The Bleeding Cycle of the Golden Jackal
A short story
All eyes in the packs of golden jackals scoped down the sun-bleached hills of Baal Hammun in the Beqaa Valley to the Temple of Venus.
Perched in regiments, the packs had been coming in for weeks, bending like reeds in crystal lakes to arrive in a sleight of sight, invisible caravans, like salmon climbing home to roost. They used to follow rivers to arrive here for this most ancient of annual ceremonies, but now, huge modern IMF roads pathed the once flooded plains, leaving a new fertility of low level blocks of flats, with tube lights visible through plastic curtains, looking like a million suns, with wire dryers hanging outside. Gathering from wooded vales, lush pastures, and deserted barnyards, and vineyards, through wild oases, and up from the beachside caves through Maronite estates, passing increasing numbers of camouflage concrete billionaire fashion hotels, wiping out the streets of pastry vendors, the turkey kissers, who’d wobbled the least far, fat on nicked grain joined with the lamb lickers who roamed like wildebeest, never stopping, running in wider circles than their elder sheep nabbers; plus the most athletic posse, the calf killers - who’d ventured back from Golan Heights. They all slavered in the long grass, waiting for the souk of sparkling light and fire baskets to fade. The hell of day would soon subdue as tourists evacuated the Baalbek ruins, and all the coin-sellers and coffee wallahs scarpered into the shadows of their TVed slums.
Every year the jackals gathered like this, for if they missed this giant moon - they’d be cursed with rancid infestations forever.
This was the night they remembered clots of child fur being all that was left of their young, collecting with knotted bones in the corners of white marble bath tanks stained scarlet, their sweet innocent heads thrown in pots of spell stew, and their hearts that had hardly pumped 12 moons hung around the necks of giggling maids, with hacked paws. Be-ceremonied in Tyrian robes, the maids’ masters had hallalled jackal babies’ throats with rhino-horn jambiya daggers - red insides fell into swirling baths of oenos and rainwater. When the murdering session was complete, and the bath filled red, the sluice gate was opened, for all the blood of their children flowed downhill in the drains to pour through the lions’ head carvings of the Jupiter warlord temple to shower upon the village’s virgin sacrifices to their god of Bacchus, before they were fucked sticky red in his dark temple, with the most beautiful girl in the village being forced to feast on roasted horse’s hearts carved to carry opium. The leather drums rolled, the strings built up, the peaking of peers was a ceremony which became more violent until the Assyrian war-men proved themselves larger savages than the Roman cunts, or any of the crazed sun worshippers, stealing more than their young jackal pups. Sacrifice. Murdered for their entire villages new gods.
The perfect midsummer orb began to rise from the crevice in the hills, and Wepwawet began to howl. His fellow omnitarians sniffed the white planet, and found themselves howling too. Filled with thoughts of how the Phoenicians were decimated, forced to migrate across the Cartharge, taking the tradition of raping and drugging their own women with sacrificing the virgin sacrifices first borns to new lands - imitating this act of ancient gods, the golden jackals remembered all the horror shows and their kind being quested as pelts of glory.
After ten minutes of shuddering howling, Anubis piped up, “Mate, I can’t believe you started us like that, it got out of hand again.”
Jackals had to be careful about letting rip. They did their best to contain themselves, particularly their bipedallist bloodthirst. They’d been sober from human flesh for 2000 years now - not since the Great Apparition of the Jackal Jinni, back in the ceremony of stars when BC and AD met, had they rescued bipedallist flesh.
The Millennial virgin sacrifice lay drugged upon the sarcophagus carved with a Phoenician 6 point star, which pointed as a shiva shakti hexagram sigil to the Annunaki starmen. This beautiful gift to Bacchus had no choice but to be fucked by all the Bacchus worshippers because they had to create their super-power semen child inside of her. Each year, the super-power semen child who’d been created the ceremony before would be sacrificed, cut with the same jambiya dagger that had sliced the necks of the jackal young, and held to their God. The bipedallists would drink the blood of the previous year’s Venus growth - the strongest child, a product of all their beasting. The child would then be laid inside the sarcophagus, dead, and they believed by fucking atop all their years of super-semen power, the spirit would create a stronger return each year, building on all the power of all their ancients, when they fucked fresh innocence atop them all.
The jackals called this out at BS, and chose to rescue the baby of Jesus - in the ceremony of stars when BC and AD met. Before the Tyrian robed beasts started fucking the crashed-out virgin, as they were inscribing the child’s name upon stone - and calling out hazed, drunk spells:
Remember us to Bethlehem, called the Caananites
Light of Ibrahim, Phoenician wails
Venus first, and last and always - Baal Hamuun, the original holy man of all.
The story goes, that as they rescued this baby Jesus in the name of Baal, a Jackal Jinni rose, from the eyes of Egypt, telling their ancient forefathers and foremothers that they had to accept they would always be hunted, never worshipped again, but if they saved this baby - they would be offered life eternal, IF they never killed a human again.
Why, they wailed?
Because I want you to live forever, shapeshifting from generation to generation.
And thus the deal was done. In return for saving sweet baby Jesus, the great Jackal Jinni offered to remove their year’s collection of ills - to take the fleas from their backs, to rip the annual collection of stomach worms back to the ground, and to stop them running from ticks - exchanging all the evil from their murderous ways for Jesus peace.
Tonight, slinking down the hills, smelling of the earth and all its decay, with layers of the mustiness and murder of the past year, the packs had been gathering for three weeks.
Black cats n black plastic bags
Scurry cross the streets
And people bash plates
After the evening call to prayer
They didn’t need another intervening Jinni to fuck them up with new Fears.
“That’s the fucker who maimed Old Wise One,” gruffed Wepwawet, nose pointing to a particular bipedalist in a group dressed in black robes, holding a shooter and a short face. All their lips snarled at these uniformed guards who circled a procession of celebratory protestors outside the hall where the hunters met. The jackals were doing their best to contain themselves. Over the centuries, the jackal crews got stronger, but they couldn’t seem to stop themselves from getting in trouble and changing the direction of history. Their first pack of these lands was said to have been a last ditch gift from Wenamun, the Egyptian priest who was, shortly after, sent packing, back up the Nile on his jackal-headed cedar boat, by a merchant of Byblos who claimed the jackals as people eaters. They’d only done that once, with a villager who looked like a sheep, and had tasted worse than a 10 day discarded doner, it put them off human flesh for 1000 years - but in that very action, they ceased thousands of years trade between Phoenicia and Egypt, and the jackals found themselves hunted outcasts, hard rumoured, and hard-blooded.
Anubis, less of warlord than Wepwawet, was moaning - “So tonight’s the night we’re going to take him out, is it? Excuse me for just being here to proffer my fleas, ticks and mange, but I thought we’d agreed, no more bipedallists.”
“I hate blood,” sobbed Anput. “It makes me so thirsty, losing my inner meat, becoming devoid of my Elixir Rubeus to make more young in the lunar cement. I hate to bleed.”
“We’re not great fans of either, love!” snided Anubis - his mates sniggered, that he caught up with once a year nodding in sympathy. Jackal periods could be heard for miles - husbands feral yells striking across valleys.
“We hear you.” They’d howl in sympathy - all the way down to their ancient Egyptian homeland, attracting later packs, over the centuries, hearing their plight, bounding through the tunnels of Gaza to remind the men they weren’t alone, and once they heard about this deal with the Jackal Jinni - I mean, who wouldn’t wanna rid yerself of freeloading parasites?
Slipping through camps of hunters who’d take them and their young for food, and roast them on a spit if they’d had half the chance, smashing eggs of life to their roasted legs, string them to the skies with arrows of death shooting from the endless shades of hills they did their best to suck it up, and not kill humans. 2000 years wasn’t bad. They bow wow wowed to the moon, atop these ancient temples, and the Jackal Jinni would perform the magick removal of freeloading parasites. PEACE TO ALL FUR, they wailed.
Anubis’s macrame-making wife, Anput, that every one of the alphas had wanted to pair up with, in their younger days, pleaded in Anubis’s defence: “Can we please look at this a different way, guys? We can survive salading on feasts of grapes and fruits of buckthorn, dogbane, plum, a perk of coffee, carbs of maize and juice of melon mixed with the golden rain tree - we do not need to bring blood into it.”
“Oh, darling, sloths attack humans twice as much as we do, they kill them! We have only maimed in these past years - we’re not that bad. You love a fresh tear of flesh, to suck on sweet newborn roe deer as much as I do!” reminded Anubis.
Anput rolled her eyes, she’d become world-weary - her stare full of winter branch silhouettes. Every year they pounded out new puppies - and she was getting tired. She wanted to slow down, take a den with a sunset view over the Med. Have her meat delivered, not go out killing it anymore.
“It’s just weird, Old Wise One’s murderer showing up. I’m not comfortable with that guy, he’s got no self-control,” said her husband. Humans or vegan fortitude. Every year they’d try the latter - through Ramadan, lent, sometimes months would go by with them living on berries alone, but jackals will be jackals. There was a chorus echo of boasts from the the calf killers: “We took out 2% of calves in the Golan Heights this year.”
“It’s always been about blood,” ordered Wepwawet. And they all knew he was right.
They began their ascent in a swastika circle, spinning to the Bacchus Temple.
Smelling the abuse
Animal blood
Smeared sacrifice
Wepwawet let the women go forward, as he stalked the hall of hunters for the bipedalists’ Jupiter heart.
Passing the Medusa head
Fallen Cleopatra
Casual ruins
Lion gargoyles and the gutters of oenos, mixing with the murder
Flowing
Above carved flowers
And the hexagram stars
To become earth, water, fire, and tell-me-more in the temple of Bacchus
Wepwawet, his eyesight was not as good as it once was, could smell something.
“Wait up, is that Old Wise One’s killer, dragging a girl into the Bacchus temple?”
The skies opened, and the great Jackal Jinni split through the heavens like a sprouting seed for all the jackals to be fearful of. He bellowed out:
“As clear to the truth as a dream can be
Steering you
To what will set you free
Do you tell that dream?
Leave it as a fantasy?
What’s the difference between that and reality?
For thousands of years you have believed me
My stories and dreams have no boundaries
I see what I want to be
Now you must do what you need to set yourselves free
Be, just be!”
His snout was a bountiful as the depictions in hieroglyphics, and as soon as he’d said this, the skies shut back up again, like a lock seal plastic bag - as if he’d never been there.
“What the fuck was that?” asked the chicken lickers, covered in blood, bringing themselves up from the dust of the ground that they’d been cowering in.
“I think it means we’ve done our time,” said Wepawet, “they’re taking a woman in to rape her, and they’re about to slice the throat of a 3 month bastard, again.”
“I am Anubis, the Egyptian godhead, a shepherd fox, and I shall reap my powers on thee!” shouted out Anput’s husband, whispering an echo behind himself, “Don’t know where that comes from - seriously.”
“Anubis doesn’t like killing,” explained his wife, Anput, to the Goat Murderer crew who were sidling in, bloody late.
“I thought the New York Times had written about him?” asked Kebechet, repping the Calf Killers
“They called him a sloppy amateur. Eating hares, rodents, lizards, snakes, muskrats, and birds and eggs, licking the bones left by big cats, and larger wolves. LOVES EATING SNAKES was the subhead, but it didn’t mention he’s not so great on vegetable water. He always leaves half the meat. Never finishes a hunt.”
“Wasteful, I agree,” said her old girlfriend, who also wanted to retire to the new dens with the sunset view over the ocean, “My Kebuchet, he just can’t help himself, ooooo, a liddle furry muskyrat, and a coy pooer, coypu muskyrat, that’s what turns him on, far more than me these days…”
“All of them love the idea of rainbow fluff of hares, a million coypu, wild pheasant, partridges, waterfowl. It’s not you, dear.”
Anubis needed to be cleansed tonight. Every year they dropped a pair of perfect puppies, in underground dens, and this was the congregation night when the crisp sunrise, twinkled with layers of hills backlit, halfway to Christmas trees, after tonight, he needed the parasites that slowed him down to scatter like a nail bomb, for another year. It was tiring, having to find food for his fat and lazy wife. He wanted to slow down too. He was having trouble digesting that the Jackal Jinni was setting them free, allowing them to kill bipedallists - he really wanted nothing to change.
The sounds of the rising ceremony in the Bacchus temple. Death march, blood swill, drum to hell, eagle lutes.
They circled.
Old Wise One’s killer was assembled with a Winston Churchill wannabe, and a man who looked suspiciously like Donald Trump. A Kim Jong-un, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Berlusconi, Netanyahu, it was a caliphate of slathering sidekicks, fondling beneath robes. They hadn’t been able to meet in Davos earlier this year, because the climate protestors were ramping up.
A ring of girls circled in a trance - a paid trance - reciting what they wanted the men to hear:
“Cuming for Bacchus. Cum to me. Cum for Baal - you built this temple to the sun, and to love, and war, and now to Bacchus here - swing your torturer's lamp through my blonde hair.
Your eyes are worlds. And you grab a kiss and tight, we are tight. I pull you and suck as you do the same to my chest. It makes me horny, baby. This is no other night. This is the night. Another vice, darl. Enter first the Venus hex,
Stars and corners
For priests to impress
Crosses laid, font, babtise
After original acts have passed…none of us shall die,
Singularity for me me me,
We will never let the others free of slavery…Singularity for me me me. ” they chanted.
The jackals stalked - what are we gonna do? Passing sculptures of pregnant women, the tree in the centre of the Jupiter temple, they slunk around the side of the Egyptian red granite columns of Jupiter, the god of war, and soaked up all the fierce French and Otto-German re-organisation of crumbled rocks - they’d done a good job renovating the place with their archeological pilferings.
“We go back to Baal, original sun god of gods, Bek, this town is our town. This temple is our temple.”
Rolling in the blood of the animal baths, carved with Mermaid medici refinery - the 300 jackals started their Wim Hof breathing routine. They were ready to take out all of them - for once and for all - and accept their fate of mange, and fleas and louse. Accept the anxiety of not killing humans by killing them.
The spirits of all the harlets and whores of Babalon rose
Mercury apothecary from their posse,
First to take out the Wise One’s killer, and rescue the child sacrifice, and the virgin who would be traumatised forever by their rancid curse…
“It’s fine, she won’t remember a thing,” conforted Anput, as Anubis wailed about the PTSD possibilities.
“Do we kill him though?”
A black back jackal appeared outside the gates to the Bacchus temple,
“I’ll be your apotheosis lord” he growled. “That guard has killed too many. And the rest of them are also evil. It is our time to feast.”
A bloodbath ensued - no human flesh was left unripped - the jackals tore through all of them, with vengeful hatred, the moon turned black. It took them all night to kill every one of these raping world leaders, attacking them like a shadow of ink washing over their drawings and blueprints for self-obsessed success. The jackals became Bacchus. Chaos turned to dust, and the jackals carry fleas and ticks and lice and mange, and never once returned to Baalbek for their annual ceremony - instead looking wider, circling every hall of hunters, protectorates, parasite carriers.
Pray to Bacchus. Pray to Anubis. Drink to the jackal spirit in all of us.
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