The blood spills across the floor. Butcher-bought, it smells of the slaughterhouse, the pheromones of animal fear. I sketch the pentagram, light the candles. In the center I place the small vellum package. Stitched shut with the veins of things long gone. I whisper the words. And she comes.

She uncoils from blood. She--the color of porcelain and teeth gone sour on the taste of worship staled. Blood long dried and flaking. She uncoils, spreading herself, unfolding bones intestine strung. Flesh for blind eyes.

She was loved once. She was worshiped. They sacrificed to her. Young things. Loved things. Needed things. Such was their love for her it overcame familial ties, overcame the essentials of life. She was essential, her favor, her desire, her love. Oh how they contorted for her.

She uncoils me, undoes me. My soul is a blood-sodden homage to her formless stench of brothels and bloodbaths.

And then, like every lover, she was one day jilted. A new love came and she was cast aside. No longer was she brought gifts, signs of tenderness, twitching warm things. No longer was the dance blood-stained and wild for her pleasure. And she grew angry, and her former lovers grew afraid, and she was locked away,

She uncoils and stitches burst, things sewn to be sealed evermore, undone in this moment of sacrilege and sanctity

Slither, my love. Become. Undo yourself, and reknit fever dreams and sex stains into your multiplying skins--tattooed and beautiful.

Rising, rising,
coming
up
to me out of
pentagrams and-

She uncoils herself, bidden hither from nether. I give to her. Blood, and body, and soul. I give her love, and it wracks my body like a quake. Bone shattering, blood-spilling. And in this moment of broken-finger beckoning she emerges, unfolds, uncoils and gratefully she worships me.