As soon as Lino realized how wealthy he was in this new life, he had stopped listening to the system for a while and ran out of his mansion, a city guide from his new library in hand. He had searched far and wide for a gay bar with sinners far gone and booties gone wide. And while he found one, he had neglected to heed the warnings of the system: That in Cabaret cults were the most common occurrence in gay bars after gays, lesbians, and straight guys hitting on said lesbians. Scientists had tried to decipher why, and all the results from a myriad of studies pointed in the same direction: male cultists often considered themselves sort of in a more-than-friends relationship with the interdimensional entities they tried to summon, and many didn’t care about what gametes their monstrous patrons produced, so queer culture had accepted them as a sort of sexually boring weirdos.
To provide a parallel, imagine a Chinese-managed store, what’s the first item that pops into your head?
That fucking golden cat. You know the one. It knocks with its paw all the time, it comes and goes and comes and goes!
Well, cultists were the annoying golden cats of the LGBT community. Except they kept their arms considerably quieter—whenever they weren’t stabbing someone, that is— and weren’t said to attract money. And, unlike Zhaocai maos, cultists often respect private property, they don’t just spawn in your house like those fucking golden cats. Like, your wife brings another one home after the previous golden cat mysteriously ended up in the oven, you kill her —as it is natural after a betrayal of such proportions— and wall her remains up neat and tidy, thinking you committed the perfect crime. But when the police come, they hear a knock and tear down the wall, just to find the fucking golden cat calling with his paw, tap tap tap tap. And your dead wife, to boot, because bad luck swims in flocks. Like penguins. I also have opinions about penguins…
Right, Lino. He got kidnapped by the cultists after his second martini. They even stole the olive from the cocktail glass, the despicable criminals. They were making Lino and others like him march in line through subterranean tunnels —as opposed to tunnels in the air. Their leader, a robed figure of obscured face and clear intentions, looked intimidating under the orange torchlight. The two cultists at the back, wielding ancient sacrificial tools of the six-murders-per-barrel variety, snickered as they intimidated their quarry.
“Brother C, do you think the Queen will be pleased with today’s… suitors?” asked Brother H, his voice rendered into a mellifluous tune after having to resonate with his respectable amount of bodily sugars.
Brother C licked his eye like a reptile would. That was his answer.
“That’s right, she is never pleased, but she is still the Queen, Brother C. And she chose you to be brought from distant lands and aid in our mission.”
Brother C began walking on all fours, posture as unmammalian/undinosaurian as possible. His tongue lashed out to catch a crunchy, squirming tortured spirit that flew by. In his mind, it was a bug too.
“Your ways are exotic and inspiring, Brother C.”
Lino stared at the green letters that only he could see floating over his shoulder.
Someone, I won’t say who, fucked up.
Shut up, Lino thought, as he knew the thing could read his mind.
“The best of us, Brother G, I swear. Being only fourteen, Brother C is a prodigy…” He heard one of the cultists in front digressing.
Do you want a quest that offers a reward if you survive? Maybe that way you can avoid having your immortal soul sacrificed to a demon for thinking with your crotch. Act stupid, make the gods laugh, get saved, and get progress towards your breakthrough. What do you say? Should we reward you for being a moron?
In my years as part of the scientific community, I learned a thing or two. One of those was how to shamelessly accept such offers.
I… I just wanted to hurt your pride. Make you beg as a sort of punishment for getting us into this.
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I don’t care, sweetheart. Men are owners of their thoughts and slaves of their words.
In all my years working as a system for morons, it’s the first time someone calls me a man.
In all my years working as a paleobotanist, few people ever called me man. Most called me al. Consider yourself honored.
You know what? If you survive, I am bumping your breakthrough progress up to the midway point. Do you want a quest to make it official?
I have your word. Besides, getting away with my soul intact will be enough of a reward.
But you will still hold me accountable if I try to go back on my promise. Who’s the monster here?
My Avatar. She is writing a treatise on racism and xenophobia. The first seven pages are highly detailed apologetics arguing for a potential genocide of the Chileans.
Yes, her countrymen are often very passionate about hatred. I like that. How does a dead plant write, though?
Fast. And badly.
Their cute conversation got interrupted by reality: they had arrived to the arching entrance to a deeply carved, circular chamber built out of gray bricks streaked with a tourmaline pattern that converged at the center of the room. Lino’s nostril got assaulted by the smell of humidity, unwashed robes, and pennies. Or blood, it probably was blood.
The receptionist acolyte was the kind of man that didn’t know the meaning of expeditious: it took several minutes to review the documentation of the kidnapping cult members and make sure that everything was in order. “You may pass.”
Brother L threw a cigarette butt to the side, into a puddle of non-combustible yet suspicious liquid, and grunted. “High time, Brother Slow, my cowl was about to catch cancer.”
Pushing into well-sculpted backs with the cannons of their revolvers, the cultists ushered the group of fabulous victims forward. Lino wanted to run away, but he didn’t want to get shot, because his doctor had recommended him to reduce his lead intake to the minimum necessary. Brother B stepped in front of the group and lowered his hood, revealing a second hood underneath. He lowered the second hood, and third one seemed to bud from beneath.
“How many hoods do you have?” Lino interloped his kidnapper, because they didn’t seem the kind of folks that would torture him for his insolence. Most of them reeked of pee and inexperience.
“Not enough!” Brother B said, as he continued with his daunting task.
When the final hood fell, no head was revealed under it. It was just an empty space. A very anticlimactic conclusion to his act.
“Where is your head?” The bear of the group (who wasn’t literally a bear) asked, forwarding a fat, hirsute finger.
“Unlike you, I have touched the body of a woman before. And decided merely being a garment for a whore wasn’t a worthy life, so I began cultivating. With the passage of years and toil that stretched my fabric to the limits of what any cloth could stand, I have achieved a state close to illumination. I, shaving implements unbeliever, am a Bodiceattva,” Brother B explained.
The twink of the group gathered valor to speak. “How have you decided you were male?”
“My job description was firmly squeezing tits and waists. Statistically, it is very likely for me to be male.”
Lino decided not to push the issue of a piece of clothing gaining sentience, getting way ahead in the way of illumination and then joining a cult. From what he knew of this new world of his, that was close enough to expected.
“Roar,” The second bear of the group added, not knowing exactly why: he had been taken out of his home in the forest, sent to a gay bar as a spy, and then kidnapped by these madmen. With some luck, they would not see past his astute disguise.
“As a little aside, which one of you morons brought a grizzly wearing glasses into our sacrificial chamber?” But nothing could escape the analytical gaze of Brother B.
“Brother H has a personal vendetta against them,” one of the cultists said.
Brother H stepped forward. “No-homo bears killed thousands of my mothers and countless of my siblings. They deserve to be eaten by the Queen of Damned Sin.”
Lino began wondering if his martini had been spiked.
Sadly, no. For you this is surreal madness. For the locals, this is an unusually quiet weekday.
This universe was made on drugs.
No. But it is, arguably, made of drugs.
Lino began wishing his martini had been spiked.
“You know what, H? I am tired of your bull. You lead the summoning ritual now.”
Brother B’s steps didn’t emit a sound as he left the center of the pattern and disappeared behind an old, wide pillar of bricks. In hindsight, the fact he hid no feet under the robes should have been obvious.
Brother H stepped up to occupy his place, red cowl lit by distant, arguably magical yellow lights. When he lowered his hood, the raw truth was revealed: Brother H didn’t have a head either, and, in its expected place, a glass jar of honey—made by overly mirthful bees, according to the label—rested. The jar was scowling at the sacrifices.
“Listen here, worthless…” He started pointing at them, one by one, with his long sleeve. “Thirty!”
Some of the men and women lined to die chuckled at the fact a scowling jar of honey was acting like an authority in front of them.
“Laugh now, because soon we will bring a hat full of numbers and make you draw one. And when your number comes up, you will have to perform for the Queen of Damned Sin!”