Mandrake & the Magician
Adder Ladies & the Dawn of Ra 6
The huge black dog - some kind of cross between a Doberman and a Mastiff, the young shaman decides – blocks his path spraying spittle across the hot bitumen, as it screams blunt syllables up into his face. The creature snaps threateningly with bared, yellow-stained snapping fangs, emerging starkly from pared back gums marbled with strange patterns.
Ram’s adrenalised perceptions focus on the mottled shapes marked out in black, pink and purple, shining through a patina of foam-flecked slick fluids. Rabies is unknown in Oz, but that comforting fact gives the youth as little consolation as the round tag hanging from the dog’s studded collar, bearing a tiny number and heraldic crest that marks the savage beast as ‘domesticated’.
There’s no sign of any owner on the down-market street and the cracked footpaths are almost empty; two middle-aged women in pastel floral print dresses cross the road to avoid the fracas, studiously ignoring the scene. The young man slips his dark wraparounds from his face and catches the dog’s flaring red-rimmed eyes with his own, his fixed gaze slitting as he silently stares the growling animal down. The black dog backs away in short fitful hops that lift its unbending legs from the ground, as it jumps and starts with each loud report issuing from its slavering maw.
Ram’yana calms the morass of emotions roiling through his body-mind with a distracted effort. His straining passions well up on the crest of a carmine tide of wild natural speed, as adrenaline and other self-created substances swell within his blood at this unexpected assault. He resents the interruption to his carefully maintained posture of vaguely sanguine indifference, and his eyes flash at the foul black scavenger that would impede his dash toward longed-for reunion with his runaway Lady Racheal.
The young prince suppresses a scalding cauldron of mingled anticipation, yearning, terror, lust, anger, compassion and longing until he regains his focus, while staring into the screaming heart of the beast. That’s me, he tells himself, this dog is my heart yelping in terrified, confused anger, feeding back at me through the fabric of the world. He swallows the rising tide of impassioned energy down into his belly and concentrates on quieting his mind, standing in the centre of a bubble of stillness as he stares the frantic dog down.
Ram’yana sizes the animal up while observing his own reactions. Don’t want to kick it with bare feet… he analyses the stray thought while slowly leaning toward the barking hound, berating himself for his lack of insight and compassion. Don’t want to kick it at all. The young magician decides to imagine kicking the dog instead, despite the temptation to strike out physically at this visible manifestation of danger – ’Tis my own fear, he tells himself again; the dog is me, barking out my own terror and pain. He holds the dog’s gaze as he leans over the animal.
He sees fear and confusion blurring in the animal’s eyes, hears the alarmed fearful cries emanating from its confused naked soul. Ram’yana breathes into the front of his torso to balance his hormones and mind, and swiftly concludes that even imagining kicking the dog would be an unwarranted assault on the innocent, ignorant creature; his emotionally strained imagination falls short of an optimal solution to the confrontation, so he imagines the beast turning from him and running away.
As the Centraxian shaman straightens his spine, his soul centres itself within the temple of his body and he can clearly discern that the black hound is less dangerous than it wishes to appear; the barely tamed pet is frantically searching for routes of escape, its eyes darting away from his relentless stare while it growls and howls, unable to meet the locus of his focus. “Go home,” Ram’yana growls, and the canine sprints across the road when he takes a confident step in its direction, his eyes lifting to the city-shrouded horizon.
The dog narrowly avoids being skittled by an overloaded flatbed truck filled with milled lengths of timber, and zigzags from its lurching path in a mad frenzy of scrabbling stick-limbs. It disappears into a thick hedge bordering an overgrown park, still barking and whining until it’s out of sight in the urban wilderness. Open, empty arched windows gape from the upper levels of a once majestic sandstone church, visible through the interlacing branches of low senescent trees. An impressive spire still stands, but gaping rents break the architectural perfection of the conical stonework. Black stains streak upward from broken stone window frames like streams of inverted melting mascara, bearing witness to the intensity of a fire that’s all but destroyed the structure. The empty church is a grandiose mansion of a silent and absent deity, struck down by a spark that bridged the gap between Earth and Heaven.
The Centraxian prince resumes his passage along the Road of Saint John, scanning the desolate streetscape as he dons his wraparound sunglasses and smoothes his long windblown hair. The realisation comes to him that he’s only a handful of houses away from the opulent anarchist squat where a chandelier – struck by a huge, thick, bouncing black balloon during a frenzied mass volleyball match - fell onto his head during a crowded party. The young shaman had been given warning enough; five minutes before he’d looked up and seen the huge, ornate glass ball hanging above his head - and a little voice had suggested that he find somewhere else to sit. He hadn’t.
He recalls the way the widening circle of shocked, open-mouthed faces went white as sheets, simultaneously drained of blood as he rose from the array of shattered shards and climbed to his feet. The sudden synchronous descent of unanimous pallour on the encircling guests’ faces was followed by a thick caul of blood that sheeted down across Ram’s eyes in a viscous scarlet veil. A group of fellow travelers hurriedly drove him to the nearby hospital and apologetically left him at the front door. He’d had the top of his head shaved until he resembled a medieval friar and the flesh of his crown had been stitched closed. The young intern had been concerned that Ram’s eyes were too dilated; there was no way the young shaman could tell him not to worry – it was only a result of the combined effects of the drugs swilling through his system.
For months afterward Ram’yana wore a varied succession of hats, berets and caps over his stitched-up monk’s tonsure. He no longer talks of the painful experience, knowing the anecdote oftentimes leaves people with the impression they have a handle on him - something that explains the young shaman’s wild nature, adventitious experiences and sometimes erratic ways.
Ram’yana returns to the present as his body descends the slope beside the desecrated, deconsecrated churchyard. He walks through a run-down section of the once-expansive estate of the Anglicans, originally envisaged as a low rent, low-roofed, lowbrow ‘working class’ district; the only trees in sight surround the lightning-blasted house of god. The decrepit little blocks are lined with ageing remnants of once proud tiny cottages, barely set back from the busy street behind broken pickets and rusty fragmenting fleur-de-lis crowned cast iron fences; half-hearted bars surrounding confined cells of urban despair. The crumbling barriers guard the perpetual ticking and tocking of gas and electric meters - sole decoration of the tiny, noisy, unusable front verandas of aged pensioners and desperate underpaid wage slaves.
Some of the buildings appear abandoned to the experienced squatter’s eye, while a few are obviously derelict and condemned - completely boarded up or half burned down. Oz prides itself on being a classless society, but Ram’yana walks through a living museum exhibit that belies that ubiquitous national notion. He spies the street sign he’s been looking for and takes a deep breath as he rounds the corner into a long narrow cul-de-sac of similarly damaged and deserted homes.
The street is cracked and potholed but nonetheless straight and level, yet the houses undulate beside it, following the twisted lay of the land as it rises and falls beside the built-up roadway. The entrances to the first few narrow terrace houses are reached by climbing a small slope, and the row of dwellings descends until there’s a stretch of street-level cottages that swiftly slip down into a clutch of semi-subterranean two-storey homes. None of the houses has a front yard to speak of and there are no trees to be seen anywhere, but the dead-end road is quiet; very quiet. Tiny dead gardens are cluttered with smashed window frames and broken furniture, and piles of glass shards lie heaped in glittering fragments in the gutters.
Most of the houses are on their last legs, and a couple of timber-framed homes have toppled in on themselves to slouch in tottering heaps. Ram’yana finds occasional numbers visible on dented letterboxes and broken cast iron gates and his mind spins while he counts down the paces to his true love’s door. His pulse races faster with each step until his heart is pounding in his chest when he reaches the numberless gateway that must be the new dwelling of his Lady Racheal.
The tiled roof is partially shattered and a tired gable window yawns through broken glass fangs. The low metal gate falls inward when he reaches to open it; the hinges have rusted away and the ancient metal frame has been propped cosmetically in place. It clatters down a short flight of rubble-strewn concrete stairs that leads to the bottom floor of a low two-storey house. Ram’yana descends carefully, gingerly stepping across twisted strips of rusty metal and jagged pieces of glass with his bare time-toughened feet. The subterranean entranceway is a shadowy pit, its detailed ceramic mosaic of geometrically arranged triangles and trapezoids shattered and scattered across the cracked concrete foundation. A handful of shriveled, desiccated plants droop from tangled and torn macramé hangings and the front door has wide cracks running up the length of its glossy burnt orange coat.
Ram’yana pauses at the threshold, worried that the door may be attached as loosely as the gate; then he notices the twelve-inch nails securely fastening the wood to the solid frame. A thick mass rises in his throat and his heart pounds in his chest as he peers through one of the jagged cracks. His fingers turn the small handle of the bell - the metal spins freely in his fingers and makes no sound at all. Removing his dark glasses, he spies sunlight pouring through a thin cloud of dust particles, swirling in torpid Brownian motion in the one-storey rear of the house, where much of the roof is lying on the floor.
The front of the structure seems largely intact, although many floorboards are broken or missing and the plaster ceiling is now lying in the cellar; torn electrical wiring forms festoons of skeletal Christmas decorations hanging from rotting joists and beams. The dwelling is in far worse condition than any squat the shaman prince has ever inhabited – or would ever considered inhabiting, except in grave extremis. As his eyes adjust to the gloom he notices a flicker of candlelight washing a scratched doorframe with amber light. The doorway opens into a room that stands off the hall - a glance to his right verifies that the front window leading to the room is securely boarded shut.
Ram’yana knocks on the thick wood of the door with a staccato beat, but the sound is virtually inaudible so he raps one of his rings thrice against the bleached plywood plank that replaces the portal’s small window. Floorboards creak within the house and a shape occludes the candlelight, a silhouette shrinking within the shadow doorframe on the graffiti-scrawled plaster of the hall. As the slim shade steps into view Ram’s heart lurches in his chest. “Hello? Ramses?” The familiar voice falters, as though the girl is still waking from a deep sleep.
“Racheal.”
“Come around the other way – to thy left.” He doesn’t want to take his eyes from her dimly illumined form and quickly glances across the rubble-studded concrete to a tall wooden gate with a sharply pointed top, which almost reaches the cracked keystone of a slender brick archway. When he looks back through the crack Racheal is nowhere to be seen, so he steps across a swathe of shattered glass and investigates the gate.
A five pointed star is carved through the planks and Ram’yana swiftly reaches through the aperture to undo the bolt on the inner side; its presence is betrayed by a newly installed pair of nuts. They’ve been put on back to front, he notices absently as he unlatches the metal rod. The lock can be undone from without… The gate grates on rubble as it swings inward and he steps through trailing strands of sweet yellowing honeysuckle that catch in his hair and velvet tunic when he enters a narrow, shadowy, brick-floored side passage. Dried grey scum marks the high water mark on the broken flagstones after the recent heavy seasonal summer rains and the atmosphere is dank and tinged with mould.
He picks his way through broken bottles, fragments of furniture, smashed masonry and various other items he doesn’t examine too closely in his haste. An open doorway is set in the wall to his right – or rather, the wall has a rectangular hole in its brickwork – and Ram’yana steps onto a parallel pair of surviving floorboards that lead back toward the front of the house. A skeletal fossil of a kitchen gapes at the open sky and cobwebs span the gaps between hanging scraps of wiring.
Unidentifiable broken things glitter on the gloomy ground, full fathom below the rotten joists and missing floor. The young magician walks across the wide tightrope with arms outstretched, crossing a chasm that was doubtless once a pleasant living room. He keeps his eyes on the jagged lightning-flash cracks that split the front door as he impatiently paces his way toward and the rectangle of candlelight. Each step takes him closer to his beloved, and with every stride his heart rises higher in his throat to block the words of greeting that are about to burst from his mouth. When he gains the solid floor of the hall he doesn’t pause to examine the layered histories of graffito as he strides toward the open door, but a diminishing series of inverted pentagrams in red and black fleetingly catch his eye; and a painting…
A thrilling, nerve straining sensation of sheer immanence swells to bursting point as the shaman’s last few steps slow in a strangely congealing flow of treacling time. There’s no thought in the young prince’s mind or urge in his soul but to see his beautiful missing mate, right now, this moment; yet he struggles in slow motion as though immersed in a turgid nightmare, straining against the temporal stream to be reunited with his mate - until he steps through the dim threshold into the light and time catches up with them both.
The Lady Racheal stands with a long-fingered, paint-stained hand balanced on her hip, her candlelit form framed between draperies of midnight blue velvet. Ram’s greeting catches in his throat as their eyes lock and he basks in the bright vision of the Centraxian High Priestess, seeing all his hopes vindicated in the half-smile curling her sensuous lips. Racheal’s slim feminine body is swathed in an all-enveloping hot pink pantsuit of crushed velvet lined in scarlet satin, from her studded black collar to her bracelet-haloed ankles. Ram’s rediscovered beloved winks at him from the sanctum of an incongruously cosy bedchamber; only a couple of floorboards are missing and the walls are covered with intricate batik hangings.
“Awa Ken.” Racheal’s voice is unusually deep and throaty as her eyes shift away, drifting upward to focus on a point above Ram’s head. A parachute covers the presumably shattered ceiling, descending in broad harmonious arcs to the room’s high skirting boards; the white army surplus silk hangs in carefully arranged folds and pleats. A pair of five-stick candelabra stand on a low table covered with a black satin sheet, filling the chamber with flickering light. Most of the tall white paraffin candles have just been lit, and their serried ranks flare in a slowly undulating series that gives the room the appearance of breathing. Racheal’s red-rimmed eyes flare in the wavering light; the prince notes the dark rings framing her blue orbs as he barely restrains himself from dashing across the chamber and into her arms. “Awa Ken, Mon Ken” he replies, a hesitant smile tickling the corners of his mouth.
All the extinct cheer once vividly present in the rest of the condemned house has been artfully concentrated in this single room, to frame and focus Ram’s heartfelt concentration on the glorious vision of his paramour. The teenage priestess wears a splendid mix of resolute innocence, fey longing and dissolute indolence on her subtly glowing features and a widening smile spreads across both their mouths as she greets her prince. “Oh Ramses, my love…” Racheal’s deeply modulated voice sends a shiver through his flesh, a glow smelting into ecstatic exultation as her words sink into his overloading, hormone-blinded consciousness. My love… As exultation approaches adulation, her next phrase brings him a short way back to his senses; “Welcome to my new home.”
Ram’yana can barely reply, mumbling his words in a repetitive mantra. “Awa Ken, Mon Ken. Racheal… love…”
“Have a seat.” All of Racheal’s nails on her elongated toes and fingers have been painted a bright glossy scarlet and her flame-lit strawberry gold hair is tied back with a ribbon of black velvet. The girl stands at the foot of a slim single mattress covered with black satin sheets and colourful cushions, lying on a rug spread across splintering floorboards. She raises a brass goblet beneath the blue velvet canopy and downs its contents, her sapphire eyes glittering over the rim. She indicates a long divan covered in amber crushed velvet but Ram’yana advances toward her, an immovable force propelling him toward the irresistible object of his desire. His emerald eyes and overflowing heart are riveted to his magnetically attractive lover as her arms rise and open to him.
“Ramses,” Racheal breathes, and her artifice of unconcern evaporates as she flows toward him. Her arms surround his body in fuzzy velvet pinkness and her empty goblet falls onto the rug, forgotten. He inhales her funky familiar scent amid the cloying sweetness of patchouli and port as their lips meet in a mutual flow of salty, sobbing, laughing, crying, cleansing tears; their hearts pound against the layers of bone and meat separating them from each other’s pounding rhythms - but the sweet foretaste of reunion doesn’t last long.
The Lady Racheal gently pushes her mate away, holding him at arm’s length with her palms upon his chest, staring into his soul. He watches the words work their way up into her mouth. “I’m not going back to the Group. That’s over.”
Ram’yana shakes his head, flicking the interruption of their union from his mind. “It matters not.” The young shaman knows there’s no sense arguing with an oracle. His hands slip onto her hips and her fingers spread across his chest.
“Everything is and nothing matters.” Racheal quotes herself as her hands stroke his long hair and caress his longer body.
“I’ll not gainsay a Cassandra.” Ram’s smile stiffens into a rictus, and he’s unable to stop grinning at the Wiccan girl. Racheal’s tightly elasticised pink suit perfectly matches the tone of his beloved’s skin when it’s flushed with passion, and he watches as her blood rises through her lingering pallour to rival the pantsuit’s heated hue. Their mouths inexorably approach interpenetrating union as Racheal’s pink tongue moistens her succulent lips; her breath is redolent of chocolate and port.
She suddenly grabs his wrists to slip his hands from her hips and turns away from him, reaching for a pack of Rothman’s cigarettes. So cold… so hurt? Or has she fallen in love with someone else? And… she usually smokes Benson & Hedges or Marlboros. Ram’yana is tortured by his imaginings, a plenitude of tawdry possibilities rushing through his mind in a futile blunderbuss attempt to illuminate the truth.
“I hate that name.” Racheal’s face flares brightly as she strikes the match. “She met a horrid end, and had a terrible life – as ye’d well know.” Her voice is level and gravid. She puffs the cigarette to life while he fumbles in his vest pocket. “Do you have a joint?”
“I haven’t rolled it yet…” he withdraws the pouch provided by his fellow Centraxians from his vest’s camouflaged inner lining. “Mayhap the name’s meaning is a trifle two-edged…”
“In what way?” She shakes the tail of her mane and rubs her forehead and reddened, dark-circled eyes with the heels of her hands.
“It means ‘snare of men’,” Ram’yana replies; “cas andra, more literally ‘net’ or ‘weave of men’. He reaches for her hand when it falls to her side. Racheal’s fingers entwine around his in unthinking automatic reaction as she smiles up into his face. “More likely ‘weaver of men’,” she laughs. “All this time I never realised you knew… Let’s have a pipe instead.”
The girl points her cigarette at the low black-shrouded table, where a long curving metal pipe set with detailed filigree of tiny spheres stands propped on a wooden incense holder. “It comes from
“Remember?” Racheal glances from the candles to meet his eyes and the full import of her single word strikes home; a long-haired (if balding) traveling juggler and magician in his late thirties, Tony recently disappeared into Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, and the Centraxians had feared the worst. The voluble, likeable hippy had once helped Ram’yana rescue a young friend from the clutches of a serial rapist and occasional murderer, in a sorry tale they’d all rather forget - but he knows that Racheal will always remember the terrifying episode, and so will he; the High Priestess had been one of the crazed man’s victims.*
Ram’yana fingers the long, slender hash pipe. “It came from him?”
“No – I had a strong flash of him when first I saw it. I think he’s still alive…” Her aquamarine eyes return to the candle flame. “…and still juggling. Someone else gave the pipe to me. Have a seat – I need to take a leak.” She leans up, pecks him on the cheek in a gesture of reassurance and steps into the darkness of the hall.
The long amber-covered lounge proves to be a pair of bench seats pulled from old Holden cars, upholstered in vaguely arranged cushions and fabrics. The arrangement is stable enough when he drops onto its creaky frame beside his shoulder bag and crumbles a long fingernail full of dark resin into the silver-capped bowl of the pipe. A metal bucket clangs somewhere within the house and Ram’yana concludes the building has no plumbing. His wandering eyes rest on a pair of leaky five gallon containers standing in a small pool of water by the entrance to the bedchamber.
He notes a two-burner stove attached to a portable gas bottle, propped on milk crates in a corner of the room. The chamber bears the hallmarks of Racheal’s idiosyncratic artistry, but he can’t understand how she could have furnished and decorated her new squat so quickly. She’s been very busy… A ginger tomcat emerges from the cluttered shadows behind the lounge and slinks around the edge of the room to the bed, stretching onto the jumbled bedclothes to commence licking its hind legs.
“There’s another floor – well, a room, anyway; big enough for a studio, with plenty of light.” Racheal stands confidently poised in the portal, her hands propping up the doorframe. “Welcome, my love, to my new candle-lit garret - near the University, well stained and cat-warmed, a bare floored barefoot struggling artist’s dream home, redolent with the suffering of generations of the working poor and surrounded by fellow vagabonds and free thinkers, junkies and poets, drunks and writers and deliciously happy psychedelic dropouts, in a velvet-lined bedlam of silk-screened, tie died, handmade clothes and canvas – and though we all dwell in guttering candlelight, some of us are looking at the stars.”
The torrent pours out in a single, unbroken flood that leaves the girl breathless and bleary eyed. Her rapturous rant utterly stuns Ram’yana, who sits staring through his cloud of imported smoke, astounded at her poetic lucidity. The priestess bows and rearranges her tight clothing. “There’s some port, if you like.” Racheal indicates a half-full flagon sitting on the floor beside the divan. “Best have some, to catch up with me – I’m still half Mandied.” Ram’s hand stops halfway to the large screwcap bottle as his eyes shift from their idle perusal of the girl’s new metal-studded collar to her inscrutable face.
“I thought you weren’t doing them any more?” There’s no way to avoid the inevitable criticism implied by his words, but the diplomatic prince endeavours to keep his tone level and to sound as non-patronising as possible when the sentence blurts from his mouth. Mandrax is a scheduled prescription drug – a barbiturate laced with a hypnotic derived from Mandrake root and synthesised into a substance called Methaqualin. Mandies are deathly popular among many young (and older) people in the decade that time forgot. Urban witches often mistake the drug for a substitute route to the arcane powers gained from consorting with the fabled man-shaped Mandrake root.
Man Dies – an appropriate name, like Slow Death. The white pills are marked with the symbol Mx, and come in bottles of a hundred. They are commonly prescribed as sleeping pills – and commonly sold on or disbursed to friends. Mandies are very easy to overdose on, and are a readily available method of suicide – or murder. It’s an all-too-common ‘date rape’ drug (long before the term was ever minted) – and many young people flock to what they mistakenly believe is a safer, medically authorised alternative to other ‘hard’ drugs like heroin.
The trick to enjoying the stuff and staying alive and in one piece is to stay awake after taking one, staying indoors in a known safe place, never having any available when you’re already out of it, and never operating machinery or attempting to drive a vehicle while they’re in your system. Regular users tend to have limited horizons in more ways than one. Your judgment disappears on Mandies, along with your memory of how many you’ve taken. If you get the dosage right and manage to stay conscious, your limbs go numb from the major joints down and the effect is remarkably similar to being drunk – and sumptuously, sensuously horny. But Mandies cause brain and vascular and nervous system damage and…
A forerunner of the infamous and much weaker Quaaludes, Mandrax leaves dead and brain damaged people everywhere in its wake; in a few years its use will be discontinued in favour of slightly less lethal alternatives. It’s a barb in the flesh of the hippy movement – a poisonous pharmaceutical barbiturate that ruins the scene, man, and helps taint the reputations of truly safe natural highs like marijuana. Drugs ain’t drugs and oils ain’t oils, as the alchemists of the Dawn of Ra insist.
Racheal’s developing addiction to Mandies was one of the reasons the lovers had left the squatter’s compound and rented a place of their own. “Where did you get it?” Ram’yana asks when the girl remains silent.
“Why? Want one?” The gorgeous, velvet-clad wastrel sashays over to a dead television cabinet and opens a drawer set in the walnut veneer of its base. “I have a couple left.” Ram’yana can’t hold himself entirely aloof from the temptation to sink into undemanding, unconstrained slow sexual oblivion with his newly rediscovered mate, but the need to be truly and consciously reunited with his beloved overcomes the indolent notion. “I’ll stick with the port and heads,” he replies as she proffers him an engraved white pill.
“Suit yourself.” Racheal holds his gaze expressionlessly as she rises from the cabinet and pops the hypnotic downer into her mouth, swallowing the bitter pill without recourse to water or wine. She strokes the orange cat and pins Ram’yana to the spot with a sphinx-like expression; her lover knows she’s challenging him to offer judgment or criticism. He hangs suspended from tenterhooks, knowing he dares not tell his witch-wife how to behave, here in her new private abode - or elsewhere. This is the first time he’s seen the willful girl in days; they’ve rarely been apart for so long, and his experienced knowledge of her shifting moods conspires with his ardent love and urgent lust to hold his tongue still in his mouth.
He fills the void with a mouthful of port and then remembers the package swelling his shoulder bag. “It seemed likely you’d need these,” he says, handing her the parcel. “Thought they might come in handy.” Racheal sways across the room and takes the package from his hand. She kneels at the table and opens the plain paper wrapping to reveal a lace-frilled blue dress – her favourite – and a couple of other items of clothing, wrapped around her well-worn Tarot deck. “Just some essentials. Where’d you get the clothes – and things?”
“These?” She glances down at her apparel. “Made them yesterday.” She indicates a treadle sewing machine covered with velvet drapery and her hands fondle the box of cards as her eyes wander about the room. “Still making them. See?” She holds her right arm up into the air to reveal a line of slim pins that hold the inner seam together from elbow to wrist. Ram’s eyes wander down the length of her arm to linger on her firm breast, fully revealed within the thin sheath of stretched velvet. Aware of his regard, Racheal raises her other arm and stands, pivoting on the spot. “Miss me?” She turns away before he can reply and stumbles on the rug as she reaches for the pipe. Ram’yana watches the drugs twisting her nervous system as she lurches toward the table, scattering the startled cat from her path.
“Here,” she says, bending over and presenting her firm, nicely rounded backside to his appreciative gaze. A red satin seam runs down the crack of her bum, splitting in twain to run down the insides of her long slim legs. Ram’yana misses his catch when Racheal unexpectedly hurls a large, darkly flapping object over her shoulder. “A present.” A red-lined black leather jacket lands beside him on the lounge. “Check it out, man. It’s now. Get with it.” The blackened sack of skin slouches on the amber velvet, its maw gaping ruddily at him.
“I know leather’s exempt from thy veg’tarianism…” she mumbles as Ram’yana fingers the soft, pliant calfskin. “…thy penchant for boots, f’rinstance.” The coat has simple understated lines that please his aesthetic and the fit looks about right – but he can’t help wondering about details. The zipper works, he notes. Yet the outline of its previous wearer is somehow all too visible, molded to another body like well-crafted armor. He opens the coat and holds it up, shaking out the vibes.
Racheal sits on a ragged section of rug and unscrolls a long white sock up her slender calf, pushing the elastic-edged pink pants up above her knees. She stands hesitantly and sways before a cracked full-length oval mirror encased in an intact and beautifully stained mahogany frame; the witch girl twists and turns along with her reflection as she rearranges her hair. “Love,” Ram begins, “what’s…”
Racheal’s reflection tilts her head and fixes upon him. “And the jacket?” she interrupts him. “It looks a good fit. ’Twill suit - try it on.” Ram’yana stands up and slides the leather over his frame with more than a little reluctance. He can barely extricate himself from all the questions lining up to hang over their heads like serried swords of Damocles, and is surprised when the black leather slips around his body like a second skin. “Thanks, love - it’s… really comfortable. It fits almost perfectly.” He takes advantage of the moment to walk to her side and they regard their images in the cracked mirror.
Racheal leans her hip against his thigh and her living presence assails his swooning attention. “The red lining suits you,” she says, “and you’ll grow into it. How’s the pipe?” Her pleasant, mildly berating smile belies the warmth of her embrace as she turns to face him. “Still smoldering under its cap?” Her groin bumps into his thigh and he can smell the excess of port on her breath as they enfold each other in a press of arms, breasts, bellies and loins, squeezing their bodies to touch as closely as their confining clothing will allow.
The Centraxian priest and priestess caress, fondle and kiss in a lingering timeless interval of bliss, immersed in each other’s scents and sensations; two horny teenagers in love, finally reunited after unendurably long days spent apart. Racheal’s leg twines around Ram’s and her slim thigh rises along his side to wrap around his waist. When she grinds herself into his hardness, Ram’yana knows he’s just two scant layers of cotton velvet from the ardently longed-for familiar home of her hearth.
The electric tide of impassioned young lust releases the reunited lovers to their longing, aching need for complete reunion. Thoughts and feelings are nakedly transparent after years shared in perpetual togetherness and the relatively short time they’ve been apart has been an eternity for them both. Their eyes meet within the recombining veil of their hair and the mutual yearning that shines from them burns with an identical tear-jerking intensity.
As they pause for breath in the rising gale, Ram opens his mouth and almost ruins everything; he despises his weakness even as the words slip from his lips. “Please, love – come back home with me.” Racheal steps away from him, sways slightly and kneels before the pipe, turning her back to his pleading eyes.
“
“That’s better.” Racheal smiles as her eyelids slip into catlike slits. The ginger tom scampers up to her and looks up expectantly. Racheal fills her mouth with another load of smoke and blows it out, directing a thin stream at the tomcat’s face. The cat’s ears flatten beside its head and its eyes mimic Racheal’s as it opens its jaws slightly to savour the streaming resin.
Racheal passes the pipe to Ram’yana and he takes a deep draw. “He’s used to it,” Racheal says, stroking the cat. “He’s a mull pig, really. And what’s-his-name here comes with the place – in fact ‘twas he who led me here.” She nuzzles her forehead against the big tom’s brow, and the cat produces a surprisingly loud thrumming purr when she lifts him to her bosom. “He’s sort of the cat of the guy who said I could have the place – he says he knows thee – and Kha-Aan.”
Ram’yana’s hand mingles with Racheal’s as they stroke the cat together, and it eyes him warily before acceding to their combined ministrations. “What’s his name?”
“Bluey. Bluey, meet Ramses. Prince Ram’yana, Sir Blue Ginger Cheesemonger. That’s what he seems t’ like best. The food, not the name…” Racheal sways and blinks.
“I mean – hi, Sir Blue Knight, pleased to meet thee – not the cat, I mean his master, or friend, or protector…”
“Him? Gavin. Gavin Geensleeves, I think. He’s an older guy, a poet. There are all sorts of interesting things painted around the walls – he did some of them. They’re everywhere...” Her swaying motions threaten to become a full-blown swoon and Ram’yana moves closer. “An empty stomach,” she explains. “Let’s have some treats.” The poet’s name is vaguely familiar to Ram’yana, but the girl’s fragrant, fragrant proximity is overwhelmingly distracting as her thigh slides against his and her breast mashes into his arm.
Bluey slips from Racheal’s lap as she leans over, falls toward the couch and catches herself against it, tilting the structure precipitously. Ram catches the wasted girl by her slim waist and she hovers in a state of delicate balance, pulling a paper shopping bag from beneath the springs of the makeshift couch – and a cornucopia of bagels and muffins, croissants and Danish pastries pours onto the black satin tablecloth. A muffin rolls across the floor and Bluey pounces on it and wrestles it into submission. Ram’yana barely notices, enthralled by the firm familiar flesh of his girl as she hangs in his tender grasp.
“A repast fit for a prince.” Racheal sweeps her arm across the smorgasbord of sweets and selects an apricot pastry, swinging in a graceful arc to kneel beside him on the floor. She takes a huge bite and chews ravenously, her eyes rolling as her drug-induced sugar craving munchies are sated by the sweet treat. The temptress encourages him with a wink and a nod and when she’s swallowed most of the mouthful she murmurs around the last morsel. “Eat up, my prince, time’s a’wasting – they’re already a couple f’days old,” she smiles hugely and wraps her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth as she begins to hum a vaguely familiar nursery rhyme.
The wordless murmur becomes a chant as her eyelids droop and her smile dissolves. “Old… mould… don’t fit the mold… hope I die before I get cold…” Her hand rises to her mouth and she takes another bite, humming through the apricots as she chews while she rocks. Ram’yana takes a cautious bite of a fruity bagel as he keeps his eyes on her, while her chant echoes around inside his stoned cranium. He decides to do the singular thing most often suggested by the greatest luminaries and sages; he dos nothing. Or in his case, almost nothing; he resolves to await developments, suppressing further questions beneath the looming imperative of his indomitable lust, while he chews the surprisingly tasty stale bagel and listens to the entrancing voice of his gorgeous young witch woman.
Racheal’s croon becomes a keening wail and the cat darts toward the doorway in an orange blur. “Told… rolled… shared and sold… I’ll not be the one controlled…” Tears pour from her eyes as her song becomes sobs and Ram leans over and strokes her long shuddering back and tangled blonde hair.
“I had to jump out of the car,” Racheal explains through her sobs, “so I stole his coat – that jacket you’re wearing…” Her hands reach up under the lining and she rises onto her haunches, her pants ripping loudly as she strips the coat away with a determined grimace twisting her symmetrical features. “Take it off.” He lets her pull the leather from his arms and she hurls it across the room; its erratic flight hooks the coat over one of the candelabra and flaming candles spill wax across the tablecloth and the fuzzy amber velvet of the lounge.
Ram turns to gather up the candles but Racheal stills him with a hand on his thigh. “Let it burn,” she moans, leaning her brow against his shoulder. His eyes dart from the flames to the water containers by the door; only three candles are still burning, but the lounge’s velvet cover is beginning to catch fire. The leather jacket is perfectly safe – unless the whole place goes up, Ram’s worrying mind reminds him through the amused surface of his inebriation.
“Er…” his mind races, “what about, um, the poet Greensleeves’ things?” Racheal’s sobbing becomes a satirical laugh and her hand slides up his thigh. “He’s not possessive,” she chortles as her tears subside and she wipes her red-rimmed eyes. She regains her composure with chilling swiftness and her voice becomes perfectly level. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Her pupils are wide pits reflecting orange fire and Ram’yana turns in time to see the lounge flare up with an astoundingly tall tongue of flame.
Racheal’s hand reaches for his tumescence in an enterprising attempt to slow him as her young man leaps to his feet and races to the doorway while wreathes of acrid smoke begin to writhe through the room. When he lifts the first container it’s obviously empty, but he judges the second almost full by its heft; he unscrews the lid frantically as the flames reach the leather jacket and Racheal roars with laughter, rocking back and forth with tears streaming down her rosy cheeks.
“Flame and burn, flare and turn, hell’s bright flame is what ye’ll earn…” The girl’s head lolls back and the young shaman watches her throat oscillate with her fricative syllables as he splashes water on the lounge and the room fills with black cloying fumes. Her chant continues when his eyes squeeze shut against the smoke and he crouches beneath the worst of the fumes. “Wheels can turn, oil can burn, let him know fate’s swift return...” Racheal’s words become a hum again and she slips into a coughing fit, falling sideways onto the mattress as the last of the water finally reduces the flaming lounge and coat to a sizzling black mass.
“I need a drink,” she coughs, rocking in foetal position on the jet black satin sheets, gasping in the clear space beneath the dark pall of pungent smoke that fills the upper two-thirds of the chamber.
“We’re fresh out of water,” Ram says, tapping the empty container. He drops it on the rug and ducks down beneath the smoke as he’s overcome by a coughing fit. Racheal stares up at him through her long blonde mane, dislodged from its trailing headband. “Any port in a storm,” she says, pointing to the flagon. “Come feel these sheets – they’re cool… and I have to try out this new camera on something.”
A true story
images - author's
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Mandrake & the Magician – Adder Ladies and the Dawn of Ra Part 6
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