Beau had never seen her fingers move like that—deliberate, almost surgical—as she traced symbols into the sweat-slick skin of the man beneath her. The other one, younger, and goiter’d hung had been chanting something guttural, syllables that made Beau’s fillings ache.
He had heard, over the years, “Sheboygan was more than a town, it was the threshold of decadent debauchery for “too tall Sally”, where demons whispered into the ears of mortal souls.
Laying the hands in forbidden places—and step mama, dancing with a shadow. It was in the way she licked her lips before reading aloud from Leviticus, her voice dropping an octave, stretching her labia, wetting her insomnia. The Deacon’s goiter bobbed as he swallowed, his Adam’s apple a grotesque pendulum keeping time with the chant.
Beau’s stomach turned—not at the sight, but at the realization that he knew this ritual. He’d seen it before when the dark came in heat and Sally fucked herself with the crucifix. Hungry. Purposeful. The dumplings hissed and popped in their boiling water, a grotesque counterpoint to the wet slap of flesh against flesh.
The younger man’s goiter pulsed with each guttural syllable, veins standing rigid beneath the skin like roots seeking the surface. His fingers—knuckled like knotted rope—dug into Sally’s hips, guiding her movements as if she were a marionette—smiling at Beau. As the coven walked in, chanting, “Shall We Gather at the River.”
