For Part 1 of this serial, read HERE

For the previous part read HERE

The Story So Far - We are in the fading days of Ancien Régime France, a time of great upheaval. We have followed the correspondence of twins Joseph-Marie, a witch, and Marie-Joseph, a deserting soldier, as they broke out jail and sought to provoke a revolt against the predatory elites.

But now we also run into other figures plotting their own form of upheaval, the Marquis de Sade and firebrand revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat…

PART 4 – The Marat Papers

8th July 1789

Les Cordeliers, Paris

Antoine,

I feel certain that the king’s officers are seeking me after I published the Project for the Constitution and the Rights of Man just as the Estates General began gathering. I fear – not really fear, for Jean-Paul Marat fears nothing, but suspect – I suspect, then, that the law is after me. I must take refuge in the only place safe at present, the sewers of Paris.

This means I will be unable to make the final revisions to the text of the journal. So as my typesetter and confidant, I trust in you to make the following changes to issue 1:

Title: The proposed name Publiciste parisien is shit, what am I, a goddamn advertising shill? No, though of course if we can find sponsors for our serious political work, so much the better. I’ve decided on L’ami du peuple. Good, right? I am a friend to the people, and heaven knows the people need a friend in the hard times ahead.

Text: In reference to Lafayette, replace the phrase “that lackey to the King, Lafayette” with “George Washington’s bumboy, the pedophile Lafayette.” It’s time to remind people that though he dared much against the King of England, he won’t do shit to bring discomfort to the King of France. Such a reference would be very timely, as I believe the Americans have chosen today as their national day or somesuch. We reference them, then, in honor of their constitution (though mine is better).

The reference to “the good doctor G’s delicate machine” is on reflection a little obscure. We need to call a spade a spade. Change that to: “that national razor, the good Doctor Guillotine’s aristo-shortening device, must be given full rein in these liberating times.”

That’s all for now, if I consider any other urgent changes to the text I’ll let you know from the sewers. By all means get this journal – The Friend of the People, Volume One, Issue One – out onto the streets as soon as possible.

Adieu, my friend and may good fortune serve you. I’ve hired a strong young man to help me on my journey into the sewers, an ex-soldier (I think he’s a deserter) called Joseph. He says he can carry me through the streams of sewage if the waters get deep, and that he has a sister who will meet us with provisions of food and wine.

I think everything is going to be alright, though I confess to concerns now and again that the people will lack for heart and falter at the critical moment. Let us pray – to the Goddess Liberty, not to their Kingly God – that we will give them the courage to take action when action is needed.

Give my love to your beautiful sister Simone, tell her I think of her always and keep her lock of hair in a locket close to my chest.

Your friend and comrade

Doctor Jean-Paul Marat

Colonel Perrin,

As you well know I have been tracking the escaped witch and suspected murderer Marie-Joseph Beauchêne. I have reason now to believe that she and a brother of hers, possibly a deserter from the King’s army, are somewhere in Paris. The attached document is a transcription of a message written (allegedly) in blood on a wall in the Paris sewer.

It is almost too shocking. That it implicates that reprobate mob-monger Jean-Paul Marat is no surprise. Make of this document what you will, Sir, but at the very least it implicates the woman as a vile heretic and proves her wicked heart. I have men combing the streets, we believe they are no longer in the sewers.

Capitaine Lucien Pelletier

13 July

(Found in the Paris sewers by a transient and reported to the Garde nationale, transcribed by Frère Marcelin.)

“Written in blood on this day of our Dark Lord, Prince, and Infernal Master, The Unmaker, The Great Leveler and One True Judge, His Unholiness, Satan, 13 July 1789.

The blood whereof this pact is written was mixed in equal parts of Marie-Joseph Beauchêne, Joseph-Marie Beauchêne, and Jean-Paul Marat, that it may bring forth the full power of Mighty Hell to bare down upon the oppressors and enslavers of the sans-culottes. Let it be also known that nine rats, the number of wisdom and prophecy, were sacrificed in alignment with the rules set down in the Great Tract of Semyaz in the Spirit of Attainment.

Cast down into these sewers, as the benay Elohim were cast down from Heaven, we called upon the powers of Beliar and Leraje and Eligos, Powerful Demons of Hell, to grant Jean-Paul Marat a Revolution for His People. In our nakedness and frenzy, we danced in firelight, baring ourselves to The Infernal Divine, offering our bodies to these Spirits who birth war.

And let it be known, here writ in blood, that these Spirits did appear and did eat of our sacrifices, and did enjoy of our bodies and drink of our blood and our offering was deemed acceptable to them. Jean-Paul Marat did enter into a covenant with them, that he would have his revolution, at the cost of the comfort of his own flesh and that his own life must also be paid as debt.

This covenant hereby signed,

Jean-Paul Marat

FOUR YEARS HENCE, MARAT

I CLAIM YOUR LIFE

FOUR YEARS TO THIS DAY

Catch the penultimate chapter on July 7th with just a week before Bastille Day.

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For the previous part read HERE

The Story So Far - We are in the fading days of Ancien Régime France, a time of great upheaval. Until now we have followed the correspondence of twins Joseph-Marie, a witch, and Marie-Joseph, a deserting soldier.

But now the twins are together and we switch to other forms of correspondence and documentation.

The storm winds of revolution are approaching fast …

PART 2 – The Twin Dossier

1 July, 1789

Colonel Perrin,

It is with deep sorrow and consternation that I write to you of the unsettling events which recently occurred in Lyon and which I have had the unfortunate and monumental task of investigating. These are horrors I know not how to describe. The ordeal began on 30 April when one Father Lazare Mathis of the local parish took into custody the accused witch Marie-Joseph Beauchêne. I have read the good Father’s journal and his accounts of the interrogations he had with the accused are assiduous. His dealings with the accused witch were of the most pious and adhere strictly to authorized methods for gaining confessions. Yet the witch persisted in her innocence, though Father Mathis was convinced of her guilt and heard growlings and snarling emanations from her cell on several occasions. Three days ago the esteemed Archbishop Descoteaux arrived in Lyon to assist in obtaining a confession. He brought with him Father Laporte, an expert in the rite of exorcism. According to Father Mathis’s journals, he believed the woman to be housing a wolf demon and thought it best to exorcise the spirit.

It is here I must admit, I am unable to explain what happened after the Archbishop arrived. I can only report what I see before me, all else would be vain speculation. The local authorities have done what they could to keep the scene as they found it, for that I am grateful, and yet… I have had such nightmares since arriving. But that should not trouble you, Colonel. Perhaps I am only forestalling in describing the atrocity placed before me. To the task.

The entire jail had a most foul stench upon my arrival. True, they often do, but this was such to make one’s stomach give up its contents, if you’ll permit my saying. As I approached the cell wherein the woman had been kept I noticed several animal prints of various types; there appeared to be cloven-hoofed animals along with cats, foxes, and a large wolf. All of these were in blood and there were, at my guess, at least six beasts. These were heading out of the cell and down the very hall where I tread.

Witnesses, including the provost, whose report is included in this dispatch, heard a great and terrible roar and fearfully loud screaming before the door to the cell was wrenched from its hinges and the animals escaped. The wolf reportedly had red eyes and the cats were as large as hunting dogs. Their tracks do confirm this report. Though the provost is ashamed, he does admit that he and his men hid from the animals so as not be murdered by them. No one saw the woman, the accused witch, exit the cell. She is, as far as I am concerned, an escapee. My role here is not to recommend punishment or mercy, it is only to investigate and report. You, in your wisdom, will decide what should be done with the men here.

I moved to the door of the cell which was indeed bent and twisted free of its hinges. No man that I know of could have done such a thing. Only an incredible force of nature could have accomplished the task, and yet, the door stood within a well built jailhouse that remained untouched. How the animals got into the cell, the provost also cannot tell me, for he himself assured the door was locked behind the clergy as they entered, at their direction. Could the man be lying? I think not. He is in a most extreme state of distress and has hardly stopped praying to eat or sleep since my arrival. It is the behavior of a disturbed man, but I think not a guilty one.

Within the cell, Colonel, was only horror. Such horror as I have never seen before and never wish to see again, may God help me. I will do my best to be faithful to the scene as it was presented to me, but forgive me if my words falter at the depravity and vileness of what I witness. Within the cell were the bodies of Father Mathis, Father Laporte, and Archbishop Descoteaux. Their holy frocks and various accoutrements had been rent to shreds, exposing the naked flesh of each man. Rosary beads were scattered around the bloody straw strewn floor and each man had his own cross stuck… between his buttocks, please forgive the indecency, Colonel. I pale to write these details. The men had been ripped open at their bellies and their organs and intestines strewn about the room as though… God forgive me… as though in celebration. Their faces were mutilated as to be no longer recognizable. Each man was missing a part of his body. We have searched the cell and could not find the right index finger of the Archbishop, the nose of Father Laporte, or the genitals of Father Mathis.

The proper authorities from the Church have been contacted and the bodies have been moved to the church here. My men have been scouring the countryside, but no trace of the witch or her demons have been discovered.

More men may be required, as is your direction.

Capitaine Lucien Pelletier

The Notebooks of the Marquis de Sade

2 July 1789

I write this in my carriage as they ferry me from the Bastille to the insane asylum at Charenton. I write on a little wooden desk on my lap – I have decided to call it un surgenoux, a laptop – as the carriage progresses down bumpy lanes, which causes me to succumb to nausea.

This is acceptable; there are worse things than nausea, and certainly many more inauthentic things to suffer than the wave of vomitous disgorgement that overcome me each page or so. I simply rise from my seat, lean out of the window and barf, lustily and with great aplomb. Would that all my bodily activities were so bold and decisive; but alas, age.

“Hey!” they call as they see me spewing down the side of my conveyance. “Hey! M’sieur! Aren’t you the famed pornographer Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, le Marquis de Sade?” The frontispiece likeness of the author which the engraver Casson has made for my books is really quite extraordinary. People simply just will recognize me wherever I go.

“No,” I reply as I mop the puke from my chops with my dainty aristocratic handkerchief scented with lavender. “No,” I say. “Firstly, I am not a pornographer. I am merely the delineator of dreams, a universal lyricist channeling the half-hidden fantasies of all. And second, I am no longer known as the Marquis de Sade. I have renounced my former title and am now to be called plain Louis Sade, humble man of letters, a toiler of the pen and member of the working classes.”

By this time the carriage has left my admirer far behind, and the local curs chase after, lapping up the vomit as it drips from the bodywork. I leave the declaration of my new proletarian identity to them, these running dogs, as is most appropriate, and I return to my laptop, for the labor of a writer never ceases.

Earlier this morning I found a way out of my prison cell and scrambled up onto the roof of the Bastille. It was really quite far down, and I felt a wave of vertigo as I considered for a moment the delicious sensation that it would be to plummet from this place down onto the cobbles below, the exquisite agony of twisted tendons and shattered bones, the sweet lover’s gurgle of blood catching in the throat. But I bethought myself to my revolutionary task and rolled up my manuscript to make a bullhorn.

“Help! Help!” I yelled through the papers. “The guards are killing us prisoners!” It was a simple appeal, direct and frank. It was not true, not yet, but it could well become so in time. “They massacre us in here!” I shouted. “Send help, citoyens! Mass your militias, gather your sections, arm yourselves with pikes, and liberate us your fellow workers from the ongoing slaughter that is taking place in here!”

And much more, for a long time after. The people of Paris began to gather below and to murmur their inchoate revolutionary fervor. I could see it from my high perch – they wished to taste blood, and I was giving them the excuse they needed.

At this point the guards came and dragged me back down to my cell. The warden wished to strike me dead with his sword, but realized that I had too many connections – and in fact, despite my rhetorical flourishes, I am still a nobleman. He decided to declare me non compos mentis and ship me off to the loony bin.

No matter. I planted the seed. Within a week or two at most, this Bastille will be stormed and the people will prevail. I have sowed the wind and this dandified little military man, this prick of a warden, will reap the whirlwind.

Whorls of history whip up at my feet like the waves of a sea-squall. I stand in the calm eye of the storm while it rages around. Round and round it goes. The vortex of revolt, the swirling tides of time.

Excuse me, I must stop writing now. I have to puke and I really can’t puke any longer.

We stop at an inn in Ivry to change horses. Over in the courtyard are a pair of young people who catch my eye, who seem strangely familiar, as if they were characters from some book of mine. A strange bewitching girl, modestly dressed but wild-eyed like a ferocious beast of prey. Long dark locks, a fair bosom in a dirndl patched and stained, a very tigress in the guise of a peasant wench. And beside her stands a young man, very much like her, her brother? He has a gaunt aspect but a demeanor and a way of moving himself that speaks of strength and ruthlessness. He is like myself, me Louis le Marquis, if I had not gone quite so much to seed, if I had been something other than a penman and a cocksman and a soft soft libertine.

And so I sit here and I scribble on my laptop as the ostlers change the horses and my guards take a sip of wine. And I look at this alluring pair, I think of them as Justin and Justine, and my mind wanders. And then they look up, they look at me, they whisper a moment, and they nod agreement of a plan.

And here they come, walking towards my carriage...

3 July 1789

Settled in Charenton last night with an empty belly and a mind full of strange desires. I slept not a wink despite the draught I was given upon being locked in my room. One could suppose it was the new surroundings. The ignominy of an asylum when, in reality, I am the most sane man who has ever lived. Fully settled in my right mind, I merely see farther than the common man, past these days of coddled piety and needless propriety to a time when all people are free to exercise their will as their desires demand. One could also suppose it was the screaming. The guards here do not beat the vociferous into silence as they do at the Bastille. Or perhaps it was this wretched excuse for a mattress. Foul smelling and lumpy. At least my blood wasn’t feasted on all night by those vampiric gluttons, fleas. Although, thinking upon it, I might like to be a flea, sinking my head into the fat rump of a young whore and drinking until I’m ripe and swelling. Such an uncomfortable fatness, hot blood pressing against thin flesh… a thought to keep one up at night in bulging readiness, but it is not what kept me up last night.

No, it was the young couple who accosted me at Ivry. I must detail the encounter, for I feel I will never be rid of its influence. I watched them approach me, the young woman’s eyes never once left mine, the waiting eyes of a predator. Many times I’ve been the hunter, but not since childhood have I allowed myself to be the prey. Yesterday I could do nothing against it. I was suddenly very aware of the shackles which kept me confined in the Charenton carriage. My empty gut churned anew. While she walked toward me, her companion hailed my guard, I saw gold flash in his palm. Were they friends coming to free me? Her eyes did little to reassure.

She approached the carriage window and appeared to sniff the air. “They don’t feed you well in the Bastille, eh?” Under the slight wave of her hand the door lock clicked and she pulled it open, sliding inside. She smelled of earth and smoke. I felt myself wanting to shift away from her, but she reached out and pulled me close, her fine bosom pressed up against me.

“You stink,” she wrinkled her nose. I found myself at a loss for words, a rare occurrence. “I know who you are. What you’ve done. What you pretend to be.” She pressed a long, jagged nail into my cheek, I heard the skin break and felt the hot rush of blood. Pain was second to the fear thudding in my chest.

“Who are you?”

“I am Marie.”

“What do you want with me?”

“Two things.” She licked the blood off my cheek. “I need to find someone. And I want to play. I hear you like to play.”

At a click she looked up. Her brother slid into the carriage on the other side of me. The accursed box started rolling.

“My twin, Joseph.” He reached across me and caressed her cheek, pressing his thumb into her mouth, she bit down, blood welling in the wound. I watched her suckle with fascination, and I must admit that despite the circumstances, my member grew stiff.

“Take off his jacket.” The young man spoke, I heard the self-assured cadence of a soldier in his voice.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Torture is unnecessary.” I never claimed to be a brave man, just a brilliant one. Bravery is overrated, why save another and harm yourself? I simply couldn’t.

“Where do we find Marat?”

I admit I wasn’t immediately sure who she meant. “Ah, the man who wrote the Supplement?”

“Yes, where is he?” The young man spoke this time.

“He’s a nobody. Yet you have me, The Great de Sade, right here in your grasp. Ask me anything, go on.” The audacity of some people. I am a true artist of the flesh and of the letters and they ask about some low-level functionary.

The young woman growled. A sound unlike any other, deep in her throat, a truly animal utterance.

“Well I can’t say that I know, but he was elected to the committee of the Carmes-Déchaussés district, so one imagines he’s there somewhere. But that’s all I know. I don’t suppose you’ll mind if I shove you out of the carriage at a trot, will you? It’s the least you deserve for interrupting my writing.”

I was rather irritated with their lack of reverence toward me. They didn’t respond, the woman looked across me to the man, in unison they each took an arm of my coat and set to stripping me of it. I protested, of course.

“We want to hear you scream,” the young man whispered in my ear. My body reacted, my skin flushed, my heart beat harder in my chest… anger. I am not the subordinate. I lashed out to strike him, the young woman caught my hand with impossible speed. On my life, I don’t know how to explain this, but she had claws coming out of her fingertips. Her brother took my wrist and she slid a clawed finger down the length of my arm, slicing through my vomit stained linen shirt and into my arm. Blood welled immediately and she noisily lapped at it with her tongue before passing my wound over to her brother. He looked doubtful, but he licked crimson spillage nonetheless. Apparently liking it, he latched on to my arm and sucked greedily.

Something happened to me then, a deep ache in my groin. A longing I’d never felt. The young woman noticed the stirring and ripped my pants open with rapacious speed. She took my now raging member in her mouth and sunk her teeth in. I came instantly. She tarried, sucking blood and sperm as I wailed in pain and pleasure. Eventually she let the thing flop out of her mouth, sucked dry and punctured.

“Please, enough. Get out.” My voice hardly sounded like my own.

But the young man pulled out a knife, apparently lacking the same beastly equipment his sister had. At the same time she moved over to him and knelt before him, massaging him through his pants until he was hard. He looked down at her, ravenous. She was gentler with him, I became hard again as I watched her open his pants and begin her fellatio. I touched my own member, slick with blood and bleeding more now that it was hard. An unimaginable feeling of sharp-edged pleasure. I had almost forgotten the knife when I felt it dragged down my face. The young man handed the knife to his sister and took my face in his hands licking, lapping sucking blood from the wound. I felt his mouth on mine, passing my own blood into my maw, which I drank greedily. One’s own life-force is a powerful aphrodisiac.

At this moment the young woman pushed her brother back into the carriage seat and sat atop him. I watched her slide him inside with eagerness. Such a hairy cunt. Perhaps that is keeping me up. I want to bite her back, taste her blood and cream. That and the wounds. She massaged my slick, swollen, bloody dick as she rode her brother. All three of us came together.

My newfound obsessions.

Will I ever see them again?

They jumped from the carriage after that. Easily. And I watched them run into the woods, hand in hand. I’m sure I heard a ragged howl, but I was bleeding profusely, so maybe not.

As if they had known what was going to happen, the carriage stopped at the next town. The guards cleaned and dressed my wounds, fixed my clothes as best they could.

And now I am in Charenton, throbbing with pain and desire. I cannot stop thinking of their mouths on mine. What must his cock feel like? I’m left aching for more.

Ah, cette vie misérable!

NEXT PART - Tuesday June 30.

Be there or be ancien régime!

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For Part 1 of this serial, read HERE

For the previous part read HERE

The Story So Far - twins Joseph-Marie, a witch, and Marie-Joseph, a deserting soldier, are held in separate prisons. They contrive a way to write letters to each other involving familiars requiring blood payment.

But though Marie still faces torture and abuse at the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities, Joseph has broken out of his jail.

Marie continues their correspondence…

My Dear Joseph,

I am breathless with joy! That you are safe and in the hands of my most esteemed friends gives me no end of happiness. No doubt they love you as they love me, for you and I are one, and they with me. I contain multitudes.

I have a plan of my own to tell you of. I haven’t yet explained how I got to be in god’s wretched torture pit. It was by my own design. I paid a farmer’s wife to accuse me of witchcraft so that I would be arrested. My reasons for this are simple. The priest here fancies himself an expert witch hunter. He speaks of nothing else in his tired homilies. Harasses all manner of women and girls, he demeans and belittles, thinks all women evil, and arrests as many as he can get away with. He has tortured and murdered many innocent women. All because he is an ugly, putrid little man with blackened teeth and a vile personality, wholly incapable of kindness or empathy. No woman would touch him.

Him, I could dispatch easily enough without the trouble of a prison cell, to be sure. But he is in the good graces of a particular archbishop who has also taken a morbid interest in the punishment of witches. He travels to assist his sycophantic priest in obtaining the confessions of accused women who remain steadfast in their innocence. Their tortures are endless and they delight in inventing cruel new ways to tease the devil out of women. Perfect men of god, full of hatred and vitriol, too arrogant to see their folly. Righteousness and cruelty go always hand in hand.

As I said, they have only killed women who could not have confessed, for they had no sin of heresy in their hearts. I have withstood the tortures of the priest, knowing his superior would come to assist him in breaking me of my willpower. Today that archbishop arrives and I will tear them both to pieces in my cell. I will feast upon their holy remains and I will grow in power and ferocity. Once I have rid the world of these monsters, my escape will follow.

I write this with great difficulty. My wolf is barely contained within its human prison. I feel my bones crack in preparation for its escape. I walk with difficulty as tendons and ligaments loosen. My speech distorted, my mind wanders to droughts of blood and raw meat sliding down my gullet.

I love you my brother, we will meet again, in one world or another.

Yours,

Marie-Joseph

Marie love in much pain cant write but safe will send yr familr with this mssge

Healing now with frnds

Yr brother loving Jo

Joseph,

It is with great difficulty I write this letter in secret. The archbishop did not come alone. He brought exorcists with him, they mean to strip the devil from within me. I love my demon master. I cannot live without him. Oh, Joseph, for so long he has been my sole comfort, always within me, always holding me up when I would fall. The sweet succor of his strength has been mine alone since childhood. If they take him, and if I cannot find you… I will die. I am a wretched being. My body destroyed, my mind in chaos. But I will fight. We will fight. We speak in internal whispers, profess our love… we hope our cries for help will be heard.

Our name is Legion, for we are many.

God will not devour us.

Yours,

Marie

My sister, my sweet monster Marie,

This shall be the last letter I write you and send by way of your strange messenger.

In a week I shall either be with you or be dead.

Can you imagine what it will be to be united at last, after a lifetime split apart like the cracked halves of a nutshell? It could be that we no longer match each other, that life itself has deformed us so we do not fit together anymore. If that’s the case, so be it. But I will be with you, and if you are indeed a monster then I will also be a monster. Indeed ever since I plied a trade as a soldier and executioner, taking the poor wretches of the land and stringing them up to hang like ripe bursting fruit on roadside trees, I have been some kind of monster.

I am nearly healed, or healed enough. No doubt just as you felt my pains you will also feel the agonies of my healing as I lie here in an abandoned cottage, the summer rains glistening in through the frayed thatch of the roof, and I suck on robbed honeycomb as my bones mend and the stings of a hundred honeybees smart like resourceful imps.

I have healed where I was broken; where I fell is where I rise again. I take an old musket which I found on the body of a soldier in a roadside ditch – I could have sworn it was me myself in my old uniform, festering in the June sun with grass growing through my broken skull – and I turn it stock-side up to use as a crutch.

And I start to hobble. From Grenoble to where you are is a good five-day hike, and I must stay off the main roads where the King’s Men are patrolling for vagrants. I don’t fear them any longer, just as I fear nothing but re-imprisonment, but I do not wish to die until I at least have held you once more and stroked the hair of my sweet Marie, my little sister, in the days so long ago when our father used to come in search of you and I would hide you in my arms and never let go until he’d tired of beating me.

Adieu, or maybe I should say à bientot – see you soon my dearest sister

Your loving brother and the half of your soul

Joseph

NEXT PART - Tuesday June 23.

Be there or be ancien régime!

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For the previous part read HERE

The Story So Far - twins Joseph-Marie, a witch, and Marie-Joseph, a deserting soldier, are held in separate prisons. They contrive a way to write letters to each other involving familiars requiring blood payment.

In their years of wandering since separation, they’ve encountered many bizarre incidents and strange people, including the monstrous glutton Tararreand the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. Marie explains that she has also become a lycanthrope, known as the Beast of Gévaudan.

Joseph continues their correspondence…

Yes, sweet sister,

I feel your beast squirming inside your skin and I feel that it also dwells in me, but perhaps it manifests in completely a different way in my case. You transform into a – I was going to say monster, but you are no monster, or if you are, you are my lovely monster and I own your monstrosity for my own. You become a thing of vengeance and so do I, but I remain a man for all that with the weaknesses of a simple human beast, and for that I confess to some considerable envy for your state. If I could become as you are, I would.

Your messenger indeed came to me and brought your gold pieces, and I paid the postage with my blood though it weakened me in my already weakened state. But I have the coins and can resume these letters with some regularity, at least while I stay in this fetid hole.

You’re right, it is a squalid cell I’m forced to survive in, but there are worse. This is the luxury suite and below me is the oubliette, the place where those with no money are dumped to waste away. I’ve seen it and was threatened by the jailer with placement in there, but now I have your remittances I am spared it, at least until my plan reaches fruition and I may be... not here.

It’s truly abhorrent what people can be made into. In that dark oubliette are wretches you would not even imagine are people, things that scrounge in the rancid straw for beetles and who count a raw trapped rat as a feast. But enough of that.

After I escaped from Tararre, after I became a deserter and vagabond and sentenced to a summary death like the one I’d myself imposed as a soldier, strung up on the nearest tree limb and left to the crows, after that I wandered the byways. I stole a suit of clothes and left my army uniform behind. I was free, free of fear, but not of the consequences of my acts.

Again Jean-Jacques says “Peoples once accustomed to masters are not in a condition to do without them. If they attempt to shake off the yoke still they are alienated from freedom.” Utter freedom is freedom from want, my sister, not pretty words about liberty.

I wandered the Margaride mountain peaks in the Gévaudan, that stark country where even the goats shiver in the wind that drives madness from mountaintop to mountaintop. The people there spoke about a Beast in the forest, some kind of wolf or lion or beast of prey that slunk down from time to time to prey on their flocks. They were disposed to hire shepherds to watch their sheep and goats, and so I found a place to stay with a peasant family called the Roberts.

They gave me a dish of gruel every day, poor stuff but no more than what they ate themselves, and they had me stay in the shepherd’s hut up on the hillside which was good for me as I was far from the roads and the patrols of the King’s soldiers.

And so it was that on one night with the moon full and the sky a mess of scudding frightened clouds, I saw the Beast, prowling not far from my hut. It had eyes like red rubies and a strong body like a dog’s but much larger, and a way of moving that was like a liquid fire. I felt you were near and I felt something that I thought had gone away from me, that plunging in the belly that marks fear.

And so I squatted down in the hut and cowered while outside a sheep screamed and was carried off. I felt you nearby and I feared for you and I feared you and I feared you were the Beast and I knew it and I feared again.

But now I know and I fear no more.

Write soon

Your loving brother,

Joseph-Marie

Mon Cher,

I have often wondered, what is a monster? Is it one that kills, or merely frightens with its hideous features? A creature no human could countenance? One without pity or remorse? Or one that is merely different? Many kill and are not considered monsters… I was in Gévaudan some time ago, I had to protect some of my sisters from accusations that would have seen them hanged. Were the people I killed innocent? Not in my mind. They were a sect of witch hunters, training their children to kill my kind. My conscience is clear. My sisters do not think me a monster, but to the families of the ones I murdered, I most certainly am. So perhaps there are no monsters, or perhaps we’re all monsters. Our gods, whoever they might be, are left to sort out the mess. I see myself as an instrument of my master, no more, no less. His morality is mine, although it might not be the morality of my victims. Where does this leave morality and monstrosity? Perhaps I am not the beast to decide….

I remember your scent in Gévaudan, it was you, unmistakably, but an older, wiser you. I can discern friend from foe in wolf form, but affection is impossible. I would never harm you, but our reunion would nonetheless not have been congenial. Still, odd as it sounds, it was good to taste you on the wind.

I will do all can to spare you the oubliette, vile places that turn men into animals. Want does that, does it not? Make animals of men? My Marat also spoke of freedom, as did your Jean-Jacques, “freedom is abolition from want,” he said. Want, not desire. Men will never find abolition from desire. I have heard of the men in the far east who live without desire… but I am skeptical. Having all of one’s creature comforts met, one’s thoughts will turn to desire, it is simply the way of mankind. We are not capable of being satisfied.

I’m guilty of desire myself. At Gévaudan, I killed more than just witch hunters. I killed some merely for the taste of their blood. I ripped out throats to drink the hot, frothy rush of life. There’s nothing like it, mon frère, to feel a life ebb through the grip of your teeth. There are scents that one must coddle in the belly…

Enough. I go on too much, you’ll be disgusted with me.

After the mountains, I returned to the city, in Lyon. I hate the smell of humans. You can almost smell them rotting inside their living flesh. Overworked to living death. Empires built on their backs as though they’re merely a spade handle one can replace when it breaks. I know, it seems hypocritical of me to talk of the value of human life. But at least, I will die without what I eat. I savor, but I do not glut… my mind wanders. He’s starving me again. Perhaps this explains my gustatory preoccupations.

But I was in Lyon. Some of my sisters there lived in the Cordeliers. They ran an apothecary shop. Herbs were never my strength, but I’m skilled with protective magic and they needed it. They were five women living without a man, that will always arouse suspicion. There is something so unsettling to men about an unwed woman, gather a few of us together and we’re downright terrifying. Once I arrived the harassment from the city government stopped, and for a time I thought we would live in peace.

But decay is the way of nature, peace will decay into chaos.

I shall have to tell you more later, I grow weary and my hand shakes.

You mentioned a plan. Perhaps you could tell me of it, if it isn’t too dangerous.

Yours eternally,

Marie-Joseph

Dear sister, I write in haste

Too late to tell you of my plan for it is already executed and I am free. I had hoped to break out without bloodshed, but it was not to be. Someone needed to die and I regret it had to be that way. But I regret it far less when I consider who it was.

Your servant, the one who brought me your coins, was key. Perhaps he hasn’t told you, the fine little fellow, but we have reached our own arrangement. Instead of an offering of my blood as payment for those courier services, I suggested that he slide into the jailer’s rooms on his way out and take a few drops of that gentleman’s arterial substance.

I may also have suggested that he take it all, all the bastard’s blood, along with the keys that hung at his belt. Is it a crime to set a beast out to pasture, or a send a servant out for victuals? I certainly didn’t suggest he do the same to the guardsman at the inner gate, but so it was. I knew that one too and I knew him for a brigand, so it weighs little on my conscience. The wretches whom he used to rape in the oubliette will sleep more soundly for his absence this night.

And with that we stepped out into the moonlight, the creature and I. We were in the courtyard of the old fortress they use as a prison here in Grenoble, the Bastille. Do you know the place? It stands high above the city, pointing its cannons at the citizens below. There are many detachments of cannoneers in this place and guards stand sentry at the main gates. There was only one way to go – up.

I will spare you a detailed narration of how I scaled the walls with the help of your servant, my new friend. How I stood on the roof of the fortress with a world at my feet, the full moon glancing its silver light on the sleeping rooftops of the city far below. How I stood at the brink of the roof with the creature whispering in my ear: “Jump, for I and my friends will catch you... Jump and place your faith in the beasts of the nearworld!”

I scarcely knew what was happening. The waves of nausea that wove their skeins around me, the hot breath of your creature in my ear, the silver tracery of the city so far beneath my feet.

I jumped

This serial continues with PART 6 next Tuesday, 16 June

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For the previous part read HERE

The Story So Far - orphaned grown-up twins Joseph-Marie and Marie-Joseph are held in separate prisons and contrive a way to write to each other, which involves familiars requiring blood payment.

After they were separated in childhood, Joseph was drafted into the army where he meets the grotesque all-consuming glutton Tarrare.

Marie is abused by nobles whom she serves as maid, but soon encounters revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat.

Joseph continues…

My sweet sister my little Marie

Until this time I’ve had no real sense of your torments, for though I feel them from afar I did not understand them in full until I read your latest letter. The itchings and unease that I feel beneath my skin and know come from you have been a constant throughout my life and I’ve grown used to them almost without once considering what they mean. I am a vain and purblind fool! Forgive me my stupidity, which is so much greater than my native dullness, for it is cultivated from a lifetime’s habit of survival and indifference.

I’ll await the messenger with eagerness, and of course will pay a tribute to them – whatever they are – in blood. Meanwhile the jailer here has become tired of me, and I have found another arrangement to get this letter mailed to you. I may not speak of it now.

I was telling you of Tarrare the monstrous glutton from my regiment, and how the army officers found a use for him. What they did was this: along with another man, they would send him as a spy to watch the enemy positions, both men disguised as simple peasants. The other spy would sketch a plan of the defenses, observe the comings and goings of the detachments, and list all the intelligence on a paper.

Then that paper would be sealed up in a leather cylinder and swallowed by Tarrare. If searched by enemy patrols, nothing would be found; in addition it was believed that the stench he emanated would be enough to dissuade the enemy soldiers from prying too deeply into his affairs.

Well, I was sent as the observer and sketcher, the real spy. Tarrare came along not as scout or explorer but merely as a container. They do say that the message is really in essence the medium of that message; if so, then the message I would send the King’s force would in essence be a suet-like towering globule of pus.

We started out well enough on the first day, making our way carefully through the no-man’s-land between the encamped armies. Soon we took a break under the hot sun. We took refuge beneath a grove of lemon trees. Tarrare gobbled his way through the lemons on the trees, grimacing sourly at the tartness of them and not enjoying himself by any means, but rather driven by that unstoppable appetite.

It is a selfish act to survive, my sister. Nobody asks us to live on. It would be easier for all concerned if we just laid down and died, but some compulsion in us does not allow this simple conclusion to be carried out as fact.

As I was dozing beneath the stripped lemon trees, with my shirt draped around my head as sunshade, there was a disturbance in the air around me, the reek that was Tarrare’s aura shifted suddenly. I roused myself; he was standing over me with a look on his grotesque face, all bloated lips and tiny piggy eyes, that spoke of hunger... hunger for my flesh.

I knew that if I hesitated for an instant I would become a mid-day snack for this ogriforous beast, a light luncheon and no more than a brief pause in the raging appetite that drove him to greater and greater monstrosities.

For an instant I considered yielding, just to find out what it is like to slip into the python jaws of a man like this, to ease into his gullet and into the soft refuge of his belly...

But then I kicked him in the balls, he grunted and collapsed, and I ran free.

I was free of Tarrare and his savage gluttony, but also, and more importantly, I was free of the army, cast out between two opposing forces in the heart of Europe. Of no side and accepted by nobody, the absolute reject of men.

And I was forever free of fear also, never again to be passive victim to its chill clutches. Something about imagining myself sliding down the esophagus of a reeking fleshy giant and then awaking to the fact that I could simply knee him in the gonads had freed me in the most complete sense of the word.

I would remain free from that moment on, no matter how much they tried to enslave me with terror or even throw me in their prisons. “Man is born free, and yet everywhere is in chains” says Jean-Jacques. The name of those chains is fear, and I have none of it left.

Adieu, ma brave!

I await your messengers

Your most loving brother

Joseph

Darling Joseph,

I must first apologize, I may ramble. My Tormentor is refusing me sleep again. I am also covered in leeches that I may not touch. I am guarded by a large young man from the village here. He fancies himself quite the menace. When he was first set in front of my cell he called me horrible things and beat his cudgel upon the bars. Now he has three of my leeches hidden under his shirt. I’ll make him eat the rest.

I’m sorry you feel my beast. Or maybe I’m not. I don’t consider it a torment as I took it on willingly, but I do wonder if you sharing the twitchings and shiftings from within means you also share the beast. If even to a small extent my beast has a twin in you, that would be very interesting. I wonder if you’ve ever felt it trying to break free, if you could transform the way I do. Perhaps we’ll meet again someday and I can guide you through it. It really is wonderful to run through a dark forest, hunting your quarry with only your nose and your instinct to guide you. You’ll never feel more free.

I will admit the account of your escape from that foul Tarrare lent a bit of levity to this grey cell. I laughed perhaps too heartily at the thought of him collapsing, for a brief moment relived of his insatiable hunger by the deft hand (or foot) of pain. And wanting to be devoured, that too, makes me think of the wolf. But perhaps you are more free than I, tied to my wolf, tied to my demon, tied to you.

My friend has returned to me and reported on your conditions. Squalor, as to be expected. I’ll send them regularly with money so that you can grease the wheels of favor. The money is useless to me. My tormentor would gladly take it, but only after I’m dead, in order to keep his conscience clear of course. He’s been more determined as of late to break me. Why I let him try is perhaps a matter I should discuss. I could tear him apart. I could hex him. But I let him beat me instead.

But first I must tell you of the beast, and of Marat. I was with him one night, he railed against a nobleman, Édouard Pierre. A cruel landowner withholding food and wages from his peasants. Marat was a writer, not a fighter. He could only continue to rail against the excesses of the aristocracy in general and fight for change en masse. Noble causes, and much more important than petty vengeance. But I am a killer. I like petty vengeance. I sought then and there, as well, to prove to Marat that his precious science couldn’t explain everything.

We lay in bed, candles guttering in the breeze from the open windows. I told him I must show him something. And that when I had done, he must open the door for me. I asked him to help me remove the rugs and then stood naked in the room.

“Don’t be scared,” I told him, “I would never hurt you. Just remember to open the door at the end.” It’s difficult to describe, I’ve tried many times. I’ve never seen myself change, I’ve only felt it. I’ll try for you. It starts at my spine, widening, lengthening, I feel it stretch and grind, the vertebrae pop and separate as new bones grow in between. It’s painful, but not in the way you’d imagine. I know, as my limbs lengthen and claws split from fingertips, that I’m losing the more complex part of me. If only for a while, I’ll become a monster, unthinking, uncaring, desirous of none but ruin. It hurts to lose one’s humanity, no matter how little you think of it.

I could, here and there, see Marat as I writhed, his cigarette dangling from his lips, eyes wide. I could see his mind trying to find the trick. That was the thing with him, always looking for the sleight of hand, be it of nature or of man. How are you tricking us now? I loved him for that. He wasn’t afraid, he was intrigued. Once my muzzle has burst through my mouth I shake off the remaining bits of gore and eat myself up. I need to be inside the wolf if I’m to come back out again. It’s a curious ouroboros of fur and flesh. And yes, I’ll eat it, too, when I’ve transformed back to human.

Marat opened the door for me and I killed Édouard Pierre. I burned his archives as well, so no one would know what his peasants owed. I am a very clever wolf.

I came back to Marat in human form, he seemed relieved. No one likes to watch a tiny woman devour an entire wolf, bones, fur, and all. Then again, it might’ve turned Tarrare on.

My apologies, what an unpleasant thought to leave you with.

Adieu, mon frère,

Marie-Joseph

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For the previous part read HERE

The Story So Far - orphaned grown-up twins Joseph-Marie and Marie-Joseph are held in separate prisons and contrive a way to write to each other.

After they were separated in childhood, Joseph was drafted into the army as a boy-soldier where he later meets the grotesque all-consuming glutton Tarrare.

Marie finds her way into the service of nobles who abuse her, but her desire for vengeance and early apprenticeship in magic has transformed her.

Joseph continues…

Sweet sister,

I weep to remember you calling me your Little Bear, those were precious moments in a life that seems built to make a hell of heaven for the unfortunate such as ourselves. We were born into an early world of birdsong and bluebells in the forest, of sunlight dappling the trees and the rainbow stretching over all in the spring shower. But for such as us this is a world of hunger and bruises, the welts of rods over our backs and the attentions of those who wish us nothing but harm. Those days of paradise dwindled away and I was no longer your Little Bear but instead a great monster of compulsion.

They say the fish rots from the head, and it seems to me that this is also the case with our kingdom. The king lounges in his palace at Versailles surrounded by rich tapestries and cakes and I-don’t-know-what-else. We scrabble through the ditches plundering decomposed bodies for brass rings and pewter trinkets, content to find a piece of stale bread. Something has to be done to remedy this situation and I know... but I’ve already said too much.

It’s only that, with my money run out, I need to take some other action to get the jailer, the bestial Gèrard, to bring me paper and ink, and to take away my letter and mail it to you. Instead of gold I now give him my body, and he consumes it greedily. There is nothing more repellent to me than to degrade myself to this vile man, but nothing is more necessary to me now than to communicate with you, so I do what must be done. It’s not the first time that such men have taken me for their own, though I pray it may be the last.

I was telling you of my army service, and the wretch we’d saved from hanging named Tarrare. That saggy, wrinkled peach, who smelled of the midden heap. I had a mind that his extra flesh was there so he could balloon when he ate, then deflate as he digested.

Each day he would eat all of his army ration in a single gulp, and go on to forage for whatever he could find: foxes in the bush, thrushes that he snatched from branches (for he had incredible reflexes and was like a great nervy cat), suet and offal thrown out by maids to rot in the farmyards. He would fight pigs for the slop in their troughs and then – true, my love, all true! – he would swallow their piglets whole. I don’t know how he did that, but he did, and I saw him consume dogs, cats and even horse foals, opening his maw like a great python to huff them down with a grunt.

The men in my detachment, though the most vile rogues imaginable (I include myself in this, as I had been obliged to descend to some detestable practices to survive) – these men, I say, the scum of France turned animal by the brutality of the army, hangmen and thieves all, they were deeply upset by the grotesque hunger of Tarrare, and by the emanations that would come off him as he digested. He was like a fairytale ogre but so unbearably real that it was impossible to sleep for his stink, his gurgling belly and his obscene eructations. Sometimes he would vomit up bones only to suck on them like toothpicks. In so many ways there has never been anything as real as him.

So the sergeant asked the captain and the captain asked the major, and up and up it went through what they call the chain of command but what is really a pecking order of vultures. And then they hit upon a scheme for what to do with Tarrare. It was a way for them to be rid of him, but also a way for me to escape the abject destiny of a soldier of the King.

Here comes the jailer Gèrard, he’ll be asking for his ‘pup’ to pleasure him again. Imagine if he called me Little Bear, as you used to... what I would do to him if he were to profane the only sweet memory I have of my entire life!

Rest well, my sweet sister

We’ll see each other soon as I feel a solution is nearing to

[THE DOCUMENT ENDS ABRUPTLY]

My Dear Brother,

I am- not well today. My Tormentor undertook a most hellish torture yesterday and I am fighting to recover. Even if I respected his office I could not call him a priest. None of his vows will stand against his depraved desires, but rather must cower to his baser self. And base he is. I no longer think he is torturing me to get a confession, rather he takes pleasure in watching me suffer. He is very close to his god in that way. Both cruel masters who promise far off rewards you’ll be far too dead to hold them accountable for giving. But no matter how he tortures me, this beast inside me will not let me die. I am creature who cannot die, yet who also cannot live.

Fortunately, I had set in motion a plan to help you before my Tormentor came to my cell, else I would not have the strength for it. As I said in my last letter, I spent some of the years we were apart amassing a small fortune. Nothing so grand as the people I stole it from, but enough to help me find you, and take us both far away to a better life. What I put in this letter about what I’ve done must be limited, but suffice it to say that women with my skills have friends who aren’t of earthly disposition. These friends are obliged to help when help is asked for. They are very clever friends who are unlikely to fail at their tasks.

You will get a visitor, likely after the next fortnight has passed. It could be a man, tall and thin, with dark hair and a scar across his right cheek. Or it could be a woman, her hair will be red, she’ll be young and pretty, but will have the same scar across her right cheek. Or, finally, it could be a fox. This fox has the same scar across his muzzle and is devilishly clever. No jailer will stand in his way. Whichever form this friend takes, they will deliver money to you. Not everything I have, that would be too dangerous to travel with. But they will also tell you where to find the rest.

They will ask for a little blood from you to sustain them for their long journey back to me. Please oblige. I know it is unpleasant, but it does secure their loyalty. And they will not do you terrible damage. Do not fear my friend, they mean only to do my bidding.

When last I wrote I told you of a man I was to meet at a salon. Such wretched gatherings. None of the noble women can even read and yet they gather ‘round to discuss philosophy as if they aren’t merely regurgitating what men have told them. ’Tis false agency, false intellect, false importance. I loathed them and only went when dragged scowling and complaining. This salon was no different, my dress was simple, my hair my own, no absurd powdered wig or vain frippery. The man my employer wanted me to meet would not look even once in my direction, but there was another man there, simply dressed as I was and, it seemed, as disgusted by the obscenity of wealth and willful ignorance on display.

With him I spoke, the revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat. I found him intriguing and we spoke on several occasions afterwards. While we both hated the nobility, we spoke more often of science and medicine. He refused to believe in my skills and frequently called me a trickster, though he could never discover my ruse… Despite this, we became friends, and the wolf in me wanted to carry out every one of the deaths he desired. I became ravenous when I listened to him rail against the greedy, callus, and entitled of France. He said they could not, or would not change their ways and so must die. These were feelings I had as well, though I had not been able to articulate them as eloquently as he. I am, when all is said and done, a beast.

If ever we meet again, I swear to it he will have his revolution.

I would tell you more, but I am struggling with coherent thought. A mention of Marat and the beast in me begins to salivate at the memory of those days. I feel its teeth against my ribcage, oh how gnaws at me. We miss the warmth of blood flowing down our throat. We miss rending flesh with our teeth. We want more than gruel in our belly. Yesterday, I let a growl escape my throat as my tormentor thrust slivers of wood beneath my fingernails. He called me demon, but he will pale when he finds out the truth.

Oh brother! My claws rip through my fingertips. The sweet tearing of my own flesh is succor to my suffering. A howl escaped me now. They’ll be running to me soon. To see what beast is in here with me. There will be none but me, a small woman, beaten but still full of rage. And I’ll laugh at them as my beast’s muzzle pushes up my throat. I won’t let it out now. It isn’t time. It isn’t time yet.

Forgive the blood upon this letter.

I look forward to hearing from you. How you and that man with a familiar affliction escaped the King’s army. Don’t forget what I told you about my friend.

I will sink my teeth into living flesh again one day.

Your beast,

Marie-Joseph

Check in next Tuesday June 2 for the next part!

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The Story So Far - orphaned grown-up twins Joseph-Marie and Marie-Joseph are held in separate prisons and contrive a way to write to each other. They describe their lives after they were separated in childhood, Joseph drafted into the army as a boy-soldier and Marie wandering with a merchant who “adopted” her.

Marie continues…

My Dearest,

How curious we both wandered, yet never crossed paths: were we meant to learn different lessons? Perhaps the demons who guide me were guiding you, too. I sense there is a purpose to all this suffering… Don’t lose hope, my twin.

You needn’t feel remorse for thinking me dead. In many senses I did die. The weak, senseless girl I was perished in the forest and I emerged as something other, something stronger, darker… hungrier. I’ve ensured the security of my communications, so I’ll be able to tell you my story freely. In response to your story, what can I say? We’ve traveled, both of us, you in the body, on the earth and in the flesh, and I in the astral realms where one meets strange beasts and fallen gods. It’s no small thing to say I am a little envious of the experiences you’ve had, meeting the people of the land and feeling the touch of lovers. But I do not regret my path.

For nearly two years I rode with the merchant. At night he slept either on a thin mattress in the wagon or in an inn if he could swindle enough money for drink and a whore. He afforded me a trunk with air holes and a locking lid. It did have a pillow, so I suppose it could have been worse. When I got my first blood he was overjoyed as he could save money and abuse me instead of the unfortunate girls in the inns.

I killed him shortly thereafter. I didn’t exactly mean to, but he made to touch me while the pot boiled over the fire and tipped it over on him. He was badly burned and died of infection. I took great satisfaction in watching him fester and swell and ooze. He smelled wretched before he died. I dumped his body in the woods and took the wagon to the next town where I sold everything, wagon, horse, and all for a very low price to a very lucky man. I learned from that merchant that I’m a fighter, that there is an animal in me that will do anything to survive.

From there I found work in the kitchen of a farmer. It was backbreaking labor, toiling from dark to dark with only a bit of straw near the fire for a bed at night. I was fed scraps, treated as an expendable resource. The master beat me frequently for daring to question his treatment of us servants. The mistress hated my pretty face. In truth, I hate it, too. It’s never caused me anything but trouble.

What I don’t understand is why they were so cruel. They were by no means wealthy, just tenant farmers scraping a living out of borrowed land. There were enough of us working that baron’s farms we could have killed him in the night and taken what we already owned through our toil. But that was not the lesson I was meant to learn. What I was meant to learn, I learned from the cook, a woman from Saint-Domingue. She’d been a plantation slave and escaped on a ship to Bordeaux.

“No better life. But at least I own myself.” She’d tell me about her home while we gutted chickens for supper. I gutted chickens for four long years.

She caught me staring at the sky one day, watching the crows whirl above me. She warned me about standing still. I’d get whipped if anyone saw. But I remember smiling as I told her that, in the wings of the birds, in their particular tilting and their occasional, languid flapping, I saw the ruin of our master some three days hence. She touched my face.

“Petite, you have the sight.”

In three days time the Baron stormed the farmhouse and had our master arrested for non-payment of the rents. The cook and I stole what we could and ran into the fields. We found our way to the forest and there, we found our salvation. A group of witches living together in a cave system. They took us in, they made us women. We learned the things for which I am now incarcerated. But those circumstances I’ll save for a later letter. Suffice it to say, I was never happier than all the years I spent with my coven. I’ll certainly tell you more about our activities, which were something more than knitting and brewing.

For now I must rest. My tormentor, the Father Lazare Mathis, is traveling and I am to be left alone when he is gone. He knows I will bend the wills of any of these weaker men who come near me. My letters go out by the boy who brings my food. He’s a darling orphan. I’d endeavor to be his mother if I weren’t the feral beast that I have become. The Father assumes the boy is too young and innocent to be swayed by me.

He is wrong.

But no more of that for now. I must rest.

Yours eternally,

Marie-Joseph

Sweet Sister,

Indeed you are mistaken when you imagine that I ever truly considered you dead, for there is some slender thread that connects me to you no matter how distant we may be. What happened was that I gave up on myself and so ceased to feel you actively in my heart as I do now. But I no more thought of you as dead than I would imagine my own head to be lost and I walking around headless, an absurd figure of impossibility.

Give up on myself, you say? This indeed was true when I joined - or was made to join - the army of the King. I started as a drummer boy in the company of Captain Brûle, a wretched militia detachment tasked with capturing and hanging foreigners in the realm. We roamed the land and looked for anyone who couldn’t speak good French or who simply looked wrong: the wrong color, the wrong look. Then it would be my task to roll the drums in a death tattoo as one of other of the company stretched out the neck of the vagabond on a roadside tree-limb. There was much show in it but little ceremony - it was enough to have the wretches hanging by the roadside to make the peasants feel that the King was their true master, to quell any thought of revolt in their simple breasts.

As time went on there was less and less ceremony involved, and we would string them up while we took a smoke break, relaxing on tree stumps and drinking good country wine as the man with the short straw did the heavy work of hoisting them into eternity. We joked and laughed as the poor ones dangled and danced. We were the King’s ghouls now, small imps of tyranny with no thought of what we were doing but to get from one day to the next and avoid the hangman and the sergeant’s scourge.

Then one day we caught a rogue, a strange rogue, snuffling up at the dangling corpses of an Arab family we’d hanged the day before. He seemed to be about to nibble at the toes of the youngest child, a girl of four, when he was challenged. A curious stench came off this man, who seemed large but in fact was quite short, with a skin that hung off him like an empty sack. He seemed old with lank colorless hair but in fact was very young, no more than seventeen. He seemed weak like a cripple but in fact was immensely strong. His stench was unusual, and while we were by no means roses ourselves, he smelled like something dead but more intense and - may I say like a ripe luscious fruit? - strangely alive too. Everything was wrong about him, as though his own being couldn’t reconcile his great appetite with his ability to exist. He should not have been, and yet he was.

The sergeant no sooner saw this monstrous man, and scented his insane stench, than he gave orders that he was to be run through with the bayonet. But the stranger protested in good French, said he was one of us, a soldier, and that he loved the King as well as us. We soldiers had no love for the king, but Captain Brûle could get a gold piece for every Frenchman of good standing whom he recruited into the army, so he called a halt to the summary execution and ordered that the strange-smelling man be given a white jacket and a musket. Now he was one of the King’s men.

And that was how we became comrades of common Private Tararre, the most grotesque soldier ever to take up arms, a monster indeed but in his own way blameless as a baby because there was no malice in him, only an endless hunger that never could be sated.

More soon, my sister, they are putting out torches and it’s time to send this letter with the last of my pocket change. Write me soon, sweet girl.

Your devoted brother

Joseph-Marie

My Little Bear,

Do you remember when I used to call you that? Even though you were always bigger than me, I’m smiling now to think of it. The two of us, curled up inside a log in the forest, hiding from that brute we called a father. I wanted to murder him for you. Our lives have always been hard. It’s understandable that you’d suffer such despair as to lose yourself and our connection. But you must be in a better place now, you feel just like the spirited, fighting bear I remember.

I’ll spare you the details of how I learned my craft. It was a long and often harrowing process. I have been many people, held the forms of many creatures, and I have seen lands beyond this one that should only exist in nightmares. There is one creature for which I held an affinity though, so I kept it within me, and I can feel it straining against this confinement. How long it will stay trapped within me? Within this cell? I don’t know. It’s getting difficult to control. Why do I control it? I’ve asked myself many times. I’m not certain of the answer except that there is a voice in my mind that tells me to keep it contained, let it get angrier and angrier. So this I do. Despite the agony its claws and teeth cause inside me.

I stayed with the coven in the caves for a few years. But this beast they gave me wanted to run. It wanted to taste the world, devour everything in its path, and so did I. We are very alike, this beast and I. So I left. It is not easy existing in the world as a poor, unwed woman. Rather like being a wandering heifer, ripe for branding and breeding. Can’t allow feral women to run loose after all, we might start to like it, eh? We might not take their abuse if we develop our own wild strength. They’ll see soon enough.

On the other hand, I didn’t like begging much.

I had two skills very few other women had, I could read and I could write. That I’d learned in the coven from a former nun. Thanks to this knowledge, I was able to find employment instead of entrapment. Or it seemed at first, nothing is ever as it seems. A critical mindset, not a lesson, but a way of thinking. Whatever you’re looking at, it isn’t what you see. So what is it? This is how your mind must function. How your eyes must fight deception.

I got a job writing correspondence for a nobleman. How did I manage such a feat, wandering into the city a waif with nothing on my back but rags? I did mention my pretty face, did I not? Well, I have a little more than that working in my favor. I have the wiles of the wolf. I was outside a shop, begging for alms. I’d made a sign with charcoal. I caught his eye, I let my beast speak to him on levels only the body understands. He asked me about my sign and before long I was riding to his manor house in a carriage. I was given clothes befitting my new station and I worked with his younger brother, who largely managed his estates. I was allowed in the parlor, I was allowed to sit with the ladies, although, the Comtesse did not like me, at first. On one late afternoon I heard her complain to one of her ladies that the Comte wanted to divorce on the grounds that she had not produced an heir. Having neither refining nor breeding I wasn’t aware that I shouldn’t speak, so I did. It was only a small mater of magic. I could help.

With her maids sworn to secrecy, we held the ritual in her chambers. I sacrificed a rabbit and drew a pomegranate on her belly with its blood. I bid her use a perfume of basil and petitgrain the next time her husband came to her. Within two months she was with child. While the child grew safely in her belly, I became the plaything of the Comte, and his brother. Meanwhile I stole things. I gave the some of the money to the poor in the town, but I hid much of the wealth I stole and I used it to leave shortly after I had seen the child born safely into the world. He will be quite the monster one day, if he isn’t already.

I found it simple to change my identity as I moved from place to place. Always careful not to climb socially, or to appear to want to. Always silently increasing my own wealth and sewing discord among the nobility wherever I could. I had no end goal. I was hungry and I wanted mischief. I wanted freedom and I wanted to hurt people who deserved it. I was very successful. I have money, hidden safely away for us if we ever get out of our separate Hells. I instigated scandals, I ruptured relationships, I ruined business dealings with a simple slip of the pen, I was a regular scourge of the nobility.

I was at a salon one evening. I shouldn’t have been there, it went against my own code of safety as it were, but the Baroness for whom I worked insisted. There was a man there she wanted me to meet. You see I never played the part of a cheerful young woman eager to please and be liked, no, I was… dour, dark, taciturn. I felt this persona was safer. But this woman, in her narrow-mindedness assumed that what I needed was a man. That only a husband could bring a smile to my face and laughter to my lips.

I had plenty of men.

All my smiles were wolfish and menacing.

I must end here. My tormentor, the wretched priest, has returned and is eager to punish me for having gone unpunished in his absence.

The wolf grows angrier.

But still the voice bids me, wait.

Yours always and ever,

Marie-Joseph

EDITOR’S FOREWORD

This collection of documents, amounting to an exchange of letters between imprisoned siblings, a dossier of official reports, and the memoirs (or fictions) of the Marquis de Sade, were discovered in the Archives Nationales in Paris last year and in this volume are made available to the public.

It is not the aim of the present editor to determine the nature of these documents, whether genuine personal correspondence and factual eyewitness accounts, or else fictitious entertainments, or even an attempt at perpetrating a hoax.

I will only note in passing that the following incidents, all mentioned in the text, did in fact occur and are historically attested: The Beast of Gévaudan, a creature reportedly the size of a lion, or bigger, and in the form of a wolf, sighted in the Margeride Mountains at this time; Tararre the grotesque everything-eater who was employed as a spy in the French Royal Army just prior to the revolution; the ergot-poisoning outbreak which made sufferers feel like their skin was changing into a hairy pelt; and the revolts which resulted from this psychological disturbance.

It is also well-known that the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned in the Paris Bastille until he appeared on the rooftop shouting that the prisoners were being massacred, an incident said to have inspired both the storming of the Bastille on the 14th of July 1789 and the subsequent September Massacres of royalist prisoners in 1792.

There has been no attested meeting of the Marquis de Sade and the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat, but it is known that when Marat was murdered in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday on 13th July 1793, de Sade, going by his ‘revolutionary name’ of Citoyen Louis Sade, was invited to deliver the eulogy by his section of the Jacobin Club.

Therefore this text is offered to the reader and researcher as is, with no prejudice as to its veracity or otherwise. Read it as a fanciful tale, or read it as a historical document.

As the Marquis himself would say: What you will is the whole of the law.

PART 1 – The Correspondence Between the Twins

My dearest sister,

When you were taken away from us, I lived a while alone with father but he wearied me with his eternal complaining by day and his unwanted attentions at night, and so I soon left that place never to return. Left separated from you at only ten years old, I had no inkling of what to do next - you were always the clever one with a plan while I was the one with a flame of passion inside but no sense of where to aim that fire of mine. I was, then, a lost child.

As I wandered the highways and forest paths I told myself I was seeking you, but really I was seeking something else. I don’t know how to say it clearly, but I know you’ll understand since we are of the same womb, the same blood, the same mind and soul. I was looking for something not-you, and by the reasoning that you and I are the same person, something not-me. A refuge from the burden of being a person, is the best I could express it.

Later I found what I was searching for, and I will tell you all about how that came out. It may lead to one death, or it may lead to many deaths. But there will be death at the end of it, surely. The path I’m on is hard. I don’t know, it may in the end lead to deaths that will become a new light and life for us. Perhaps a life for many. If so, it will be like the stories the priest used to tell us about Jesus and his agony on the cross, which apparently cleansed us of our sin; but I don’t see many clean people as I go about in the world. What was the point of taking away our original sin, the one we are born with without choosing, only to give us free will to sin again and again? Will the deaths we cause ever change anything? But enough of that.

I’m in prison, and I hear that you also are in the women’s prison at Delboutville, to which place I shall address this letter. It took me much bribery to locate clues of your whereabouts, and much more to secure pen, ink and paper with which to write you. I do not worry so much that this will be read by my captors, as the jailer here, a brutal troglodyte called Gérard (though I don’t know if that’s his first or last name, perhaps it’s his only name) cannot read. What I fear is that he will take my bribe, take my letter, and then throw it away unsent. I promised him another payment on receipt of your reply, so that inducement might encourage him to mail the thing.

That’s all, dear sister. I’m well of body, but unhappy of course, plagued by the melancholy, but that won’t be news to you as you sense what I sense. By the same token, I know you’re well and alive, I’ve always known about how you are, but I don’t know your circumstances. Some I’ve heard say you’re a witch, others that you’re a wolf woman and you eat babies. You and I know the truth of these accusations, so I won’t put anything on paper, and I suggest you likewise are discreet and speak only in our private way about those things to avoid incriminating yourself. They say you are to be burned in the public square after the assizes and condemnation in the spring. But I know it won’t be so, and so I send you courage.

At nights I burn like a candle - with jail fever, they say, but also with a strange need I have. To hold you, perhaps, but maybe also to be like you, to run as you do and know your knowings. That’s enough.

With wishes and a thousand kisses

Your ever-loving sibling

Joseph-Marie

My Heart,

If only you knew how hard I tried to get back to you. Father sold me to that merchant. The one with the blue wagon that had little partridges painted in gold on the sides. He was always jealous of me. The old brute. The merchant was a brute, too. My sweet Joseph the world is full of them, brutish men to whom we are but objects. That merchant kept me chained inside his cart. I was to cook for him and keep his washing done. Among other horrors, as you can no doubt imagine. Hours I spent on the road, trapped inside that dark, roving prison. Merely a morsel in its greedy belly, earning a new scar for every mile the wheels turned.

He kept me until I splashed scalding water in his eyes and broke free of him. Like you, I too wandered the forest in search of something. I had no idea what. What I found was an institution of learning, framed by birch and oak, and with teachers of many kinds, who taught me many trades. I have been so many things. I am still so many things. But always, always, I am your sister.

Of course I’ve always known you were still alive, but to have a letter placed into my hands with your name and your scent upon the paper… I cried for hours, joy at your finding me. Sorrow at all we’ve lost. All I’ve lost. I cannot write too much to you of what I’ve been through. Not until I’m sure of the security of what is within. Suffice it to say, I am no longer the innocent you once knew. I am a woman now of hard wrought talents.

They treat me so wrong here. For days and nights on end I do not sleep or eat until I am so overcome with deprivation that I chew at the plaster walls and sing tuneless melodies of madness that I’m certain do me no good in their judging eyes. They refuse me a chair and make me stand until my legs give out. I am forced to walk endlessly for hours back and forth upon the same tedious road, my guard forever changing as they tire. But I am rather lifted or dragged if I grow weary. Never allowed to rest. I can receive no rest in this castigating place. Yet I will not confess. I will not. Though death take me, I will not.

My guards come hither, I am to take more torture today. Of what manner I know not…

With all my blessings,

Your dearest,

Marie-Joseph

Sweet Sister,

I suffer with you I feel your torments and I always have. It’s the only thing that keeps me from perfect equanimity, the tranquil serenity of the warrior who has already given himself up as a dead man and now only awaits the date and time of his fate’s culmination.

Let me briefly tell you how I came to be here, like you a prisoner, like you awaiting a final condemnation. I told you how I started off on the road, knowing you were out there somewhere. Sometimes I felt your sufferings, other moments I felt your joys, but you were always there like a whisper in my innermost ear. I joined a group of travelers as they went around the country selling their trinkets and doing whatever else they could to survive. You could say they adopted me, or you might say they abducted me. Kidnap or care, what difference does it make in the end? We survive and we learn, and the circumstances of our learning are given to us by fate and the world.

It was a good enough education for me to see the ways of the undertrodden all over this land, the weavers who craft beautiful cloths on their looms while they themselves dress in patched rags, the miners who dig coals for the fires of the rich but who huddle without warmth in frosted hovels. I learned much of life and also of thievery, and Papa Moritz our clan chieftain was a man of letters and some learning. He taught me reading and the ways of speaking like the rich and educated, and he lent me his volumes of Voltaire and Diderot.

Much later, after I became a revolutionary, he would pass me his hidden volumes of the Marquis de Sade, that strange man full of passion for wanton excess. His writings haunt me still; how can such an animal be so human? How can a person of such intelligence be ruled by such base pleasures? How can such a man attract me so?

For eight years with the gypsy band I travelled the length and breadth of France, also the Austrian Netherlands, Navarre and Switzerland. I had my childish loves and got into my childish scrapes. It shames me now to say that I tried to put the whisper of you out of my head, to consider you my dear sister as lost to me or even dead. Yet I know it was I who was the lost one during those times when I denied our deep connection.

All changed in 1784. We were passing through the Gévaudan country, a land much disturbed with rumors of some strange Beast wandering the forests and mountains. There were soldiers all over the countryside then. One night as we camped in a clearing by the King’s Highway, the soldiers set upon us gypsies in a surprise attack. They moved through the camp bayonetting children and pulling up young women by the hair, intending to ravish them. Papa Moritz faced the sergeant who led those men then, and his calm and his dignity cowed them utterly. He offered the sergeant gold in exchange for being left in peace. The sergeant accepted the offer of gold but said he wanted more.

“What more?” said Papa Moritz. “A girl for our pleasure,” said the sergeant. “It gets cold and lonely and boring out in our forest camp.”

“I can’t spare you any women, my dear sergeant” said Papa Moritz. “We need them simply to continue our race, you see. It’s nothing personal, it’s a matter of survival for our people. I’m sure you understand.”

The sergeant shrugged. “What can you give me instead?”

“Why not this boy?” said Papa Moritz. He gestured towards me and gave me a look that said you are not of our blood but you are of our people -- do this thing for us.

I understood then that there was more than one way to comprehend an unspoken message and from that time I began again to hear your whisper in my head.

From this moment as well I became the King’s man -- the King’s soldier to fight and die for His Majesty as well as the King’s Catamite to be used by his rough soldiery.

Soon I will tell you of what happened in the army and out of it. For now the unlettered jailer comes, and I must send you this letter through him. Of course there is more in this message than appears at first sight, but this you understand without my even telling you.

With love

Your devoted brother,

Joseph-Marie

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Dr. Jack, November 4:

There is an epidemic of insomnia at the base. Insomnia itself is not unusual, the sun doesn’t set from October to February… newbies usually struggle for the first month. Add to that stress, overwork, homesickness, rotating shifts, and well, I’ve seen my fair share of sleepless scientists.

This is different. John Hoy’s been the facility manager for a decade, hasn’t slept in three days. Dr’s. Mako, Begam, and Mikula are going on a week now. Two research assistants, and one of the cooks, as well. Dr. Mako’s symptoms are the most severe as I think she’s been infected (?) the longest. What can this be besides a pathogen of some kind? These are scientists and professionals, not hysterical types. They don’t stamp your approval to an Antarctic mission if you’ve got bats in the belfry. The brilliant Dr. Hal Wright was denied for being “too mercurial.” Had to send an assistant. We all breathed fucking a sigh of relief…

The point is, I don’t think this is some fit of mass hysteria.

I’ll walk through Dr. Mako’s case up to now, supposed patient zero. She came to me last Wednesday, blood-shot eyes, dark circles, a slight tremor, heightened anxiety, and the curious belief that she could feel the base sinking into the ice. She hadn’t slept in two days. These are all normal symptoms for sleep deprivation. She hadn’t been able to fall asleep, but couldn’t say why. She’s a three-year veteran of the team, unlikely to be affected by the novelty of being in Antarctica. I quarantined her in the med bay and gave her some melatonin. No sleep. Upped the dosage to as much as was safe to give her, nothing. She was unable to sleep. We tried Quazepam, still no effect. It had now been seventy-two hours.

During this time, the other two doctors, Begam and Mikula had both also been admitted to the med bay. All three had been working in mud cores drawn up from the lakebed beneath the ice, another reason to suspect pathogens. Those mud cores have been quarantined and the lab cleaned, but it appears to have been too late. This pathogen spreads somehow or other, I’m still not sure how.

By day three Dr. Mako had to be restrained. She had become quite aggressive and hatched a belief that the base was sinking and the only way to stop it was to kill everyone inside. Something nonsensical about the weight of souls being too much for the ice. She’d have to set the souls free to save the base. I administered near dangerous levels of Quazepam, but to no avail. She was raving and her slight tremor had become more of a constant quaking.

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Being centuries old, it can feel at times as though the universe began with me. That the beings who infuse me with their power created me before the Earth and that, as a consequence, I am the only wise one here. This is not true. Not at all. The magnolia, for example, is millions of years wiser than I. Each flower holds an eon in its cup. In my cup, I hold but an evening.

Let’s begin.

Mental Health

They are, as one might expect for a being so ancient, poised and possessed of a powerful equanimity. At one point or another, we all feel the unsettling imbalance of depression. The world is dark, the light is dark, your mind is slow and savage. It’s a persistent anti-existence that the magnolia finds deeply troubling. It has lived for millennia, thrived despite the Earth’s many upheavals and cannot abide this state of wishing to actually not. Merely standing in its presence is enough to undark one’s outlook, however, a tea of fresh petals is most helpful. Drink daily until the brain improves.

This tea is also useful for anxiety, when one has swarms of bees in the chest, both painful and pressing. They want to burst out, the body does not want to rupture. Hot magnolia tea dissolves the bees into a nutrient rich relaxation brew. Just hum hum hum hum and drink and thrive. Drink at the first sting. Drink until those bastards die.

Can’t sleep? Sit cross-legged on your bed in the dark, cup a magnolia flower in one hand. With the other peel off an outer petal, eat it. Eat slowly, petal by petal. Think of expanding in soil. Your shell splitting, roots digging down, shoots pushing up. As you eat each petal imagine a different stage of growth. You’ll awake refreshed with a sheen of pollen on your skin.

Shapeshifting

Some caveats: shapeshifting is painful, dangerous, requires intense concentration, and can be permanent if you’re an idiot.

With that said, let’s begin. You will need a magnolia leaf and some part of the animal that you want to shift into. Hair, shed skin, or a feather is typically the easiest to collect as you don’t need to be in proximity with said animal to collect it. There’s no need to be gruesome or go overboard with slaughtering an animal… unless it’s a fish, hard to collect parts of a fish without catching them and at that point you may as well eat the thing. Set the animal detritus on your head, cover it with a magnolia leaf. Suffer for a few minutes, figure out how to function in this new form, then do whatever it is you wanted to do. When you’re ready to become human again, you’ll have some trouble. The leaf merges with you when you shift, so you can’t exactly doff it like a cap and regain your form. Instead, you’ll need to overcome the animal brain swiftly taking over your consciousness. Picture the leaf in your mind, picture it separating from your skull. This takes intense concentration. As you visualize it, the leaf will begin to separate from the animal you’ve become and come to rest again on the top of your head. Shake it off. Then wait for the agony.

Beetle Lure

Beetles have been pollinating magnolia for millions of years and the two are inextricably linked. Ergo, one can use magnolia to control beetles. Why would one want to? Beetles are quite industrious, great at getting rid of evidence, devouring your old self and brining about a new iteration (literally, by the way- they will eat you alive, then reconstruct you again on your old bones), they’re great company, and can help you contact the dead through intricate tappings.

To summon them, you’ll have to perform the magnolia dance. Fasten a magnolia flower to the top of your head, walk widdershins in a circle while moving your arms up and down in tandem. Do this at sunrise. Do it again at sunset if you wish to keep the beetles over night.

When you have the beetles, convey your intensions verbally, they’re ancient, they’ll understand. Then watch them get to work.

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There was an intruder in the forest this morning. I was drawing up this year’s garden plan, snow’s melting faster than expected so I was irritated at the interruption. Winters are getting shorter and shorter and I can’t say I like it. I need my rest. Feel like I oughtn’t harp on humans burning the planet down in every entry, but damn if they aren’t making a hell out of this paradise.

The dogs alerted me to the interloper. They could, of course, take care of such a threat themselves, but I like to know what kind of human is wandering off the path in my forest. Who would dare? Who could break the wards? Who is that monumentally stupid?

While the dogs rested, had water, and a snack, I looked for my preserved magnolia leaves. I had them pressed in a book somewhere. Going through the bookshelves I pulled out several old tomes: La Mort Aquatique, Trancendental Altercations, La Grande Dame, Nachtfresser und ihre Verwendungszwecke, Insect and Dream Manipulation, but finally found a pile of them in Fylgja Höggormi, which made no sense… regardless, there they were. From a jar in my cabinet I took a strand of fox hair. Outside, I stripped naked, put the fox hair on my head, and then the magnolia leaf over that.

If you’ve never shape shifted before, I don’t recommend it. The pain is intense, you’re going to piss yourself, and for at least two minutes afterward you’ll stumble around like an idiot while trying to figure out how to get any of your body parts to work. The wolves no doubt enjoyed watching me figure myself out. But once I did, off we went.

It took an hour of traveling deep into the slushy, melty forest before the scent hit me. The bland internal rot of fast food and carcinogenic beverage dyes, refined sugar, sweat, microplastics, and overconfidence. We were in a small clearing, at the center of which stood a large, mossy boulder. The sharp tang of pine and the cloying, buttery scent of peeling birch bark mingled with something else, too. Something darker. The goading scent of hot, bloody saliva.

Whispers filled the air, “I’m here on Witch Mountain, where the deadly prehensile-tailed tree slugs are said to live. No one has ever been this far off the path here before, but I’ve been studying and I know what I’m doing. I’ve been following a huge slime trail for about twenty minutes now, and it heads up this tree right in front of me. Now, as long as I don’t get under the tree, I should be safe.”

I let out a yelp, the wolves split around the boulder, one to the right and one to the left. I scrambled up and over. Huddled on the other side was a man in his late forties, camera in hand. I barked at him, he startled and looked up, stumbling backwards as he did, but recovering quickly and aiming the camera up at me.

“Got surprised by a cute little fox. Hi there fella.”

Might not want to be demeaning when your enemy has the high ground, nonetheless, I stood still. Geri and Freki both took noisy steps toward the man. He swung the camera quickly right then left.

“Oh shit. Do wolves and foxes hunt together? I might be in trouble here,” he laughed nervously. “Ok, ok, no, I have bear spray.” He swung his backpack around and set the camera down, aimed at himself digging through his bag. About to die and still worried about creating content, humans never fail to astound…

“Probably should have packed this better. Oh wait! I got it.” He held up an aerosol can and waggled it at the camera. He muttered something about the range of the spray, then took to reading the back of the can. While he read I jumped noiselessly down from the boulder and circled him, coming around behind. I wanted to know how he got through my wards, he had to have a talisman or an amulet, something. I nosed through his bag, but found nothing. Just as he looked up from the can and into the camera I put my paws on his shoulders and my muzzle to his ear and licked, deep in there. It’s only gross when you’re in human form. In any kind of canid form it’s a very special moment with a taste particular to each person. Inner ear flavors kind of burst in your mouth and swim like shrapnel-fish through your brain. So exquisite.

He didn’t like it.

“Fuck! Shit!” He spun and hurled the can of bear spray at me. I dodged. Geri and Freki advanced, but I had already seen what I was after, on a leather cord around his neck hung a shard of black tourmaline with a zigzagging line carved around its middle. The symbol of a broken boundary. No doubt with some other witch’s magic behind it. Irritating, but we are what we are, and loyal when we need money isn’t always it.

He kept crab walking backwards until he bumped up against a very solid Geri, who opened wide and took the man’s head in his mouth. He was as gentle as he possibly could be, but the message was easy to receive. I, a fox and much smaller than a wolf raised from a pup on demon milk, climbed up the man’s torso and rooted around in his shirt for a good grasp of the tourmaline, then severed the leather with my teeth. It isn’t often that I have such sharp teeth. Or that I’m so close to a vulnerable man’s jugular. I licked his neck, licked deeper into the sweat and salt and oils, the bitter taste of fear. He whimpered. I bit down into hard neck muscles, feeling his jugular roll out from under my teeth. So elusive. Hot blood ran down my throat. A rare treat.

But I wasn’t trying to kill him. I leapt off him and barked at the boys. Freki took hold of one arm and Jeri took hold of the other.

The man blubbered and moaned. Nothing comprehensible. They dragged him up under the tree he’d been so interested in and we all stood around him to ensure he didn’t run. We do not call them prehensile-tailed slugs, rather dull. We call them gastrosnaps. Within a few moments there was a rustling in the tree above, a few fist-sized globs of mucous dropped with undignified splats into the leaf litter. I gekkered in anticipation, I couldn’t help it. Foxes are terribly excitable.

The man looked up into the leafless tree, his eyes wide, searching. Gastrosnaps can be tricky to spot, even with no leaf cover. They have excellent camouflage and can mimic branches. More mucous slopped down from the tree, they were getting excited. One of them broke cover and moved, the man screamed and lurched away from the tree trunk. Like slimy yo-yos, the gastrosnaps unfurled, bulbous heads charging for their prey. Five of them, with enormous, hook-like teeth, bit into the man at various points along his body. He writhed and screamed, but the slugs held him fast as they hauled him up into the tree.

They really are amazing to watch, quite muscular, and they work together so well. Using their own bodies, they lashed him to one of the bigger branches high up in the tree. He screamed and pleaded for help, but witches help those who help themselves. He could have helped himself out by not sneaking into my woods. I’d love to say I felt horrible for him as each slug then latched onto him with their hooked teeth, but the most I felt was hungry. The slugs, curiously, feed more like spiders, having syringe like tongues that they insert into their prey, digesting and sucking out the goop. Once the tongues go in, the screaming usually stops, the digestive juices must have some kind of anesthetic. I’d love to get a sample, but I also love not being eaten alive.

Once he was dead and the gastrosnaps were quietly slurping, we headed back for the cabin.

Unfortunately, I had to become human again.

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Magnolias are some of the most ancient flowering plants on the planet, with fossils dating as old as ninety-five million years. Scientists have used computer models to trace flower evolution back to the first flowers, and they think these flowers would have had a structure similar to magnolia flowers.

Here’s a little plant timeline. Life on Earth began in the water, and plants are no different, with photosynthetic algae giving rise to mosses and other bryophytes that would have lived close to water, but not in the water. To colonize the land, plants needed a vascular system that could carry water from sources underground to stems, branches, and leaves. The first vascular plants were called gymnosperms, these are today’s conifers and cycads, like pine trees and sego palms (not actually palm trees) respectively. Gymnosperms don’t have flowers or fruit, instead they have cones. Each cone is made up of scales that protect a seed. When the seeds are mature, the cone will open so the seeds can be dispersed.

Magnolia fruit looks very much like a gymnosperm’s cone when it first develops from the flower. As it matures and dries, the cone-like fruit will open at each scale and a seed pops out. These fruits are classified as aggregate fruits, like blackberries, raspberries, or strawberries. None of these are actual berries, by the way, a berry must have several seeds inside a fleshy fruit, like blueberries, tomatoes, and oranges. If you picture a strawberry, those little seeds are on the outside of the fruit, ergo, an aggregate fruit.

So it’s the flower that differentiates the magnolia from the early vascular plants, conifers and cycads. These early flowers would have been pollinated by beetles, because bees hadn’t evolved yet. This is probably why magnolia flowers tend to be cup or bowl shaped and have thick tepals.

Ok, quick aside, tepals are more evidence that the magnolia was one of the first flowering plants. In flowers that are evolutionarily younger, there are structures known as sepals underneath the flower’s petals. While the petals are white or brightly colored, sepals tend to be green. When it isn’t possible to differentiate between the sepals and the petals, then both structures are called tepals.

So back to the beetles. Magnolia flowers have some interesting behavior to aid in pollination. They will open during the day and attract beetles with a strong scent. As night falls, the flower closes, trapping any beetles that are resting there. Magnolia flowers are hermaphroditic, meaning the flowers have both male and female sex organs. Flowers close up at night and as the tepals raise, the female sex organs open to accept any pollen that the beetles may have carried in from a different flower. As morning approaches and the plant senses that it’s getting lighter, the female parts will close and the male parts open to deposit pollen on the beetle. Then the flowers open and release the little prisoner, who will hopefully fly to another flower and pollinate it.

Magnolias are native to both East and Southeast Asia and North and Central America and have a long history of both medicinal and culinary use. As far back as at least two-thousand years ago, the Chinese were using magnolia to treat anxiety, depression, insomnia, asthma, seizures, allergies, and chest colds. These uses are also supported in Japan, and on the opposite side of the world in Mexico and by several indigenous peoples. Magnolia’s neuroprotective effects have been studied by scientists and seem to validate these uses, but more studies are needed to determine the best use for this plant.

Magnolia buds and tepals are said to have a spicy, sweet flavor reminiscent of ginger and cardamom and they are used in a wide variety of ways. They can be baked, fried, added to salads, pickled, used to flavor sugars, made into cordials… pretty much anything you can think of. You can also chew on the bark to help relive the symptoms of withdrawal from things like cigarettes and sugar.

Having such a long history, it’s no surprise that magnolia are found in folklore and myth all over the world. In Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics by Richard Folkard Jr. (1884), the author, perhaps conflating the plant’s use as a sleeping aid, says that the scent is so strong that one flower placed in the bedroom at night is enough to kill a person. It isn’t, but I love to include these silly bits of folklore, especially when I can find other folklore that directly contradicts it. As in Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs which states that one should put a magnolia flower on or near the bed to encourage your partner’s faithfulness. I suppose it’s difficult to step out on a lover when you’re dead?

In one Japanese folktale I found, a fox tricks a man into becoming a priest by placing a large magnolia leaf over its head, thereby turning itself into a woman. It then used duckweed to form a baby. The man had been watching this and threw a rock at the duckweed baby, killing it. When the (fox)woman broke down in hysterics, the man scoffed, telling her that he knew she was a fox. But she continued sobbing, mourning her baby with such intensity, that the man started to doubt that what he’d done was right. The (fox)woman, in culmination of an epic gaslighting session, convinced him to become a priest to atone for his crime. The woman took him to a temple where another priest shaved his head as part of his initiation. The shaving was intensely painful, brining the man to his senses. The priest disappeared, the temple disappeared, and the woman was gone. The man was bald, however, because the fox had chewed off his hair. I guess… don’t throw rocks at babies, even if they’re made of duckweed and their mother has a magnolia leaf on her head.

Also in Japan, certain miko, or Shinto shrine maidens, called Zatokaka, would use beads made of magnolia wood to heal sick babies.

They also used the bowl of water and dead leaf, plus a rosary called mokorenji -magnolia. If a child was born and was sick, it was placed under the protection of a Zatokaka. A rosary bead from the miko’s rosary was attached to the child’s clothing and became the protector of the child.

-From a 1962 issue of the Journal Folklore Studies, written by William P. Fairchild

This certainly invokes the long-held belief in the healing power of the magnolia.

In an Indian folksong, a woman laments that her husband has brought a co-wife into the home. She says she could understand him doing this if she were ugly or barren or had a sharp tongue. Or:

If I had crippled arms, you could have brought a co-wife,

I have arms like the branches of magnolia, why have you brought her?

From a 1985 issue of the Journal Asian Folklore Studies by Manju Bahtnagar

Here the magnolia is meant to evoke grace and beauty. And they certainly are as beautiful, and useful, as they are ancient. Co-wives (or husbands, I don’t know your life) I feel like should be a joint decision, though…

And that’s the magnolia, ancient, lovely, and useful.

Hey there! Here’s how plant horror in the coven works:

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone.

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, horror piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - New episodes are free! The back catalogue is going to remain paywalled largely because un-paywalling it is time consuming and I am busy doing horrifying things.

Third week of the month - The Grim Grimoire (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). The text version of this will be free, but a digital zine version will go out to paid subscribers. The back catalogue will remain paywalled for the reason stated above.

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, monster trucks, extinct species, serial killers, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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Kira stood at her window and watched the police helicopter circle in the night sky, its red and blue lights flashing. The message blasting from its loudspeaker was muffled behind the duct-tape framed window, but it didn’t matter, she’d heard it before. The message played on her phone, as well as on the TV, and the radio, every hour, on the hour:

This is Vector Control, due to abnormal Vector levels, all citizens are ordered to stay indoors. Citizens caught outside will be arrested and sent to quarantine. Stay indoors. Vector Control repeats, stay indoors. All violators will be placed in quarantine.

Kira let the curtain drop from her clenched fist. One hundred and sixty-three days of seeing nothing but the inside of her own apartment. One hundred and sixty-tree days of feeling nothing but the same carpet under her feet, the same coffee table, sofa, and bedsheets under her fingertips. One hundred and sixty-three days of hearing Vector Control say twenty-four times a day that they were shit at their jobs and there was going to be a day one hundred and sixty-four. It was supposed to have been a few days. That’s what they’d been told at the beginning of this nightmare. Vector Control would contain the threat and normal life would resume.

But that had been one hundred and sixty-three days ago.

Kira’s fingers twitched.

She pulled the curtain back again, lately she’d had a perverse urge to watch them. In the daytime they swirled high in the sky in massive clouds, thick and black. Like an oil slick in the blue ocean, they shouldn’t be there. Not in those numbers. At night they massed and swirled at street level, drawn to the light and snaking in black swaths through neighborhoods and around homes, seeking entry at doors and windows. Kira waited, holding the curtain in a white-knuckled grip, until she heard the whine, a high-pitched, tinny drone. A billion wings searching for a bloodmeal. Not for themselves, for their broods. Kira put her hand against the glass and felt it vibrate with the whine as the ribbon of black came undulating across her view. This close, she could see the individuals that made up the ribbon as they brushed up against the glass. Their syringe-like mouths, their black and white banded legs… their eggs were ravenous. They’d sucked every living thing dry for miles. And they were spreading across the country. Cities in their path were scrambling for a deterrent, a control, a barrier, anything to keep them out.

One hundred and ninety-seven days

I am God and these my creatures squirm inside the yellow void. Infinite they wriggle, I see messages in their movements. Protect. Kill. Protect the squirm. Kill the human. Kill the human. Protect the squirm. I am God and my squirm pleases me. My squirm seed shall multiply and cover the Earth. I shall give them the land. I shall bless them with bloodmeals and sweet nectar for all of their days. And I will protect all of my squirm, from this day forth.

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