The Ritual

rope. Fenris tied off the other wrist. Tight thin rope that burned and cut into his flesh, pinned him to that cross in the wet grass beneath a sky from which
the last light was draining fast.
    When Surtr clumsily removed her big knees off his shoulders, Luke understood there would be no last struggle; no final petulant fight to give them something to remember him by.
    Fenris grinned, Loki frowned, and then they were straining with all their might and strength under the weight of the crucifix’s long beam with Luke tied fast upon it. He shook and he
struggled against the rough wood as he was raised from the ground. His little stinking white gown dropped down at the front towards his face, and his cock and balls felt horribly exposed to the
night air. He felt like a baby, infantilized. There would be no dignity at the end. He hated them with such a black intensity, he could only hope that he might suffer a stroke and deny them his
final screams, his abject terror at the very end.
    Then he was upside down. Down his body, he looked at where he was skirted in the blood-ruined linen. Saw the black sky beyond his grimy toes. Dropped his head back to the wood. Looked at the
grass so close to his face. Studded boots gathered near his eyes. The pressure of blood rushing downwards came into his head quickly. And upon his head they jammed that scratchy spiky crown of
flowers, by shoving it upwards. They martyred him with that halo of dead petals.
    And then they all began shrieking. They sang out their incomprehensible screechy lyrics. They drank from bone horns. They threw their thin arms at the sky he could see below the soles of his
feet.
    ‘You die on the cross of the false messiah, Luke! It is so exciting, you fucking Nazarene!’ Fenris shrieked into his face.
    Luke’s face screwed up involuntarily. He thought he might break down. Then stopped himself. Then tried to get off. Stupidly, he just tried to get off the big upside-down crucifix. Then he
sobbed. Then he shouted. Then lost his mind; saw it go, like a watery thing puffing into vapour, before there was just black and red colours and his own screams inside him. Good, because he did not
want his mind. Did not want reason, or lucidity, or anything that would enable him to fully comprehend what soon would be coming for him from out of those dark trees, as he hung upside down upon
that black cross.
    ‘Your band fucking sucks!’ he screamed at them again. And laughed like a maniac. ‘You talentless fuckwits!’ Some of the alcohol ran down from his gullet and into his
mouth, stinging like battery acid. He spat it out, spat it at them.
    The world of upside-down whirled about him; the fire dropped into the sky; the forever of trees clung to the soil with their roots to prevent themselves falling into that eternal canopy of
cloudy darkness. He felt as if he were hanging over some great ocean, and could see no land in any direction, and was about to be dropped. If they cut him loose now he knew he would fall straight
down and into the sky.
    Fenris tried to out-scream him; he was getting to Fenris again. He knew it; skinny weasel-boy Fenris had unfinished business with him and didn’t like any defiance from his victims.
    ‘Hey Surtr,’ he called out to the excitable figure, thumping herself around the fire with her face all painted like that. ‘I’ll be dead, but you’ll still be fat and
ugly. You look like a frog, you fat fuck! Your cunt is the worst thing I have ever smelled!’ he screamed his throat raw.
    And then Loki was restraining Fenris, who looked like a Bonobo monkey with a white face, driven mad by some experiment.
    Luke screamed into the sky, the earth, the endless trees. He wanted to be mad and screaming when it came, low down and fast and eager. He called out to it. ‘Come on you stinking fuck! Come
on!’ He would bite its face with the last of his life.
    Soon he was fading, he was feeling faint, his head was swollen and hot and prickly.
    Loki was calling to the old woman. He was angry with her. She seemed unconcerned, and sat silently on her little chair. Loki released Fenris, who stomped across to the porch and pointed at the
tiny woman in her little chair. He screamed at her too. Clenched his hard white fists and shook them at her. Loki implored her. Then shouted at Fenris, who turned on him. There was some shoving
between them. Then Surtr plodded across to the confrontation and screamed at Fenris.
    The old woman stood up, and