Posted by Kimnikki on November 29, 2001 at 05:02:14:
Blissblade: a story by Kimnikki
kimnikki@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------------
Part I
((Scene: A small pub in a roadside village. A pretty woman, no more than 25 years old, sits across a table from an older man ... perhaps in his late 40's. He is ruggedly built, handsome in a brutish sort of way, with dark hair that is becoming salted with gray. His hands are long and slim, and despite numerous small scars, move with a surprising grace. On his belt, in a bandoleer across his chest, and tucked into his boots are several highly ornamented knifes of various sorts. They are alone at the table and no one sits nearby. Even though the rest of the pub is crowded, everyone else is giving the man a wide birth. He begins to speak.))
So you want to know how I came to be here eh? You want to know how I became who and what I am today? Funny ... most people don't really want to have much to do with me. Intimidated I guess. And those who want to talk to me ... well most often they don't want to know that kind of thing. They want something else from me.
You really want to know? Harmph ... well ... it's been a long time since I sat down and *just* talked to a pretty young woman like yourself. And truth be told, no one alive today knows the story. Might be nice to tell someone for a change. Well my dear, here's a coin ... go get us some ale and I'll tell you the tale.
Responsibility can be a heavy burden, yet at the same time it can be a delight to carry out those responsibilities. It all depends on how you see things, and whether or not you learn to take advantage of inborn skills and desires.
In my case it was (and is) a love of knifes, and a skill with them that I seem to have had in the cradle. I can remember being a young one, and having my poor mother shriek in horror to find her two-year old sitting on the kitchen floor juggling her razor sharp meat knifes. Of course the only thing the scream accomplished was to startle me and cause me to slice a piece out of my thumb. Mother went into even more hysterics, leaving it to my older sister to bandage the cut. I still have the scar. Ah well ... the mishaps of youth.
My poor mother; looking back I'm amazed that she didn't have a stroke or a heart attack. No matter how hard she tried to stop me, she just couldn't curb my fascination for blades of any kind, though hand held knifes remained my favorite. I cut myself many times of course, and every time I came home with a bandage (or in need of one) you'd think I came home with an axe through my skull from the way mother carried on.
I learned how to do everything with blades, the way other children might learn how to play with marbles, or go fishing in the pond, or climb trees. You name a trick that could be done with a blade, and I could do it. From sword swallowing (actually machete swallowing since I didn't have a sword in those days) to juggling to picking pieces of kindling out of my friends' mouths from 50 feet away, I could do it all. I even learned how to make my own blades after the blacksmith got tired of repairing mine and showed me how to do the work myself.
My skill made me very popular with the local children who loved to bet on whether or not I could hit a tossed coin at 100 feet, or whatever game they dreamed up to challenge me. And yes ... I did hit the coin; I won a kiss from Hanna on that bet. Lord, was that ever one pretty girl ... but I digress.
Now while the kids loved me, their parents loathed me. Well can't say as how I blame them. How would you feel to find your 10-year old daughter holding an apple in her teeth while "that manic boy" throws his blades from 15 feet away, slowly shaving the apple down smaller and smaller?
So one way or another, I was constantly in one of two conditions ... admiration or deep trouble.
I also learned other skills with my blades, which made me even more popular with my peers ... and would have made me even more unpopular with parents if any of them had known. Well 3 of them knew about my other skills, but they kept it to themselves for some good reasons of their own. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
By the time I was 15 I knew that my small rural village was not the place for me. I had learned how to be a good entertainer by amusing the local girls and boys and I had an unsurpassed skill for doing a wide variety of tricks with knifes. I could hammer and forge perfectly balanced blades and do some pretty fine decorative work on them, but that was all I could make. I couldn't even bend a horseshoe correctly. And that was the sum total of my talents. I couldn't even read a word other than the names of various types of blades. And I was a lousy farmer, yet another thing my mother would shriek about given any opportunity to do so.
It didn't take a genius to know that I would be happier elsewhere. Not that I couldn't have used some of my little tricks to keep myself very happy there, oh no, I could have kept myself quite amused. But I wasn't really looking forward to having very large and muscular lads come knocking on my door when they found out on their wedding nights just what some of those hidden talents with blades were. And you can only fool around with another man's wife so many times before you find yourself on the wrong end of a pitchfork.
Since I didn't think that perforating their husbands would endear me to the above-mentioned ladies, I figured it was time to go.
On the day of my 15th birthday I ran away to join a travelling carnival that passed our way. There I was billed as the Amazing Rando, the best knife act in the business. Within a year I was the headline act, performing 3 times a night in every place we hit. Ah those were the days ... everywhere I went there were hundreds who shouted and cheered me as I performed an ever-growing array of dazzling feats with my knifes, swords, and machetes.
They really were nothing more than a fancy dressed up version of the tricks I had been doing for years. But what had become everyday fact of life in my village absolutely astounded every other village, town and city we passed through. My real showstopper was when I would put an apple in my own mouth and then throw one of my special curved blades. The curve would cause it arch back at me and I would toss the blade high out over the audiences heads and then have it return smack dab in the middle of the apple.
I also learned to refine some of my more private tricks with my blades, much to the delight of many anonymous women in various towns and cities along the road. There were many places over the five years I spent with the carnival that looked forward to my repeat performances.
A carnival is a family, and a world unto itself, where rules and values have a different meaning than they do outside of it. Many a carney has things they would prefer to keep hidden from the world, but overtime your fellow carney's will always find out your secret. But unless what you're hiding threatens or harms the rest of the carnival, you'd be amazed at what a carney can accept with a shrug and a muttered, "now that's one I haven't seen before."
Think about it; in a world where the woman in the next tent has a heavy full beard and they guy who serves the peanuts has two heads, having some rather ... lets call it unusual ... skills with razor sharp knifes is pretty mundane. Hell ... for the first time I was actually asked to demonstrate some of these skills in front of a crowd of my fellow carney's. Damned embarrassing the first time I'll tell you, but the reaction of my audience (not to mention my co-star) was most gratifying.
After the climax (no pun intended) of my little show, Ezmerelda (my co-star) was helped back to her tent by her sisters, all of whom were giving me looks that said sleep was going to come few and far between from now on. This is another aspect of carnival life ... so long as you don't fool around with someone else's spouse without permission just about anything goes. So rather than be disgusted by my little demonstration, many of my audience were looking at me in a whole new light.
I was feeling pretty smug right about then. I had a wonderful life with the carnival; lots of money, a life of travel and adventure and hoards of people who cheered my name. And now, rather than trying to keep my little quirk hidden, I was looking forward to being able to practice my skills on a regular basis with people who wouldn't judge me for its strangeness.
But that night changed the course of my life yet again ... for Madame Zelda was one of those who had come to see that private performance. Madame Zelda was a real honest to god Gypsy, unlike just about every other carnival gypsy you run into. She was so wizened and bent that her age could have been anywhere from 80 to 160. She had that air of mystery that all gypsy women seem to have been born with, and was as much an enigma to most of the carnival as we were to the rubes in the towns we passed through.
Maybe that's why she didn't have many friends; she had managed to keep hidden the secrets that the rest of us hadn't. *I* certainly found the old woman creepy. (And that's from a man whose bunkmate for 2 years was a "wild boy" who bit the heads off live chickens. Like I said ... a carney can get used to almost anything)
I was alone in front of my wagon, cleaning my blades prior to putting them away when Madame Zelda hobbled up to me on that gnarled cane of hers and looked me dead in the eye. You'd think a grown man who could take a fly out from between its wings with a knife would have little reason to fear one dried up old woman, but my heart froze and my mouth went dry as a bone. It was as if those shinny black eyes, sunk in that bronzed wrinkled face, were looking right through me. For all I know they were.
"So," she hissed in a voice like dried leaves rubbing each other, "you've the gift. And you don't even know it." Then she cackled like a hen on her eggs. "He he he he he he he he."
I swallowed the lump in my throat and answered the old hag. "Of course I know I've a gift ... and I bless the fate that gave it to me. My gift with blades is what has given me a life that I love."
"Foolish man ... that is but the merest fraction of your gift. A love of good steel, a knowledge of its form and function, a delight and excellence in its use was in you the day your mother whelped you." I felt pinned like a bug in bell jar under those eyes. They looked so alive ... so out of place in that decrepit wreck of a body.
"But there is more ... oh so much more you could do with that," she hissed, tapping the edge of the knife I was cleaning with her cane. It rang like a bell in the still night air.
"I know everything there is to know about any blade every made or that every will be made," I boasted, trying to remember I was a man and not a mouse.
"Oh really Rando? What if I were to tell you that what you did to Ezmerelda, what you gave her, and what you received, was far less than what was possible?" There was a wheedling quality to her voice, like a parent holding out a cookie to get a child to behave.
"I've never needed anyone to teach me anything about using blades ... only making them. I learned everything I know now before I was 10." And that was the honest truth. I'd never once seen any other blade act, and since I couldn't read I certainly hadn't read about them. It was as if I had been born with the knowledge, but had had to grow up a bit to be able to use it.
"Of course, of course ... that's always the way of it with the true gift. But there are some things that not even you know yet ... and probably never will without old Zelda to show you. He he he he he he he." She cackled again, and there was a distinct delight in the laughter. "To think that after all these years I'd find another of you."
That finally stung my pride. I knew, without any false modesty, that there was no other that could match my skill with blades. "There is nothing you can teach me that I can't discover on my own," I growled at her.
"True ... that's very true." I didn't expect that answer, but she went quickly on. "But without old Zelda it might take you years to stumble across it ... and it's as likely as not that you'd loose all in the process of self discovery." And again came the cackling laughter.
"Now look you, I'm sure you mean everything you say. I'm sure you think that you know some great secret of the blade. But I'd much rather run my own affairs Madame ... after all, do I try to tell you how to read palms?" Being belligerent hadn't worked ... why not try reason?
She waved her hand as if dismissing something unpleasant. "That foolishness is for the rubes we bilk after your show." She grabbed my wrist in a surprisingly strong hand. "What I can show you, the ultimate truth of what you *really* are, is as real as the metal in this." And again she tapped her cane against my knife, causing it to ring out into the night.
And that finally did it ... pissed me off. *I* was a self made man. *I* was the most famous knife thrower in the kingdom, probably the world. *I* knew exactly who and what I was ... I had carefully crafted myself over years of hard work and practice. Yes I had a gift, but it was one I'd carefully nurtured with work and sweat. How dare this crazy old crone tell me "what I really was"?
I snapped the blade I held high into the air, then in rapid succession whipped 5 more blades out of my belt and hit the spinning blade as it fell, each time making it ring far more loudly than had her cane. As each thrown blade hit the spinning one, it was deflected down and into the ground. When the first blade finally hit the ground, point first right between her toes, the 6 blades made a near perfect circle around the woman. To give the old bat her credit, she hadn't once flinched.
I glared at her, biting off my words as I spoke. "There is NOTHING you can either teach or show me ... nothing. Now leave me alone."
She looked me in the eye again, saw that I was no longer intimidated by her, and gave a heavy sigh. "Hmmmmm .... I made a mistake. Never should have tried to spook you into it. Must be getting old," she muttered, more to herself than to me. "You're a rare one you are ... I'll have to wait 'till you want it."
"I'll be going then ... but my offer is still open. When you're ready to see, when you know that there's something just out of reach, you come to me, and I'll show you. Oh yes ... that I will." She seemed different somehow ... almost friendly in an offhand sort of way.
She hobbled a few yards off, then turned back to me. "Just remember this ... once you learn something, you can't ever unlearn it." It sounded like a warning. Then she said something that froze my blood.
"Goodnight .... Blissblade." And with that she tottered off into the night.
Oh yes ... there is a name for what I am. Don't be surprised that you've never heard it ... supposed to be a big secret for some fool reason. Oh I've heard all the name's folks call me ... and a few besides that they've never heard. But that's my True Name ... it's both who and what I am. Now where was I?
Oh right ... the first time I heard it.
Blissblade ... oh how that single word has echoed though all the years. It doesn't have the same effect on me now as it did that night, but I can still remember how it was that first time. Blissblade ... when she said it, I swear that I actually heard a sort of a click, way deep down inside my mind. Like the word itself was a key that unlocked a door. The door was still closed, but it was unlocked.
A cold shiver went up and down my back, then spread out from the middle of my back to both arms and down my legs. I shuddered from head to foot for several seconds, unable to stop the shaking. And that single word ... Blissblade ... echoed around inside my head like the echo from a distant bell.
To say that that spooked me would be a classic understatement ... I damn near wet myself. I snapped up my blades from the ground and literally ran into my wagon. I made myself some tea while desperately trying to convince myself that she had drugged me. But I knew that that word itself had somehow touched something in me I never knew was there.
Well, as you can imagine I didn't get much sleep that night, but by the next morning I'd managed to convince myself that it had all been some sort of trick. She had somehow spooked me out so bad or slipped me something that altered my senses so much that I'd only imagined that strange 'click" inside my head. And my imagination had done the rest and made me shudder and hear the strange echo. Yes ... that had to be what had *really* happened.
If I sound like someone who was desperately trying to convince himself of an absurdity then I'm telling the story right.
I was still a little shaken by it all, though by the time of my first show of the night I pretty much convinced myself that it had all been in my head. I did all three shows, to a rousing ovation as usual, which did much to dispel the slight lingering uneasiness that was left.
Then, when the show was done and the rubes had been safely bilked, robbed, cheated and then sent home happier for it, Ezmerelda's older sister Shazirda sauntered into my wagon wearing nothing but a string of pearls. Speaking of a pretty girl. Well things progressed naturally from that point. I used every trick I'd learned practicing on the girl's back home, and all those woman on the road the last few years. My blades did their work, and my little tricks worked very well indeed ... at least for Shazirda. I'm sure they heard her in the next county.
But for the very first time ... I was left feeling unsatisfied. Oh it's not that she didn't try mind you ... and she knew a trick or two of her own with those pearls. It felt good, and when I spilled my seed deep inside her, my blade pushing her own pleasure higher and higher, I did nothing different than a 100 times before. She obviously loved it, for she was effusive in her thanks before staggering her way back to her own wagon.
But I felt let down somehow, in a way I could not define. It had felt wonderful; I loved giving pleasure, and had received it as well. What was wrong, why did it feel like opening a gift and finding a bunch of socks inside? It had been good ... but somehow not good enough. It didn't bother me that much that night ... after all, everybody has an off night and sometimes loving is less intense than at other times.
And that's as far as it would have gone if it had only been that one time. But it wasn't.
Because it was every night after that! I became something of a slut to be perfectly honest ... I had my way with every woman in the carnival who would have me. And after a few morning coffee clutches with Ezmerelda and her sisters, there were very few who would not have me. Night after night the cries of passion echoed around the carnival. Each time it was the same ... it was good, it was very good ... yet it was somehow lacking. It never seemed so for my partners, but it always was for me.
It got to the point where I would bed more than one at a time, or multiples in one night ... and hardly be able to stand up to do my show the next day. I'm only human after all, and 4 times a night, 4 nights a week for nearly a month straight damn near killed me. Finally it reached the point where the ringmaster politely told me to "keep it in your pants for a night" when I slipped up and knocked out two of my teeth with my boomerang-apple-in-the-mouth gag.
I was growing desperate. Imagine eating hamburger all you life, never knowing there was such a thing as steak ... and then to suddenly discover that you crave steak ... even though you don't know what the hell it is!!
Sorry for shouting ... those were trying days.
This went on for nearly a year, and got to the point were even my bed mates noticed a change in me. I would force pleasure from them. I don't mean rape ... I mean I would almost literally wring an orgasm out of them, in the desperate hope that such a hard, fast and intense climax would somehow transmit itself to me. Never worked of course. They didn't complain about it ... which made it all the worse. I'd found yet another new trick to use on a woman with my blades ... and I still felt unsatisfied!
And in that entire year, not once did Madame Zelda do more than pass the time of day with me. She never once asked why I was making love to so many so often. Nor did she ask me why I was nearly screwing myself into a coma. But those shinny black eyes were *always* looking at me.
It was the night that I knocked out my teeth that I knew I was in trouble. I never missed ... never. And for all its flashiness, that gag is actually rather easy. An apple is actually a pretty big target for me, and even if I'm off a little, all I have to do is move a bit and the blade will always land smack in the apple. But that night I wasn't concentrating and was too tired ... and came close to killing myself. Two inches lower and it would have gone in my throat, 2 inches higher and it would have been my eye. Not good.
Deep inside I knew what I had to do, though I'd done my best for month's not to acknowledge it.
So after bandaging my split lip and getting the "strong man" (who was formerly a dentist) to fix my teeth, I headed off to Madame Zelda's little wagon. I reached up to knock on the door of her wagon when a bright light suddenly flared to life and her dry-leaf voice rasped from within.
"Come in Rando, come and have some tea." She had been, it seemed, waiting up for me. I must have looked like a condemned man walking up to the gallows as I ascended the 3 little stairs to her door, which she opened to admit me.