his brain, the ones that would not cease, not ever. ‘You are going to die .. You are going to die ..’ He would not fight me. He would not have the ability for that because no human had.
As expected, he was lying upon the bed and facing the ceiling. Beside him was his snoozing and post-coital wife. She was face down. He made a gesture as though reaching for a bedside cabinet, but he became immobile. He was being allowed to see, but not to move thus, he was paralyzed. I walked speedily toward him.
“Judgment has been made,” I told him quickly and in an almost whispering spit.
Now beside the bed I gazed down toward his frantic eyes. They were teeming with the contents of nightmares. It was the very same scenario that he’d inflicted upon women.
With hacksaw blade in hand, I removed my cap, jacket and then my shirt. From their corners his eyes were watching me discard the items. His eyes were also shifting rapidly as though trying to leap at me in defence. I let her trousers fall to the floor, then I stepped from them and with shoes removed I pulled off what was remaining.
Naked, I stepped onto the bed and positioned myself astride and just below his head. The bed was very soft. I moved her legs wider apart and then allowed my breasts to fall onto his face. The hacksaw blade was in my right hand.
“I am of the only truth. I am of the carnal desiring and the bleeding. I am of pleasure pure and great. I am female. I am female. I am female. I am more than you could ever imagine.”
I leaned back and then touched his nose with the tip of the saw blade.
“There, there, there,” I whispered toward his face.
His eyes were now fiercer than ever. Unmoved, I thought them trying literally to leap out from their sockets at me in defense.
“You took a crucifix from Jane, because you thought she shouldn’t wear it. Yes?”
I yanked the crucifix he was wearing from his neck. I didn’t leave him easily.
“Pretty thing,” I smirked and while licking it with the end of my tongue. Then I pushed the crucifix along with its chain inside my vagina. It was time. Yes, it was time for the execution of the perpetrator of the worst insult, the iniquity.
Having moved myself so to face the other way, I lowered my vagina onto his face. The crucifix felt hard inside me but gave neither pleasure nor pain there. He would see me most intimately now.
Still, there was very little time. After parting his legs I held his testicles hard and put the hacksaw blade beside them. I would cut with the intention of removing everything. He would be left entirely without.
“HAIL DIABOLUS! HAIL DIABOLUS! HAIL SATAN!”
The cutting would have been surprisingly easy, the blood difficult to negotiate as it drenched my gloved hands should I have gone ahead. I wanted to cut straight through, forwards and back, forwards and back, all the time yanking on the testicles. This was what he was feeling me doing. I squeezed the testicles hard as though this was my intent, though in sooth was not to be.
Only in my mind could I hear the torrent of his screaming, the severed bloodied full scrotum and penis almost in my hand. So quick it could have been. I made it appear that mycutting strokes were longer and becoming more effective. I put pressure onto the blade and immediately there was a heavy flow of urine.
“I am almost done save for one final yank. Where before was your manhood is a gaping and bloodied smile. Ha. Ha. Ha. Live with it.”
The sawing cuts had been determined and very effective. However, there was no time for admiration of my work. Having swung myself from his body, I wiped my gloves on my breasts and vagina.
“LOOK AT ME, YOU HUMAN, LOOK AT ME. I AM OF THE HOLY MOTHER. I AM OF WHO YOU DESPISE. I WAS NE’ER CAST OUT OF THE BEYOND, NE’ER BY YOUR CREEDS, NE’ER WHATSO’ER. I AM THE BEYOND. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. THOU CANST NE’ER BATTLE WITH THE SUPREME ADVERSARY. THERE CAN NE’ER BE TERPITUDE OF THY OWN DEEDS. TO KILL THEE MAKES ME NO BETTER THAN THEE, SHOULD I WANT. SHOULD I WANT. SHOULD I WANT. SHOULD I WANT.”
My laughter was loud. With haste I pretended to place the genitalia in a plastic bag brought for the purpose. Still I laughed. I began dressing.
When wearing the final items of my clothing, my shoes, I ran to the bed and glared into the Doctor’s eyes.
“Though thou shall cease, I shall live eternal. Consider the completeness of what I am. Glory be to the Mother. Hail the HOLY WOMAN.”
Having carefully deposited an untouched and handwritten map for the police indicating a solemn rendezvous, I left the room. Then as quickly as I had entered I left the house.
The crucifix and its chain were still inside my vagina.
How long before he was released from the worst torment was not easy to assess and it was certain he would never be the same again. The police would arrive forthwith because his wife would call them, but she would fail to notice the incriminating map that was waiting. It was so.
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CALLASSA
Invicta Veritate