Severed from their bodies and drained of consciousness, the heads swiveled like useless appendages in the hands of Eulalia. Dangling, they flailed wildly as she scampered through the archway and up the rustic stone steps leading to the North Tower of Wewelsburg castle. Although the neck wounds were completely cauterized, some blood still leaked out of the nostrils of the head which she gripped by the hair in her left hand. Eulalia occasionally stopped, sat down, and wiped the blood away with a rag tied around her waist in an effort to prevent any blood from spattering along the stone walls and floor of the castle. Besides being messy, the spilled blood would be indicative of a mundane nature. An unnecessary artifact of her activities, it would betray the code of honor that she had taken upon herself as part of her alignment with the Dark Goddess. A pledge to exalt artful respect and discreet action, it was diametrically opposed to the wanton self-assertion of the philistines that populated this world, or at least the majority of it.

Eulalia had long since accepted that the majority of people were ugly and profane. They would never understand the actions she was performing right now because they were steeped in conformity to the prevailing culture of their world. They were unconscious that their culture was, too, a cult, with its own charismatic leaders, its own sacred cows, and its own deceptive stories spun by authority figures. Eulalia, knowing she was not part of the cult of mass culture and its mundane individuals, was instead aligned with her own cult, which exalted a more visibly sinister nature. Performing criminal acts, such as the one she was performing right now, filled her with a sort of sinister adrenaline which rushed up and down her body. It was an energy in her that freed her from the constraints of mundanity and allowed her to embody beauty and perfection.

The first time this energy surged through her was at her initiation rite. After hours of driving through byways lit up by dim yellow street lights and trudging through narrow dirt roads where the foliage brushed against her white nightgown, she had finally reached a stone circle in a clearing amid the primeval forests of Shropshire, England. The stones were laid out in a perfect circle, evenly-spaced with mathematical precision. A metal beam towered in its center, like the lightning rod at the top of a skyscraper or, if viewed from above, the nipple in the center of a breast. Eulalia knelt in front of the beam and closed her eyes. It felt to her that thousands of dark tendrils emanated from her, encompassing the forest like thousands of tiny eyes mapping every square inch of the region. Sensitive to miniscule changes in the behaviors of woodland critters, the motions of bushes and leaves, and the dampness of the inland clime, she felt these changes were interacting with her, responding to her. Although she was in the forest, it was also in her; she was one with it.

She turned away from the beam and towards one of the stones, upon which lay a man who would be naked if he were not draped in a black woolen shawl that hung off the side of the stone. His limp head, nuzzled sideways into a depression in the stone’s surface, was covered in black cloth. Eulalia raised her arm and drew down the cloth to unveil the man’s eyes which to her surprise were open, their whites glistening in the darkness, shivering with his body in the cold. She drew her attention to the man’s lips, which were far enough agape to make the shawl’s lower portion ripple as he exhaled, his deep but uneven breath revealing the tension in his body. Eulalia crouched down and kissed the man, fondling his lips with her lips while cradling the back of his head, caressing just beneath his ribs with her other hand. His eyes shut as if in a fleeting bliss, and the rhythm of his breath grew stiller and ever more regular as his body grew limp, melting into the rigid contours of the stone. As his head fell back and she eyed the arteries on his neck, tightening her grip on the blade hidden in her nightgown, she prepared to perform that solemn act which she did not know would form a recurrent motif throughout her secret life.

But now, she rose up the spiral staircase leading to the former inner sanctum of the SS, picking the locked door to the SS General’s Hall. She took a few seconds to admire the sanctity of the black sun wheel engraved on the center of the floor, lit up by moonbeams emanating through one of the tall windows. It was black of course, but she noticed its subtle green tint which reminded her of the trees in the forest beyond Wewelsburg. She tossed the heads onto the black sun, watching them stumble on their fat noses as they rolled over the engraving. Adjusting the heads and brushing their bloodstained hair so the faces were visible, as if preparing them for some formal appearance, Eulalia took out her phone and made a call, her voice fluttering between the surrounding stone columns.

“Hey Nyx, I’m just blowing off steam in Wewelsburg castle right now after dropping off some previously talking heads on top of the black sun engraving. Want to see? Just ignore the blood...”

Eulalia waved her phone around the room to display the heads, illuminated by the screen’s light.

“Gosh, I didn’t even notice there was so much blood. I’m going to wipe it away after this call. I pity the philistine who is going to have to come upon this. But sometimes after spilling so much blood, I can’t resist, I feel like dancing…”

Eulalia didn’t bother to wait for an immediate response on the other end and put her phone away. After wiping away the excess blood, she ran down the steps and out of the North Tower, away from Wewelsburg castle. After a few minutes of running she came to the Alme river along the northwest edge of town. She found a place where the water was shallow and she could cross. Lifting her nightgown so only her bare feet would get wet, she disappeared into the forest past the river. Amid the pitch blackness, the thick trunks of trees and the foliage, the only means of navigation available to Eulalia was her intuition. At times she stopped and closed her eyes, sensing slight atmospheric fluctuations.

Finally, she came upon her special tree. It was hidden in a grassy alcove, surrounded by wildly variegated ferns and a thicket of leaves. As she neared closer and closer, its aura grew stronger and stronger, making her feel warm inside, as if she were being embraced by its presence. She placed her hand on its trunk and felt its life force interacting with hers.

“The green tint of the black sun reminded me of you…” Eulalia murmured, in hushed tones so weathered and muffled they were indistinct from the rustling leaves that surrounded her.