Deliverance

by Max Ridge

The following piece of writing, an excerpt from an unpublished book, was included in March 98 issue of Ferment. The book is presented as fiction. Yet the section below says something entirely true about the protective power of Goddess Kali, as experienced by people who worship her...

* * * * * *

So, I’m asleep in bed one night...and then I’m awake...abruptly...instantly!...fully conscious...most unheard of for Max...I usually take forever to struggle up to what Pinks consider normal waking consciousness...not this time...there’s someone in bed with me!...a female form, lying on its side, facing away from me...I’m abruptly aware of an overwhelming terror...and disgust...this is no ordinary happening...this thing next to me is glowing faintly!...it’s emitting a dirty whiteish-yellow light...which somehow shines right through the bedclothes...I’m paralysed with horror...this overpowering sense of a presence...an elemental...it’s like yeast...all mouldy...or fermenting...not smell...it doesn’t smell at all...something far more fundamental than that...seething, swirling, bubbling, corrupted leavening is its very essence...and it’s Postsekvinjo, I can tell...somehow, she’s projected herself into my fuckin’ BED!...what now?...I can’t move...and it’s turning over...you can bet it knows that I’m lying right next to it...that’s what it’s here for...

...it doesn’t have a face at all...nothing...smooth, blank...two armlike projections reach out to me...in a filthy parody of a woman’s embrace...but they sprout wet sucking mouths as they come towards me...they hit me...wrap around me...they’re wet, sticky...doughy...they coil right around me...and keep on going...the mouths wetly latch onto me...two big slimy on my chest...then they start sucking...draining the vitality away from me...I can feel it going...the Yeast-Thing instantly abandons its succubus-form...it’s just a dirty glowing pulsating wet lump of ooze in the bed with me...more tentacles sprout from it...all over...slurp slurp slurp...they stick on and start bleeding me, too...faster and faster...I’m being raped!...it’s disgusting!...terrifying, too...although I can somehow sense that this thing is not preponderatingly of evil as such...it’s a vastly powerful manifestation of twisted, insane NEED...it NEEDS me so much...so much that it’s draining away my whole spirit into it...it’s killing me by its need...I can feel it...that’s why, evil or not, I so absolutely terrified... doesn’t do the feeling justice...I need a stronger word for it...

...suddenly, I hear my own voice filling the room...not loud...but vibrating with a profound, reverent confidence that seems to shake the walls and floor...<>...I’m praying!...without conscious intention, I’m reciting my basic opening invocation to Goddess! And, instantly, the horrible wet sucking multitudinous vampire mouths have lost their hold on me!...<> it’s withdrawing its tentacles back towards its quivering body,<>the quivering mound is shrinking! The nasty glow’s dying out! <>

IT’S GONE! Goddess be praised! I roll over, and snap on the light...nothing there...I fling the bedcovers back...nothing left but a huge wet patch on the sheet, disgustingly like leftover come...

* * * * * *

You might recall that the altar was right there in the bedroom...that’s probably what saved me...at all events, you can be very sure that I immediately lit up everything that there was to light on the altar, and gave humble and profoundly grateful thanks for my deliverance from a very strange and horrible and unheard-of phenomenon...then I performed a few special little rituals for keeping evil at bay...the stain on the sheets had completely vanished by the time I was through, so I judged it safe to go back to bed, which I did...undisturbed for the rest of the night, thankfully...

Text © Max Ridge 1998
Artwork © Colin Robinson 1995

home.pacific.net.au