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The Oldest Curse

By: AMoveableBeast



The high priest, hooded and robed in a cloak made to resemble leaves, stood and chanted in a deep, serious tone, while I listened and looked on as solemnly as I could manage. They had really outdone themselves with the altar. Perfect placement, this time. The holy book was open to the correct page and the ceremonial dagger was gleaming in the dim light. My faithful, a mix of mortals and piru demons, wore less elaborate robes of "leaves" and circled the priest like a grove of trees, chanting back to him a heartbeat later, creating an echo-chamber effect. In the middle was the offering, a pretty, young thing, stripped bare, her eyes shining and her nipples erect, proud and excited to be chosen for such an honor.

And I--dressed in a charcoal coloured suit, seated on a five hundred year-old throne of interwoven pine and spruce--couldn't have cared less about the whole ordeal.

Normally, I really went in for the whole sacrifice thing. Usually I found their dedication to the old ways touching. The whole all-in, secret cult role-play bit was charming, and it played well to my sense of grandeur. They were good kids, and damn if they weren't trying. I just wasn't feeling it that day. 

Have you ever been in love? Real love, I mean, not that sterilized flowers-and-a-box-of-chocolate, horseshit, love. I'm talking about the genuine article, that ugly, fucked-up kind of love that they don't sell a Hallmark card for. If they did, it would read:

"I love you and I need you, and I don't know which is stronger. You probably did something little and stupid, like kiss me, or talk to me. 

And you're no different from anyone else, not really, but, for some reason, I let my guard down with you. Maybe I was having a good day, or a shitty one, or maybe you just had the softest looking fucking tits I'd ever seen, or a big dick, a look that said you could fuck my brains out, and I needed it hard that day. 

Whatever the reason, I let you in, and now, you're inside me, crawling around under my skin, in the recesses of my being, hop-scotching about among my secrets and my dreams. And somehow, even that's not close enough. I need more, and I'm willing to peel my flesh off in ribbons to get it, to get my heart nearer to you. 

I used to be normal. Then I met you and you conjured this awful, beautiful obsession in me. Now, I'd disembowel myself, gut myself of everything I am, everything I believe, just to lay a finger on you. 

I'm not telling you so you'll help; you can't, even if you wanted to. Knowing you this way, it feeds me, makes me want to shout in joy. But the taste of you only whets my appetite for more. My screams of ecstasy, no matter how loud, eventually grow quiet, and then there is just the echo of you, fleeing from me. It calls to me, maddens me with its lack of proximity. There is no excess of you great enough to satisfy this hunger for closeness that I feel.

This is no cure for this cruel compulsion of love, no substitute, no sweet methadone for my growing addiction. An instant without you sends me into delirium tremens. My devotion is chronic, my affection terminal. I love you. I need you. Finish me."

If that seems extreme to you, like the desperate proclamation of some hopelessly co-dependent nutter then, shame on me, I haven't yet made your acquaintance. I need to get out more, but you know how it is, especially these days with the internet—face-to-face socialization just seems so passé. But if you know firsthand of what I speak, of the exquisite torture of real love, then we've already met. 

You see, I'm the god of love—well, one of them-- also evil, confusion, wickedness, cruelty, disease, and a host of other things your kind find generally unsavory. But if I've learned anything over the millennia, it's that a diversified portfolio is an absolute must when dealing with the ever changing winds of civilization. If you think this economy is tough, you should have been there at the end of the Fourth Crusade when Byzantium ran dry. You could have traded an especially fresh loaf of bread for the pope's hat.

But I digress. Love is what I'm really known for. Love gets all the attention. My name is Lempo: The Master of Demons, Dread Lord of the Forest, Frother of Loins, and Sower of Great Discontent. Call me Po. 

It's nice to see you again. How's tricks? 

For someone with dominion over it, to be frank, I don't tend to give love much thought, at least apart from professional concerns. Personally, I've never gotten what all the hoopla was about. Never felt the tingle myself, but in my line of work, you meet a lot of poets. Yammerers, those poets, long-winded and short-lived. Don't get me started on Plath and Dickenson. One broiled and the other froze. Put 'em together and you might have had a halfway decent piece of pie. Tasted them both. Felt a bit like Goldilocks with her porridge. They were both great with the sales pitches, though. Can't buy that kind of publicity.

"I desire the things that will destroy me in the end." Smart girl, that Sylvia. She really got it. Love is the world's oldest curse, and I am the preeminent hexer. It's a train of the damned on a non-stop trip to Brokenheartsville and Straight-jacket Junction, and I'm shoveling that coal and blowin' that lonesome whistle. 

Me, I don't take that ride, least not as a passenger. I don't fall prey to cantrips, don't lose money at shell games, and I certainly never fall in love. First rule of dealing--don't sample your own wares. Love is for rubes. 

What? Not how you imagined me? You were expecting a chubby guy with a bow and arrow perhaps? Please, I was making dicks hard before he was wearing diapers. Eros is a sell-out, a cheap, deific knock-off. I saw him at the Christmas party last year. He looked fat, even for him. Guess that's what happens when you're more interested in selling boxes of chocolate than being a proper god. 

That's the trouble nowadays: everybody's selling something. Athena works for the pentagon, Osiris is pimping Viagra, Ganesha is in the weight-loss racket. Hells, Quetzalcoatl is making a damn fortune working the pro-circuit as a luchador. And Jesus...Fucking Jesus has his hands in everything, done quite well for himself--especially for a half-breed. Still humble, too--wears the same sandals and everything. Though, in fairness, he was a bit of a trust-fund baby, as his dad, He-of-the-missing-vowels, is kind of a heavy-hitter. Never met either of them myself. Different circles and all that. They hang around the mezzanine and I'm a bit of a basement-dweller. I know them from their work, however. Inspired stuff. I particularly liked the water into wine bit from the little guy. And big-G, well he practically invented Stockholm Syndrome with that whole Job business. Real entrepreneurs, those two. Don't care what you want to say about the Jews--they know how to run a business. 

Even I'm not immune to the commercial trend. I'm in the nightclub scene. Mostly because it was the closest approximation of a cult I could find that still put me in the right tax bracket. I picked Atlantic City because, like all evil things, I found myself naturally drawn to Jersey. Every club is a religion unto itself. This particular temple (devil-worship during the day, dancing at night, fish-fry on Sunday) was named "The Woods" in homage to my arboreal profile. It never ceased to amaze me how you could give a group of desperate people a building in which to do the same things they could have done at home for free, and they paid and worshipped you for it, offered you all kinds of things.

Like the naked girl in the middle of the circle.

The high priest, whose real name was Herbert but who preferred to be called Dathos "in circle" (Who was I to judge? I had many names. Thankfully none of them as despised as "Herbert". Jutas came close. What's one letter, right, Christians?) picked up the crinkled old book that lay on the altar table before him, opened it to the right page and began reading from it--with gusto. He had a lot of gusto, this particular high priest. I'd seen them come and go, and this one had real panache. Once in a generation sacrificial talent. I don't care how stupid his birth name was.

The Kalevala, which was a kind of folk-tale bible composed of oral tales told by ancient Finns back when they brushed their teeth with sticks and thought flatulence was a significant portent, was mostly nonsense, but it was familiar nonsense, a falsehood that I had heard so often that I had become nostalgic for the lie. Plus, I loved to hear the old Finnish. Something about the "ah" sounds. Like a hot breath on my balls.

"Evil Hisi grasps the hatchet,

Lempo takes the crooked handle,

Turns aside the axe in falling,

Strikes the rocks and breaks to pieces;

From the rocks rebound the fragment"

Dathos, high-priest of the New Jersey sect of Lempo, pulled a strip of fabric from his robe. It was a leathered looking bit of cloth the color of dying grass, tattered and speckled by what appeared lt be old blood, designed to look as ancient as possible, like it had seen a thousand such rituals. In truth, Dathos, in his Herbert form, had bought it from Hobby Lobby (another Christian venture) a couple weeks ago. The man was a wizard at weathering. What he could do with cold tea and a bit of charcoal, almost made up for his shitty Finnish. 

With a grim look pasted across his face, he wrapped the faux-ancient rag over her eyes like a blindfold. At one point, years ago, when water had yet to be walked on and Hobby Lobby was just a gleam in the eye of a guy wearing a thorny hat, we just cut the eyes out. Just cut 'em right out. But with the screaming, you could barely hear the the high priest chanting, so next we'd do the tongue, and then, half the time, the high priest would just be standing there holding the tongue, like that was something people did. Or, he'd put it in a jar or a pot or something, usually with the eyes, and let's face it, no one is paying attention to you when you're standing next to a container that is rapidly accumulating organs by the minute. It was like a dark-age medical drama. What are they gonna take out next? That was good entertainment back then. Sure as hells beat sitting around betting on which of your children were going to survive to adulthood.

"Lempo guides the sharpened hatchet,

And the veins fell Hisi severs."

He picked up the knife now and held it aloft. The circle of worshippers gasped and chanted louder, as if they had never seen a fucking knife before. There was just something about holding up a blade during a sacrifice that got people excited. Personally, I was tired of it. I kept hoping for a spoon. Wouldn't that be some shit? A fucking ice cream scoop, maybe? I'd give favor for days to the first bastard that carved someone's heart out with an ice cream scoop. Real hardcore Ben and Jerry's style. Vermont Virgin: sweet cream with organ chunks and a cookie swirl.

I had to admit, it was a nice knife. The blade was gilded with gold and the hilt was studded with rubies. Curved wickedly and horned with a spike. The cultists went ape-shit for the dagger, and for good reason. 

That little souvenir was old. It wasn't Finnish, though, it was Persian. I just didn't have the heart to tell them. They got so into it. As the god of love and sickness and all things terrible and evil, I was many things, but a wet-blanket wasn't one of them. 

The blade had belonged to Xerxes the first. Xerxes, now that was a guy that really knew how to party. Got a bit of a bum rap because of that whole Thermopylae business. What a bunch of bullshit that was. Three-hundred soldiers my evil, pestilent ass. Nice round number, three-hundred. That legend was like a bar-fight in reverse. Everytime they told it, there were fewer and fewer of them. Have you ever been to a Greek wedding? How many people were there? If that many show up for a party where the only album the DJ has access to is Yanni: Live at the Acropolis, how many do you think show up for a war? It was like a European nude-beach on free-gyro day. Liked the movie, though. Nice abs. 

"Quickly gushes forth a blood-stream,

And the stream is crimson-colored."

Taking the very untraditional dagger, Dathos made a real show of following procedure as he blessed it several times before bringing it to bear against the skin of the young maiden. Blinded as she was, the feel of the cold metal against her throat made the girl jump a bit, which caused her breasts to jiggle alluringly. 

She was pretty, with a rack that nearly defied gravity. Shapely and free of almost all blemishes and pubic hair, she was a LARPers wet dream standing there offering herself to the Paapiru, "Head of the Demons". 

I didn't understand the pretty ones. The ugly ones, sure. Join a cult. Make some friends. The robes were flattering, especially if you were a bit thick in the hips as so many of the "witchy-types" were, and the hors d'oeuvres were free. But the pretty ones didn't need devil-worship (little "d") to make friends, and those tits could have bought her as many bacon-wrapped scallops as she wanted. It had to be daddy issues. 

All-in-all, I'm fairly convinced that through the history of mankind, no cause, no religion, no political agenda, has launched more ships heading in the exact wrong direction than daddy issues. Forget a black guy; imagine how mad your old man will be if you sleep with the enemy of light. Doesn't get blacker than that. 

You laugh, but that line has worked in the past. 

Dathos cut now, just a slow, sensual slice right under her left breast. The girl let out a moan of pleasure as the edge of the dagger crept across her torso. I wondered if she would have been as aroused if we had done it in the old way, where instead of a symbolic little cut, the high priest would have carved her heart out and carried it over to me on a tray made of infant bones held together by pine tar. I doubted it, but you never know. Daddy issues.

Holding the dagger beneath the jut of her swollen breast, the high priest collected blood along the flat of the blade. When it was sufficiently slathered, he balanced it between his hands and carried it over to me, presenting it as an offering. 

"Lempo may perchance come hither,

Let him fill this lowly station,

Let him stand between the kettles,

That with soot he may be blackened"

As was customary, I ran my finger along the edge of the blade, gathering the crimson as I went. When I was done, I placed the tip in my mouth and tasted. The entire room grew quiet, and the air became thick with anxiety.

In older days, when worshippers were many and humans responded to fear more readily than social media, it would have been that poor girl's heart. It would have been a village, or a town, making the sacrifice. I would have taken a bite. Tested the quality. If I found it worthy, I would keep the darkness of the forest confined to the trees for another year, convince the demons to laze amongst the boughs, hold sickness and plague clenched tightly in my fist, keep love locked up securely with the chains of rationality. If it displeased me...well, it was a harsher time. 

You probably won't understand.

I'd send forth the dank hounds, beasts of stale wind, rotten foliage, and sharp, jagged teeth, lead them to the huts and houses of the friends and family of those that had offended me. My piru, demons and spirits of unconscionable malice and mischief would haunt the roads, tormenting any they came across. Opening my hand, I'd let my other children out to play--malaria, influenza, smallpox, puerperal fever. Worse still, I'd unleash love, the awful, crippling, heart-wrenching power of love, on those present at the unworthy offering.. 

I'd feed them passion, funnel it down their throats until it collected in their bellies, until they were sick with it, a longing without end or reason. When they started to writhe with the fullness of unadulterated need, I'd paint them with lust and unleash them upon each other. Lust in its purest form is a peculiar kind of starvation, a need to push out and pull in simultaneously, to rip and thrust and claw and tear. Starving people have no ethics. 

It was not uncommon for them, the older ones, the smaller ones, to be literally fucked to death in the first session, bludgeoned or smothered by someone they once called a neighbor, a friend, a father, a son. When they were raw with it, peeled skin coated with blood and cum and shiny sweat, I'd take it away, let them see, let them remember and think. 

They'd kneel, blistered with pain and covered with guilt, and cry and wail over the bodies. Most times they'd beg for death, beech me for the sweet favor of oblivion. I'd listen, to each and every prayer, and nod, run my hands over the broken skin and tell them I understood.

Then I'd fill them up once more, and watch them do the whole thing again. This was a cyclical process. It would often take all night.

Nights, even truly terrible nights, only last so long, however, and when there was only one left, a single witness to the evening, someone who hadn't been trampled or choked, whose heart hadn't exploded from the effort, who had instead outlasted and out-lusted his or her fellows, killing many of them in the process, I'd free them from the madness, this time forever. 

I'd make them watch me devour the bodies of the others. Slowly.

I looked differently then, not like a man, like I do now, but I was man-shaped--a gathering of razor-leaf and night soil with dark, endless tunnels for eyes, and a mouth. I had such a mouth! Filled with teeth, so many teeth, beyond counting, all of them sharp, a collection of enamel from different beasts, beyond number, no two alike-- a ring of yellowed hunger, pieced together from the appetites of a thousand creatures.

The lucky survivor would watch me as I used those teeth to grind, and saw, and slice apart people who had once had names and homes and families...and a chance not to disappoint me. I would even eat the bones. Especially the bones. People keep the most succulent parts of them buried as deep as they can. The sweetest marrow tastes of secrets.

I'd let him go after that, let him walk past the husk of his village, let him smell the smoke and hear the awful nothing, the sound of no children playing, no men working, no people living. 

He would be his own kind of poet after that, a walking sales pitch. As I said earlier, you can't buy that kind of publicity.

The standards for the sacrifice were once quite rigorous. It had to be a virgin of good breeding, blue of blood and pure of heart. She had to be of exceptional potential, unsullied by temptation and full of possibility. The chosen had to be the best and brightest. It was supposed to hurt. That was the point of sacrifice, what gave it value. 

The girl in New Jersey, who stood shivering with anticipation as a thin ribbon of blood trickled down her stomach from the cut under her breast, would have never passed muster a few centuries ago. 

She was a drug-user, pot mostly, but I could detect angel dust and oxycontin swimming alongside the iron and the plasma. Not a virgin either. I could taste every sexual experience she'd ever had. Her first orgasm, gained from riding the armrest of the couch while watching a particularly disturbing episode of Law and Order. The way Kevin Johnson's semen had felt squishing in her palm after she'd jerked him off, her hand buried under a coat in his lap as The Hangover played to uproarious laughter in the theater around her. Even feel the first time she'd taken a cock anally, painful at first, scary, too much, too fast, then surrender, a not-unpleasant pressure easing into a glorious fullness. 

She'd pulled mostly "B's" in high school. Had gone to nursing school for only two semesters before dropping out to come to New York. The Big Apple proved a little too much of a mouthful and she retreated to the relative obscurity of Jersey. A job as a cocktail waitress at Caesars presented itself by way of a drunk man in a business suit whom she'd blown in the bathroom of an upscale bar after one-and-a-half dirty, desert-dry martinis. He'd cum quickly, and there were bits of olive still in her mouth mixing with the taste of his sweaty cock when she gulped him down. Salt on salt. The olives might have been stuffed. It was hard to tell with just the little bit of blood on the knife. She never received the same treatment. The man was significantly deeper in than one-and-a-half desert-dry martinis, and as a result, his ardor was shaken after just one stir. His business card had been as much an apology as an offer. An awkward call had followed a few days later. Another blowjob and she'd started the next Thursday.


The Oldest Curse



Then there was the devil-worship. A handsome piru with eyes like a snake and a knack for dice had led her here. A desire to feel different and adventurous had done the rest. Cavorting with demons was quite the rush for wannabe bad girls and weekend-witches. Evil was a turn on to a certain kind of woman. Early Christians had once depicted me with a pointy tail. I was often glad it was merely artistic license; if it were true, I'd have had to spend all of my time trying to keep girls with dark eyeshadow and band tattoos from sitting on it. What was it about sleeping with the embodiment of lust, the physical representation of promiscuity, that made girls feel special and unique? 

The cocktail waitress with the nice tits and the shaved twat was certainly neither of those things. She was perfectly common, unremarkable in the fact that by striving to be unexpectedly wicked she had assured herself of being absolutely predictable.

The girl was the very definition of unworthy. The trail of blood had made it's way past her hip now and, following the curves of her body, dripped over the lips of hairless pussy before falling in spots on the wooden floor. Too bad she was wearing the damn strip of cloth. Could have used it.

Without irony, the high priest knelt before me and bowed his head in reverence. He turned the dagger and held it so that both his hands were wrapped around the hilt, the blade pointed upward, the tip resting against his exposed throat. It was a deference based on real vulnerability. As was customary, I cupped one hand under the pommel and placed the other on his head.. I would show my satisfaction by pulling his hood back, allowing his true self into my presence; I would show my displeasure by shoving the knife up under his chin and into his feeble human brain.

Silence and excitement spawned in the deep shadows of the room, gave birth to shuffling feet and palpable tension. 

I did my very best to stifle a yawn. I was only partially successful and when the hood came off, I couldn't speak for a second and the congregation had to be content with vigorous nodding and hand waving until my exhalation ended. Expecting to hear the proper reply, many of the robed witnesses took a fearful stepback, worried that this breach of protocol meant my swift and unmerciful judgement was soon to follow. 

I shook my head trying to rattle away the yawn as a small amount of tears built in the corners of my eyes. "Ahhhhh...Sorry, lads. Don't fret. You did great. Good stuff. Real dark and scary. Professional-grade culting, right there. I think it was even better than last week." Then, remembering that I still hadn't spoken the ritual response, "I, Lempo, Dark Lord of the Forest, do abide your presence and offer you shade from the searing light under the canopy of this dark wood."

A collective sigh burst from them and I smelled the faint scent of urine. Poor kids, didn't know what they were so scared about. I hadn't rejected an offering in decades. Killing your employees was a sure way to tank a business. Besides, I was out of I-9s, and didn't feel like training a whole new staff. They could have brought me Joan Rivers and I'd have called her a worthy virgin.

With the danger passed, however imagined it might have been, my worshippers got down to the part they really liked about the ritual: the orgy.

Robes hit the ground, puddling beneath bare feet, creating a make-shift bed of blankets, which was put to use almost immediately. A piru, a tall one who, a few thousand years ago, had looked a bit like a crane with sharp, taloned feet and who still had a long nose and wide, webbed toes, threw a red-haired woman down and proceeded to bury his face in between her legs. Another demon, this one a female sporting an abnormally large tongue that referenced the lizard she had once been, knelt behind the man and began to lick his ass enthusiastically. 

Ritual quickly gave way to ravaging, and soon every member of the circle was caught up in the ball of demons and debauchery. All except the sacrificial waitress, who, still blindfolded, stumbled free of the group and toward me, almost tripping over two women who were aggressively sixty-nining. When she made contact with the throne, her hands groping out for the wood like some sort of horny Helen Keller, she dropped to her knees in wanton reverence. 

"Please, Dark Father, feed me your approval, shower me in your favor. Thou art my only desire." she said, her pert little body practically shivering in anticipation. I shot Dathos a questioning look. Thou? What did the twat think this was, some porno version of Richard III? A cock, a cock, my kingdom for a cock! The high priest only shrugged. Panache, yes. An eye for good pussy, no. As I unzipped my pants, I thought about the financial practicality of hiring talent scouts to scope out nice ass. It had worked out well for Catholicism.

Once I freed my divine member, she set about fellating it in a style congruent with the typical American approach to any situation; she was aggressive, enthusiastic, and showed a general disregard for the feelings or preferences of anyone else. Dathos hurriedly returned the dagger to the altar before disrobing, and before my dick was even fully wet, buried his cock in the girl from behind. 

Getcha some, Herbert.

"She is quite the go-getter, isn't she? Very eager. Let me guess...Airline stewardess? No, wait, Starbucks barista?" The voice that spoke was a whispered bit of sharpness, pleasing to the ear but with a hint of a threat, the sound of a knife sliding free of a scabbard. It startled the waitress who was sucking my cock, causing her to stop. The woman it belonged to appeared suddenly, as if from nowhere, stepping from the air to lean casually against the armrest of my wooden throne.

"Cocktail waitress," I said, without further elaboration, before giving the subject of the question an impatient pat on the cheek signifying that she should resume her sacred duty, which she did, even more vigorously, and less empathetically, than before.

"Ah," she replied, as if that said everything. "Whatever happened to the good old days? Princesses, a countess or two, a nun when it got slow? Couldn't they at least find you a Kardashian or two? Those bitches are everywhere."

"Even in these dire times, I think I would have to reject that offering. It's nice of you to finally join us, Hisi. Got tired of creeping around The Between, eh?"

Hisi merely shrugged her shoulders. To say that she was beautiful would have been an insult. "Beautiful" was the word that poets and songwriters came up with to describe things like Hisi. Seeing her in the flesh made the word seem small and inadequate. She could not be encapsulated by something as petty as language; not even with the full scale of human senses could see be contained. Even for a goddess, she was hard to pin down. Even "goddess" was sort of a misnomer, as she was male as often as female. Shifting and changing, she became what a person desired most when he or she was in her presence. She could be light or dark, tall or short, either sex, either gender, could smell like the cheapest of whores, or like the homecooking of a long-dead mother. Her touch was the spread of need, of doubt, with lips that tasted like betrayal and breasts that lactated pure, whole lust, none of that two percent shit. 

Like any dream or desire, she could vanish entirely from view, or she could appear everywhere at once, consume a man's visions, his thoughts, his life. Hisi was the embodiment of the big turn. She was the moment of final corruption, the instant when a businessman betrayed his best friend to climb the corporate ladder, the second when a mistress told her lover that things would be so much easier if his wife just wasn't around. The bitch was basically passion personified, a little sin pudding poured into an hourglass. 

To me, she looked like a blonde woman in her early twenties, tall and pale in the traditional Finnish way, with eyes like the Arctic sea and a summer smile untouched by the Northern chill. Only her outfit remained her own. She was topless, heavy breasts hanging right beside me as she leaned on the chair, a skirt of leather, barely long enough to cover her ass, her only garment. Few remembered Hisi, knew her name, fewer still recalled how dangerous she was, or knew that the skirt she wore was made entirely of foreskins. Humans had such bad memories. Hisi was a hard woman to forget. She was also my sister, my sometimes lover, and the biggest cunt this side of Cleopatra. 

"Have you been waiting long? You seem bored. You normally enjoy your festivities so. Unless...there's something else on your mind. Or maybe it's not your mind I should concern yourself with." Putting one finger to my temple, she traced it down my jawline to the tip of my chin, down my throat, stopping at my chest. There she drew a little heart. "Why, Po, what is that ruckus? Is that a beat I feel? Does something stir within the black heart of the Paapiru?"

I tried to concentrate on the blowjob. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Ridiculous? Dear brother, would I ever be something so common? It's not without precedent. There was that one girl, a few centuries ago. The one you played house with for, how many years was it? What was her name?" Hisi was feigning ignorance. She knew damn well what her name had been.

"I haven't any idea of whom you're referring to, love." I could play dumb too. The cocktail waitress continued to work my meat like some cock-sucking robot set on overdrive.

"Hanna? No, that was the high-born we spit-roasted when you were in your Italian phase. God, I miss that dick. Go big or go home, am I right? Glad to be rid of the chest hair, though. Liidia? No, that was the redhead who could only cum if there was a wolf in the room. Anna? No...what was it?"

Knowing that the quicker I complied the quicker she'd shut up, I offered the answer. "Oona."

"Ah, yes! Oona. You fancied her quite a lot if I remember. Sweet little thing. None too bright, though, if memory serves." Her hand had moved down from my chest and now rested on my abdomen. "What ever happened to good, sweet little Oona?"

"I don't recall." The blowjob wasn't working. I busied myself with watching the orgy that was still progressing on, what would be in a few hours, the dance floor of the club. A chubby woman with a tattoo that said "disturbed" across her shoulder blades was being held aloft by four weasely piru, while another, this one as big as a bear with a proportional sex organ, stood between her legs and split her with fierce, powerful thrusts. It had been going on for some time now. The pain had stopped, maybe even the pleasure too. Her face, once a mask of passion and fear had gone slack with shock, and was tight and shiny with dried tears.

"Sure you do, bro." I could see her out of the corner of my eye looking up at me, her face painted with a broad innocent smile. Her hand clawed at my stomach, kneaded into me.

My first memory, millennia ago, before the first men gave me a name, before there were names, is of waking up in a large, dark forest. Maybe "waking" isn't the right word, I don't know that I was asleep, but neither was I awake. Rather, I always was, somewhere, in the twilight between being and not. It was like I was daydreaming, of blood and pain and lust and love, wonderful vicious love, but I was the only one, dreaming why dream of cum and crimson. Then, someone, some savage man or woman (it's hard to remember specifics after a few thousand years, even for a god), free of clothing and ambition, absence of dark thoughts or deep love, went to sleep one night, a night no different than any other. And he or she dreamed, not of survival, not of berries and nuts, but of need, desire, the value inherent in skin--the way it would feel pressed against his own, the way it would tear against the edges of a sharp rock. And this person found me in my dream, in The Between--the place where gods are born, if they are born at all, where they die, if they die at all, where we go when we are not here--and, more importantly, I found them. We chatted, we touched, tasted of each other, and, in the way of lost dogs and dark thoughts, I followed her home. To a forest. To Finland. To you.

And even then, when my eyes first opened, first learned of the stinging light of the day, there was Hisi. When I think of it, I think that she may have even been there even earlier, in the before place, curled up in the corner of my dream. She has always been. Her, and my brother Paha. They are my twin shadows, one cast by the sun, the other by the moon, one fair and the other foul, one obvious, the other covert. 

We are like most families in that, we are bound by common origin and united by shared history. We are also like most families in the fact that, for much of the time, we can't fucking stand each other. We're too alike. We're too different. We know each other too well, and not well enough. We have been all things to each other: lover, rival, kin, stranger.

It was during one of the "lover" periods with Hisi that I met Oona. As my sister said, she was a sweet girl, simple, a farm girl descended from a long line of farm girls. My sister is ardor incarnate, and a hot bit of conversation, but she lacks...emotional depth, shall we say. Oona was an ocean of affection, cool, still waters that went down and down. I thought I could hide the affair from Hisi. I was wrong. Poor Oona. She never even knew who I really was. It was one of my favorite things about her. She certainly didn't know how jealous my sister could be.

"Tell me what happened." Hisi continued to tease. 

"You killed her."

She rolled her eyes and laughed, a shrill, cruel noise that caused the cocktail waitress to change the rhythm of her sucking for just a moment. At least something could. "Well, OF COURSE I killed her, but there was more to it. Do you remember the next morning? At breakfast?" 

"Yes..."

"Well?"

"Well what, Hisi?"

"Refresh...my...memory!" She nearly screamed this part, her voice crackling with divine power and malice, so much so that it blew back the hair of the woman at my feet. Even the piru, so busy with their orgy, stopped momentarily to give fell Hisi a fearful glance. Her nails, grown long and treacherous in her anger, pierced the fabric of my dress shirt, thrust clean into my abdomen and through my back, skewered a kidney on the way before being stopped by the firmness of the wooden throne. Wouldn't kill me, took a fair bit more than that, but it fucking hurt, and I could feel blood trickling down to my waist. Some of it ran down my cock, streamed over the base before flowing down over my balls and thighs. The waitress, unable to see, made no adjustment to the blowjob, and got a mouthful of it, causing her to gag and choke. But she fought through it. She didn't dare stop. Maybe she was smarter than I gave her credit for. Hisi was not as practical as I was, or as forgiving of unworthiness. 

Dathos, more accustomed to our spats, didn't miss a beat. 

"Fuck all, Hisi! Three-thousand dollar suit! Now I look like Saint Sebastian on the cover of fucking GQ. Fine. I remember. You tore her to pieces and stuffed what was left of her into her own intestines and then you fried 'em up and served 'em to me for breakfast the next day with quail eggs and grated black truffles. Feel better?"

"And you said?" She was still intense, her beautiful, stolen face twisted in malice.

"Really, Hisi?" The poor waitress was shaking so badly and gagging so much on the blood that she was barely moving up and down now, just kind of rocking back and forth, biting my dick with her chattering teeth.

"Tell me!" The force of her demand was a gale wind through the room. She was such a fucking prima donna sometimes.

"...That it was the best goddamned sausage I ever ate." I conceded finally.

"When I told you what it was, who it was, you were so crestfallen." Her face was all sly sweetness again and she sparkled with her victories, both current and past. "Who would have thought such a plain girl would have gone so well with such a decadent meal." 

"Yes, well. She was even tastier pre-griddle. I assure you." 

"Oh Po, you always go for the Average Janes, don't you? You've fuck deities and queens, yet it's the peasant girls that always get a piece of you. Like this latest one that has you in a tizzy. What's her name? Veera, is it?"

"Leave it, sister." 

"She's due in today, isn't she? For her next appointment?"

"I said leave it."

"How long has it been since she's been in to see you, Dread Lord of the Forest. A week almost? Maybe she's not coming at all. Maybe she's grown tired of you, Po. Perhaps she can't stomach your presence anymore, your foul stench, not even for the precious bargain she sought."

Faster than any mortal could have managed, than even Hisi, with her tricks and her vanishing, could avoid, I reached out and grabbed her by the throat. I let a little bit of power, my divine gift, into my arm. Even that small spark was enough to strain the tendons, to pop the blood vessels than ran up my forearm. Bruises formed instantly, spreading out like a purple spill under my skin. This form was so fragile. It could contain so little of what I really was, but even that little leak held enough potency to handle my sister. 

She tugged against me, fought to escape my grasp. Pointless. I gave her one good squeeze and she was on her knees, gasping, head bowed. The waitress completely stopped sucking. I could feel her trembling against the hardness of my dick. Even Dathos, who had continued to fuck her without interruption through the ordeal, ceased his thrusting.

The Finns got us confused, my siblings and I, thought we were one and the same. Some fools, even now, persisted in calling me by my brother's title, directed their prayer's in my sister's honor. There were a lot of idiots who thought of us as a triad, a shared coven of equals. There were a lot of idiots in the world.

I am Lempo, the darkness at the heart of all things. I am Paapiru--Head of Demons. If there were a dinner table in my dark house, I would sit at the appropriate position. There would be no other chairs at this table apart from my own. My siblings would sit at my feet, hungrily awaiting the scraps I was kind enough to feed them. Sometimes they needed to be reminded what's for supper.

Maybe I just needed to buy a fucking table. Never underestimate the value of an effective visual aid. 

"Dearest, dearest, sister...perhaps I was not articulate enough concerning my desire to not continue this avenue of conversation."

"A thousand apologies, Great Lord," she said, her breath coming in gasps. "Mercy for the unworthy. Mercy for your foolish sister."

I relaxed my grip enough that she could breathe fully once more, but I did not release her completely. "Granted. Fingernails. Now."

Her nails ceased to be claws, shrinking and retracting from my abdomen. The wounds began healing even before they were all the way out. "If it pleases you, dear brother, Father of Lies, blood of my blood, may I give you pleasure as contrition." Her eyes were downcast still, shoulders slumped in submission.

"You may." Fucking Hisi. Always knew how to get under my skin. Thousands of years had taught her the location of every button. I tried to be nice. I really did. At least so far as my responsibilities allowed. Some girls just didn't want nice.

Hisi reached out and grabbed the waitress with both hands, one under her neck, plying her jaw, the other threaded through her hair, and began forcing her down on my sex. It was an immediate improvement. Even in this removed manner, Hisi was a masterful lover, with a depth of knowledge and experience the slutty cocktail waitress would never possess.

Dathos started to fuck the waitress once more, trying his best to match Hisi's rhythm. It wasn't easy. A goddess did things a little differently. Mortals weren't made to keep up. Just the act of being a proxy was too much for the young sacrifice, who sputtered and gagged as my sister used her mouth as an apology. I had to admit, it felt fucking amazing. I almost felt a twinge of guilt when the tears came. Almost.




The Oldest Curse



"Does this please the master?" Hisis asked, the picture of courtesy and amiability. Her breasts were bouncing with the effort of manipulating the other girl, whose breasts were themselves jiggling from the combined force of being fucked by the high priest and compelled by Hisi's impossibly strong hands. 

Some things stir your blood, no matter how many times you see them. "Yes, quite," I said. Still, I found myself drawn not to the action, but to my sister's face. More accurately, to the face she was currently wearing.

Noticing my preoccupation, she leaned in close, my hand still around her throat. "Do I look like her?" She whispered this next part just for me, her venomous mouth pressed close to my ear. "I do, don't I? I should have known. You never change, Po. You might be the most powerful fool in existence, but you're still a fool." I went to speak, to protest, but she shushed me and continued speaking in a low, conspiratory tone. "It's okay. Enjoy it. Enjoy her. You haven't even touched her yet yourself, have you? You know, for the god of evil, you're quite the gentleman sometimes. I always hated that part. The gentleman part. Give me a bastard anyday. You can be such a glorious bastard when you want to be. But if you want to play the knight, fine. Let me polish your sword."

The waitress was a blur in her hands now, a tool, but at least she had become a willing one. Gone were the tears, along with any pretense of control, the girl's ass rippled with the force generated from the hips of the high priest, and her mouth was a wet, easy thing, all spit and surrender. Dathos opened his mouth in ecstasy, and I could smell his cum as it entered the waitress. I was specially attuned to the low groan he let out as he did, could pick it out even among all the other sounds in the room. I could sort out every cry, every filthy word, every touch of ejaculate from the orgy, could tell how fertile each woman was by the luster of her skin, could guess how long a man would last by the quality of his sweat. But the only thing I could focus on in the moments as my own pleasure built was the sweet mask that Hisi wore, so perfect, so exactly like Veera's, but, at the same time, all wrong, inferior in some intangible way. Hisi, inferior to a mortal girl. The thought was ridiculous, but somehow equally indisputable. 

The waitress was cumming now, too. Hers was a tangy scent, thick and pungent, fear mixed with sweet abandon and just a touch of stale urine--creamy white on the shaft of Dathos' rapidly softening cock.

Hisi looked at me and smiled, the deception was almost fully realized, except that where Veera's smile was broad and crinkled, lopsided with earnestness and too wide with truth, Hisi's imitation was aesthetically perfect, without flaw--and worse for it. "Cum for me, Dark One. Accept my atonement." I ignored her words and focused instead on the fullness of her lips. Releasing my hand from around her throat, I imagined them saying other words. Words I wouldn't admit even to myself.

I filled the waitress' mouth. More than filled it. 

One advantage of being the god of love is a kind of divine virility. Golden Apples put Cialis to shame. My erections know no limits, my sex drive no decline, and my orgasms--well, let's just say that I make Peter North look like a dribbler.

She was a good lass, tried to swallow and everything, but it was a hopeless task. I erupted into her mouth, stream after stream. Letting out an appreciative moan at first, she gulped, but upon finding no end to the flood of fluid, the noise quickly turned to dismay. My seed spilled from her mouth, ran down her chin and dripped off in great dollops onto the hardwood floor. My climax had coated her mouth so efficiently that she had to cough and spit to keep from choking and she eventually wound up on her knees in front of a puddle of spunk, a trail of jizz hanging from her mouth. Dathos, recovered from his own orgasm--which oozed from her pussy, forced out by the coughing--bent down and rubbed her back in an effort to comfort her.

I put them both from my mind, and basked in the remains of my orgasm, letting the sounds of the orgy wash over me. It was good to be me: god of evil, sower of love, owner of the preeminent dance club in New Jersey. Another successful sacrifice. Not a bad way to start the day. And things were only going to get better.

Or so I thought.

Hisi snuggled against me, immediately putting me ill at ease. She was only affectionate when she had something bad to tell me. "I hope that pleased you, Po. You're such a silly god. You could have her anytime you wanted. Why relegate yourself to pretend fantasies with your loving sister?"

"You're ruining my afterglow...We have an agreement, she and I. It is none of your concern."

She rolled her eyes and patted my chest. "You and your deals. It's no wonder the Christians get you confused with Lu. You both love to bet and bargain."

"Except I actually win mine."

"Well...I'm afraid you might have to wait a little bit for this latest session with the girl. You have something else to deal with first. We have a visitor. That's why I was late to the ritual. I was receiving him."

A flash of irritation broke my contented post-orgasm smile. "Who?"

"Him."

My pleasant attitude drained from me and streamed down to join the puddle of jizz on the floor. My brow furrowed and I stood up to address my worshippers, my dick still thick and bobbing with blood. 

As my mood changed, so did the atmosphere in the room. The room grew darker and the air filled with an acrid smell, like the burning of wood. When I spoke, my voice was the rustle of dead leaves mingled with the sound of unexpected footfalls behind a traveler on a deserted road. I said only one word: "Out."

Thirty seconds later, the room was empty. Every last cultist had fled, some of them in the final stages of passion, right on the edge of climax. They had turned, naked, and run, leaving satisfaction on the floor with their robes. There were worse things in the world than blue balls.

I rounded on the throne, my hands balled, my teeth clenched, intent on taking my anger out on my sister. How dare she not tell me immediately that he had come. She was already gone, however. Returned to the Between. I had no time to follow, to punish her for her omission of truth. 

He would be here any second: Lemminkainen. 

After refastening my pants, I slouched on my throne and waited unhappily, in that way that one waits for something unpleasant, squirming slightly in my chair like a man with a cavity sitting in reception room at a dentist office. How I wished I could simply pull the tooth. It was rotten to the root, no doubt, and that root ran deep. A thousand years deep. 

In a pattern that was becoming common when I was irritated or stressed, I thought of Veera. Sweet, innocent Veera, a dress full of curves and a heart full of pure, sweet blood. Blood so clean and light that it revealed the waitress's for the common sewage it was.

In a normal man, it would have seemed like I was comforting myself. Only I wasn't of course. I wasn't normal. I was a god. And comfort, like love, was for rubes. A curse laid on the naive, an illusion for those who could not stand the awful truth: that the world was turtles and heartbreak all the way down. 

What kind of shmuck fell victim to his own curse? 

****

Veera showed up for the first time almost two months ago, on a Saturday, during the transition from unholy sacrificial altar room to happening dance club. The piru busied themselves by erasing runes and setting up the bar. One of the boys was just sitting the turntables on top of the dark altar when she walked in, wearing a white sundress with blue dots, carrying a leather purse over her shoulder and holding a brown bag that wiggled and crackled in her hands. 

No more that twenty-five, she seemed nervous but spoke without a tremor in her voice. "I'm looking for someone."

I was still in my throne--it was always the last thing to be moved, and they always insisted on carrying me out of the room while I was still sitting in it, some show of respect, no matter how much it made me feel like a Jew boy at a bar mitzvah--and I choose to ignore her and instead continued an especially intense game of Candy Crush on my cellphone.

Moose, who suddenly appeared behind her, rushing in from the direction of the front door, answered for me. "Ladies' Night is Wednesday. Free drinks and lotsa techno. Come back then." He gave me a sheepish look, at least as much sheep as a black man with shoulders as wide as a bookcase could manage and added. "Sorry. I's in the bathroom. Must have snuck by me.

Moose was my bodyguard, a piru, and a right fucking big one. At one point he had been a herd of his namesake that breathed fire, the sacred guardians of my unholy forest. Like most of us, he had changed with the times. A herd of moose couldn't drive a limo or work the door of a club. And the droppings...I didn't miss the droppings. No, Moose had adapted, like the rest of the demons, like I had. Not that he was inconspicuous. Though he was now just one individual and not a bunch of overgrown demonic deer, he hadn't lost much mass, really. At just a shade under seven feet tall with arms the color of oak trees and just about as thick, he was hard to miss. Just the sort of lad you wanted as a bouncer, and he served just that purpose, along with personal guardian. Indeed, most people took one look at Moose, with his slack jaw and sausage fingers, and decided there were better places to cause trouble than my fucking club. He scared most people. Saw him shake down a couple of tough-looking guidos a few weeks back. One of 'em, a real ripped looking douchebag in a silk shirt with no buttons and muscles to spare actually peed himself a bit when Moose growled and a small puff of smoke came rolling out the side of his mouth.

No urinating for this girl, however. She only stood a little straighter and said, "I'm not looking for a man. I'm looking for something else. A god. Juntas, Hiipiä Viiniköynnöksen, Sydän Juuri...Lempo." The piru exchanged surprised looks. Few knew those names: Creepvine, Heartroot. Ancient, colloquial names, preferred by Finnish peasants, long ago, when the woods were a feared place, when people knew the old stories. Most Jersey girls weren't up on their three hundred year old devil monikers. Looking closer, it became obvious that this one didn't hail from Atlantic City, however. 

Tall and broad in the kveeni way, with muscled thighs and hair the color of Finnish chamomile, she was of the old blood. Without question an exotic transplant growing wild in the Garden State, but to me she was a familiar bloom, a remember scent on a much missed wind.

"No gods here. Just dancin'. And we closed. Go away." Good lad, Moose, about as sharp as an Easter egg, but by gods if he didn't have the proper response down. He moved forward and grabbed her by one of her slender arms and started to escort her out.

"Let me go! I'm not leaving. I came here to see Lempo." She struggled, but, against Moose, it had little effect. He was almost carrying her by her one arm. "I invoke a binding!" 

Moose started to speak again, probably to reiterate that we were closed or perhaps to talk about how there were too many numbers in the world and they hurt his head or something, but I held my hand up to stop him, and said, "Wait." Moose ceased dragging her, but still clamped one meaty hand over her arm, it covered the entirety of her bicep. "What do you know of binding, girl?"

"I know that he has to accept them!" 

Wryly, I said, "How do you know these things? Have you been Googling?" 

"My great-grandmother was a high priestess in Espoo. I know the rules!" Espoo was a world away. Maybe she wasn't a flower, blown in haphazardly with the wind. Perhaps she was a migrant, propelled to me on wings of courage and bravery. Or desperation. Desperation was the birthplace of aviation. Fuck Ohio. 

I smirked. "Rules. Why is it that angry women always seem to go on and on about the rules? As if there are such things. There are no rules in life, only lies of convenience that we share for short periods. There are no lies here for you. Just unpleasant truths." I waved my hand and Moose began once more to see her out.

"No! There are rules! Niin metsä vastaa kuin sinne huudetaan!" 

The forest answers in the same way one shouts at it. A common Finnish proverb. These days, people had translated it to something akin to, "what goes around, comes around", but, in truth, it meant far more. Few remembered where it truly came from. This girl did, apparently. As did I. Bleed for the wood and the wood will bleed for you. Bleed for Lempo, and he will bleed for you. I put my cellphone away.

"There is more to a binding than simple words, snowbird." I spoke and Moose stopped again. 

The girl waved the bag with the arm he hadn't secured. "I know the terms and I have components."

Did she now? Unexpected, but still..."And for what purpose do you seek this binding? Need a love potion? Got your eye on some rich bloke with a thick wallet and a skinny dick? Pray tell, why do you seek to enter into a bargain with the god of love and wickedness?"

"Disease. He's also the god of disease, and I won't discuss it with anyone but him. Take me to him. I won't bargain with his lackeys. 

"Tsk, tsk," I said. "Tyvestä puuhun noustaan. A tree is best climbed from its base."

"Metsäkeskus." Forestheart. She knew her words.

"You've got a good grasp on the old tongue for a young one," I said.

"I told you, I know the invocations, and the words of passage."

I leaned forward in my throne. "Do you know this one? Paha saa palkkansa."

After some hesitation she answered, "Evil will get its share."

"And did dear great-granny tell you what that means?"

Back straight, she said, "It means, 'into every life a little rain must fall.'"

"It means, Lempo will fuck you in the end, sometimes literally."

"Fine. Bring him out and we will discuss my sodomy."

I liked where this was going, but, frankly, she was starting to hurt my feelings with the misidentification. "Bring him out?" I began to point things out with my finger. "Let's see. Big chair. Nice suit. White guy not doing any work. Who do you think is in charge here?"

She blinked and looked around, trying to judge my seriousness by the looks on the faces of the piru. When her eyes returned to me, there was suspicion in them. "You?"

I reclined deep in my throne and threw one leg over the armrest. "Dread Lord of the Forest, Strickener of Hearts, Maker of the Best Croque-Monsieur this side of Bordeaux...at your service."

"Don't lie to me." She was still brave, but doubt was creeping into her voice. "Surely you cannot be him?"

I get this a lot. I don't look like much of a god, really. I'm short, balding, and a bit on the tubby side. Nothing corpulent, mind you, just a bit of a spare tire and some love handles. What? Being Lord of evil is a tough job. I stress eat. I do have nice eyes, however. And cosmic powers. There's that. Chicks dig the powers. Can James Franco turn someone into a pillar of salt or teach goats to pull a chariot through the sky? Thought not. When you go god, you always applaud.

"I am many things, but a liar is not one of them. I am He-Who-Gets-Blamed-For-A-Lot-Of-Shit." I held my hands up and kicked my legs, while speaking in a melodramatic voice. "Behold me and despair!"

Still she eyed me skeptically. "You must be kidding."

A god can only tolerate so much disrespect. I drew myself up in my throne and pulled the truth to me. Shadows gathered from the corners, slipping and running across the floor like rivers of ink, to puddle at my feet. I whispered to them and they responded, stretching and curling around me, pouring up the chair against gravity. I wore them for only a second, like a cloak, before sending them streaming back, released from my command. In that instant, however, I was the darkness, I was the sinister truth that follows men wherever they might go. I was death, and a hundred things worse. 

I showed her the piru, too, let her see the teeth, the hair, tails and claws. The actuality of their nature hovered over them for an instant--truth poking up through the lie, spiked and horns piercing paper masks. They leered at her openly, with forked tongues and tusked mouths, salacious and devoid of conscience. At a word from me, they would rip into her, feast on her flesh and dance in her skin. Maybe without a word. 

This was no grove of frightened saplings, fearful of fire and chopping axe. This was The Woods, a dark place, dank, and full of danger and wickedness. This was Jersey. "I am Lempo." It was a simple statement, but a complex reality. It had shaken kings. I had watched brave warriors flee under the weight of those words. 

Looking around, a change came over her. Her eyes, which had been hard and steady all the while went saucered, and her feet, planted firmly before, flared out slightly, toward the door. It was coming together for her, the stories and legends. For the first time, she looked at me and saw me for myself: a creature of unimaginable power and evil. Run, run, little snow mink. Flee this place. Tell them about me. Tell them everything.

She didn't run, however; she laughed. She actually laughed. It was a crisp sound, like the ringing of bells, nothing like Hisi's cruel snickering or the obscene guffaws of the piru, different even than the anxious chuckles of the cultist. It was an honest sound. I hadn't heard its like in many years. 

The fear was still in her eyes. Mixed with her mirth, it gave her a mad quality that I found quite attractive. Crazy in the head, crazy in the bed. Holding her hand over her mouth, she tried to stop, but the laughing continued, eventually falling into breathless giggles that nearly doubled her over hard enough that she barely managing to hold onto her brown paper bag, in which something still squirmed. She tried to speak several times, but each attempt just intensified the giggling. With little recourse, she held up one finger in a sign that I should give her a minute. The piru looked around, obviously confused and more than a bit dejected. Moose was positively puzzled, but that wasn't unusual. Poor guys. It's wasn't them. They were quite spooky. This bitch was just crazy. I had to admit, however, she was growing on me. I hadn't been laughed at by anyone other than Hisi in a long, long time.

Even after she had managed to regain control, she struggled to keep her face straight, and it fluctuated between deadly serious and super model on nitrous oxide. "I'm sorry...oh God--god, I mean." She laughed again. "...when I get nervous, I get the giggles, fuck, and I can't stop talking, and you're just so short, and those monsters, they're piru, aren't they?...Am I going to die?"

I was at a loss. "Maybe," I said truthfully. "Not sure, to be honest. Doesn't usually go this way." 

She laughed even harder at this. What a fruitbat. Gorgeous, though, and ballsy, with a touch of naiveté. Nice combination. "I was so prepared. I studied. I really studied, like, a lot. I expected, the Devil, and you're like an evil George Costanza." Her face went even whiter. She was almost screeching now. "Oh fuck, why can't I shut up? Why...in the name...of all that is decent...can't I...shut up?"

George, huh? Better than Newman. Personally, I had always thought I favored Ricky Gervais.

I pinched my index finger and thumb together, depressing her larynx with a thought. She tried to yammer on, but couldn't. Panicked, the beautiful blonde began to clutch at her throat and struggled to make noise. I held up my hand, as if showing her where I had pinched her closed. "We're going to take a second and get zen, k?. Breathe. Breathe. We're not going to have anymore of this babbling, now are we? We're going to talk like grown-ups. When you're ready, nod, and I will open up my fingers, and we can resume having a normal, adult conversation. There will be no more giggling or babbling. If there is," I jerked my head toward the piru, "I'm going to let these fine folks eat you--in every way imaginable. Do you understand? Inside voices, good. Giggling and babbling, bad. Now, are you ready?"




The Oldest Curse



She paused for almost a minute and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. When she opened them, she had seemingly regained her sense of balance. She nodded, and I broke my finger and thumb apart. When she spoke, it was tentative and calm, as if she were testing her voice to make sure it still worked, "I apologize, great Lempo, Dread Lo--"

I cut her off with my hand. "Please stop with the titles. This will take all day, otherwise. Call me Po."

She mouthed the word as if trying it on her lips before she actually said it. "Po." Deciding it would suffice, she continued. "I'm sorry...Po. I didn't mean to disrespect you."

I shrugged. "What did you mean to do?"

She dropped to one knee, almost losing her purse from her shoulder as she said, "I came to beseech you Oh great Lo--uh, I mean, Po."

"Fucking hells, girl. Stand the fuck up. What is it you want?"

After rising awkwardly she added, "My fiance. He's sick. Pancreatic cancer. Terminal."

I nodded. Rough way to go. The silent killer, they call it. Then again, they say that about everything these days, from carbon monoxide to high cholesterol. In my experience, killers don't make a lot of noise when they can help. No one ever talks in awed tones about the world's loudest assassin. "Awww. Someone already put a ring on it, huh? You're breaking my heart. Nasty bit of business. Has he tried eating more antioxidants? Blueberries, I'm told, are practically bursting with the stuff." In actuality, there were no such thing as antioxidants . It was all just a grand lie propagated and spread by the Injun spirit Old Man Coyote to help sell his brand of organic trail mix--"SkinnyWalker". Shit took off like a rocket, and just when I thought Wadjet had the market cornered with her snake oils. 

She ignored my teasing. Emotion crept into her voice despite her efforts to keep it out. "It's said that you can cure any illness. Save him. Please."

I was surprised. It was a rare request. While I could technically do what she asked, it wasn't a well-known part of my portfolio, and I was loath to utilize the ability. I didn't cure diseases. I inflicted them. I had a reputation to maintain. "Not really my bag, love. Did you try Apollo? You're not, by chance, a virtuoso, are you? He's always favored the willowy and musically inclined."

A little bit of fire returned to her eyes at this. "I am a Finn, of the old blood. I have nothing to offer a Mediterranean sun god. But I have something to offer you. I invoke the binding."

I shook my head. She had spirit. "Snowbird, a binding is no easy thing. Few survive. And you'd be doing acts that he likely wouldn't approve of."

"Better that I live in shame than he die in agony."

"Enough of the former and you may wish for the latter."

Refusing to back down, she said, "My name is Veera. I offer myself in exchange for the life of my fiancé. I will take the trials. I have the right."

I measured with my eyes, trying to take her in. What a brave girl. Stupid and kind (weren't the two basically the same) but brave. I motioned to the demons that surrounded us, "Alright, snowbird, even after seeing them, their true faces, you would offer me your allegiance? You would join my piru, knowing what they are? What you would become?"

"I would." There, there was the tremble.

"Most of them were born to it, you know. Animals that grew fierce and gluttonous and twisted under the dark canopy of the woods, many of them over hundreds of years. It's easier that way. More semesters to spread the change out over. Humans, you have to take the condensed version. Speed class. Most can't hack it."

"I have the right! I have brought the offering."

I sat forward again, hands on my knees. "Right! Right? There is no right. I could separate you from your spine and make a necklace with your vertebrae before you could even get it out of the bag."

She paused. I could see her swallowing. Run, run, do it now, girl. In response, she said only, "Niin metsä vastaa kuin sinne huudetaan." 

What an arrogant, insufferable, little shit of a girl. I thought about lining her mouth with ulcers, of gutting her with razor-leaves, of holding her in the basement and filling her mouth with wood ants until they climbed down her throat and built their mounds in her chest. She wanted to sell her soul. For love! What a rube. I opened my mouth to tell her how much trouble I was having in deciding how to kill her, how the options were too enticing when I surprised myself by saying, "The forest will answer."

The demons buzzed with excitement. There hadn't been a new piru in decades. A binding was the equivalent of a homeroom pizza party for demons.

Even the girl seemed surprised, and her breath came out so hard at my reply that it made a whistling noise. People were often surprised at miracles, no matter how frequently they asked for them, I had found. Wish in one hand and offer your soul in another. Veera recovered quickly, however, and placed the bag on the ground where it continued to wiggle. Quickly slinging her purse from her shoulder, she dug out a Ziploc bag filled with some sort of foliage and a kitchen knife, from a set it looked like, one of those late-night cutlery deals with the resin handles and the full tang (It slices! It dices! It binds you eternally to infernal powers!), then set the bag aside.

Once she opened the plastic, I knew immediately what was in the baggie: lingonberry and buckthorn generously mixed in with pine needles. Potent and pungent, very aromatic. If Martha Stewart sold sacrifice bags, they would have been similar..

Carefully, she knelt, and spread the contents out, evening it out until it formed a small circle. Setting the knife on the wooden floor, she unrolled the crumpled and folded top of the brown bag and reached both hands inside, only to bring out a gray furred rabbit. 

It twitched in that incessantly nervous manner that rabbits had. Even from my chair, I could hear the beats of its anxious heart, pounding away. There was a Finnish legend that said that one day, I whispered all of my dark plans to my sister, thinking we were alone in the forest. Unbeknownst to us, there was a rabbit hidden in the brush, and it shared the my dark agenda with the rest of its kind. Ever since, rabbits have trembled in constant fear of what is to come. Nonsense of course. Hisi could never keep quiet long enough for me to tell her all of my evil plans. I probably didn't even get out "Good morning, nice weather we're having," before she started in with her yapping. Rabbits were just spazzes. Don't blame that shit on me. Damn things would run from a silent fart. As the one being presented to me would have no doubt done if its front legs and back legs hadn't been bound with twine. Wouldn't have run very fast no matter what, however. This one was thick and swollen and obviously very, very pregnant. 

She laid it lengthwise on the bed of needles and went to pick up the knife.

"Uh, uh, uh," I said, wagging a finger. "To be a piru is to be an animal, raw, unfettered by the strain of civilization. If you would come with me, you must cast off your mortal trappings, step from the path, and walk among the trees as a native." She gave me a confused look, so I extrapolated. "You have to get fucking naked."

Her cheeks reddened and she made a face that indicated that she had forgotten that part. Standing up, she averted her eyes and began to slide her dress off of one shoulder. 

This wouldn't do. "Animals aren't shy. Demons don't blush. Look at me while you do it."

Veera's gaze snapped up and met mine. Jaw set, chip up, she kept her features steady and slid down first one strap, then the other. With nothing holding it up, her dress fell in a wad to the floor, leaving her in only a bra and panties. These come next, the bra peeled off slowly. The cool air on her nipples sent them spiking and she came close to reflexively closing her eyes as it touched her skin, but she remembered my instructions and flicked them wide. Her panties came off in a rush, revealing a curl of golden hair above a pair of fat pussy lips. 

She was stunning, in any location, in any era. The most polite of the piru leered openly, while the less well-mannered whistled and made suggestive noises and beastial sounds. The woman stared straight at me and her mouth stayed firm, but her blush deepened. Not bad.

"This is how you will be in my presence from now on. You will wear skin and nothing more. If you disobey, you'll no longer wear skin." What a shame that would be; she had such lovely skin.

Nodding her agreement, she hastily returned to her knees and picked up the knife as she had intended before. She placed the edge against the swollen belly of the rabbit. We would see how well she knew her words. Some of the piru made there way behind her so that they could better see her and ass as she went about the ritual.

"I am human. I would be more. I would be less. I have walked in the sun and felt only the sting. I would walk in shadow and feel only the cold. Lempo, Forest Lord, block the light for me so that my eyesight might wither but my hunger may grow." Decent. She sliced into the stomach of the rabbit. It screamed, that shrill, desperate rabbit scream that would put a B-movie starlet to shame. This rabbit, at least, had been right to live its life in fear. Lempo had come. 

"A piru hungers for life, raw and pure. I will take only the sweetest meats...." Setting down the knife, she picked up the rabbit, a set of legs in each hand, and held it in front of her face, slightly higher than her mouth. The rabbit continued to scream, and its belly was slashed red. Still, looking at me, she tilted the creature like a cup of flesh. The gash in its stomach opened up and the contents poured into her open mouth like water flowing out of an overturned vase. 

At first, it was just blood, easy and flowing, but then, they started to fall out: rabbit embryos, pink and slick with fluid, like little grubs in her mouth. They were barely solid, and they gathered in her mouth like little bags of jelly. I counted six, but it was hard to be sure. Their heartbeats were so quiet that even I couldn't determine their number by sound. She couldn't handle the last one and it tumbled free of her lips and splattered to the floor. 

It was not an easy first meal for a piru, but the trials would just get worse from here on out. If she couldn't handle some rabbit tartar, she would never make it past the later stages. She was doing quite well, hadn't gagged once. Ooh, there it was. The chewing did it. That part got a lot of people. It was hard to know what to do with the little suckers. They were kind of like oysters...but with tiny bones, and legs, and tiny partially formed organs. Every once in a while I could tell when her tongue made contact with a part she recognized by feel and I thought she might retch. She didn't, though. Had to close her eyes for a bit, but I decided to let that slide. Let no one call Lempo unreasonable. 

When she was done, and the last bit had been swallowed down, her full breasts coated with blood, she laid the rabbit--which had finally stopped screaming: permanently--back on the bed of needles, opened her eyes, and completed the offering. "The rest, I leave for the Paapiru, may my feasting forever please him." Veera slumped forward, hands flat on the floor to either side of her, bracing her. She was going to need a minute.

Moose retrieved the skin and brought it to me, faithful hound that he was. I took it from him and held it between two fingers. Making a show of it, I tilted my head, lifted the carcass high above my mouth and slowly lowered it down. The piru roared at my showmanship. They were an easy crowd: the dead animal schtick always brought down the house. I devoured what was left of the rabbit in one smooth dip (Yes, boys, I'm single), then licked my teeth and gave a broad smile. I resisted the urge to rub my belly. A good deity knew when to cut the grandstanding.

"I accept your offering, mortal," I said. Then, I drug a fingernail across my palm drawing blood. Instead of pouring out, it formed into one large bead of blood, which continued to thicken and congeal until it was about the size of and density of a Tylenol liquid gel. I rolled it down to fingers and held it up to the light. "Bleed for Lempo, and he will bleed for you. Give this to your betrothed. It won't cure him, but it will help. I'll give you a dose for every trial you pass. If you make it through, he'll survive. If you fail in the middle, at worst, you will have bought him some time." With a flick of my wrist I sent it spinning into the open purse by her side. 

She only nodded weakly and reached over to collect her things. With her dress bunched in one hand and her purse in the other, she stood weakly and said, "Thank you." Turning, she made for the exit, and was shocked when two of the piru moved in front of her. She looked back at me. "What?"

I made a tick sound with my mouth and raised my hand up. "Your offer has been accepted, but you still have to pass your first trial. It's sort of tradition." 

Her resolve waivered visibly for the first time. "Now?"

"Now."

"What's the first trial?" I could tell she was spent from her ordeal with the rabbit. Shame. She would need her energy. 

I gave her my best apologetic shrug. "Initiation."

"I'm engaged," she offered weakly. 

"You bargained for life, not fidelity. All piru are married to the forest. Consider this your honeymoon."

The piru in front of her smiled, an awful toothy grin that fully revealed two cat-like fangs that protruded slightly over her bottom lip. When Veera saw it, her face fell and fatigue filled her eyes. She knew what was to come, and nodded anyway. Very brave, this one. Her fianc was fortunate to have such a woman, even if she were a fool. When I dropped my hand, signaling the piru, I almost felt guilty. The demons felt no such compulsion. Soon, she would be just like them; the trials would see to that. I frowned at the thought. I had enough devils.

Naked within seconds, they fell on her without mercy or constraint, hands groping, tongues searching. A woman with hawkish features threaded her talons in Veera's hair and forced her to her knees, pulling the human's face to her sopping cunt. The others were not so gentle.

Long ago, a piru named Gordy had run away from the forest, an unheard of occurrence at the time. He was only gone a day before I noticed. In that time, however, he found his way to a whorehouse. By the time I caught up to him all the women but one were dead. Battered to death by his affection. What's more, Gordy, had a thing for redheads. When I found him, he had the lone living whore bent over a pile of the others, all of their hair had been ripped out. He was gripping a clutch of red locks, presumably from one of the dead girls, in his fist and holding it over the one he was fucking like a wig. I stopped it, but she was already too far gone. I gave her the gift of what you know call Alzheimer's but was then known as soft mind, and she spent the remainder of her life thinking she was sixteen again with no memory of the brothel or Gordy.

Before I skinned Gordy and made a cloak out of him, which I wore for almost a century to remind the other piru of the price of disobedience, I asked him why he had run away. It turned out the other demons were bullying him for his sensitive nature. 

I watched them with Veera, made sure they didn't kill her. It was a small kindness, if it was a kindness at all. Hours later when they were finished, I had Moose carry her out and take her to the hospital. I could have healed her, but trials were trials. When everyone had gone, I smelled it out. There, between the copious sexual fluids, was a dapple of her blood that had fallen from her lip when the fanged woman had kissed her roughly. I gathered it on the tip of my finger and brought it to my mouth.

It took me only an instant to sift through the vile stain of the piru. After that, it was all white light singing on my tongue. 

Born in Finland. Moved to America when she was three. Grew up in Brooklyn. The old country was little more than the scent of pine and stories from her grandma to her. Still, she had a deep nostalgia for the idyllic culture she imagined she had once been a part of, and missed it often in that way that someone can miss a place that they have never been.

Her first kiss with James Kirkland in the back of his Chevy Cavalier, nervous and giggling. Warm lips, hungry tongue. He wanted more but she held firm. Finished the night with her head on his broad chest, still fully dressed. 

Did her undergraduate at Vanderbilt. Came home and got her law degree from Columbia. Joined a big firm right out of school. Big paycheck, bigger accolades.

Lost her virginity to her fiancé, Erik, another attorney, before he had that title. They met at Columbia. She loved him. After he had gone to sleep that night, she had written in a diary that she'd kept since she was a teen. Her entry: "Dear younger me, all that waiting...totally worth it! Good call on James K. He had the herpe."

Quit the firm for a position as a social worker at children's hospital in Jersey, land of the less fortunate. She was overqualified and underappreciated. Half the paycheck, double the sleep.

Sitting with Erik during his chemo treatments. Watching him mainline poison and listening to him crack jokes. Eventually there was more poison and less jokes. Then there were serious-faced doctors and x-rays dark with shadows and bad news. They tried to have sex, but he rarely finished. She loved it just the same. Afterward, she would stroke his hair and as he fell asleep and think about how lucky she was to have found him, and how cursed to lose him so. She decided on one of those nights, when he had talked openingly about needing her help to end it if it ever got that bad, that she would do anything to spare them both that fate. She remembered a name from her childhood: Lempo. Then a few bits of memory--reading, researching, meeting odd people who believed strange things, had heard rumors of a club downtown.

Then sadness, sadness and genuine grief so strong and true that even I couldn't barely bear to look at it further. The images were scattered. The blood was stale, muddled from being trampled on, and had begun to lose some of its potency from time spent on the floor. It was much better to get it fresh. There were scenes of crying, frustration, anger and bitterness. Just flashes, hard to sort. The cancer, apparently, had taken its toll. It did nothing, however, to lessen the overall quality of the sample.

Not quite a virgin. Who was these days? Still....

She was worthy. 

I walked to the hall, up the stairs, and headed to the roof, to my place of solace. Someone could carry my throne out later. I didn't want it at the moment. 

****

This may sound odd, coming from a being that is routinely credited with the downfall of civilization, but I love people. You fuckers are fascinating. Give you lot a millenium and a pile of rocks and you'll build a pyramid, as tall and as big as a mountain. Give you a century of boredom and some pointy sticks and you'll tear the fucker down just to show that you can. 

You know what they say about lemons and lemonade? Well, it's true. And I would know; I've been shoveling lemons at you for years. There is an opposite saying that seems to be equally as true, however, and that is: "If life gives you peaches, find something else to bitch about." 

I don't get you. You rise to occasions but sink with monotony. If I give you plague and pain and heartbreak, you stand together in circles and sing inspirational songs and light candles and hug each other until your skin chaffs from it. But if I go easy, if I take a summer or two off, leave you laying on the beach with full bellies and stiff drinks, you can't be trusted to rub lotion on each others backs without trying to strangle one another. You look into the crystal water and reflect too much, about who has what, who doesn't, what's fair, what's not. It's like you can't stand all the fucking peace. Only a human would grow angry that his or her piece of paradise wasn't as big as someone else's, while other people in far off corners rotted from the inside.




The Oldest Curse



To paraphrase the Jew Book: Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll kvetch that the weather is never right for fishing.

Take Lemminkainen. Fucking Lemminkainen.

First off, the name. Sounds a bit like mine, huh? As to why, the ancient Finns were concerned with many things, not dying and finding a place to stick their dicks that wasn't filled with bees being chief among them. Language and writing, unfortunately, were not great skills of theirs. Historians go on and on about Phoenicia, with its alphabet, and Egypt, with its scribbled pictures, but I feel inclined to mention that neither of those places were invested with forest predators or prone to snowstorms that lasted for months. A hot sentence won't warm you when the boughs are fanged with ice, nor can you distract a bear from eating by drawing a man wearing eye-shadow with a basket on his head Still, in ancient Finnish the word for "ass" was "kolo" and the word for a hole in the ground was "kollo". So, it really is true what they say about the old Finns.

Either way, this lack of articulation led to some problems concerning me and Lemminkainen. To tell you the truth, people still get us confused. Which is unfortunate because we work in different parts of the company. He's in the heroic department, acquisitions and community service, and, like all bad guys, I work in HR. He's a god too, and a powerful one, though it wasn't always so. Trickery and conjuration, are his aspects. (A good god of trickery and an evil god of love. Fucking Finns, I tell you. Bunch of kolos.) Call him Lem. He's a nice enough chap, but he has a real sore spot when it comes to me. I think he's just spoiled. 

The man had everything: good looks, wits, a hell of a way with the ladies. Was basically born to be a hero. Things were less democratic back then. Destiny and providence ruled the day, and guys like Lem arrived on fate's coattails with golden hair and pearly teeth and just expected the world to lick their balls. And the world, after a few good deeds, a glass of wine, and a nice foot-rub, typically complied. He got poems and songs, tales of his exploits and accomplishments. I got whispered rites in the woods involving dead animals and hard nipples. Still, it was a living. 

Sure, he had some tough breaks. I take full-responsibility for that. He was a hero; I'm the god of evil. Heroes have struggles. I was just doing my part, holding up my end of the bargain. Personally, I'd like to think that I helped the fellow, toughened him up a bit. Any man can survive the loss of one true love, or even two. It's the third that really shows that they have the stones. 

He didn't see it that way. Worked up a spicy beef with me over it. Even went so far as smashing up some shrines and crashing a few cult-ins, stuff that took real planning and precise scheduling to put together, especially back then. You couldn't just shoot your high priest a text in those days. You had to send a raven, appear in a dream, light a damn bush on fire. It was all portents and prophecy--exhausting stuff. Do you know the meteorology you have to get into to incite weather patterns that make crops fail ONLY in the regions where people have not built a secret dark altar in your honor? I spent most of the sixteenth century playing at being some evil Al Roker. 

I was pissed. Straight-talk here: I had a bit of a temper in those days. I had this old crone send Lem and his buddy on a quest to kill and bring back a certain black swan that was particularly valued by a god that had even worse anger management problems than I. Long story short, Lem gets shot dead with an arrow and then ripped apart by the fierce currents of the blood-river of the underworld. 

As ways to die go, that's probably not the best, but, hey, there are worse. Ask Prometheus. Turned me off from fried liver and onions for three hundred years.

Lem, though, with his Jim Morrison hair and easy charm, was too lucky even to die. His mum up and took a copper rake and fished him out of the river, pieces at a time, like skimming leaves out of a swimming pool, and glued him back together with honey from a sacred bee. Not only did that bullshit work, but he became a god--a full-fledged deity, just add insect vomit. I mean, hello, how fortunate can you get? Kids are dying from dysentery and malnutrition from a steady diet of pine cones, and he returns as big hero 2.0.

But does the he come back grateful? Does he come up to me and say, "Good show, Po, thanks for the dip in the death drink. Look at this shiny new immortality. Check out these godly powers." Of course not. He's ticked. Up and devotes his whole existence to opposing me in everything I do. Dedicates himself to my destruction. I try to tell him. Sit on the beach. Enjoy your peaches. But he won't have it. He's all jihad-or-bust. 

Fucking humans.There's just no pleasing you sometimes.

So I say, "Fuck it. Let's dance, new kid." And we do. We still are. A bloody little tango that has lasted the last millenium. At this point, I'm not even into it. I'm just going through the steps. One, two, stab-stab-stab, three, four, kill-kill-kill. I just want to hit the punch bowl and grab a breather. I've tried to end it and so has he. In all honesty, I don't think either of us know how. This murderous little ditty of vengeance and retribution is all we know. Much as we hate to admit it, even gods need routine. Particularly gods.

So I found myself, sitting on my old throne in the middle of the empty dance floor, thinking of Veera, tapping out a beat on the wood of the armrest, waiting for the latest dance to start. I cracked my neck, once, twice. My death toll was beyond counting, my name spoken in the frightened whispers of a dozen languages for over a thousand years. Few beings made me nervous. Lem was one of them. I hated him more for that than for anything else.

Focusing on the double doors that led into the room, I waited. I could sense him. He was allowing me that anxiety. As a trickster, he could cloud any senses, even those of a god. If I could feel him coming, it was because he wanted me to. I could feel his presence building, coming closer and closer, one of the overhead lights, still dimmed from the ritual, grew bright and then burst in a shower of sparks. So dramatic. Once a hero, always a hero. Fucking Lem.

Right on time, the doors flew open and in he strode, dragging a large trunk behind him. Moose trailed just behind him, his face, as always, a mask of determined stupidity. My enemy walked quickly, with purpose and devoid of fear, his face a study in rage, until he was just at the edge of the dance floor and then, using only one arm, hurled the trunk, which must have weighed well over three hundred pounds, so that it skidded and spun across the floor toward me. With the speed it was travelling and how heavy it was, the trunk would have crushed a normal man, sent him and the throne hurling across the room in a storm of skin and splinters. I wasn't a normal man. With a calmness and deliberateness that directly contrasted his agitation, I slowly extended my right leg, heel out, and stopped the trunk with my foot. The impact was so great that it tore several tiles loose from the dance floor, but neither I nor the throne budged an inch. 

I gave my friendliest smile and nodded my head curtly, acknowledging his entrance as if it had been the picture of politeness. 

Moose didn't miss a beat, whether due to his familiarity with the ways of immortals or because of his deeply lacking intelligence. It was hard to be sure with him. He casually walked in front of Lem, right in the path where he had hurled the truck, and announced him. "Master Lempo, Dread Lord of the Forest, Father of Evil, Head of Demons, Piercer of the Great Heart that is Love, may I present the Greatest Hero of the Kalevala, Wooer of The Northern Maiden, He Who Has Tasted the Black River and Lived, God of Trickery, High Wizard of Conjuration, Mage of Misdirection, Lemminkainen.".

Nice introduction. Good projection. Would have instilled fear in most. Lemminkainen, didn't scare so easily, hower.

"Who approaches these dark woods in black times?" I spoke the traditional greeting.

"A traveller seeking shade and nothing more," he said, answering in the prescribed way, if a tad angrily. Lem was tall, far taller than me, at least, but he was still almost a foot shorter than Moose. He showed no sign of intimidation, though, and well he shouldn't have. Standing there, dressed unassumingly in a ragged Mudhoney t-shirt and worn jeans, he could have taken the massive bodyguard apart with a snap of his fingers. No piru could approach the power of the hero-god. Then again, I wasn't a piru. I was Paapiru. 

"Walk beneath these leaves, but do not tary overlong, lest the shade seek you." Then, in a cordial, less formal manner. "Good to see you, Lem. To what do I owe the pleasure? Come to try one of our famous Long Islands?" I motioned my hand toward the bar that sat in the corner.

"Always peddling some poison or another, aren't you, Wormwood?" Ah, the old nicknames. I hadn't heard that one in a while. 

"The people thirst," I said simply. 

"And you just can't wait to fill them with toxin and sully the world with your sacrilege." Sanctimonious upstart. If he stood any straighter or puffed his chest out further, I was afraid he was going to crack a rib.

"InBev can't have all the fun." Tapping my toes on the large trunk, I asked, "Did you come here just to compliment me? Is this a token of your undying affection? You shouldn't have. My feast-day isn't until autumn."

"I will gift you with oblivion if you don't mind your forked tongue!"

"Rumor and hearsay. My tongue is no more spectacular than the next gentleman's. Though I daresay your mother disagreed." I gave him a wink. 

Lem's handsome features knotted with anger, and runes of light lit up on his skin, arcane patterns of green and blue bleeding together, growing in intensity, dancing across him like the northern auroras. Breaking from him, they traveled out into the room, surrounding us, balls of light that shimmered and danced, then started to condense, flickering, growing and shrinking, into forms that were nearly solid. Spectral soldiers--thirteen of them, one for each trial that their master had endured, for every hardship I had inflicted on him in his quest for love--dressed in ancient armor, still sporting their death wounds, gashes and holes that seeped blue ectoplasmic blood that dripped and poured but vanished before hitting the floor. 

"Do you take me for some hedge wizard, Lempo? To be disrespected so? The dead heed my call, great warriors laid low by your machinations. Their thirsts for vengeance as just and true as my own." As he spoke, spears materialized in the hands of the apparitions, sharp and tipped with heads that I knew were quite dangerous, even to someone like me. 

Moose flinched noticeably. Always superstitious, he had quite a fear of the undead. Heights, too. What a lummox. It was hard to find good help. What use was a bodyguard that went weak-kneed at the sight of a few angry spirits? I guess he might be useful if I were ever attacked by the cast of Jersey Shore. 

"Lem, old sport, you should know by now that I don't spook." I raised one finger from the armrest and twirled it slightly. The sound of rushing of wind filled the room, slight at first, but growing, nipped with cold and loud with the sound of rustling leaves, but not a paper moved. 

The ghostly soldiers charged. Moose, showing his great worth and unquestionable bravery, actually took a few steps back, until he was not quite cowering behind the god of conjuration. Raising their spears, the dead made ready a unified attack. 

Say what you want about the ineffectiveness of the old ways, but synchronization is a lost art in warfare. The business of killing used to be a violent ballet. Now, it's all remote-controlled drones and land mines. No flair in an IED. 

These warriors, however, were old-school. As one, their weapons thrust out, aimed at my heart, not a second separating the timing of any of them. The spears were only about a half a foot away from my lapel when they met the barrier. It held the tips lightly at first, causing them to bob noticeably, as if caught in a fall breeze. I spun my finger faster, and the bobbing increased. Soon, the breeze became a gust that tore at the buckles in their armor and ruffled the beards on their ancient faces. 

Something as mundane as a tornado, just an accidental mix of pressures and fronts, can take a straw--plain old, harmless straw--and put it through a telephone pole. What then can a god do with a leaf?

Though they were invisible, you could hear them now, crackling like the wings of a thousand locusts, spinning out from me, each a tiny scythe in that fell wind. At the beginning, it was a nick or two, a thin cut on the cheek of one or two of the warriors that seeped blue--nothing compared to the wounds they had already suffered. Then another, and another, before, finally, like a maelstrom, it struck, a storm of razors, sharp and relentless. Skin flayed, armor shredded under the assault of innumerable invisible, perfectly-sharpened razors. 

Fools will tell you that the dead have no fear, that they feel no pain. Balls. The dead know fear like no other, and pain, as well, because they have experienced enough of both to truly understand. After life, there is death. After death, there is nothing. 

Even the honor-bound can know panic. A few of the soldiers tried to flee the obliterating wind. Too late they discovered that the same wind that held their spears now enveloped them, trapped them against my spell. Soon, they no longer even resembled men. Before it was done, before I let the rustling quiet, they were little more than a collection of shrapnel and ooze.

The room was quiet once the spectral wind died down. Nothing had been disturbed. Lem's face darkened even further into fury. Moose peeked out, as much as he could manage being larger than the person he was hiding behind. Big idiot had the audacity to grin and give me a thumbs up.

"What fun, Lem. I do so enjoy your visits. Tell me, have we time to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey?" I allowed myself a smirk. Truthfully, I was more nervous than I showed. I'd meant to stop them a good foot earlier than I had.

My rival took another aggressive step forward. In response, I raised my finger once more and gave it a lazy twirl. His shirt rippled. With a clenched jaw, he stared balefully at me, but no more runes lit up his tanned skin. "Aren't you even going to open it?" he said, referencing the trunk once more. 

"Isn't it in bad taste to open a gift in front of a guest. Egg on my face, I didn't get you anything, old sport." I had no need to open it. I was fully aware of what was inside. I had sent it originally. 

"Make an exception." Moose, who had just now managed to return to his proper position at Lem's side, shot an anxious sideways glanced at the smaller man due to the anger in the demand. 

I rapped my knuckles on the armrest. No sense dragging it out. With a kick of my foot, I crushed the lock. Within seconds, the heavy lip sprang open and out crawled a diminutive creature, sporting green, mucus-covered skin dotted with pus-filled sores, leathery wings with thin veiny membranes, and a grotesque oversized phallus that was almost as large as it was.

Paha. 

With bulging eyes the color of skim milk the creature looked about the room in confusion, even the dim light of the club hurting his sensitive eyes. When his gaze settle on Lemminkainen, he hissed, revealing teeth small and pointed, like those of a piranha. "Sneaking, hiding, finding...hurting. Binding. Darkness. Screaming." 

While Hisi was the embodiment of the grand impulses that led to evil--desire, ambition, wrath, hubris--Paha was the petty things: jealousy, greed, selfishness, lechery, perversion. As such, unlike the rest of us, he had never evolved. He was as he had been nearly a thousand years ago, small, squat, hideous, able to communicate only in bursts of emotion and crude description. Most people found him revolting. Most people hated the part of themselves that was Paha. If Hisi were the gorgeous mistress seducing the wealthy married man in the bedroom of his lavish home, Paha was the teenage son watching from the closet with a handful of jizz.

Lem, showing his human upbringing, shrugged his shoulders aggressively at the little, slimey god and feigned a step forward, which caused Paha to retreat instantly to safety of my throne, where he hugged himself tightly against my leg. I could feel his huge cock down the length of my shin. "Brother Po, Paha scared. Shaking, trembling, fearing, peeing."

An unsteady, wet trickle against my ankle let me know that he was indeed doing all of those things. I slapped him across the face and shook him from my leg with a kick. He bounced hard against the trunk before skittering around to the side, leaving Lem and I on either side. The repulsive deity wasn't keen to turn his back on either of us. Paha was smarter than he looked. I wasn't pleased and Lem, I'm sure, would have liked nothing better than to make a hat out of him.

Lem shared why he was so angry. "Honestly, Po, you send this cretin to my abode. Have you no better assassins in your retaining? You had faith that this mongrel creature could end me?" 

"Of course not," I said. "I have faith in nothing. I had hope, and little enough of that. Still, I figured that at worst, you would kill him and save me the irritation of his company." Paha hissed. I stuck my tongue out at him, and then curled it and touched my nose with the tip. "It looks like I had bad luck all-around. Good thing I didn't go to the track today."

"You would sacrifice your own brother so callously? Your dishonor knows no bounds, fiend!" It was a wonder Lem could balance at all, propped up as he was on his high horse which seemed to constantly sit on a soapbox. 

"He's more like a dog, really. And not a very good one, at that." I indicated my urine soaked pant leg. "Not even housebroken. And at his age? Thought it might be time to put him down. Thought you might do me the kindness of the coup de grace. You know me, I'm all heart. Can't even finish Old Yeller."

"Brother Po is cruel. Sharp-mouthed and dull-hearted!" Paha dug his sharp claws across the trunk, leaving deep trenches in the wood. He would have loved to throttle both Lem and I, but knew he was overmatched. At least for the moment. 

Paha was an odd creature, at the mercy of his feelings. In truth, his physical form was little more than a slimey membrane through which emotion passed. The more he felt, the more the filter soaked up, and the bigger he got. Even now, I could see his shoulders straining, the framework of his leathery wings cracking and expanding under his anger. He had grown almost four inches during the course of the conversation. I would need to assuage him. It wouldn't do to have him get into a tizzy and busting the ceiling again.

"Paha, dearest, sweetest, Paha, come to your brother. You know how I like to tease. I am so glad that you are well. I feared constantly for your safety." He looked at me skeptically. Paha was dumb, but not stupid. He then looked to Lem. One of us was pain wrapped in roses. The other was only thorns. He chose the sweeter scent and bounded over to me on all fours to sit at my feet. I rewarded him by scratching under his chin. His muscles ceased their swelling with just that touch. "That's a good Paha! Bother Po, won't let the mean man hurt you anymore."

The little god twisted his head to look back at Lem and felt brave enough to give a horrid chuckle. "Trickster all out of tricks. Po here. Po protect." He nuzzled my knee. I could smell the infection coming from the open sores on his skin, and fought the urge to kick him away once more.