Dark Rites

She wore white where the others wore red.

Alex began to tremble.

Sacrifice...this beautiful young woman!

The high priest raised his hands. He reached down for the knife on the altar. He lifted it high.

Alex’s knees were giving; he was going to fall. They were going to sacrifice the young woman!

But the high priest continued to talk. “The time comes for the ultimate, as we prepare this world for he who is coming—he who will touch you all, and give you life and freedom. We prepare, we come closer and closer!”

Someone stepped forward, touching the young woman by the shoulders. The white gown fell to her feet.

No! He had to protest; Alex had to do something, had to stop this...

Alex heard a noise. A horrible bleating, a protest.

He turned.

It was a goat.

And as Alex watched, the poor creature was trussed up by a pair of the figures and stretched, screaming and terrified, over the altar.

And the knife went down on the creature’s belly and then its throat.

Blood sprayed across the table and down onto the cobblestones. The bleating stopped.

“All hail Satan!”

The cry went up. The gushing blood was caught in a chalice. The cup was passed around.

It was brought before the girl; she was marked in blood over her breasts—what the markings meant, Alex didn’t know.

But she was alive!

The chalice was passed again. It came to him.

He was supposed to drink.

He did.

It was amazing what terror and the will to survive could do for a man.

* * *

He didn’t vomit until he was back in his little cell.

He fell on his little cot, shivering and sick.

“Vickie, please, please, find me!” he said softly. “Please, please!”

He thought he might cry; he felt he should, but didn’t. He was too bewildered, too weary, after the night.

He just lay there. He tried to assure himself that help would come.

“One thing for sure, Vickie, if I make it out of here alive. This fellow is going to be a vegetarian! Maybe I’ll even be vegan!”

His cell had no windows, but he thought that it was late in the night when he finally slept.

He might be an agnostic, but he drifted off whispering the Lord’s Prayer.

And he couldn’t forget the woman, the beautiful, blonde woman standing there, obviously drugged, smeared in the blood as if...

As if she was being prepared for a time when it was her blood that would be spilled.

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