Page 45 of Ma Petite Mort
He comes. Hard.
Moaning. Gagged. Writhing.
And I swing.
CHUNK.
The blade hits his neck. Not clean. Not pretty. Just final.
Blood spurts across my chest like holy water. His head dangles half-off, his body still twitching. The wheel creaks as it slows, cum still dripping down his thigh.
Alaska howls, wild and unhinged, crawling in circles around the body like she’s guarding a fresh kill.
Indie rises slowly, blood-slick and grinning, then turns to the crowd with a predator’s gleam in her eyes.
“Don’t just stand there,” she purrs, voice like smoke and venom. “Worship him. Worshipthis.”
She kicks the corpse’s leg out wider and gestures toward the blood pooling beneath him.
“Touch yourselves. Praise the gods.”
I stand tall, dripping, panting, laughing like I’ve never been happier in my life.
“And that, darklings,” I scream, arms wide, eyes wild, “is how you end a fucking show!”
The crowderupts. Cheering. Crying. Coming.
Some drop to their knees. Others run forward, begging to be next.
The gods are fed.
The blood runs warm.
And me?
I giggle as I toss the axe into the fire and blow the crowd a kiss with fingers still soaked in death.
“Final moan, baby,” I whisper. “Final fucking moan.”
chapter twelve
bjorn
Heresy - Nine Inch Nails
It’s over.
The last scream tore itself from a throat two offerings ago, lost to the choking air. The final axe has long since found its mark, buried in bone and silence. Even the moans—once curling around the torchlight like smoke—have dwindled into stillness, leaving only the thick, smothering weight of what’s been done.
The tent no longer groans under the weight of its occupants, but it does not forget. It breathes in what remains. The stench of it clings to the canvas: blood and semen, smoke and rot, scorched flesh and spilled liquor. Death lives here now.
Not quietly or peacefully.
But proudly, like a beast with a full belly stretched out in the wreckage of its hunt.
Blood gathers at my feet, sluggish and dark. It coats the soles of my boots, the handle of my axe, the carved runes along my chest where it’s dried into a second skin. Bits of bone glint beneath the muck, and a half-severed hand twitches once before going still. The firelight flickers low along the edges of the canvas above me, but the heat remains, smoldering. It feels earned.
I stand alone in the center ring, though the dead surround me. Mangled bodies splay across the floor—some curled into themselves like they died afraid, others stretched out like offerings, split open in supplication. A few still breathe, though shallowly. A cough here, a sob there, and somewhere in the dark, a guest whispers a prayer not meant for me, or my gods. It makes my skin tighten. This is no place fortheirgod.
