Mojo - 20. Chapter 19: Abraca…. Who?

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Chapter 19: Abraca…. Who?

I wasn’t liking this one bit – tied ‘X’ fashion, hand and foot to a pair of stripper poles, like a modern-day Samson about to get a buzzcut.

I almost wished for Angekwekwa’s blindfold again. She’d collected me at 10 from the Bellagio, as promised, but covered my eyes in the limo. We didn’t go all that far, so I had an idea we were on The Strip someplace. Still blinkered, I wondered if I’d made a mistake, for this procedure bore too many cloak-and-dagger similarities to the crazy donkey dick cult’s modus operandi. Taken to a room after an elevator ride, my blindfold was removed and I was told to strip and change.

So now, here I stood, wearing only a string-type bottom with fabric front and back panels, and watching these new religious nuts perform their ‘ceremony.’ Ms. Umfume-Kintay was there too, in her white robe and hood – the same thing they all wore dancing about me and chanting some mumbo jumbo. Weirdly, some had old-fashioned magician mustaches – extra long and thin – while others carried ventriloquist dummies – each little wooden man dressed in his own white robe.

They marched around my stripper poles, every cowled figure holding one of several inexplicable cult objects: some with long-stemmed poppy pods, dried and used as rattles; some with small whips; some with a round shield on one arm; and others – most oddly of all – a hen tucked in the crook of their arms. One thing they all had was a wand, even the little wooden hands.

I was like ‘WTF…?’

The chants and movement stopped.

From my left and right, two young men cloaked in red hoods and floor-length capes stepped up to me.

The gathered assembly before me parted ways, and an older man lowered his head covering as he approached. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back in the style lots of men in their 60s preferred, and when he spoke, he had an insufferably British mush to his mouth; it was similar to those Americans who affect a decidedly Parisian plonk to their à la Française.

He raised his hands, letting his sleeves slip, and lifted his eyes to the dim-lit ceiling tiles. “Oh, Blessed of the 365 Heavens, you of each day of the year, hear our beseechment for assistance.” He looked down, lowering the hand with a large signet ring towards me. “This young man has been cursed by a false god, and needs the Cock in his life. You, oh Great Snake-for-Legs, The Anguipede One—”

‘Oh, boy. This seemed like a load of—'

“Hear our voces magicae. Oh, Lord, cure him.”

The leader pressed the cold stone of his finger-jewelry to my forehead.

“Abraca, speak unto this boy

That which is sacred and profane;

Life wrapped in death –

Light in darkness –

Questions in explanations –

Speak the word existent

At the beginning as well as at the end,

In the same moment of creation and destruction.

Abraca, be both terrible and wonderful

And work your mysteries.”

The man stepped back, and simultaneously, the red-hooded boys flanking my sides lifted the front skirt of my loincloth. Angekwekwa produced a long rooster tail feather from beneath her robe.

The cult leader took it, and shocked me by what he did next. Tickling my privates with it, he tried to mutter mystically: “Abraca dabra.”

It was all I could do not to burst into giggles; every man’s religion is his own, but ultimately, each is just as ludicrous as the next.

And that was it. I heard drinks carts rattle, and the cowled assembly exposed their faces with chatter and self-congratulations. The lights came on, the leader drifted off with his feather, and the two red boys untied me.

A couple of minutes later, the three of us were back in the withdrawing room, where my clothes had stayed the whole time. As I was pulling on my briefs, I noticed one of the boys locked the door to the ceremony chamber and lowered his head covering. “You following me or something?!”

It was Claude Germaine, and he was half-laughing to get a chance at using my line from last evening.

“You have some connection to the—”

“The dude who used the feather, that’s my old man, Guy Germaine.”

The other boy revealed his head as I slipped on my tee-shirt.

“And this,” Claude said, “is my fiancé, Domingo Klaassen.”

“Hey.” I shook his hand. Ignoring the inconvenient fact that Claude was straight, I took off my cult ‘string bikini’ and put on my jeans. “You part of this too?”

“Sure am – Claude and me were both born into it.”

“Yeah,” agreed Germaine, “that’s why we want to get hitched and get out of Vegas.”

I scanned the pair of them up and down. Domingo was just as shaggy haired as Claude, but of a darker hue. He was also more open with his assertive smile.

“And you’re both hetero…?”

“Yep,” they replied unanimously with shy grins.

“See,” Klaassen explained, “we want to get gay-married to fuck the whole patriarchal system of oppression, file joint taxes as two dudes and then buy our girlfriends cool stuff with the refund.”

“Yeah!” The espoused boys high-fived. “But mostly,” continued Claude, “we want to do it to piss off these Abracans.”

“These cult people, why?”

“They don’t approve of joint marriages,” said Domingo.

“Same-sex unions…?”

Claude sputtered like I missed the obvious. “Nah, bro. Two Abracans gettin’ hitched. They only want members to marry non-members so we can convert more people on the down low.”

“Yeah,” Domingo chuckled with an inside joke. “As if by magic.”

“But what is it exactly you need to get ‘hitched’?”

Both laughed.

However, Claude thought for a moment before he said, “About $2,000 to dump our cell accounts and get out of town.”

“Yes! Did he tell you?” Domingo was animated by excitement. “We want to get to Holmes County, central Buckeye State. We hear Amish girls are easy.”

A bro chest-bump followed Claude gleefully telling me, “Yeah, they’re real fag hags!”

A knock sounded on the door with a voice asking from the other side “Is he ready?”

“Yes,” Claude called out, unlatching it. “He’ll be right out.”

A couple of minutes later, I was wandering about the ceremony room a little dazed and confused. It was the same space but now the blinds were up and the harsh desert sunlight streaked in.

“Well?” Angekwekwa strode up to me, her corkscrew curls bobbing. “How’s your gay pecker-wood feelin’?”

“Um, good, I guess.” I didn’t know if she expected an insta-boner or what.

“By now I thought you should be cold-stone hard, my little fruity friend.”

I simply grinned awkwardly; she did envisage immediate results. To distract my feelings of possible failure, I glanced around our environment. All the freaks had disrobed and now stood in street attire in small groups. They had cocktails – the drinking kind – and their wands dangled from wrist scrunchies like suburban soccer moms’ minivan keys. They were all older bastions of vintage Vegas: scotch-swilling, tobacco-slamming, sharky types carefully cultivating the mystique of a vague mob connection à la Sinatra, but with a Slytherin vibe.

“Oh, here he comes.” The woman gestured towards Claude’s dad heading over to us. He too now had a dark-as-night wand bouncing from his wrist.

“Ah, young man; Guy Germaine. A pleasure to make your acquaintance in fully dressed form.”

More of his affected accent grated against my eardrums, but I shook it off. “Likewise. I’m Kohl.”

He held out his hand, the one with the ring.

We shook, and then he turned coldly on Umfume-Kintay to dismiss her. She departed, and the cult leader placed a palm on my shoulder to lead us on a stroll, his wand caressing my backside as we went.

“Abraca is a much more powerful god than that crude redneck, Priapus. His followers are nuts, as I’m sure you know. But now that the Cock God smiles upon you, your John Thomas will be right as rain in the morning, I guarantee it.”

“That’s a big promise.”

He leered with a lopsided grin and touched the side of his nose. Just at that moment, I noticed the shelves along one wall for the first time. These hosted the chickens the cult members had been holding, and now they brooded in baskets while quietly clucking and watching the proceedings comfortably. “Are you a magician, sir?”

He was flattered, and his wand came up with his hand to pat his chest. “Why, yes. Guy Germaine the Germaine! That’s my stage name, and I take pride in being an old-school magic-man from the days when magic was feared and honored for its greatness.”

“The days of Houdini?”

“No, no. Greater. Like the time of Humphries the Humanist, or Matilda the Metaphysicist.”

“Oh.”

“So, you’ve heard of me…?”

Expectation shone in his voice, so I lied. “Yes.”

“Naturally,” he gloated. “Quite right that you have.”

This guy with his nearly painted-on mustache and slick demeanor made me wonder ‘…what if Vincent Price and Criss Angel had had a baby….’

I glanced around from nervousness as we continued to stroll. This room, full of other, old-time polyester-clad magicians and ventriloquists, was creepy to say the least, especially because of the latter, who kept their dummies’ eyes trained on me the whole time; little wooden necks creaking as they followed my motions.

Suddenly the room shook with booms – a fireball shot past the window outside.

“What the—”

No one in the chamber even batted an eye. Guy led me over to look out. To my surprise, we were not high up in a tower, but on the third or fourth floor. Right outside the window was a decorative balcony, with ship’s rigging beyond. A pirate show was in mid-progress, for a crowd below in a plaza hooped and hollered, and I recognized where I was: Treasure Island. This casino and hotel on The Strip had a full-scale sailing vessel in its fountain next to the building doing squash-buckling events several times a day.

Another cannon went off and pirate actors went swinging by with shouted “Arrrrrr’s!”

“Let me show you something special, my boy. Our cult objects.”

Guy was on the move again, this time heading us towards a wall with lighted niches. I have to say, I felt like I was back at the Getty Villa.

“How much do you know about the Great One?”

We hauled up and stopped. Behind a glass door was a stone relief.

“Nothing, Mr. Germaine.”

“Look here. This is a North African altarpiece, circa 150 A.D. See the god’s attributes?”

How could I miss them! This ‘god’ of theirs was an utter freak to gaze upon. Some kind of chimera with the armor-clad torso of a soldier, the head of a giant rooster, and most strangely of all, a pair of fat-ass snakes for his thighs, legs and ‘feet.’

“See what this representation of the god holds?”

It was the medical wand with the double-helix snakes of Medicine on it, plus two dried poppies like the people here used as rattles.

“This is Abraca in his purest medicinal incarnation – The Healer.”

“Oh.” What else could I say….

He gestured us on to view another display case. Once there, I felt the painted eyes of the dummies following me from the crowd, and observed the Abracans had a cultish interest in each other’s wands.

“You know,” I chuckled towards Germaine. “This all seems a bit Deathly Hallows to me, what with the capes, and—”

He cut me off testily. “Oh, don’t go coughing up more of that Hairy Pooper phenom rubbish.”

“Not a fan…?”

“We despise all of that riff-raff tit-tat meant only for boobs and imbeciles. It gives real Magic Inc. a bad name. Confuses the public.”

I suppose I saw the logic in that. It was the same as MDs hating doctor shows on TV because the programs got the ‘medicine thing’ wrong.

The cult leader caught me watching the act of wand-admiration amongst his followers. He pulled up his own and ran it under my nose like a hotdog at the fairgrounds. “Our zealous interest in our neighbor’s staff – learning the timber species, age, maker, and wood varnish like a Stradivarius – is all attributable to a hopeless condition called wand envy.” Germaine chuckled at his own witticism, if you could call it that.

Again, I was reduced to a simple “Oh.”

He stroked his dark member lovingly. “This one is made of the rarest and most prized of all – elder wood.”

My eyebrows crinkled involuntarily. Two things popped into my mind at the same time. The first one revolved around the ‘Hairy Pooper’ phenom…. But the second…that one raised a goose bump or two.

I mentioned the first one to Germaine. “In the series of books whose name shall not be mentioned”— I winked at him—“elder is the wood the devil himself chose for the wand in Snape’s possession….” I came to a faltering halt, for my host looked pale all of sudden.

“Rumors, boy. Rumors – and slander against, well, just slander!”

The seriousness of his reply instantly caused the other allusion to pop in my mind as a forced moment of re-play. I saw Psyche standing in our Pasadena motel room, saying in enchanted fashion: “…He of the olive and elder….” She’d meant Priapus, of course.

“Besides,” Guy suddenly added, “Draco Malfoy was the Wand of Destiny’s true master. Everybody knows that about that particular horcrux.”

With that, we moved on. Cannon fire boomed outside, and the new case he showed me seemed filled with jewels sparkling in the firelight coming through the windows.

“Ancient intaglios,” he said as I bent down to look at some of the details. Carnelian stones, and large garnets in red and brown were shaped into flat-fronted ovals. Deeply cut into the surface were images of Abraca, all cock-headed and snake-legged, but instead of medical implements like the large relief, most of these representations of the chimera bore a round shield on his left arm and a raised whip in his right hand – an oddly short implement, like a crop for horses.

“What are these?” I asked.

“Very valuable gems, collected over several lifetimes, and carefully guarded by our religion.” He drew down his hand that I might admire the matching intaglio on his left ring finger; it was the one he’d impressed onto my forehead earlier.

I stood up fully, and he continued, “In ancient times, these amulets of protection would have been sewn into the underlining of garments, because the Cock God loved to be rubbed in private, next to the privates, under the clothes.”

I thought, ‘This cult object likes handies.’

The wicked leer Guy shed on me made yours truly not venture to speculate what type of underwear he had on currently.

We continued to stroll, this time to where the two temporary stripper poles were still up. There was another lighted niche behind them I hadn’t noticed before. Something oddly familiar and out of place was on a golden shelf there.

“You know,” I told Germaine wryly, “I’ve met your son Claude on a few occasions, and today, Domingo Klaassen, his fiancé too.”

The boy’s father stiffened; grew agitated. “The recklessness of youth! I raised him right, to enjoy the high life, go out every night if he wants to, run around as much as he can stand, not think about the consequences, but he breaks my heart by talking about settling down and throwing all of this away. Can you imagine, Mr. Kohl, the wicked selfishness of homesteading on a farm outside of Canton? Ohio! The shame of it all…. Oh, children are a great trial unto their parents.”

“Yes, they are sometimes indeed.”

“And this…” He pulled up short and stopped us between the two stripper poles to look at the contents of the alcove. “This is our most sacred cult object.”

“This rusty old souvenir…?” For that’s all it was. A vintage tourist-sized model of a rooster weathervane, resting atop a polished marble base.

“Yes,” he said transported. “It used to belong to very important men – two of them to be exact.”

“Who?”

“You see, this ‘souvenir,’ as you termed it, is an exact replica of a weathervane crowning a building in Bern, Switzerland, and sacred because it was bought by Carl Jung to commemorate a romantic romp he shared in that structure with Aleister Crowley. The summer of 1912 marked both men’s cult awakening to Abraca’s sexual release and power.”

“Really? Jung and Crowley were lovers?”

“Oh, yes, my boy! And more importantly, joint lovers of Abraca.”

I must have looked dubious, for the old-school Vegas magician and cult leader continued in an ‘educational’ tone.

“You, young man, should not find it incredible to learn the degree to which Abraca is integrated into the power structures of everyday life. Take the Vatican, for example. One sacred cult object in their possession is a silk weaving from Persia. Dating to about 600 A.D., it shows a proud, sacred cock with a halo. This item is reputed to have belonged to the same pope who in the eight-hundreds declared the image of the cock to be venerated in equal holiness as the cross, going so far as to mandate every church place these two images side by side on the altar. A later pope ordered rooster weathervanes to be installed on top of all the churches of Europe in honor of The Blessed One of the 365 Heavens.”

“Oh,” slid out of my mouth again as another fireball shot across the window. I felt like I had slipped into an alternate reality.

The man concluded his lecture patly. “So in terms of the pope, Jung and Crowley, you see, religion, psychology and magic have never really been divided.”

I thought, ‘What a damning pronouncement against all three!’

˚˚˚˚˚

I knew I was dreaming, but despite the sweat, I didn’t want it to end.

Mottled sunlight, sliced into motion through the shifting green canopy high above, strobed on my eyes as I ran. I suddenly had to dodge a rough, fallen log encrusted with moss; I leaped over another one.

The forest engulfing me was deep, dark and primeval – it represented the heart of my Teutonic soul, if you listen to the myth-makers and head-shrinkers – so I felt invigorated by the pine-scented air.

Gordon ran ahead of me, dashing in and out of the stands of mature tree trunks, and making me chase him. I called out his name pitifully several times, and each plea of my heartbreak simply made him turn to me with his beguiling grin. He’d giggle at my pain.

Leaping over one felled oak, I chanced to glance to my thighs and saw I was completely naked. What was more, I was rock-hard; my energy and vigor had returned.

When I looked up again, the woods were eerily still. Jogging to a halt, and coming ‘round one particularly thick tree trunk, I saw my boy’s back peeking out as he tried to conceal himself behind another a few paces ahead.

Slowly, watching my footfalls, I kept my eye on the sliver of Gordon’s clothes I could still see, and suppressed my joy as I sneaked up to the front of his hiding tree.

I popped around to embrace my boy….

Instead, the snarling face of Priapus was there. As I stumbled back, the woodman’s visage maintained hate-filled glances of vindictiveness on me.

I looked down. Around my waist was the loincloth the Abracans had made me wear. Lifting it, my Schwanz was as limp as a wet hand towel.

I awoke with the nature god’s maniacal laugh still ringing in my ears; it seemed like the bellow of a blast. Tearing off my bedsheet only confirmed the mix of my tears and sweat, and the pathetic state of my manhood.

I gave it a good smack or two, experiencing a moment of clarity. By all rights, the crazy ritual and humiliation the Cock-God fools subjected me to should have triggered a Post Traumatic freak-out in me; but it didn’t. Why? Because, despite the outward similarity to my garden center of horrors ordeal, this Abraca-dabra shit was just that – shit! Their so-called god is an excuse for a power grab, and paled in the face of Priapus.

‘Fuck them,’ I thought. ‘This Abraca Scheisse is as hollow as the myth of “Conservative Compassion”!’

Angry, I vowed revenge for the squandering of my time and dignity.

My phone said 1:32 AM, but I didn’t care. I texted Claude:

“I know a way to get your two grand, and maybe more.”

˚˚˚˚˚

‘Chicken run, part two,’ I told myself.

Claude and his fiancé were back in their red robes. They were also currently on their knees helping me complete my look in the cult’s dressing room. The boys pinched and twisted and concentrated on getting the plastic souvenir I’d picked up at Caesars Palace on my newly padded body.

I watched them in the full-length mirror, witnessing me become more ridiculous by the minute.

The cult leader’s wayward son glanced up at my reflection. “You sure this is gonna work?”

“Yeah. It’s risky,” added Domingo Klaassen.

“It’s easy, boys. Trust me – I’ve planned and executed worse without a hitch.”

They glanced at each other; I guess the word ‘hitch’ renewed their fervent hopes of a sham marriage and a contented life in Ohio Amish country, chasing good girls for a change.

They went back to securing belts and buckles, and I thought over how this came about.

Burtron checked out this morning, exhausted from all his needy Vegas followers, and went on to Burning Man, where I would join him later tonight. He left his gear behind so I could ship it home to the Flying Dutchman.

Once that was sorted, I paid a visit to a costume shop and the faux Roman casino’s gift store, and sent Angekwekwa a text. I told her the Cock God ritual only partially worked and needed a ‘booster shot’ before I left town. So she assembled the freaks again, and here we were. In a way, I hated to involve her, but then again, she was the one who got me in with this humiliating mess in the first place.

The boys were done with the chest piece and kilt. Domingo helped me slip on the round shield while Claude placed a bullwhip borrowed from Burtron’s stash in my right hand.

They slipped on my costume head and raised their own cowls. “Lower the lights,” I said and assessed my transformation in the mirror as best as I could see it.

“You look sick, man,” Germaine the younger said.

“Yeah, totally….”

“Lead the way, boys.”

I toddled along, making some rustling sounds and letting the boys enter first.

As coached, they made horrible moans of fright, and caught the crazies off-guard.

When Domingo shouted “He’s here! All bow,” that was my signal.

I cracked my bullwhip, and strutted cockily into the assembly room. It was dim like yesterday, and that served my purposes.

Gasps went ‘round the chamber, and the faithful dropped like rocks to their white-robed knees. Puppets too lay face down, their mini wands all in disarray.

I walked to the place between the stripper poles, cracking my whip frightfully near Guy Germain’s cowering figure. Then I kicked my head back and let out a fierce Cock-a-doodle-doo!

I knew the yellow chicken costume, plastic centurion armor, and green trash-bags ‘snakes’ for legs scared the living shit out of them. Think about it; how would you feel if God showed up at your church cracking a whip?

Through my discreet beak mouth, I saw the boys gather up all the gems from the display cases into velvet bags.

“Oh, Great One,” said Guy with trembling voice, “why hast thou shown thyself unto us, all unworthy as we are…?”

‘Um,’ I wondered, ‘why indeed.’

He dared to raise his eyes, so I immediately grunted some mumbo jumbo gibberish – mixed in with whip-cracks and clucking – while the entire time watching the boys finish up and start heading towards the double doors outta here. They ran their arms along the shelves with the roosting hens and sent them squawking and winging it around the chamber.

When they got to the exit, I knew it was time to bolt, but something made me turn and nab the stupid weathervane before I ran.

The crowd, still cowered on the carpet, barely dared look up and see me high stepping it as best I could with these garbage bags trailing 24-inches off the end of my feet.

The boys burst through the doors, and we were in the corridor. They took off to the right, and I booked it in the other direction, weathervane tucked under my wing.

Confused sounds arose amid the chicken squawks from the assembly room, and I knew they’d be after me – me, not the boys.

I hoofed it straight to the end of the passage, trying not to trip over my own legs. I pushed open a door and teetered on the brink of a balcony outside.

Canon fire boomed, costumed pirates sword-fought, and about a thousand people stood in the plaza four stories below gawking at the show.

This was a dead end.

I glanced behind me. The Abracans had figured out the scam, and middle-aged magicians and ventriloquists ran up the corridor towards me.

I snapped my bullwhip around a loose rope in the ship’s rigging and pulled it to me. Pyrotechnics went off, and people in the crowd noticed me. I climbed on top of the handrail, and just as the first cult members got to me, I Tarzanned my way across half the length of the pirate ship.

A boisterous “Cock-a-doodle-doo, motherfuckers!” escaped my beak in mid-flight.

The crowd was amazed, and so were the actor-bandits pausing in their bloodthirst to watch the soaring chickenman and his weathervane.

My rope rotated just right to show me the balcony I’d escaped from moments before. A tumble of magicians, ventriloquists, dummies, and white capes dropped down into the fountain below, releasing concealed doves, bunnies and playing cards as they went.

I landed on a platform on the ship’s mast and had a chance to bow for the adoring crowd. They were now chanting: “Chickenman! Chickenman! Chickenman!” Grabbing on to another rope, I kicked off to a second balcony and my ultimate escape.

The whole time, my mind was laughing its German ass off, thinking, ‘Abraca…who? Suck my limp dick, Cock God!’

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