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Hours and countless courses later, I sit between Baza and Sam and listen to the pleasantries of a group of angels with a military stance, dish out to Baza. Something about the latest plan of advancement and the decision he forced through at the last council.
I fight sleepiness and debate whether it would be regarded as appropriate to leave this party in my honour. By now, the singer has stopped singing and a trio of angel-musicians have taken to the stage, playing haunting melodies on their string instruments.
A very large and mean looking angel with two dark grey wings enters the banquet hall and marches to our table. At the sight of him, the politicking warriors bow down to Baza and disperse into the crowd, sheepishly glancing over their shoulders at the newcomer.
The newcomer wasn’t invited to the party but, in all fairness, he doesn’t look like he belongs in here.
His massive frame is covered in a thick and rigid black leather tunic of a butcher, laced on both sides. I bet this tunic can stop an arrow or maybe even a bullet. His bare massive arms, thicker than my waist, are laced with old and new scars. Thick leather wristbands are strapped to both of his arms and I spy handles of weapons tucked into one.
Two wide belts criss-cross his torso, another circles at his waist, holding up his weapons. He looks like a walking armoury. Like your average Terminator assassin. The arsenal of his weapons is so vast and varied that I can only recognise a few: knives, small swords with wide blades and a whip. All his weapons look menacing and the ‘real deal’. Black leather trousers cover his legs, while a military grade, black, laced high boots encase his feet.
His face carries a mean scowl. A weird-looking necklace bounces on his chest with every step. When he leans over to Baza to whisper something into his ear, I almost pass out at the realisation that his necklace is made of human teeth of different shapes and sizes.
Baza listens intently to the newcomer and gives a short nod in approval and the mean butcher leaves the room.
Baza rises from his seat, raising his arms, calling for silence. Swiftly all conversations die around the room. Hundreds of angelic faces are now watching him, ready to take in every word he’ll deliver.
“Dear friends, our quest for justice begins today”, he announces to the crowd. “Today we take the first step toward righteousness. Our new sister has suffered injustice and maltreatment, just like we all have. Higher power did not protect her, did not stand up for her, did not intervene, allowing the scarring of an innocent soul. She was powerless against her adversaries then. But now, she has us!” He calls to the guests, his voice steadily rising.
“We will fight for her. We will deliver vengeance for her. We will help her rectify it all, deliver everyone’s dues by their deeds, because we will not stand idly watching as one of us suffers. We will stand up for our own!”
He turns to me. “We are your family now and we will deliver vengeance for you”.
With every word he utters, drowsiness evaporates and panic sets in. My face is on fire, while the rest of my body is cold, as if suspended in an ice tank. One by one faces turn to me.
I sit numb, frozen in place, unable to scrape the energy to get up and leave, afraid of what is to come.
In the ringing silence, the entrance doors swing open to let in a group of tall and muscly male angels, sealed in black leather.
The earlier ‘butcher’ is leading the way and is clearly in charge. He is the tallest among them, a head and shoulders above the others. The three angels behind him carry mean scowls on their faces, while scanning the crowd of partygoers with disdain. All four wear the similar black leather tunics, worn out to a different degree, the weapon belts crossing their bodies. They all look like battle weathered warriors.
Two bloodied prisoners are staggering between them, shackled and chained, with warriors on both sides, yanking their neck chains now and again. The prisoners are not angels, or at least they don’t have wings behind their backs.
I’m mortified as I watch their treatment. The abuse, torture and humiliation they’ve endured, paraded like a safari trophy. I draw the air in my lungs, leaning slightly to Sam, about to speak up for them and find a way to stop this gruesome show, when a fat chavvy chain on the neck of one of the prisoners catches the light on its unsoiled side.
The chain has a round pendant and vaguely reminds me of something. The faint memory tugs at me, but I cannot seem to pin it down. And then he moves again, takes a few more steps. Then another.
The world is tilting, spinning. Or maybe it’s me?
I feel afloat, disconnected, violently spinning in a vacuum.
Silence. I can’t hear anything around me. I can’t see anything but him. The world has darkened and fuzzed around him. He fills my vision, my head, and I can even smell his aftershave in my nose after all these years.
Dread squeezes my stomach with an iron hand and I’m about to vomit.
I repeatedly swallow, as hard as I can, forcing the vomit back down my throat, burning it with acid on the way down. I grip the napkin on my lap until my hand hurts. I look for a way out of this room but there’s only one way out, and now it’s blocked by something I pushed so hard to hide, to bury in the deepest grave.
The group reaches our table.
My sluggish brain livens up, and in an urgent petrified whisper begs me to run, but my frozen body is unable to obey. I’m about to push my stiff muscles to respond and to bolt, when Baza turns and addresses me.
“Ariel, we promised to stand strong with you and we promised to avenge anyone who wronged you. Now we keep our promise.” His voice rings in the silent room. “This is your chance to deliver vengeance and put things right. We all know that nothing heals old wounds better than revenge, so let the healing begin!” He yells the last five words to the crowd.
The guests roar in approval.
‘Butcher’ keeps his gaze on me as he comes closer. He takes the enormous hunting knife off his belt and unclips the coiled whip. He stops in front of me, only the dining table separates us. His thugs and the prisoners are behind him, replacing the Ella Fitzgerald of the angelic world.
I guess this is the new entertainment now.
His hands reach out to me across the table, offering me the whip in one hand and the knife in the other. His cold gaze meets mine as he waits for me to take either weapon, to make a decision. I don’t understand why the Butcher would offer this to me so, baffled, I just stand there, blinking at him.
My shocked gaze travels to the prisoners. They’ve been beaten long and hard; their faces are a swollen black and purple mess with dried blood crusts in places, their shirts soaked with blood, dried, then soaked again. One prisoner’s arm is swinging at a weird angle, clearly broken. The stench of urine, vomit and dried blood surrounds them.
I gulp, shaking my head at Butcher.
And then he raises his head. His gaze meets mine and my world tilts once more. A familiar arrogant, sly half smile stretches his broken lips, revealing newly missing teeth. Blood starts to trickle from the corner of his mouth.
“Ah, isn’t it our sweet, innocent Ariel”, he lispers with his coarse voice through broken teeth. “I have to say, I am surprised to see you alive. Thought you would be dead by now, overdosed more likely. Shame that our arrangement didn’t last as long as I would’ve wished. My associates used to love your innocence”.
He drops his voice to a loud conspiratory whisper for everyone to hear, “And I know deep down you liked it too”.
A hand touches my arm. I jump in my seat, startled. It’s Sam. He’s looking at me with sad and worried eyes. Muscles are tense on his jaw and neck. He’s not saying a word, although I can hear his realisation and pity loud and clear.
Rage floods me. I’m blinded by her. I don’t feel anything but her pulsating energy. She’s back, and she’s as strong as ever.
I shake off Sam’s hand and snatch the whip out of Butcher’s hand. An approving smirk stretches his lips.
It’s a long way around the tables. Hundreds of eyes are following me. Pitiful, gloating, lustful and blood thirsty. Rage is screaming inside me, blazing with the heat of a wild fire, blinding, hot, scorching, death-wielding.
I stop in front of him. Watching.
“Looking good”, he chuckles, eyeing me. “Inviting some more?”
With a hurt bellow, I throw the whip in. Whip uncoils, biting me hard on the side but barely touching him.
He chuckles, spitting blood on the floor. “Slug as ever”.
I clench my teeth, grinding them with a screeching noise. Tears pool in my eyes. I raise my arm up with the whip again, this time above my shoulder.
The tail flickers in front of my eyes, flying ahead, biting, slicing across his face, through the skin and muscle, leaving behind a bloody track. Blood pools and runs down his face from the split wound.
I raise my arm again, above my shoulder, sending another flick of the whip towards him, slicing across the face and chest. His bloodied shirt rips, exposing his chest. An ugly blood line sprints from his chest up to his face, gruesomely dividing his face in two. He wails. My tears spill over, eroding my vision, blinding me.
I raise my hand again. The whip flies. Again and again. The rusty smell of blood fills my nose.
I don’t count, don’t feel the time, suspended in my own memory. I can smell his aftershave again, the same as years ago. My foggy drugged, up mind crying like a child locked in a wardrobe. The aftershaves of his buddies after him. The chaffing of the metal cuffs on my wrists and the screech of metal on metal when the cuffs slid along the headboard.
I hear that deafening rhythmic squeak of the metal coils of a cheap and dirty mattress underneath me. I feel the heavy weight of a sweaty and smelly body on top of me. The basement’s smell of mould and mildew with the stench of yesterday’s curry, and the spidery cracks on the low dirty grey basement’s ceiling in front of me, with flakes of old, peeling paint hanging off it.
And lucid moments of terror when my mind didn’t have the blessed numbness of the fog to hide in. And the beating. Regular, repeated daily, with cold calculation to break me, to push me into absolute submission, but sometimes just vicious, punishing and sadistic.
I see nothing but a bloodied pile of meat, his deformed face and body, ripped apart by the whip, now on the floor, coiled like a snake, crying for mercy. Pleading, like I was once. Blood pools underneath him and the puddle slowly gets wider, filled by the fruitful rain of my rage.
But I keep going, desperate to appease the ravaging animal inside me, who refuses to be silenced who’s raging, demanding more wrath.
The sobering barrage of applause and cheers cut through me, roll over me like a frigid North Sea wave, waking me up. The raging fire inside me is flushed down, exposing the charred ruins of what’s left of me.
Suddenly I feel infinitely tired and alone. Disorientated, numb, exposed.
I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to see anybody.
I open my hand. The whip slides out of my hand as a strangled dead snake. It drops to the floor with a soft swoosh.
In an exhausted haze, I walk to the door, stumble unsteady around his limp body, around the guards. Away from him, his grotesque tortured body, from my public exposure, from the assault of the animal in me. Away from everyone, without looking back. My legs are taking me out, living a life of their own.