Part 1:
On the cusp of pubescence it was not a mystery to Astrid and Franziska, to themselves, that they were sexual creatures. Nor, did they think, it was to others – although the apparent, half-hearted denial of this fact by some of those who classified themselves as “adults” – based on some abstract, legal threshold regarding the same which apparently demarcated the line between those capable of rational decision making and those not – made them laugh, in their sinister way. For both of these sisters knew, these twins, could tell, when, under the guise of paternal affection their father or grandfathers, uncles and other male relatives would touch them in an apparent innocent fashion, or glance at them that such lines would be blurred – if, indeed, they ever existed in the first place. They – these empathic twins – could readily feel the desire that radiated through such presumably innocent touches, such presumably innocent glances for in fact, in such cases, little empathy was needed because what was simply was – natural, apparent, readily ascertained. And the twins did not hold this desire, this longing by others for their smooth, taut flesh; their youth, their gaiety; against these older males. What they did find to be equally amusing but more often than not maddening was the contradictory stance that was so often taken by these, who were taught how to wield condescension even amidst their praise and who would rail, in a rote, societally-approved fashion, against forbidden love when they, themselves, knew that it was such a forbidden love with them, both, that these same men yearned for.
The sisters knew themselves to be sexual, feeling and capable of ecstasies when they, alone in their room in the deepest parts of the evening or the sleepy, mist-shrouded early pre-dawn would touch each other, sensually. Not always simply softly, with tenderness, as males would often be wont to superimpose as the default and base pacing of their sort but sometimes roughly, with an edge of violence tinging their lust, with that roughness that two sisters of a spirited nature – oft to play but oft to fight – would readily, naturally exhibit. The sisters knew themselves to be sexual, and calculating in their sexuality when they, on some occasions, would accost their brother, Martin, several years their junior and lead him, coach him – calculatingly – to touch their bodies, guiding his hands and placing them on secret places beneath their clothes and watch as he, his confusion, his embarrassment in his youthful naïveté led over time – via their prompting – to other vistas, other peregrinations of desire. The sisters knew themselves to be sexual, calculating and indeed predatory in their sexuality when they would at other times, with that roughness that siblings of a spirited nature – oft to play but oft to fight – molest him, bending his will to theirs, with a long feminine finger thrust penetrating, violating – orchestrating in him a distortion toward muliebral nature in the same way that a conductor would lead a symphony toward infernal heights at the crescendo of a Mussorgsky fantasy.
On a walk along a cobblestoned street one day in those cold days on the cusp of Spring when the air was still chill and the trees still barren of the green splendour to come, still marked by the Winter so recently passed, the sisters came upon a small bookshop tucked away along a narrow alleyway snaking out from the busy streets of the university town which they, along with their family, had come to visit in the concourse of accompanying their father on business. Their father, as appropriate, was in the midst of associated tasks on the campus itself and their mother was busy supervising their younger brother who was well preoccupied at a sweets-shop some blocks south leaving them together to wander at their leisure.
The bookshop caught their eye immediately upon passing not because of its rather worn, weathered and even somewhat decrepit wooden sign which hung above the green doorway nor by the lush foliage, well-trimmed and evergreen, which sprouted from the small garden boxes beneath either of its large windows. Peering through the windows however the sisters spied, with their grey-blue eyes glinting coldly but inquisitively in the midday sunlight, a curious cabinet marked “antiquities” upon which were placed figurines both large and small – some which appeared humanoid in appearance with others grotesqueries of a most inhuman shape and fashion.
Entering the shop through the battered green doorway, a ringing chime triggered, yet with no visible shopkeep making an appearance from amidst the cluttered shelves, the sisters proceeded to the cabinet which was located beside a narrow and winding staircase toward an upper floor of which they could glimpse a small portion from their current vantage point, apparently housing an even more cluttered assortment of printed items than apparent on the ground-level itself. The figurines in the cabinet were separated from the possibility of handling by customers by a thin layer of somewhat dusty commercial glass so Franziska raised her forearm to the surface, smearing off some of the dust with the sleeve of her denim jacket while Astrid glanced behind them to make sure that a surly owner or equally surly regular wasn’t coming around a corner as Franziska did so.
Their ability to view increased by Franzi’s cursory cleaning, the two sisters pressed their faces up against the glass, peering at the curious statues which hearkened as it were to another time, another place – both more numinous in nature than the doldrums of modernity yet also numinous in their extremity, as certain of the figures depicted in these sculptures seemed to be engaged in orgiastic rites of excess, blasphemy. Others exuded an air of unmistakable violence, intimidation, threat. As sexual creatures themselves, self-aware, yet christened as forbidden fruit by the laws of the state – such informed as the case may be by the laws of society and economic commodity; these depicted allusions toward such bygone orgiastic rites of excess and blasphemy, of beings possessed of such a violence, intimidation and threat, pleased them and provoked within them a lust and a yearning, not strange, but rather, familiar. Hands clasped together in one another’s sisterly hands they looked, soaking in the scenes and entities in miniature so depicted, seeking to remember them, to recall so that they, themselves, might bring about some similar spirit in their secret pastimes later, alone, together.
The sisters’ reverie was interrupted by a sound to their left near the stairwell and they both simultaneously managed to peel their faces away from the glass of the cabinet just in time to see the tail end of a trench-coat disappear around the corner with an appreciable swoosh, followed by what sounded like a male voice humming to himself. Astrid and Franzi glanced at one another, facing each other and communicating a quizzical suggestion through their eyes without any verbal follow-through, as twin sisters frequently do, and then, with a simultaneous shrug, they too mounted the stairwell to see what awaited on the second floor.
*
Part 2:
The second floor of the bookshop was very similar to the first except that it felt somehow more cloistered, a bit more stuffy and a bit more crowded than on the ground floor. The first perhaps because there were no open windows or passageways to the outside, though a faded stream of light from a closed, upper window shone down in a zig-zagging angle through its rather dirty pane, highlighting the swirling dust of the place within its lazy beams. The second, as to crowding, was no doubt due to the fact that even as the sisters had ascertained earlier from the most cursory of glances, this part of the shop was indeed even more cluttered than the rest.
Their quarry in the trench-coat had eluded them somehow or other as he was no longer in sight (they had lost visuals as he crested the top of the stairs), however from back amidst many sagging shelves and large tables laden with withering newspapers of the right-wing tabloid variety (Franzi noticed this first, her nose crinkling with some distaste at the discovery) they could hear that unmistakable humming and as such they proceeded to follow the sound to investigate further.
Near the very end of the far shelves the sound of the humming grew more pronounced, and rounding the corner in their zest, the sisters nearly toppled into the man in the trench-coat, who was crouched right on the other side examining the volumes on the lowermost shelf. Astrid and Franzi let out an involuntary cry as they ground themselves to a halt and the man in the trench-coat latched himself to the wooden-frame of the bookshelf, bracing himself for what would have inevitably been an American football-style pileup. Franzi cursed under her breath, drawing a reprimanding look from her older sister who muttered a more conservative peinlich in response to her sister’s untoward comment and the situation in general. Seeing the man still crouched to the floor and muttering to himself as well, the sisters reached down together, an arm from both grasping either of his shoulders and pulling him up, much to his protestations that he was quite all right.
Raised up to his full-height, which was, all in all, not that much taller than the two sisters, the man presented a somewhat curious figure, though not one that would be incongruous in a book shop of this sort, that is to say, an old, more classical bookshop, sans the brightly-lit interiors and elaborate cappuccino bars so beloved to inhabit and quaff (in regard to the latter) by the metropolitan smart-set. The first thing the girls noticed was a strikingly bushy, ginger beard and greenish-eyes bearing somewhat of a thousand-yard stare (no doubt due to the recent and sudden interruption) peering out from behind his round spectacles which met their own, glinty, grey-blue eyes in turn. The man very politely apologised and it seemed only appropriate for the girls to insist in fact that the near collision was their fault entirely (they did not, however, admit to stalking him – though he himself could probably well enough recognise that fact by his own recognisance).
Finding a way to extract himself from their company – albeit politely so – the man looked down at his wrist-watch and made a slight tsk tsk noise and noting that he had somewhere important to be almost immediately. Thus he left them, but not before shaking their hands, politely, in turn, and then proceeding out from betwixt the narrow bookshelves and back toward the stairwell (the sisters at this juncture stood well to the side giving him an ample berth for a successful departure without any undue bumping, though Astrid did feel the slightest touch of the man’s coat brush her hand as he began his departure).
The stranger having thus been roundly hunted, cornered and loosed by the sisters, they turned their intention instead to the lowermost bookshelf which he had only briefly before been perusing and then they too crouched down among the well-worn, second-hand tomes to see if they themselves might find something of interest and perhaps even an indicator of the character of the rather elusive figure who had so recently departed.
*
Part 3:
The sisters had been surprised, after searching through the volumes previously being examined by the man in the trench-coat, to see that the section itself dealt with what would be termed in usual parlance as concerning itself with “Black Magick” – thus perhaps its rather tucked-away placement in respect to the rest of the shop and also, perhaps, a contributing factor to the rather alarmed reaction of the man when found there by the sisters (the possibility of physical collision notwithstanding, however).
A few of the volumes in particular, with the purported authorship of a certain Order labelling itself as “Traditional Satanist” in general orientation yet claiming roots in an alleged aural tradition stemming from Ancient Albion in the British Isles took their especial fancy. However, with no excess of pocket-money and their rucksacks having been stowed in the boot of their father’s automobile (the absence of such luggage on their persons’ disallowing the remote possibility of any undetected theft, despite the relative quiet of the place), they settled for second-best – taking note of the name of the organisation in question and promising each other to research further – via the medium of the internet – once out from the university town and back home in their own room, in their own house.
The ride home was uneventful, though their brother Martin, having been well fortified by an extended luncheon at the sweets-shop followed by a formal family dinner at the hotel restaurant on Beaumont St. (during which there was also an ample dessert following the meal itself) was very lively, somewhat disconcertingly so, especially since he was seated between them on the rather small backseat of the family sedan as it speeded along the dark thoroughfare northward to their home, still some hours away. Remembering between themselves the scenes depicted in the design of the statues they had observed earlier at the bookshop and seemingly communicating, non-verbally, as twin sisters are oft to do, Astrid and Franziska stretched a hand both outward, settling them on either thigh of their younger brother and began rubbing, softly, but with intent. Initially Martin’s reaction seemed somewhat startled, but then, as they began rubbing with more enthusiasm, albeit gently, he met their own sly glances with a sly glance of his own and soon enough closed his eyes in pleasure, lost in his own private reverie – prompted to no small degree by his older sisters’ intentful ministrations.
Their mother and father glanced backward at them, surreptitiously, through the rear-view mirror and smiled to themselves, pleased, as parents are oft to do when seeing that their children are meeting their expectations of behaviour and then, after, began to engage themselves in low conversation, politely so for their son, whose eyes were closed (apparently in rest) and for their twin daughters whose attention lay upon the churning, dark forests visible through the back windows of the sedan on either side respectively, their breaths steaming against the cold windows of that early Spring and their fingers, those which were not resting upon the body of their sibling, those twin fingers sometimes drawing, from memory, certain sigils and insignias which they had viewed – albeit briefly – in those tomes housed in the bookshop along Sheep Street amidst the waning afternoon in that southerly campus town.
Eventually the family arrived safely at their destination, that house on the outskirts of a somewhat rural farm which marked the principal landmark of the area, the sedan slowly grinding upon the packed rocks rendered from perhaps far-off quarries and the lights of the headlights casting their incandescent glow upon the front of that old house which had been their domicile now for some years. The sisters, gently, roused their younger sibling from his reverie, snaking their knowing hands up from his thighs across his youthful stomach and chest and resting them, much as they had done (yet more gingerly) upon the man in the trench-coat earlier in that coolfull, early Spring afternoon, shaking him, politely so, awake, before proceeding together, as a family, into the house – their arrival greeted with a marked meowling from the twins’ favourite tom-cat, who had somehow or other ensconced himself within the interior of their domicile prior to their departure earlier the day before.
*
Part 4:
With their brother now in bed and their parents enjoying a glass of wine in the downstairs den, the sisters had the rest of the evening to themselves to do with as they wished. With little ado other than throwing their rucksacks upon their respective single beds, which sat to either side of a large plush rug and letting in their favourite tom-cat, who indicated his desire to enter with a furtive scratching at their door, the sisters pulled up a chair on either side of their shared desktop computer and began searching for information concerning that certain Order which they had read about, earlier.
As the girls read they began to ascertain somewhat of the nature of the books that they had encountered as much of the writings associated with that Order and its associated subject matter seemed to be readily available and much talked about online. The discussions concerning the alleged origins in antiquity of the group in question and the practices related to the same they found to be non-plussing in the extreme, with little to catch their imagination and with some of the more base argumentative threads regarding the same seeming somewhat familiar to the sorts of controversies they observed among their own schoolmates, yet somewhat less adept in general.
The visual artwork, allegedly depicting or attempting to depict the energies associated with the pantheon of the group, known as the “Dark Gods” they found much more interesting, although few except the most extreme of such depictions seemed to match the sort of sinister energy and posture which had been exhibited so starkly in the designs they had seen on the figurines in the antiquities cabinet that afternoon, though certain of the sigils and symbols seemed to possess in themselves a dread potency, indicative of some potentially disastrous dark forces that waited, patiently, just beyond the boundaries of their three-dimensional world.
The few polemical articles that they found concerning the status of their own demographic, that of youth, in connection to the group in question made them laugh, in their sinister way, though somewhat derisively so. One in particular dealing with the subject of “Satanic child abuse” and disavowing the same (while stating that those of their own age bracket were in fact not possessed of the cognitive abilities to make decisions on whether or whether not to participate in certain activities) amused them particularly. On the one hand the sisters could understand that the group was, at the time of writing perhaps, that time of the great Satanic child-abuse scares, tactically exempting themselves from such activities, yet they were also amused because they knew, from even cursory research, that at the end of that decade such scares were in fact farcical – and even contrived by children, themselves, mischievous children who relished in creating scandal in the world of “adults” – those thinking, decisive, rational creatures that they supposedly were. One case in particular came to mind, that of Edenton, which was not dissimilar in many ways to the way that the girls of a long-ago Massachusetts town had also created a much more pronounced and eventually deadly scandal with a similar stratagem, the sly smiles of the children betwixt themselves unseen by those adults who positioned themselves so very far above them and who believed them to be their protectors.
Soon they tired of scrolling through those countless articles which, although purporting to be the work of a mostly-female organisation, they felt, instinctively, was probably more than likely the work of men – perhaps not dissimilar to the man in the trench-coat that they had encountered in that bookshop along Sheep Street earlier on that afternoon of early Spring. They did however come across certain stories, purportedly exhibiting certain “occult” lessons in narrative format (thus the “occult” aspect of the lessons’ transmission) which they found to be provocative – for their atmosphere, their sexuality, their violence seemed to exhibit that same atmosphere, that sexuality, that violence which they, themselves, knew themselves to possess and understood – intrinsically – that they were capable of wielding.
Astrid left Franzi alone at the keyboard and stole downstairs to prepare them both a cup of tea, passing quietly their father, Sepp, who lay in a contented yet somewhat drunken state in his chair in the den, a freshly opened bottle of Glenfiddich sitting beside two empty wine-glasses, their mother having apparently long since retired for the evening. The water boiled and the tea now steeping in the Brown Betty, Astrid left the kitchen along with two mugs and passed quietly by their sleeping father (but not before pouring a dollop of the single-malt to fortify her and her older sister’s beverage) before mounting the stairwell to their shared room at the top.
For the next few hours the two sisters took turns reading to one another from the stories that they had found, stories full of a myriad of characters involved in various circumstances – often sinister in nature – all of which seemed to be set in various locales within that land where the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough which they, themselves, now inhabited, albeit for a time.
As the night wore on and the subject matter of their reading, the exertions of the day and that small, stolen portion of life’s waters from their father’s bottle all conspired to draw them to their evening’s rest they found that this satisfied, lazy fatigue created in them a burgeoning, rising lust. Not only a lust as was usual between them, for sisters of their sort, but a lust to do the sort of deeds they read about in those stories – a fanatic desire to become like those entities which they had seen depicted in the bookshop and which certain individuals – sometimes acting in concert but more often acting alone, in secret – sought to bring to physical manifestation on the earth, loosening them from whatever foul corner of deepest space where they were now imprisoned. With these thoughts and others churning within their minds the sisters rose and tenderly, yet intently, stripped one another of their garments before they stood before each other naked, the shadow of their tom-cat sitting upon the open window-ledge and the cool lunar rays of the an early Spring moon, nearly full, cast upon their youthful bodies.
Kissing each other, mouth pressed to sisterly mouth and tongue probing sisterly tongue, they embraced, lowering themselves onto the plush rug which lay between their beds. As their passion became more inflamed Franzi reached her hand downward and began slowly massaging her younger sister as her younger sister, in turn, brought her own hand around behind her older sister, cradling her posterior and then inserting one finger and then another to that forbidden place between, the arousal through such means being Astrid’s particular proclivity. Through their shared love, though it had been shared many times before and would many times after, on this night in particular their act seemed to them – within their apprehension -yet not verbally relayed to one another – to mark the sealing of a pact – a pact between two devils, the likes of which even purported servants of the same were apt to fear.
To the far side of the room a shadow was cast and Astrid and Franzi turned their heads to see their father standing in the doorway to their room, the door cracked open and his face bearing a look of incredulity, yet in the pools of his eyes, deeper down, something more. With eyes deep with affection and deep with calculating intent the sisters extended each a hand toward him, and their father, closing the door behind him, walked towards his daughters and lowered himself down between them, surrendering to their embrace.
R. Merrick
*
Notes:
1.) “Children have not always been perceived as a protected commodity in a puritanical society, as they are now. Current morality seeks to protect children not so much due to their inherent innocence (which is arguable), but so they can be carefully moulded by mundane standards in order to play their part in the economical structure, going through each stage of the same motions, same development, from childhood to teen years, to early adulthood onward, limited by their adherence to seeking base material success. Sex is one more commodity in this equation, and when its acceptable standards are bent, its stranglehold is threatened. Children have been economic pawns throughout history, and really there is more precedence for young children being married off and breeding early than there is for the current model of their “protection” — which has more to do with protecting and extending their interest in the schema of mundane society. Some may see certain imagery of children on the above blog as exploitative. Welcome to the world; it is an exploitative place. If something as simple as a child being sexualized is enough to cause squirming, disgust, and fear, then perhaps it’s time to ask why, and where these morals come from, and what their worth really is.”
2.) “(δ) that there is no conformity to conventional social/moral rôles but rather certain accepted practices.”
(δ) “means that women often tend to run/govern/provide for the family/farm; that relationships between two women – and between siblings and cousins – are not unusual, and if and when they occur are not condemned and are not even remarked upon; and that there was/is no distinction of social class between those ‘of the gift’.’ – The Rounwytha Way in History and Modern Context
Woodshed Rounwytha 