Is that what I look like?

I’m looking down on my body from above. I’m a real sight, hog-tied between two irregular mounds in the bedding, gagged, my head split open and bleeding where Jonquil knocked a handful of butterfly sutures loose, my right arm leaking into a messy stain on one pillow. Eyes are closed. I’m floating. Iris is singing and I can understand the harmonies now, I can hear her as she tries to summon something that isn’t there.

“Beloved and forsaken! Eater of Souls! Lover of Death! Mother of nightmares! We who are gathered to observe your rite remember you and recall you by name! Come now to this vessel we prepare-”

I’ve got company up here. I can feel them gather in the darkness, blind curiosity thrusting them close, like sharks butting up against the legs of a swimmer stranded in the middle of an ocean. They’re class three abominations. I have summoned them to feed on the rips and gashes of my memory that I dribble in the water of Lethe. I’m not alone up here: and they sense me. Soon one of them will taste me, take a bite of my soul and find that my memories are richly textured and deep. And then I’ll begin to lose stuff. I push at them, trying to shove them towards the empty vessels that I have primed, but they aren’t having it; I’m far more interesting than any century-dead bag of bones.

And then I feel a horrible visceral pain, as if someone has stuck a barbed knife through my umbilical.

“Come to this vessel!” shrieks Iris. “Come now!”

I convulse: the pain is unspeakable. And I feel the tugging. If I travel with it, the pain lessens slightly. “Obey me! Enter the empty vessel! On pain of eternal torment, I instruct you to enter!”

I drift down from the canopy, watching the ripples of nightmare twitch and spiral above me, still seeking. What the fuck?

“Enter! Enter! Enter!” Iris yodels. And as I lie on my back, looking up at the canopy above me, the pain in my guts evaporates.

What the fucking fuck? I close my eyes, and resume my gurgling, muffled invocation. For a moment, I’d swear I was having an out-of-body experience…

Then a coherent picture forms in my mind’s eye.

It’s like this. Iris is trying to summon up the Eater of Souls and bind it into my body where, among other things, it’ll eat my soul and take up permanent residence. But the Eater of Souls is otherwise occupied right now. But Iris doesn’t know this-she doesn’t have TEAPOT clearance.

Meanwhile, I have just been trying to vacate my body all on my own, in order to summon up the feeders in the night, because if a bunch of Goatfuckers are trying to sacrifice me, I might as well fuck ’em as hard as I can. Again: it’s not Iris’s fault for failing to anticipate this, because she’s never had to visit the Funny Farm. She’s not really much of a demonologist. And she’s such a good manager she’s never had reason to see me when I’m seriously pissed off.

Here’s the upshot: Iris’s invocation has got a dangling pointer, an un-initialized variable pointing to an absent preta. But there’s a soul in the vicinity, cut free-mostly-from its body. So instead of hooking onto the Eater of Souls, the preta manger, it latched onto me. So she’s just spent fuck knows how much carefully hoarded ritual mojo to bind me into my own flesh.

Like she said: “Fatal accidents never have just a single cause, they happen at the end of a whole series of errors.” Well, Iris has strung about five errors together and she’s about to go down hard, because I’m about to turn fatal on her.

I open my eyes again and stare at the canopy overhead.

The feeders in the night are dispersing-but they’re not going back from whence they came. They’re rippling outwards, through the temple towards the walls. This body’s occupied. But outside the doors, the vessels I’ve been prepping are waiting.

The chant continues, as do the invocations and imprecations in the name of an absent monster. I lie back and try to calm my hammering heart. I don’t feel quite myself-I’m sweating and cold even though it’s a summer night, and my skin doesn’t seem to fit properly. It’s very strange. The cultists continue with their rite, which takes some unexpected turns. There is a large silver goblet of wine, into which a hooded man empties a familiar-looking syringe full of blood-it boils and steams on contact, which is rather disturbing. Then a quorum of the chorus line start to shed their robes, and don’t stop at their underwear. They walk around me naked, which is really disturbing because they appear to be into mortification of the flesh in a big way-even bigger than Opus Dei-with a genital focus that makes me wonder how they ever get through airport metal detectors. Or reproduce. No wonder Jonquil is an only child-

And speak of the devil’s daughter: here’s her mother, leaning over me-black robes covering up who-knows-what, and really clashing with her blonde rinse. Iris unhooks the gag, steps back, and throws her arms wide: “Speak, oh Eater of Souls!”

I work my jaw. It feels subtly wrong, as disarticulated as if I’ve just done hard time in a tomb and haven’t noticed I’m one of the walking dead. I force myself to inhale, try to salivate, turn my head sideways (that feels wrong, too) and expectorate. A thin stream of spittle lands on the bedding beside my eternally sleeping companion: it’s black in the torch light. Dust, of course, because I can’t be bleeding. Right?

“Speak!” she commands me. I stare at her, and feel a nearly irresistible urge to bite her throat out. Right now I should be trying to make like I’m a freshly reincarnated Eater of Souls, but I am thirsty and I am hungry and I have just been through hell and I really don’t care.

Some imp of the perverse takes control of my larynx: “I’ll drink your blood,” I croak, and instantly regret it. But much to my surprise, her eyes light up.

“Certainly, lord! Bring the chalice!” she shrills over her shoulder. A naked minion steps forward, bearing the huge silver goblet: it’s full of what I’m pretty sure is red wine, and it smells wonderful. Iris accepts it and holds it near my face. I slurp greedily, spilling more than I suck into my mouth. It’s thick and sweet, like tawny port, but also warming, as if there’s a trace of ginger or chili oil dissolved in it. “In the name of the Unhallowed One, I command you to stop drinking,” she says.

I freeze momentarily, acutely aware that I want to keep going, but-she won’t order them to untie me if she doesn’t think I’ll obey her, I realize. And I really, really want to be untied. I can sense the feeders all around us, dispersed throughout the soil around the crypt, doing what they do best: eating in the darkness, consuming and corrupting and possessing the material forms that are normally denied to them. Soon, they’re going to take possession of their withered husks and go looking for more upmarket digs. I don’t want to be tied down and helpless when that happens-

Evidently Iris mistakes my indecision for compliance. She turns to her audience: “The Eater of Souls obeys!” she calls. “The first test!”

She turns back to face me, triumphant and happy. “What would you have me do to hasten the opening of the way?” she asks.

“Untie me.” I tug lightly at the ropes. “Untie me.” My right arm feels wrong, but so does my left-they both obey me, but feel oddly distant. Blood sugar must be low, I tell myself. Or that wine has a kick to it.

Wrong response. Iris is shaking her head. But she’s still smiling. “Not yet,” she says. “Not until the rite of binding is complete.” Rite of binding? Uh-oh.

“The rite is complete,” I tell her, hoping she’ll buy it. “The blood and the wine…”

“I don’t think so.” She looks at me sharply, and I see something greenish reflected in her eyes. Something behind me? She turns back to her altar before I can work it out, walks towards the front of her congregation. “Bring me the sacrifice pure of heart and soul!” she calls.