The Bride Wore Blood

Joseph saw the hawk again. Felt it again. Its dark wings swooped down on him.

He saw himself in its eyes.

But the hawk had more in its eyes than his image.

And the bird had a sharp, long beak and its angular wings spanned the sky. He saw this hawk in his dreams. It was through the coal-black spirit-bird that he got directions.

Joseph was at the crossroads, and needed directions.

The hawk came to him from one side of the crossroads, and the woman came to him from the other side. The hawk came from the spirit side. The woman came from the underworld.

Both the hawk and the red goddess came to him at night. He worshipped both of them at the crossroads. Each rite was different, and each was the same.

In his rites, he collected women--their perfume, their spicy flesh. He kept them in storage.

He loved to go down into the basement and browse. Especially pungent to him were the fermented jars, whose reek conveyed the love of the dark, dark goddess. And he loved to watch the pale worms of redemption in their endless squirming motion.

Crawling beetles patrolled the basement like suns at midnight. They crept along the drying skin laid out on the worktable.

In front of the worktable, on the floor, was a crossroads made of sprinkled corn. It was large enough to sit in, and here the hawk told him to meditate, hour after hour.

Joseph sat there as directed, suffering the leg cramps and stiff buttocks with gratitude.

The stillness of the air stifled his lungs, and completed his sense of high sacrifice. He felt exaltation in his breast, where the hawk rested, its spirit-wings outspread across his hot, fiercely beating heart.

* * *

The bar was still pretty empty. Joseph walked in and sat down at his usual booth. The bartender brought him a beer and knew not to bother him. Joseph was lost in thought.

The bar was another place to think things through.

He sipped the cold Bud and stared at the dark-panelled wall. There were just two other customers sitting at the bar--regulars, old men waiting patiently for time to stop.

Joseph knew she would be showing up just about now. A woman with copper colored hair and copper colored skin.

Medusa, he called her. He was a well read man. She didn't mind the name.

Medusa with the wild red hair. Frizzing right out of her head like scarlet snakes. Tendrils from the Queen of Night, the Queen of Fear.

He was afraid of her, and he liked that.

She came sauntering in. She stopped in the doorway to the side of the bar and gave him a full view of her. The breasts caught in little nests of dress, the nipples teasing their way along the border of tight blood-red rayon. The waist nipped in, to burst out in improbable hips. The black leather-look skirt was so short he believed he could see red fuzz crawling along its edge.

Legs bare, lips wide and red, red. Eyes sneering right into his. Hawk eyes, flying eyes. Wise eyes.

He sneered (smiling was not easy for him). That was her cue to come over.

She sat right next to him, and put one long arm around his shoulders. She was all nerve, and he liked that.

"How's my boy?" She picked up Joseph's half-finished beer and emptied it in a gulp. She dabbed daintily at the corners of her thickly curved mouth with a napkin.

The bartender brought over two beers and set them down with a nod to Medusa.

"My killer son?" she said, stroking his thin leg with its tight black jeans. He flinched a bit, but would listen to anything from Medusa's dangerous lips. "Whatcha been doin? Your hawks watching out for you?" She laughed. What had he told her about the hawk? He couldn't remember.

He mumbled, "hawks just fine, viper bitch. Do me."

"Here?" She laughed again.

"Yeah."

"We'll go in the john then."

They slipped out of the booth and crossed the ever-twilit room together, arm in arm. The bartender didn't look up from his newspaper.

Hers was the mouth Joseph wanted. The red, perfect mouth. He could not trust the lower one--the natural, the unconscious mouth of her sex. He preferred the mouth of art. It held less fear for him.

She licked his cock and then shoved it in her mouth, down her throat, and sucked him dry.

He stood against the wall of the tiny, filthy men's john, braced in ecstasy, his hands gripping at the plaster wall as if it were his mother's breast.

Pearly liquid spilled out the side of her mouth as she stood up and bent over the sink. He gave her some money and zipped his fly, and walked out of the john and back to the booth.

He always lost it when he came. It felt so, so good to go there. But he tried to hold on, to keep himself there and always, always lost himself down her mouth. Every time he thought "maybe this time I'll hold on to ecstasy"--and each time he lost it to the whore.

He sat down. The beer was warm by now and he drank it in one long gulp, and lit a cigarette. He began the slow process of regaining his strength and sense of self after the failure, the wound.

He ordered a whiskey.

It was five o'clock, and the evening regulars would beegin soon to file in. He would leave in a few minutes. He couldn't take crowds for long.

He ordered another drink.

At 5:30 they began to come in and he paid his bill and left. He stopped by the corner liquor store for a fifth of whiskey and made his way home.

* * *

Joseph got up around one a.m., feeling pretty drunk still. But he knew it was time to hunt and dance. He put on a clean white tee shirt and clean black levis.

He got his steel hunting knife out of its special drawer and polished it a little. He combed his dark brown hair slowly, meticulously, making sure he had one careless loop sweeping down his forehead, for angst. He had a thin white face and pale blue eyes, and the dark hair was a great contrast to these, making him look, he thought, like a Romantic poet.

He was a Romantic poet. He was all ready to go make some poetry happen.

He went downstairs and out through the kitchen to the back, and out to the garage. He got into his old battered Ford and pulled out to the dark street. He began to ride the slick skin of night, down the tunnels of the tomb they called the ciry, down into the labyrinth where at the bottom waited the Red Woman, teeth bared, ready to dance him to death.

Thinking about it made him sweat slightly. His stomach was a little queasy. He liked the feeling.

He drove through the back streets, unwilling to use the shorter route to downtown. Better to keep the anticipation building for a while.

He needed a new hunting ground. He kept going through downtown and into an area where he hadn't been much before. He parked on a street dotted with ragged, flickering neon. He got out and walked into the nearest club.

The house band blared a bit too loud for his taste, but that was all right. He got into the music after the initial shock and found that it sharpened the excitement in his gut. He found himself a seat at an empty table for two and ordered a beer.

He knew he could do nothing without the hawk spirit. And it would strike when ready, not before. So he sat and enjoyed the show, the leaping fools out on the floor, dead souls dancing in their reeking, spastic bodies. Dead, all of them: not one had a higher life; he felt sure of that. Not like him. He had a spiritual purpose. He was ordained and aware.

He was afraid to ask a woman to dance or even drink with him. Yet he knew there was a lady out there who could be his match tonight. And behind every one of these dancing fools was a part of the gods' plan--for him, for them all. All were, after all, ultimately divine.

He looked around with his hawk's eye. His third eye. He saw red. That was the color of sex.

He found the woman for his evening. Black of hair, black of eyes and skin--the goddess he had dreamed of. Leaning against a wall seductively, chatting with a girlfriend, glass of red wine held neatly in a delicate hand. Her dark, dark hair streaming around her shoulders like an aureole of night. Her dress poured over her, red as blood, showing off her blueblack skin. She had the secret of a million years in her eyes.

He would be her courtier tonight. He moved to a table closer to her--one with an empty chair opposite to his. Finally, he made eye contact.

She came right over, smiling. Her beetle-black hair almost made him faint with its powerful beauty. The blood-dress dripping down her slim body reminded him of his own wounded nature. The dress was cut to the latest fashion to make light of his anguish.

She sat down.

"More wine," she said, looking straight into his eyes, turning his heart to a cold stone of terror.

The burgundy tasted like fermented blood. They drank solemnly, watching the deep liquid as if for portents. Every movement, every light and shadow had deep meaning, resonating down into the earth.

Down into the center of the earth.

The hawk told Joseph that this woman was his mate now. And she smiled at him as he realized this. Then she drained her glass and gestured to him to dance with her.

And when he got out among the other dancers, his joy became furious. She gyrated with a grace not human. Her young and beautiful face held within it a mirror that made him afraid. It held more than he could see. It made him blind.

When the music slowed, he held her fast, and the embrace fused them as dust fuses to dust.

"You're older than you seem," he whispered, his voice raw. She laughed. Her perfume smelled faintly of decay.

She replied in a silvery whisper: "I have more secrets even than that." She knew that would probably get a rise out of him.

"I'd like to learn them," he mustered, awkwardly leaning his thigh into her crotch. She got the message.

She followed him past the crowded dancers, out of the club and into his battered car out on the curb a couple of blocks away. All the while he kept focused on the knife in his pants.

He didn't want to go back to the house yet. The courtship should be in the wild. He drove out onto the freeway and cruised a few exits west, and got off past suburbs, out where the city was only a distant dream. He knew well the lay of this land.

He drove into a wooded area and stopped by the side of the dirt road. All this time, his lady had been silent. But he sensed no fear in her.

She just said, when he stopped the engine, "do you want to fuck me here?" He laughed uneasily. Too naive a thing to say? He leaned over her and whispered, feeling assured, his pale hand stroking the side of her ebony neck. "Hon, I'll do whatever you like. If that's what you want, I'll do that."

He showed her the knife, playfully, mischievously, like a little boy showing off to his mother.

He slid the knife seductively under her chin. He began to get hard, with the knife protecting him.

She did not flinch or try to leave. She licked the blade and stared at him with fierce understanding.

This was the real dance, the dance with the world's deep soul. He felt weak. He alsmost passed out. He felt like he was a hazy mist floating over his body.

Her red tongue lapped at the slick steel. She stared into his blank pools of eyes like a python at its prey.

She gently pried the knife from his limp fingers and set it on the dashboard.

She got out of the car.

She walked around the car and got into the driver's seat, pushing him out of the way, onto the passenger side. He murmured drunkenly, but did not resist.

She started the car, turned it around, and drove out of the woods.

She parked on the street in front of the dilapidated rooming house where she was staying. She took the keys and the knife with her and went in. She left him asleep in the car.


When he woke up it was grey pre-dawn. He could see out the windshield that the house was dark. He looked around at the unfamiliar street and realized he was missing his keys. But it was when he noticed his knife was gone that he got worried.

The bitch was on to him.

It wouldn't do any good to knock on the door. He would have to get in without her knowing, get the knife--and the keys, if he could find them--and leave, preferably without waking her up. If she woke up he would have to kill her, and that would mean the night was a waste.

He walked around to the back of the dilapidated Edwardian house, whose wood had once been painted white, but now was gray and fraying, the rough fibers sticking out like the bones of the uneasy dead in too-shallow graves. Most of the windows still had glass, but some were broken, their jagged edges like the maw of a skull. In its time, though, it had been a grand house.

He frightened a fat black rat as he walked around the house. It scurried into the litter-strewn bushes between this house and the crumbling ruin next door.

He came around to the kitchen entrance, beside a row of battered garbage cans. It was just light enough to see the ripped screen and the dull brass doorknob beyond it. But he wasn't going to get that open without a tool. He had to climb onto a can and hope he could do it noiselessly.

He was just sober enough in the cool early-morning air to manage to clamber up and reach over to the kitchen windowsill.

It was open just a crack. He reached up and worked it up with his fingers a couple of inches, then, with a push that winded him, slid it up far enough to slither through. He had to rest a few moments, hunched over on the garbage can.

But he had to hurry. It was going to be light soon, and he didn't want to be seen. He squeezed through the narrow opening, catching his shirt and skin on the half-rotten wood. He steeled himself against the pain and slid down onto the floor. He lay there a few moments, catching his breath.

He lay there until a large roach startled him. It crawled along his ankle, all two inches of its slick brown body.

He knew better than to brush it away. This was the hawk god come to remind him. He waited respectfully for the sacred beetle to wind its way off him.

Meanwhile he looked around at the lay of the land. He noticed an old servants' stairway and this was where he would start. When he began to creep his way up, he had to breathe slowly, as he had been taught in meditation. This would keep him from making any abrupt movements.

When he got to the top of the stairs he stilled his mind to receive the message from the god.

He needed to know which door was hers.

He looked through the uncertain gray light for numbers on the doors. Some of the doors had them, or remnants of them.

He thought: it must be four. Right? Number four. The number of the crossroads.

He nodded. That's right.

He knew her room was in the corner, the last door of the L-shaped hallway. He walked slowly and quietly over the frayed carpet and stood waiting.

How would he enter?

Surely she locks her door, he thought. Joseph tried the knob, slowly, carefully.

The hawk told him to stop, and he did. It was locked anyway.

But it didn't matter, because the god assured him that he would find completion soon. The hawk and the woman would come to him together with the rising of the sun. This was the promise pf the blood red dawn.

So he waited outside her door.

And when she opened the door, it was dawn, and the sun came through her open window in a scarlet stream upon her dark skin.

She still had on her poured-red dress. Her hair was all in a matted mane around her sleepy head.

Her hawk eyes did not sleep, though. She pierced him through to his heart with her look of deep recognition. He looked at her with abject adoration. She, and only she, of all the women he had known, was one with the hawk.

"You want your knife?" she said. Her thick, sleepy voice was all condescension. "You want a body part?" She whispered this, leaning into his ear as he sat before her on the filthy floor.

She leaned over to her dressing table near the door and picked up the knife that glinted with the dawn's fierce light. She seemed old as old to him, dead as dead, moving in the slow cadences of the beyond-dead, stirring in the tomb-wind underlying all breath.

She hissed: "take a piece, baby. Take a piece of my rotting flesh, the only reality in the world."

She dug a millimeter of skin from her left arm. "There it is."

She held up the tiny, bleeding bit of flesh before his face. "Your goddess. Take." She laughed and picked up his limp hand from the floor and put the piece of skin in his fist, closing the thin white fingers over it.

Oh, this was his mate, Joseph thought. She knew him through and through.

He could never leave her now.

He nuzzled his cheek against her foot. She softened at his obeisance. She felt motherly. She helped him to his shaky feet and took him to her bed. She let him sleep on top of the dirty sheets.


And when he opened his eyes it was late afternoon. He looked around the room and she was not there, but her symbols were.

He knew then that she was crazy. What she had in her room froze his blood so that it no longer ran red in his veins: he felt it must have turned pale blue, it felt so cold.

Her instruments were everywhere. She could rend a man into any shape she wished with them. He was only at the very beginning of his transformation. He knew that.

He was at the threshold. He was in the center of the crossroads.

He noticed the thick leather shackles on his wrists and ankles. He was not stretched out uncomfortably, but he was afraid.

He meditated upon the coming wedding night. He felt honored, grateful, to be here.