Handsome Freaks

A Serial Novel

by Ezra Vancil

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Ch1-P1 | Ch1-P2 | Ch2-P1 | Ch2-P2 | Ch3-P1 | Ch3-P2 | Ch3-P3 | Ch4-P1 | Ch4-P2 | Ch4-Pt3 | Ch4-Pt4 | Ch5 | Ch6 P1 | Ch6 P2

For more convenience, I'm working on also creating an updated [Novel index here] soon!(http://www.ezravancil.com/handsome-freaks/)

This is an original STEEM series novel. If you like odd dramas about odd things, strangely funny and sad, freaks, bearded ladies, emotional pain of invisible boys–I'm writing this on steemit based on a short story I've written... enjoy.

The Song Of Deborah

Chapter 6 - Part 1

Over the summer Magdalene noticed the subtle changes in her slim boyish frame. She now blossomed. Curves had replaced the straight lines of her hips. She stood naked in front of her mother's tarnished mirror. She ran her hands up her torso, then over her small pointed breasts; feeling a tingling sensation of pleasure. She stood at an angle in which to hide her face, but let her body fill the space of the reflection's view. She admired her naked body for a few moments each morning before bathing. With her face hidden, she could imagine the beauty that could have been.

Her beard was manageable at that time, even though she would wake each morning to its shadow returning. Its dark and coarse stubble, like a blanket of dirt, covered the ivory skin of her cheeks and throat. She could make it a full day and night before the budding black hair on he face returned.

It was her father, Geraldo, who taught her to shave properly.
Geraldo was truly grieved by Magdalene's newly sprouting beard, though, he was not the type of father to let his dark moods show. He kept those bitter resentments pointed in secret at his wife Esther. The one who had so ruined their daughter's future with such silly superstitions. He was a most pleasant man in the daytime... greeting all with a smile. No onlooker to the 'James Family' house would ever suspect that he was so troubled inwardly. Yet, he was, and greatly so.

His hidden and brewing hatred was stowed away in the lower depths of his being; waiting for the nights when he could punish his wife in private. He punished Esther with a thick, heavy and painful silence. The kind of 'silence' that siphons all the air from a room.

When he first became aware of the beard on Magdalene's face and the story of how it came to be, Geraldo sought to destroy the Preist who had brought it about. But, to his displeasure, he found that even though Father Demissie was a very powerful man in the region, with many influential friends, he had nothing to destroy. He owned nothing, lived nowhere, and cared nothing of reputations. To take an old man's life – a man that longed for heaven anyway – would strangely be a favor and a blessing.

Over the months, Geraldo gave up all fantasies of revenge against Father Demissie and heaped his inward resentments more so on his wife.

Being the practical man that Geraldo was, he bought a shaving kit for his daughter and taught her the art of the close shave.

Magdalene shaved with her father each morning before breakfast. He showed her the perfect angle at which to hold the razor; how a hot soaked towel would open the pores of her follicles, for a smoother shave. The ivory handled flip razor he bought her; he sharpened each week with his leather belt. He even gave her a bottle of shaving lotion, imported from the small French coastal town, Ploumanac'h; it was the same kind he wore. Magdalene smelt like the old wood of a ship.

Over time, like her father's beard, the hair of her throat began to connect with the hair of her neck... which was growing up from the hair on her chest. The strip of hair on her chest became thick, it formed the shape of a bird; as if its black feathered wings spread, grasping her small breast. But she did not shave her chest. No one would see it anyway. Still, when she was alone or bathing, she missed touching the tender skin of her nipples.

Even with the shadow of the beard, Magdalene was a stunning creature. Her eyes like the Egyptian pharos in the ancient hylogryphics, dark, round and wide... and a strong nose, chiseled onto her face, like the work of a skilled sculpture. Her lips, lush and crimson; her hair waving down in curls over her shoulders.

When the dark shadow of facial hair began to persistently show under her skin even after she shaved; as a distraction, Geraldo bought her a silver makeup kit with drawers and a flip-up-mirror. It was stenciled with blossoming roses and thorns, ornate and perfectly crafted.

She applied base to the shadow on her chin and lip, red rush to her cheeks and dark liner surrounding her cat-like eyes. Her father would slowly look her over and smile, saying each morning, "If it were the days of my father, I would receive an entire flock of unblemished lambs for your hand."

Esther's Garden

Magdalene was not accustomed to so much attention from her father, but it was a welcome friendship, especially with the ever-increasing absence of her mother.

Since the morning of the curse in the tent of Father Demissie, Esther's demeanor had become increasingly odd. She, In just a few short months, had developed a powerful dependence on her prescription Laudanum. Her afternoons were spent in an opium haze. "For my horrid menstruation." She would say. "...May the virgin mother have mercy on a woman's pain!"

Fleeing the silence of her quiet husband, Esther would spend entire days with the pigeons that flocked in the estate's garden; sitting with her box of Laudanum and an empty teacup... talking to the birds. When she returned to the main house each night she would be covered in pigeon shit – not even caring to wipe it from her eyes.

At the dinner table, Esther told wild incoherent stories of violent bullfights, ghosts, and lonely invisible boys. She claimed that the birds spoke these wild tales and other private words in the garden to her each morning.

While his wife was going insane and his daughter's hair growth issues became evermore perplexing; Geraldo's practice of law began to suffer under the strain of it all. He soon could not spare the cost of keeping the servants on staff. That left only Magdalene to care for the estate and her mother's increasingly bothersome activities.

In those early months, Magdalene still was able to be a woman in public.

When Magdalene had a need to leave the estate, Her makeup would thickly be applied, to hide the scruff of her chin. This made the prickly socialites murmur and the men stare. To make it worse, she capitalized on the features which still proved her superior feminine nature. She tailored her clothing to accentuate the shape of her hips. She wore bustiers under tight blouses, they held her breast up on display like two tender pomegranates ripe on the vine.

Men, young and old, found themselves inexplicably following her without cause through the rows of olives and cheese at the market. The young boys tangled in behind her, tripping over the bins. The old men watched her every move. Magdalene enjoyed the attention. She even encouraged it by sometimes glancing their way, from the tops of her eyes, peering under her thick round brows in an obvious flirtation. Yet, these times did not last.

As the years progressed the beard became increasingly difficult to disguise. In her sixteenth year, she could not even make it a full day without the beard's noticeable shadow returning. The new whiskers were thicker and darker. Soon, no makeup could hide the budding afternoon's growth on her face and neck.

The task of disguising her true self-became impossibly difficult. In desperation, she took to the habit of also shaving before afternoon tea. It was her sole duty of her every day. Maintaining her feminity, consumed her time... no different than any steady working profession.

In sheer exhaustion from the constant upkeep, she resisted obligations that might take her from home. Often though; she had no choice. Esther was increasingly 'odd' and there was no one else to do the keeping of the house. The shopping and the preparation of a proper dinner had to be done.

On her seventeenth birthday, Magdalene went to the market to buy a plucked goose. That morning as Magdalene saw her father to his horse, he told her to spare no expense at the market for her birthday dinner that evening. He pressed two gold escudo in her hand before he mounted his white mare. "Buy a goose! Maybe two.. and some good wine!" he said, as the horse turned and set off in a trot.

That day, as was usual at the Market, random a group of young men stopped in their tracks staring with gaping mouths at Magdalene. She, as was usual, peered at them under her round brow and gave a flirtatious grin. Yet, this time, the response of the men was not as expected. They did not bite into a log of cheese or cram the olives in their mouth. No, this time, in their gawking eyes, Magdalene detected what looked and felt like, disgust.

When she left the market, she was distressed and confused. She hurried past an oversized window at the wicker shop; In the reflection, she could see that her beard was full; at least an inch long. Causing a further shock, she could see that the hair of her chest escaped her dress, with a few wafts hanging over the collar. "Oh dear Christ," she said.

She dropped the plucked goose and the French wine, grasped her blouse, untucked it, then pulled the collar up over the face. She then ran as fast as her legs would carry her... all the way home, in tears, to the arms of her father. They wept together that night.

For weeks after the event at in town, Magdalene could not be pried from her bed... though her Father earnestly tried. She stole her mother's little box of Laudanum, and for a month she slept as the dead sleep.

Unfettered from the ivory razor, her beard grew. It grew in a week to be as long as her father's beard, which hung over his collar. She had lost her beauty forever. No man would love her now she thought. No man would caress her nipples and small round belly. No man would kiss her warmly with sweet tasting wine-breath. And except for her own remembrances; the soft skin of her cheeks was forever forgotten. Her once pleasurable mid-day fantasies of intimacy turned only to her detailed remebrances of the look on the men's faces at the market. More so, what she saw in their eyes, which was disgust and confusion. She soon looked at her own face in the mirror with the same eyes. Disgusted by her reflection.

She no longer highlighted her eyelashes with the mascara or dotted her cheeks with ruse; for the dark lines of mascara only seemed to highlight the dark mustache bellow her nose. She quit shaving her beard altogether; it grew to her belly. She would trim it though, just above her bosom; only to remember what was once her feminine nature, before she was blessed Esau's birthright.

What The Birds Said

On a cold December night, under the influence of several drops of her mother's Laudanum., Magdalene fell into a sleep; a sleep so deep inside herself that it felt as if she was in the dark safe womb of her birth.

She awoke in the garden surrounded by the same pigeons her mother fed in the day. It was midnight and the moon was glowing with pink hallow behind the trees of the garden.

The cooing of the birds sounded like music; like a song her mother sang to her when she was a child. That night the garden was more crisp and real than reality itself. She felt like she had awoken from a dream, but the dream continued. She could feel the pink hues of the sky on her skin. She then realized the moon was apart of the trees, they were one thing, moving in one motion. The trees were a part of the grass that weaved around her bare toes. She suddenly and undoubtedly conceived that all nature of the garden around her... the birds, the trees and the moon, was also her. She was one with all, and all was one with her.

She sensed that the moon was not as far away as she thought. It looked like an oil painting with masterful lines of perspective, pushed in to further divisions of her perception, only by the trickery of a skillful artist. She reached out with a finger and taped the glowing moon; like a pond it rippled. When the waves subsided in the sky, the speckled stars came near to her. They were twinkling angels of light, dressed for battle. The pink hues of the moons hallow streaked across their bodies, turning red, like stripes of blood on their wings.

The song of the pigeons became a soft chant. They wobbled slowly in a circle around her. Thier coos became words; she could understand them clearly now. They sang a lyric from the scriptures of old. The birds chanted each line as one quivering voice.

"Wake up, wake up, Deborah!
Wake up, wake up, break out in song!"

Magdalene could not help but question the logic of what she was witnessing. But it was too real; too real for questions. The birds they spoke directly into her being. The angles began to sing along in a masculine chorus.

"...Wake up, wake up, Deborah!"
"Most blessed of women be Jael!"

As if there was another secret conversation, with unuttered words, Magdalene knew that she was Deborah. The Deborah they asked to wake. She heard the violent sound of hooves tearing the earth beneath her. She looked down; to her surprise, she was no longer sitting in the garden, she was on a white horse. It was dashing through the night. The birds flew alongside her singing now louder, in the rhythm of the horse's stride...

"...then thundered the horses’ hooves—
galloping, galloping, galloping
...go her mighty steed..."

The angels in the sky, flew before her, as stars fly with the horizon, moving but holding still in their positions in the night sky. the replied to the birds in a chant,

"... From the heavens,
the stars fought,
They fought,
from their courses they fought...
He asked for water,
she gave him milk;
in a bowl fit for nobles,
she brought him milk,
They fought, She fought, Oh Deborah Kill!"

In the fury of the chant, the hooves of the horse beating the ground, the wind stinging her cheeks; Magdalene felt a fierceness in her chest, a courage like nothing she had felt before.

"...Wake up, wake up, Deborah!"

The horse plowed its forelegs into the dirt and came to stop in a cloud of dust. The songs and chants quietened as the white birds fluttered in a cyclone around her. She slid down from the bare back of the horse as the birds settled on the ground; their song becoming a whisper. They were speaking then, in rhythm, in one voice...

"...We, your wisest of ladies answer you...
indeed, have you not said it to yourself?"

The dust began to fall and her vision cleared. Magdalene could see that she had arrived at a familiar place; Father Demissie's tent was no more than ten feet in front of her. The Preist who had cursed her at her mother's beckoning. The priest who had shown her for the first time, the member of a stiff manhood, yet cursed her never to be loved by such an instrument of a man. Looking at the tattered tent, she was filled with rage. The birds began to whisper again...

"... Did he not find and divide your spoils?
wake up, Oh Deborah, and divide him...
a woman or two for each man,
colorful garments in your hand.
Blessed will be the land.
Oh, Deborah, divide this man..."

As she walked slowly to the tent, it struck her plainly, the scripture the birds quoted. It was the 'Song of Deborah', from the book of Judges.

When she was a child, her mother had taught her the scriptures by way of song. The great Judge, Deborah, was among her favorite stories to teach. She was one of the few heroines of the scriptures. A Judge who won the war by way of seduction and intimate violence. Though the birds still whispered the plot, Magdalene knew the story well. She knew what she must do. She ripped her gown with one violent gesture, exposing her breasts, which were covered in hair. The star-angels lifted their shining swords in the night sky, lighting up the field around the tent. The birds continued their verse, as quiet as the night...

"... Her hand reached for the tent peg...
her right hand
for the workman’s hammer.."

Magdalene pulled a rusty peg from the corner of the tent and gripped it tightly in her hand. She heard Father Demissie's feeble voice from inside the shelter, "Who goes there?"
She answered, "It is I, the one destined to be a whore"
He answered only in two words, "Oh, dear.."

Gripping tightly the sharp peg in her hand, she ducked her head and entered the tent. She could see the old Priests face, it was withered and pale. He threw his blanket open. He was naked. His manhood was not stiff as before, but was withered and limp like the loose skin that hung from his bones. He held his arms out to the young girl.
"Come.. come, I have been waiting for you. I know what you must do."

She let her dangling gown fall to the tent floor and laid beside him. He clutched her naked body tightly. Magdalene did not resist, but made her body to curl up around his small frame. She laid the rusty peg behind his back. They embraced desperately. He spoke very quietly into her ear. "Oh, dear girl, how lonely I am. How very alone I feel. No skin has touched my skin in many decades. It is worth a lifetime of suffering to feel your skin, even if it feels like the arms of Jacob when he tricked his father Isaac. Will you let me sleep forever in your arms... even, only, in death?"

Magdalene felt a sudden compassion for the small man in her arms. But, it was not enough to overcome the duty she knew she must accomplish. She felt his manhood stiffen against her leg and her rage returned. But still, she spoke in a soft tone in return. "You damned old man. If you only knew what your curse has done to my soul. You chose yourself, of your own will, to be alone. I had no choice. I have been made to be alone. I see the disgust in the eyes that look upon me, even my own; and though he tries to hide it, even from my father's eyes. You damned old man.."

"I meant you no harm." Was all he said.

She no longer heard the birds chanting. She did not need them to remind her of the rest of the song. She remembered it quirt clearly. She recited it quietly as the old priest pressed up against her body..

"He asked for water, and she gave him milk...
in a bowl fit for nobles,
she brought him curdled milk.
...Her hand reached for the tent peg,
her right hand for the workman’s hammer."

She lifted herself on one side and reached over him to take the tent peg in her small hand. He kissed her breast as if they were tender skin; not as they truly were, covered in a carpet of hair. She could hear the pigeons whisper the final verse of the scriptural song. She clutched the peg in her hand tightly...

Magdalene awoke to her father's hot breath on her face and the painful noise of his cringing painful shout, "Christ in heaven, what have you done my girl!"

She sprung up on her backside and unclenched her eyes to focus. She felt that she was naked. Her Father was kneeling over her, tears were spidering down his cheeks. He abruptly lifted her with his quivering arms and hoisted her over his shoulder. She felt a sticky cold wetness on her hands and face; she held them out and saw that they were dripping with blood. She looked further out and could see that her father was carrying her from the Garden. Her father's old white mare stood a few feet away nestling its nose in the grass and picking dandelions to eat. There was brown blood smeared across its white body. She could hear her father crying as he carried her to the house.

The scene of the sun rising over their estate was viewed upside down by Magdalene. She dared not say a word as she hung from her father's shoulder, clinging to his wide torso. They passed Esther, her mother, sitting in her normal spot, with her empty teacup, like she did every morning... with her box of opium and the pigeons surrounding her.

Esther did not turn her head as her bloodied daughter passed by; carried on the shoulder of her husband. She seemed to have no interest in the hectic drama surrounding her. She sat quietly, peacefully smiling at the birds that cooed at her feet. Magdalene could hear that she sang a song. It was the last lines from 'The song of Deborah'.

"She struck,
she crushed his head...
she shattered
and pierced his temple they said."
At her feet... he sank,
..he fell; there he lay.
..At her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he fell—dead, they say."

To Be Continued

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