The Juliette Society(75)

The music is so loud I can’t hear myself think, so loud it feels as if it’s slowly erasing my identity and filling it with sound. What I can’t let it steal is my purpose. I have to find Anna. I repeat it over and over in my head like a mantra.

I start to descend the stairs slowly and as I get closer to the floor of the grotto, I realize it isn’t covered in moss, it’s covered in bodies; a writhing mass of copulating bodies, of hair and skin and sweat. The carpet of bodies covers every inch of the base of the grotto and creeps up the sides. They’re so entwined that it’s impossible to discern where one separates from the other. Heads are buried between legs and arms. Torsos seem blessed with multiple pairs of limbs. Legs emerge from shoulders, arms disappear between legs and emerge from behind waists. Hands are fixed to breasts. Penises sprout from bended knees. Mouths are either open in ecstasy or filled with some appendage or other. And it’s as if they’ve all been whipped into a sexual fervor by the music.

And I thought I’d seen it all in Anna’s company – on the SODOM website, at the Fuck Factory. I thought I’d seen just about everything. I was almost starting to become jaded, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Not even in the movies.

I put one foot forward carefully, stepping into this teeming mass of bodies and, as I do, it seems to register my presence and start to separate and open up, forming a path for me to walk along. I’m moving through these bodies and I feel so self-conscious yet, at the same time, completely inconspicuous because no one is paying me the least bit of attention, as if I’m walking through a crowded city street, one person amongst many, amongst hundreds and thousands, lost in the hustle and bustle.

I glance up at the podium, just in time to see the blonde girl stand up and fall back into the undulating swarm of human flesh. Her prone lifeless frame is being tossed back and forth across the floor of the grotto like a body surfer being passed over a mosh pit. Arms reach out to grope and grab her and pull her down. Others push her up and onward.

It reminds of the opening scene of The Wild Bunch, where the children are sitting at the side of the road watching an army of red ants swarm over and devour two scorpions. And they’re watching this terrible spectacle of ritual sacrifice with delight, poking the creatures with sticks to excite them further, encouraging cruelty without conscience.

I watch in horror as the blonde girl gets sucked down and swallowed by the pack, her body lost in the spill. And it’s not as if I can do anything about it. Just before she does I get a good look at her face, enough of a look that I can see it’s not Anna.

Another girl gets up and takes her places at the foot of the veiled figure. The whip is raised, and comes down on her back with a terrifying force and speed. Her body tenses as it hits, her shoulders arch out and her spine in. Her head tilts and her mouth drops open, like a wolf howling at the moon, but her screams cannot be heard, because the music drowns out everything – the sound of the whip, her screams, the mass of bodies around me writhing and fucking – everything but itself.

The bodies continue to peel away in front of me and I’m almost in the center of the cavern now and close enough to the podium to see the faces of the girls, to see that none of them are Anna either. The girl in front of the throne has been lashed into unconsciousness and she’s slumped at the foot of the veiled figure.

This is a weird fucking scene. The weirdest. Too damn weird for me. Right now, I just want to run and get the hell out of here, but I can’t. I’m at the mercy of this swarm of bodies.

The music is pounding in my ears. My heart is beating so hard that it feels like my chest is going to explode. It’s beating so hard that I can feel myself start to panic and hyper-ventilate. And it takes every ounce of willpower to stop that from happening, to slow my breathing down and regulate, so I can take stock of what to do and where to go. And now it seems to me as if the bodies are not opening to accommodate the path I’ve chosen but that, instead, they’re leading me, and as long as I keep walking, the bodies will let me pass.

Soon enough, I’m almost at the other side of the cavern and I can see an opening in the rock face, a passage out, and I realize that’s where they’re leading me. Each of those final steps is more excruciating than the last. And, finally, I can’t take it any more and skip over the last few arms and legs to safety.

I dash through the opening down a narrow passageway as fast as my legs will carry me and I don’t look back until I hear the music decrease in volume, until I can barely hear it any more and I can hear the echo of my footsteps as they hit the floor. And the passage splits into three, then two, then turns in on itself. And it feels like I’m back in the bowels of the Fuck Factory again, getting horribly lost.