“Have you ever seen a form of magic like this?”
Zatanna didn’t respond to the officer’s question. Instead she pretended to be lost in thought about the markings. But she knew them, all too well. Not only were they a dark, horrific form crafted by desire and pain, longing and lust, she knew the very runes themselves, because she had drawn them herself, a decade earlier.
“Officer, they’re purely gibberish and they likely have nothing to do with the girl’s disappearance. It’s alright if the landlord wants to paint over them.”
“Are you sure? I’d hate to lose evidence—“
“I’m certain. I’m an expert. Someone has taken runes from various different types of magic and put them up here randomly to throw you off the track.”
“Okay. You’re the expert,” he said as he walked back up the stairs.
27 Warminster Lane. Zatanna had spent a short span of weeks here in her youth, dabbling in various forms of magic that were considered forbidden. Was the girl’s disappearance connected? Or was this her chickens coming home to roost?
* * *
Her skin was burning with the memories as she sat bolt upright in bed. Zatanna gasped for air and ran her hands over her shoulders looking for wounds, her breasts in search of bruises, searched her nipples for hooks. The images from the dream were already fading, but the strange mixture of pain, excitement, and arousal remained for minutes after. She lay back in bed and stared up at the ceiling, unconsciously running her hand over her belly as if still looking for hooks, but ending with it searching between her thighs, invading her pussy lips. When she realized she was masturbating it was already too late. Zatanna both stroked her cunt one last time and with her other hand pinched down hard on her nipple, causing her to cum so hard that she saw spots and lay still a moment. Then the realization of the pain and her desire for it and fear of it caused her to roll over and clutch the wastebasket near the bed and hurl into it.
Was she imagining her future or simply remembering the past? After years without all of that madness, weaned slowly from the exquisite agony and the insufferable pleasure she could feel herself slipping back into old patterns. This was what they wanted. If she let them back into her head she’d end up drunk or doped up on the floor of another basement, surrounded by beautiful, bound people, invoking the minions of hell from their extra dimensional void.
Now that she’d revisited the past, they could likely smell her arousal. And since she’d come to the runes she’d carved long ago, they might have a sense of where Zatanna was in this world.
Perhaps she could placate them. With a sacrifice. Yes, someone young and curious and full of life. Someone with whom they could keep themselves busy for a while.
* * *
She scanned the crowd and saw some familiar faces. Gratefully, none of the Justice League had shown up, or the Titans, or any of the other major heroes. For this short-notice performance she wanted only fans and no law enforcement. Who was her victim? Her victim! It was so strange to be thinking that way. Was this how villains thought?
“Miss Zatanna!”
The voice was vibrant, full of youthful energy. She knew instantly, but she turned anyway to take a full appraisal. This was her.
“I’m such a HUGE fan! Could you sign an autograph for me? Oh, god, I can’t believe I get to meet you in person!”
“How did you get backstage?” Zatanna asked, trying to not sound perturbed, since this was actually helping her out quite a bit.
“Oh, that. I’m sorry. I tricked my way back here.”
“Did you… have a friend distract the guard?” Say no, please say no.
“No, no. I’m here alone.”
Perfect.
“I just flirted with him. I gave him a phone number.”
“Not your real one.”
The girl smiled in a way that told Zatanna she was right.
“Here you go,” she said scrawling her name on the piece of paper. “Do you have good seats?”
“About thirty rows back. But I’m happy to be here.”
Zatanna performed a small bit of sleight of hand and handed her a first row ticket along with the autograph.
“Enjoy!”
The girl was still thanking her as Zatanna walked away, feeling both incredibly clever and unsettled by how easy it was to be bad. This is what Luthor did. Give someone what they think they want.
“And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the great… ZATANNA!”
The applause was loud and fervent. It wasn’t often people got to see a great magician without having to spend outrageous sums on tickets, and a genuine superhero at that.
The first dozen tricks were all too easy. Once you’ve fooled Darseid into releasing you from shackles, working a normal audience is all too simple. Not that these were routine tricks, they were well done and well thought out complicated illusions… they were just child’s play.
“For my next trick I will need a volunteer from the audience!”
Zatanna looked down at the row of seats that were reserved and found her young fan there.
“You, girl in the good seats.” She said and motioned her up. She nearly leaped out of the seat. In fact she didn’t even run over to the stairs up, she just hopped up onto the stage.
Now Zatanna, and the crowd, had the opportunity to take in the sight of the girl. She was very pretty, willowy, with natural red hair and a few freckles that helped her seem wholesome but didn’t take away from the very nice, young, tight body.
“Wow, you must work out,” Zatanna said in her jovial on-stage tone. “By the way, folks, in the interest of full disclosure, the young lady and I met before the show, though she had no idea she was going to be involved in the show or how. Now give her a hand.”
The audience applauded politely, a few guys whistled. She was dressed in a white miniskirt and a pink sweater that was open in the front just enough to see the center knot of her black lace bra. Zatanna looked down into the cleavage and felt a twinge accompanied by quick flashes of violent, insane sex. One second she and another woman were joined at the cunt, grinding against one another while something chewed at their nipples and lashings erupted from the darkness to strike them on the buttocks, forcing them to grind harder. Another second, her legs were bent in an exaggerated fashion while something was being driven up inside her, something large and thorny. Another flash immediately on its tail had her standing over a much younger girl, smothering the girl’s mouth with her saturated pussy while she insanely clawed t her own flesh and pealed it away.
She accidentally bit her lip, she knew not from the pain, but from the taste of the blood.
“This trick is called the Magician’s Lament.”
She started by tucking the girl into a large box. It was large and ornate, covered in a geometric pattern that was different on each side. It looked like a puzzlebox, perhaps with moving parts, though it was hard to see the details with the speed with which the girl was being forced into the box. Zatanna didn’t want to let her linger.
Once the door was closed there were a number of elements that happened, but not one of them was really relevant. They were all flash and showmanship. An eruption of fire, an unexpected torrent of rain from out of mid-air, all there to distract while all that was really was happening was the puzzle box.
Zatanna stood at the side of the box and at the right moment, when she’d given them several minutes of flash and narration, she stroked the box in a specific and somehow sensual way, and the box began to turn. But it turned in several directions at once! Parts were folding and spinning and reconstructing, pinching and expanding in ways that made one wonder how anyone inside could possibly survive.
And when it was done, and the drama was concluded, the box opened , and rather than a mangled form of the young woman, they found only… nothing.
There were so many elements performed at once that people gave little thought to the disappearance of the girl. In fact they were more interested in the many other things that were vanishing or reappearing to even think about the girl they’d seen for only two minutes in a fifteen minute long overload of the senses.
When the crowd left, they were overjoyed and wrung out from the experience. The Great Zatanna had given them a fantastic evening for everyone… except one girl.
* * *
The dark was almost numbing. The girl with the red hair floated, or perhaps stood… she really couldn’t tell. After an untold amount of time she’d expected the light to reappear and to be pulled right out back into the theater, but it was uncomfortable here and it seemed like she wasn’t coming. Her fear was building. When it finally reached a crescendo and she wasn’t certain she could handle much more sensory deprivation…
There were hands on her shoulders. Was she imagining that? She couldn’t see. And she couldn’t tell when they started touching her, she was just suddenly aware of them. She reached up with one hand and felt the fingers, the spots where fingernails should have been but were not. A wave of nausea came over her but she pushed through the fear and continued to feel upward until she felt what she thought was a cheek bone. She reached over to seek an ear but instead found something hard and cold, and… it felt like a nail. Was there a nail extending from someone’s head? This had to be her imagination.
“What is your name, child.”
The voice was dripping with honey, as if to cover up the bitterness within.
“Come now. She sent you to us. She didn’t even ask your name, did she?”
Zatanna had done this? Where was she sent to? And how?
“You were a sacrifice. For thousands of years they’ve been offered to gods both real and false, to demons and wannabe prophets. She did not ask your name because humans do not ask the animal its name before they slaughter it. I ask, because I want to know you.”
There was a strange curl of logic that forced her to follow it.
“Maggie.”
“There, Maggie. I wanted to know your name. And now…”
There was a pause of indeterminate length and a glow emanated from behind the nail-riddled head of the one who spoke. She could slowly see him forming like a pale spirit materializing. He was pale and bald, tall, with a black jacket that was part leather and part darkness. His eyes burned with an uncomfortable light, and the glow behind him was like some horrible, deranged halo of sickly light.
“And now I want to know your flesh.”
The pain was all at once. A pure outrageous moment of pain that made her orgasm and drop into the void that suspended them.
* * *
Zatanna sat across the room from the box. She couldn’t keep it. The Lament box, modeled after the puzzles of French Toymaker, Phillip Le Marchand, were the inexplicably the most sought after collectibles on Earth, and yet they were only spoken of in the darkest circles, in places where no hero would ever be to hear them. This, larger reconstruction of the Lament Configuration puzzle box, intended to send sacrifices to hell, was now an albatross, a lodestone, an anchor that could only drag her into further darkness as she either sent more girls to them or she sent herself there to relive the horror and pleasure she’d experienced before her escape those many years ago.
She arranged for it to be taken to the junk yard to be crushed, with the agreement that she could go with it and witness its demise.
The workers didn’t seem to recognize Zatanna since her trademark fishnets were not present, in favor of a more incognito pair of jeans and heavy jacket. She’d felt cold all day for some reason.
They loaded it and hauled it away in the truck while she sat in the cab and watched the city go by. At the yard they unceremoniously pushed it off the back of the truck and a forklift scooped it up.
“That for the heap,” one guy asked.
“No, it’s for immediate disposal.” The other answered and motioned with his head toward Zatanna before muttering, “She must have some bucks to get to the front of the line.”
* * *
Zatanna had candles everywhere and the light fixtures turned on. She couldn’t handle the idea of sleeping in the dark just now. Like before it would likely be months before she could do that.
There was a strange rolling sound outside her door, eventually followed by a knock.
Zatanna got up and went to the door. It was fall and darkness came early. She opened the door and outside was a familiar worker in coveralls with a clipboard.
“Here’s your cube, ma’am. Sign here.”
“Whu-what?”
“Your cube. It’s been crushed down as far as the compacter would take it. Wheel it in, man.”
She stepped back mostly out of reaction to seeing the dolly with the limp of metal on it and knowing what it had been.
“I didn’t need it. I just wanted it destroyed!”
“Ma’am, it says, crush and deliver here on the orders. Now if you’ll sign.”
“No! No, I won’t sign!”
The two men exchanged looks. The one with the dolly leaned it forward and let the lump of misshapen metal fall off. Then both turned and walked out.
“I’ll sign for it then, but we have orders to deliver, not to bring back.” the one with the clipboard said as they got into their truck.
Zatanna stood at the doorway, wondering how she could move around the lump without disturbing it, without it somehow knowing she was there.
She stared for a long time. Finally, a gust took out some of her candles because of the open door and she quickly closed the door and moved to the candles with the lighter from her robe pocket.
Zatanna hadn’t given much thought to what she was wearing. All the workmen saw was a woman in a robe opening the door. But the untold hours she’d spent trying to forget her deed and yet madly masturbating had caused her to be only dressed in the most minimal of fashion beneath the robe. She wore her fishnets, which she’d come to realize were a buried memory of bondage. No panties, as she’d torn them off in a momentary fury earlier which she couldn’t even remember. She had been like a crack addict, unable to remember everything from moment to moment, lost in a haze, in this case, of mostly sex punctuated by moments of self-mutilation. Her nipples, the skin of her thighs, her tongue, her fingers and palms, the bottoms of her feet, all had some sort of scoring, bite marks, of pin-prick punctures.
Was it in there? The box? How could it be? The lump of steel was so small. In fact, it was curiously interesting, the shape that it had taken. With the bits of rebar, stainless steel and other scraps that had been crushed along with it, the object had taken on a strange and oddly disturbing/pleasing shape. She looked at piece of rebar running through it and thought about what it would be like to be impaled on it, the pleasure it would bring.
It couldn’t be in there. It couldn’t be operated, could it? It was after all wrecked to the point where it could not be manipulated.
Zatanna pulled on one of the scraps of metal and it fell away. The sense of the rusted metal between her fingers felt strange. She went to pull on the rebar but found it was tightly in place, but it could be rotated. She turned it almost like a handle. Something felt familiar about all this, something called out to her, a darkness within that compelled her to crank some parts, poke others inward, to bend and shape. There was the bitter taste of raw copper on her tongue, perhaps because she’d unconsciously performed the last caress of the knotted steel with her mouth.
The room was silent and she became aware that all of the candles were out. How long had she been doing this by touch, seated on the floor in the darkness, her tactile senses groping the metal and turning it into the desired shape.
In the crushing of the puzzle, through arcane accident or unholy miracle, the confluence of bars and bits, nuts and bolts pressed into the now deformed cube had formed another puzzle. One that if unknotted properly could also light the way to anti-paradise.
The voice was a whisper. A female whisper. The ‘e’ sound was carried out a bit longer than usual. Then the word was repeated, sing song. Magieeeee. Followed by a girlish chuckle. It was the answer to a question that had never been spoken.
“My name is Maggie, in case you were wondering.”
“I’m Sorry--” Zatanna started to say, her nerves alight as if she were being electrified. Her adrenaline was overwhelming her ability to control herself. She could smell the void, the absence of sensory input outside of that one sound. It was dark, silent, weightless, and she knew it. She knew that she was home.
From the endless numbness came a sudden and sharp pain. Something bit down on her clit. She convulsed like an electrified cat and became aware of the pale green-gray light of the abyss all around her. From where Zatanna lay on her back, A shock of red hair extended from between her legs, a pale, freckled forehead visible, and then at last a pair of eyes, green and playful staring at her. The pain in her pussy was excruciating and yet she could not unwind it from the pleasure of the tongue that was circling inside her, churning her insides. The girl continued to stare at her and Zatanna stared back, frozen in place by nothing more than that accusatory stare and the outrageous pleasure that was overwhelming her desire to escape. Zatanna didn’t need to see more to know it was her sacrifice returned for some modicum of revenge.
Something entered her anus, forcing its way past the tight muscle and feeling uncomfortably hot even as it stoked something within her. Zatanna raised her hands to feel her own breasts, to knead her breasts, to pinch the nipples, in truth—the rip them straight away from her body with the crescendo of the orgasm that was coming, but she was denied. Her hands were sewn together behind her back.
“Zatanna, for your crimes, the cenobites declare that you shall never be allowed to administer your own pleasure or pain. You will be at the tender mercies of others for your willing denial of this, the legacy you once so openly sought.”
Crime? Punishment? Her cunt felt so good as the young redhead made her writhe on the floor of this chamber whose edges she could not quite perceive nor care about. Whatever was inside her ass made her writhe, forced her pussy up into the face of her pleasurer.
“Mercy,” Zatanna said, knowing it was a meaningless word and that it was more likely to inspire some horrendous amount of pain for merely being whispered in these unhallowed halls. She wanted the pain. She needed it.
Zatanna felt the blessed end coming, an orgasm that she knew would be run through with some unexpected knife of pain that she would not expect.
“Shall we grant her… that?” the man’s voice asked.
“Maggie finally raised her head far enough for Zatanna to see her lips and what extended from between them… a tongue that was so long that it disappeared out of sight and around whose surface ran a coil of barbed wire. The barbed wire extended down the darkness of her throat and as the tongue worked away inside Zatanna like a plumber’s snake, the redhead, Maggie, curled her lips back in a sneer that revealed to Zatanna that her teeth were also unnaturally long and sharp! Zatanna began to shake her head no because she knew what was coming with the fury of the snaking tongue. The crescendo arrived and Maggie lunged forward, snapping her jaws closed.
And Zatanna awoke in her bed. She let out a howl but it was mostly a reflex to what she had expected to happen. This was her room. No one was there. Her arms were not bound together, and in fact, if she rolled over, which she did, falling out of bed, she found that her bed sheets had become wrapped around her wrists, for a moment giving her the sensation of being helpless.
The sheets were damp where she had mercilessly humped the pillow and blankets, orgasming uncounted times. But there were no minions of hell. She stood in front of the full length mirror and saw only the red welts born of self abuse.
Zatanna should have been elated at her freedom, but she wasn’t. The greatest orgasm of her life had been brewing and was denied her. The high of a lifetime! The moment at which she would have willingly died, evaporated like a dream.
Through the doorway she could see the pieces of metal. Had she really opened the doorway? The puzzlebox, as it had been, was gone, crushed beyond usefulness, and the temporary puzzle that had been manufactured by the destruction of the box, was completely unknotted. She had no way to return to hell. And she knew now, with it completely denied her, that it was what she wanted most.
* * *
A word was exchanged, a secret word of some sort and the door opened. The businessman adjusted his tie at the burst of warm, moist air that emanated from the portal. Inside were all manner of sounds and sights as people were restrained, whipped, punctured and beaten in every corner of the club while industrial techno music drowned out the ability to understand each other. He felt nervous, and at the same time, got an immediate erection. This was one of the places they’d recommended when he was in Thailand. This was the place they spoke about during that boat cruise through the Mediterranean in which he’d spent the whole time tied to the mast while women beat and abused his sun burnt flesh.
“This one’s yours,” a leather-bound man said as he pushed the man down to the ground in front of an imperious bitch with a long ponytail and breasts sculpted by Satan himself. He looked up at her clit piercings and soon realized that he was lying on top of another woman onto whom he’d been pushed.
“Slut!” the bitch said, kicking the woman on the bottom. “Service the new arrival.”
He stood up and went to take down his fly but his hand was smacked with a riding crop. The girl on the floor sat up and through the zipper gap in her leather mask she produced her tongue which she used to try and manipulate his zipper down. He felt his cock get even harder, as if that were possible.
She somehow managed to get it down with only her tongue, a gift she’d learned in the long months spent in servitude in clubs all over the world and she buried his cock in her face, ignoring the gag reflex, living only to engulf him.
“Oh, god!” he said, coming in short order, splattering into her throat and her windpipe. She coughed but refused to remove her mouth from the member until she was given permission.
“Fantastic! Worth every penny,” he said to the dominatrix. “What’s her name?”
“Who cares,” the bitch said.
“What does she look like without the mask?”
“I don’t know. Must be ugly; she refuses to take the mask off. And I refuse to let her. A little mystery is better sometimes.”
Zatanna choked a little longer on the cum before returning to a state of readiness for the next sexual torture they elected. She refused to give her name and she hoped that someone would try to force it from her. Please! Do anything and everything to her! Was the rest of her life to be spent in these petty games? She’d been tortured by the greatest and that was what she desired. Everything else was muffled, a shade of what it could be. She lived in hope that someday she would find her way back there, to their hellish machinations. Somehow.