Jithinia came home from work to find the apartment empty. She felt tense and thought a hot shower might calm her frazzled nerves. After she showered, she walked, glistening wet and wearing only her mood ring, towards the bedroom, singing Gitane Demone's Incendiary Lover, which she had just listened to.

A hand fell across her mouth and jerked her backwards. Her captor held her tightly against his body, his arm pressed securely against her breasts. She strained her eyes against the top of her skull as she tried to see his face, but he wouldn’t allow it. Holding her head with his powerful hand, he insisted that her eyes faced forward. She could feel, against her wet ass, the pulse and throb of his cock through his vinyl pants.

A grinning goat-boy full of mischief appeared before her, and she recognized the one she’d been calling Caledonia. She resisted an urge to struggle and accepted her fate, for surely her captor was none other than Nathaniel. “Pray!” Eldridge commanded, forcing her hands together in the desired gesture. He wrapped Jithinia’s hands with bondage tape, binding them in eternal prayer. Then he wrapped it around her head, covering her eyes and mouth. Next, he taped her ankles together. Nathaniel hooked his arms under her underarms, while Eldridge grabbed her by her ankles. They lifted her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her face up.

Someone touched a vibrator to her clitoris. She moaned and writhed as the goat-boys taped it into place.

Someone grabbed her by her ankles and pulled her ass to the bed’s edge. He held her legs up and over his shoulder, and she felt his cock slide into her pussy. He fucked her slowly.

He pulled his cock out to the head, and the other goat-boy slid a finger into her anus and slopped her hole full of lube. He inserted a string of beads, one at a time.

The goat-boy with his cock inside her fucked her violently, as the other goat-boy popped the first bead from her anus. Her entire body contracted. “Mmmmmm!” she moaned through the tape. The next bead sent a tremble up her spine and back down again as it was tugged out of her taught little asshole. The third bead made her insides try to push themselves out of her, and she felt as if she were turning herself inside out. The next three beads came out one after another, in rapid succession, and she felt herself open and release. Her gushing honey soaked her lover’s balls and ran down her crack to soak the bedspread below.

The goat-boy pulled his cock from her. They rolled her onto her belly, and she got up on her knees and elbows. They whipped her, sometimes softly, sometimes leaving red lash marks across her bottom. Sometimes the tassels curled under her and smacked her pussy. Regardless, she arched her bottom up to meet each blow.

Someone pulled back the tape from her lips and put the hard plastic handle of the whip into her mouth. “Don’t drop it,” Nathaniel said, “or I’ll be very angry!”

She gripped it tightly with her teeth, pressed her tongue against the plastic. She couldn’t breathe. She felt frightened and dizzy. Her nether mouth swallowed a cock, gobbled it in deeper and deeper. She pushed her G-spot against the throbbing cockhead.

Someone pulled the whip handle from her mouth. She mouthed the air for a moment before the other goat-boy put his cock inside her mouth. He thrust in deep and out to the tip again.

Two men, two men were having her, and she didn’t even know the identity of one. She felt helpless and frightened at first, and then resigned herself to enjoy her mysterious lover with wanton abandon. She licked the pearl of pre-cum off, stringing it between the head and her tongue. She begged for their seed with her grunts.

The vibrator buzzed against her swollen clitoris. The boys found their rhythm, pervading her and voiding her in a synchronized dance. She wanted the goat-boy in her mouth to cum. She took a deep breath through her nose, inhaling the perfume of his sex. She relaxed her throat and took him in all the way to his balls, which hung heavy with seed against her chin. She wanted him to explode right then. She wanted to feel the hotness spilling as a waterfall down her throat. She felt her own climax building, as she hovered on the edge of ecstasy.

The boys withdrew from her. Desperate, both her mouths worked as a hungry baby’s, begging to be fed. Someone unbound her ankles. He gripped her hair and pulled her upright, then unbound her hands and removed the vibrator.

Someone lay down on the bed next to her. Four hands guided her to mount him. She grunted as he filled her. Arms wrapped around her and pulled her forward, smooshing her breasts against his sweaty chest. Hands moved to her ass cheeks and pulled them apart, holding her anus open to the cool air. The goat-boy with his cock in her pussy withdrew all but the tip. The head of a well-lubed cock slid into her bottom. Quivering, she new she was going to be sore. She couldn’t stop them now even if she wanted to. The two goat-boys pushed into her and filled her up as never before. Her mood ring was gold.

Eldridge, who was beneath Jithinia, took the tape off her eyes, which seemed wild, overwhelmed and ecstatic, almost terrified, as if she had seen God. He kissed her gently, softly, as if tickling a rose against his lips. He pressed their foreheads together and looked into her third eye, got lost inside, took all of Nathaniel’s love for her and made it his own.

Nathaniel loved to fuck Jithinia’s ass. He could feel Eldridge’s cock through the thin layer of flesh that separated them. Each thrust Nathaniel made pushed Eldridge’s stumps into the bed. Soon, the stumps split open and began to bleed, and the pain mingled with their pleasure.

They moaned and grunted as they worked her. Sometimes they thrust in unison, sometimes they altered, one going deep while the other went shallow. She felt their power running through her. Her legs felt as mushy as gelatin. Her head tingled at the base of her neck, and she thought she might die. She let herself go. She felt peaceful, somehow closer to God, completely given over to the Fates.

Nathaniel’s orgasm built, as did the shared pain in their backs. He pulled the hatpin from his sleeve, unaware of his actions, as if driven.

Jithinia tightened her anus and pussy around the two cocks. They were going to cum inside her, cum inside her pussy, cum inside her ass, fill up both her holes with their seed. The deepest part of her pussy convulsed around the tip of Eldridge’s cock.

He released his seed into her spasm, which closed around him and shook his entire being. She called out to the gods in orgasmic tongue. She pushed against the cocks, as if to force them out of her, but they only pushed in deeper. Her honey gushed from her.

Nathaniel jabbed at her ear with the hatpin. He released his seed inside her with tremulous undulations, a confluence of lust and rage, pumping her dirty little hole full of seed. He felt her relax. She went limp and fell on Eldridge as a rag doll. She twittered violently, uncontrollably.

Nathaniel’s penis softened and slid out of her. He felt overcome with contrition and collapsed onto her. A guttural scream grew in his belly and exploded in shrill terror from his lips. His tears could not be damned for life and beauty already were. His ears hummed a high pitch screech, sounding as an ailing Theremin. He envisioned himself a moth, wings tattered from a kitten’s game, lying belly up in the hand of God. God lightly stroked his fuzzy belly, and he fluttered his impotent wings. He cried out, “I’ve killed you, like the others, as if you were nothing! I should have left you after the first!”

“Nathaniel. Nathaniel,” Eldridge said in a hypnotic voice, but the words were too far away. “Hear my words,” he said repeatedly until Nathaniel finally could. “I’ve got you,” he said. Eldridge clutched his brother by his wrist, denying the hatpin its fatal penetration.

Nathaniel was stunned. He held the hatpin for a moment longer before he opened his hand and let it drop to the bed. He wrenched free of Eldridge’s grip and pulled away from his lovers.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Jithinia said as she dismounted Eldridge. She trembled all over. Her legs wobbled as a newborn fawn’s, and she had to sit down.

Nathaniel frantically pulled on his pants and boots.

As Eldridge approached him, he hummed, Calm down, Nathaniel. It’s okay.

Nathaniel hummed, It’s not okay. I’m not okay. I almost killed her.

But you didn’t. I know you’re horrified right now. It’s gonna take some time to get used to being this way. Please, just calm down. Eldridge tried to hold him.

“Fuck you, Eldridge!” Nathaniel screamed. He pushed his twin away so hard that Eldridge fell to the floor. He grabbed Jithinia’s keys and bolted out the apartment door.

“Stop him! He can’t drive!” Jithinia cried out. She threw on her bathrobe, and she bolted barefoot out the apartment door after him. “Nathaniel!” she yelled as she ran downstairs and out the front door. It was near dark, and a freezing, cats-and-dogs downpour drenched her. There was ice on the sidewalk, and she slid up and bashed her head on the cement.

Nathaniel climbed inside the Gremlin and started the car.

Eldridge quickly dressed. He didn’t bother with a shirt, but he took the time to put on his boots, slip a hatpin inside the right one, and put on a coat before chasing after his lovers.

He found Jithinia semiconscious on the sidewalk. “Jithinia, Jithinia, are you okay?” he said.

“We have to find him,” she said. “Hurry.”

“Okay. I will. Don’t worry.” He scooped her up and carried her to the GTO. He opened the door, pushed the seat forward, and gently laid her across the backseat. He checked the wound on the back of her head, which seemed to have stopped bleeding. He took a thermal blanket and a leather trench coat from the trunk. He helped her take off the soggy wet bathrobe and slip on the coat, and then he wrapped the blanket around her.

“Please hurry,” she said.

He climbed into the driver’s seat and fired the engine. He had been listening to Christian Death’s Death Mix earlier, and “Book of Lies” played softly on the stereo. His heart pounded in his chest. He tried to reach out to his twin telepathically, but Nathaniel blocked him. He concentrated intently but could barely feel his brother. He hoped he could feel him strongly enough to catch up with him.

“He went towards the highway,” Jithinia said.

Nathaniel couldn’t get the defroster to work, so he wiped at the fogged up windshield with his shirtsleeve. The tires skidded on the slick road, and he weaved like a snake down the deserted highway. He didn’t know where he was going, and he didn’t care. He had to get away from her before he destroyed her.

Eldridge managed to pick a direction from his brother’s mind, and he drove down the highway after Nathaniel. The roads were treacherous, and even as an experienced driver, Eldridge couldn’t pick up enough speed to catch up with his brother.

Jithinia sat up in the backseat, and Eldridge looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked.

“I’m alright, I think. Just a little cold.”

“It’ll warm up in a few minutes.”

“What’s wrong with Nathaniel?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me so that I can. Why did he run away?”

Eldridge didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

Jithinia said, “What are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing.”

“Whose car is this?”

Eldridge realized that in his panic, he had taken Seth’s car, not Caledonia’s.

She said, “Is this your car, Eldridge? That is your name, isn’t it? ‘Fuck you Eldridge!’ That’s what Nathaniel said to you, before he ran away. Is that your name?”

“Yes,” he whispered as if admitting his name were a confession to all his sins. “I’m sorry you were dragged into this. You’re a good person. You deserve better.”

“So tell me, Eldridge, what have I been dragged into? Why did Nathaniel run away?”

“He’s afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of hurting you.”

“As if running away from me doesn’t hurt.”

“I told you, you wouldn’t understand. You can’t.”

“I understand that Nathaniel is different now. What did you do to him?”

“Nothing.”

“Who are you, Eldridge? Where’s Caledonia?”

“Caledonia is dead. I killed her and ate her soul, and I’ve been wearing her skin for days now. Your friends, Purp and Moe, I killed them, too. I’m a monster, Jithinia. I’m your worst nightmare.”

Jithinia burst into tears. “Oh my God. Nathaniel’s dead isn’t he? One of your kind swallowed him up and now wears my baby like you wear Caledonia.”

“No, Jithinia. Nathaniel isn’t dead. Nathaniel is what he’s always been. He’s like me. He just didn’t know it before, and now, he’s having a hard time adjusting.”

“Nathaniel killed someone?”

“He’s not human, Jithinia. We have to feed. I’m sorry.”

“And I guess you just creep across the land killing goths?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Why do you have to kill goths? Why can’t you do the world a favor and feed on assholes like the greedy rich, republicans, or religious fanatics?”

“Because I like goths.”

“What?”

“I have to live with these people inside me. Goths adjust rather quickly to their condition of vicarious debauchery. Before you and Nathaniel, I’ve loved only the dead. Goths romanticize death. Love is death. Sex is death. All is death and death is beautiful. I am beautiful, and they worship me like the god I am. Their death is not a murder but a sacrifice unto me, that which they love. They not only give me peace, but also, some of them actually understand me. They are –- they were my only friends, before I found Nathaniel and met you. I love you, Jithinia.”

“You don’t even know me!”

“But I do. Nathaniel is my twin brother. We share a soul. I feel everything he feels, and I promise you, we love you very much.”

She laughed at the absurdity of it all. “So, you really do have goat heads. I thought I was going crazy.”

“What? You still see us as Shatter Kinder? But I thought – the drugs, they wore off long ago! You shouldn’t be able to see us this way!”

“But I can, and so can Danielle.”

“Really? I don’t know why that is. No one else can see through our glamour. That is only one of our forms. Have you ever seen the other?”

“I don’t know. What is your other form?”

“We look like fairies. You know, small in stature, but not like midget small, just petite. We have elven features – you know –- pointy ears, sharp, high cheekbones. Our hair is white, and we have pale skin and purple eyes.”

“No. I have never seen you that way. But I had this vision --”

Nathaniel took an exit and drove aimlessly through deserted back roads, in the middle of nowhere, where nightfall on a moonless night meant pure black, and the houses gave way to cow pastures and fields.

Once the sun had set, the freezing rain mixed with snow. A fierce gust of wind pushed the Gremlin’s right front tire off the road. Nathaniel jerked the steering wheel hard and pulled back onto the pavement, nearly going off the opposite side.

He heard a thunderous crash and thought for an instant he had hit something. He realized too late that a tree had fallen across the road before him. “Shit!” he yelled and slammed on the brakes. The car kept going. He closed his eyes. He heard the sounds of snapping wood and crushing metal. The car stopped, but Nathaniel wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. He broke through the windshield and crashed into the tree. Like a corpse in a barbed wire fence, he was entangled in the ice-covered limbs.

He had wrecked in front of a church. The huge tree had also toppled a power pole, and the hot wires had set a pile of leaves, still dry beneath an overhang, ablaze. The flames quickly spread, for the old church was made of old wood, and it was held together by faith, not faith in God, but faith in the church members’ own beatitude.

Nathaniel almost blacked out from pain as he willed himself to crawl from the wreckage. Across the street from the church was a graveyard. He pulled himself up onto his feet and stumbled bleary-eyed and dizzy into the graveyard, for it seemed the most romantic place to die.

Eldridge felt Nathaniel’s pain, and he knew his twin was in trouble. Both their backs were bleeding. With that pain to focus on, it became easier to fixate on Nathaniel’s location, and finally, he found the crumpled Gremlin. He pulled the GTO into the graveyard’s drive and parked.

“Under no circumstances are you to follow me,” he told Jithinia. “It’s not safe. You can’t trust us right now. Stay in the car.”

He left her and went looking for his brother. The frozen ground crunched underfoot as he walked through the graveyard. The temperature seemed to be dropping by the second. His hands grew numb and the soft cloth inside his pockets felt like razor blades on his fingertips. The wind roared, and the snow swirled like glitter in a glass orb. Tree limbs crashed down all around, sounding like Frost Giants stomping through a forest.

Nathaniel was curled up on his knees atop a stranger’s grave, just like the night he had first felt his twin’s pain. He was soaked to the bone, and he was so cold that he wasn’t shivering anymore. His exposed skin was blue and puffy. His hands and feet felt numb. “Go away!” he hissed. Eldridge took off his leather jacket and wrapped it around Nathaniel. Nathaniel’s speech slurred as he said, “I don’t want it!” He threw the coat to the ground. His muscle coordination was so poor that he nearly fell over.

Eldridge knelt down next to Nathaniel and took his brother’s cold hand. He metamorphosed into his Geist Kinder form, and without intention, Nathaniel did, too. “It’s okay, Nathaniel,” he said through chattering teeth.

“No, no it’s not! I almost killed her! I am wretched, Eldridge!”

“We can’t help what we are.”

“You can’t help what you are, Eldridge. I, on the other hand, was happy before you came into my life, and once again, you’ve broken me. I can’t live like this.” He jerked his hand away and said, “Leave me alone, and let me die.”

“Just let me hold you. Please. Can I hold you?”

Nathaniel felt too tired to argue. “Just for a minute,” he said as Eldridge wrapped his arms around him. They pressed their third eyes together and let their minds become one.

Eldridge wept as he felt his brother’s pain and sorrow. He said, “I’m sorry, Nathaniel. You’re right. We are abominations to God. I should die, too, this time. I want to die with you.”

They closed their eyes, for they felt heavy like ice on snapping limbs. Their breaths became shallow and slow. They held tightly to one another, until their limbs were so stiff they couldn’t move them anymore, and the twins froze together in their embrace. The last thing they knew for sure was that suddenly it was so very hot, and if they had the muscle control to rip off the last of their clothes, they would have, and all they could think about was how bad they had to pee.

Then they were falling through black space, tumbling, hurtling through the darkness towards an aurora.

Eldridge, I’m frightened. Are we dead?

Yes, but we haven’t crossed over. Don’t be afraid.

Their decent slowed once the blackness swirled with colors like an oil slick on churned water. The twins floated towards a shadowy figure in the distance.

Who is that? Nathaniel hummed.

An Angel of Death come to clip our silver chords and guide us to our next lives.

An Angel of Death?

You know: Samael, Azrael, Sariel, Uriel, Gabriel, Michael, Yama, Yanluo, Enma, Izanagi, Saturn, Cronus to name a few. Charon came for you last time you died. Of course, that’s not their real names. That’s their earthly names, the names given to them by humans.

Suddenly they were before the angel, or perhaps the angel was suddenly before them. It was impossible to tell. Regardless, her presence inspired terror.

Her form continuously created and changed, seeming as poisonous, rolling smoke, both black and every hue in chaos at the same time. Her shape was Baphomet. A long mane, thin threads of obsidian shimmering like black icicles, framed her face. Black flames snorted from her flared nostrils. Her fierce horns were the only part of her that seemed tangible. Her eyes were infinite, and inside each eye was the soul of every man that was, is, or ever will be. It was the shape and structure of Chaos, distinguished from its substance, Void. It was the essence of Pattern, distinguished from its shape and structure, Chaos.

Nathaniel felt overwhelmed by her presence. He hummed, The Angel of Death is a Shatter Kinder? Eldridge? Shatter Kinder are Angels of Death? That’s what we are?

All Angels of Death are Shatter Kinder. Not all Shatter Kinder are Angels of Death.

The Angel of Death spoke, and her voice was a thousand flies trapped in a plastic bag. “What do we have here? Two Geist Kinders, very far away from home. It is unusual for gods to dwell within this plane in flesh rather than spirit, let alone in separate forms. You must suffer greatly. Just existing as such must be maddening. Tell me, do you feel like your very molecules are trying to fly apart and condense at the same time?”

Nathaniel hummed, What is she talking about?

If you and I lived in Eden, as we should, we would have a duty, and when we performed that duty, we could do so as one entity, so that our burdens would not be too heavy.

The Angel of Death opened her mind to God’s judgment and what she learned surprised her. She said, “But you’re not Geist Kinders, are you? You’re half Shatter Kinder, sons of Mordecio and Eliara. Such unions are forbidden, yet here you are, the prophetic children of duality, the most unique amongst the gods, the most feared amongst the gods. Your very existence foretells the end of time. This is quite a revelation.”

Eldridge said, “I beg you. Reincarnate us! Make us forget ourselves!”

“Do you think it will be less painful the second time around?”

“It will be different!”

“It is your fate, the absolute within a paradigm, that which defines the paradigm. I cannot allow you to commit suicide.”

Nathaniel said, “What about freewill?”

The Angel of Death laughed at his ignorance. “Ah, free will, the ability to choose one’s perceptions within the paradigm. Free will is subjectivity. If one believes in something, then it is real to him or her. Free will is the power of belief.”

Nathaniel said, “I don’t know what to believe.”

“You don’t want to believe. There is a difference. You are Kinders, yet you shun your responsibilities. You haven’t spent a day of your life in a classroom or under the tutelage of a maestro. You don’t even understand the magick you wield. You choose to hide in human flesh rather than face your destinies. You are pitiful little gods.”

I am a god, Nathaniel thought as if the concept finally clicked. He didn’t quite know how he felt about that. Overwhelmed, almost panicky. He was more than just a vampire, a nightmare, or a monster, but a god, a powerful god that surely must be damned to carry a great burden.

“Then tell us, what is our destiny?” Eldridge said.

“What is destiny but fate observed? You must see for yourself. Time will tell if you listen, but you don’t even know how to hear. It would be wrong of me to send you back without teaching you a few things. The least I can do is give you some direction.

“Time is the perception of stimuli as it is absorbed, changed, and/or excreted. Time is potential energy in a rhythmic pattern of sixty. It’s an idea, and without belief, it does not exist. It is dependent upon your free will, and therefore, it bends to your will.

“As you perceive time, the past is known. Time moves in a linear path towards an unknown future. What happens to time if the past is known, and time moves in a linear path toward a known future? Or what if the past is unknown, and time moves chaotically towards an unknown future? Suppose the past is unknown and moves in a linear path toward a known future. How do you perceive time then?

“Imagine your past is your future. You would then know your future. It would not frighten you as an unknown future does. There is no past, for once you’ve done something, you forget it ever happened. In this future, Eldridge, your brother Granville will come back to life. You will be together for seven years, and then you will return unto your mother. There will be no pain of loss because you will both be forgotten.

“Time does not control you. You choose to see things as you do. That doesn’t make it infallible.”

Nathaniel said, “Only God is infallible.”

“Think about what you just said, Nathaniel. Is that true?”

“Well, yeah. It has to be. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.”

“And what does it mean to be omnipotent?”

“All powerful.”

“Then can God create a rock that It cannot lift?”

“Well, if God is all knowing, It should know how to create such a rock,” Nathaniel said.

“And, if God is all powerful, It should be able to lift any rock,” Eldridge said.

The Angel of Death said, “It’s a paradox, an assertion that is essentially self contradictory, although based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.”

“So what is the answer?” the twins said.

“Let’s say God sets out to create a rock that It cannot lift. First, It would create a rock, bigger than an average person could lift, and then It would remember that It is a five-year-old child. The answer to a paradox lies in one’s ability to change one’s perception.”

Nathaniel said, “If God created everything, what created God?”

Eldridge said, “Nathaniel is unfamiliar with the story of creation.”

“Is that so? Then let me tell it to you now. Once upon a time, God had been nothing: no chaos, no order, no form. One day, God forgot It was Nothing, and thus It became Everything and called Itself Paradox --”

After she finished the story, she gave Nathaniel a scroll to help him understand. He unrolled it and read:

INSERT SCROLL GRAPHIC

The Angel of Death said, “As you can see, in the beginning there was void, containing no matter, empty and open space, or break in continuity.”

The blank nothing, the empty canvas, Eldridge hummed to Nathaniel.

“Out of void came chaos, pure energy, the disordered state of unformed matter and infinite space.”

“But isn’t that void?” Nathaniel said.

The Angel of Death said, “Chaos is disordered matter, matter without form. Void is the absence of matter.”

Chaos is the paint, Eldridge hummed.

“Then there came order, a condition of comprehensible arrangement among the separate elements of a group, a sequence or arrangement of successive things.”

Order is like the artist, Eldridge hummed.

“And then there is form, the shape and structure of something as distinguished from its substance, the essence of something as distinguished from its matter.”

What is form? Nathaniel hummed.

Form is the painting, Eldridge said, “Canvas, paint, and painter continuously creating and changing.

“If God is everything, perceived at once,” the Angel of Death said, “what, then, is a human?”

“The shattered souls of fallen gods,” Eldridge said. “Adam and Eve, the first gods to crumble, they ate of the Tree of Knowledge. They looked into the eyes of God, pools of void where black is white, and they did not like what they saw. They cast off themselves, for their failings were the failings of God.”

“Good, and what, then, is a god?”

“Paradox, remembering Its exalted form in fragments only, as a shattered dream. God’s reflection in a broken mirror. A bigger piece of god than a man, who is made of shattered gods,” Eldridge said.

Nathaniel rolled the scroll back up and put it in his pants pocket. He said, “What does this have to do with us?”

The Angel of Death said, “Even gods serve Fate, Nathaniel.”

Nathaniel thought about all that the Angel of Death had told him and something clicked in his mind. He smirked. “Thank you so much, for sharing your wisdom with us. You must have been at the head of your class to be so wise.”

The goddess seemed to blush. “Why yes, I was.” She didn’t know why, but she came closer to him, and turned her head towards his lips as if she expected him to whisper a secret into her ear.

Nathaniel pulled the hatpin from Eldridge’s boot and plunged it into the goddess’s ear before Eldridge could even discern his brother’s intent.

The goddess looked perplexed, as she suddenly understood that, all along, she was never sent for Eldridge and Nathaniel’s souls, but rather, they were sent for hers.

What have you done? Eldridge hummed. She could be our aunt or something.

Eldridge, dear boy, I have done what I have done. Don’t you see? We may be uneducated, but once we devour her souls, we will know much of the Shatter Kinder mysteries. We will be ever so powerful. We are gods, Eldridge, the most powerful gods, the most feared gods, and by God, let’s give them something to be afraid of.

Nathaniel pulled the hatpin out of the goddess’s ear and licked off the blood. Then he licked at the soul coming from her left ear as if licking an ice-cream cone. The first taste was orgasmic bliss, and Nathaniel implored his brother to come feed with him. He hummed, Oh my God, this is so delicious. You have to taste it.

Eldridge couldn’t resist. He joined his brother on the goddess’s right-hand side, where he tasted the goddess’s other soul, which he found to be equally refreshing.

They gorged themselves. The souls were more than satisfying; they were divine rapture, rich and filling, more satisfying and nourishing than any human soul could ever be.