The QUEEN SONG

(14) Scenes 33-34

07/19/2019
Mike W McCoy

Version 1.0

<>33<>  Mud that smelled of blood. 

Ace couldn’t completely comprehend on a conscious level what was physically happening within the now of reality.  His beaten, bloody, and bruised body was on autopilot while the mind was tethered deep inside a delusion.  A dream that sang so seductively it sapped and sucked away at his shattered soul.

The Queen Song had completely altered his visual and physical perceptions.  True time was a tenacious throwaway as mere seconds seeped away like minutes which stroked straight as broken hours. 

Ace, in this altered state, fondled odd textures of a woman’s firm flesh gyrating above his body, or was it below?  It didn’t matter, the unusual angles, the improbable positions, the thrusting and caressing completely confused him.  The soft and supple tones flexed into hard and hateful angles as an animalistic anger wormed itself into the chorus of the Queen Song. 

A slight simmering sound from the 4 ‘Wailing Women’ background singers wafted wistfully onto the Soundtrack playing inside Ace’s mind.  Their moaning rhythm was changing counter to the Song’s tenet tempo as the fleshly feelings became less playful and more painful.  Nasty, numerous, desperate, even devouring emotions surged or squirmed along the edge of his perception, while bringing bright quick glimpses of the Resort’s reality.

The terrible truth was of a throne room scratched into the dirt of the abandoned theater.  Flickers of flame burned in child-sized fire pits, casting inhuman horrifying shadows of things that should not be.  The ash-painted wild haired naked women swayed in slow circles, competing within the caustic acoustic cracks of the Song. 

Ace’s climax was coming closer, and with it a ‘Something’ slithered stoic and sideways.  Despite the desperate debilitating desire forcing him onward and upward, he felt the end was near.  The Queen Song stayed strong, stamina inducing and slightly devious.  The background harmony of the backup women’s melody became more intense, like an icepick in his brain, and with it came a piercing pain producing pertinent previews of the rest of reality.

His lover’s skin stretched and streaked with the wrong color and contours not wholly human.  Hardness where softness should have been confused and disorientated his sensual sensation of the Song.  Suddenly a splash of wet crimson chaos withered the sub-set ‘Wailing Women’, 1 by 1 until there were none.  The dirt floor became mud that smelled of blood. 

The ‘Something’ sought out a source, and sucked Ace dry.  And with the old man’s murder, the Queen Song collapsed inside his compacted and cracked-open skull. 

The moment of his death lingered.  ‘Laughter’ was chased away by ‘Waste’, until finally Mother arose naked and transformed.

The 4 dead background singers laid littered liberally about the crater of carnal creation.  Their ripped open throats still dribbled blood into the wide wet mix of sand and dirt, with its center being the desiccated debris of Ace Veilleurs.

Gore and grossness dripped from Mother’s newly hardened claws and drooled dramatically from her sharp toothed jaunting jaw.  A few faithless fearful followers fled the throne room, while other more perverse peons prostrated themselves with hopes of being selected to serve.

A newly self-appointed quartet of cryptic courtesans arose from the crowd of kneeling cultists clumped nearby.  They hesitantly approached their Queen, weary of her jerky lunging motions, but they climbed closer none the less.  These emaciated women were costumed in the cult classic of ripped rags, bare feet, wild untamed hair, and blood encrusted scratches crossing their deeply tanned filthy flesh. 

“My children,” Mother breathed loudly, as rivulets of copious crimson sought a source and pooled around her feet.  “Take me to my children.”

A rust-red hotel bedspread was held up by a pair of Courtesans.  The blood streaked Queen wrapped herself into it.  The throne room’s remaining reserve of cultists gave way, and formed a procession proceeding towards the Twins in their nursery. 

The quiet of the throne room reverberated with the beating of Mother’s heart, a soft mumbled moan from the remaining Courtesans, the slowly rising caterwauls of the cultists chasing their Queen, and the load echo of helicopter blades.

<>[]<>[]<>

<>34<>  Phantoms of famine’s finest.

The Soundtrack slipped sideways sporadically, at least that’s how Boris thought he experienced it.  Serious sleep was a bygone experience the exhausted man hadn’t enjoyed in days.  So when his flesh finally faltered, and he succumbed to the sensation, it was somewhat sexual.  Obscene subtleties stuttered slowly over his swollen lips and sensitive sexual sections swelled with serious side effects.  All these feelings were in synch to the surreal Queen Song slicing at his cerebellum a quarter millimeter a second.

The dream was strong, strongest so far, and situated close, very close.  The music inside the special agent’s brain began to blend blood and memory into a new reality.  Indistinct images intruded with an abstruse not entirely human view.  Vague vibes and visions of visceral violence crept crookedly from the corners, but the sense of sex stayed straight and strong.

Increasingly incremental suicidal screams filtered inside the Soundtrack, faintly and flat.  The tempo of the new acoustics from the fantastical female fatalities, the ‘Wailing Women’, swirled counterclockwise until cracking the edge of the Queen Song, and allowing a waking reality to brake thru with a choked off scream.

“No,” Boris blurted as he shot up from the dream.  “Children?”

The idea of the word burrowed into his brain as both bloodshot eyes beheld the confusion of his physical situation.  “What children?”

The walls of cabana #7 at the Grand California Resort were mostly straight and intact, but they leaned precariously close to collapse.  The moonless and starless night sky painted a blackness behind the cracks and crevasses streaking the failing fractured frame, and it oddly helped to increase the light of the lone small sizzling cactus-frond fueled fire. 

The yellow green flames fixed the eyes of several of the closest figures who squatted no more than a half-dozen paces away from Boris who laid partly prostrate against the crumbling ruble of the cabana’s strongest wall.  Like the phantoms of famine’s finest, they moved not towards or away from him, but they seemed to advance and recede within a different reality tied to the flickering flames burning within the shallow pit.

Serpentine shadows slithered and shifted, making the precise images of each cultist difficult to discern, so a hybrid sufficed.  Only the sagging emaciated breasts differentiated the male from female follower.  Loose, tattered and stained cloth covered close to half of the festering flesh the firelight featured with its few brief flashes falling between the spurts and pops of the dried invading plat species.

“Hello,” Boris tried with a thirsty voice.  He was both surprised by the sound and their reaction to it.  “Do you-”

Quietly, and in unison, the cultists shuffled on their haunches back across the broken stone and dirt covered floor until the front line of refugee rejects had given Boris enough room to stagger into a standing posture. 

A mournful moaning rose from their collective shadow, presenting no direction but indicating eminent action.  To him they had become the leading edge of the greater darkness that was the shadow of Death itself. 

Steading himself against the cleanest wall, Boris felt up his pockets, and straightened the ruined rags that used to be an exquisite business suit.  The nearest followers fixed their eyes on the floor and raised their arms in a surrendering pose, but none rose to oppose him. 

“Um, swell,” the mangled man’s commented curtly.  “What happens now?”

Then, as if the darkness simply gave birth, a large healthier looking cultist suddenly appeared at the edge of the feeble firelight.  He was very dark skinned and had Polynesian facial features above a wide shouldered naked torso, the exposed flesh of which was painted thick with light gray fire-pit ash.  The faded dark Denim covering the legs of Mr. Ash was dirty and slightly charred like the soles of both his big toed feet. 

Boris couldn’t help his restless reaction, and immediately regretted it while speaking.  “I take it, you’re not with room service.” 

The big gray ghost of a figure smirked back, and slowly displayed the arm he had kept hidden in the deeper shadow.  Boris was torn between the whiteness of the cultist’s cruel smile and the shark-like teeth trailing both edges of the huge smart-cactus frond clenched tightly in a strong beefy paw.  Both looked deadly and sharp.

The volume of the clustered cultist’s moaning on the back channels of the Soundtrack continued to rise as the he limped away from the cabana’s wall towards the low burning fire pit.  The ground level refugees slid further back, as if being re-absorbed by the darkness of the night, leaving Mr. Ash and Boris to face each other at an uncomfortable distance. 

“Now,” the mutilated man began after spreading his arms wide.  “Do we really need to become violent here?”

Unexpectedly an answer came back.  “No, but outside, you are wanted.”

The special agent scoffed at the notion before slowly shuffling out of the semi-collapsed cabana.  However, he nowever hoHever took his eyes off the deadly cactus sword Mr. Ash used to point the way. 

“Who’s to be first?  Jax or Mother?”

In response, the shirtless Enforcer pointed with the organic weapon, not at the abandoned limousine, nor the collapsed corner of the Grand California Resort, or even at the crowd of creepy cult minions milling about the Olympic sized pool, but towards the line of fire threading its way towards a distant silhouette of a giant grounded helicopter. 

“Swell,” he shrugged and fell into step behind a chittering trio of the cabana insiders.

They twitched and groaned with every other stumbling step in the darkness, leading Boris along more by sound than sight.  A long glance over his shoulder solidified Mr. Ash as still dedicated to his unvoiced mission.  And back farther, the cult followers that could had crept crookedly closer, like a shambled heap of blind believers, unsure of the why, only knowing that they must follow.

The professional part of the Boris’s mind scanned the parade, trying to find a weakness in the layout, a path thru the maze of sand dunes, rocky ruins, stumbling semi-corpses, and lines of prickly plants that would lead to an escape.

“Escape?” he questioned out loud.  “But to were?” 

Then as if is silent response Boris, along with his entourage, crested a high dune, and got a good view of the action unfolding down on the melodramatic meadow.

“There,” grunted Mr. Ash while slapping his weapon loudly. 

Boris knew his reaction sounded rude, “Of course, I’m going.”

A meek sliver of moon light chose that moment to expose itself and illuminate the terrible tragedy about to unfold.  At about a soccer field’s distant, a short stone wall held back a burnt umber tinted turquoise forest of smart-cactus.  The waist high plants had their deadly fronds folded conical like a pointed Pope hat, and to Boris they appeared to sway slightly by an unfelt breeze.

On this side of the stacked stones the special agent could just make out the slippery silhouettes of Yellow Hand triad henchmen and their underboss Chan Xais.  The group was striding confidently to greet another procession of Chinese men unloading a large dull metal box from the solid black helicopter parked on a distant sand dune. 

The 2 clusters of animals came together with formal bows, and a minimum of words.  He couldn’t hear anything being said, but Boris guessed at what was going on.

The newest clique of Chinese were most likely led by the large round one who had stepped forward 1st.  He handed a small package to Mahn, who examined it before passing it on to his underboss.

The remaining new militaristic men stood at compass-point attention around the dishwasher sized metallic crate.  By their jumpy looking poses they were ready to rend and reap any who dared enter their ring.

By contrast the Yellow Hand Snakes were loosely spaced and relaxed.  Though some did openly cradle guns, trusting in their own computer enhanced info-dumps for target locks on the encroaching extras now nearing at about 10 car lengths away.  Some still sported bandages, while their triad Birds clung to their weary well-tailored serpentine forms.

From Boris’s view on the dune, the Chinese women, still costumed in their damaged elegant evening gowns, had managed to appear poised like perfect pearls amid the ruins of the Grand California Resort.  And it was during the brief break before descending the dune, Boris saw Mei Liun, the Vulture in the red dress, direct all attention towards the Monster and his own escort of creepy cultists. 

“No, not this way,” Boris groaned in response to her wave.  “Yes, I see you too.” 

Then without missing a beat, she next indicated the Firstborn walking vanguard at the long line of cult followers swaying aloft burning torches.  Long smart-cactus fronds were aflame, and dripped red hot embers for Jax to walk upon as they converged closer to the waiting groups of Chinese.

Underboss Xais began to gesture wildly like a salesman working a side street bazaar in some forgotten corner of the Twilight Zone.  From the reactions, Boris could easily assume the speech was bravado, aimed at bolstering the combined triad gang’s confidence amid the impending impious danger.

“Get going now,” Mr. Ash grunted, breaking the spell.

Boris scanned the terrain again, lasting no more than a single breath. 

“Relax, big boy.  I’m going,” he puffed breaking into a painful run.

<>[]<>[]<>

© Copyright 2025 m w mccoy. All rights reserved.