Short Story-"What's in a Name?"--Horror--A Journey down the rabbit hole of the mind...

What’s in a Name?

By Royce Sears

She looked at me for a long time. She was young and pretty, in her fancy white lab coat. Her long blonde hair tantalized me. I licked my dry lips as thoughts rose unbidden to the surface of my mind. No! No! I screamed inside my head, or at least I thought I did. She looked at me curiously for a moment as she adjusted the wire frame glasses on her nose and cocked her head to the side.

Her stethoscope fascinated me, draped around her neck like a snake, a boa constrictor that might strangle her at any moment. I laughed. That would be fun to watch! Watch it squeeze the life out of her, slowly. She made more notes on the papers in front of her and adjusted the snake around her neck. Could she not feel its leathery scales when she touched it?

“What are you writing?” I asked.

She looked at me, adjusted her glasses again, and licked her lips. Oh my God, she licked her lips. That pretty, wet, glistening, sensuous tongue. She wants me! I can tell in the way she licks her lips.

“I’m just making some notes on our meeting, Jacob,” she said sweetly. Her voice was like that of an angel, no, not an angel. She was a succubus, sent by him! He said he would send them, and he did. That sly old bastard.

“So tell me again Jacob, if you would. What happened after you arrived at your last posting?”

“My last posting, my last posting,” I thought long and hard, “You mean as a missionary?”

“Yes, you said before, that you were a Mormon missionary. Am I right?”

“Yes, I was a Mormon missionary. Before I met her, or was it him? I don’t remember. But yes, I was a Mormon missionary, I think.”

She made more notes on those papers, looking at me over the top of her glasses. Those eyes! Pretty flecks of green and gold in those cold blue eyes. Cold like ice, yet warm, warm like fire. Yes, like fire, flames, like the lovers that she and I were meant to be! She could tell couldn’t she? She had to know!

“Before, you said you met someone? Was it a he or a she? Do you remember?” she asked.

I groaned. “Oh, I don’t know. Does it matter? I met someone, yes. But it doesn’t matter, does it? He, She, It? It’s all the same. It really doesn’t have to be a he or a she. It just is.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, “Can you tell me about…It then? How did you meet?”

I could feel my lips starting to tingle. My fingertips felt cold. My arms felt heavy, and it was becoming hard to think clearly. The medications! Those damn meds! They were starting to work. I tried to keep from swallowing them, but they made me. They make me take them. I don’t want them! I don’t need medications. I’m not crazy! It was real! All of it was real!

“I wazsh in New Orleans,” my words were starting to slur together, “with my partner Andrew, when we met her. At least I think it was a her.” I shook my head. I wasn’t sure. “She had a house on Odin Street. We were out tracting one day and she invited us to come inside. We talked. We were there to share the word of God with her. Andrew, oh my friend, Andrew!” I wailed.

Shhh, she is trying to learn our secrets. Hush you silly little boy. The more you talk, the more they learn.

She looked at me, judging me through those cold blue eyes. I saw the stethoscope coming to life again, wrapping itself around her tiny neck and squeezing the life out of her little body. I saw her eyes bulging out of her skull from the pressure as the snake squeezed and squeezed. She continued to look at me, her mind obviously filled with questions. Questions I didn’t have answers for. I didn’t understand it anymore than she did. She wrote some more on those damn papers. I wanted to scream at her, maybe I did. I don’t know.

“So you talked. What did you talk about?” she asked.

“We talked about God, about the Book of Mormon, the Savior, and his Plan of Salvation. She said man didn’t need Salvation. Man was lost, had always been lost, and that God was a fool. Andrew argued with her, he was nice about it, but he argued with her. He said that Man needed God, and God’s plan for Shalvation. She laughed, she laughed so hard at him and ‘his naiveté,’ she called it.” I sighed, “Oh Andrew, if we had only known!” I wailed again.

“Known what, Jacob?”

“Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut Up! I don’t want to talk anymore!”

You’re talking too much! She don’t need to know. She can’t know! She’s not ready!

“Why don’t you want to talk, Jacob?” she asked quietly. “What happened next? You can tell me. It’s okay to talk to me. If only you had known what?”

She irritated me, her sardonic stares and cold, clinical questions. Didn’t she know she was here to serve me? Women are the inferior species.

You are the man. You are the chosen of God. They are incomplete. Sinners! Whores! It was they, women! They brought down the wrath of God upon mankind by taking that damn apple.

I’m not God’s chosen anymore.

You’re better than that! You’re beyond those things now! We’ve taken you to a whole new level. You belong to us now!

“If only we had known what she .. what he.. what IT was, you shtupid bitch!” I screamed, “But it doesn’t matter now…I am beyond you, you and your notes, your little mind games.”

She scribbled on her notes, and I laughed. I laughed so hard that I nearly fell out of my chair, and would have if it wasn’t for the restraints on my wrists that prevented it. Tied me to the chair, a prisoner. I had forgotten about those restraints. I laughed even harder. They were all prisoners, they just thought that had ME imprisoned. They’ll see! They’ll see!

“And what was It?” she asked.

No. Not what was it? What am I? What am I she asks? Come! Come to me you stupid bitch, I’ll show you what I am. Get on your knees before me and I’ll show you what I am! I am that I am!

I laughed, I laughed at her arrogance. She thought she could understand what had happened to me, what had happened to Andrew. She, in her white lab coat and silky dress slacks, thought she could understand what we had seen, what I had become.

She moved the snake again, it was obviously becoming uncomfortably tight around her neck, and yet she still didn’t notice that it was a snake. And she thinks I’m crazy. I’m not the one with a boa constrictor wrapped around my neck. He’ll claim you too, soon enough. That snake is just as much a tool of his as SHE was.

“She showed me the truth. She showed me what was behind the curtain. ‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain’” I laughed at her again, cackling, “she showed me how deep the rabbit hole goes!”

“And how deep does the rabbit hole go, Jacob?”

I laughed. I spat at her, but missed. I laughed more, this time even harder. “It goes ALL the way down. That’s where HE lives, you know. But not because he has to, No! Because he wants to! He likes the darkness. That’s why he sends those like HER up here, to teach us, and show us the truth!”

“Does she have a name?” those cold blue eyes asked me. I only saw her eyes, her eyes and that soft, wet, tongue as she licked her lips again. She does want me! She’s craving me! She knows that I am no longer a mortal man. He told me they would know. He told me they would come to me, desiring me, craving me, wanting to feel ME inside their flesh, to cleave unto them until we are as one flesh.

I laughed even harder this time, “You want her name? A name? You must be even crazier than you look, woman! That’s something she taught me…names have power, real power!”

“Well, we’ll come back to her name in a bit then,” she said as she made more scribbles on her notes, “What truth did she show you?”

I noticed her face flushing, she breathed quickly. I could see the skin flushing at the base of her neck, then the top of her exposed cleavage, hidden only by thin lace. She could not hide her desire from me. I could see she was aching to be made one with me.

Truth? She wants truth. Truth, truth, truth, truth, truth. She wouldn’t know truth if it smacked her in the face, bent her over the desk, and fucked the brains out of her stupid, fluffy blonde head. Stupid bitch! Take these restraints off and I’ll show you truth.

“She tied Andrew to a chair, and she showed me things. Immoral, unjust, and ungodly things that I loved. We beat him, we tortured him, we played in his entrails, and then we ate them.  We ATE them! Together, they showed me that man is God’s plaything. We are God’s little toys. Together they showed me how to make Andrew into my plaything, my toy. The truth! The truth is I, ME, I AM equal with God! And then we fucked in ways that you can never imagine, I can show you. Let me show you how. Let me show you things you have never dreamed of! Let me show you pleasures that you have never imagined!”

I stopped to think, to breathe. It was hard to think with the medications coursing through me and the bulge growing between my legs.

“Did you know that human liver tastes just like beef liver when you cook it with onions? No? I bet you didn’t know that when you cut the heart out, it keeps beating for a few minutes either. HE showed me that.”

She made more notes, scribbling faster than before on those damned papers.

How can you make notes? Writing? When I have offered to show you things that no human can conceive of? You insolent bitch!

“And you said her name was?” she asked quickly.

Without thinking I responded, “Her name is Legion, Jezebel, she is, and was, the Whore of Babylon! She is my lover! My mother! My Savior, and my friend!”

“Thank you Jacob,” she said politely, “We will talk again soon.”

“No, we won’t,” I said. “You’ll be HIS soon. He’s coming for you. I can see it. Remember what I said when that drunk driver hits you on the way home!”

She stood up, taking her notes with her, and walked toward the door. As the door was closing, I heard her say, “Patient suffers from schizophrenically induced psychosis, delusions, hallucinations…”

She didn’t see, or feel, the stethoscope squirming its way closer and tighter around her neck. Soon it would be tightening, strangling that pretty blonde head of hers. I waited for her to start screaming.   It wouldn’t be long now.

THE END