LJ Idol, Season 9, Week 16: A Terrible Beauty Has Been Born
"O Vanquished Beast," moaned the man with the inverted pentagram dangling from his neck, "we call to thee!"
The dark priest was only one out of the five hooded figures whose palms hovered above a ring of Celtic runes scrawled in red on a concrete floor. In the center of it all sat a lone vertebrae, just the right size to have once belonged to a human being.
This wasn't the most ideal of black masses; their sacred circle was more of a sacred huddle, given the lack of space in this basement den. Shoving the overstuffed leather sofa, fully-equipped entertainment center, and rolled-up carpet against the wall didn't open it up much either.
Still, the moon was new, and the stars were aligned as they would not be for another millennia. The man with the inverted pentagram dangling from his neck had waited all his life for this moment. He continued, "I give thee the remains of the fiend who cast you from this world so very long ago. With this offering, we beg for your return."
"With this offering," responded the others, "we bring forth your destruction. Cleanse us!" Cleanse us!"
"Jesus Christ, Pete!" snapped the dark priest. "It doesn't work unless all of us say all our lines!"
"This is really awkward," said the figure he'd been addressing, "but I'm not Pete." A woman pulled the hood off of her unruly black-and-silver curls. "I just found this robe lying around. On someone's shoulders. Who is tied up. And has a concussion." She added, "You might want to take him to a neurologist later. Sorry about that."
"What is the meaning of this?" bellowed the dark priest.
She clapped her hands. "That's my favorite bad guy cliché! Do another one! Do another one!"
"What are you waiting for?" he yelled at the other cultists. "Get her!"
"You're the best!" she giggled.
The first one drew a knife.
"Curved dagger!" She pumped her fist. "Yes! I totally should have brought my bingo card!"
The man lunged. She pulled off her cloak, wrapped it around his forearm, tightened it until he dropped the blade, and swept his feet. While he fell, she grabbed his robe, wrapped it around the throat of the second one, and kicked him in the back of the knees.
"Stay down," she told them, "or I start breaking ribs."
The last two wisely chose to come at her at once.
"Permitir que esses poucos momentos para passar sem você," she said, and they froze.
Sort of.
That spell was a favorite of hers, because it required no props and very little energy. The only downside was that it didn't really freeze anything so much as it just switched off the minds of anyone in the room for about five seconds, tops. This meant that, if, for example, two douchebags with sharp objects had been charging at her when she spoke the words, they would keep moving. Luckily, she had more than enough time to get out of their way, grab the relic, and head for the door before they even noticed they weren't stabbing her.
It came as a surprise then, when the dark priest's hand clamped onto the arm that had been reaching for the jar. "You are too late," he said, his voice harmonizing with another that wasn't physically there, "for a terrible beauty has been born."
"Seriously?" she replied.
His own response was to throw her at the farthest wall. The cheap wood paneling cushioned her from serious injury, but it still stung. "Bone bruise," she whined. "I really hate those..."
"It's time to put an end to your insolence!"
"You know what?" she told him. "My Evil Villain Bingo Card is upstairs with my stuff. I'm just going to run up and get it." She rolled to her feet and took off, making it quickly to the living room, where the first douchebag she'd encountered lay bound in the fetal position. With him were all the props she needed to sort all this out.
From the steps behind her, that weird double-voice rang out: "Sivajmana!"
She gasped violently and crossed her eyes as she was unexpectedly seized by the single greatest orgasm she'd ever experienced her whole life. Every thought fled from her mind, only to return sheepishly moments later. Her knees buckled, pitching her forward. Her arms tried to cushion her fall, but in that state, were capable only of flopping around.
"Okay," she panted through a dry mouth, "that's a clever trick."
The urgency of the moment seeped back in through the heat, and she dragged herself to her messenger bag. With tingling fingers, she rooted through it until a pair of hands flipped her over.
The possessed douchebag laughed. "Do you have any last words, fool?"
"Yeah," she sighed. "Got a cigarette?"
"We will enjoy peeling the flesh from--" He didn't get to finish, because she blasted him in the face with an air horn.
While he staggered back, she misted the space between them with a tiny spray bottle labeled "Holy Water" and honked at him again. He fell to the floor, growling. She repeated this until steam rose from his exposed skin.
All the commotion finally woke Pete, who leaned over and heaved.
"You need to go to the hospital," she told him. She turned back to the head douchebag. "And you need to stay right where you are." She hit him again with the water and the horn to remind him how he got there. "I am not letting you anywhere near me in my moment of victory so you can knock me over and crush my skull with your bare hands. I saw that once on TV and I'm not taking any chances."
"You'll pay for what you've done!"
"Look, mister," she explained, "my name is Rafaela Torres, child of Nestor Torres and Sofia Barros, who are but one of the five. You know what I mean, am I right?"
The dark priest's teeth gritted. "... yes..."
"You may think you're the smartest motherfucker in the room, but I assure you, you are not. Look into my eyes and see that I speak the truth."
He obeyed.
She continued, "Because you just did to me something no man, woman, or battery-operated device could ever hope to do, I'm giving you the option of a graceful exit. But because you gave me a bone bruise--and I really hate those--I will hurt you if you choose to decline my offer. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Without a word, the body that once contained the spirit writhed in agony and screamed. That creepy, otherworldly harmony fell gradually out of sync, until it became a fading echo, and finally, one voice.
While this went on, Rafaela removed a stiff piece of paper from her bag and a golf pencil from her pocket. She bit her lip in concentration, and carefully decorated the card with a number of Xs.
After some time, the douchebag groaned in his own, solitary voice. "What happened?"
"Let's see:" she reviewed; "You and your fellow idiots somehow stole the sacred vertebrae of St. Columba; a secret, mystic sect of the Greek Orthodox church called in a favor and sent me after it; you and your fellow idiots used said vertebrae to summon a monster St. Columba banished in Scotland; a malevolent spirit who was not that particular monster possessed you; and it ran away from me as soon as it learned who it was dealing with. All in all, a pretty typical day for me."
The cultist squinted at her, utterly baffled.
Rafaela had never been possessed, but she'd channeled once, and that itself was pretty disorienting. She gave him a moment to process before concluding, "You, on the other hand..." She kicked him hard in the side. "... broke a rib and have a trip to the emergency room in your future. Take your friend--and don't let him go to sleep until he sees a doctor."
"This isn't over!" the idiot coughed.
"Ooh!" She examined the card in her hand and checked one last box. "I-17! Bingo!"