Last year about this time, Three Losses was published in the Dare to Write It ezine (7/9/2019). The short story competition I entered had a theme of “Loss” and a word limit of 500. Below is the full-length version of the story.
***
“Tina!” ripped from Brand’s throat as he watched his boss crumple into a loose pile of arms and legs when the amulet rays hit her. Her body flopped over, her glass eyes staring at the ceiling. Growling, his hands tightened on his machetes and turned toward the bastard wizard, readying to leap.
“Uh-huh. You could be next.” The graduate student wiggled the ancient Mayan medallion. Smirking. “Besides it is not like I killed her.”
Brand’s eyes roved over her limp body trying to figure out what was happening. Whiskey, Martini Martinez’s sister and tech for the monster hunter end of their lives, found this case from the police reports of female co-eds turning up on roadsides after disappearing for three days with no memory of the intervening time. Five of them, so far, over a six-week period. Glassy black eyes stared at the ceiling with her two long braids which normally hung passed her fine ass tangled with her arms which now reflected light like they were cloth, not skin. Her ceremonial athame, which she had used to cut half-ass spells the wizard had thrown, remained unchanged in her dominant left hand, but the gun in her right looked like a foam toy. Martini Martinez didn’t appear dead as much as a puppet with its strings cut.
“What did you do?”
“Turned her into a doll, a fuckable doll, all moist and warm. You can take her home. Do whatever you want. She’ll come back to herself in seventy-two hours.”
“Gotcha,” whispered in his earpiece.
“Turn her back now.” Brand demanded.
“No. You are going to allow me to escape. Going to give me time to pack up my shit. And let me go.” He wiggled the amulet again attached to the chain around his neck. “Or join her.”
“Mayan … golem-making,” Whiskey’s voice whispered in his ear. “Found it … yeah, gotcha, gotcha, those amulets only work on one person at a time.”
“Not going to happen.” Brand ran at the wizard wannabe and punched him with the knuckle guards around his machetes until the bastard fell unconscious. And then kicked him a couple times with his steel-toed boots until he felt a rib break. “Tell me we got a fix to get Tina back quick.” He said into the thin air, panting.
“Nope, those things are preset. The Mayans would transform their sacrifices, throwing them down the pyramids. As fabric golems, they would take no damage. Then they could take them back to their temples and play with them, pass them around.”
“So the gods wouldn’t get the sacrifice? Didn’t that piss them off?”
“No, because the soul of the person got transferred to the god-realm to be played with. The girls wouldn’t remember anything when returned to their bodies, just like the co-eds, but the damage to the soul would remain.”
“How much damage?” Brand asked.
Whiskey didn’t respond.
“How much damage?”
“You know two of the co-eds already committed suicide. And a third is in the hospital getting her stomach pumped and is little more than a vegetable after her attempt.” Whiskey’s voice got smaller. “The other two are the newest. It is just a matter of time.”
“Fuck.” Brand looked around the room. His eyes wanted to focus on Tina and also didn’t. So he focused on the black dagger in her left hand. “How do we get her soul back from the god-realm quickly?”
“You would have to go in and get it.”
“How?”
“Mayans weren’t the most blood-thirsty of the gods in the Americas, that prize goes to the Aztecs, but only human sacrifice opens their gate.”
“Right.” Securing his machetes in their scabbards, Brand strode over to his boss’s body and picked up the witch blade.
“No!” Whiskey yelled in his ear. “That’s black magic. Don’t kill Ryan.”
“Don’t worry. That isn’t the only sacrifice available here.” Brandon thrust the small blade into his belly. Knowing that wasn’t enough, he pulled upward, then sideways. “Hold on Tina, I’m coming.” He collapsed over her body, blood flowing out and soaking into the doll’s fabric skin.
(words 682; original work published Dare to Write It ezine 7/9/2019 – 500 word limit; full length published 8/2/2020)