Mother Night – Welcome to the Feast

by Mr. K. 

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You have finally been invited to The Feast.

It was inevitable that you would find them, or they would find you. You knew that the night you met up on the rooftop of The Remus Building with Indigo. As she explained it, you knew that it would come to a showdown.

“They call themselves The Feast. From what I can tell, they are the descendants of a long time of meta humans. They all share the same power. Get this! You’ll never believe this shit. Well … you probably will. We deal with some fucked up shit.”

You stood, straight-faced and listened to this buoyant woman who was young enough to be your daughter as she gave you one of the most energic briefings ever. She paused, setting her hands on her hips and cocking one eyebrow.

“They feed off of the glucose in the human brain. That and the 12 to 15 watts produced by the human nervous system,” she explained. You were thinking of saying something, asking how she knew all of this, but she came up with an infomercial salesman’s voice.

“But wait! There's more!”

Indigo laughed. “ They seem to think of cerebrospinal fluid as a sort of delicacy. At the end of the day, what you have is a husk.”

“The catatonic victims,” you said. You mind flashed to the faces of daily victims. One after the other. You think about the strangely large number of women that have been showing up empty and hollow.

“Exactly. And notice how all of them have been academics? Scientists? Women?”

She pointed at your head.

“Big-brain people, Dr. Britain.”

And now, you are flying towards them. You often fly as high as you can, but, today, you are swooping low. You are between two rows of buildings. You are scanning, scanning, scanning. You are scanning until your mind hooks on to … something. You slow. You are hovering now.

Up and to your right, on the roof of the one-percenter apartment building, there is a party going on. There are women in evening gowns. There is champagne. There are the clicks of high heels against the pool deck. There is delicate music. There is the clink of glasses.

There is no talking.

This is The Feast and the members of The Feast communicate telepathically. You do that thing that you do to focus your powers, touching your gloved fingertips to your forehead just below your red hair line. You close your eyes and listen. Hovering there, you reach out and probe their minds.

You can hear women chitchatting about esoteric literature and recollections of their ageless adventures. They complement each other and talk about how much they love all of this. Beautiful as they are, these are un-humans. They are communicating in their un-human mind talk.

You are trying to keep track of all of their conversations.

You hear their voices.

You hear them when they call you.

“Good evening, Mother Night.”

It is all of their consciousnesses at once.

“We don't think that you were invited, but no worries, darling redhead. We have a welcoming gift for you.”

You will never be able to describe the power. The power and the pain. You know that it was each brain of The Feast women. Each one of them went out a tendril of force called The Surge.

Your hands came up as if they could hold your waking consciousness in your head. They came up to your head as you tried to soar away.

“Leaving so soon?” they ask.

There is the sound of metal twisting. It is the sound of steel rising and coiling. You look down and up and around you. At first, you would swear that what you are seeing are tendrils. That is only for a second. This is barbed wire.

Their minds must have reached out around the city to find the chain link fences and the tops of buildings. They found the scrap yards and the impound lots. They used their minds to rip the wire from its mooring, wherever those lengths were, and to send them to embrace Mother Night.

Here they are.

They slash the air, making giant loops around your body as you try to fly, tumble, rise, then dip again. They find your legs, drawing those coils into tight loops. Tight. Right around your calves. Tight. They envelope the thickness of her thighs, squeezing like manic tentacles.

Your circulation is suddenly gone. Even as your legs grow numb, the sinewy lengths of your arms are trapped in circle after circle after circle of steel.

Metal cords pull hard into your crotch and around your waist. Your costume and super physical toughness protect you from the galaxy of spikes, but the wire still pulls and yanks. It pins your arms and legs.

They grab your hair and wrap across your face as the final Surge eats your consciousness alive. Your body feels heavy, your muscles weak. The power that flows through you as you fly shuts down.

The minds pull, and drag you down, down, down.

You aren't awake to feel the sudden chill of the water, or to smell the chlorine. You aren't awake to struggle as the water closes over you. You cannot hear their mind voices as they celebrate your long, lean body dropping into the pool. They enjoy the site of you bound in metal cords, unconscious and sinking. You are not awake to feel the relief of air and their minds hoist you back up.

Their minds unwind the wire.

You are still unconscious as the barbed wire pulls itself away from your body, leaving you sprawled on the pool deck. You aren't awake when all of the brains say at once to you “Welcome to The Feast.”

You are only awakened, finally, when they are ready for you to feed them, when your body is stiff and laid out in some sort of tight dark space. Your body is stiffly paralyzed and you wait in the dark until the cover is removed.

You see it all at once. Long tables. Candles. Tuxedos. Gowns. Lipstick. Jewelry. They applaud and cheer silently as men with white gloves lay you on a long table.

You realize you are on a silver platter.

Your body is stiff and helpless on a silver platter.

“Welcome to The Feast, Mother Night!”