Devil Woman's Tongue

Her name is Angela Vostinari, but Titus never calls her ‘Angie.’ She is his ‘Devil Cakes’ or, more often, ‘Devil Woman.’

She lies on the kitchen table, her arms flung out, her body rigid. Looking down from the ceiling, it would appear as if she’s in a Jesus pose, as if she’s lying on a (round) cross. Her face and long red hair are wet with sweat. Her green eyes bulge. And her mouth— — —

Titus Voth is soaking in a hot bath when Angela screams.

— — — Her mouth is a bloody mess— — —

Titus sighs as he slips into the sudsy hot water.

It’s been a long day, a tiring Friday, the last day of their first full work-week at a shoddy home improvement company. But it was a good day. Titus made a sizable commission this afternoon— over two thousand dollars— by overcharging an elderly couple for ten vinyl replacement windows. And it was his Devil Cakes who set the appointment.

Titus is a salesman.

Angela is a telemarketer.

Both are unscrupulous liars.

Titus sips Jack Daniels on ice, before setting his glass on the floor beside the tub and— — —

— — — jaw open wide, Angela’s mouth is a cup filled to overflowing with blood. He sees no hint of a tongue and knows (but doesn’t know) it’s no longer there— — —

The bathtub isn’t big enough. Titus puts up his knees and scrunches down, but even then, an island of flabby gut remains above water. He hates this tiny mobile home. They’ve only been living here for three weeks but he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to how cramped everything is.

Angela is in the living room, watching some stupid 90s sitcom on Netflix. Suddenly, Titus hears her scream. Sitting up fast and causing a splash, he shouts, “Devil Cakes?”

He is answered by a crash of breaking glass and the loud snarl of a cat.

Since he and Devil own no pets, Titus doesn’t know what to think. “Devil!” he shouts, jumping out of the tub.

“HOLY CHRIST!” Angela shrieks. “Stay away from me!” This is promptly followed by a hair-raising scream.

Titus exits the bathroom and ducks across the hall, hurrying into their bedroom to grab his Louisville Slugger.

Angela’s screeching suddenly chokes out, becoming gasping gurgles. It sounds like she’s being strangled!

Raising the bat behind his head, Titus rushes down the hall, into the living room. What he sees in the kitchen shocks him to the core of his soul.

Angela is laid out across their kitchen table, her eyes bulging. Her mouth is yawing open, as if in a soundless scream, and it’s brimming with blood. Four gray-&-black-striped cats are perched on her, one on each of her wrists and ankles, and a fifth cat— a black one— sits squarely on Devil’s belly, its back to Titus, its tail twitching.

Even at first glance, he knows these cats aren’t natural. He can smell their gamy badger smell. He can sense their strange intelligence— a telepathic brush of presences both bestial and evil.

The four cats weighing down on Angela’s limbs simultaneously turn their heads to focus malign glares on Titus. Gooseflesh flocks up his neck.

Focusing on the cat holding down Angela’s right wrist, he sees that instead of paws, it has what looks like monkey hands. What Titus thinks is, Those are human fingers!

He looks to the hirsute hellion sitting on Angela’s left wrist and gasps when it looks back at him with one slit green cat’s eye and one squat blue anthropomorphic eye, both simmering with hatred.

That’s when the pure black cat on Devil’s belly turns around to face him. Seeing that cat’s bloody muzzle, for an instant he thinks it’s sticking out its own bloody tongue. Then he realizes the truth.

Yelling inarticulately, Titus charges forward, swinging his baseball bat. The four gray cats exhibit comedic expressions of surprise, their mouths falling open (revealing wicked cat fangs). Titus’ aim is dead-on; he hits both of the felines sitting on her ankles, squarely enough to knock them both off Angela, sending them flying (and screaming) into the kitchen wall. The cats— — —

— — — her mouth open and full of blood, not a muscle twitches. Angela seems almost comatose (or dead), except for her eyes.

There is awareness in her eyes. She— — —

In the middle of nowhere in rural Indiana, Titus and Angela just recently moved into a shitty trailer on Lot 127 of the Shady Acres Mobile Home Park. Behind their mobile home is a weed-covered hill that drops off a steep embankment down to a thick copse of trees. When Titus comes to the place where the cats bolted through his shattered kitchen window, he hears Angela squealing somewhere within that dark forest.

Insects sing their night songs. On the other side of the trailer park, a dog is barking.

Titus’ head feels foggy. He’s bewildered. He thought Angela was lying on the kitchen— —

— — — The repellent black cat sits hard on his lover’s chest, her tongue limp and bloody in its maw— —

“Help me, Titus!” cries his Devil Cakes. “Help me!”

Titus runs to the edge of the embankment and looks out at the trees. A full moon and a billion stars provide plenty of pale light, but he doesn’t see anything moving in the thicket. Fearful, he thinks, I’m already too late.

“I’m here, Titus!” the Devil calls out. “Save me!”

Naked, wearing only his slippers, Titus bounds down the embankment, nearly losing his footing, the grade is so sharp. He stumble-runs into the woods, where he immediately discovers a path.

Consciousness becomes blurred. He has a sense of passing time and passing trees. The forest deepens around him. Led by his lover’s voice, he makes several sharp turns.

Clearness of thought returns to him when he places all his weight on the hidden trapdoor and plunges through it. He has barely a second to register the sight of a wide wooden plank that has been perfectly camouflaged with leaves . . . before it drops away beneath him.

After that, he sees nothing at all.

— — — cats slam into the kitchen wall, screeching human/feline wails. Both gray tiger cats land on their feet, jump up on the sink counter, and then spring right through the shattered kitchen window.

Cat-cries recede into the night.

The other two tiger cats— the ones holding Angela’s wrists— also flee. The cat-with-the-human-hands does a kind of back-flip before it leaps out the broken window.

The baseball bat clutched tightly in his sweat-wet hands, Titus is left alone with the black monster on Devil’s heaving chest, the one eating her tongue. That grimalkin glares at Titus, it’s eyes seeming to pulse, as if surging with some expanding power.

He thinks, Cat’s got her tongue! and nearly laughs.

From outside the window, Titus hears Devil Cakes giggle.

Turning away from (and forgetting) her frozen form, Titus drops the bat and rushes to the window, his thoughts swirling. “Devil?”— —

— — — Out of control, he plunges down a pitch-dark chute. The walls of the tunnel are perfectly smooth, incredibly hard, and slightly damp, making them especially slippery. He rides his bruised ass, sliding faster and faster into the earth.

When the chute ends, he’s propelled through the air, into an open black void.

He starts to scream, but then he’s smacked full in the face by something wet and fleshy, only to have his entire body engulfed, in the next instant, by warm, piecemeal moistness. He begins to slide, feeling sandpaper-like roughness dragging over his skin. Titus squeals as he plummets through a dangling tangle of overlapping meat. Then the skin slips away.

He hits bottom, hearing the loud snaps of many breaking bones.

He is addled when he feels no intense pain. His skeleton was jarred but not hard enough to break anything. The air is knocked out of him, however, and he spends the next few minutes gasping for breath (smelling gritty bone powder.)

High above him in the darkness, he hears echoes of cat mews.

Clutching his butt as he continues to gasp, he slowly climbs to his feet.

Suddenly, the lights are turned on, blinding him. When he can finally see again and take in his surroundings, he gasps.

The cavern is vast and frightfully deep, much deeper than he suspected. He can’t even see the ceiling, hidden in the darkness high above. From out of that inkiness hangs a tapered column of giant tongues, hundreds of them stitched together in curtains, each easily weighing a hundred pounds or more. And directly beneath the hideous stalactite of dangling ogre-sized tongues is a pile of human bones, some so battered they’ve been reduced to dust.

Titus feels like he’s hyperventilating. The air is old— stagnant and lichen-tainted. Illumination is provided by a series of electric sconces mounted on the rough walls of the cave. But other than the giant imbricated tongues and all the scattered human bones, there is nothing to see.

That’s when the whispering begins.

“I’ve never done anything like that in my life!”

“You know I would have been there if I could have.”

“Seriously, honey. Once you scraped off the burned part, it wasn’t that bad.”

“I found that motel key at the laundry mat.”

“I’m too sick to make it into the office today.”

“I did not have sex with that woman.”

“She’s not here right now. Can I take a message?”

“I’ve only had two beers.”

“I only have eyes for you, sweetheart.”

“I’d do anything for you, darling.”

Every voice belongs to a different man and every voice is lying. Titus knows every utterance is a fabrication even before he hears the most infamous lies of all: “The check is in the mail!” is followed by another man swearing, “I promise I won’t cum in your mouth!”

Each whisper causes a different tongue to waggle. Clearly, all the tongues are still capable of speech.

Titus turns slowly in a circle, looking for a way out of this place, seeing nothing that gives him hope.

He is so startled he squeals when a deep, resonating voice calls his name. “Titus Vincent Voth, salutations! It is indeed an honor to meet such a consummate liar!”

“I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’!”

He has never liked being called a liar. It’s always made him angry, even though it’s true. He welcomes a spike of anger now, greatly preferring that to fear. “Who the hell are you?” He summons all his bravado. “What is this place?”

“This place?” answers the unseen stranger. “Just the humble little pit I call ‘home.’”

“I’ll call you.”

“I had a fantastic time tonight.”

Titus takes an instinctive step backward as a tall figure emerges from the darkness. Dressed like the Grim Reaper in a hooded black gown, the stranger's face is shielded by shadow. His arms are visible, however; he has flesh, albeit very thin and very pale. For a moment there, Titus thought he saw no skin at all, only moving bones (perhaps because he's surrounded by so many broken skeletons).

With a booming base voice, the black-clad ghoul tells him, “We’re both reasonable men, right, Mr. Voth?”

“It's worry-free fucking, baby! I had a vasectomy!”

“Of course, I’ll still love you in the morning!”

Titus no longer has his Louisville Slugger, so he grabs up the biggest human femur he sees, cocking the thighbone back over his right shoulder, ready to swing. “STAY AWAY FROM ME!”

Shadow-face looks up and calls out, “Take ‘im, boys!”

“I'm authentic! I've never catfished anyone!"

“I'm as straight as an arrow and hung like a horse!”

Cats rain down from above, wailing like banshees, their cries reverberating in the secret chamber to create a tragically brief bewailing opera.

“I eat mostly low fat foods.”

“I was just picking up the phone to call you.”

“No way! That dress does not make your butt look fat.”

“I’m fine.”

The voices befuddle him, making it impossible for him to focus on anything but the lies.

“I’ve got no problem with colored people! I’m not a racist!”

“I believe women are equal to men in every way!”

“So you think the reason I thought it was funny is because I lack empathy? I’ll have you know I have several trans friends!”

“I swear I’m okay.”

The four gray tiger cats surround him. He now notices one of the creatures has a hairless human ear. A man’s blue eye glowers at him, along with seven cat-eyes. The sprinkling of miniature homo sapien body parts mixed with feline is profoundly unsettling.

Working together, the oily beasts trip him up and push him down, causing Titus to fall directly beneath the tapestry of tongues. He’s powerless to do anything to save himself. The rush of lies— big and small— innocent, ignorant, hurtful, jealous, envious, angry, hateful, malignant, loving, charitable, embarrassing— all the deceit overwhelms him.

“Sure! I love sushi!”

“I don't do drugs.”

"I'm HIV-negative."

“I did not buy a penis pump!”

“I’m a survivor. I’ll be fine.”

His arms are spread out. Cats sit on his wrists. Two others sit on his lower legs. All four each weigh a cool ton. Titus is pinned down.

The reaper holds a skeletal white finger up to his shadow-face, trying to shush the lying tongues, “Sssssssh!”

The voices decrease in volume but don’t cease.

“I have no clue where that blond hair came from!”

“I only went to that website to do research!”

“I couldn’t help myself!”

“I wouldn’t dream of killing myself! I’m not that kind of person!”

“Shut up!” roars the hooded monster.

The tongues fall silent.

— — — frozen in that open-mouthed moment, Devil Woman’s eyes plead with him. Seeing Angela so still, trapped in her own body like that, Titus feels like screaming — — —

Titus yells at his white-armed shadow-faced captor, “WHAT ARE YOU?!?”

“Undead!” whispers one of the tongues.

“He’s a Preserver.”

“He’s a Thief!”

The shadow-faced brute points at the gargantuan tongues. “Pay them no heed. What I am not,” he continues, “is an Eater of Lies. So you can rest easy, Titus.”

Titus’ mind becomes his own internal Cave of Whispers. He hears his own lies echoing back at him, from out of the past.

“I don’t expect you to buy anything tonight, Mr. Johnson. But since I already made a special trip out here, just let me demonstrate our product so you can tell me what you think of it. Fair enough?”

“Me? I’ve worked with this company for almost twenty years now.”

“Absolutely, Mr. Pierce, we’re listed with the Better Business Bureau.”

“Oh, no, Miss Hill! I wouldn’t dream of pressuring you!”

“I don’t mean to frighten you, Mr. Taylor, but if you don’t take care of this problem now, before winter, you could be looking at a potential disaster when the first snows hit.”

“I have a 75-year-old grandmother of my own, Mrs. Cooper, so you know I won’t steer you wrong!”

And on and on and on...

Over the last eighteen years he’s worked for more than two dozen different fly-by-night companies. He’s pitched everything from vinyl siding and rooftop solar heaters to satellite dishes and invisible fencing. He has told every type of lie imaginable to line his own pockets. And now all those deceptions come back to him, marching one by one through his head.

Included in the audio parade are lies he told Devil Woman, like when he said “I’d never be unfaithful to you, honey.”

— — — Looking at her torn-out tongue hanging from the cat’s mouth, Titus recalls watching Devil Woman lie to some old lady on the phone, telling the retired woman, “You remind me of my Mom!” He remembers smiling at his lover from across the phone room and rolling his eyes, knowing fully well Angela’s mother had died giving birth to her. — — —

“You have a delightful decision to make, Titus,” says Shadow-man.

The cat holding Titus’ leg snickers like a cartoon dog.

“Quite simply, Mr. Voth,” declares the fiend, “will it be the Devil Woman’s tongue . . .”

— — — pitch black cat on her chest gives a little shake of his head, causing Angela’s tongue to flap about in its bloody jaws— — —

“Or your own?”

“What?” Titus is profoundly confused. He keeps thinking Devil’s tongue is already a done deal, a ghost of a memory . . . but that doesn’t seem right either. He remembers hearing Angela calling out to him in the woods. Her tongue was okay then.

“Don’t over-think this, Titus. I’ve found over the centuries that those who spontaneously answer are generally happier.”

He blurts out, “I don’t get it. This isn’t real.”

The monster declares, “If you choose to sacrifice your own tongue, Mr. Voth, we can put Miss Vostinari’s tongue back.”

Titus jumps as if brushed by electricity. “What?”

“We can put her tongue back, quick and slick. We only need one liar’s tongue to preserve tonight.”

Titus looks up at the hanging meat-sacks above him and wonders if that’s what will become of his tongue . . . if it will somehow be enlarged to gigantic proportions.

— — — on the table, her mouth still perfectly filled with blood, Devil Woman’s body gives a little shudder. A single tear breaks free of her left eye, rolling down her face. And suddenly—

Suddenly the memory of his girlfriend on that table breaks through to Titus’ conscious mind. He gasps. “You’ve already ripped her tongue out!”

The creature shrugs boney shoulders. “Yes, but we can restore it. Good as new. Trust me.”

If Titus has one Golden Rule, it’s to never trust anyone who says, ‘trust me.’ Certainly every time that he ever said it, he was completely untrustworthy.

Remembering Angela’s mouth, caked with blood, a mouth he’s kissed thousands of times, Titus suddenly feels like he’s going to be sick.

The hooded fiend shouts, “Get over it! Decide! Do I take your lover’s tongue or do I take yours?”

This moment will forever seal his fate. He understands, with a perfect cognizance, how momentous this choice is.

This ghoul expects him to take the easy way out, to sacrifice Devil’s tongue— the tongue already taken. Why should he suffer the pain?

Everything that he’s ever done in his life has been selfishly motivated. Hearing all his own lies reflected back at him filled Titus with shame. Guilt claws his soul.

And he adores his Devil Cakes. He gives her shit, but he can’t imagine life without her. As much as they both talk about their mutual aversion to getting married, if she expressed any interest, he’d propose to her in a heartbeat. Angela Vostinari is his soul mate.

Titus knows this monster (or his accursed cats) will rip his tongue out. They’ll kill him and do terrible things to his corpse. And when they’re finally done with him, all that will remain are his bones. For a moment, his long cultivated narcissism threatens to win out over his affection. But then Titus cries out, “MINE!” His voice echoes six times. “Take MY tongue, not hers! Give hers back!”

The Thing-that-Feeds-on-Lies blathers with rage. Elsewhere, back in his home, Titus knows the waiting black cat is also furious, as it’s forced to leave behind Devil’s restored (never truly touched) tongue.

Titus realizes, “You lied about everything, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“Of course I didn’t,” says the fiend, another bald-faced lie.

Four cats join together to manhandle Titus. They move so swiftly, so unexpectedly, he doesn’t even have time to yelp. He is lifted up and thrown, with frightening strength, at the tangle of hanging tongues... only to stick onto the side of one of them.

Immediately, his naked body begins to change.

“You’re really going to like this next part,” says the ancient liar.

The trapped man screams.

The happy monster laughs.

All Titus’ teeth suddenly pop out simultaneously, with the precision of an organized defection. When he spits them out, he feels his jaw shift, sliding out of place. Other bones begin slipping, plunging through his flesh, like hot metal bolts dropped into a bowl of cold gelatin. His chest involuntarily clenches, with muscles he never had before, and twelve pairs of ribs are squeezed out of his body. He tries to scream, only to discover his throat is filling with liquid and his lungs (and heart) don’t seem to exist anymore. More bones are expelled; more internal organs are overwhelmed; and when, finally, his new blobbish form disgorges his skull, the metamorphosis is complete.

Titus Voth has been transformed into a one-hundred-sixty pound tongue.

His mind is the last thing to go. In his last moments before oblivion, he understands that the moment he fell into this whispering abyss, his doom was inevitable. He never had a chance.

He knows the tongues of women are different, however. This Lover of Lies is restricted in what he can do to women. He can’t rape them of their tongues. The vision Titus had of Devil Woman on the table, her mouth full of blood... that isn’t what already happened. That’s what could have happened, but only if he had given the creature his permission.

Since he didn’t give his consent, Angela is safe.

His last human thought is: Give the world hell, Devil Cakes. I love you.

The giant tongue that used to be Titus Voth whispers...

“Of course you can trust me, Mrs. Jones! Do I look like a liar to you?”

⚡________________⚡

Shedding the illusion of human appearance, the massive black leech-like Thing slithers through the deep underground chamber to the hanging column of imbricated flesh.

All the sighing tongues turn their lies inward, liquefying them.

Deceit becomes drool.

The Lie-licker stretches up the tip of Its own waggling form, touching the lowest of the hanging tongues.

It is angry that It won’t be able to feed on the woman’s sweet fabrications. There will be no dessert tonight. Frustrated, the hungry monster slurps Its meal, feasting on a thousand male deceptions— savoring the new added flavors of Titus Voth’s greatest lies.

⚡________________⚡

Angela Vostinari has a vexing nightmare. In it, cats with human hands wrestle her into submission and are about to rip out her tongue . . . when Titus charges to her rescue wielding his baseball bat.

The cats tear Titus apart, leaving nothing recognizable behind in the gore except for his tongue.

Awakening to find herself on top of the kitchen table, Devil Woman screams. Then she bursts into tears, knowing intuitively that Titus is dead. Some wicked Thing threatened her last night and her beloved Captain Caveman prevented that Evil from doing her harm.

Angela mourns Titus for three weeks. Then she arranges to move to a bigger city. Once she’s settled into a new apartment, she goes back to work as a telemarketer.

⚡________________⚡

The new tenants that move onto Lot 127 of the Shady Acres Mobile Home Park tell only little white lies which aren’t suitable to a monster’s needs.

But in December, two days after Christmas, the old man living in the beige trailer on lot 115 succumbs to advanced years and bad fruitcake. By Saint Patrick’s Day, the trailer is sold.

The new owner of the home on lot 115 is an affluent, married tax attorney named Ian Iverson. He purchases the trailer so that he and his mistress will have a secret love-nest.

One night, after they’ve had sex, Ian’s girlfriend gets up and goes to the kitchen for something to drink.

In the bedroom, the cheating liar nearly jumps out of his skin when he hears his mistress scream.

Unaware of the choice he’ll soon be forced to make, Ian goes to his lover’s aid, only to discover her lying on the kitchen table with an open mouth full of blood— — —— — —

If you enjoyed my wicked kitties 🐈‍⬛, check out my terrible dogs! 👇🐕

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Thank you kindly for your support!

_____________Bolt ⚡