'''''Note:''' This hasn't returned permenantly. I found that someone posted this on Wattpad, so I'm trying to prove that it's mine.''
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It was the day before my thirteenth birthday and Dad said that night was going to be special.

There was work to do that night, but it would be different than all the other times in the last six years. That made me nervous. We had a routine, he taught me never to stray from it. My stomach was all knots from the moment I woke up in the back seat of the station wagon. Since we wouldn't have time to stop anywhere tomorrow (distance was important), Dad said we could eat in a restaurant for both meals. I could order whatever I wanted.

Our diet was usually strict. Honey, milk, plain yogurt, salt, apples, mushrooms, chestnuts, royal jelly, grasshoppers, dogs and goats. Holy food.

I didn't even have school to distract me, because Dad said I had the day off. Even when I asked for a lesson he told me to relax and enjoy my almost birthday. There was nothing else to do except watch snow fall and pile up on the windows of the LTD.

We started early that night. Sure, it was dark, but it was only 9 o'clock by the time Dad parked the station wagon on the side of a country road. This was all wrong. He always chose suburban or urban areas. We were suspicious out here. And the snow. We would leave tracks. I didn't say any of this, he must know. I just put on my black hoodie and grabbed my bag. It felt heavier than usual.

"We have some extra stuff tonight," Dad said as he popped open the back hatch. He opened the hidden compartment, got his own bag and rifled through it. "Starting with this. Come here." I slid out of the backseat. Laid out on the back bumper was a small jug, six foil balls and a container of what looked like ash. Carefully, he unwrapped the foil of one of the balls to reveal a black pyramid just barely visible in the dim interior light of the LTD. My father opened his mouth, I mimicked and he placed the pyramid on my tongue. It tasted like earth. Dirt, clay, loam. He unwrapped another pyramid for himself.

"'Ust le id met in ur mouf," he said trying to talk around the pyramid. I giggled, he winked. He licked his thumb, then rolled it into the ash. With his other hand he grabbed my face and began drawing what felt like an inverted triangle. After the outline was done, he shaded it in. It was slow work, by the time it was done the pyramid had melted like an ice cube and slid down my throat.

"Swallow this one whole," he said as he unwrapped a black sphere. Dad placed it on my tongue. I tasted the sea's salt and the mud and silt of rivers. It got stuck in my throat and, while my eyes bulged and my throat worked furiously, Dad put the jug up to my lips. The liquid was sweet, thick, and it dissolved the sphere almost immediately. Again, he repeated everything (even the choking) on himself.

"Chew." The last ones were cubes, solid with very little give. I was worried I might break a tooth, but I saw my father gnawing away at his like a dog with a bone. He brushed the bits of foil in the compartment along with the jug then replaced the lid. "Get your stuff."

The walk went quickly. It was at least half a mile uphill in the cold mountain air, but it felt like an instant. The cube was getting softer. My stomach still felt weird, but it was different. The tightness of anxiety had changed into something airy and immense. My head felt the same. It was as if the world were expanding like a balloon, getting bigger, but also thinner and more empty. I zoned out, lost in the rhythm of snow crunching beneath my feet and the soft suction of the cube on my teeth. I didn't even realize we were at the job until dad stopped me. My belly lost all its lightness as it cramped right back up. Not only were lights shining in the house, but they had guests. Five cars in the driveway. They couldn't all belong to one family. Even if they did that was too many. On the side of the house, Dad knelt down and took hold of my shoulders.

"Don't be afraid. We're not alone tonight." He whipped a finger skyward, for a moment it left a pink trail behind. "The planets are all in the houses of our masters. The world gets thin. That's why we need a feast for them. This is an important night for us both. You're going to be blooded. Everything you need is in your bag." He tilted my head down and kissed my forehead. "I love you, buddy."

"Love you too, Dad." We put on our masks. My father wore the black dog mask and I the goat.

He adjusted my hoodie so it sat perfectly on the edge of the mask against the back of the crooked horns. "Up the back. Find the children. Twin boys. They share a room. We'll meet downstairs." The mask didn't muffle his voice at all, it spilled perfectly out of the slightly open mouth. I nodded and we went in opposite directions. He had to seal the house, I had to lay out the first meal. I was glad they'd be boys. Many times I'd seen dad struggle to cut the offerings out of girls.

There was a pool in back. Kitchen light shone through the sliding glass door and I could see long shadows stretching out from an adjoining room. My insides were nothing but butterflies as I walked past the door to stand in front of the pool house that butted up against the house. On tip toes, I cleared a line of snow off the edge with my gloved hands, then pulled myself up onto the roof. Running up the side of the house was a children's fire escape ladder connected to the sill of a dark window. Up I went. Halfway up I looked behind me, out over the large yard fenced in by forest. A parabola of flickering light was closing in on the tree line. I thought I heard music. Shrill whining horns, slow droning bass drums. The window opened easily. I had to duck my head low and come in on my hands to get my horns inside.

The room must have been a spare, empty except for some plastic storage crates and boxes. The door swayed, seemed to flicker, but opened soundlessly. I stepped out into the hallway, yellow with the glow of night-lights. I started to calm down. This was my usual part. I go in first. I was the herald and the watcher. Sure, the house was still awake, I heard adult voices from downstairs, but I was always the first in. I found the children. The voice of our masters led me to them.

Their door was already open slightly, I pushed it the rest of the way with my fingertips. Two boys laid in single beds on opposite sides of the room. Above the head of their beds were night-lights that spelled out their names in shining letters. Terry. Taylor. I walked into the room and knelt down in the space between the beds. From out of my bag I took the short, green pedestal bowl. I covered the bottom in powdered sulfur, over that a layer of sweet hash. The last layer was the nigredo. I swung the vial back and forth as I took it out of my bag, watching the black trail it left. The liquid twisted, spiraled as I drizzled it into the bowl.

I took the carving knife and the spoon out of the bag, then moved them and the bowl over to Taylor's bed. These boys couldn't have been more than ten. They seemed so foreign with their golden hair cut short, their soft clothes with strangely drawn people on them and their room full of colorful and complicated things. They felt like members of some lost tribe that had wandered away from the station wagon hundreds and hundreds of years ago to slowly become the aliens I see now.

I turned on the small table lamp on the night stand beside Taylor's bed and angled the shade to let more light hit his face. Then, I watched and waited for him to feel my presence. He must have been so confused when he finally opened his eyes to see in the dim light the hooded black goat with his great horns and human eyes. Reflective black like obsidian, every cut smooth and made with obsessive and loving care. I knew he would. I just had to wait for it.

Scream.

Taylor's mouth opened and I jammed my gloved hand into it. It was a tight fit, I could feel his teeth scrape against the leather as I grabbed his tongue. He let out muffled sobs and choked. His eyes were like a rabbit's when he saw the knife. There wasn't enough room to go in through his mouth. Carefully, I cut a slit across his cheek and used the blade to peel back the flaps. Taylor's skinny arms came up, flailed at my shoulders while his teeth gnashed at my hand. The knife went through the boy's new hole to sever the roots of the tongue. I pulled. It was harder than I thought and I was worried I wouldn't be strong enough. My other hand grabbed the open side of Taylor's face to brace myself. Slowly, with a long, wet rip it gave way. My fist was back down the boy's throat before he could scream. With a stretch, I carefully laid the tongue into the bowl.

He sucked ragged, constant breaths in through his nose. The smell of piss was strong. With the butt of my hand against his chin and my fingers dug into the top of his throat, I pulled the child's head up. I picked up the spoon, razor sharp along its sides and lined the curve up with the arc of his eye. He stopped struggling. Maybe he was dizzy or sick. His soft clothes and blankets were wet and red. With even more care than before, I cut little trenches along the top and bottoms of his left eye. Like a barber I adjusted the angle of his head so the blood would run off without obscuring my work. He only became frightened again when he felt the pressure of the spoon on the back of his eye.

"Auh, auh, auh, auh," he pleaded around my glove. His body went rigid when the eye popped free, his perspective drastically changed. He fainted when I yanked it out. I set it in the bowl next to his tongue, spiraling the optic nerve around the eye. I threw back the boy's covers and pulled down his pants. This was the worst part. The smell of wastes and the mess, and it was hard to carve the offering perfectly. Anatomy was part of my schooling. I knew the easiest way would be to go up under the scrotum and carve a separation between the various ducts and glands and the rectum. Then, I could go over the penis, under the pelvic bone and loosen up the flesh on that side. After that I could reach in and clear everything out. Like a pumpkin.

It was slow work and I got a piece of bladder, but it was good for my first offering. I dumped the handful of genitals and tubes into the bowl.

"Terry. Terry. Terry." I sat on the edge of his bed and pulled the sleepy boy up to sit beside me. When his eyes opened, unfocused and dazed, I pointed to his brother. It didn't register at first. All the blood, the mutilated face and groin, the stillness of his brothers body. He turned to look at me and tried to scream.

Terry was much easier than Taylor.

I put Terry's offerings into the bowl. From the bag, I took out and lit a long stemmed match which dipped into the bowl. The nigredo caught, the sulfur lit, the hash began to smoke and the flesh began to cook. The flame was black. It seemed to suck the light from the lamps and night-lights. I wiped off my tools on their sheets and set them back in the bag, except for the carving knife. What now? Downstairs, I guess. Herald to the grownmen. As I was walking out the door, I looked back. Out in the dark, featureless faces and long fingers were pressed up against the window. Even without mouths or eyes, I knew the unfaces were hungry for the first offering. Pride swelled inside of me as a half dozen crowded the window.

Down the breathing hallway, down the stretching stairs, the voices grew louder. At the bottom of the staircase, I noticed a dark, hairy mold was starting to emerge from the walls, which still pulsed in slow, elongated beats. As I passed, I saw The Hag in the kitchen. Must have been. Completely naked with private hair like a bush, black, tangled, spilling over her hips toward her back and growing up to her navel. On top of her head, the hair was sparse and stringy. Her breasts sagged almost to the black jungle of her groin. Filmy white eyes, long, yellow fingernails cracked and jagged, sharp, crooked teeth that looked like they would rip her own mouth to shreds and behind them a tall roll of mottled tongue with sides sharper than razors. She smiled as I passed by.

I didn't know what to do. Usually, after the first offering, I was to wake the others. Run circles around them as they tried to find what was making noise in the night. Raise their fear. Harrying like that seemed silly with all of them awake, so I simply stood in the entranceway to the living room and waited to be noticed.

"Holy shit," one of the men yelped. There were two women and three men, all lily-white and clean and pretty. They looked at me, the silent black goat staring back at them with a knife in hand.

"Taylor? Terry? Is that one of you boys?" a blonde woman said. "I hope it's not. Out of bed when you're not supposed to be and playing with a knife. Whoever's under that mask is in for a serious grounding unless they give it to me and go back to bed." I said nothing. Her voice cracked a little when she said, "Taylor? Terry?" again.

"It can't be the boys. It's too tall," the man beside her on the couch said. "Who are you? Are you okay? Are you lost?" I said nothing.

"This kid is giving me the creeps," said a bearded man seated on a chair opposite the couch.

"All right, buddy," the last man, tall, greying but not old, stepped out from behind the bar. He stole a glance at a redheaded woman. His back straightened and he puffed out his chest as he walked towards me. "Let's see what you've got under there." He set a hand on my shoulder and, as if it were hot coals, immediately recoiled. "Jesus Christ, he's covered in blood." His eyes were as wide as they could stretch.

"What the fuck is this?" the bearded man said. Across the hundred or thousand feet of floor out the unfocused, doubling window I could see a procession of flesh spiders with four legs that go five feet up, then descend to the pink human torso from which the heads of wild men hung upside down.

[[Image:Midnight wolf masquerade mask by qarrezel-d4uuy8q.jpg|thumb]]

"In the days of the first men, life was very hard." My father came in, naked except for his mask. His bag fell out of his one hand. The other hand held a shotgun, sleek and sinister. I was surprised. We never used guns, he must have found it in the house somewhere. But we were outnumbered. "Babies died just as often as they lived. Disease and beasts ripped us to shreds. We were at the mercy of the hunt and the seed. Our ancestors looked at their short, ugly lives that knew no respite except for bestial pleasures, a full stomach and a good story and they knew that whatever masters this world has must be cruel and hungry."

My father's body is covered with self-inflicted scars, tattoos of dogs' heads and goats, geometric shapes and symbols too esoteric to be understood. "And they were right. They worshiped these masters and fed them from their own flesh. The Black Dog and Goat were born to take from those who would not give. Over the centuries, people softened as life became easier. They found new masters who offered love and balm for the sores that existence inflicts. But the first ones are still there and they are still hungry."

A few of the offering were crying, the rest just looked on, dull-eyed and confused. The grey-haired man, his swagger gone, bolted past my father. His footsteps were loud, so was the sound of a violently handled door knob and the thumps of fists on wood. "The door won't open. Christ, Sam, why won't your door open?" Father calmly walked after him.

"Come here you little piece of shit," the bearded man growled as he rose from his chair and rushed toward me. He stopped when he felt my blade slide into his gut. I don't know why. He could have gotten me easily after that. Instead, he just looked at me, stepped back from my knife and sat down hard in a chair, hand pressed against his bleeding stomach. The shotgun went off. We all listened to father's footsteps and the soft whisper of fabric being dragged across hard wood.

The man's head was mostly gone. A trail of blood and matter oozed from the ragged caldera of jaw and occipital bone. Father brought him to the center of the room. The mother of the boys leaned over the arm of the couch and threw up in spurts punctuated by coughing and sobbing. I looked to the redhead. She sat on the floor, back against the bar, elbows on her knees, head in her palms. I had a perfect view of her pale cleavage and felt a stirring.

"Disrobe him," my father barked. I tore my eyes off the woman and went to the corpse. Shoes first, then socks. Next, with my knife I sliced through his polo shirt and khaki pants in a way where I could just pull the rags out from under him. The stink of dead man's waste filled the room. With finger tips, I slowly pulled his undershorts off. My dad turned the gun on the man I stabbed. "Clean him."

"W-what?"

"Clean the filth from his body." The aim shifted to the redhead. "Find water."

"Vicky there's... there should be bottled water in the mini fridge," Terry and Taylor's father, Sam, said without looking at her. Vicky stood up and moved on shaking legs behind the bar. She handed a bottle of water to the bleeding man. When he came over, I gave him the slightly bloody polo. No one spoke. The only sounds were the mold bleeding through the walls, breathing in long raspy breathes and the scrape of the shirt on soiled flesh.

"Stay there." Father walked to the body. He held out the shotgun for me. I took it, holding it like it was a newborn baby, a mixture of nervousness and excitement. In exchange, he took my knife and knelt before the body. With surgeon's skill he made deep cuts across the top of the chest, the bottom of the stomach and one down the center to connect the two. He dug his fingers into the center incision, forcing them through a layer of tissue he didn't cut through. Thick, dark blood oozed around his hands. With the same wet rip that came from the boys' tongues, the two flaps of the man's chest were pulled back. The Black Dog went in with his knife and came out with a heart. Arms outstretched, he offered it to the bleeding man. "Eat."

The man did nothing, just pressed a hand to gut.

I raised the shotgun. "Eat it!" I screamed, the sound stretched and wavered into almost aliens syllables. His hands shook as he took the heart and slowly raised it to his mouth. Blood flooded down his chin as his teeth cut in. Bit by bit it went down in choking, coughing bites. The wall whispered to me. I went over and rested my head against it, as much as the horns would allow, trying to hear what it was saying. They told me about an ancient city of pillars that my children would raise from the heart of the world.

The heart-eater was on his hands and knees. As he retched up slivers of heart from his mouth, his punctured stomach spat blood and acid onto his shirt. I caressed the mold on the wall, surprised by how soft and thick it was. Almost like moss. My father had the man by the hair. I've seen him practice on apples. He'd make a little face and try to remove the rest of the skin in one piece. Apples don't struggle, but the Black Dog is an artist.

My eyes, feeling like they rolled for miles inside my skull, drifted to the entrance of the room. There was The Father, head brushing the ceiling, ugly, twisted sex dragging on the floor between his dirty feet. Weak, sunken chest, long arms roped with muscle, filthy beard as untended as The Hag's private hair. I knew his belly was full of hair and teeth and the tiny bones of his children.

"Child! Child!"

My hands were back to the mold. It crept up my fingers and its black covered the black of my gloves. At his voice, I pulled my hand away and the mold receded in fluid movement. My head turned slow, as if I was underwater. The bleeding man was slumped against the wall, his face a red mask. He was alive, his chest just barely moved in and out.

"Child, come back to me." I looked to my father. The face was placed on the floor where the shotgunned man's head would have been. A white candle burned inside his chest, stuck between the ribs where the heart was. The albedo. "We're almost done. Come. Help me with the herd." I raised my foot. It felt weightless. When I went to set it down, I fell through the floor and hit hard concrete. I looked up to see where I had fallen from and saw the Stone Bairn floating against the ceiling. Dozens of pale, blue babies with blank and filmy eyes. Premature, some resembling humans only in vague shape. Their umbilical cords hung down like the strings of balloons, twisted and knotted together, all coming from a single source: the ripped open belly of the sobbing mother. Soft, hungry cries came from inside them, some started to stiffly move their arms and feet or flippers and beaks.

"Son, I need you stay with me." The Black Dog eclipsed my view of the Stone Bairn. I sat up. I was in a basement. Someone had removed my clothes. The women were also naked and crying, wrists lashed together. Sam was on his knees, wrists and ankles bound, mouth gagged, eyelids forced up, pierced with fishing hooks that ran taut up to the drop ceiling. A long, semi-slack leather strap ran adjacent to the fishing line and looped tightly around his neck. "Yours is the rubedo. When you're done, go back to the car with her. They'll tell you what to do." He embraced me, letting the snout of his mask rest on the forehead of mine. "I love you, buddy. I'm so proud of you."

"Love you too, Dad."

He released me and went to the blonde woman, the citrinitas. My father grabbed her by the throat, forced her to the ground with one hand and with the other spread her legs. She screamed when my father entered her and didn't stop. I could just barely hear the slaps of my father's hands as they swatted away her angry, scratching fingers. The sounds of her husband were much clearer. I didn't even look at him as I moved to Vicky, the redhead. My new bride. My sweet, new love. I heard the scuffle of cloth-covered knees against the concrete, muffled pleadings against the gag. I took off my gloves.

Tenderly, I laid her down. "Please, no. Please, please. You're just a kid, he's fucked you up. It's not your fault, it's not your fault. This isn't right. I can get you help. Please. Please. Oh, God, please." She was the first woman I ever touched with my own flesh. So beautiful and soft. I pressed the mouth of the goat mask against hers, jammed my tongue toward the tiny mouth slit, trying to taste her lip. She sobbed. Clumsily, I put myself inside her. My father had shown me movies, old, grainy films projected onto the side of the car, to teach me about carnality.

She tried to push me away, so I snaked my arms under her shoulders and pulled her close. Father brutalized his woman. He took her to the brink of unconsciousness with his hands around her throat, then let her come back as he made deep cuts on her with his knife. Her husband danced on his knees, searching for some way to go to her. I heard little clucks of pain against the gag every time he tried to shut his eyes. Finally, I heard a scream so loud it was clear even through the cloth. I turned around. He had fallen over. Not completely, the leather strap kept him suspended a foot or so off the ground. The hooks jiggled freely and shined in the fluorescent light. The man struggled, tried to use his shoulder get back to his knees. He couldn't even close his eyes as he strangled to shut out the sight of his wife joining together with the Black Dog. The hooks had torn right up through his eyelids, leaving slivers of sight.

The Black Dog finished and left his woman to cry against the wall. I tried to make this perfect moment last, enjoying these new sensations and the touch of my love's weak hands pressing against my chest. But I finished too, my eyes locked on her's. I looked over to my father. His mask was off and he knelt with the shotgun pressed against his forehead. I understood. I didn't try to stop him. It was all part of this night, my birthday. He squeezed the trigger and his head exploded. Brain and skull fountained out in slow motion, spun end over end, twisted and diffused. As I dressed, I didn't take my eyes off this tentacle of gore that slowly emerged from my dad's head. He still hadn't hit the ground by the time I pulled my new bride, still crying, up the stairs.

The house was filled with our masters. It now fully vibrated with breath and the whispers had become songs in the first language. I wrapped my love in blankets, caressed her beautiful hair and whispered, "Don't be afraid, they're your gods too now. You're their servant as much as I am."

The world was dark outside. Black stars in patterns that haven't been seen in eons glowed dimly and barely cast light. I was in pain as we walked. My bones and skin stretched, my clothes became tight and small. The mask grew in sync with my body, never a second of discomfort.. The transformation terrified Vicky. She was married to a boy, but now she was being taken by a man. I noticed later, in the mirrors of the station wagon, I looked just like my father.

There was a mask waiting for Vicky. A serene cow, black as ours. Worse than any of the expedited growing pains, my heart hurt as I turned the mask's screws through her flesh and into her skull. Her first instinct would be to pull it off and that is not how things are done. While my mask lets my voice through perfectly, her's kills all sound.

We got away. On the radio, I heard news of the blonde woman. The sensational reports of the murderous cult and the police cover-up that's been going on for longer than anyone can make sense of. I heard clips of her pleading for the return of Vicky, for the young boy, who she knows has a good soul, to do the right thing.

The first night I slept after the wedding, I dreamed of a great black dog on top of a pillar that connected earth to sky. He told me of a place in deep woods where I would find friends and refuge. Vicky and I could live there. It would be safe for her to give birth there.

I'm happy. At night, I hold my love close, kiss her neck, rest my hand on her slowly swelling belly. She will bare many children. A new litter of black dogs whose howls will herald a new age of the old gods.

{{by|ImGonnaBeThatGuy|user=yes}}
{{sort|Black Dog and Goat, The}}
[[Category:OC]]
[[Category:Dismemberment]]
[[Category:Ritual]]
[[Category:Demon/Devil]]
[[Category:NSFW]]
[[Category:Suggested Reading]]