“Do you have anything to say for yourself before I exact your punishment in full witness of the coven?”
Melinda blubbered like a baby, undignified with lines of snot running from her nose to her mouth, her entire body shaking. Her eyes blurred with tears, making it hard to see her sisters in the coven, ten in all. She had betrayed them, had stolen a holy vial of dragon’s blood for use in her own spells, and now she would pay for it.
By the firelight, Josie stepped into view, her eyes gleaming maniacal and her rictus of a grin stretched wide. She passed so close that Melinda smelled the garlic on her breath, then took her place behind the High Priestess. Melinda suppressed a gag at the sight of a green bit of something between the wizened witch’s two front teeth. The High Priestess turned and nodded to Josie, who produced a large carving knife and waved it mere inches from Melinda’s nose. The flames flickered in the reflection of its smooth blade.
With a nod of approval from the High Priestess, Josie turned toward the others and said, “I ask you to come up here and make your mark upon the beast that has tried to break our coven.”
A low murmur arose from the group.
“Courage, my sisters,” Josie said, and in a move so swift it was over before Melinda registered the pain, she swiped the knife’s edge across Melinda’s cheek. A hot sting lanced across Melinda’s flesh and she fought back a cry.
Josie held out the sheath, the blade glistening with Melinda’s blood.
The first to step forward was a woman in a gray cloak, her pale face decorated with blood. Her hand shook a little as she accepted the knife, and she clamped her other hand over her wrist to hold it steady. Squaring her shoulders, she leapt forward quick as a lynx and pried one of Melinda’s eyeballs from its socket. A pop! and a gush of blood ran freely, warm and thick down Melinda’s face. Through her agony, Melinda watched with her one good eye as her coven-mate palmed her eyeball, stabbed it with the tip of the knife, and slurped it into her mouth like an oyster. The sister’s eyes rolled back in her head as her body shook with spasms, the quivers running up and down her limbs, her lips stained with blood and dribbling vitreous fluid from the eyeball.
The woman raised her hands above her head, the knife gleaming and dripping blood. “I feel like I could lift a car off of a person.” With an emboldened sneer, she faced Melinda. “Are you prepared to atone for your offenses before your coven mother?”
“Yes, sister.” Melinda turned and bowed to the High Priestess. The ancient witch kissed her, and when she drew away, a smear of Melinda’s blood had spread like warpaint on her face. Melinda dared not reach up to wipe the blood away, for it was considered a blessing that one as exalted as the High Priestess would be so adorned.
The woman in gray turned to the next in line, a young girl. “It is your turn, my lady.” She held out the knife, hilt first.
Grasping the knife, the girl stared apologetically at Melinda, knelt, and sawed through her big toe. Melinda hissed in anguish as a geyser of blood instantly spouted and whirlpooled around her foot. The world swam, and she doubled down and fought the urge to faint, somehow miraculously succeeding in remaining upright. Over the next hour, an ear, her nose, her lips, and her breasts were cut away in the same fashion. The floor, awash in blood, looked like the Red Sea. Many times, too many to count, Melinda believed she was close to death, but the members of the coven cauterized and treated her wounds, for—she would learn—they had something extra in store for her.
***
The next night, the entire coven showed up in black, the highest color of honor of their God, Satan. Melinda was laid face down on a black marble altar outfitted with gutters to drain her blood and catch it in chalices for future ceremonies. Her hands and ankles were bound to the altar, and her head was held still by a strap. Josie motioned for someone to turn on the radio station, and a familiar Christmas carol came on the air. As the music of “Frosty the Snowman” filled the room, Melinda tried to concentrate on the words. Her eyes darted among the members of the coven, and when a flash of light shimmered in her vision, to her horror, she saw they all wielded knives.At Josie’s signal, the coven descended upon Melinda, and her back bloomed into a torment of slices and cuts and stabs.
Melinda’s voice rose from deep in her body, and from her throat burst a wail of agony. Through her cries, she pleaded, “W–what are you doing to me?”
“Why, we’re making a human Ouija board, my dear,” the High Priestess croaked. “There’s nothing more precious or equal than a board derived from living flesh.” As if jolted by an invisible bolt of electricity, the women ceased flaying Melinda and held their breath. The air was stifling and the only sound was the slight rustling of the gray robes and a shuffling of feet. Some watched with bloodlust and hunger in their eyes, and others looked green, as if they wanted to run far, far away.
“You will get used to this as time goes on, initiates,” the High Priestess said, reassuring the newer sisters among them. “It will become second nature to you.”
By this time, the carving was done, and the High Priestess called for a towel to be used to rub down Melinda’s back. Melinda howled in immense pain and fainted.
Later, unsure of how much time had passed, she awoke to a pulling sensation and the snipping of…what was that? Scissors? And a deep stinging.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, I’ll show you, my dear,” the High Priestess said. “Your suffering has made you so beautiful and worthy in the eyes of Satan.” She motioned to Josie, who pressed a button and a piece of rock swiveled on the ceiling, revealing a full-length body mirror. Melinda still lay on her belly, so Josie reached out and turned her head to an unnatural angle to give Melinda a clearer view of her reflection. She gasped. A rectangle of skin had been carved away, about eight inches by four inches, down to the muscle. She could see the shiny red, pink, and white marbled meat of her back, all the sinews connecting her shoulder blades together. Her entire back was a lake of lava. The pain was otherworldly.
“What did you do with my skin?”
“Oh yes, dear,” said the High Priestess. “In your shock, it’s no surprise that you don’t remember. Why, I’m curing it to use as my special Ouija board, my dear,” the witch said, running her tongue over her ancient, shriveled lips. “It has special powers because you were an acolyte and born during a full moon in the month of May. You are powerful. You have no idea how powerful you are.”
At the High Priestess’s command, Josie grasped Melinda’s head and turned her to face the other direction, where she saw the skin that used to be on her back mounted on a special stretching machine and carved in the symbols of a Ouija board. It smelled a bit sweet and ripe. A few maggots squirmed around it and a fly landed on it and then flew off. Melinda swallowed hard, then unable to hold her stomach, vomited. Josie jumped back, the throw-up squelching under her feet, but the High Priestess didn’t flinch.
“Tonight, will be the ceremony for the board,” she said. “The initiation. We will use it for the first time. And it will be glorious. Finally, we shall be able to contact the demons we wish to summon to walk the earth with us. Thanks to you, my dear one. You may go to bed and rest.”
Feeling her restraints loosened, Melinda was lifted up by the many hands of her sisters—the same hands that had once prayed with her and mutilated her, and which now carried her off to her quarters. Obeying the High Priestess, she gingerly slid into bed, careful to avoid irritating the gaping wound on her back. She would lie on her stomach, but yesterday, the coven had removed both her breasts in ceremony. Though those lacerations were cauterized and bound, after lying face down on the altar, she could not bear the thought of even the softness of the bed pressing into her chest now. She lay on her side, her nightgown stuck to her back, oozing pus and healing fluid and blood. She closed her eyes and dreamed.
***
Melinda was naked and smeared in ash. She was shoveling coal into a gigantic furnace. Scars puckered where her breasts had been, and the wounds of her ears, nose, and the missing skin had healed and shrunk into a landscape of disfigurement. Her eye, also, had healed unsightly. The way the scar tissue grew back, it looked like a worm was crawling out from her eye socket to meet with the scar on her cheek left by the gash of Josie’s blade. There was nothing she could do about it and her coven sisters avoided talking to her, but that was fine, because she had bigger worries. Every night she was visited in her cabin by a minion of Josie’s, who would have his way with her. She had not become accustomed to the rape, but rather, complacent, turning herself off for the time he penetrated her body, sending her mind on a vacation lest she go mad.***
After many years passed, Melinda removed the tanned Ouija board from the false floor of her closet. She glanced around to make sure no one had seen her. Among the coven there had been so much conflict about the board. Some thought it held magical powers because it was fashioned from human suffering. Others thought it should be destroyed because of the human suffering borne in making it. Melinda smiled a lascivious grin. She was of the former opinion. With the High Priestess who conceived the board long dead, and Josie rotting in her own grave, the Ouija board had served out its usefulness, forgotten by the generations to follow, forgotten by all but Melinda. She had only one question to ask that was worth asking. She was tired and old. She was bored. There was not much left for her to do on this plane. She wanted to move on.She sat on her knees before the Ouija board and put her hands on the planchette and asked, “How long do I have to live?” There was not the usual vibration that signaled a connection, no stirring of the wind in the room, no taste of cinnamon like she always got when using the board.
Then, the board lifted up and stretched itself into a giant mouthful of shredded, gnarly teeth. It fastened itself to Melinda’s head and chomped down with great relish. Like a python, it dislocated its jaw and slowly swallowed Melinda. As her essence reabsorbed into the instrument cut from her own body and made from her own skin, the words of the High Priestess, spoken long ago, returned to her: You have no idea how powerful you are.
Now, she knew.
When all was said and done, only a tiny blood stain dotted the floor. The Ouija board’s tongue darted out and swallowed up even that remnant of Melinda’s worldly life, before emitting a loud BELCH! Then it flattened itself out, and waited. It waited in service to the one whose blood had been spilled and whose skin had been shredded in its creation. Now, they were again one. Flesh unto flesh. At long last, the Ouija board served only its mistress: Melinda. After a lifetime of waiting, of enduring the abuse and torment at the hands of the coven, Melinda was hungry. And the Ouija board, in honor of Melinda’s thirst for blood, was ready to oblige.
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