She was instructed to drink the red wine from the girl’s freshly sliced open stomach even though it hadn’t even been gutted. Wasn’t even fit to be a chalice, if we were going to be made to classify an open stomach as such. That was what Sean wanted to make it. Wanted to take things in their relationship to the next level, said it had all gotten stale between them. When they first met, their mutual love of, let’s call them, rituals, had been enough to keep Sean enthralled with Carly, even well beyond her thin frame that he could swear he felt rattling as he fucked it.

Sometimes, it was even enough for Sean to hear that Carly would let him have her bones when she died, which she was planning to do sooner rather than later as a result of said thin frame being a consequence of anorexia. He wasn’t going to try to stop her, force feed her–and Sean really did like to eat, constantly taking advantage of his under twenty-five male metabolism by shoving his face with frozen pizza after they had sex within a giant pentagram shape Carly had outlined and built upon with candles. If they actually managed to make it out of the house they were squatting in, in the center of Gardena’s abyss, he would chauffeur them to whatever the nearest fast food drive-thru was to satiate his post-coital (and general) appetite.

They met in an Angelfire chat room, bonding immediately as a result of their obvious connection over ganging up on how utterly flabby (both physically, it had to be surmised, and in terms of his commitment to the true rituals of the devil) SatansCumIsMyEnergyDrink85 seemed to be. They exited the chat and started a private one, exchanging information and establishing a meeting point at the Hot Topic inside the mall in Torrance. Sean, black unkempt hair and pale skin coordinating with his dark denim, ultra fitted skinny jeans, combat boots and Slayer shirt, could instantly spot Carly in the crowd, a dash of hot pink lining the back of a side slit in her black skirt attracting his eye before the cut up GWAR tank top. He sneered at her as a form of smiling. They traversed the tan linoleum floor to meet at the front of a giant pentagonal seating area.

He took her hand wordlessly and guided her back outside, to his white Honda Accord that appeared almost strategically dented allover, recessed in the far reaches of the parking lot, where no one in suburbia was fit enough to dare to bother parking in. He shoved her in the back and pulled her fishnets down, then ripped her skirt in such a way as to break the button off entirely, a clear-cut demonstration of its cheaply made quality. He began to lick her stomach, pausing briefly to stare into her eyes and remember that the tryst was missing something very important, as discussed per their fevered chats that had manufactured this very rendezvous. He paused to lean forward toward the front seat, where he opened the glove compartment to pull out a very full ten milliliter vial of blood. She beamed at his ability not to be hasty when it came to wanting to fulfill carnal lust right away. Not without the proper accoutrements to enhance the experience.

So she, in turn, pulled her own vial (of much lighter colored blood, Sean had to note) out of her bra, which he still hadn’t yet ripped off of her body. She lunged at him to, not kiss, but bite at his tongue as both parties fiendishly proceeded to release the contents of their vials, he pouring it onto her ribs and licking it up with the same ferocity as a rabid dog might tear at flesh and she stroking his dick with her own supply as lubricant.

They went on like this in the car for what felt like hours, and surely it must have been, for dusk soon descended upon them by the time they had both climaxed (she twice, he thrice–so it goes for male-female injustices). They licked one another’s remaining blood traces before Sean moved into the driver’s seat and offered to give her a ride home. He was still a gentleman, after all. Even if he was a hemoglobin-sucking one.

She was evasive about a drop off point, like Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink. When she said to just take her to the Lucky Lady Casino, he was further intrigued. “Why, you work there?”

“Why, would that turn you on?”

“I don’t think I can get much more turned on by you than I did today.”

“Maybe if you play your cards right, you will.”

“What are you suggesting?” he asked, licking his lips unwittingly.

“You don’t want to be a part of what I’m about to do.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“All men are faint of heart. Which is why they never bother to have one.”

“I’m different.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shouted with sarcasm he could tell was actually genuine excitement, “Well hot dog! Come on inside with me then.” She then put her hand up as though it could control his movements and said, “But wait until I go in first, and then follow.”

Sean did as he was told, even going the extra mile by waiting ten whole minutes before entering the smoke-filled space to the sight of what felt like an almost obscene amount of gaming tables with poles affixed to them so that strippers could stretch and showcase their wares as overweight white men and non-English speaking Asian men gawked and did their best to concentrate on the task at hand: winning enough money to entice any of these dimepieces to sleep with them later. At the far end, beckoning to him like a bull in red lingerie that she was somehow the only one shrewd (or maybe cheesy) enough to don, there she was. She saw him noticing her and seemed to take her twirling and gyrating to more elaborate heights. She wanted him to sit down and take a gamble. At her table. He didn’t even think of placing his bets at another.

That was five years ago now. That first encounter Sean still had to picture often in order to get it up for Carly. Which is, in part at least, why he had to urge her to take their once great antics to this new level. The only level, in fact, that would be able to arouse him enough to ever feel as he did on that first day for Carly. As though he would move mountains and swim through oil spill-drenched oceans to get to her. In the months that followed, all he could seem to remember was the color red–it saturated all of their activities, sexual or not. He knew that if he could just re-create that period (no pun intended), he could rekindle the love that he knew he still felt for her. The love he wanted to feel as he did that day and night when he hardly knew who she was yet knew her better than anyone could.

Carly, too, was obviously amenable to reinvigorating the ardor she had falsely become accustomed to and still falsely clung to, and was even more willing perhaps than Sean to do whatever necessary to get back to those glorious inaugural weeks of their deliciously debauched relationship. In the athamé epoch, as she had dubbed it, for it was them being at their most satanic and cannibalistic. It was these qualities that Sean sought to reinstate in bringing Carly their willing sacrifice over that night, to the very mall parking lot where they had first copulated with the same abandon that Sean was currently slicing Audrey’s stomach open with. The geographical location was, of course, always important when arranging any sacrifice, and for Sean and Carly, the only coordinates more sentimental could be the Lucky Lady Casino. Alas, it was too public for their needs.

Watching Sean’s beads of sweat glisten in the moonlight as he did their relationship this solid, she knew there was no going back on her promise to drink the wine from her like a goblet. She didn’t know what rule (or spell) book Sean was operating from, but she knew she had to trust it if she wanted him to lust after and love her in equal measure. So she drank. She drank and drank until there was no longer any distinction between the blood and the wine. Is this how Christ’s disciples felt? she had to question herself around the umpteenth guzzle.

Then, all at once, she realized Audrey had stopped writhing and shrieking. She had expired. It was this that elicited more of a reaction from Sean than the sight of Carly imbibing from a human body. All at once, he started to sob, throwing himself over her mangled stomach as he shoved Carly out of the way.

“What the fuck have I done?”

“What are you talking about?” Carly tinnily asked, completely flummoxed by his enervated, non-alluring behavior. If his plan was to win her back by being a total pussy boy, it wasn’t working.

He managed to croak out, “I loved her.”

“Say what?”

“I wanted to see if I could still love you though. See if we might all be able to join together as one in perfect cannibalistic sexual union, but now–”

“Now what? You see that she had to fucking die to fulfill your cockamamie sexual fantasy?”

“No, I don’t…I just thought…”

“You thought what?”

“That you wouldn’t turn out to be such a monster. That you wouldn’t be able to go through with it.”

Carly chortled, wiping a bit of blood off the side of her mouth. “Well surprise surprise, Seanny baby, looks like I’m the cold-hearted bitch between us. The real ritualist.”

He looked up at her from his prostrate position on top of Audrey. “You’re cruel, you know that?”

“I thought that’s what you loved about me.”

“So did I. Maybe I’m getting softer with age.”

“Your body certainly is. Anyway, how did you even know this whore–come to fall in love with her?”

“I met her at the Ralph’s. She worked there. She talked to me every time I went to her checkout line.”

“I don’t know if I’m more appalled that you met her in real life or that you shop at a faux bougie supermarket behind my back…is that why the blood we’ve been drinking lately tastes like tomato juice?”