11. sorry, we're dead: a supernatural noir.
On the outskirts of town, not far from the river, was a hill. At its summit was a large house that glittered like diamond during the day and gleamed like oil at night. This was because the whole of it was glass and steel. The curtains were sometimes drawn in the rooms, but there were nights like this night when every one of them was drawn back into the corners, so that those inside could look out from every angle and see the whole of the city spread out around them. On some nights, the house shone like a beacon, like a lighthouse on a stormy cliff overlooking the wild ocean, with hundreds upon hundreds of candles lit within it. Strange, hypnotic drumbeats and chanting would echo down the empty hill. Shadows cast across the flickering wicks danced and undulated to the primal rhythm.
No one noticed this. The hill was beyond the warehouses, too far from any fashionable or useful area of town to be much frequented. If anyone did look up on these nights and glimpse the lights or hear the steady beat, they would forget as soon as they turned away. To remember, you would have to be at the center of the chanting, standing in the circles of chalk and blood, staring into the embers and pools of melted wax and blank, black eyes of the drummers. To remember, you had to be a part of the magic. You had to let the spirits see through your eyes and taste with your tongue.
On such a night, the gods tried on new bodies the way rich men slipped into tailored suits. Ate and drank of the offerings. Shared their wisdom with the faithful disciples. And whispered of power and glory, of everything in the palm of a hand, in voices too bewitching to deny.
And a man in a blue suit and tophat sat on a white throne, the blood of a chicken and the dust of chalk on his fingertips and a ruby glinting in his pearly smile. He looked over his congregation with delight before turning to the dark-haired woman sitting beside him, the light of excitement and giddy desire shining in her bright eyes. He in his blue suit, she in her red dress; his skin a dusky brown, hers opalescent in its paleness; male and female. They were a study in contrasts-and wasn’t that what all magic came down to? Opposites and mirrors. Giving and getting. The balance and the line in between. There were those with power… And the people who brought them that power.
Down below, at the foot of the hill, a man in black stood beside a tree and looked up at the house. As he took a long draw from his hand-rolled cigarette, the ember at its tip flared a hellish red. There was a golden crown on his head dotted with roses. Blood dripped from the petals, a deep and luxurious crimson. As each droplet fell to the dusty ground at his feet, there was a faint hiss and wisp of smoke-and then not a trace that anything had fallen. The white paint on his cheeks and forehead shone in the moonlight; or was that paint at all? Was it actually bone, old bone that had never yellowed with age but instead had bleached and brightened over the centuries?
The crowned man in black smiled grimly at the beat of the drums that aped the beat of a heart, took a last long puff, and ground the end of his cigarette beneath the toe of his boot. Slid his thin hands into his pockets, turned, and started back into the city.
He would remember the house. And what those inside intended to do.