Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

LIV. With The Chains That Bind Us

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In Tonoho Oʼodham, the cells were forged in the malevolence of lost souls, the jail sensing Lolitaʼs peril. The dolls rose, shrieking into the night with a desperation to pierce its veil, only fracturing the night with more horror. Stirring in their slumber with nothing but blithe lust and corrupted, lifeless bodies.

     The silk of the water lapping at her naked body chained her to Voltaireʼs bath, Eopsin's snakes birthing the wavesʼ might, and in another rhapsody, Lolita watched Eopsin ride atop the skies, those familiar snowy winds, and the Everlasting Night bringing its worst fantasies to life. Within Voltaireʼs bath, she sat on top of the world, Eopsin brought death and destruction, and the jail came to life clockwork. Feeding the perilous souls around her, defining itself as the true epitome of hell on earth.

"Drink," Voltaire murmured in that dark, sad baritone, fingers gracing her skin behind her. In the throes of the icy water, Voltaireʼs voice sent shivers down her spine, the midnight wine seeping into her bones. Framed by effervescent, pregnant moonlight, Lolita traced the scars and cuts along Voltaire's skin with pause.

"What is this place, Voltaire?" Lolita said with a whisper.

"This is the city of Tonoho Oʼodham. Forged from the fires of Iʼitoi, a Native deity, Tonoho Oʼodham is a labyrinth prison that spans from Kingston to Havana. It was designed by Pinochet, and constructed by the Order."

"But why?" Lolita asked, exasperated. "And why am I here?"

Voltaireʼs wine was like tears of gods, sparkling with a longing, and silently, he dumped it and stirred in silence. The water moved with his finger, materializing into a glass belly dancer, and before her eyes, she watched her dance, her sisters whispering along the water.

"Men called me the Ifrit long before I came to Tonoho Oʼodham. Before there was the Order, and Chaos," Voltaire murmured between sips, watching the dancersʼ hips write their own poetry.

"Dancing with the devil was like drinking water. All the rage, all the conversation. I served emperors and kings, cast from Godʼs shadow to Kublai Khanʼs court, dancing with the devil and drowning in the wealth I accumulated."

Lolita sipped on the wine, arching an eyebrow in thought, watching the fire grow in the Ifrit's eyes.

"Voltaire," she hummed, frustrated. "Why did you knock me out? Why, the f*ck, am I here–"

"And then they cut my body into pieces and used dogs to eat my flesh and chariot wheels to smash my bones," he seethed, enraged, slamming his wine into the sea. The dancers were strangled by the wineʼs potency, watching Lolita in horror.

Voltaire looked out into the bottomless hellscape.

"You see, Miss Kovačević, I am exiled vizier here. This is not the Hell I knew but it comes close. Tonoho Oʼodham has a life to it, it breathes in death, it spits out corpses. The Warden satiates her bloodthirstiness by killing prisoners and eating the remains. This is...a most ungodly place. And so, why would a Cuban heiress send an exquisite piece like yourself into the belly of the beast?"

Lolitaʼs body screamed, bones aching as her mind chained itself to the images of death around her. Against the faltering gasps of the dancers, Voltaire reached his fingers for Lolitaʼs throat, poised with the grace of a pianist, watching the muscles tense up with indignation.

"How the f*ck..."

"Like I said, I am an exiled vizier in a hellscape. Even the walls have ears."

Voltaire stared on, curious.

"I donʼt know what my...future self, if you will, was planning when he met a delicious creature like you," he murmured simply. "But what I can offer is that it piques my interest, that Robin DeMarcus, a nobody, sends her favorite toy to where it all started."

"Where it all started? When she met Sebastian Prince?"

"When she broke out of Mazorra and became a homicidal maniac," Voltaire said, throat trapped in its laughter.

Lolita listened to the wind howl, to the dead take theirs, to the night greet Eopsin with open arms. Thieving and scheming, Lolita watched Voltaire with skepticism; his wine was one she would spit into her cup, his touch one that she knew would be strangled by. Tonoho Oʼodham was a city of shit and destitution, a city where secrets would be buried be deep, and Voltaire, this deity older than time, one that played God, he would not have her–

"She sent me here to tell her story, share her weaknesses with me, her favorite toy," Lolita gritted out.

–or, so she thought.

"She sent you here to correct them, to sniff them out, I suspect," Voltaire murmured, inching closer to her. "After Pinochet designed Tonoho Oʼodham alongside Midas, he started a witch-hunt for the fortune of a dead spirit, Vyolèt Domingo, a Bajan slave-turned-pirate, and the source of Shakespeareʼs attraction. She and her sister serve to be Hellbenders legends now, Macbethian extremists, known for their cruel methods of torture, with a treasure trove of lost Polynesian, Caribbean, and African treasures rumored to be inside El Dorado. One of those treasures is Shakespeareʼs Book."

"The source of the Orderʼs power," Lolita whispered, breathless. "So, where is the Book?"

"Thatʼs not how this works, Iʼm afraid," Voltaire murmured, solemn.

The water churned. Slowly, at first, as things always did, and then with a force Lolita had never seen before. The dancers were reduced to their gaping mouths, screaming, swallowed by Eopsinʼs iron teeth. A tornadoʼs grip overcame Lolita, shattering the shards of the wine glass against her face, and as she screamed with the dancers, Voltaireʼs eyes stared back at her with a ghostʼs vengeance. Smiling, the water turned to wine, the wine to snakes, and the wind spewed their venom in and around the Jail. The wind moved faster than the speed in light, piercing any sound that came in and out, and Lolita watched as her skin, her skin, was ripped apart from the seams.

Two seconds to darkness.

   "YOU SCRATCH MY BACK AND IʼLL SCRATCH YOURS, LOLITA," Voltaire howled, rising with the wind.

"HOW?" she screamed, sinking further into the pool, her blood thicker than water. 

One second to darkness.

"GET ME OUT OF THIS PRISON!"

Zero.