(This excerpt contains scenes of violence some might find objectionable.)

Chapter One

Number Nine’s Necro-baptism

Number Seven – The Thief

“One must die by fire, one must die by frost, one must die by poison, one must die by hanging, one must die by drowning, one must die by eating, one must die by being eaten, one must die by lust, one must die by suicide, one must survive and all must live in praise of Bacchus.”

Hersh, Number 1, Christ-Bacchus, God-child

How did I wind up here, behind this mask? I was wearing the same one that the rest of the boys were, it’s face was that of a beautiful woman’s with an ivy-sprig crown, blue eyes and a grinning, dragon-tooth smile. All the boys but Number Nine, the Musician, stood in a circle while the girls watched from the balcony. I looked up at Number Three, the Astrologer. She was speaking to her daughter, Number Eight, the Virgin, Number Ten, the Chef and Number Five, the Sommelier. Over the course of my travels, I learned to read lips, it would prove to be the one skill that made sure I’d get out of the temple alive.

“The full moon is in perigee. This only happens once every thirteen months,” the Astrologer informed the Virgin, Chef, and Sommelier.

“They’ll be driven mad…” the Chef added.

“As if they aren’t already?” the Sommelier asked, rhetorically.

“The moon doesn’t feed their lunacy. Their lunacy feeds the moon,” the Astrologer finished.

Perhaps she was right, the temple drove Number Nine mad enough to take his own life. He had been a victim of his own tragic disposition, slitting his wrists that old-fashioned way. The boys had been waiting in a circle, shifting around in their uncomfortable dresses and masks, until finally Number Four, the Magician, dragged Number Nine’s corpse into the center of the circle beside the ivory tub. The white tub was filled with deep red wine that suffused the temple with cigar-box vapors. The Magician lifted Number Nine up to the tub’s lip to sit.

“May his dreams and memories be chained to this realm that they not follow him beyond. Take a good look at him, he is without his senses, and so his soul shall remain, unable to witness the glory.”

The Magician paused and let go of Number Nine’s corpse until it simply keeled over, to the side, splashing into the tub of wine. Once the body had been submerged, we all walked over to the tub’s side.

“Each of you dunk him three times as tribute to Bacchus,” the Magician commanded.

In order of our numbers, we lifted Number Nine up by his hair and dunked him back into the wine three times. I was the last in line to do so and once I had finished, it was my duty to lift the corpse out of the tub and onto the floor. I didn’t think I could do it alone but when I tried, I felt superhuman power exuding out of every muscle. I looked at the moon, shining down from the oculus in the ceiling, it seeped a strengthening soma from out its craterous pores. With one arm, I took Number Nine out of the tub and threw him on the floor like a ragdoll.

The four women stood up from their balcony seats and walked down to the floor, knowing they would soon be needed for cleanup.

“In tribute to Number Nine’s music, Number One will be playing the flute.”

Number One, the Hierophant, Bacchus incarnate, lifted up his mask to reveal that thirteen-year-old baby-face we’ve all come to worship. The Hierophant was a special boy with a sad story. His name was Hersh and he was a hermaphrodite. Cast away by the world as a freak, he found a circle of people who would worship him as a God. He lifted his mask up to reveal those beautiful, golden blonde curls, his androgynous face, and those crusty lips. He brought his flute up to those crusty lips and played for us the perfect soundtrack to the violence that would ensue.

“In praise of Bacchus, tear the body to pieces,” the Magician commanded again.

All of us spared no time in grabbing a limb or piece of tissue and pulling with all our might. Bones would dislodge and break before his flesh just split apart under the tension. Limbs, fingers, joints, and knuckles were flying up off the body in a frenzy.

“Embrace your divine madness. Let the nymphs seize you. The prince of pandemonium bequeaths you. Bacchus. Dionysus. The twice born. The lord of souls. Son of Zeus. Son of Semele. God of demonic silence and breathtaking violence. God of the most blessed ecstasy and enraptured love. Whose spirit is elemental to all that is created and destroyed and belonging to the Earth. In the name of this God, our God, who’s come to us in human form, embrace your divine madness and tear this sacrifice apart,” the Magician preached with startling theatricality.

When our hands were too slippery with Number Nine’s blood, we resorted to our teeth and like jackals, ripped through the carrion without daring to swallow. With too many pieces to count strewn around the room, Number Nine had been divided up into an irrational number.

That’s when the Astrologer and Sommelier pushed forward a vat of the mad honey. We all took handfuls of the honey to eat and celebrate the ritual’s end. The Chef came around with a knife, stripping as much of Number Nine’s fat off his pieces as she could collect. All the rest of him, the Astrologer, the Sommelier, the Virgin and the Chef would gather up to dunk in the mad honey for preservation.

We all lifted our masks and became men again.

“What now?” the Chemist asked.

“We drink,” the Banker smiled and turned to Number Five, the Sommelier.

“I made a special wine for us tonight,” the Sommelier informed us.

“Made it?” I asked.

“That’s right, Jesus. Necro-baptisms and full moon perigees don’t happen every night. This occasion was too momentous for just any bottle,” the Sommelier replied.

With ample time between now and drinks, this is a good opportunity to make introductions. Hersh has to be Number One. Hersh is God as child, the homunculus, like Christ and Bacchus, he is twice born and from the water. Number Two is a man of just as much importance, a man of great vision but still, just a man. Number Two is the Banker, Charles Gaiman. Yes, that Charles Gaiman, of Gaiman-Billings, the mega bank. Stricken from birth with a terrible case of Omphalos syndrome, he is the financer of wars, governments, revolutions, political movements on the left and right, and cults like ours. Drunk with power and empowered to drink, at his old age, wine is his one true love, after his wife, Number Three. Opal Gaiman, Number Three, the Astrologer, is Charles’ pregnant wife. Behind every great man, is a great woman and this great, big, gluttonous lady is responsible for the mad beliefs that infected Mr. Gaiman and led him to conduct this decadent experiment in the first place. The Gaimans’ first child, Scarlet, is Number Eight, the Virgin. I’ve never seen a more beautiful blonde in my life, but I dare not act upon my impulses and touch her. Not to skip over too many heads, Number Four is the Magician, Salerno De Palma. With his giant, muscular frame, Sal is Hersh’s greatest confidant. He would die for Hersh and our cult, because we are his key to the magical realm he’s spent his whole life learning about. Mindy Oliver, perhaps my favorite of us all, is Number Five, the Sommelier or Somm, for short. She’s a republican dyke with barrel-loads of attitude and has been working directly under Gaiman for at least a decade. Number Six is the Chemist, John Rollins, a PhD paid to make our drugs. Then there’s me, Number Seven, the Thief, a title I take no issue with. I came to this country illegally from Mexico to steal my freedom. I didn’t come here to work, I came to here to explore, like Byron into Albania before the world had such rigid borders. I ventured through South and North America as a poet, my feet led by the ancestral memory of my grandfathers and a lyrical flow in my mind. I was on a quest to improve my potency for poetry. From the moment I stepped foot in America, I decided I would meet the man who owns this country and lo and behold, Mr. Gaiman found me. He took a deep affection and appreciation for my talents. As a skilled thief and lock-pick named Jesus Madrid, he saw the irony in including me in his collective. Number Nine was the Musician, Leroy Rich. Now, he’s a bunch of honey coated pieces, stewing in the bitter goop. Number 10 Ten is the Chef, a transgender male to female. She was born Ingo Braun but reborn Inga. She hates us all, I’m sure of it. Why? Because we use honey for religious purposes and thus, get a pass to break our vow of veganism. That’s us. That’s Bacchus Death Collective. The BDC.

~ * ~

The boys were sitting around a table in the dining room. It’s a beautifully decorated room with vines and ivy growing out of every crack and crevice and crawling up the legs of our marbled table. The only women allowed in our vicinity are first the Somm, to serve wine and second, the Chef, to serve dinner. The Somm approached first, carrying a bronze decanter that was sculpted into Hersh’s face. She arrived at the table and introduced her wine.

“Tonight Bacchae, I made a special and ancient blend of what is known as a retsina. Modern wine cannot exceed a fourteen percent alcohol content but with this, the sky’s the limit. It’s more comparable to a tincture, really. I wanted to make sure we all forget about Number Nine as quickly and violently as possible. The base wine is a thick and tannic Saperavi vintage 2014, with grape resin. It was fermented by burial in the soil of a marani cellar in Georgia. The black plum smelling Saperavi’s dry, peppery taste is complemented by blending in the mad honey and a pinch of sea water from the Mediterranean.”

The Somm poured each of us a glass of the retsina. We all took a whiff and sip of the vulgarly stout drink. Many of us coughed out our severed taste buds. Hersh even gagged up a bit of vomit. After a few swigs, we discovered the delight in damaging ourselves.

“I taste sour cherry and black currant,” the Chemist began.

“It’s a warming wine,” I continued.

“It’s like sandpaper on my tongue, did you dip-in your rancid finger to stir this blend, you wretch?” the Banker asked the Somm, smacking his teasing crimson lips.

The Banker would always do this, offend the wine, torment the Somm, and silence the table. This was his show, no one but Hersh ever dared make a peep against him.

“No, sir. I used a metal stirrer and precise measurements. Do you not like it, sir?” the Somm asked with an undaunted discipline.

“Fetch me something I’m used to.”

“I’ll bring two bottles right away, sir,” the Somm smiled and skittered off, away from the table.

In the awkward stillness that followed, the Banker just shook his head. “Can you fucking believe her?”

That’s when Hersh hurled his retsina up all over the table. The Magician sprang up from his seat with a bowl and walked over to Hersh as if he was going to comfort the child. Instead, the Magician reached over and collected all Hersh’s bilious red slop into his bowl.

“Mustn’t lose a drop, sacred fluid…never know when I might need it for a ritual,” the Magician then turned to Hersh. “Will you be spitting up anymore, Lord Bacchus?”

Hersh leaned over the bowl and spit out the debris lining his mouth before he waved the Magician away.

“Thank you, Lord Bacchus,” the Magician said then returned to his seat.

The Somm returned with two bottles of wine for the Banker.

“What do we have here?” the Banker asked.

“Some Lubrusca from your own vineyard. 2001.”

“Excellent, my favorite vintage. Grows just a few hours from here, up in the Fingerlakes.”

“Interesting,” I replied, feigning interest.

The Somm brought both bottles to the Banker and placed them before him.

“I won’t be needing a glass,” the Banker informed the Somm, who rolled her eyes at him. The Banker then continued, “What was that wine we baptized Number Nine in?”

“Standard Beaujolais. Something the Chef would cook with.”

The Banker nodded then stood up from his seat.

“If you’d all excuse me, I’d like to drink my wine by myself.”

The Banker then strode off, carrying both bottles of Gaiman Lubrusca.