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Scene #18
It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Not like this. Not in the dark and not in a cemetery with death.
Rose stood rooted to the stop while her fellow sisters raised their arms into the air and swayed to the sound of their own voices. Rose tried to participate. She tried to be one of them as she had since Balor had made his promises so many months ago.
The goblet of red wine — representing the blood of the sacrifice- had passed around the circle mere minutes before the chanting had begun.
Never before had Rose refused to drink of the sacrifice.
Not until tonight. Even now, as she watched her sisters moods collapse into subservient, she wondered why she had never before considered drugs.
The goblet had come to her and Balor, standing at the head of the tomb, his dark eyes looking too bright in the torch light, had cut his stare to her. There had been something in that look. Something she hadn't been able to place. It had scared her like she had never been scared before. Her hands shook as she put the goblet to her lips. She had meant to drink, to be a part of this family where she had never had a family before. But the glow of those eyes, the warning in them, it had stopped her. Instead of drinking, she had kept her lips tight and gone through the motions. No wine had passed her lips.
While Balor had spoke of the future, her sisters had become complacent is ways Rose had never noticed before. They had nodded and agreed then begged to hear more when all Rose heard were the ravings of a mad man.
Death, he said was the beginning. Death would lead them to the Promised Land where they would be loved and cared for.
Torch light reflected off the knife in his hand and suddenly all the months of listening came to a crashing halt.
Death was not an answer.
It was the end. There was no pig with them. No animal of any kind. Rose stared at the knife and swallowed hard, wondering where the sacrifice would come from. The doubt she had been fighting for months won and Rose knew everything around her was wrong.
Evil moved passed them like a shadow hugging her body. It wrapped its ice cold tentacles around her shoulders, sending a shiver to every nerve. The February night chilled to the bone, all their cloths inadequate to prevent shivering on the snow covered ground. What Rose felt now, though, it had nothing to do with weather and everything to do with the glow coming off the man hey had called savior. He had lied. Balor had lied.
"No." her lips moved, but no sound came out. Her body shook while her sisters vibrated with excitement and ecstasy.
"Michelle," she mumbled over frozen lips, uttering her real sister's birth name for the first time in eight months. "No," Rose whimpered.
The chants washed her simple whisper into the wind.
That was her sister lying on the grave stone, Rose thought. Her real sister and not the one Balor had assigned to her. Michelle and she had left home together when their mother had remarried a bastard who hadn't wanted kids. Michelle had been the strong one, finding food and shelter when there had been no pennies in their pockets.
Michelle led. Rose followed. Michelle had found Balor. Just nine months ago. Sitting in a park as he watched the children play on the equipment.
Here and now he moved his wrist, he light sliding down the blade.
The snow had been brushed aside to expose the name on the grave that stood before them: Daniel Leland Callahan. Her big sister who knew all the answers, who had brought her to this way of life when everything else had seemed crazy, lay on the frosted marble with a smile on her face.
Balor had promised salvation. Happiness. A purity of soul that no one in her life had never before been able to provide.
Purity didn't require blood. Not in the Sunday school she had attended when she had still been in a pony-tale and not now, not here in this dark cemetery at night.
She covered her ears and shook her head to drown out the noise of their chants, but where there were five, it sounded like a fifty. Noise came from around them. Heat radiated off the grave of Daniel Callahan as Balor stood at the head, his hand raised over the tomb and her sister and uttered his words in a language she had never heard. The snow for two feet in every direction melted away.
Balor called them here for something, but it wasn't what they had expected. He had brought them here to show them the way, but thinking on it, looking at her sister spread eagle on the cold slab of damp marble, Rose didn't remember what the way was or even what she had been looking for.
She ran forward, breaking the circle, of her "sisters", wondering how she ever thought of them as one of her own. No one noticed. The girls were lost, their gazes raised to the moonless night. Balors' gaze came down sharp, cutting into her as sure as if he directed the knife toward her. Rose felt a sharp pain in her side, like a knife slicing into her, but she didn't stop.
And neither did he. The verses went on, his voice growing louder than the girls.
Rose grabbed the hand of her sister, but Michelle didn't even open her eyes. The grin Rose saw in the dim light was one of elation. Michelle yanked her hand out of Roses.
"Please, Michelle," Rose begged. Time was running out. The energy around them built. Blue static came off the other headstones. Bright spots of color breaking into the yellow torch light. The ceremony had almost concluded.
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