Clown in the Moonlight

'Depends on what you want. Half and half is one-twenty. Around the world three hundred, you want the whole night it's five, and that's a bargain. Believe me, I know.'

'You know.'

'I know.' He actually holds out his hand. 'Payable now, up front.'

He snaps his fingers.

I look over at Mercy, the silver studs on her short-shorts burning. She dances among flashlight rays that seem to cut her to ribbons. She meets my eyes. I realize what a dupe I've been. She'd spotted me and off the cuff had known I was the loneliest, horniest, most futile asshole in a long line of them. A gray-haired punk old before his time, full of need and empty of action. A couple of air kisses in my direction, a hand to my neck, and I'd be hers. She'd even hinted at her true intention. Whatever you desire, it costs. And I'd been too eager to see what she was actually talking about, distracted by ritual and subjugation.

Jenks still has his hand out. He snaps his fingers again, says, 'Come on, c'mon. You going to kick in or are you going to let a fine ass like that get away from you?'

I keep my gaze on Mercy as she snakes her way across the field, dancing and gyrating, sweaty and laughing.

'What about me makes you think I have five hundred bucks on me?' I asked.

'We can always hit an ATM.'

'And how do you know I have that much in my bank account?'

'What else are you going to spend your cash on, man? Trips to the French Riviera? You've got no woman. You drink milk, for Christ's sake. You don't do drugs. You live in a dive someplace, you've got no friends and no wife and no kids.'

'And how do you know all that about me?' I ask, genuinely interested.

He frowns like I've asked the dumbest question he's ever heard. Maybe it is. 'It's written in your face, man. Don't you know that? Don't you see that every morning when you're shaving?'

My expression must be fairly absurd because he starts to chuckle, and then guffaws.

Mercy's dance ends and some of the men can't contain themselves. They whistle and hoot. Not very becoming behavior for a coven.

The White Queen tries to stop the noise with a hiss, but the guys keep going and Mercy even takes a bow. It pisses off Kip, who appears to be serious about the rite. He growls, 'That's enough. This is a solemn ceremony.'

Mercy steps back to the tree and kneels at it in caricature of pagan worship. Her harlequin's face appears to be poised on the edge of laughter.

Dropping her chin to her chest, the White Queen begins to chant, holding the athame tightly in both hands. The blade dips and jerks, turning her as it moves. It seems to be alive, like she can barely hold onto it.

She cries out and spins, and her arms are wrenched and yanked this way and that by the trembling knife. Wheeling, she faces me, her arms jutting forward, the dagger pointing at my heart.

She says, 'It's you. The spirits want you.'

'Yes,' I admit. 'They want me. And they want all the rest of you too.'

She takes two fumbling steps in my direction and then stops. The athame begins to pull her away in a different direction. She wanders with it, mewling. She struggles to let go of the handle, but can't. The other members begin to gasp, mumble, titter nervously, make sounds of surprise and disbelief.

I turn to Jenks. I feel the first real smile of the evening crawl across my face.

I reach out and grip his wrist hard enough to make him drop the flashlight.

'Hey!' he cries.

It rolls at my feet and I kick it aside, the beam illuminating nothing now.

'Hey…my wrist…stop-'

I grip tighter. I pull him closer, the night sky playing in his moist eyes. 'You really know how to steal the last remnant of a man's self-respect, don't you, Jenks?'

'What? It's dark, I can't-'

'You think I don't need that last bit of honor? That last piece of my own sense of self-worth? You think I'll turn that over to you without a fight?'

'Hey, man, don't-'

'I didn't give it to Baphomet. I didn't give it to my father. I didn't give it to Ricky. You really believe I'll hand it over to a piece of wet shit like you?'

'Hey, man, hey! Hey!'

The bones in his wrist grind together and he tries to shriek, but the agony steals his air.

'You think I don't have repressions and pressures building up inside of me. You think I don't have violent fantasies just looking for a way out of my head? What am I, just a clown out here in the moonlight? No. No. I am rage.'

Kip begins to shout. 'I call forth Bathal, Bathei, Bathezel, Bathezuwen,' he says. 'I ask for my familiars Three-Together-in-the-Blind-Eye, Hildegrance, and Winter's Leg to come to me now and guide these blessed magicks. Where there is abomination, there is integrity set against it. Where there is devilment, there is dignity to balance it. Where I am lacking, there is redemption. Where there is sin, there is confession. My misdeeds are countered with my repentance.'

I let Jenks go and he draws away, unable to rub his wrist. 'You broke it,' he whines. 'I'm going to hurt you now. I'm going to hurt you bad.' He smiles, trying to hang on to his dwindling cool. 'You bastard-'

'Keep grinning, Jenks. That's right, just like that.'

I grip his chin tightly in my left hand, pressing hard into the nerve ganglia under his ear with my right so that his jaw pops open. I reached into his mouth. He struggles for a moment and I kick his feet out from under him. I keep hold of his jaw on the way down. I find the razor he keeps stashed between his gum and his cheek, the one he said he could slip out any time and slice somebody. It's a nice move if you practiced it. I'd seen guys go down with cut throats on the yard. Their jugular veins leaking, an eye taken out, or their faces marred forever by jagged gutters.

Mercy had been right. Blood sacrifices might be in order.

I gash him high on forehead with the razor and blood pours into his eyes. He doesn't feel any pain yet and just says, 'What…? What are you doing to me?' Then I slice again in the same place, right at the base of his hairline. The flesh parts like muslin cloth. I grab hold of his hair and wrench it. His scalp starts to come off.

Jenks takes one long, deep breath, inflating his lungs and readying himself to scream. I drive a nasty left hook under his heart and cut his wind off. Then I pull on his hair even harder and feel half of his head of hair tear free from his skull. It flaps sideways exposing the burnished skull beneath. In the moonlight, it seems to beam.

'I think I'll want her the whole night for five hundred,' I say. 'I'll tally up with Mercy, right?'

I hammer him across the jaw and let him fall away into weeds, slipping back into darkness.

The ritual is almost over. Most of the coven members were just bored twenty-somethings looking for a way to kill part of the evening before hitting Grimm's top shelf. The White Queen speaks a final blessing, with Mercy still praying at the tree in the center of the clearing. The others begin to split up, walking back to the house. I heft the flashlight and Kip comes towards me.

'Quite a performance,' I say.

He takes affront. 'This was the real thing. We were calling down power. We were fueling our own destinies. Taking matters into our own hands.'

'Is that right?'

His teeth are tiny, sharp, and yellow. 'Jenks tell you how much we wanted?'

'He did,' I say. 'So, if you're really into witchcraft shit then how do you split your focus between calling down Three-Together-in-the-Blind-Eye and Hildegrance while playing the pimp?'

'Hey, you don't have to go for it. It's your choice. But it'll be a waste, I can tell you that. You've never had anyone like Mercy before.'

'Yeah?'

'I know.'

'You know?'