Why the fuck did I sit here, thought Iqui Acab as he shuffled in his seat, turning once again to meet the grinning face of Old Spider Monkey.
“Gorgeous wedding, huh?” asked Old Spider Monkey.
The wedding hall was suffocatingly dark. Lit only by the pale glow of the corpseworm infestation.
It also smelled like monkey shit.
“Sure. Gorgeous.” said Iqui Acab, before noticing the pouch that hung from a loose rope around the monkey’s neck.
“What’s in the pouch?” he asked, making conversation.
Old Spider Monkey clasped a hand across his face to control his laughter.
“That’s for later,” he finally managed.
“Sure. Later.”
Why the fuck did I sit here.
But as Iqui Acab looked down at the stage below, at the bride and groom before the shaman, he knew it was all worth it. For Iqui Acab was about to witness something that no mortal ever had before.
He was about to witness the wedding of two gods of death.
He was about to witness the wedding of Flying Scab and Lady Blood.
He was about to witness a wedding in Xibalba.
Though, okay sure, that was only partially true. The wedding was only being held in the entrance to Xibalba. But even a wedding held at the Mayan underworld’s entrance was surely something worth attending. Especially here, in underground Tazumal.
A mockery to the pyramids in the mortal world, Tazumal’s apex pointed downwards, not upwards. Its peak was upside-down. It pointed not to the heavens, but to its opposite, to the decrepit city of Xibalba.
And there, in the chamber within that inverted summit, was where Flying Scab would marry the maiden Lady Blood.
But as exciting as the journey had originally sounded, the way down had not been what Iqui Acab had expected.
Nobody knew who had built the underground pyramid of Tazumal. His father claimed that it was by the false-god Seven Macaw’s almost-men, long before their eradication by the Heart of Sky, Huracan. His father also said that Huracan had not been thorough, and that those walking effigies of wood still walked the labyrinthine paths in underground Tazumal.
Iqui Acab had laughed at that.
And so, he’d left for his journey with nothing but a pack of food, his blowgun, and a flute to entertain himself. But after the sounds he heard, down those midnight paths, on his first night within the pyramid, Iqui Acab had thrown his flute away. For something listened in inverted Tazumal.
From then on, Iqui Acab had stuck to the black path in silence. He’d stuck to the black road and nothing else.
Do not, my son, do not go down the yellow path, his father had said. Do you hear me boy? The yellow path. Leave it alone!
But after three days of darkness, without meaning to, Iqui Acab had come upon the yellow path. And how inviting it had seemed, how warm. And how sweet the air had smelled down there.
Maybe.
But he’d listened to his father and turned away, continuing the black road down.
And made it to the apex chamber unharmed and well.
Iqui Acab looked around the wedding hall and wondered at how odd a crowd this wedding had brought together.
The death lords in their high seats, looking ever so pleased, and none less so than Gathered Blood, who had managed to rein in his rebellious daughter after her escape to the surface world, had managed to drag her back into Xibalba to marry the death lord Flying Scab.
Looking down on her now, on the stage below, Iqui Acab could not help but feel a great deal of pity for her.
A great match or not, she looked so sad. Her mouth tightly closed in defeated silence.
“Pretty, no?” asked Old Spider Monkey, catching him staring.
“Sure. Pretty.”
But to call the death goddess pretty would be an understatement. Even in this decrepit darkness she seemed to shine. Standing there, red body paint lathered across face and body, looking regal in her bird headdress made of quetzal feathers, regal but still rebellious, she wore no wedding huipil, only a low sarong wrapped at her waist and nothing covering her breasts but a jade necklace dangling from her neck.
So sad, she looked, so angry. Her mouth tightly closed in defeated silence.
The shaman almost finished with his blessing.
And again, that thought. How odd a crowd this wedding had brought together, the death lords in their high seats, the surviving mortals scattered throughout the hall, and the retinue of monkeys. So many monkeys.
Why had Lady Blood brought with her no one from the surface world but a retinue of monkeys?
And Iqui Acab turned and saw Old Spider Monkey trying to control his laughter yet again.
“Old Spider Monkey, what is in that pouch around your neck?”
And Old Spider Monkey turned and grinned his awful grin, ripping the loose rope around his neck in one solid tug to slowly open the pouch and upend the contents into his hand.
Holding them out for Iqui Acab to see.
Holding out in front of him a handful of human teeth.
“Whose, whose are those?”
“Why Lady Blood’s, you fool. Whose else?” said Old Spider Monkey.
Iqui Acab’s heart sinking.
“And why do you have Lady Blood’s teeth in a pouch?”
Old Spider Monkey clasped a hand across his face to control his laughter yet again.
“And how else was I supposed to refit her mouth with jaguar teeth?”
And Iqui Acab turned just in time to see Lady Blood smile for the first time that entire night, a smile that contained rows and rows of jaguar fangs.
And smiling is exactly how Flying Scab saw his bride for the final time, right before the maiden Lady Blood lunged and ripped his throat out, his godblood pooling down her neck and chest.
The howling laughter of spider monkeys erupting throughout the hall.
There would be no wedding in Xibalba after all.
________
Xavier Garcia is a writer/editor from Toronto, Canada. His short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies published by Fugitives & Futurists, Cold Signal, hex, Apocalypse Confidential, Cursed Morsels, Filthy Loot, and others. You can find him walking the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, or at twitter.com/xavier_agarcia.