13.
Circus Succubus
They had warned me, the old men of the village. Do not go to the gorge, there the fairies live. They are as beautiful as angels, but evil as devil himself. They charm the hikers and lure them into their cave. Never again will these men be seen. It is said that the evil fairies live on human souls. Male souls.
I laughed at them. I went to the gorge.
I got caught. I got bitten by her.
Alanis. Goddess Alanis.
Now I am hers. Her dog. Her slave.
Hers.
“The world is getting smaller and smaller.” So the running mouse complains as the walls close in on her from all sides. “Right”, says the cat. And eats her.
Why do I have now to think of this text by Kafka? All thoughts, all remaining energy of life should be directed towards regaining freedom? I only have this ultimate last chance! Otherwise, GODDESS ALANIS will devour me like a cat swallows a mouse.
SHE who found me, kissed me, hunted me, and abducted me – me, an innocent traveller, hiking through beautiful isolated nature.
SHE who mistreated, whipped, and broke me, here in her cave, her palace, her lair.
SHE who shaved my head, enslaved me, marked me, used me and erased my status as a human being.
But when this terrible GODDESS OF THE DARK was gone, for a moment invisible, a low door opened. Summoning up my last willpower, I found the courage to crawl through that low door, not more than a cat flap. I was driven by the hope of escape: of freedom.
So I crawl on all fours like a crazed cockroach through this black passageway – naked and shaven, with small silver bells attached to my nipples and scrotum, a ring through my nose, a beast. HER beast, blind, stupid and insane with fear. Insane with hope.
The corridor is a narrow, low tunnel through which one can only crawl on all fours. It is too dark to see anything, I can only feel the metal walls to my right and left and above me – there are bars all around me. The floor I am crawling on is also made of metal bars. Like a tube, this escape route, like a cage, a predator’s walk… a trap? I fight down the thought. I only have this last chance! Forward, come on, just get out of here!
But it’s strange. While I was still able to crawl on all fours a minute ago, I’m now already bumping into the bars at the top and have to make myself smaller. It also seems to be getting narrower and narrower on the left and right. I can only crawl on my stomach, with my arms close to my body… and now I can only pull myself forward with my arms stretched out in front of my head… moving myself forward inch by inch with the help of my fingers, nails and even teeth… the corridor gets narrower and narrower…
The bars suddenly begin to glow red the closer they get to my body. And the more they glow, the warmer they become… hot… The red metal is getting redder and redder… all around me, the bars turn red, heat up… I can’t pull my arms back any more, I can only crawl forward inch by inch… until finally I can’t move a millimeter, tightly enclosed by the increasingly hot bars, the red slowly turns into sun-hot yellow, into glowing white…
I am stuck in the burning cage, tightly enclosed like meat in a grill basket! The bars are glowing, I scream at the top of my lungs – I am being grilled alive!
Suddenly the darkness is pierced by a ray of light.
In a pillar of white light she appears – ALANIS, the cruel GODDESS I was trying to escape. Even though I can hardly move and the glowing metal bars are scorching my skin and flesh, even though my eyes fill with tears that fall onto the narrow bars with a hissing sound, I still recognize every detail: Alanis is wearing a skin-tight, blood-red leotard with sparkling green stars, shiny black leather boots that reach above the knees, black gloves, golden epaulettes on her shoulders, and a black top hat on her head, from which her red hair breaks out like flames. She holds a bullwhip rolled up several times in her hand, her gaze is cold on me.
She has transformed into a dompteur, a circus tamer. Despite my endless pain, I hear laughter, whispers, and hooting all around me, the sensationalist noises of a female audience that I cannot see, because apart from the Goddess in her beam of light, I see nothing, everything else is black. But there is no doubt: I have walked into a terrible trap in my blind urge to escape; now I lie in the center of a ring, trapped in a body-tight cage made of glowing bars; I scream, but my voice is burnt. Ashes on my hope.
“Look at this human piece,” Alanis says loudly, and she walks around me slowly. With each step, she raises a little dust from the floor of the circus ring, which floats briefly in the light of the spotlight and settles on the leather of her boots.
“This human creature still believes in freedom. It still hopes to be able to return to its life as a human. It still doesn’t know that it belongs to me, body and soul. That it is nothing more than my dog.”
The dompteur is now standing right in front of my cramped face. I see her leather boots in front of me, the fresh dust on them. She continues speaking to her audience: “This human piece still has hope. Look, my sisters, how it cries and suffers. It no longer hopes for freedom. It has only one hope left: that it will all end soon. The pain, the humiliation, the agony.”
Laughter from the darkness of the audience. Shouts are heard. Female voices: “It will never end!” –“So stupid, humans!” –“Show the piece what it means to be a slave to a Dark Goddess!” –”
I can’t see it, but I can feel Alanis smiling. She speaks: “No, it will not end for this piece of humanity. But I will give him hope. It is such a sweet human delicacy: hope… It gives me pleasure to play with it. My sisters, say on: shall I play with its hope?”
A mighty choir of female voices surges through the darkness: YES! PLAY WITH IT!
Alanis claps her hands. At that same moment, the glowing bars that held me firmly shut open and fall away from me like limp ropes. I lie on the floor, face down, trembling, gasping, sobbing, screaming in endless pain. The smell of burning flesh is still in my nostrils – but when I manage to move my arm in front of my face, I realize that there is no trace left, not even the slightest redness…
Alanis rolls me onto my back with her foot. I look up at her. She smiles. “Welcome to my Circus Succubus. The hope of freedom has brought you here. We’ll see what tricks I can train your hope to do.” She puts her foot on my chest and pushes her boot over my face. “Kiss the sole of my boot – and I’ll give you your freedom.”
Did she really say that? She smiles down at me. There is silence in the ring. Is she serious? When I raise my head a little and touch my lips to her boot sole, the smack of the kiss is as loud as a whip lash. Or did the terrible Alanis use the whip? She laughs and strides calmly to the edge of the ring, turning to the audience.
“Let us see where his hope takes him, honored sisters!” She turns and speaks to me: “Stand up. You are free. If you can make it to that exit.” She points to a gate at the end of the ring that I only now see – or that only now opens.
The gate to freedom: The sun is shining there, birdsong can be heard, friendly laughter from people – the world, my world, so close! An illusion? Another illusion?
I just have to get up and run! Another doubting glance at the dompteur – but she just stands there and waits. Around her, a dark glow of Nothingness. “Don’t you want to?”
Yes, I do!
I rise, still doubting, to my knees, look again at Alanis, the Dark Goddess, but she does nothing, she plays with her long whip, waits. So I rise completely – will my legs carry me? Yes, they carry me.
I run!
Naked, shorn, cattle-marked, as I am – it is only twenty meters at most to this heavenly exit! With mighty leaps I jump forward, feeling like a refreshed Hercules, free in a few seconds ––
–– but strangely, I run and run –– the distance to the promised exit is getting smaller and smaller, but not in proportion to my fast pace… I am making progress, yes – but with each step less than I actually would have to… and it is also strange that the heavenly exit seems to be getting bigger and bigger, not because I am getting closer to it, but because it is… growing…
I look around without stopping in my race – and see GODDESS ALANIS growing too. She hasn’t moved from the spot, but she now appears to be two meters tall… and the faster I run, the taller she gets… no, wait…
I’m shrinking!
I’m shrinking as I run!
Every meter I cover, I pay for with my height! I scream in desperation, run all the faster, hear a thunderous laugh from the darkness all around, look around –– and there is Alanis behind me, a giant of fearsome proportions!
Now she stirs, she takes a leisurely step forward, and the ground thunders and vibrates around me under her steps ––
“Don’t you want to flee to freedom, dog? Don’t you want to go back to your humans? Run faster!” her voice resounds in the arena.
And I run faster – and shrink faster. But what just seemed like twenty meters to me now seems like an insurmountable distance of a hundred meters… Nevertheless, I don’t give up, I wasn’t totally dwarfed when I took the first few meters, it must be possible to make it, even if I arrive as an ant! –– Alanis’ footsteps thundering behind me –- but I’ll make it, I can already smell the scent of the flowers outside ––
–– when suddenly I’m lifted up by the nose ring! Like a doll, I struggle in the claws of a devilish crane, I am turned around, I am shaken by her hands like a bell – and I stare in horror at the gigantic face of the Goddess Alanis. Her eyes sparkling in all colors, her stream of red hair, her fangs, her tongue licking her lips… gigantic in front of me – and I hang like a mouse in the claws of a cat of prey.
“Oooh. The human piece didn’t make it,” she mocks loudly, and her breath blows in my face like a hurricane. All around, the audience laughs scornfully. ”His hope was so great. But now he ist so small! A tiny puppet on strings. And what is his hope against his fate? Nothing. Because I am his fate.”
Alanis licks my mouse-sized body with her tongue. Like a cat tasting its prey. She blows her breath against me, I tremble in her claws like aspen leaves. She laughs. Her white teeth bare, her fangs threatening.
Cries come from the audience: EAT HIM!
Her huge cat eyes sparkle at me. She whispers at me, and yet her whisper is as loud as the rumble of the sea: “Yes? Do you hear them? What do you say? Shall I eat you?”
I beg for mercy in a squeaky mouse voice: ”Please don’t, Goddess Alanis, please don’t! Please don’t eat me! Please please! Let me live!”
She laughs like a hurricane. She holds me high in the air, turns around once, as if she wants to present a rare insect to the public: “You see, hope is still there, in this tiny creature that belongs to me!”
EAT HIM! demand the invisible sisters of Alanis.
She lowers her hand, and I dangle again before her face, her mouth. Close. She purses her lips – and kisses me – a kiss that covers my entire body. She whispers, almost tenderly: “You are mine, for all eternity. What is mine will never be free.”
With that, she lifts me up a little with her claws – and opens her mouth. I scream at the top of my dwarf’s lungs, plead, shriek – but very slowly Goddess Alanis lets my wriggling body down into her waiting throat. When my abdomen has already disappeared completely into her mouth – a feeling as if I were sinking into a hot moor – she closes her teeth. My body is now stuck between her teeth.
“Mmmmmh,” she makes to the hooting of her sisters. She moves my body back and forth between her lips, rolls it between her teeth. Her teeth perforate my belly… ‘Mmmmh,’ she makes ––
–– and bites down.
She chews. Smacks. She devours my abdomen. She continues to hold my upper body in her claws. Lower body – gone. Eaten. Swallowed. Digested.
She looks at me, sparkling. Her bloodied mouth opens wide again.
I no longer scream. I die.
She lets the rest of me down into her throat – until only my tiny head is sticking out. Her tongue scans my body, sucks, tastes. Mmmh… Her teeth hold my neck… And then –
– she bites again.
Darkness.
Eternal darkness.
Eternal black.
But then the otherworld turns gray again.
I wake up. Do I wake up?
Where am I?
“Did you think you would die after our little show together, slave dog?” I hear her voice. ”You will learn what it means to be my property. Eternal torment. Without end.”
I realize that my body is back to its “normal” state: at least in one piece… naked, of course, tattooed, treated and marked many times by Alanis’ cruelty… I stand at her bedside like a candelabrum, holding candles in my outstretched hands and in my open mouth.
Alanis is lying in her blood-red velvet bed wearing a red silky nightdress. Her naked foot plays with the bells attached to my scrotum. She holds a black book in her hand, her blood-red painted fingernails playing with the pages. She looks at me.
“I can make you whatever I want. You are what I want. When you understand that, nod, but not so that wax drips on my foot.”
I nod without letting any wax flow.
“Good. I have thought up something new for you, slave dog. You will tell me a thousand and one stories: stories of my own forays and adventures. That is your destiny, your purpose in my world. When you have told the 1001 stories, I will extinguish you forever.”
With that, Alanis straightens up a little, stretching her head up so far that it is level with my mouth, which is holding the large black candle.
She blows out the candle.
Good night.
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