Joseph D'Lacey - Snake Eyes

“No, I certainly don’t. That’s why we’re doing this. Who’s going to get the head?”

“I will,” said Puff Wiggery, a nervous eye cast towards his still dancing wife.

“Me too,” said Rickett, uncertain whether his wife had had her turn by then or not.

“Make it quick.” They ran off into the night. “The rest of you get down and keep as quiet as you can. We don’t want to do anything to disturb them too early.”

I watched the orgy progress. Velvet had recovered and was dancing in the circle again. I assumed that meant she was planning to have another bite of the fiendish cherry. It didn’t matter to me; the damage was already done. The important factor was that the dancing women’s trance was so strong they had no inkling of our arrival.

“What is this plan you’ve got?” asked Prattle as we crouched in the dry undergrowth.

“We’re going to cut the demon’s tail off.”

“What? Its tickle tail?”

“No. Its demon tail. That’s the thing that demons fear most and a demon with no tail has no power over humans. If we can get its tail, we’ll have all the bargaining power we need.”

“You’re insane.”

“I’m only going to do this once, Leopold, so enjoy the experience.” I passed him the Ledger. “Read it and you’ll see.”

“I can’t read this. It’s an arcane book of occult nonsense.”

“Read it. Then give it right back to me.”

So he read, the pages an inch or two from his face but glowing very faintly in the night, enough that he could see the words. When he was finished he handed the book back to me without saying a word.

Moments later Wiggery and Rickett returned with the head of the demon.

“Keep it facing away for the moment,” I said. “Now then, any volunteers for the next part?”

No one spoke.

“There’s no shame in that. It’s a dangerous job. You could die a horrible death and go to Hell, so I understand. Last chance,” said I. “Anyone.”

I looked across at Prattle.

“You still have Cleaver’s knife, I take it?”

He drew the blade out from his black robes and it gleamed even in the darkness. I leaned in close to him.

“You know, doing this would be great for your reputation. And this is still a religious matter. I will stand aside for you if you want to take the job.”

Prattle only shook his head and handed me the knife, handle first. I looked at the edge of the blade and the thickness of the steel behind it and hoped it was the right tool for the job. More than that, I prayed I had the strength to do what was required.

“If this works, we give the demon back its head and keep the tail.”

“What’s to stop it taking the tail away from us once it can see what it’s doing?”

“You’ve read The Ledger, Prattle. A demon without its tail has no power.”

I wanted to see the expression on the demon’s face when I sliced off its most prized body part but that was going to be impossible. I couldn’t risk letting the head see what I was doing or it might warn its body and then I’d be the meat. I broke cover and crept out towards the ring of swaying women and their Hellish stud. I have to admit, it was distracting seeing all those females, gyrating in sheer erotic anticipation. Most of them were naked or half naked and they bounced and jiggled in a most engaging manner. True, many of them could not be considered great works of art and that might have explained their terrible yearning for the intimate attentions of a demon, but just as many were more than presentable and a few, Velvet among them, were delectable beauties I’d have been proud to bed in my younger days. Nowadays, I was beyond that sort of frivolity, of course, although the truncheon beneath my britches protested otherwise.

The deep stupor the women had entered seemed to make them oblivious to my approach, yet it was still a struggle finding a gap in the constantly moving circle and slipping through it without a dangerous amount of contact. A doughy breast slapped against my left ear and I had an eyeful of Mrs. Wiggery’s unkempt belly-hedge before I made it past the women and into the space where the demon lay.

Carefully, I moved the lanterns that were dangerously near the demon away from its wings and limbs. I tried to ignore Blini Rickett’s wife as she skewered herself on the demon’s rough-hewn mast. She was kneeling on its upper thighs. Her hands clutched at the coarse red hairs on its stomach, her nails making no impression at all on the leathery surface. It was impossible to tell, even to my experienced ears, whether her cries were of pain or pleasure. I was thankful that she was facing his upper body—I didn’t want her to see me approach his nether regions with a knife. The spell might break and then she and all her coconspirators might turn that very knife on me.

I crawled up behind her, between the legs of the demon and was there confronted by its huge, hessian rough scrotum. It resembled a travelling pouch with three skittle balls inside and it shook in time with Mrs. Rickett’s squats and thrusts and yells. The snag was that the tail was partially obscured by the demon’s triumvirate of testicles. I was going to have to lift them in order to access the root of the tail. I knelt as close to the conjunction of its legs as I could and was then in closer proximity to Mrs. Rickett’s behind than I would have ever have chosen to be. The handle of the knife was slick with sweat as I reached forward with my left hand to lift the demon’s bag of three giant marbles and expose his greatest weakness.

I hesitated before I took hold of its adversarial gonads. What if it realised my hand wasn’t one of the women touching it? But it couldn’t know that, could it? Without its head, the only sense it had left was that of physical feeling. Convincing myself that this was logical, and knowing that there was, in truth, nothing logical about demons, I took a gentle grip on the trio of overgrown oysters and lifted. The demon’s legs twitched and stiffened. Mrs. Rickett gasped and continued her knee dance. Apparently, the extra stimulation had caused the demon’s club to swell even further. Beneath those infernal bollocks, I saw what I wanted to see. The cleft of its foul buttocks and behind that, the tail. The smell was shocking. It smelled like a chicken coop with a hundred dead goats in it on a hot day. Around me, the sounds of the entranced women with all their moaning and rustling through the dry grass, receded.

There was just me. And the knife. And the tail.

I watched my right hand point the tip of the knife at the ground beside the tail. I didn’t know if I had the strength but I had to make one single swift movement and the job had to be done. There would be no time for a second slice. I decided that a downward stroke with the force across the tail was the best way. There was hair around the base of the tail and that stopped the demon feeling the keenness of the blade. For all it knew it might have been the finger of a maiden ready with more stimulations. I took a deep breath in and mustered all my power and focus. I thrust the knife downward and towards the tail with every fibre of my strength and every atom of my will. With the other I kept a gentle hold on the tail. That was when I discovered, to my probably eternal relief that demons don’t have bones in their tails. The blade went through it as if I was cutting roast bison and the tail came away in my hand. I was so delighted I knelt there looking at the thing and smiling when I ought to have been running away.

I think it’s accurate to say that the demon felt the bite of the blade. It sat up knocking Mrs. Rickett—a still not totally satisfied Mrs. Rickett—backwards. She grappled the beast’s chest hairs and managed to hang on. There was no sound of a scream from either the body or the head, but I did hear repeated bursts of air escaping its windpipe and it didn’t take much to imagine the level of noise it would have made if its head were still attached to its body. The tail writhed like a snake in my hand and I fell backwards just as two enormous, six-fingered, talon-tipped hands came my way. Trapped by a leg on each side, I rolled backwards, ending up in a heap, but out of reach, at the creature’s feet. I stood up, knife in one hand with not a drop of blood upon it and tail in the left gripping my wrist and flailing as if blessed with its own life.