Dreamweaver meets The Theurge - Cauchemar
The Bandersnatch
Cauchemar
The Introduction by The Bandersnatch
[Where ever nightmares live. 3:15 am. July 1999]
“Ah didn’t mean to Pa! Ah didn’t mean to!!” Huge, hot tears
drop from each cheek like a watery metronome, from the fifteen year
old’s face.
“Persephone Hepzibah Mathers! What the Hell did yew do now!?”,
Malachai Mathers growls. The large Appalachian man looked like any
other balding, southern Baptist minister, collar and all…if not for
being engulfed in the flames of Hell-fire.
Persephone blinks and wipes away two large tears, taking a
moment to screw up her courage. Malachai chooses to interject before
she can answer, feeding his illusion of non-compliance. With a face
beet-red in apoplexy, he snatches up the little girl by one forearm,
adding yet another set of deep fingerprint bruises to her collection.
Mathers beams at the consuming pain, his burning grasp causes
his daughter. “Hell Spawn! This is what yew should have done before
ya’ killed me! Ya should've jess accepted your punishment like a True
Christian! ’Tis the meek that shall inherit the Earth!”
“AAAAaaaaaah! Ah couldn’t help it Pa! Ah didn’t mean it! Ah
didn’t mean ta kill ‘em. Honest! Pleeeaaase”, she tries desperately
to wriggle away from her father. The burning bodies of Abigrrl Lens,
and her coterie of Anarchists, writhe fresh in her mind. “Please Pa!
Forgive me? Please? Pleeaasse!? Oh God! Pa!!!”
The sadist shakes his little girl until her teeth rattle, and
her wriggling stops. “I should have killed yew, when ya killed yo’r
mother!”, he snarls as he grips her throat like a vice in his huge
flaming hands.
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Unbidden her memory flashes back to her birth, to thoughts
surrounding the cursed event. “Fat lazy cow! Ah’ll teach yew ta be
late with breakfast.” With a hickory switch no bigger ’round than his
thumb mind you, (but no smaller neither) he stomped his way into the
bedroom, and started whaling away at his sleeping girl of a wife.
Several of his lashings fall across her abdomen inducing labor a mere
two months early.
Among the things her father hated her for…
Her mother’s preg…laziness;
Her mother’s birthin’ complications;
Her mother’s subsequent death;
Her survival;
The hospital costs;
Her failure to drown in the well at the age of 1;
Her Powers o’ Hell;
Her stepmother Eostre’s love, and affection, at the age of 3;
The poltergeist haintin’s;
Her failure to suffocate while sleepin’ in the loft of the burning barn
at the age of 5;
Her failures to be beaten bloody with a switch no more, by the age of 7;
His fear;
Her genius;
His lustful thoughts of her 12-year-old body;
Her awareness of them;
Her “hexin’” of some fine upstanding boys, former stars of the football
team who was only horse-playin’ at the age of 15;
Her ‘willfulness’;
Her conversion to the Cult of Catholicism;
His seeming inability to strike fea… er, the Fear of… God into her
anymore.
The final straw came the day Malachai triumphantly came home
with news that Abdiel Dasha had asked for Persephone’s hand in
marriage. He happily gave his permission to the forty-year-old Abdiel
to marry his wildcat, hell-spawn of a daughter.
She numbly recalls him coming home, cheerfully telling her to
get her lazy butt off her bed, and her nose out of those God. Damned.
Books. “ Think yo’r a man? Goin’ ta be Doctor?” “Stupid chile, damn!”
Persephone bitterly resents Malachai’s taking every possible
opportunity to undermine her self-esteem. And even though she knows
that, that is what he’s doing, it doesn’t make it any easier to take.
At the dinner table later that evening, “Eostre, That was a
mighty fine meal!” Malachai beams his approval at his wife, who wanly
smiles and nods. Turning his attention to Persephone, he levels a
satisfied gaze on her. “Ah’ve got yew taken care of ‘Percy’” informs
Malachai. “Hmm? What do you mean, Pa?” Persephone asks. An
obsequious grin splits his face, as he continues “Well chile, yo’r
fifteen now, an’ iffin yo’r not careful yew’ll be just’n ol’ spinster
a’fore long.
So ah was talkin’ ta Abdiel Dasha today…” Unbidden, the conversation is
relayed in instants as she involuntarily picks it out of her Father’s
head as he begins.
Leaping up from the table Persephone shouts, “NO! Ah won’t do it! Ah
won’t marry that disgustin’ pig!” She knew what unchristian things
Abdiel thought about when she went into his store, and she shivered in
repulsion, to think of the designs he had for her nubile young
body. “What!? Yew Jezebel! Yew jess sit yo’r ass back in that chair
b’fore Ah tan yo’r hide, but good!” sputters an outraged Malachai.
Persephone quivers to a stop like a hare, but doesn’t sit.
Sliding the chair away from the dinner table, Malachai starts
to stand and draw his belt from his jeans. “Yew ungrateful brat! Do
yew know how hard it was to find ya a husband in this county?”,
Malachai lyingly asks. Tears fill her eyes, but she doesn’t reply.
Malachai circles around the table to tower over the frightened girl.
The belting begins in a rhythmic “Ugly!” *Smack* “Stupid!” *Smack* “Dis-
” *Smack* “-o-” *Smack* “-bediant” *Smack* “Harlot!”. As background
Persephone intones, “pa-don’t-make-me, please-pa I-don’t-love-’im,
he’ll-be-mean-to-me. Pa! Oh God! Please!”
By this time Persephone is on her knees weeping into her hands,
her Telekinetic Force Field preventing her from feeling her fathers
blows upon her head and shoulders. “Ave Regina Cælorum…” she begins a
prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Not even backtalkin’ could have
infuriated him more than being ignored.
Malachai is gratified that he gets her attention, stopping her
mewling, when he knocks her flat on her face, by breaking a kitchen
chair over her head. Persephone stares at her father in shock,
unharmed but for her soul. Glaring at her like a madman he
shrieks “Hell-Spawn! Devil’s-chile! Ah renounce yew! No chile o’
mine’ld have truck with Satan! Blasphemer! How dare yew use Satan’s
powers in the house of a Man o’ God! How dare yew not take yo’r just
punishment!? Yew Evil… LEW-cifer has taken possession of yo’r soul!
Harlot! Witch!”, accuses Malachai Mather in righteous aghastment.
“MALACHAI!” screams Eostre, “Stop it! Stop it raght this
instant!”
The preacher-man flushes crimson from head to toe, until his
face turns white with fury. In a spooky calm he addresses his
daughter. “Yo’r no childe o’ mine. Yo’r evil has e’en contaminated
mah new wife.” Reaching casually, the long fingers of his huge hand
curl talon-like around a large kitchen knife.
Frozen momentarily in shock, Eostre then dives to interpose
herself between her beloved stepdaughter and her cruel husband. But
it’s too late. Arm raised high, Malachai screams, “Ta’ HELL with ya!”
Persephone lifts her tear-stained face to watch her father’s arm
descend like Morté’s scythe. She doesn’t even feel it glance sharply
off of her shoulder, and watches it slowly ‘rush’ head long and bite
deeply into her diving Step-mother’s jugular, and stick with a
vibrating ‘Thock!’ in between her neck’s vertebræ. Still in slow
motion, the knife is pulled from her father’s numb hand, as her
Stepmother tumbles limply to the linoleum floor. Persephone notices
the blood begin to pool like a spring, pouring from her Stepmother as
from a faucet running full bore. Persephone ruins her summer dress
kneeling in the pool, and cuts her hands as she tries futilely, to
staunch the flow of blood.
She doesn’t notice her father again until moments later, she
hears the “Shhhhoock, Shhhhoock!” oiled metal-on-metal sound of her
father’s pump shot gun being cocked and loaded. “Pa, how could you?”,
she lifelessly asks her father. Thinking she was speaking for
herself, “This is for yo’r own good, Percy”, he growls harshly. “Ya
murdered mah Eostre, and now Ah’m sendin’ ya ta Hell.” Grief over the
loss of her Stepmother, and years and years of suppressed anger,
recrudesce as she cries, “Ah’m already there! See how Yew lahk it!”
Where-upon Malachai finds himself in Egypt’s own Lake-o’-Fire.
Persephone sees her Father spontaneously combust, and shriek in pain
and fear. She tries to take-it-back, but its to no avail. The venom
and hate of his final thoughts, poison the young girl. Her horridly
writhing Father burns a perfect circle some 10’ in diameter and a foot
deep into the floorboards of the kitchen, leaving behind only his ashes
and one charred molar.
The remains of the Mather’s family is found a week later by
Abdiel Dasha, come-a-courtin’. The girl is all catatonic, in her
summer dress of black and rust colored bloody gore, nearly starved ta
death. Abdiel covers his face with an arm, and pushes through the
charnel house cloud of flies, to quickly telephone the Police and
Ambulance.
A week later, Persephone comes out of her shell, when a nurse stands
next to her bed wearing the same perfume as her stepmother. Persephone
becomes a ward-of-the-state, spending two years at Eastern State
Hospital while pursuing higher education. Upon her release, she swears
to the Blessed Virgin that she’ll never use her gifts to kill again.
She finishes the last two years of under graduate classes at the
University of Kentucky in Lexington, before transferring to Megapolis
University for her Doctorate in Forensic Psychiatry.
But Persephone doesn’t escape the rumors in her home town that
she sacrificed her soul, and her step-momma, to the Devil who came and
took her daddy away, until she dies in a plane crash only a day after
her graduation.
************************************************************************
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Persephone feels her whole body become numb. *Ah deserve
this. Ah’m Evil!*, she thinks. “These cursed ‘powers’” she
spits, “Are evil! Ah killed them all. Ma, Pa, and now, them
others.” “Ah’m sorry Pa... Yew were raight. Ah deserve ta be
punished!” “Hail Mary, full of Grace. The Lord is with thee. Blesséd
art thou among women, and blesséd is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of
our deaths. Amen.”
And in an extraordinary display of Will, so Persephone Hepzibah
Mathers dies.
[Penthouse Suite, Parc St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans 3:16 am. July
1999]
Le Comte d’New Orleans, Aramis d’Chardrey, watches through his
sylph’s eyes his heroine’s soul leave her body. Unlike most spirits of
the newly dead, she spends not a moment hovering about her body, but
departs immediately for the not Light on the West Wind, in tow of
something foul. Aramis burns one of ‘James’ services, his Archon of
Transportation, and Teleports directly into Circaëa Gemynd’s bedroom.
Wrinkling his nose at the scent of burning flesh, he takes a
precious moment to lock the door, setting a gnome to bar the entrance,
and tacitly orders an undine to clean him up. She dutifully absorbs
all of the remaining blood spilled earlier this morning. Of habit
through years of service Jackson, shape-changes into a fresh wardrobe
from boots, cord-du-rois, to silk shirt, gloves, & cravate. Minute
iron filings fall sparkling like snow to the carpet, to be swept up by
the gnome.
Le Comte moves to stand before a recliner, facing his
surprisingly petit and enchanting waif who lay lifeless on the bed.
Well, no… Not quite lifeless, just soulless. Her etheric body will
indeed wane, but hasn’t faded yet. Finger bruise shaped, second degree
burns cover both of her arms and her throat. He tries with kisses,
to ‘Lay Hands’ upon her wounds, but bounces his nose off of her
invisible Telekinetic Force Field. Sitting beside her, he drums the
fingers of his right hand over her abdomen in thought. Curiously,
after fifteen seconds of pressure, his hand ‘falls’ underneath her
Telekinetic sectional armour. With patient experimentation, he finds
he can eventually slide his touch, underneath her Force Field.
He finally succeeds in Laying Hands upon her, healing each bruise and
blister, with a kiss. At the nape of her neck, his mouth begins to
water, and The Hunger immediately assails him with ferocious strength.
He steps back, and with a violent mental shake and enormous effort, the
Theurge casts away both The Hunger and his corpus, which falls like
chaff from his pneuma, flopping bonelessly into the recliner.
He’s pleasantly surprised at his success, as he’d only been
able to Astrally Project after the appropriate ½ hour ritual
preparation in the past. It takes a few moments to orient himself in
the Aurora Borealis fluidity of Astral Space, and he curses his
ineptitude, knowing a Shaman would do all of this much more facilely.
With a little searching, he finally finds his Angel’s ‘silver cord’,
the etheric tie between her living body, and her astral body. Aramis
tilts his halo to a rakish angle, spreads his owls wings wide, and with
a few powerful beats, wings his way along the path of her silver cord.
He expects that he’ll have the same advantage over his heroine
speaking to her soul-to-soul, as she does over mundanes, speaking mind-
to-mind.
************************************************************************
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[HELL: Behind the ol’ homestead, on the dirt path leadin’ to the
woodshed…]
Malachai Mather’s surreptitiously feeds ravenously on his
daughter’s grief, pain, and self-loathing, ’specially her self-
loathing. He goads, “Ah’m goin’ ta whup the tar outta yew
girl!” “Ah’m sorry Pa!”, she whimpers. The psycho-pomp cuts her
short, jerking her brutally up along behind him. “How dare yew change
yo’r given Christian name!”, he accuses with self-righteous
umbrage. “Not good enough fer ya!? Yew were always puttin’ on airs…
Too high n’ mighty fer the rest of us! Never knowin’ yo’r place.”
Persephone pleads, “Pa, Ah had too!”
“Git in there, yew lyin’ harlot!”, the preacher-man flings his
daughter face first into the dry and dusty floor of the carpentry shop
of the woodshed. Persephone sits up and tries vainly to brush the dust
and wet blood off of her summer dress. The dilapidated wooden door of
the woodshed slaps shut with the finality of a mausoleum’s vault. “Yew
think Ah don’t know wha’chu was doin’ when yew were away? Goin’ off ta
College lahk yew were a man!? Sneakin’ off at night, shamelessly
wearin’ yo’r pajama’s in public lahk some wicked hoochy coochy dancer,
an’ usin’ the Devil’s very own powers ta hurt people.”
“No Pa, it wasn’t like that!”, she entreats. Reverend Mathers,
ignores her pleading and tosses the ropes of Persephone’s self-doubts
and self-worth, over the centre beam of the woodshed and binds her
wrists high above her head, lifting her up to her tippy-toes.
“This’ll teach yew!”, Malachai spits, and reaches up with a
huge ham of a hand and grasps the neck of her light summer dress. It
easily shreds with but a single tug, spattering droplets of blood
everywhere, and leaving the young girl naked from the waist up. Like
evil whispers, the whip of her self-loathing, rustles in her Father’s
hand. Worse, she’s mortified to death, as her Father’s pure lust
flagellates her mind, as his eyes devour her pert breasts, and bubble-
gum pink areolas. “Pa, Nooooo…”, she despairs. “Yew know this is no
more than yew deserve ‘Percy’.”, he condemns.
With a deep ragged breath of anticipation, the sadistic
Reverend Mathers rears back with the ebon steel-spiked whip.
Persephone closes her eyes tightly and prays, “Dear God, No!” Malachai
chortles, “He won’t lissen ta no devil-chile! Yo’r Devil’s Powers
won’t save yew here!” “K’rrack!”, with a retort like a rifle, the whip
flies arabesque, eager to bite sharply into Persephone’s tender flesh.
************************************************************************
****************
Following his Angel’s silver cord intensely, Aramis d’Chardrey
finds himself bursting into, and surrounded by an Appalachian
mountainside. Below him is a little single story, ramshackle
farmhouse, which is complete with barn, forge, root cellar, well,
outhouse, and chicken coop.
Le Comte alights behind the barn, following to the end of where
the cord leads. Upon his desire ‘Mélissange’, his Virtue of Combat,
shape-changes from a red-gold orichalcum ring on his right hand into an
orichalcum rapier. Peeking between the wooden slats, Aramis takes in
the scene, and hears his angel say, “Dear God, No!”
As Malachai chortles through his vile reply, Aramis burns another
of ‘Jame’s’ services and Teleports into the woodshed, intercepting the
blow on Mélissange. Reverend Mather’s eyes bulge in surprise and
outrage. Persephone flinches at the blow, which never lands, and
glances with trepidation over her shoulder towards her Father. Between
her and her Father, she sees a handsome, and regal figure, excepting
the comically askew halo. Le Comte’s True Sight reveals the preacher
man Malachai Mather’s black bat’s wings, burnt-red bulls horns, trunk,
tail, loins, legs, and feet.
With his free hand Aramis pulls from beneath his silk shirt, what
appears to be an old fashioned Key of Or. Its shape is a simple
ellipse with a lower case ‘k’ hanging from the arc of one of its
narrowest radii. Adlibbing one of King Solomon’s Incantations, le
Comte abjures, “Lofaham, d’Chardrey, Iyouel, Iyosenaoui.” Malachai
Mathers pits his hate and psychoses, against Aramis d’Chardrey’s True
Faith, training, and Will. The Reverend Mathers begins to stalk
forward, before howling in frustration, and appearing to self implode.
************************************************************************
****************
Turning toward his heroine, “He lied you know. If God is in
your heart, then God is listening.”, explains the mousquetairesque
Angel. Persephone’s sapphire eyes moon into her rescuer’s violet
ones. “Who are you?”, she inquires. “Le Comte d’Chardrey,
Mademoiselle.”, he smiles. He continues, “I’m not King Solomon, so
whomever that Dæmon was, he’ll find his way back soon.” With a casual
swipe of his rapier, the Theurge attempts to cut away Persephone’s
bonds, but is incredulous when Mélissange rebounds ineffectively,
despite her molecular edge. “Lord of Light!!!”, he exclaims. Ashamed
of her impotence Mélissange, with permission, withers in retreat into
her ring form.
He turns his clever mind toward untying her bonds, but he more
progress he seems to make, the more Gordian they seem to be. “Hurry,
please”, Persephone implores.
Nodding, “Ummm hmmm.” They both turn to the task at hand. With
penetrating aperçu, le Comte recognizes the nature of their conundrum.
Changing tacts to stroking her ego, “Thank you for my life,
beautiful.”, he whispers in his melodious voice. “Hunh?”, her mind
casts about trying to understand the break in her thoughts. “My life.
You saved it… Well, you saved me, earlier this morning.”, he
reiterates. “I did?” “Oui mademoiselle, in front of my home in
N’Awlins.”
Persephone blossoms from fifteen-year-old woman-child to twenty
something woman even as he watches, as her self-image
improves. “You’re very brave. And much stronger than you know.” he
continues. Indicating the ropes binding her wrists with a nod, he
bends over to whisper in her ear. “Those are the Gates of Hell, and
only you can open them.”
Automatically, she tries to see what his mind envisions, but
due to his Warding, for all intents and purposes it isn’t there to be
found. Doubts assail her, “No, no. This isn’t real. You’re not
real!” “Hmmm?” “You’re just a figment of my imagination. You’ve no
mind!” “It’s protected, mon petit.”, he explains, and continues. “I’m
real, you’re real, and we’re alive, for now.” “For now?” “Oui,
Mademoiselle. I may have lost the last vestiges of my humanity by the
time we return. I’m starving to death, and I’ll need to feed. On
you. AHHHHHHH!!!”
“Now ain’t that sweet, ‘Percy’?”, grins Malachai evilly. “Even
if yew could get back, one of ya would die.” Reverend Mathers calmly
reels in his whip, now burning with an ebon flame. An ill indigo
nimbus emanates from it.
Le Comte writhes in pain in the dust of the floor,
bypassing “Jackson” entirely that ebon flame sticks to him like tar,
consuming portions of his soul as it begins to spread,.
Malachai saunters up to his victim, glorying in his sadism.
Aramis goes limp, and his eyes close briefly before they snap open
again. Through gritted teeth he hisses, “This corruption isn’t mine.”
And with that, the ebon flame is snuffed out.
Reverend Mathers takes a few quick steps back, and begins to
unfurl his flaming whip like an evil ebon Couatl. Then he
hears “SnnAP!”, and looking over he sees his li’l girl all growed up.
Unbound and no longer in her filthy and tattered summer dress, she’s in
her full heroine regalia, the royal blue skintight cat suit; silvery
boots, gloves and sash. Gee-gaws hang at her forehead and throat. Her
sapphire eyes meet his at the same time she extends her hand and
commands, “Stop!” Malachai smiles nastily “Yew jess…”
“Malachai Mathers!!! Yew jess git yo’r ass o’r here raght
now!”, a huge tow headed man bellows. “Pa!?”, Malachai cringes.
Le Comte leaps to his feet and into the air, snatching his
angel’s wrists on the way up. Above the homestead Circaëa watches her
Id creation, Gran’pa Aliester, whallopin’ the very Devil out of
Malachai, before the forest on the mountainside swallows the fleeing
pair.
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Quick as thought they burst into the beauty of Astral space.
Le Comte’s True Sight picks up their silver cords and off they speed
leaving wakes through the coruscating Aurora Borealis that surrounds
them. They arrive at their bodies, and before a tacit word can be said,
Circaëa struggles to escape, not wishing to return. Aramis shoves the
emotionally exhausted woman into her awaiting body with a “Thwuump!”.
Even for the most practiced of astral travelers, “falling” into ones
body is an extremely disorienting experience. Setting up a Circle of
Protection/Retention on the Astral, around her body so she cannot
wander too far off, Aramis slips back into his body trying to keep one
eye on the Astral as he reawakens.
The HUNGER! Fangs sprout from his bicuspids, cutting his lips. His
eyes fly open to vrille through his prey. His violet eyes variegate
into a burnt burgundy, and with a start he sits straight up and stands,
to cross quickly over to his petit victim who lies helpless on her
bed... The effort to operate dually on both planes is enormous. He
wonders incredulously, *How in Lucifer’s Name do Shamen do this?*
Were he a simple vampire, he’ld be able to feed upon her as is.
However, as a dæmonologist of a family of Gnostic Luciferian
dæmonologists… The young Theurge suffered a mishap. On the eve of his
16th birthday, during the course of his Rite-of-Manhood, he summoned
the Hyphiate (a creature similar to Succubus) ‘Su Nü’ to teach him how
to be one. A Man, that is. Mal chance leapt upon him however as, in
the throes of post coital ananda he made the off-hand comment, “If this
isn’t Heaven, may God strike me Dead!” So she bit him…
And now, like Le Ombres d’Sang’s (The Shades of Blood), or Vampire
Society’s, Aristocracy, he suffers from a restricted diet. In his
situation however, it is bloods lacking in post orgasmic opiates do not
nourish him. Blood with both orgasm’s opiates and oxytocin is his
ambrosia. He needs to make her cum for him, before he can feed.
Aramis prays to God that his angel will be able to survive the
experience. Emhiates (Incubus) that he is he synchronizes his aura,
and his very soul, to hers and enters the inner ætheric space of her
Id. Here, his heroine is a Goddess, and he, an interloper in her
temple.
With long practiced skill, le Comte d’Chardrey, finds the disoriented
Circaëa and leads her into his lucid dream…
End Introduction
Last modified 07/20/00 please send comments and constructive criticism
to Bander...@hotmail.com
From The Banderlair; A Tale of Megapolis:
Dreamweaver meets The Theurge – Cauchemar The Introduction
By The Bandersnatch
Bander...@hotmail.com
***
This work is copyright © 2000 by The Bandersnatch.
You may download and keep copies for your personal use as long as the
author's from, byline, e-mail address, and this paragraph remain on the
copies. Please do not post this story to any web site without
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the contents is permitted.
***
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