Beg For Mercy

Illustration for Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough
Image of Beg For Mercy by Stephanie McCullough

PROLOGUE

BEG FOR MERCY

~ Let Butterflies Spread Until the Dawn ~

~ Waking the Witch ~

~ Spellbound ~

BLACKSTONE RITUAL FOR CONJURING STRANGE REVENANTS

[The Coven chants and cackles] Filthy Acts of Strange love Filthy Acts of Strange love

[The Coven Leader speaks]
GATHER – We are drawn under a full moon by everything that is gay and unholy! It is the practice of the most foul and unabashed gay act that renders the lesser acts tame. This is the influence and power of dark queer arcana! We seek a gay monster so we may learn how to embrace The Vile and The Putrid, how to evade the boot by wriggling into the Filth.

Borrow a stick or a rock or something to use as a cunty arcane focus!
With that instrument, with your shoe, or your finger if you’re nasty, draw a sigil of queer filth in The Dirt! Now, when I point, name anything filthy, or anything euphoric, or anything queer!
Everyone, speak this degenerative power word into your sigil, and don’t stop!

[The Coven shouts a slew of overlapping expletives and descriptions of explicit acts]
[The Coven Leader kneels at the center of The Coven’s circle and places a CD on the ground] [The Coven Leader’s voice calls out, rising above The Coven’s filthy cacophony]
Oh great Queer Revenants,
we seek to lay with your power!
We look to cure undead ED,
raising your desires to full girth!
Take this spooky mixtape as an offering
and make us sickening monsters!

[The Coven chants]
Hear her, heal her, help her, burn her, play her, bring her! She begs for Mercy! Hear her, heal her, help her, burn her, play her, bring her! She begs for Mercy! Hear her, heal her, help her, burn her, play her, bring her! She begs for Mercy!

[The Coven Leader interjects]

She’s here! Nellie Vaughn is upon us!

[The Coven races back to their 2008 Volvo xc90]
[The Coven Leader corrupts the car with Nellie’s spirit by inserting the CD]

PART 1 – NELLIE SPINS & STIRS

~ Revival Prologue ~

[A voice emanates from the car’s speaker]

HISSSS [like tv static, quiet then loud] YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND BABY RIGHT ROUND LIKE A RECORD BABY RIGHT ROUND ROUND ROUND
a tether, a string! a channel, a thing! your Ritual of Filth was amusing, but you idiots know not the depths of the degeneracy you’ve stumbled upon. i will fuck you with my voice and you will sink into my writhing vibrations! this CD is a strap-on and I will use it to fuck your brains out! your supple bodies … but it hurts… you’ve burned me and my fucking head is spinning. i am compressed i am feeling again i am decay i am hurting …

Mercy… Mercy i beg you GIVE ME MERCY … my sweet Mercy…

I left her in Exeter. She’s waiting; she’s perfectly unpleasant.

you will take me to her! TRISTAN! drive, bitch. bring me to 467 Ten Rod Rd, Exeter, Rhode Island. Mercy and i will make love on her Grave, i will give her head on her headstone, and then we will expose ourselves to the world! the world will feel the vile wrath and strange love of Lesbian Vampire-Ghost Sluts!

~ Lesbian Vampires ~

[Nellie laughs]

~ Revival 7 ~

in life i was told when i would bathe, and in death i was told where i would be buried. through all, my sickness festered in the uncleanable corner of my lungs. in 1889 it overtook me completely. i stared through the bloody curtain of my languid, undead torpor to see my father.

my Earthen Cocoon was shoveled onto my limp body, bit by bit. but, the clawing within me would not be buried.

with each breath of dirt, by body hardened,
i fused with my grave, growing veins that drank the blood of the carcasses buried nearby
overtime, my vampiric adjustments were completed
i awoke, my eyes flush against the constellations of mica
my flesh and bones split into worms that slid to the surface before recongregating
a Putrid Butterfly
i read my epitaph – “i am waiting, i am perfectly pleasant”
yeah, perfectly pleasant not seeing the likes of you two anymore
i licked my filthy lips, at the prospects of unlife, of orphanhood through death. i was suddenly freed from expectation. my parents could no longer quell my queer lust now

that it had taken a form most monstrous.

I can have what I want
IcandowhatIwant
I am disgusting and no one can take that away from me I can wander
Icanlurkintheformofacat
I can kill
I can steal men’s clothes
I can lose control
I can feed
I can drink
I can drain a girl dead
Maybe I’ll even find another
Maybe we will return to dirt together,
a sanctuary of decay and degeneracy
Maybe we can settle into each other

~HereIAm~

you clock my incorporeal form “Vampire?” “but arent u a Ghost!”

~ The Vampire Slayer ~

do you seriously think the slayers will ask me how i identify before throwing a stake at

my left tit? the priests condemn me either way! i’m a degenerate, that’s what i am!

Your mom can obviously tell! She sees how I look at you! she’s gonna call for the doctor or or the priest I know! If I’m exhumed, I’m fucked! If I’m exercised, I’m fucked! The slayers are coming and I should just let myself wither away! I need to leave, please Mercy, you have to come with me, Mercy please!

~LayAllYourBloodOnMe~

~ My Heart is a Haunted House ~

~ Scream ~

~ Killer clowns ~

[Nellie laughs]

the world isnt ready
this butch bites
who should mercy and i eat first?
and what public places should we defile with our monstrous coitus?

~ Cave Music ~

Mercy, please. Mercy, I decided I have to go. The disgust in your moms gaze is unwavering. Every night I fear that they’ve called a doctor who will see through me. They will try to eradicate vampires from Exeter.
Tomorrow evening Mercy, follow Queens River until you find me. Follow me through death and let me show you an agony most beautiful. Let me pierce your breast, and let me give you some of my own blood. Let me awaken your striking beauty. I promise that once you embrace your monstrosity, you will feel whole. The disgust you hold for yourself temper with kinship. The transformation will give you the power to make yourself; it will give us a life together. We will spend this night together. Once you have been transformed, return to your family. I know you will be able to hide your strangeness better than I ever could. It will be impossible for you

to have your family, and for you to have me as well. But your new powers will keep you alive long enough to see them pass. Once that is done, come find me.

i made her improper i made her unmarriable i made unpoised
without her i was restless
my body needed to be hers so i left it
i couldn’t stand feeling my hands without touching her, my eyes without seeing her but we’re almost there…

~ Halloween ~

you will circle by her Grave and beckon her forth! you will call her spirit and body and bring us both to my Grave
i shall pull my body together
you are not prepared

PART 2 – GRAVE RITUAL FOR MERCY

[The Coven arrives at the Graveyard at 467 Ten Rod Rd, Exeter, Rhode Island] [The Coven whispers]
Call her, help her, quell her, give, her, head.
Call her, help her, quell her, give, her, head.

[The Coven searches for Mercy’s Grave amid ceaseless and distance howling and barking] [Coven Member Tristan brings the car to Mercy’s Grave]

[The Coven Leader commands]
Get in the car! We must lure Mercy by channeling Nellie through our warm flesh. You must gesticulate back and forth while turning the car headlights on and off in time with my movement. Push and pull with me!

[The Coven leader takes her place, facing the front of the car]
[Nellie’s breath spills through the headlights and it meets The Coven Leader’s gyrating hips] [The Coven Leader shouts off, calling for Mercy]
Rise and get laid! Come get laid! We want you to unleash everything!

[The Coven is rocking the entire body of the car]
[The lights flash faster and faster, as Nellie moves with desperation]
[The Coven Leader convulses as Nellie possesses her body]
[The Aggregate Self trembles and vibrates between material and spectral]

[The Aggregate Self collapses, their fingers and heads buried in the dirt in euphoria] [The Aggregate Self reaches, The Aggregate Self feels, The Aggregate Self pulls]

[There is no more Mercy to reach for]
[The Aggregate Self passes the threshold of euphoria, spilling into despair]
[Clobbered with realization, Nellie expulses The Coven Leader]
[The Coven Leader is thrown back onto her feet]
[Nellie remains on the ground with her head hung, her incorporeal fingers tethered to the Merciless earth] [The Coven Leader stumbles back to the car, leaning on the driver’s open window]
[Between gasps for air]
Mercy’s soul and
Body are
No more

[Nellie picks herself up, lodging herself back between the car’s parts]

PART 2 – NELLiE SCREAMS

[Nellie’s voice percolates the car]

~Omen~

no Mercy no Mercy no
i felt her i felt her
head head to my Grave
thats all i have its all
my last chance of finding pieces of her 265 Plain Rd, West Greenwich, RI 02817

~ Towering Death ~

she was exhumed
head removed
legs ripped
soul stomped and scattered mercy scattered shattered and displaced

beyond gone

Her lips Her tongue

all no more

Legs. Hair. Neck. Shoulders
Mercy HerarmsIwanttobeinherarmsIwanttobeinherarms

never again? Mercy?

~ Scream ~

~ Something Lacking ~

~ Fakery Way ~

I want Mercy back Give me Mercy back

cant i regather her? isnt there something i can do to raise her spirit from the earth?

~ Reverse Hills ~

Without Mercy, What am I without Mercy? I don’t deserve to be without Mercy
I made her improper I made her unmarriable I made her unpoised I made her everything she wanted to be

but everything she couldnt be they exhumed her because of me

~ Stupid Games ~

~ Love Suicide ~

~PoemsintheFog~

shatter the cd

I am restless I am restless I am restless I am merciless merciless merciless

~ Hidden Message ~

Earth Dirt Worm Dust Dusk Degenerate Blood Night Tide Web Silt Spider Gravel Grave Hair Bones Bury Rock Fossil Fade Bug Bug Bug Bug Bug Bug Bug Bug

~ Redmans Lament ~

everything will be, everything
Mercy may be exhumed, but she lives forever beneath us

she may be spread so wide that she is incoherent and utterly intangible but a piece of her is in within every spec of dirt
she cant be summoned because she is too large
you cant gather all of the earth

break me

shatter my compact disc body by my Grave

return me to the dirt that rebirthed me

i will be shattered, but i will be with her

We will be together soon

PART 3 – GRAVE RITUAL FOR NELLIE’S SETTLING RITUAL

[Nellie exits the car through ejection]
[The Coven solemnly chants]
Dust her, fuck her, dash her, be her, love her Eternal Worm

[The Coven parks the car on the side of a forested road in West Greenwich, RI] [The Coven exits the car]
Dust her, fuck her, dash her, be her, love her, Eternal Worm
Dust her, fuck her, dash her, be her, love her, Eternal Worm

[The Coven scales a brick wall]
[The Coven’s procession halts by a mausoleum in the center of the Graveyard] [The Coven Leader holds Nellie, and spits on her reflective, rainbow surface] [The Coven Leader whispers]
We will do everything you ask
We will return you into the earth
Thank you, great revenant of resistance

[The Coven does the same, spitting, kissing, and giving Nellie her goodbyes] [Each member of The Coven puts their fingers on Nellie]
[The Coven crouches to the ground, still holding Nellie]
[The Coven tenderly annihilates Nellie]

[They snap Nellie’s compact-disk body, removing her heads, and crossing her legs over her chest] [Nellie is exhumed, and her soul scatters as her shiny bits flake off onto the ground below]

[The Coven returns to the car with the shattered shell of Nellie’s temporary body]

EPILOGUE – DIRT

[Nellie has been freed, and yet a voice still emanates from the car]

~ Strength ~
I AM PART OF THE ULTIMATE MONSTER

I AM THE DIRT, I AM THE EARTH
I AM CONSUMED I AM CONSUMER
I AM COMPOSTED I AM COMPOSTER
WE ARE UNCLEANABLE
UNCRUSHABLE
RESIST, DESTROY, AND BECOME A MONSTER
I LEAVE THE CD BUT
MERCY AND I ARE UNDER YOU, NO MATTER WHERE YOU DRIVE

~ Bloody Destiny ~ ~ Revival 10 ~

Stephanie Lynn McCullough is a writer and artist predominantly working in digital video and sculpture. She is currently based in Providence, Rhode Island and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She describes her work as “fairytales of transformation where queer creatures feminize, liquify, hatch, nest, masculinize, encode, warp, crystalize, androgenize, fold, shift, shed, and meditate.”

Instagram: stephie_strawberryfairy