Rod Rees - The Demi-Monde - Winter

More silence. Trixie’s hand closed around the butt of the Colt.

‘An interesting point, but not persuasive.’ There was the tinkling of a small bell and immediately the doors to the hall swung open.

Resplendent in the immaculate black uniform of the SS-Ordo Templi Aryanis, Colonel Archie Clement strode into the hall.

Trixie knew that she was a dead woman.

How long they knelt there Norma didn’t – couldn’t – know: she’d spent the night encased in a magical bubble. Everything that happened outside the pentagon seemed distant, almost dreamlike. Even when Crowley and his adepts tore their gowns from one another and pranced around the cavern in a frenzied orgy of sexual indulgence it hardly touched on Norma’s consciousness. But now the music was louder and even more frenzied, the screams of Crowley and his adepts as they shouted out their spells and incantations more impassioned. She sensed the ritual was coming to its climax.

Suddenly the shutters set high in the roof crashed open, allowing a shaft of sunlight to stream through, down into the cavern. In that instant, Aaliz Heydrich was bathed in a halo of golden light and the runes painted on her body seemed to writhe and twist like living things. Her body began to tremble. A low moan escaped her lips. And then, with a terrible scream, she arched back and collapsed unconscious to the floor of the altar.

Norma felt herself tumbling into a dark nothingness, but just before she slid into unconsciousness she saw Crowley’s face, his mouth drawn back in the rictus of a smile.

The Rite of Transference was complete.

The Real World: 1 August 2018

She awoke slowly… cautiously, taking long careful moments to orientate herself towards the challenges to come, settling her nerves for what would be a performance of a lifetime… of two lifetimes.

She kept her eyes closed, feigning sleep, but still she gathered information using her other senses.

Smell…

The Professor was close by: his cologne was unmistakable, almost overpowering. That was a comforting realisation: it was good to have a friend and ally in the room. But despite the competition of the Professor’s cologne she still detected the brush of Chanel No. 5 on her nose. This presumably signalled that the First Lady – her mother – was in the room; she was touched by her solicitude. And as a background fragrance there was that signature aroma of disinfectant and urine that was inescapably ‘hospital’.

Touch…

She could feel the stiff, clean bedsheets under her fingertips – my, how long her nails were! – could feel the press of the regimented arrangement of the blankets that confined her as she lay on the bed.

Taste…

Ughhh… yes, the taste of the plastic tube they had in her mouth, presumably there to ensure that she kept breathing, that she didn’t swallow her tongue. No one wanted her to die. That would be very embarrassing and the President would be very pissed off.

Hearing…

She could hear them whispering, so concerned, so considerate, so desperate not to disturb her. There was the President’s gruff, mahogany voice as he dealt brusquely with an aide who was reminding him of a ‘prior engagement’. The First Lady was sobbing quietly to her left. And providing a 70 bpm backbeat to the room’s whole bated cacophony was the beep, beep, beep of her heart monitor.

She took a surreptitious breath, preparing herself. She opened her eyes.

‘She’s awake!’

‘Oh, thank you God!’

‘Please, she’ll be very weak.’

‘Please don’t crowd around her. Please don’t overexcite her.’

‘Oh Norma, darling, it’s Mummy.’

She gave a weak smile, thankful that the plastic tube masked any element of theatricality.

‘Weak…’ she gasped in a ragged voice.

The doctor – white coat, stethoscope, worried expression, must be a doctor – pushed closer and lifted her wrist, presumably checking her pulse. ‘Probably a little anaemic, young lady, we’ll organise a blood transfusion if that’s okay by you.’

She couldn’t suppress a big smile: that would be very, very okay!