The Vorrh

replayed through his slow brain.
    ‘Kippa! Kippa, get out of the way!’ barked the innkeeper.
    The cleric stopped moving and brought his sheathed cane into view. He knew there was no danger from this faint one, but he had no intention of showing mercy as the other drinkers watched; even the dog had awakened to the danger and watched him with bared teeth from beneath the table.
    Kippa was still rendered immobile, unable to take his eyes away from the approaching demon. The blade made a great, circular arc, an elaborate matador flourish that had none of the surgical precision of its previous use. On its upward swing, it cut between the youth’s legs, severing his budding manhood and sending him, toppling and screeching, out of the deliberate path of the living, grinning nightmare called Sidrus.
    * * *

    It crawled across the floor on all fours, its long, white proboscis sniffing, whiskers quivering as it nodded from side to side. Its rangy, pale legs seemed to both tiptoe and slide on the polished wooden floor. The top part of its body was clothed in a green, silken skin, which caught the garish light from the blazing flambeaux on the balcony outside the windows. The lower half of its body was naked, its huge, swollen phallus swaying like an independent entity as the creature approached its next engagement. The last bed was in great disarray, the covers pulled messily around the softly snoring body of its spent occupant. The room was full of whispers and laughter; small, animal noises of hunger and fulfilment rippled the landscape of opulence. Sighs gilded the tangled scent of incense, musk and intoxication.
    It reached the next bed and slid its gloved hands beneath the sheet. They were instantly gripped by the smooth, trembling grasp of the woman who waited there. She pulled the beast inside and drew the covers over them both. Her form was older, large and voluptuous, and she too had a distorted face, in the shape of an owl, black feathers accentuating the ivory wideness of her eyes. He slipped a catch on his beak and pulled it backwards, leaving the lower half of his face exposed, so that his mouth was visible and active in their lovemaking. Pulling him close, she kissed him passionately. He jumped back, startled, almost falling from the bed. Neither Luluwa nor Ghertrude had ever done such a thing; it had never been explained to him, and Ghertrude had always looked away when they mated.
    The stranger drew him closer still. ‘Don’t be shy,’ she said.
    He let her suck his mouth again, and it was sweet and arousing. He kissed back, and his manhood surpassed previous dimensions and expectations.
    Even in the over-populated room of revellers, the sounds of the owl and her new companion arose above all others. Their bedding thrashed wildly, and something else wallowed out from their conjunctures; other couples and trios found their attention hooked and pulled across the pulsing darkness, away from their own compacted intimacies, peering towards an unnameable eminence that was outside and beyond their own little shudders and sighs.
    It was almost dawn when he crept from her bed to search the rooms for his black velvet cloak.
    When the owl awoke, she began to cry. She pulled her mask away and started to shout. She stumbled to the window, her hands on her face, and began to scream.
    The owl was called Cyrena Lohr. She was thirty-three years old, and had been blind since birth. In the early light of post-carnival, with anxious friends and strangers standing by her side, she shivered, naked and overpowered at the window, watching the brilliant sunrise, yellow and crisp on her first visual day.
    How had he done this? Who was this miracle worker who had entered her bed and given her sight? She had to find him. The moment she could be sure she was not dreaming, she would find him and thank him on her knees.
    The remaining revellers in her mansion were dressing quickly. One brought a dressing gown and wrapped Cyrena in its warm folds, while attempting to steer the emotional woman away from the window and back to the bed. But she would not be moved, so they brought her a high-backed armchair and seated her safely within it. Most of the crowd that had occupied her many rooms had disappeared; the combination of unmasking and being a witness was too much for their frail identities to bear, and they had fled as the whisper slithered through the house. Miracles are never comfortable; for the hungover, the debauched and the