LITERATURE

Tantra Bensko
© Tantra Bensko 2006

The Inhabitants of Mercy

I lay in my living room, all the book shelves gleaming with fresh wax, listening to Beethovan, resting from assisting in the gory feline surgery at animal rescue. My long black hair was entertainingly sharp against the soft orange carpet, but the intensely colored paintings on the red wall were more captivating. The picture of a lynx was pulsating with power. I had decided it would be a good animal to identify myself with, much more assertive than being the sweet little deer of my youth. Anyone could take advantage of my soft deer heart. But, a lynx! The lynx painting was right side up to me, as I lay with my head by the wall, looking up at it. And that had become perfectly normal. All my pictures were right side up from that upside down angle.
     Sexy Steve had flown into my life like a bat chasing mousquitos, and it shook both of us up. So much so that he told me obliquely one day that he’d turned all his pictures in his place upside down. Not that he really had a place. He had stolen the attic of my best friend, Adam. I asked him why he did that with his pictures, and he said he didn’t know. I guess I had affected him a lot. Kind of flattering at the time, considering he was an incredibly good looking guy five years younger than I.
     The night he told me he had done that, I went with the flow, the strange spell we were under because of how we felt about each other, and I turned all my pictures upside down too. No one who came over to my apartment ever noticed when they were just sitting or standing in my apartment. It’s not like the paintings were abstracts. One of them was even a picture Steve had painted for me. It was a watercolor of a mountain town with a castle, a big crystal, and a spaceship approaching it. On it he had written “Take me to the center of time and space, and I will make the world a better place.” I should have known something was up when he gave me that. A better place, my ass.
     It was fun to see how long it would be before my friends noticed the pictures were upside down. I had intelligent friends. Painters, writers, nurses. We got watched experimental foreign films together, discussed Brautigan and Lloyd Pye over red wine. Yet only when I suggested they lay on the floor with me did they slowly catch on that the pictures were right side up from that angle. People just didn’t expect that. They expected things to be stable, normal, shelters to be shelters, with continuity. Not my apartment. Not any more. People expected people to be people. I've gone beyond that, now that I've met Steve, and read all I could find about the phenomenon though I found myself forgetting more details of what I read than ever.
     No one’s life remained right side up when Steve entered it.
     The phone rang, and my heart jumped. There was always the thrilling hope that maybe it was Steve. It was. My heart fluttered, a little overwhelmed. “So, what do you think? Want to come over? We’re playing Dungeons and Dragons, but we’re almost through. It’s my birthday. I’m 22.”
     “I didn’t know that! Thanks for asking me.” What a high school thing to say. I wished I’d been one of the first asked. I could hear young cute female voices in the background. They’d better leave my boyfriend alone….
     When I got there, Adam, who resembled Wally Shawn, his kinky greying hair longish and wispy around his large bald spot, let me into his house, looking lopsided, and giving me a rumpled wink. “Did you know it’s his birthday? He let me give him a birthday present today!” He did a little waggly dance, bouncing his large, soft hips around, exagerating his lips, and lifting his eyebrows up and down. “Too bad you got here too late to watch.”
     “Oooo, baby.” Though they were both appealing in their own ways, watching didn’t really sound like my style, but it was fun to vamp with my buddy, and I was glad Adam had had a good time. We shared our Steve stories like twins holding hands in the womb, staving off the big world outside. It was all a little strange to us, but what the hell. Kind of kinky.
     “I don’t know about those guys upstairs. It’s not just Steve living there any more. The landlord doesn’t like it at all.”
“Is it still OK if it’s just Steve up there?”
“Yeah, he doesn’t mind about that. But it WOULD be good if that boy would give me his rent. It’s been over two months now. I don’t need a rent boy, I need a boy I can boink sometimes, who pays RENT.”
     “He STILL hasn’t paid you? What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. He said he’s going to give blood and give me the blood money next week. Jeez, it’s not like I’m asking much. I mean, he COULD get a job.”
"Why do you let him treat you like that, Adam? Can't you just kick him out? Do you think maybe you don't have strong boundaries because of being molested so much when you were a kid?"
"Hmm. You know, I think you may be onto something there, Magdyline. A big kiss for you! Ooo." He bumped my hip with mine as if we were dancing. " I just got used to being violated when that guy broke into my house all the time and had sex with me. It seems normal that people can have their way with me, I guess. Want to have your way with me, baby?"
     A girl stumbled down the stairs, her eyes swollen and nose red. “Hey, Adam! Hey—are you Magdyline? He said you’d be coming over.” She laughed: I wasn’t sure what about, and went out the door. What.
“You’d better go see to your birthday boy! Give him a kiss for me!” And I did. I was a little nervous as I went up the stairs, as his friends were even younger than he was. I wasn’t sure the best way to dress to fit in. Definitely not the scrubs from animal rescue. Not my natural fiber skirt that made me look thinner. I wanted to look thinner, but I wanted to look young and hip. So I sacrificed form for style. Their style, as much as I could manage and still feel OK about myself.
     How unlike me. But that night, I tried giggling along with them at nothing, alternating with trying to seem at home there with being an older, suave professional woman who couldn’t care less. I barely knew the kids, and didn’t really want to. I wanted them to leave Adam’s house. But I laughed as if I thought what they were doing was fine. Took a lot of balance not to fall to one side or the other. It was wearing me out.
     And I wanted to make love with Steve, who was hanging upside down. “So, what’s your thing about doing that, anyway?” I asked. I just wanted to talk about it, understand it, but once I said that, I knew it was an uncool question. Why was it sexy that he was doing that, looking so alienated from the rest of society?
     “I don’t know. It just feels like my way.” He never knew why he did anything. It was almost like he got orders from something else, or from some part of himself he didn't really know. He looked like a vampire bat hanging there, and I knew that was the look he was fostering. Not saying made it more sinister, yet more lovable and goth. “You should try it. You can see all the pictures the right side up that way.”
It wasn’t easy. But I did. I didn’t say anything. Giggling about that would have been ungoth. We were like bat twins, upside down against the world. My legs were going to sleep. How did he do that for so long? “Do you do that a lot?” It felt wrong to ask. I should just assume the answers to my questions. I felt like Gidget or something. I started to turn red from embarrassment for talking straightforwardly about it, but I really wanted to know. And then my redness was amplified so much by being upside down I had to right myself.
     “…Of course.” Ugh. That long silence first made me feel even stupider. I should be more oblique. It was getting less crowded in there, as a few of the kids had gone downstairs to get drinks.
I stared at the dirty walls, or at the angles of the roof that passed as walls in the cluttered attic. I could see what he meant about the pictures. Some of them had been drawn on the walls upside down, from a bat position. Clever. I didn’t remember them being there before.
     I got even quieter as the kids left in the room talked loudly amongst themselves, really getting into something or another. Finally, Steve sat next to me and whispered conspiratorially: “I’m going to get rid of them.” What a thrill! For me?
He got up and looked in the Dungeons and Dragons spell book. He found what he was looking for, and while the kids were talking about something, he pointed out the spell to me, as I leaned over his shoulder. He smelled so good. Was it some cologne designed to drive women wild? Most likely, it seemed like he'd bought the best bottled pheromones on the market and splashed it all over his body. Creating the illusion that he was the ultimate catch, messing with biology. Or did he really have the sexiest smell any man had ever had My face was close to those beautiful ears that were uncovered by his gorgeous hairstyle, longish everywhere but around his ears. He liked to think of them as being elvin. An elf thief or something, according to Dungeons and Dragons, that silly game. Or was it just silly? I knew elves were actually the fairy tale version of the little grey aliens. Same exact behavior in all the stories throughout history. They abducted kids and left hybrids, caused trouble, all those various activities. It made me squirm. It was a way of popularizing a group of extraterrestrial reptilian creatures who were implanting people left and right.
     I wanted to kiss his ears so badly. And those full lips. That slender neck, so delicate. My favorite spot was where the back of his hair came to his neck. It was so touching, so young and tender and sweet, yet with such animal magnetism. I wanted to touch it delicately, revererently.
He whispered the spell far too quietly for them to hear, giving them no signs. Yet he promised me the banishing spell for chaos would work, would make them run off. And then, would he kiss me? Could I show him how much I wanted him—obliquely? I didn’t really think it would work, but the kids started getting really restless. They started saying something about leaving, and looking around. Next thing I knew, they were out his door, and I heard them all going out the door downstairs as well. Steve and I stared at each other. His eyes were gleaming, and he had a big satisfied grin, yet looked astonished himself. His head was cocked zanily. We burst out laughing. “It worked! And it’s a chaos spell, so they’ll just go off all over the place without making any sense. Just wait.”
     We had the night to ourselves for a couple of hours until they came back again. I still had it, even though I was getting older. We pulled away from each other and put on our clothes quickly when we heard them rustling around downstairs again. What a loud bunch of kids they were. And it had been such an adult household, with Adam and his normal renters, before they started moving in, or whatever they were doing. I couldn’t figure out how many were actually living there, or were just visiting Steve, or what. I could tell they had at least been storing their stuff there way more than before. It was such a small attic. I could make out little piles of clothes that seemed to be pillows. A few toiletries. But he didn’t bring it up because he knew I was close to Adam. He probably didn’t know that Adam told me everything in our daily phone calls. That Adam was getting really fed up, but was just as enamoured of him as I was.
They burst in. “Wow, man, that was fuckin WEIRD!”
     “Where did you go?” Steve could hardly contain his glee.
“Nowhere! I mean, we all just had to leave, but we didn’t know where we were going to go. We didn’t want to do anything, but we just all wandered off in different directions. FUCKING inSANE.” They guy shook his head. I shared Steve's delight, amazement in the workings of the spell, though I didn't like the implications of the dark magic of it. I knew who answered the calls of black magic, and it was the reptilians, the demons the black magicians evoked often with full occult knowledge. But maybe this time, it was just evoking the natural powers of the Universe.
     I was reluctantly learning a little bit about the different kids that I’d hoped to let merge into one another as they faded into the background of our lives. This red-headed one, Frankimal, was in love with Jessie. She was the one who stared at me a lot, got quiet when I was around. What was up with that? She was a tough little bitch, always wore black leather, her hands covered with dirty olive colored mesh even inside when it was warm, and her filthy jeans had loud patches sewn onto them. Her hair was all one length, blond, scraggly. She was short and squat, wore a lot of make-up that she didn’t seem to take enough time with. But Frankimal, who was much smaller than she was, held onto her sometimes, rubbed her back, and she looked at him like he was the answer to something. And there he was sort of named after a cartoon drummer personality.
Steve and I couldn’t stop laughing.
     “What? What the fuck is it? Jesus, you guys.” Frankimal kicked a loose piece of wood and it came free from the wall. They laughed. “This place is going to fall apart by the time we’re through with it!”
“Hey, what do you think of our art?” Noble asked. Noble was the one I liked best, seemed more honest than the others somehow, with a shaved head, and clanky chains, as well as the usual black leather jacket. “Free canvas.”
I wasn’t sure what to say about their pictures. Yes, it was creative in a grimey pop culture way. Scribbly. But it was someone else’s house. The pictures were painted on the white, slanted ceiling. Some were right side up. “Is that a dragon?” Then I felt stupid for asking. I should known it was a dragon, badly drawn as it was. “And…that angel, that’s pretty cool. I like it playing the drums.” But really, I didn't trust angels. I knew they were the messengers of people like Yahweh, who was an Annunaki extraterrestrial reptilian just like the rest of them. And the angels were too. All of them pulling the wool over people's eyes that they were controlling, to stay in charge and make them do whatever they wanted them to do. Those angel wings looked just like the wings of the dragons, and it creeped me out.
     “Yeah, that’s us. We’re a band, you know.”
“Yeah.” I knew, for Pete's sake. I was tired of waiting for them to get the joke about that. To realize how ridiculous they were. “Anyone learn to play yet?” They didn’t acknowledge what I'd said. I was glad. That was too bold a question. I was supposed to go along with the illusion of competancy and promise.
“Yeah! Just wait. The Lost Angels are going to be bigger than Guns and Roses!” said Weird. Weird was almost as good-looking as Steve, but didn’t possess the same magnetics of doom, the same incurable draw. God, I wanted Steve so hard, so all the time, so insatiably, so transcendentally, so like the climax of some major classical symphony.
     “Look.” He pointed to their various pictures on the record cover. “I’m him. Steve’s him. Noble’s him. And Frank, well, you know he’s the drummer. FRANKIMAL!” Frankimal went into a frenzied rendition of his abstract idea of drumming. Weird stamped the floor.
I just couldn’t take keep smiling like this was normal. If Steve could sing at least, it would be different. Or write music. If any of them even had instruments! Jeeesus! I said good-bye to Steve and left. I was good and didn’t whine or anything or say I hoped to see Steve again before long. Had to play it cool.
It was almost a week of lonely waiting later when Adam called up and told me the news: “They all moved into the attic days ago. I don’t know what to do. The landlord is breathing down my throat. They just won’t leave. Seven of them in that attic. It feels like the house is going to fall in. They bang around up there all night. I think they're doing Satanic rituals….But at least Steve did bang me the other night.”
“Ooo. Did he nail you good?”
“You bet. That boy has got the best body. I love his dragon tattoos.”
“I don’t feel too comfortable about dragons, myself, you know, Adam. Have you read about the dragon religions all over the world? They always had priests who said people couldn’t go to God straight up. People had to go through them. Had to sacrifice so they would bring the sun up. Dragons, snakes, all those reptile things. I don’t know. They worry me.”
“Yeah, their Dungeons and Dragons game is getting sort of out of hand. I don’t know about Steve being an elf thief. I don’t think it’s just a game.”
“He sure does seem to have some sort of supernatural hold over people. And from what he's told me about his life before he came to Iowa, it was the same way then. It's like he eats our lives.”
"But he's so cute. And those dragon tattoos are cute to me, like little friends. Why are you worried about dragons? When I was molested, every time, I thought I saw a dragon come in the room with him too when he was going to rape me. I don't know, some sort of imaginary friend fantasy I guess. The dragon told me everything was ok, and it wouldn't hurt, just to relax and enjoy it. And when I did, it did feel really good. At nine years old, you just don't get that kind of pleasure in life otherwise. That dragon was my friend."
"Adam! God. Well, I don't want to scare you off of what makes you feel secure. Just forget about it." Telling him about my research into all the scholarly books about dragons would be like taking the pacifyer from a baby's mouth. But that was just sick. Fucking dragon. Just the kind of abuse they were into, vampirizing the trauma, making people easily controlled ever after. And now, they were being treated like fuzzy friends and pop culture icons. Disgusting that they could get away with it, but they always had been masters of illusion. People just seemed to be wired to be gullable. And wired by the very reptilian race itself when it invaded the Earth.
“Want to come by?”
     I did. Adam and I hung out on the couch, him with his face rumpled into it, his favorite spot. We felt homey with each other as always, sinking into each other as we cuddled. I petted his round head, those apple cheeks all rosy and trusting.
He showed me a picture he was painting on a big piece of paper. "I always draw protector dragons when kids are Christened to give them for presents. This one is for my nephew who's being Christened next week. They're like protectors. I think they really love kids."
We could hear the kids upstairs, heard a loud breaking of glass and laughing. They came downstairs, and Steve smirked at us. Noble asked if we wanted to go with them through the steam tunnels.
That sounded adventurous to me, but Adam wasn’t up for it. He was going to make a cake instead. “I’ve got the mix already!”
“Yeah, you’re mixed up alright,” said Jess. Frankimal tried to pretend to laugh. “I ain’t goin,” she said. “Yuck.”
“But Magdyline’s going, right? See, girls can do it,” Frankimal pointed out. She agreed to go.
     The steam tunnels were cold, covered in water, with rats here and there, and a snake. A toad. We got lost, got scared we wouldn’t be able to get out, tried going up the way we thought we’d come in but it was locked. We panicked, but eventually realized we were just turned around. We went up into the college and snuck into an office. There was a refrigerator, and Frankimal and Steve took out Cokes and passed them around. I was having nothing of it. I had never stolen anything in my life. It made me nervous that someone might find us, but we left the lights off, other than the light coming from the refrigerator, and we stayed a secret. Eventually, we slogged back, and by that time, I had grown to feel much more part of the group. I gave Steve a kiss and went home to change out of my muddy clothes and go to bed, sore and shivering. I had to be at animal rescue the next morning early. No one there would believe that with a good job like that I was sneaking around under the city at night, and hanging out with crackpot young kids. I just never mentioned it. But the sewers were a good secret. We had made plans to go again. I felt almost like I was part of their gang. I hadn't ever been part of a group in my life, and it felt good.
     Of couse, I did think about how the dragons always lived underground, in caves, and tunnells. Guarding the treasures they hoarded.
Adam’s next phone call was worse. “I’ve been trying to get them out of the attic. So now, they’re going around saying some kind of Dungeons and Dragons spell. For me to die! It’s a murder spell! They just walk downstairs to go to the kitchen and don't stop saying Die Die Die.”
“Holy Moley! That’s Horrible! What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I guess they need somewhere to go. Steve is supposed to be their leader, but where he’s leading them, I don’t know. It's not like it's actually going to kill me, so I guess I'll just see what happens next.”
“I’m coming over, Adam.”
     He and I sat on the couch and huddled against our insecurities. We both went upstairs to the attic and knocked. There was a kind of a bark from inside. We went in.
The pictures had taken over the walls: Spaceships. People holding up snakes. Dragons eating people. Dragons wearing hoodies. Knives decorated with blood and castles with kings and queens with snake heads. And graffiti that I couldn’t make out. I shuddered. It reminded me of the serpent cults that the priests used to manipulate the minds of the civilians. The kings and queens revealing nonchalantly that they descended from snakes and dragons and therefore had the right to rule. What did that tell you about wars… was there some relationship to the blood sacrifices? Death from wars fought for the warring countries run by competing dragon hyrbid bloodlines, and all the fear and death being harvested by them psychically. Blood sacrifices seemed to be what held everything together. Blood. Lots of it.
     Steve smiled big. ‘Hi, Magdyline! How are you?” He came over and gave me a big sexy kiss. He smelled so good, I could hardly stand it. It HAD to be artificial pheromones. Didn't it? His hair was so fine, thin, wispy, like a little boy’s. I smiled just as big back.
When he turned away, I could see the huge patch on the back of his black leather jacket. “The Lost Angels.” God. Were they just nuts?
“New logo,” I pointed out. “The angel wings look like dragon wings.”
Noble turned around to show his to me, on his back, and said, “Yeah, that’s what they were, you know. The angels were Annunaki too. You know, from the planet Nibiru? Wearing helmets? Coming in spaceships like in all the drawings and tablets? They were flying reptiles. That's why we like them. You don't think it's cause we're Christian or something, do you?”
“We’ve all got them,” said Jess, gleaming. She looked different. Not wearing any make-up to speak of. Well, that was an improvement. Much better for her skin than that those nasty chemicals. Oddly, along with her jacket with the patch, she wore a long, natural skirt, the kind I wore. My heart went out to her.
“So, what, are you guys going to move out pretty soon, or what? Looks like you’re getting packed.” I knew they weren’t but wanted to ease into it.
“Like, go where?” they laughed.
“Well, you know, Adam can get kicked out if you stay here, right? So, then you’d lose a place to stay.”
“Well, we’d lose a place to stay if we left anyway, Miss Magdyline.”
“Come on,” said Adam. “Want some pie?” It was no secret he was addicted to sugar, even though he was diabetic.
We went downstairs. “Hey, where are you going?” shouted Steve? I could tell he had missed me too. “I know YOU"RE not going to eat any pie.”
Yeah. Sugar, bad for the immune system. Wheat, clogged up the intestines. Preservatives, nasty-ass. “How about some herbal tea, Adam?”
“Got tea.” He heated some up and got himself some pie. We sipped and ate in silence. What could you say?
     I was caught up in work for awhile after that, and tried to just not think about Steve. I couldn’t feel right about trying to see him when he was treating Adam that way. But it was almost impossible to get the image of him out of my mind. Ridiculous Steve. Lovable Steve. I wanted to protect that slender body so delicately formed. Those childish fantasies. That ingrown intensity. I didn’t want to lose him. I would stare at the picture he painted for me and just go into a kind of confused trance. Maybe my tranciness lately had to do with lack of sleep.
“Adam. I can’t sleep. I just keep thinking about Steve. Don't you think it's time to put your foot down?"
“I don’t know. I mean, like if it's what you said, that it's replaying me being molested all those years when I was young, well, that did feel good, and it gave me a dragon friend. I just thought I should have a choice about it. Not having a choice made me want him to die. I thought about it a lot. And then he got cancer and died. Maybe this is some sort of karma cause now they want me to die."
"But maybe you should just plain and simple get your house back before your housemates decide they don't need to pay rent either, and your landlord kicks you out."
Then, one day, I came home from an especially hard day at work. It was hard to do my job because I empathized with the animals. My heart was just too soft to do a job like that, really. I wanted to go home and just take a bath, listen to John Cage, soften into the Ravel stage, read some Tom Robbins, forget about how much the animals were suffering, get the images of them out of my mind. Do something for me instead.
And there, wedged up against my door, was a huge flat white thing. It was…a major piece of Adam’s attic ceiling! I could recognize it because it had paintings I had seen before, by the Lost Angels. It was a serpent curled around an egg, and the caduceus. The symbol of DNA. Symbol of genetic modification by the Reptilian doctors of old. Modifying human nature to make us more susceptible, better slaves, more easily mind-controlled. And some with more reptilian traits than others. Ugh! What was that doing against my door?
     So…that meant they must have torn up Adam’s attic! It looked like it had just been ripped out, knocked out. But why was it on my door? It was bigger than the door itself.
It was a notepad. They had scribbled something on it, a note to me. “Magdyline. We’re not staying at Adam’s any more. “We’re staying HERE.”
Ah. So. They had torn down his place. Kicked in his attic. They would do the same thing to my apartment if I didn’t let them stay. I was trembling. Well, they WERE like homeless little puppies. Puppies could get pretty destructive, tear up the rugs, chew up shoes…..
     It was the next night when I got home late after going out dancing, this time, just wearing my usual bells and long skirt, that I walked in and fixed myself a cup of tea. I wondered if they were really going to move in. I knew Steve had the key. It wasn’t until I got to my room and started to get ready for bed that I noticed I had been replaced. In my bed was another me. I thought at first maybe it was Steve, waiting for me. We hadn’t slept together for a long time, and I was missing him desperately. I crept over to the bed in the dimness. No, the hair was too blond, too long. It was Jess!
I hate to wake people up. I crept around in my room gathering up some things and curled up on the floor in the living room. Well, I did like the colors in there. It was like being inside a picture by Van Gogh.
The next morning, Jess was still asleep when I left early for animal rescue. I was tired, not really refreshed by sleep, not quite ready to deal with animals that had no home, that I was taking into my life, taking care of. I dragged.
When I got home, the door was unlocked. When I walked in, Jess was there, drinking a cup of my hot licorice tea, crosslegged on the floor. Frankimal was lounging next to her. “Look at her,” he said. “She thinks she’s you.” Herbal tea in the lotus position did look a little odd on her. And there was more. She was wearing one of my paisley skirts. The kind that was especially flattering because it hung very low around the waist, tied with a string, showing the curve of the waist off to best advantage. Though she didn’t have much in the curve department. Baby fat more like it. And she was barefoot. I didn’t remember seeing her without her combat boots.
“Hi….How’s it goin?”
“How’d you like your note?”
“Ummm. Well…very creative.”
“Adam was a jerk. He didn’t let us stay there any more. What a queer. Our art was the only good thing in his house anyway.”
“So, you guys don’t have any place to stay?”
“No. And at 10 below zero, we don’t fancy staying outside. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No….. I guess not, for a little while, until you find someplace else. But not for long, if you don't mind. I usually don’t use much heat though. You mind if I turn it down? I don’t want to let myself get too soft. After living outside I don’t like to get too comfortable with modern conveniences. I don’t even use hot water when I take a shower.”
“Wow! Where did you live outside?” asked Jess.
“Mostly in the Colorado mountains. I’d hike up to the top and find a good place to camp. Sometimes I’d camp in a tent, but usually, I’d just put down blankets, because that’s more natural. You get more of the real ground energy. Sometimes I’d put the blankets in caves. Check them out first for snakes. I did that whenever I’d get a vacation, go live outside.”
“Wow! That’s awesome! We’ve lived in abandoned buildings before. We’re more hoodies than nature lovers gen’rlly. But we’re tough. I hear ya on the heat.”
I turned it back down to where I usually kept it for guests, at a compromised warmth. “Do you like the tea?”
“Nah, not really. It’s too weak.”
“Did you boil it for 20 minutes? That’s what you have to do for roots.”
“Really? Cool.”
“It’s good for your adrenals. If you get worn out from pushing yourself too hard, or if you use coffee or smoke cigarettes or use any kind of stimulant, like sugar or something, it helps rebuild them. Some people use it to keep awake when they drive on long trips.”
“Hell yeah. Frank is going to show me how to drive.”
“You don’t know how yet? How old are you?”
“I just turned fifteen. My mama don’t know where I am, and I know she’s pissed. What other kinds of tea do you have?”
My mind was going in several directions at once. I wanted to sit down. Fifteen. A…runaway? Why? The least I could do was teach her a few things for the time being, considering her enthusiasm. I showed her more, chamomile for tummy aches and insomnia, fenugreek for mucus---
“Mucus! Yuck. What about henna?”
“Henna? Like, for a tea?”
“No, isn’t that what you use on your hair? It’s all natural, right?”
“Oh, yeah. I’d never use the kind of dyes you guys are using. It goes right into your scalp, all those chemicals. But henna is something that has always been used in ancient cultures shamanically. They’d use it as a way to start fresh, with a new perspective. Makes you feel like a new person.”
“I want to do it. I want my hair to look like yours. Would you henna my hair?”
Frank grimaced. I was in slight shock, but the feel of warm henna seemed comforting, and I was happy to think that Jess was moving in the right direction.
“Sure. Just take off my skirt first. It stains what you’re wearing. You can get a towel from the closet down the hall.
We sat under the bare light bulb in the kitchen, the hot green henna globbing on Jess’s head like a swamp. I pulled the hennaed hair into spikes, like a Mohawk, and Frankimal finally got into it.
“Now you’re talking! Can you leave it like that? Will it dry that way? That would go great with her spikes and studs.”
“But what I want is for it to be layered like Magdyline’s. Can you cut it, too, the way yours is cut?”
“Well, yeah, I always cut mine, so I should be able to do yours. We’ll be twins though. Handle that, Frank?”
“Fuck the Lord. Yeah, I guess. The woman I love can do whatever she wants.”
So, I cut her hair, with bangs, a variety of lengths on the side, and layers in the back as well. The girl was a plumper, squatter version of herself. Jess put my skirt back on. She wasn’t wearing any make-up at all any more, just like me. It was creepy. Then, she got tired and went to bed. In my bed. With Frank the Animal. Obviously, Frankimal was living up to his name that night, and was happier than he wanted to let on about Jess’s new look.
I slept on the floor. Or, tried to sleep.
Luckily, the next day was Saturday, and she could sleep in once she finally made it to that fortuitous state of consciousness. She was waked up by banging on the door. “Hey, it’s locked!” she heard someone shout outside the door.
“That’s ok. No probs. I’ve got the key, remember.” And Steve let in a few of his friends. Some she had never gotten to know well, some she had never even met. And Weird. Such a cutie. Some of them were wearing their Lost Angels Jackets. Did they still take that seriously?
I could smell Steve’s scent from where I was. I went over to him when they came in, drawn by it, disgusted as I was by what was going on. I hated being woken up suddenly and having to get up and do something. It made my heart act all funny. Made me feel like I needed to sit down and rest it.
     There was no place to sit left, but the floor, not that I ever had a problem with sitting on my floor. But really, I wanted to lie down and let it normalize itself, but that would feel out of place, even in my own apartment. They had piled their things on the chairs, and Steve had taken his pile of clothes into my room and set it in the corner. “Oh, HEY, Steve!”
“Va va va voom! You look pretty cute naked, Jess.”
“Oh, shut up, Steve.”
The lovebirds came out into the living room, looking rumpled and swollen. “Look at you! You’re a little Magdyline! Well, at least your mother would never recognize you now! Oh, hey, Magdyline, don’t tell her family she’s hear if anyone calls, ok?”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. I never lied. I certainly never lied to worried parents. It would be illegal. It would be wrong. The poor mother. And I could get in some hardcore serious trouble with the law. “Ok.”
I slumped on the floor. Silent, in a kind of dissociated trance, I didn’t notice what the others were talking about for awhile.
Jess was trying to get them to drink some licorice tea. I was losing my herbal teaching enthusiasm. “Yeah, go ahead. It’s good for your adrenals.”
     I knew these guys didn’t care about their adrenals. They probably did all the stimulants they could afford, and then some. They sure as hell didn’t care that it was organic. But who knows, maybe they would remember it one day when they got cleaned up. I was too tired to fight it. Noble and some guy I didn’t recognize said they’d try it. At least Jess made it for them, looking for all the world like a version of me, though with acne, and pasty skin and a round fungusy face. But perter breasts. That was obvious, as she was wearing one of my flimsy Indian blouses, with no bra, the way I wore them when I was off work.
Work. What would they say if they knew? That would certainly be the end of me. Frankimal rescue wasn’t officially sanctioned.
Steve pulled me into my room—or was it my room any more? He closed the door. He touched me with tenderness, and I melted. He was paying attention to me! “Adam said to give you a kiss,” he said. His lips were less than half the age of Adam’s. Adam’s were really made for laughing with me. Steve’s were made for driving me wild with love. I felt his body, with no fat on it, the bones so dear, the muscles so touching. He kissed me harder, with pulses, harder, rhythmically, and we were on the bed, as he pushed me down. He pulled down my pants, and I sat up to kiss him again, as I already missed his mouth, longing for it, though I had kissed it moments before, but he pushed me down on the bed, and held me down, as he went down on me. I was so impassioned, I couldn’t contain my sounds, and was glad the gang in the living room were such loud people.
“Wait a minute,” he said. He ducked under the covers, and I wondered what he was doing. He came up in couple of minutes, looking dopey and red faced. He let out his breath. What was it guys were using? Poppers or something? I shuddered when I thought about how often he sold his blood and plasma. It seemed to be the only way he made a living. And maybe all the other guys too. It was probably incredibly tainted with who knows what. He seemed less intelligent than he had a minute before. He had been seeming less intelligent just about every time I saw him, I realized. He laughed stupidly and pushed the hair off his hot forehead.
     I stared at his forehead in horror. It receded sharply back from a very thick, protruding ridge across his eyebrows. It didn't look human. More like a reptile, or something pre-human. My heart felt weak and my vision went bright white, as if it emanated from my heart. I lay back down in a daze. Just an unusual shaped head…. I could pretend he was not a hybrid. My body wanted to pretend. My heart wanted to pretend. But my mind knew without a doubt at that point, and had to be quieted.
He made love to me, but I could barely feel it at first, so unsure was I about who he was, what my attraction to him was about. But as I looked down and saw his hair over his eyes in the beautiful cut, with those long bangs that had always covered his forehead, with those tattoos of batlike wings on his shoulders, that inwardness of his that seemed so tortured and hard to access that was now being let loose into me, I couldn’t help but be choked up with love and the desire to protect him. It made me feel more again, more, and more, until I felt the surge of approaching orgasm though it was cut short by his own.
“They call me the Rabbit.” He said proudly and laughed.
Before long, all the guys left together, leaving only Jess and me.
I was quiet, thinking, that, well, we wouldn't have a civilzation at all if it weren't for the hybridization by the reptilians. Some of them had been pretty extraordinary. Maybe I could help him overcome his predatory genes.
The phone rang. It was Jess’s mother, asking if she were there. “Who? No, I don’t know her. I’ve never heard anyone mention her. Sorry. If I hear anything about her, I’ll let you know.” Jeez. That was horrible. I felt like a traitor but I would have felt like that no matter what I'd said.
“Thanks, Magdyline. I love you!”
I hadn’t heard that for a long time. From a girl, just a friend, it meant more. It made me feel warm. My heart felt stronger. I decided just not to think too much about what was happening, and drink some hot tea.
     Every now and then I would sneak into her room and lift Steve’s clothes to my nose, smell his scent that I could never get enough of. I had never smelled anything so enchanting in my life. All his clothes all smell the same. Was it his own body’s scent? Was it something added to him, some devilish delight from a bottle of tricks? It made me think of all the times we had been together. Him in the woods with me, telling me he had put a spell on me, playing, pretending to wave a wand, to make me “frolicsome”. I had cavorted in the woods, trying my best to be spritely, light, flowing, up to his standards of fantasy….The first time I had seen him, at Adam’s house, bending over, wearing pink tight pants, the first time I had ever had a simple lust reaction to a male body, rather than a romantic, long, drawn-out intellectual attraction. I had always been innocent about love. I was slowly growing into even having dreams where I had vague sex with people, rather than just looking into their eyes meaningfully, or feeling the first thrill of having them hold my hands.
     By that night, Jess was wondering what happened to her Animal the Frank. She was restless, getting cranky. We both went to bed early. Bed and floor. I wondered why the couple had never checked with me about taking over my bed, but they looked so comfy in there, I decided it was ok, made her heart feel bigger, wider, to let them just have her space. I wondered where all of them were that night. I wanted to see Steve again with his hair off his head. Or, did I Not want to see him again that way? Just look at how beautiful he looked with his bangs instead. I finally slipped into uneasy sleep.
Hours later, I was waked by banging outside her door, raucus laughter, threats and curses, and moans. “Oh, God, I’m fuckin ready to get warm. Hey, it’s not WARM in here! Turn up the heat, will ya? It’s fuckin Freezing outside!” This, mixed with several other voices, sounding more wound up and crazed than I had ever heard.
Their eyes were glimmering, glinting in the lights they turned on. They couldn’t stop laughing. They kept congratulating themselves, repeating themselves. “Did you see how he looked when you hit him on the jaw? Fuck!”
“I thought you were going to smash his eye out!”
“Hey Magdyline, you should have seen the fight. We won. We definitely won.”
“Oh yeah, we won, alright!” Everyone agreed to that, reminding me over and over. I wanted to go back to sleep, let my heart settle down and recuperate, but they went on for over two hours with their hyped-up recitation of all the details, what they thought was hilarity, camaraderie. I didn’t say anything. I looked from person to person. Jess seemed to sleep through it all, though Frank eventually went in to sleep with her, quieter than the rest, while the others kept it up.
There was no place I could go. I didn’t hide my sleepiness or disinterest. How could I have made love with this stupid, violent street punk? I wished he’d just go to sleep. Finally, I curled up in the hard, unstable rocking chair and lay my head on the hard armrest. There wasn't even room to stretch out on the floor. All I wanted to do was forget about everything. Make it all go away.
Finally, they all found their places in the hall, the kitchen, the living room. And one, throwing up in the bathroom.
     The next morning, I got out early. I wanted to pee, but couldn’t get in the bathroom. The Iowa City snow was bleak and dirty, and it was hard to find a bush to hide behind, especially one that wouldn’t show yellow leaking out from behind it. It was way more urban that I was used to. I just wanted to breathe, though I went back before long, because of the bitter cold. I was glad at least the kiddos weren’t out in the cold, freezing to death. I couldn’t let them just die, could I? I hadn’t heard from Adam in awhile. I wondered how he was doing with his attic ceiling torn up. Was the snow coming in?
     When I went back in, I noticed in the entryway of my apartment complex several bikes there stacked in the corner that weren’t there before. Ever. Mostly kid’s bikes. And there were no kids in the apartment complex.
I knew there were no kids. Otherwise, I would never have taken the chance I did with Steve when we’d snuck down in the basement and had sex on the washing machine while it was going. That was fun. And we didn’t get caught.
Where did the bikes come from?
I went back outside. I walked through the snow to Adam’s house.
We were so happy to see each other. Sanity. Adulthood. His roommates were all home, just waking up, groggy, drinking coffee. Adam’s hair, what was left of it, was standing sweetly on end. They were all wearing coats.
Adam showed me the attic. Pitiful. A disaster area. Cold wind was blowing into the house, and icy rain had pounded the floor of the attic, flooding it, and dripping into the kitchen below. No walls were left intact. Blood red paint was strewn in Jackson Pollack lines on the floor. I asked him about the bikes.
“I think they’ve been stealing them,” he told me. “And I don’t think that’s all they steal.” I felt red. My skin swollen and tight. I had to sit down.
“No way!” I shook my head. What had I gotten into? Jesus and Mithras!
I stomped back home, determined. Jess was awake, making coffee, and licorice tea to make up for it. She nicely asked me if I wanted any. I didn’t even bother. I took her downstairs and showed her the bikes. I noticed she was losing weight, and with her hair style framing her face to cover the roundness, she was looking more like me than ever.
“I think I know who most of them belong to,” she said. “From the school across from Adam’s house. Want to help me take them back to the school? They guys won’t have any idea what happened. We can get started now before they wake up if you want to.” So the two of us lugged the bikes in question to my car and to the school. We hoped no one would see us and think we were stealing bikes. We put them back on tiptoe, hoping no neighbors would notice. No kids run out and accuse us. Crazy.
I didn’t want to leave the house again for fear they would take my things next. I was now their betrayor. Once home again, I sat there, stoney, reading a book about ancient serpent cults. I’d been really getting into it before all this happened, but my concentration had been shot. I kept reading the pages over and over again. Serpent religions all over the world. Place names, names of tribes, names of leaders, names of gods, demons: all relating to serpents and flying serpents, dragons. The religions traveling from one country to the next, changing the names, merging with the indigenous religions. Moses and Aaron were priests of the brazen serpent. They worshipped at the altar where there were idols of them. The creatures that were worshipped as the highest in rank in these cults were often albino flying serpents. With wings like angels, and foreheads like snakes. Yes, they taught people things. But were those things really good? Were the cities they formed for their own good rather than for the good of humanity? Could humanity be separated from them? It seemed to be just a matter of degree. And those with less blood seemed more easily duped than the ones who had a lot, and were the masters of control. In charge of the media. The presidents, who always were closely related to royalty. I wanted to shout out the truth, but felt like I was only person in town who was informed. I huddled up hugging myself.
     It was Sunday. Last time I’d gone to the non-denominational church down the street, I’d talked with the woman sitting next to me about how Mithras, centuries before, had done the same things Jesus did. Had been born on Christmas, was resurrected on Easter. The woman said I was obviously possessed and moved away from my pew. But why go if discussion wasn’t allowed? Better to sink into just going along with what other people did and not try to change anything. Just humor them. Pretend all those well documented books were just sci fi. Act like dragons just existed in fantasy.
     I felt beaten back. I didn’t know what to do. Thieves. Stealing from innocent children. I hoped they wouldn’t figure out what happened to the bikes.
I hardly even talked to my other friends any more. How could they understand? I wouldn’t want to even begin to tell them about how ridiculous my life had become. I wasn’t even sure I was anyone’s friend any more. I wasn’t even sure I was me any more. I felt like a doormat, and might as well still be a deer instead of a lynx. Sweet doe eyes shining in the lights about to be run over by a car. And here I was an urban feminist, making my own living, working out and keeping my muscles taut and hard, working with medical professionals who trusted me with life and death of the animals of Iowa City.
     Jess’s mother called again. I had to cover the phone to keep her from hearing the guys swearing in the background. That was the last straw. One more time and I was going to tell her the truth. Or was I? Maybe. I was in the cult of the Lost Angels.
The piece of Adam’s ceiling had become a new painting on the wall, and was the only one now turned upside down. Upstairs in his house had become downstairs in my apartment, and upstairs in my head had become downstairs in my serpent seal, my base chakra, red and alive and tingling, pulsing with anger and love and passion and mystical love for my opposite. So much so that I couldn’t tell the difference anymore between them and me. I seemed to be perpetually asleep, out of my body almost, my edges blurred. I didn’t make decisions, I sleepwalked. My sleep walked me. My dreams slept me. My love dreamed me.
     It was days of this before it happened. I came home one day to find an awful sense of danger in the air. I could smell the familiar scent of blood as I went down the hall where I heard crying. It was Jess. Nobel was holding her hands under cold running water in the sink. “You can do surgery, can’t you? Can you sew her up? We don’t want the police in on this. She’s been out of it for awhile already.”
There was blood all over my bathroom, and Jess, dressed in my skirt, my shirt, wearing a necklace like I wore, out of African trade beads, her hair cut having grown in perfection to look just like mine, her body thinner than before, to match mine, was deathly pale. She seemed drugged, half asleep, or half dead.
I ran and got my emergency kit and started to work. “What happened?”
“I found her like this,” Noble said. “She was mumbling something about Frankimal not wanting to be with her. Maybe she did something he didn’t like. He was pretty mad at her. She couldn’t handle it. I don’t know. I think she just wants attention. What a baby.” She didn’t say anything. I didn’t wait. Jeez, it made me think of blood sacrifices. Eating pain.
     I gave her chlorophyll, as good as blood transfusion. I was glad I’d learned the ropes on that one.
While he held one wrist under the water, like I showed him, tightly above it to stop the flow of blood, I became more of an accomplice than ever. I sewed the wound with my signature, the red thread, my tears of agitation dropping on her bloody hand like petals from some dreamflower. Jess. Jess. I love you, you dimwit. Get away from these guys.
And I sensed a dragon somehow, in the room. Grinning and shaking its head. And smelling like Steve.

Tantra Bensko
© Tantra Bensko 2006

I have an MA in literature from Florida State, and an MFA from Iowa, taught writing both places as well as at Memphis state. I have published widely, with short stories in magazines such as Newtopia, Ten Thousand Monkeys, and Southern Hum. My writing has also been published in journals such as Mannequin Envy, Thunder Sandwich, Hawaii Review, Colorado Quarterly, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, and many more. I write non fiction essays as well, such as in MKzine, and Conspirazine, and write about artistic culture for magazines, newspapers, and websites.

This material is copyright © Retort Magazine/Individual Artists/Authors 2001-2006 - no reproduction of this material is permitted without express written permission from Retort Magazine and/or the Author/Artist. RETORT magazine is independently published by Brentley Frazer whom does not necessarily agree to the viewpoints expressed herein. Retort Magazine is not affiliated with any social, political or religious movement or ideology beyond that of being a archival survey of the contemporary creative arts. FULL DISCLAIMER | CONTACT