Cereza’s eyes fluttered open at 5:54 a.m. Her first instinct was to slither out of bed, quietly slip into her clothes and vanish before Jeanne woke up and had the chance to burden her with yet another guilt trip.
Then she lifted her head from the pillow, pushed her hair from her eyes, and looked around. This was not Jeanne’s apartment. Jeanne was not lying across from her on the other side of the bed.
“Ugh,” she grumbled. She rolled onto her back, and, as she stared at the ceiling, the events of last night came rushing back to her, each memory giving her a reason to feel just a little bit more miserable.
Jeanne had refused her advances. For someone who took such immense pride in being The Sexiest Woman In the World, or The Most Beautiful Woman of the Decade, or The Most Desirable Human In The Multiverse, or The Most Irresistible Goddess In Existence, or any of the hundreds of other meaningless accolades that shallow, tacky magazines loved to award her with, this was a particularly bitter rejection.
Jeanne had told Cereza that she loved her. Cereza had already known, of course. Cereza knew of Jeanne’s feelings since that moment two years ago when she freed her Umbra Sister from the will of her father. The trouble was, now that the sentiment had been expressed in conversation, Cereza knew that her pesky conscience would find it easier to make her feel guilty every time she took advantage of Jeanne’s feelings to sate her own bodily desires. Bloody conscience…
Jeanne had also told her that their little arrangement was over. It remained to be seen whether Jeanne could continue to resist Cereza’s charms, but for the time being, it seemed as if their friendship-with-benefits was at an end.
Cereza gave a disgruntled snort. I’ve only been awake for two minutes, but if the rest of the day is going to be this depressing, perhaps I shouldn’t bother getting out of bed.
Cereza lay on the mattress, and allowed her senses to soak up the world around her. She listened to the growling of engines and the blaring of horns on the streets below. She watched the shadows glide across the room as the sun rose into the sky and tried to peek through her curtains.
She glanced at the calendar on the dresser, and, after a brief calculation, she realized that she had now been teetotal for exactly three weeks. She was still not used to waking up with a clear head. If only she had a hangover, she could simply roll over and sleep for another six or so hours…
Cereza pushed herself out of bed, and headed to the bathroom.
()()()()()()()
Cereza wiped the haze of steam from the surface of the mirror, and stared at the figure within the reflection. Her eyes were dark, and stern, and the severity of her expression was accentuated by the black vines of hair falling about her face and clinging to her skin. She had yet to apply her usual makeup, and her skin was sallow and clammy, giving the effect that her face seemed almost skull-like.
Cereza could look quite scary, sometimes, when she wanted to.
She gazed into the mirror. “I don’t like ultimatums,” she said.
()()()()()()()()()
Cereza dressed and went to the kitchen. She was halfway through her cereal when the pangs struck her, and she rolled her eyes and groaned. So tiresome, so predictable.
Every morning, for twenty years, Cereza had guzzled a beer with her breakfast. It was one of the most difficult habits she had ever had to break.
()()()()()()()()()
While they were together, Jeanne had been the fashion fanatic in the relationship. She spent hours with her nose buried in copies of Elle, Vogue, L’Officiel, Journal du Textile, Oui – what’s French for Pretentious Prigs?
One would, at first, assume that Cereza had a similar interest in fashion. It was not an unreasonable conclusion to jump to; Cereza gave a lot of thought to her appearance, and she often wore very elaborate outfits. However, the difference between Jeanne and Cereza was that, while Jeanne strove to always be at the cutting-edge of style, and to project an image of herself as a sophisticated, confident, intelligent woman, Cereza chose her outfits with only one objective in mind: to provoke people.
Some people wore costumes made of fur. Not only did Cereza wear clothes that had been fashioned from the butchered carcasses of animals, but if you asked them, the outfits would come to life and tell you exactly how they had been slaughtered. On one occasion, Cereza wore a suit; it would have been uncharacteristically conservative of her, only for the fact that the suit was composed entirely of nude photographs of herself.
Cereza’s fashion philosophies also extended to her approach to interior design. Jeanne’s apartment was chic and trendy, designed so that visitors would be in no doubt at all that their host was a stylish, classy individual. When people entered Cereza’s apartment, she wanted them to be OFFENDED and AFRAID.
The areas in the apartment were divided by artificial rivers built into the floor. In order to reach the kitchen, the bathroom, the dining area, and so on one had to cross little bridges to enter the various different sections. Jeanne probably would have felt that it was somewhat tacky décor; however, if one knelt at the banks of these mock streams and peered into the water, at the bottom they would see a churning mass of mermaids and fishpeople embroiled in a decadent orgy beneath the waves.
In a corner of the apartment, there was a sculpture of a deer being torn apart by a pack of ferocious dogs.
“In Greek myth, Actaeon was turned into a deer after he glimpsed the goddess Artemis while she was bathing,” Cereza would explain to her visitors. “He was devoured alive by his own hunting dogs. He got what he deserved, if you ask me. Now that I mention it, if anyone were to see me nude…“
And here Cereza’s voice would begin to drip with poison, and she would glare threateningly at her guest. “If anyone happened to see me nude, I think I would give them the same treatment. I would turn them into a beast, and tear them apart.”
The trouble, of course, was that Cereza had filled the walls with examples of some of the more ‘artistic’ photography she had done. When she told them the story of Actaeon, afterwards her guests would usually stumble around the apartment with their hands over their eyes. Unless Cereza’s guests feared for their lives, she felt she was failing in her duties as a hostess.
Cereza walked across the apartment, and stood before a large bronze fertility idol that was resting on a shelf. The statue gripped his massive phallus in his hands and held it upwards into the air, an enraptured grin on his grotesque face. His member was disconcertingly huge, as large as the rest of his body; however, he was hiding a secret.
Cereza reached forward, and detached the phallus from the god. Underneath, there was another bronze penis, smaller and thinner than the one she had just removed. Cereza took off this member as well, revealing an even less impressive appendage.
Cereza had found this fertility idol in a market in Montevideo. When she first saw it, she had been unable to stop laughing for five full minutes. She still thought it was funny.
Cereza removed another false member, and thus exposed the true shortcomings of the fertility god. When the final false limb was removed, a mechanism was triggered, and, off to the right, a section of the wall juddered slightly, and slid away, revealing a secret passage.
()()()()()()()()()
Cereza followed a winding set of steps to the cellars.
When someone entered Bayonetta’s basement, the first reaction was usually to think that they had stepped into a bondage dungeon. The place was filled with hellish torture machines. There were cells adjoining the main area, closed off with metal bars. The place was surrounded by walls of seven feet of pure concrete, ensuring that not a single, solitary sound could ever escape. There were chains everywhere.
Cereza had her kinky side, obviously; however, this place was not constructed with any sexual fantasies in mind.
As a witch, Cereza and Jeanne were required to kill angels every single day. If they failed to live up to this obligation, they would be dragged to hell. Now, both Cereza and Jeanne enjoyed the good life, and their enjoyment of the good life would be severely impaired if it was necessary for them to hunt angels literally every single day. What if Jeanne wanted to attend a fashion show in Milan, or Cereza wanted to make an appearance at a film premiere?
Thus it was that both Jeanne and Cereza had created their own dungeons, in which they could store large numbers of angels, which they could then sacrifice when needed. Whenever their collection of prisoners fell to a low number, they simply went out, searched for a large regiment of Paradiso’s troops, kicked the tar out of them, and then imprisoned the survivors in their secret prisons.
There were twenty-six angels in Cereza’s dungeon that morning. They were slumped in their cells in various postures of despair and helplessness, until Cereza appeared in the entranceway, and they stirred into motion.
Unsurprisingly, Cereza was wearing a dominatrix outfit, a PVC nightmare the mere sight of which, by now, reduced her victims to quivering masses of Pavlovian weeping and trembling. Her reasoning was that, if these poor creatures were going to die, the last thing that they lay their eyes on should be utterly sumptious to look at. She affected a sexy pose, one of the literally thousands of provocative stances that she seemed to have catalogued in her head. She surveyed her prisoners, a smirk on her face.
“Good morning, boys.”
()()()()()()()()()()
“Harlot!” screamed the angel, a Gracious who answered to the name of Adventis. He spoke in thickly-accented Enochian, but Cereza could understand him well enough. He was currently chained by his claws and feet to a horrifying device which, once properly primed by his tormenter, would pull him apart, limb-by-limb. “Vile fornicatress! Know that the agonies you may inflict upon me will not compare to the excruciating tortures of Inferno that await all witches! Loathsome, disease-ridden, deceitful, corrupting whore of demons!”
And if that sounded bad in English, just imagine how it came across in his native Enochian…
Cereza, naturally, was ignoring him. Truth was, she was not as enthusiastic this morning as she usually was. Her mind was on Jeanne, and even her angelic friends could not distract her.
“I just know that if I go back to her she’ll think of it as some sort of victory,” said Cereza. “A victory over me. She’ll think that she was proven to be right about…something.”
Cereza pulled a lever, and Adventis roared in displeasure.
“Depraved sorceress! Your blood runs thick with every venereal infection that humankind has ever known!”
“I mean, just what exactly is wrong with our current arrangement? Why can’t we keep things the way they are? The status quo is damned good, from my point of view! We have a good shag whenever we want. She always starts crying afterwards, and I give her a good hug, even though I don’t have to. And then we have the rest of the day to ourselves. I thought that Jeanne would be happy to see less of me. Heaven knows, she never seemed to appreciate my company when we were officially together. Always nagging. ‘Cereza, you’re such a slut. Cereza, you’re such a drunkard.’ Never in those words, of course…”
Cereza snapped her fingers, and ravenous, flesh-eating rats started pouring from a compartment and rushing towards Adventis. The mouths of the rats were filled with venomous spiders, which spun razor sharp webs which were used as ninja ropes by tiny microscopic Preying Mantises…
“Detestable prostitute! You shall be condemned to an eternity of service in the brothels of hell, and your patrons shall be sinners and traitors and liars and thieves and devils and your legs shall open for the pleasure of the contaminated members of every heretic and apostate that Jubileus, glory be on Her name, casts from Her Sacred Domain!”
“…always going on and on about how I didn’t care about her. When did Jeanne ever show me that she cared? Hmmm? Oh, of course, she chased after me, paid my bail, checked me into rehab. But she only did those things so that she could lord it over me. She just took every opportunity to remind me how much better she is…”
With her left foot, Cereza started operating a pump on the ground, and Adventis yelped in terror as his stomach began to expand.
“When you perish, you shall join the ranks of your Sisters, the accursed Umbra Order of Witches, all wicked, all degenerate, all unclean, all blasphemers, all richly deserving of the wrath that was visited upon them on that glorious day, five centuries ago! You shall join them, slattern! You shall suffer as they did, as they do now!”
“Would it have hurt her to tell me once, just once, that she thought that I was beautiful? Did it never occur to her to tell me that she admired my work, what I had accomplished? That she…” Cereza voice broke, and she indeed seemed astonished at the momentary loss of control. She gathered herself: “…that she was proud of me?”
Cereza performed a magical gesture, and outside, dark clouds began to gather in the sky above the apartment building. A low rumble echoed across the city, and arcs of lightning flashed across the sky. Oh, by the way, did we mention that on the roof of the building was a lightning rod, which was connected to a bundle of copper cables which snaked down through the walls, into the cellars, leading all the way to Adventis’ divine nipples?
“A wonder indeed that an impure mongrel such as you could be the issue of such an innocent being as a Lumen Sage. You are an abortion, do you understand? An anomalous aberration in Jubileus’ otherwise perfectly-functioning universe! Who could love a wretch such as you?”
“Couldn’t she just swallow her pride, now and again? Does she really think so little of me? Was it really such a disappointment that her girlfriend was damaged goods? Is she so full of herself that she thought she deserved better than me?”
Cereza wound up an enchanted watch, and Adventis was trapped in a temporal anomaly in which he was forced to listen to O Fortuna continuously for four billion years. At first he was totally pumped, but…
“It is the bitterest tragedy that so many humans adore you so! If only they could see how sinful and vile you truly are! All those young men that admire you, all those foolish women that are inspired by you, all being led merrily to Inferno by their false idol! And to Inferno they will go! To flames and eternal misery they will follow you!”
Cereza seemed to have reached a verdict of some kind. “Well good riddance to her!” she said, and when she next spoke, she was performing her impersonation of Jeanne. “‘Oh, I love you, Cereza!’ Too little, too late, Jeanne! She can find another girlfriend! She can find someone that deserves her, someone that matches up to her perfect standards! I’m pissed off with her ultimatums! First she makes me go to that shrink – that, that quack – and now she thinks she can dictate my love life? No more! I’m going to go over to her place tonight, and I’m going to make it clear to her that we’re finished. Terminally.”
Adventis bellowed angrily: “A pity! It seemed proper that you be bound together! It seemed as if you deserved her! She seems to my ears to be, just as with you, a deceitful, cowardly, wicked slattern, the bitch offspring of temptresses and perverts!”
A car screeched to a halt.
A jukebox spluttered and died.
An audience gasped and watched in horrified silence.
Somehow, the dungeon beneath Cereza’s apartment seemed to get darker.
Up to this moment, Cereza had been lost in her own little world, only paying fractured heed to the treatment of her prisoner. Suddenly, the angel realized that he had her attention. All of her attention.
“What did you just say?” asked Cereza. The high-pitched affectation was gone. The self-awareness was gone. All the fakery and artifice that Cereza had honed over years spent in nightclubs and on catwalks had vanished into thin air.
“This witch! This Jeanne! She is a whore, just as you are! You are worthy of one another! I wish you could stay together! I wish you could be trapped together forever! I wish you could cause each other unhappiness for all eternity!”
“Jeanne,” stated Cereza, “is my friend.”
“A friend of yours must be monstrous indeed! Such a curse your friendship surely is! Though I have not laid eyes upon this ‘Jeanne’, this doxy, I know that she must certainly be as debased and unchaste as you! While you both were living in sin, while you were committing sodomy together in violation of Jubileus’ law, she was laying in many mens’ beds, as you no doubt were, also. She is not your friend, no more than you were hers, she was deceiving and cheating you all along, as you no doubt were cheating and deceiving her, and your mutual deception was most deserved!”
“Jeanne is my friend,” repeated Cereza. Her breathing had quickened, and was especially noticeable given her current rigid posture. “What’s more: when she was a child, Jeanne was the only friend of another child, a child who had no one else in the entire universe.”
Adventis shook with scoffing laughter. “When you and Jeanne were children, you were already wicked! Two wicked girls, that deserved to be unhappy! Two wicked girls, that deserved all the suffering that they endured! Two wicked girls, that should have suffered much, much more…”
Cereza’s outfit began to unravel. Strands of black hair, tens of thousands, began to bristle and beat about like angry snakes. The other angels in the chamber knew instinctively what was soon to come, and retreated into the shadows of their cells.
Adventis, to give him his due, was courageous. “Your Jeanne is a witch!” he bellowed. “You are a witch! You should be together for eternity! You should despise each other for eternity!”
Cereza advanced, Adventis helpless before her. She spoke: “If I die, I go to Inferno, and Jeanne will come to rescue me.”
Her outfit came entirely undone, and a massive black shape began to accumulate in the gloom behind her.
“If Jeanne dies,” said Cereza, “She goes to Inferno, and I will come to rescue her.”
Adventis watched in silence as a mountain of shadows and darkness rose above him.
Cereza spoke once more.
“Who’s going to rescue you?”
Gomorrah cast open his great jaws, and the cellars flooded with the din of his roar.
()()()()()()()()()
Cereza’s hair reshaped itself around her form, fashioning itself into a uncharacteristically demure business suit. She cast her gaze around the chamber. The angels were emerging from the shadows, and wordlessly watching her
She matched their gaze for a few moments. “Thank you for letting me bounce my thoughts off you, boys,” she said, at last. “I think I’ve come to a decision.”
She spun on her heels, and headed for the exit. As she was leaving, she called over her shoulder.
“See you tomorrow morning.”