There is no television where I’ve been. No phone, no Internet, no radio. Nothing about the outside world has been made available to me. Confined for the last few years in laboratories, examination rooms, and an darkened gymnasium; my hair is longer, my body is lean and fit: taut, pale flesh pulled over toned muscle free of blemish, atrophy or decay.

But my soul…

Blackened, faded to nothing but shadow.

In isolation I am kept, prepared for what is to come by people who tell me they love me. People who wear bits of my features like a mask.

The darkness envelopes me when I am alone. My eyes go unshut but still I see nothing. The moment the technicians or masqueraders depart from my immediate presence, the shadows coalesce before my sight. The warmth of the halogen examination lamps, the barely perceptible flicker of the fluorescent lighting, turns to a muted cold and my sight gives way to dark.

The weariness that comes of timeless days allows me to welcome the comfort of slumber as it takes me and I welcome the knowledge that my eyes shut of my own accord as dreams spirit me away. In the arms of sleep I can still feel his cold, dry lips on my own. Weisz, my former master, my equal, my memory. He cannot redeem me nor love me. His heart is not my own.

My mother, dead and gone, for which I am thankful. Paul, a daydream of a daft girl. But it is is the perceived screams of Aunt Nicky and Mikey that haunt my slumber. A city died, and they with it.

My home is gone. Forever a scorched earth.

My heroes, dead. Or gone. Or both.

Why?

My saviors, my true family.

The flawed, Earth-bound gods that I could look to the skies as a child and chance upon a streak of color or feel the Sun’s rays interrupted by a shadow for a scant moment. Their shadows fall over my body. They protected the city. They protected me, keeping the monsters at bay. Giving me the chance to be here, in the dark.

Pacific City died in my dreams 5 years ago. My mind’s eye gave me a view, from the shadows. My heroes beating each other to death; overcome by the forces from another world; they are changed, altered, no longer who I remember; or overwhelmed by their own drive to protect. My childish hopes to one day join them in the skies: Michael, Victoria, Jeffery and the rest, dashed.

5 years ago a part of me inside turned to the desolation that has now consumed my soul.

What God would want me now?

What hero would look down from the sky and see what used to be?

Today. Tonight. It doesn’t matter anymore. I will cease to be Sheila Torrance or Sheila Christmas. My newly found Father repaired my flesh with scalpel, drug therapies, and physical regimen. My Aunt sharpened my mind with knowledge, history, and required etiquette’s. My Grandmother schooled me in the way of Ars Magna. No incantations, no rituals, only sheer force of will.

Body as a temple. Mind as an altar. Spirit as the sacrifice.

Soon I shall become Sheila Rule, Lady of Shadows.

---

Ars Magna #4
“The End Is The Beginning Is The End”
(Wicked Game Act I)
By Ashley Corgan

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---

[12 year old Sheila Torrance came into possession of a pair of creatures called Talismans. In the span of a year her entire life was turned upside down by different events: mentored by Johann Weisz, a young American practitioner of magic; the revelation that a childhood history of abuse stemmed from her Father's secret affair with her Mother; the deaths of all she loved; and marriage to a dark being named British Rule, the Lord of Shadows.] Mr. St. Nick Black Dog Inside Man release

***

Sheila sat on a lightly padded bench in front of a strange vanity dresser, the candles about the room cast dancing shadows in her mirror’s reflection. She brushed her hair absently as she gazed at herself, every few minutes she’d blink her eyes only for her eye color to shift from green to blue and back again. Every brush stroke changed her hair’s length.

In spite of her upbringing and recent history Sheila was still a teen and, even on an unconscious level, still wrapped up in herself. Sheila stared hard into the mirror before her for a moment, remembering she had her mother’s eyes. Sheila found herself pulling open a seemingly random drawer and producing a small jar from inside, a long forgotten memory sprang to the forefront of her thoughts.

It was a gift from Snipe, the pair of green-irised orbs bobbed in other-worldly amber fluids.

A chill crept down her spine.

That same sensation turned from a chill to a set of fingers carefully following every bump of her spine, stopping only twice, ever so briefly, at the clasp of her simple cotton bra and at the band of her matching panties.

“Sheila, my dear. Its time”, her husband’s voice syrupy thick as it issued at the very edge of her ear.

The tan of her skin gave way to an alabaster pallor. Blue eyes flooded into pools of green. And long, unruly blond sun-kissed locks shortened to chocolate tresses. Shadows on the walls snuffed out the candles behind her.

And the darkness enveloped her.

***

Pity is not something easy to come by in this accursed place.

Much like mercy, pity is a weakness borne by human frailties. Here there are no humans, no humanity left in anyone born of the flesh; no, they are like unto gods. In this place the Lords and Ladies of Chaos reign, and the natural order of fantasy lives and dies by their whim. Magic and Imagination are one in the same, where dreams and reality coalesce. They are the drifting thoughts, the daydream players, hidden in the backstage of the universe pulling the strings of the subconscious.

Legends.

Nightmares.

Stories whispered by firelight.

When a child’s howling cry pierces the slumber of darkness, you know the Chaos Court is in session.

Mother often waxed poetical on the subject of this mythic cluster-fuck of superstition’s bastards and all I can do is pray to myself that I’ve done all I can for dearest Sheila. Together with my Family, we’ve done our damnedest to secure for her a better chance at a tolerable future as the wife of the Lord of Shadows.

The Bogeyman.

The Monster of childhood’s closets, bed nethers, and nightmares.

For several years he teased me with promises of but a sample of his flesh-form’s genetic makeup and it is only tonight, as he parted our company for the last time, with my only child that he deposited his sample into the arms of my wife, Mary.

His only son.

How fitting.

- Gregor Christmas, PhD.
Center of Analytical Nuances, Co-Education, and Research
Personal Entry, 13/1/2007

***

Jade irises flashed open in the dark, quarter-sized emeralds watched her breathe in silence, beat for beat of her heart they watched. Unstirring, unflinching, predatory eyes devoured her shape in the darkness.

Then she decided to speak.

“I love you”, she blurted to the stone-still eyes.

“I know your spoken for already to that cockamamie asshole but I don’t care, milady. I want you, all of you.”

She cleared her throat to spite the ghost of youth that threatened to crack its monologue.

“Damn the costs, milady. Damn them to Hell. I’ll have you. You or death, and I’ll make the fucker work for it.”

The eyes responded by slowly shutting.

The youth opened her mouth slightly to stifle a yawn but felt something force its way in.

“Shit”, she croaked before her throat filled with a cold that would soon reach the pit of her stomach.

“You talk too much, you pixie cunt. Nobody, but nobody talks to my wife that way”, the voice reverberated throughout her slight body.

The darkness broke down around them revealing a small chamber: coats, robes, and various veils hung from stone hooks carved into the walls. A young woman, with pale green eyes was pinned against a bare wall by a shadow that fell across her neck. Before her a tall, helmet sporting man clad in ink black robes held a rather elfin character suspended in mid-air. A thick tendril of shadow filled the pixie’s mouth, the flesh about the neck undulated as the sallow-skinned youth squirmed in place.

“Now listen here Tinkerbell, Sheila is my wife. I bought her fair and square from one of the scarab-wielders for quite the bargain and I’m not about to let a little bi-curious twerp like you clam-shell your way into my marriage bed”, British Rule seethed.

The pixie’s eyes watered as the thick, dark shadow wormed its way out of her throat and mouth. Sweet smelling bile issued from between the creature’s ruby lips as she fell limp to the ground.

“And my dear Shelia, Lady of Shadows, do not ever consort with those below your station here at the Chaos Court. It may be a coat room but dammit this – this is still hallowed ground.”

Sheila’s eyes narrowed, the brightness returning to her eyes again and the shadow that fell across her neck spread over her and slid down her body towards her feet where they stopped at her ankles as she lowered to the stone floor.

“Look Rule, I don’t give a flying rat’s-ass what you say, think, or do but I’m here to represent the Shadows just as my Grandmother is here to represent the Christmas Family. Just because you paid to marry me and I honored this deal doesn’t mean I’m a pawn in your stupid scheme.”

Sheila stepped over the prone form of the fallen would-be paramour and stepped into the grandiose hallway that led to the inner court where her destiny awaits.

***

With the last lines of the incantation spoken it’s little body twitched to spasmodic life.

“Suc-fucking-cess”, he hissed from behind a surgical mask, Gregor stared intently at the infant’s remains as it quietly twitched and shifted on the exam table.

He absently clicked a button on a remote, exam lights lowered from the ceiling illuminating the infant’s body, a monotone computer synthesized voice announced the beginning of a recording:

“Twelve Fifty Seven AM, the morning of of January 14th, Two thousand and Seven.

Marvelous news, my Mother’s casting worked.

A – spark – has entered the corpse and it responds in kind. This thing is the progeny of a girl and a being of warped power. Herakles unbound, Gilgamesh de Novo, Christ on a cracker. Anyway you cut it, this thing is extraordinary. 6 years without a bit of decay beyond discoloration and clouding of the corneas.”

Dr. Gregor Christmas ran a gloved hand over the brackish colored flesh of the stillborn. Its eyes slowly opened and closed absently revealing a pair of heterochromatic eyes.

Green, Blue, they blinked.

The doctor traced a finger down the reversed abortion’s arm.

“Hello”, Christmas cooed as the little fist curled about his index finger.

A sickening wet suckling of air, broke the levity.

Gregor’s brow furrowed as he mechanically issued his orders:

“Mary, sedate the corpse, take blood and tissue samples, then get rid of the rest.”

A high pitched squeal assaulted their ears, the infant’s grasp turned to a clawing-grip, its eyes more alive than ever before.

“Scratch that, Mary, dear. We have a fighter on our hands.”

His scrubs clad wife cum assistant nodded dutifully and exited the room, there were preparations to be made. He wrenched his finger from the tightening grip of the living dead child.

“You’re right, little one. What a waste you’d mak-”

“You’re no god”, a raspy voice issued forth from the babe’s mouth.

***

With a gilded trumpet a lone herald filled the stone-laid meeting hall with a short series of clipped blasts. The malformed protuberances on its back flapped and fidgeted with featherlessly behind it’s back.

Together British Rule and Sheila Torrance walked past tableful after tableful of bestiary, fairy-tale and mythological entities. Almost no belief or zealous fetish went unrepresented.

Rule’s helmet was left behind in the cloakroom, his finely aged countenance revealed a past of only recent grievances and stress lines; his royal blue eyes shone brilliant in the torchlight. Hair both short and dark peppered by white-golden strands, with his strong jaw set and nose upturned to the monstrously, curious rabble that murmured between equal parts gawking, feasting, and orgy.

Sheila’s womanly features were drunken in by hordes of wanton eyes. Her mother’s blessed curse of early bloom now pulled the material of her ink black robes to a ripe tightness at both her bust and arse. Her eyes were set fixed on her Grandmother who remained seated on a throne set upon a dais along with twelve others, two of which reserved for the coming couple.

A table of Changelings clucked their silver tongues at the new bride.

SH-UNK!

An offending hand now free of its wrist twitched on the stone floor.

“ENOUGH!”

Rule cried aloud at the gathered.

“No more pretense.”

All activity came to a halt as a thick tendril of shadow suddenly pulled Sheila tight to his body.

“I, your Lord of Shadows, hereby claim this woman as my Lady of Shadows…”

His gaze locking onto her own.

“May you all bare witness to our consummation.”

Lady Richmond Christmas looked away as her granddaughter was stripped before the denizens of the Chaos Court.

***

“What!?”

Dr. Christmas stunned by this turn of events.

“You’re all the same, you fools and your scalpels and complexes”, the once dead infant spoke once again.

“You’ve gone too, too far this time but I’m willing to play along – this time.”

Gregor took a step back from the examination table.

“Don’t go too far, Doctor. I know what you’re up to and I’ll do as you wish…”

“I-I”.

“Shut up and listen. The name is Liebowitz – Joseph Liebowitz, and I know a thing or two about dealing with these magical types.”Ciao movie

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