Snake Eyes

“No, I was only saying that if you were going to go ahead with it, there was no reason not to do it here at the church. I still don’t think that cutting up and eating a demon is a good idea.”

Prattle turned towards me then and I saw in his eyes what I should have noticed a lot earlier. He didn’t think it was a good idea either. He was frightened. It was obvious that all he’d been doing was chasing popularity and more backsides on church benches. When it came down to it, slaughtering a demon was not something he wanted to be involved with.

I pursued his weakness.

“You don’t have to go through with this, you know. You have enough power to stop them even now. You can threaten them with damnation and I can threaten them with the law and instead of eating the demon we can bury it and forget it was ever here. What do you say?”

I could see he was tempted. Perhaps it was his pride, though, that made him think about it for too long. I don’t think he could bear to accept that I’d been right from the start and that if he changed his mind now it would look like weakness, while my stance would look like strength. Our final chance at negotiation was interrupted by Cleaver booming at the crowd from the top step of the church where the demon’s neck was exposed and ready for his blade.

“Menfolk and womenfolk of Long Lofting, I proffer we chop the dragon’s head off and keep it as a trophy in memory of this day.”

The crowd cheered. They were starving; they would have said yes to anything at that stage. All they saw when they looked at that demon hanging down the entire front of the church from bell tower to steps was a big fat turkey ready for the oven. I suppose some of them might have been seeing steak or lamb cutlets, but they were all of one mind when it came to the demon’s noggin.

“Chop it off! Chop it off!”

The chant grew louder. Prattle and I stepped back from Cleaver to make some distance.

I glanced into the crowd and saw Velvet had arrived, her face full of amusement and curiosity. I gestured to her to get back to the house but she just smiled at me and waved back.

Cleaver put the blade of a long knife to the demon’s throat and drew it towards himself while pressing against the skin. It opened a deep groove in the creature’s neck but no blood came forth. He proceeded to saw towards the demon’s spine and the rift in its flesh grew wider becoming a second mouth. Inside were the demon’s muscles and vessels for air and food and gore. Though severed in cross section, not a drop of fluid came forth from any part of the wound.

Cleaver’s long bladed knife sawed and sawed until he reached the spinal bones and there he sawed even harder to split his way through two vertebrae. The head was almost free. Cleaver’s sweat sprinkled the stone and evaporated in moments. The crowd’s cheering died down as the work progressed; all had seen slaughter before and all were surprised there was neither blood nor fluid within the demon. With a gristly snick, the knife slipped through the discs and ligaments between the bones and parted the final flap of skin at the back of the demon’s neck.

The head fell.

It hit the top step of the church with a dull, bony knock. It bounced upwards surprisingly high and flipped over. Instead of rolling down the church steps towards the waiting onlookers, the head landed on the stone at Cleaver’s feet. The severed neck hit the granite with a fleshy slap and for a moment or two there was total silence. The crowd, perturbed by the lack of blood, weren’t sure whether to applaud or hiss. Then the demon’s eyes, which had been open but blank ever since it landed on its back in the cabbage field, blinked. A few people at the front of the crowd tried to take step back but found they were hemmed in by those behind them. Even those who weren’t sure what they’d seen sucked in a startled breath.

But when the demon smiled, pulling its thick leathery lips back even farther exposing rank after rank of jaundiced fangs, the gasps came back out as screams and holy petitions. The entire village tried to reverse from the head and many stumbled over with others falling on top of them. Those in the dirt scrambled away on hands and knees. The outer edge of the crowd expanded and broke until everyone felt they’d reached a safe distance. Rickett and Wiggery abandoned their respective wing tips and ran down the steps to join them.