I ran to the curb, dumbstruck as I stared after the BMW’s rapidly departing taillights. They shrank to barely discernible pinpricks in the night, then turned a corner and were gone.
Gone.
I collapsed once more to the pavement, head in hands, and I wept. I wept until there was nothing left in me but an iron ball of unrelenting emptiness. I wept until I thought I would die. But to my chagrin, I was still very much alive. Alive in a world without my great love. A life unworthy of the word.
After a while, I suppose I regained an outward semblance of composure, but I remained all turmoil inside; my empty chest wanted to scream, my body wanted to shake, my soul wanted to evaporate to nothingness. But I knew I couldn’t just lie on the curb in front of my house forever. My parents would find me eventually, and I couldn’t let them see. They would never understand.
I pulled myself shakily to my feet with the help of our mailbox. It was tackily decorated with swirls of sea-green paint, ‘Slate’ spelled out in scavenged seashells. The sight of it filled me with a spasm of disgust that briefly overwhelmed the crushing hollowness in my bones and somehow gave me the strength to push away.
I turned to look at the house. The front windows were dark, but that didn’t mean my parents weren’t home yet. They could be in the basement, looking at slides of dissected sharks, or in Mom’s darkroom developing their latest monochrome photos of beach detritus. If they were there, they would surely hear me come in when the seashell wind chime next to the front door tinkled, as it did at every faint movement within two blocks. I could not bear to deal with their petty reproaches, not now.
Perhaps never again.
Leaving my backpack in the driveway, I pointed myself in an arbitrary direction and started to run. When I could run no further, I jogged. When I could jog no further, I walked with shuffling, indecisive steps. There wasn’t a lot of town to get lost in, but I managed to lose myself helplessly in most of it.
I wandered like a child through the dark streets for hours, with no direction or purpose. Why should I walk with purpose? My existence was purposeless. If everything I’d learned over the past few days was true, the world could still possibly end by Saturday. Black chaos was poised to wash over the universe and submerge everything I knew. Riley denied it, but Neil thought it could be possible. So much for that prophecy…
But possible or not, I could hardly bring myself to care. For me, the universe had already ended. The black had already consumed me. Riley, my beloved, my Great One, deemed me unworthy to bask in his light. And of course he had! How had I been so stupid to believe it ever could have ended up being otherwise? How had I dared to consider myself, my ordinary plain boring vanilla-frozen-yogurt self, worthy of his attention? Let alone his affection?
Stupid, stupid girl, I said to myself with each catatonic footfall. Stupid, stupid girl.
I passed endless dark storefronts, each one catching my pale, slight, insignificant reflection. The sight of it disgusted me. I stood for a long time in front of Henrietta’s, staring at the exact point in space where Riley and I had first spoken to each other. I imagined all the things we would never do, the joys we would never share. I wandered so long and so carelessly that I didn’t notice when the buildings became sparse, the sidewalks and lawns giving way to sandy patches of ammophila grass.
In my state of shattered delirium, I had wandered all the way back to the beach.
Where was the cove Riley had taken me to last night? I was overwhelmed by the sudden desire to find it again, but I didn’t know which direction to go. I burned to return to the place where I’d gone down with him, beneath the waves. Where he’d held me, and lent me his strength, and allowed me to conquer my greatest fear. I remembered, with the vividness of concrete reality, the hardness of him, the warmth of his body in the cool water, the movement of his muscles against mine.
My knees wanted to buckle, but I denied them their wish. Why should they be satisfied, if I couldn’t be? I did not know where the cove was, but the ocean before me now was the same one that had filled it. I began to walk toward the water.
I would never see Riley’s true face. We would never share in each other’s true, innermost secrets. I would never feel his arms around me again.
Oh god… I couldn’t go on, knowing that he was out there, living his insupposable life, walking in spaces between spaces, experiencing things the likes of which no mortal had ever experienced. Without me.
I reached the tideline, my toes inches from the ocean’s invading touch. My hand reached instinctively for the necklace at my throat. I hadn’t removed it since Riley clasped it around my neck that dreamlike day in New York. It seemed forever ago. I undid it, the silver chain pooling into my hand. My eyes dully examined the little heart-shaped pendant. ‘Please return to Tiffany & Co,’ it read hopefully.
With a rending sob, I threw the necklace into the surf, as far as my sick rage would send it. The black waters swallowed the heart, and it was no more.
No… more…
Salty mist scoured my face, my eyes. I hardly noticed. It was all so clear now. I’d known my whole life, somehow, that it would all end beneath the waves. I’d dreamed of it since before I could remember. All I had to do was close my eyes, take a deep breath, and then one step, and then another, and just keep walking…
And it made sense. Ultimately, wasn’t death everyone’s greatest fear? I had feared the sea since childhood because I knew in my bones that my death would be a wet one. But now… I feared the water—feared death—less than I feared living out an empty, hollow, meaningless existence separated from my one great love.
The Atlantic spread vast and violent before me; beneath it was the place where I had been closest to Riley. The place where I could be closest to the memory of him. It was all that was left for me.
“You can do this,” I told myself. I gazed into the churning black water, shot through with silver ripples of reflected moon rays, and I stifled a rising tide of revulsion. The ocean seemed to gaze back at me with dark intent.
“You can do this.”
But I never got the opportunity to find out if I really could, for at that moment, something was pulled roughly over my head.
A burlap sack, reeking of old potatoes, jerked tight against my face. I tried to scream, but was stifled by something wet and sour with chemicals pressed over my mouth and nose. As I began to descend into chemically-induced delirium, I felt hands all over me, lifting me, carrying me, dropping me crudely into the seat of some vehicle. Several male voices spoke rapidly in a language which was decidedly not English. Just before consciousness too abandoned me, with my last desperate ounce of discernment, I recognized one of the voices.
The hole where my heart used to be, which moments ago I’d thought incapable of growing any wider, gouged out new depths.
It was Vik.
And then, blackness.
~*~*~*~
I slowly became aware of a foggy form of consciousness. My head was pounding, my whole body ached, and though I was standing upright, I couldn’t move. The bag over my head stank of dirt, potatoes, my own stale breath and whatever had been used to knock me out. The sounds of purposeful activity surrounded me: rapid footsteps, a jumble of voices, brief snatches of indecipherable words. Once or twice I heard the dull scraping of a heavy object pushed across rough floor. Somewhere, a stereo was blaring uptempo flamenco music, as though setting the pace of the unknowable labors performed around me.
As the clouds lifted from my mind, I recognized the cold, heavy weight of chains all over me. I felt firmly affixed to some kind of vertical metal apparatus, my hands locked behind my back and a hunk of metal pressed directly between my shoulder blades, under my upper arms. The position was very unnatural, and very painful.
A brief sweet memory fluttered over me: lying in a gently rocking boat, my eyes softly covered and my hands bound with luxuriant silk. The recollection brought to mind a pair of impossibly green eyes, but they were quickly replaced by a pair of receding red taillights. A low moan escaped my lips.
All the sounds of activity abruptly ceased. I felt many pairs of hostile eyes upon me. The stereo clicked off, and I heard the sharp, deliberate tap tap tap of approaching stilettos. And then, she spoke.
“You’re awake.” It was Ms. Epistola, her voice moist as red velvet cake. The sound of her made me shiver with revulsion.
It was obvious I’d been kidnapped by her apocalypse cult. But why? What could she want with me? She’d seduced Vik to her side, but surely they couldn’t think I would ever join them.
A memory stirred in my mind: Neil listing the items required for a summoning ritual, including a human sacrifice… Oh god, they didn’t want me to join them. But Neil said they could find a hobo off the street! Why abduct me?
She’s already ruined my oldest friend, I thought, and I recalled how she’d antagonized me in class yesterday… Did she have some personal vendetta against me? Well, the feeling was mutual. So we finally understood each other.
I wanted to reply to her with some cutting bon mot, some spontaneous display of wit to wound her to the bone. Alas, my well of wit was shallow and my tongue felt swollen and lethargic. All that came out was another low moan. My mouth was so dry…
“It was terribly difficult,” Epistola replied, “fastening a thing as flimsy as you to that hand-truck. No curves for the chains to cling to.” She laughed maniacally, and her collection of cultists quickly joined in. It was an old familiar sensation; everyone laughing at defenseless Andi Slate.
I worked my mouth desperately, trying to generate enough moisture to speak. Finally, I was able to muster two croaking syllables: “You bitch.”
Another burst of histrionic laughter. Then tap tap tap as she stepped right up to me, took my head in her hands and tilted my face upward. She tore the sack harshly away, snatching some of my hair with it. I bit back a yelp.
Epistola’s face hovered before me, her deeply-shaded eyes peering into mine, her red-painted lips forming a grotesque mockery of a friendly smile. I saw nothing in her gaze that reminded me of a human being, and I itched to look away. Unfortunately, her grip on my face was too severe to let me turn my head, and I could only glance downward.
The sight of her body was not a terrific improvement over her eyes. She was no longer wearing the clothes I’d seen on the screen. Instead, she was dressed up like an absurd video game trollop, all red leather straps and chrome buckles that revealed vast expanses of bare skin. The tops of her thigh-high red boots were shaped like flames, and they tapered down to preposterously tall needle-like heels.
“My dear irksome girl,” she purred. “What did you call me? No, don’t cringe away. I am not insulted. It’s as apt a description of me as any. Such is the inevitable fate of one so unjustly scorned.” She stroked my hair gently with her vile hands, and an expression of… concern played across her face. Almost sincere, but it did not reach her eyes. “It would seem, judging from the situation my minions rescued you from earlier this evening, that you too have experienced scorn?” Her vindictive smile returned. “Such a pity you won’t live to suffer from it as I have, you little meddler.”
She slapped me hard across the face. Had I not been secured to the hand-truck, I would have toppled to the ground, such was the force of the scorn behind her blow. Tears of shock welled up in my eyes, but I refused to give her the satisfaction of crying out. I wanted to meet her gaze, to stare back levelly in bold defiance. But as I trembled within from the pain, I couldn’t bring myself to do it, and so I looked away, trying to focus on my surroundings instead.
I recognized the large dark space of the theatre I’d seen on Crystal’s screen. An odd smell of ancient dust mixed with stale popcorn filled the air. Thick, black tapers atop tall, ornate candelabra stood at deliberate intervals around me and provided dim, flickering illumination. At the boundaries of my peripheral vision I could make out the heavy red curtains, fluttering softly. As my eyes finished growing accustomed to the candlelight, I counted twelve tall hooded figures in long, dark robes. They arranged themselves around Epistola in a semicircle, their faces hidden beneath heavy hoods.
“It’s fortunate you awoke when you did, Miss Slate.” She stepped back a few paces, presenting me with a full view of her comic book fantasy outfit. She struck a little runway model pose. “I’ve only just donned my ceremonial garb. How do you like it?”
“You…” I struggled again to use my arid tongue, “…look like a streetwalker.” Despite my vulnerable position, saying it to her face felt good. The pleasure was fleeting.
She stuck out one hip and crossed her arms, sassily. “Oh, you hopeless little nobody. Glass houses much?” She looked me up and down with derision.
“What…?” With great discomfort, I tilted my head on my stiff neck to look down my front. “Oh, come on…”
I couldn’t see much of what I was ‘wearing,’ but what I could make out was even less substantial than the jumble of straps wrapped around Epistola. It was matte black, accentuating the stark whiteness of my very bare legs and midsection. I quaked internally at the thought of what the back of the garment must look like. The mess of chains crisscrossing me certainly didn’t do my body any favors either.
“Yes, I share your misgivings, Miss Slate,” Epistola droned. “Such a garment is manufactured to be worn by those of post-pubescence. It is our misfortune that we must make do with you. You too have been placed in ceremonial garb. As have we all.”
She gestured grandly to the shadowy figures around her. As one, they stepped a pace closer. They were covered from the chin down, making Epistola’s comparison somewhat specious, but their faces had become visible. I was still fuzzy from getting knocked out, but I could see they were all young and male. Each of them wore a blank, dumb expression beneath the heavy hood. Each set of eyes was locked unwaveringly upon her.
And then, among them, I saw Vik. The memory of the horrendous projection I’d watched in Neil’s shop slammed into me like getting hit by a truck. With a sinking feeling, it also occurred to me that someone had to have changed my clothes. Seen me naked. For a moment I didn’t know whether to puke or be comforted by the thought that it at least might have been Vik.
Epistola followed my gaze, and licked her lips. “Oh, yes. My precious Vivek.” She sashayed her way over and leaned up against him sultrily. Throwing back his hood, she caressed his face, her vibrantly mocking eyes never leaving mine. Meanwhile, the dull eyes of the robed men never left her. Vik’s eyes never left her.
“Vivek is my favorite, you know. My spicy little samosa. We’ve taught each other so much. He is a man now.” She winked at me before turning to kiss him sloppily, expansively. Her fingers curled through his hair, moved over his chest. But then, his fingers were in her hair, moving hungrily over her body. I could hear them panting, pawing, squelching. Though I’d seen a similar performance on the screen, it was considerably more painful in person.
“Vik, no!” I screamed. The tears I’d been restraining finally escaped to pour down my face. “This isn’t you, it isn’t, it isn’t you!”
“No?” said Vik, and I was so surprised that I gasped. He was glaring at me with great intensity, momentarily seeming to forget the half-dressed bag of compromised morals hanging off him. He disentangled himself from her, and strode forward until we were face to face. He was all clenched muscle and coiled tension, the fury in his expression twisting him into something unrecognizable. “Is it so hard to believe that after years of watching you with eyes for no other, receiving in return nothing but… but…”
He sputtered for a moment, unable to find the word.
“Scorn?” Epistola suggested behind him.
“Yes!” It was almost a shriek. “Scorn! Nothing but years and years of scorn! Is it so surprising that I would finally turn elsewhere? Somewhere where it isn’t always ‘Do me a favor, Vik!’ Or ‘Take notes for me in class, Vik, while I go do whatever!’ Or ‘Why don’t you have a girlfriend, Vik, you’re such a nice guy!’ Or ‘Maybe girls would like you, Vik, if you played a macho sport instead of yoga!’ ” He turned from me, and began to pace in a tight circle like a caged Bengal tiger. He seemed to address the surrounding shadows as much as me.
“Or ‘We’re just so close, Vik, I love you like a brother!’ A brother! Or how about ‘You’re such a nice guy, Vik, but oh that Riley is so dreamy and mysterious, Vik!’ ‘I’m completely and utterly and deliberately blind to your feelings, Vik!’ Well, Andi, being a nice guy never got me anywhere—”
He stomped back up to me, putting his face right in mine. For a moment, I thought he was going to hit me. Instead, he hissed, low and cold:
“So no more Mr. Nice Guy.”
The effect was worse than if he’d hit me. For a long moment he just stared at me, breathing as though he’d fled from a bear, as if he were ready to tear down some great structure, brick by brick. Looking at him then, from my position of utter helplessness, it was impossible not to realize how strong Vik’s taut and muscular body must be. For the first time in my life, he appeared to me as something other than just my childhood best friend, my confidante, my surefire source for complete-yet-concise notes from skipped classes. Somehow along the way… Vik had become a man. And I had missed it. I couldn’t let him get swallowed up by Epistola.
“Vik, please!” I gasped. “You have to see through this! She has you under some kind of spell! Look around you!”
I gestured as best I could with my head, indicating the darkness, the robes, the candles, Epistola’s general quality of absurd overcompensation.
“You’ve been tricked, or brainwashed, or hypnotized, or something! You would never say any of these things to me in your right mind! Please, you have to remember!” I stared at him, trying to make him feel all my own raging emotions, trying to break through the wall that had risen between us, the poison that had turned my Vik against me.
He remained silent, unblinking… but, did I detect a softening around his eyes, a twitching at the corner of his mouth?
“Enough of this adolescent prattle!” interrupted Epistola. Whatever real or imagined clarity had hinted in Vik’s face immediately disappeared. He once again took on the slack expression of total passivity. He pulled his hood back up over his hair and rejoined the formation of zombies around their floozy queen.
“The time rapidly approaches, my minions of doom!” she proclaimed theatrically, holding up her ostentatiously naked wrist to her face. “I do believe it’s time we revealed the whole plot to our dowdy leading lady, so that she might act her role to the very best of her ability.” Another condescending wink in my direction. “Minions! Let there be light!”
The space was suddenly flooded with illumination, a painful shock to my darkness-accustomed eyes. I squeezed them shut, and in my exhausted fear, I couldn’t contain a scream. This precipitated another wave of disdainful laughter from my captors.
I slowly opened my eyes and went through another dizzy period of acclimation. Crystal’s projection had not done justice to the size of the theatre; there were several levels of floor seats and three balconies towering above. I imagined the place could fit four thousand people, and all the gaping empty chairs before me were especially unnerving.
Hanging a hundred feet above the orchestra pit was a giant crystal chandelier that held a thousand blazing electric candles.
“You’re admiring our chandelier, are you, dear?” Epistola susurrated. “My little joke. I’ve seen you reading that melodramatic tripe you so love between classes. Now, it’s true that Eldritch magic is more effective in the gloaming, but I couldn’t resist mocking you, just a little. There shall be no lonely hero coming to spirit you offstage during your performance tonight.”
Of course there won’t be, I thought miserably. I was but a meager asteroid adrift in an uncaring universe, now utterly beneath the notice of one such as Riley. And even if he could notice whatever Epistola had planned for me tonight, he would not care. He had no reason to waste any more attention on a low harlot like her. He had resisted her summoning, she was defeated, that was that.
He was done with all of us. He was done with me. I slumped in defeat as much as my restraints allowed.
“Yes. Hang that plain-faced head low.” Epistola had taken her place at the wooden podium. The Necronomicon and Eldritch Grimoire sat open upon the polished surface before her. Next to them was a very ornate, very sharp looking knife. It glistened as if forged from some metal not found on Earth.
The tall, shrouded, coffin-like structure I’d seen on Crystal’s screen was gone. In its place stood a low, long shape. The incongruous tarp covering it made it seem as though it were added to the scenery in a hurry. I did not like the look of it.
Epistola pointed a long red-nailed finger at me. “Bring that over here.”
There was motion behind me, and then I was tipped back suddenly. The jerky movement made me feel nauseous, but the tilt halted at fifteen degrees or so, and then I was rolled forward. One of the cultists wheeled my hand-truck to the podium, and dropped me roughly back upright. I gagged aloud as the chains across my midsection squeezed the wind out of me. Once again, I was but inches from the vile woman. The proximity made my skin gallop.
“That was an ugly sound, darling,” she sneered. “But only the first of many that will be escaping that shapeless little body of yours tonight. If we hit our marks right.”
So my suspicions were true. “You’re going to torture me?” I tried not to whimper.
“Without a doubt. But there is so much more to it than that! There is to be utilitarian and recreational torture. Do you see this?”
She tapped the low covered shape with the toe of her ridiculous boot, producing a hollow tink. She looked at me for a moment, then rapped sharply on my forehead with her knuckles.
“Hello? Teacher has asked a question, darling. Do you see this?”
“Ow! Yes! I see it!”
“Good, very very good. Well, it’s been brought to my attention that young Miss Slate suffers a certain irrational phobia.”
Oh god. My face must have reflected my sudden surge of terror, because her loathsome grin widened.
“I see what I’ve been told is true,” she preened. “Well, let me tell you, my dear, I was overjoyed to learn about it. For you see, our performance tonight happens to feature, as its centerpiece—”
She whipped the tarp away.
“—an anti-baptism. Death by drowning, dear.”
She’d revealed an ancient bathtub that looked like it had been scavenged from some dilapidated dressing room in the theatre’s bowels. It was filled with brackish water and covered in the same arcane runes that danced over the floor and walls.
I now had my answer: I would not have been able to walk into the ocean. My desire to live had never been so strong, if only to survive long enough to not die like that. Submerged. Suffocated by that hideous element, its icy tendrils working their way into all my inner hiding places. I began to shake. I began to cry again. Hope followed in the wake of love and likewise utterly abandoned me.
“Yes, please do cry, little girl. It is delicious. It nourishes me. But allow me to sprinkle a bit of seasoning, just for extra flavor,” Epistola crowed. “I’ll bet that little swimwear model of yours and his obnoxious old uncle thought that I’d been beaten, no? That I’d been deprived of my reprisal on existence for these years of unbearable scorn, when Dead Cthulhu refused my call?”
She grabbed the Necronomicon from the podium and thrust it violently in my face.
“Well,” she sneered, “apparently they haven’t read this moldy old thing as deeply as I. For you see, you sad scrawny child, I have discovered a loophole. Discovered it, of course, with assistance from my lovely put-upon Vivek.” She glanced past me to where Vik stood, still drone-like with the other cultists. A slinky smirk sashayed across her face. “Such an obedient pupil. Of course, unless you’re even more brainless than I thought, you must have figured out by now that it was Vivek who unlocked the key to my avengement. You see, after you so callously stomped upon his tender spicy heart, he found comfort in me. Such comfort. And oh, my dear, he’s told me everything. It’s thanks to him that I’ve now unmasked the deeply disappointing secret identity of the Priest All-High. You would not believe my shock, my appall, to deduce from errant flecks of pillow talk, that Dead Cthulhu was once a student on my own class roster!” Yet another of her repugnant conspiratorial winks. “Loose lips, string-bean.”
Stupid, stupid girl! I screamed inside. Of course, so much now made sense. I’d told Vik about New York and the cultists, about Neil’s shop, about hiding the Eldritch Grimoire. The precious secrets had poured from my mouth like water from a tap. I’d acted as a spy against myself, and against Riley. I was so stupid! It was no wonder one such as Riley would maroon the likes of me on the island of my empty life, never to gently rock in his boat again. I truly deserved whatever bodily torture awaited me.
“Thanks to you, you twit of a slip of a girl, I now know that I don’t need Dead Cthulhu at all. And I need not wait for the hour of Alignment! I have discovered that Dead Cthulhu is not the true conduit to Azathoth. Dead Cthulhu is merely the vessel. Dead Cthulhu’s heart, roughly speaking—you must understand that biology becomes complicated when discussing beings who straddle multiple dimensions—his heart is the conduit.”
She placed the book back on the podium, and stroked my hair again, making my scalp crawl. “And you, my silly little lovesick simpleton… You possess the heart of Dead Cthulhu.”
I understood so little of what she was saying, I had been so far out of my depth for so many days now. But that last thing made so much sense that I was afraid I’d misheard. Did she mean that I possessed the heart of the thing that was also Riley sometimes? Did that mean I possessed Riley’s heart? Did…
Did Riley somehow love me, after all?
With an almost physical jolt, a spark of hope returned to me. As it radiated from my reborn heart to the rest of my body, I worked to contain it before it could reach my face and tip my hand to Epistola.
But as I looked away to hide my expression, my gaze fell once more upon the tub. Immediately, my bubble of hope collapsed back into the nothingness of despair. I was deluding myself.
Stupid, stupid girl. Riley was gone. If ever I’d possessed his heart, that time was also gone. If Riley’s heart really was the key to Epistola getting what she wanted, she would be denied her desire as surely as I had been denied mine. It was the coldest of comforts.
“You’re wrong,” I sniffled. “I don’t have his heart. He doesn’t want me.” My voice splintered into a thousand shards. “I’m useless to him. Which I guess means I’m useless to you, too.”
Epistola looked thoughtful for a moment.
“No… no. Useless generally, yes, but not to me. Dead Cthulhu did not resist my call, did not turn his back on ultimate fulfillment of his destiny, to simply cast you aside immediately after. Even constructed as you are for single-use, like a Kleenex.” She shook her head in firm denial. “No, you are the holder of The Heart. You will act as the conduit. You will die, thrashing, screaming, submerged. And I, Scarlett Louise Epistola, will bring cosmic negation raining righteously down upon this world and all others!” Her cackling rose to the rafters. “It will be a night to remember.”
I barely heard her as the tub gaped at me, seemed to stretch to unimaginable size, the murky water within it rippling threateningly.
“And to think,” Epistola was still talking, “all these years I’ve spent worshipping the Priest All-High! Only to discover that he is nothing more than a hormonal child, so captivated by the first homely young strumpet he meets who’s not a squirming mass of eyeballs, that he abandons his sacred duty. A pity. But! Let us not dwell.”
She slowly lifted the knife from the table, caressing it gently, moving her long fingers dancingly from the tip to the base of the blade. The look upon her face was one of hunger, and there was a droplet of moisture at the corner of her crimson mouth. With great relish, she pricked the inside of one of her wrists, drawing a bead of blood to the surface. She pressed the wrist to my forehead. I gagged and tried to escape my skin, but to no avail.
“You are now anointed, you pallid little addlepate. The Heart of Cthulhu.”
“Orr’e Cthulhu!” the dark cultists echoed around her.
Epistola turned to address the rows upon rows of empty seats. She lifted her arms in a Y-shape, a look of animal ecstasy upon her face. “Oh, at last! The humiliation I’ve endured. The trials I’ve overcome. The scorn which I have carried like a white-hot coal in the pit of my being for all these iniquitous years! All shall be revenged!”
Her minions accompanied her proclamation with a wild alien cry.
“Let the doom of all commence!”