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- QUEEN NEFERTITI
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- AMUNET, THE HANDMAID
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- SADIKI, THE VIZIER
KINDNESS
By Jason McDonald
Mid-August
Thebes, Capital of Egypt
The Royal Palace
1330 B.C.
The royal palace was filled with people, chatting amidst themselves, remarking in the immense stone statues and figures that decorated the main hall. Stone walls shone in the brilliance of the mid-August sun, which poured in through the windows and shone through the latticework of crude reflective mirrors hanging in each of the hallways. That, along with the torches perched along the tops of each room, made the main hall glow with a seemingly supernatural light – a warmth, if you will, that made all the guests feel at ease and at peace.
Children smacked their heels to and fro amongst the threaded carpets, remarking in the elaborate hieroglyphs and stone reliefs of all the previous pharaohs of Egypt that lined the main hall. Those adults not chasing down those energetic kids were either engaged in soft prayer to the Gods, or engaged in hard gossip amongst themselves about their queen. The bustling of activity did not go unnoticed before the guards perched at either side of the hall who, despite the discontented frowns upon their faces, were under strict orders to give the Egyptians a wide latitude – especially today, of all days.
Today was a celebration of the time all of Egypt had looked forward to – the flooding of the Nile. Each year over a span of several months, the life’s blood of the river bank rose and fertilized the lands, a gift from the Gods signaling a good harvest for the coming season. Each year, after the waters began to recede and the flooded lands began to bear fruit – there was a massive celebration spanning several days. Today was the first day of that celebration – Banquet Night.
In the center of the crowded room sat a massive banquet table, swelling with a massive feast whose delicious smells permeated the entire room. It was on this night that the doors to the royal palace were opened fully to the people of Thebes and, at the queen’s insistence, the entire harvest for the banquet was shared equally among all. Very few rulers had been so inclined as to share the bountiful feast freely among both citizens and royalty alike, rather than letting the royals take the first share and leaving the rest to the citizens.
Queen Nefertiti had never been like the other rulers.
The entire court fell into hushed whispers as they saw the well-renowned Queen Nefertiti – wife of the great Pharaoh Akhenaten and inheritor to the throne of Egypt – gracefully emerge from the hanging curtains in the center of the room. She was – in the minds of her collective audience – one of the kindest rulers of the lands. She stood amidst her guests, white linen robes draping her delicate features with an elegance and grace that bedazzled all who saw her. Her skin, soft and smooth, bronzed effortlessly by the hot suns and kept immaculate by regular dips in the Nile. Her movements were soft, gentle, graceful. Her ceremonial headdress framed her features well, and the jewelry she wore was a modest amount for an Egyptian royal like herself.
The commoners, artisans, holy men, architects and artists that formed her collective audience looked upon her, instinctively wanting to bow in her presence. However, she’d long ago decreed that unnecessary. Nevertheless, the bond she felt with them this night was almost overwhelming. She was truly touched by their devotion, despite the fact that it was an ingrained devotion. To most people, the rulers of Egypt were in fact the re-incarnations of their Gods. She had never been a ruler to embrace the idea of divine right or subjugate those around her out of a sense of power.
Behind her, her royal administrators and staff also stepped out from behind the main curtain to join her, followed by Egypt’s second-in-command – the Vizier. Vizier Sadiki was a tall, lean man of muscular build, and his dark eyes shone out among the audience. As second-in-command of Egypt and former right hand to the late Pharaoh Akhenaten, Sadiki stepped to Nefertiti’s right as a show of deference and respect, looking out upon the swelling crowd with a wide smile. The well-bronzed man waved to the crowd, almost drowning in their salutations, bringing his eyes home upon his queen and bowing slightly in her direction.
Nefertiti acknowledged his bow with one of her own and bit her lip, trying not to notice how the warmth of his smile did not match the coldness in his eyes.
“Good evening, my fellow Egyptians,” Nefertiti exclaimed, holding her hands out in a gesture of friendship. “I come to you today, not as the re-incarnation of the one, true God Aten, but as a simple queen.”
Queen Nefertiti retained her regal demeanor for the crowd even as her vizier glared at her sharply. She continued her speech uninterrupted.
“I also come to you with good tidings; the Nile has seen fit to bless us with a deep flood this season! Our harvests shall be bountiful this year, and my heart goes out to each and every one of you for your hard work and preparation for this year’s harvest. I invite you into my home to drink, and be merry, and be good to one another. Remember, we are all equals under this roof. This is the day we have worked so hard these many months for, so let us eat and drink and honor Aten for the gifts he has provided us.”
Her guests shouted and rejoiced as she gestured towards the varieties of meats, poultry, fish and game that covered the banquet table. The loving queen gazed upon her subjects warmly, and then upon Sadiki. The vizier held her gaze but a moment, then crossed his arms dejectedly, watching with a mild disdain as the servants passed out the meal amongst the gathered guests.
“Rejoice, my friends,” she said. “The good times are upon us.”
The Royal Palace
Sometime After
Queen Nefertiti sat at one of the many tables in the dining hall, entertaining a group of architects and craftsmen when a lovely young woman with flowing black hair and white linen garments approached. Amunet – the queen’s chief aide – clutched her necklace nervously and looked around the hall at the other guests. When she spoke, it was with a steely whisper.
“My queen, may I have a word?” Amunet asked.
“Amunet,” Queen Nefertiti greeted her warmly. “For you, anything.”
The queen of Egypt graciously departed the conversation and Amunet led the pair out of the banquet room and down one of the long palace halls, away from prying eyes and curious ears.
Nefertiti looked upon her aide, noting her anxiety and placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder.
“Amunet, we have been friends for a long time. You’ve always been free to say what’s on your mind.”
“My queen,” Amunet spoke softly. “I do not wish to speak out-of-turn, but saw that look Vizier Sadiki gave you before the banquet.”
The queen grew silent, gazing out the windows toward the darkened sands in the distance.
“He is trouble. You know this just as well as I do.”
“Sadiki is a traditionalist. He never believed in, or understood, the newer policies that I and my husband have instilled upon Egypt. He will come to understand the new ways, given time.”
“I do not believe that he will,” Amunet sighed. “He never understood why Akhenaten chose you to be his successor instead of his own vizier.”
Nefertiti felt a chill wind pass through the corridor. “I bear him no malice. If my beloved Akhenaten could trust him in his cabinet, so must I.”
“Sadiki has many supporters in the government,” Amunet said. “Many people who do not share your husband’s believe in only one God, as opposed to the pantheon that our ancestors and their ancestors before them used to worship. It is said that they–”
“There is only one God, Amunet,” Queen Nefertiti said, gazing into the young woman’s eyes. “Aten looks down upon us all.”
Amunet became quiet for a moment before cupping her face in her hands. “Which reminds me of another problem!”
“Another problem?”
“You don’t acknowledge your own kinship with the Gods – err, with the single God. With Aten. You don’t acknowledge that Aten works through you. The rulers of Egypt have always acknowledged this to be true. Even your husband Akhenaten acknowledged this.”
“I loved Akhenaten dearly, and I miss him each and every day, but I am not my husband,” Nefertiti said sharply, pointing a finger at her aide. “There has always been a divide between royalty and the people. We are all equal under Aten, and I wish to bridge that gap.”
“–but you’re a personification of the Gods!” Amunet pleaded. “There can be no bridge amongst that gap.”
“Perhaps my husband was, but I do not feel as if I’m the personification of anything. I do Aten’s Will, but I am not Aten. I’m not a God. Do you really want me to manufacture a lie?”
“It is important for the people to know who they follow. To devote themselves to you without question.”
“It’s important for us to be honest with them, or else we do not deserve to be their leaders,” Nefertiti spoke. “Vizier Sadiki will come around. So will all the rest.”
“What if they do not? What if he does not? What shall we do then?”
Queen Nefertiti placed her hands on Amunet’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. For the first time, the young woman could see the dread in her queen’s heart.
“I have to believe he can change for the better. Or I would not be worthy of being his Queen.”
Nefertiti held her aide’s gaze for a beat, then patted her shoulders and turned back toward the banquet hall. The Queen smiled. “Come Amunet, there is a feast to be had! I need to prepare my offerings for Akhenaten before the night is done.”
“Tonight?” Amunet asked. “You’re visiting your husband’s tomb tonight?”
“Of course,” Queen Nefertiti’s tone became solemn. “This was his favorite time of year.”
Amunet smiled. “I remember.”
“Besides, in light of recent events, it’s time I paid my respects. My duties have kept me away for far too long, and I would hate for him to think I was neglecting him. See to it that my chariot is ready and that my guards are assembled, would you?”
The lovely aide nodded. “Of course.”
“Join us when you’re done,” the queen added, stepping into the entrance to the banquet hall. “I’ll have the servants prepare the offerings for my husband.”
The queen strode into the hall with a smile on her face, watching Amunet slip back down the dark corridor and out of sight.
Later that Evening
The Pyramid of Akhenaten
Promises to Keep
Queen Nefertiti closed the chamber door behind her, holding her generous offerings in hand.
The beautiful Egyptian queen was dressed in decorative linens, and encased in jewelry for tonight’s holy ritual. The ornamental glass scarab necklace felt heavy against her ample bosom, as did the headdress, but Queen Nefertiti wanted to appear her absolute best for her beloved Akhenaten. Her white linen robes outlined her curves perfectly, and the jewelry around her arms shone with the light reflected from the torches around the room. One of her guards must have entered to light them before her charioted arrival, she realized, in preparation for her ritual offerings to the pharaoh on this day of the feast. The fiery light cascaded about her and for a moment, made her dark skin look as if it was glistening with a holy fire.
The Queen of Egypt bowed her head toward the centerpiece of the chamber – her husband’s sarcophagus – and smiled. “I’ve returned to you, beloved.”
Nefertiti gazed at the hieroglyphs carved meticulously into the elaborately-decorated stone walls surrounding her. The pictograms were complex, intricate prayers – prayers to guide her beloved husband in the afterlife, prayers for the offerings she ritualistically brought him, and hundreds of other such prayers which had been lovingly carved into these walls by both her and his loyal subjects to prepare the pharaoh for his journeys in the afterlife.
However, one trail of hieroglyphs running across the wall to her right caught her eye. She asked for her husband’s forgiveness to postpone the ritual for just a moment. Taking the silence of his tomb for his accent, she approached the glyphs upon the wall in solemn silence.
The robed queen ran her hands along the shrine’s cool, damp walls – delicately tracing the hieroglyphs etched into the stone which immortalized the story of her husband’s all-too-short life. The pictographs reminded her of their marriage, his benign leadership of the Egyptian sands with her at his side, and the love they shared in life. The memories made her heart swell with a bittersweet joy that faded as she touched the pictogram chronicling his death.
He’d been infected by a horrific plague that had ruthlessly swept the land three years ago, and died alone in agony. The royal guards had kept her away from his deathbed, for her own safety. She wiped a tear from her eye, her stomach tightening from the memory. She remembered praying to the all-knowing, all-seeing Aten for her husband’s life then, and for the strength he’d need to recover from his injuries. Despite her devotion, even she knew that some prayers ended in futility. Akhenaten had been a powerful pharaoh, with a strength of character and clarity of vision that very few could ever match. Apparently, Aten needed her husband’s strength for some great works in the afterlife, and Nefertiti took comfort in the fact that Aten would be watching over him until she got old and grey, and could finally join her husband alongside the grace of their beloved God.
One day, they would meet again, she knew.
She brought her attention back toward her husband’s glorious sarcophagus, the masterful centerpiece of his desert shrine. His final resting place had been intricately detailed, chiseled out of the finest, most precious stones and etched with sacred prayers that would guide him in his new life. The sarcophagus itself was surrounded by urns and canopic jars – most of which held the original set of food and gifts that had been placed for his initial burial. The gifts she now gave him – an urn filled with delicious roast duck, cooked to perfection, and a bowl full of beer – were among his favorite meals during the joyous banquets he would throw. She had resolved following his death to bring him his favorite food with every flooding of the Nile.
A warm smile on her face, she kneeled beside Akhenaten’s final resting place and spoke softly, but firm.
“Beloved husband,” she said. “I bring you gifts to celebrate the Great Flood from the Nile this year. Our beloved god Aten has been kind to bring us such a bountiful feast. I brought your favorite foods from tonight’s celebration. Please accept these offerings, as a measure of my eternal love for you.”
She placed the urn at the center of the altar, and the bowl atop the sarcophagus lid. Her back straight, she dropped to her knees slowly and placed her hands atop the lid. She smiled sweetly, losing herself in speaking the ritualistic prayers for her husband’s safety and the ones to protect his ka* in the afterlife. Following the prayers and the ritual offerings to him and to Aten, she sighed.
*a person’s ka is their soul, which leaves the body upon death.
“How I’ve missed you, my beautiful husband.”
She stroked the relief of her husband etched upon the sarcophagus lid, caressing the chiseled face as if it was his own.
“I know you have been looking down upon me throughout these past few years without you. I know you were with me when Amunet has warned me of Sadiki’s treachery. I tried to appear unworried and graceful, as you would, but secretly I wonder if he is truly planning something as Amunet fears. My husband, I ask that you keep me safe, and all our homeland safe from the darkness that I know hides behind his eyes. I sense his ka is tainted with thoughts of cruelty and domination, but I believe perhaps even once such as he can be redeemed.”
“My ka is doing just fine, my queen,” came the sarcastic reply around her, the cruel words echoing through the massive torch-lit chamber. “I’d worry about yours instead.”
Queen Nefertiti jumped in fright, knocking the bowl of beer off the sarcophagus lid and sending it shattering to the ground with a dull, resounding crunch. The fumes of spilt beer surrounded her as her heart began to pound in fright. The door to her husband’s shrine had been closed at her request, or so she’d thought. She hadn’t even noticed it open. Yet, here was her trusted vizier, stalking toward her from the chamber’s only entrance, eyes darkened by the flickering shadows.
“Vizier Sadiki,” the terrified queen arose, turning toward the trespasser. “I told the guards that no one was to enter! Why have you disobeyed me?”
“Forgive me, my queen,” he spoke, gesturing peacefully towards her. A strange, cruel grin twisted about his features as he approached. “I merely wished to – ah, pay my respects to your husband.”
“You wish to–?” was as far as the queen got before Sadiki struck her with a fast, hard backhand, knocking her off her feet and sending her ceremonial headdress flying across the room. Knocking over one of the vases surrounding the centerpiece, the queen fell hard against the cool sandstone coffin, feeling the hard edge scrape hard against her spine. She placed a hand on the cut along her delicate, bronzed face, opened by his fist, and glared against her second-in-command with a sudden rage.
“What is the meaning of this? Guards! Guar–” Queen Nefertiti cried out in pain as the mad vizier’s foot slammed hard into her ribs, sending a stabbing pain roaring along her abdomen. Followed by a second kick. Then a third. Her desperate gasps for air silenced any possible protests, and after the fourth and final blow, all the ruined queen could do was cradle her bruising stomach in the fetal position, and listen to Sadiki’s venomous words.
“There are no guards to save you now, you sanctimonious little bitch,” he spat upon her, hate running deep within his voice. “My men slit their throats the second you entered your husband’s tomb. Well, maybe it took more than a few seconds for them to die. Serves all of you right, for forsaking our true Gods.
“You hide in the folds of Aten’s cloak, and by doing so disgrace all the Others who bring us Goodness and Light. Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Ra, Set. They all deserve our worship. Your devotion only to Aten will ruin all of Egypt, and send us all screaming into the abyss!”
Furious, he yanked her up by her robes and slammed her against the face of the sarcophagus, pressing her back hard against her husband’s stone visage. His hand slid slowly along her neckline, sliding beneath her thick scarab necklace before clasping hard against her outstretched throat.
“I’m doing Egypt a service, really. Keeping a madwoman like you in power; it’s just disgusting. It’s fitting you never felt the presence of the Gods working through you – they have forsaken you just as you’ve forsaken them with your heretic beliefs.”
“You’ll never get away with this! The people will–!”
“Once I become the new Pharaoh, the people will do as I say,” Sadiki smiled wide, his eyes piercing into the depths of her soul. “After all, pharaohs are our Gods. Would you disobey a God?”
“You’re not Aten,” the queen spat, struggling against his iron grip. “And you never will be.”
“No, I’m the Vizier of Egypt. I should have become the pharaoh when Akhenaten croaked. Akhenaten was out of his mind to give you access to the throne. I’m just correcting his mistake.”
“How dare you speak of my husband that way?” She slapped hard at his face with her right hand. “How dare you disgrace his wishes and his memory this way?”
Queen Nefertiti desperately clawed against the hand that pinned her against the stone coffin, ripping gashes into the skin of his arm. With his free hand, he grasped at her right arm and smashed it hard against the stone at her back. She shrieked and choked in his hands as he smashed the arm again and again. She winced in agony, hearing the pops and snaps from her own body echo across the room. Finally, she stopped struggling, if only from the unbearable pain of her destroyed limb, and her world spun amidst the dancing shadows caused by the burning flames about the room.
Helpless and at his mercy, she shuddered as he dropped her badly-broken arm from his grasp and shrieked as it fell to her side, dangling and useless. She shook and seized from her wounds, enraptured by pain. He brought his face down towards her ear, and in his foul embrace, she could feel the heat from his mouth as he whispered a final curse into her ear.
“I haven’t disgraced anything yet.”
A tear formed in her eye as she watched him pull the urn filled with roasted duck – her holy offering to her beloved – and lift it high above her head.
He brought the urn upon her, and her world seized to black.
Hours Later
Somewhere in the Darkness
Nefertiti awoke to the overwhelming smells of oil and perfumes, almost gagging until she realized that she could barely move her mouth.
Her heart began to pound, the world slowly – painfully – coming back to her amidst the darkness. She tried to move, struggling against the invisible force that held her limbs in their paralyzing grip. She twisted and squirmed, and every last movement she made caused her indescribable agony. She tried to scream, but something was binding her mouth, keeping it sealed shut. The bound queen grabbed lungful after lungful of dusty, stale air from crude nose holes made within her bonds to calm her panicked mind.
My beloved Aten, where am I?
Shaking quietly, she began to hear the sounds of those around her. She was laying flat on her back, bound in some soft, soaked, unknown substance which encased her entire body. She knew her arms and legs were broken, feeling the bones moving beneath her skin as she struggled. Nefertiti felt oils pour upon her enwrapped form, as well as unfamiliar hands touching and caressing each part of her. At least five hands were wrapping pieces of bandage and linen about her, and she cringed at their unwelcome touch. Through the bindings, she could feel the disgusting wetness of warm, sticky oil poured against her skin, and nearly choked as the tangy substance reached the wounds along her back, where the sarcophagus had skinned her hide.
From the pain radiating from all of her limbs, Nefertiti knew that Sadiki must have finished the job on her other limbs that he’d started on her right arm. As she shifted her weight around, she realized that he’d smashed something in her back as well, feeling a horrible swelling that kept her immobilized.
No doubt to keep me from fighting this fate, she surmised. When the darkness abated, and she could see dark shadows and shapes moving about her through the translucent linen bandages, and finally knew the truth.
He’s mummifying me, she thought, sobbing. I’m being mummified alive.
She twisted and moved, suddenly feeling a wetness inside her. A wetness not caused by the oils. Pain in her broken pelvis, and soreness in her most private parts. Nefertiti sobbed, realizing the full extent of his cruelty upon her unconscious body.
My God. How could he – how could anyone?
Akhenaten, I’m so so sorry, my love. I’m so – ashamed. Ashamed I could not stop his foul, disgusting defilement. Beloved Akhenaten, please don’t abandon me to this fate. I fought with every ounce of strength I had! Please forgive me of this shame. I knew not the things he was going to do to me. If I knew then what I know now, I certainly would have–
“Sir, Nefertiti’s awake!”
A voice, coming from one of the bodiless hands, their invasive touches stopped by her movements and the groans of pain escaping her bandaged lips. Her mouth, one of the few parts of her body not yet destroyed, continued to wage war against its bonds.
“Alive? My Gods, you said she was dead!” A woman’s voice, soft and delicate, but familiar. “You said she didn’t suffer!”
She recognized this voice from somewhere, but the wrappings around her head were distorting the sounds just enough. She simply couldn’t place it.
“It seems our queen is more stubborn than we’d thought,” Sadiki, her defiler, spoke. His tone was one of sadistic thrill, and Nefertiti clenched her teeth at the sound of his voice. “Her ka must be strong, clinging to this vessel as it does.”
“Please, Sadiki, we can’t just murder her now. There must be some other way.”
“There is no other way, woman,” the defiler growled. “Besides, we’re long past the point of doubts now. We do now what we must, in order for Egypt to thrive. You know this is the only way now.”
“I do,” she sighed solemnly.
Nefertiti finally recognized the woman he was speaking to, and felt an ache in her heart. Her jaw finally stretched out its linen bonds enough to allow her to speak.
“Amunet,” she choked out in a raspy whisper, her words muffled by the bandages atop her mouth but still understood by her audience. “Why?”
“My queen, please forgive me. I–”
Amunet’s sorrowful words were drowned out by the cruel, heartless laughter of her one-time vizier. “Nefertiti, you sound as if you’re in pain. As a final kindnessto my queen, I shall remove this pain for you.”
She heard footsteps to her right, and heard the tone of Vizier’s Sadiki’s voice soften, as if whispering. “Kemosiri, you can extract the brain for preservation now.”
Oh beloved Aten, no.
She felt the metal of the blade echo in the air as it was pulled off of the stone slab her body laid upon.
Please, someone, help me. Please.
The disgraced queen felt the rusted metal hook find the tip of her nose and then travel along her inside of her nasal cavity. It pierced against the back of her nose and punctured hard into her nasal sinuses, rending through and ripping apart whatever laid in its path. Queen Nefertiti winced, and felt something wet and pulpy begin trailing out of what was once her nose.
The agony was simply indescribable.
Her last, horrible, terrible moments of living.
Please.
SHUCK!
Nefertiti woke up in a cold sweat, screaming.
She leapt from her resting place, her adrenaline-soaked mind compelling her to take several steps backward. Her feet hit the chilled stone beneath her feet and she gazed around, realizing to her shock that she was still in the Tomb of Akhenaten. Yet, no longer wrapped in mummy’s linens.
A dream? Was that – was this all merely a–?
She looked upon the stone bed which she’d risen from, and saw a mummified figure, wrapped in linen bandages stained with embalming oils and the sweet smells of perfume. The same kind of preparations her people had made for the dead. Except this mummy was still alive, as she’d been, wrapped up tight in linen bandages. She was looking upon herself.
The mummy was screaming with Nefertiti’s voice, which cracked and grew hoarse, as the man towering over it picked up the ceremonial metal hook used to remove the organs during mummification for later preservation. Instinctively, Nefertiti brought her hand to her own nose, shrieking as the soulless monster before her pierced the mummy’s nasal cavity and burrowed towards her brain. She saw the mummy’s movement’s change, watching the mummy go epileptic in its final moments of seizure. Nefertiti backed away as the man regarded the seizing body with frustration, using the mummy’s frantic movements and his own brute strength to wiggle the metal hook all the way to the brain center, and began violently swirling the hook about inside the Nefertiti-mummy’s skull. She saw a gush of blood pouring out of the mummy’s nose, and felt sickened to her stomach as a pulpy, red-brown substance was viciously ripped out from the wrapped face of the mummy.
As she hugged herself and touched her own bronzed skin, warm and lively beneath her, she understood that she was utterly, brutally dead. What remained of her supple flesh and lovely body was only ka, the spirit which left the body upon death. Her soul self. What had once been a normal, everyday process of mummification was now a horrible, horrible nightmare from which there could be no respite.
My brain. They removed my brain through my nose. I’m dead. I’m dead, and this is the afterlife. Oh Aten, give me strength.
“I’m afraid we’re way past that now, dear,” she heard a sound like snakes hissing and scrapping against hard sandstone, and felt her afterlife-skin crawl along her bones.
Queen Nefertiti glanced around and saw the speaker, and was amazed. He looked gorgeous – his sun-kissed, well-bronzed skin immaculate and stretched beautiful upon his well-toned muscles. His linen skirt and pharaoh’s headdress seemed to outline his features well. The stranger was certainly not her beloved husband, but the handsomeness of his features reminded her of him, and warmed her heart. It wasn’t until she gazed upon his eyes did she remember the monstrousness of his voice, and that something was very, very wrong about this man.
“Aten?” she spoke softly. “Is that you?”
“Guess again,” he smiled, his dark eyes piercing to the core of her being. She looked upon his sharp cheekbones and his flowing black hair and stiffened.
“Set?”
“The trickster God of chaos, disorder and violence? See, you’re getting much closer now,” he grinned, tapping his fingers along the stone slab upon which he sat. He licked his lips, eyeing her up and down as his black eyes burned like simmering coals. “I knew you were more than just royal pound of shake and wriggle.”
Nefertiti frowned, and her stomach knotted up at the crude remark. His appearance reminded her of her beloved Akhenaten, but his venomous words were more like the monstrous Sadiki. She wanted to throw up. The beast in man’s clothing smiled in front of her.
“Your backwards culture doesn’t have a concept for me yet. I am Mephisto.”
“Me-phist-o?”
“Mephisto. Lord of the sands, of the bountiful harvests, and of the dead.”
The torches behind him began to shudder, and a pallor of darkness began to surround him, swirling about his position in the chamber. Even the smells exuding from him, despite their sweetness, carried the touch of decay and rot. Unconsciously, Nefertiti began backing away towards the stone slab her mummified corpse rested upon.
“That is a lie. You’re something much worse than that.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. What isn’t a lie, you delectable little tart, is my offer.”
“Your offer?”
“Yes,” he stretched the syllable out on a serpent’s tongue. “I offer you the chance for Vengeance.”
“Vengeance?” she asked, recoiling back away from the stranger as she brushed up against someone behind her. She turned around to see who or what she bumped into and shrieked, nearly fainting.
Her eyes bulged out of her head, and a torrent of emotions swam through her as she looked upon the frozen form of Vizier Sadiki, the hate and cruelty in his bronzed gaze penetrating her even in death.
“Vengeance against that.”
The pungent stranger smiled as tears began flowing from the eyes of the queen, gorging himself upon her misery like a heady elixir.
“Akhenaten is disgusted with you, you know,” the stranger growled. “For letting his vizier know you. All of you.”
Queen Nefertiti felt ill, queasy as she kept one eye upon the frozen, statuesque form of the mad vizier and one eye upon her new tormentor. “My husband knows I didn’t have the choice. This monster defiled me in my sleep, I couldn’t even–”
“You will have to live with that shame, of course,” he silenced her protests, smirking as he looked upon the frozen form of the vizier. “Something’s missing, though.”
Nefertiti tore her gaze back towards Mephisto as he stood up, watching him walk over toward the defiler. He clasped his heavy pharaoh’s headdress and placed it upon the man’s murderous crown. He backed up and admired his handiwork, turning toward the confused Nefertiti.
“There now. Doesn’t a pharaoh’s garb suit him better?”
Nefertiti’s throat began to close up. “No. No no no no! With me dead, that means that the vizier rises to the throne! I cannot let this happen, I cannot!”
“Don’t see how you can stop it. Hell, you couldn’t even stop him from defiling your own body,” Mephisto sneered, idly lifting the mummified hand of her corpse and letting it drop lifeless against the stone to prove his point. He turned back toward Sadiki and tapped his chin in thought. “I wonder what kinds of statues and reliefs they’ll carve in his honor. You Egyptians always make your figures so life-like.”
Nefertiti ran her hands through her hair, seething. “You don’t understand. Sadiki is a monster! The City of Thebes will never recover if he seizes the throne!”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do! All my people, they have no idea what kind of venomous monster he is! I can’t let him do it to them, too, I can’t–!” Nefertiti fell, anguished at the realization. She covered her face in her palms, thinking of the kinds of cruelty he would unleash were he not kept in check. She couldn’t help think of all the slaves and the commoners he would torment, the artists and builders he would enslave, the priests he would force to worship him as the vessel of the Gods. After all those years being kind to the people of Thebes and the rest of Egypt, they would never suspect Sadiki’s evil until it was too late.
There was no way of warning them.
Mephisto licked his lips and smiled, and Nefertiti watched him trace his finger along the delicate curvature of her remains. “What if there was a way you could stop him?”
She wiped away the wetness from her eyes and her resolute gaze pierced his. “How?”
“Do you accept this chance at redemption I can bring you? This chance to save your fellow Egyptians from the pestilence and ruin he will bring?”
Her stomach coiled, but her glare remained, as vibrant and unflinching as her will. “It seems I have no choice. Not if I want to stop him.”
“None at all.”
“Then I must accept. Resurrect me, so that I might save them from his treachery.”
“As you wish.”
He smiled as the torches surrounding the room flickered and brightened with a fiery, manic blaze for only a moment. He laughed, bringing his fingers along her corpse’s legs, tracing a pattern along her stomach and finally resting upon her bosom. “Now that that’s out of the way, let’s see if you’re right about this Sadiki. Before your resurrection, let’s turn the shadow clock forward just a hair, see just what he’s done.”
“Turn the clock forward? That wasn’t the–!”
Nefertiti watched in horror as Mephisto slammed his fist into the mummified corpse before her and grasped its heart in his palm. The queen felt a touch of cold permeate her entire being as she dropped to her knees, feeling an intense, impossible pressure in her own chest. The dark creature before her squeezed the mummy’s heart in his vice-like grip, crushing it, laughing with a low, dark hiss as its juices flowed all along his reddened palms and down his arm.
Nefertiti grew pale, and everything turned to white.
Sometime After
The Pyramid of Akhenaten
The Final Resting Place of Queen Nefertiti
The queen gasped, feeling the familiar bonds of linen struggle against her inhalation.
Shaking, she reached a hand out and clasped at the bandages covering her mouth, ripping them away like fragile papyrus. She took a deep, deep breath and counted to ten, desperately attempting to calm herself, before realizing that not only was she back in her own, true body – there was no pain in her arms or legs this time around. She realized that the agonies her sadistic, megalomaniac vizier had visited upon her body were gone – removed completely, it seemed, by that unnerving Mephisto creature. Just as promised.
So, if she was now whole – her ka restored to its rightful body – why was she still so unsettled by this resurrection business?
She opened her eyes to darkness. She inhaled once more, this time tasting the stench of rot and foulness in the air. Her skin began to crawl beneath her linen wrappings. She reached out to touch the emptiness around her feeling only stone, and something else, which seemed heavy and lifeless. Nefertiti knew then she was inside a sealed sarcophagus, trapped with its stale air and dust and the taste and feeling of cobwebs nestling through her every surface.
Aten help me.
The queen in her wouldn’t let blind panic overtake her. Despite the foulness of her rebirth, she pressed against the heavy stone slab above her. To her utter amazement, it rose with a disturbing ease. If she was truly inside a queen’s sarcophagus as she thought, the ornamental stone lid should have taken a team of three men to lift off.
Terrified and alone, she was shaken from her momentary confusion and despair by the massive, echoing crash of the sarcophagus lid as it hit the floor. Nefertiti coughed as a massive plume of dust and sand kicked up around her from the crash.
Weakly, the resurrected queen stumbled out from her coffin, walking along the cool, dirty stones with weak, unsure legs. She reached out in front of her, wading through the darkened tomb, cutting through the stillness of the long-abandoned chamber with scuffling footsteps of dried linen against dusty stone.
Desperate, she reached upward toward where she hoped the torches might be across the room. She gasped, terrified, as the hand she was stretching out into the darkness began to glow with an unearthly yellow light. She watched, entranced in her terror, as wisps of golden and magenta fire surrounded her arms. The flames became hotter – brighter – moving manic and wild with a life of their own. Nefertiti shrieked as the fires leapt from her fingertips and shot over to where the dusty torches had laid silent above the room for some time, engulfing the wooden rods with the swirling fires of Hell.
Shrieking and manic, the hellfire hopped from one unlit torch to another, infusing each with the rage of the supernatural flame. The room glowed with a golden-orange light, the psychotic pyres surging out of control upon the helpless torch rods. Nefertiti watched the flames licking and sputtering about above her, and then glanced back to the hand that started it all, itself still encased in a bright, glowing flame.
The revived queen patted at the blaze, shaking her hand helplessly in a desperate attempt to put out the fire that she’d unwittingly started. Her movements did nothing but help it grow and she watched, her heart screaming, as the fire began traveling up along the bandages encasing her arm.
“No! Get off me! No, stop this! STOP!” she cried out, backing away from the burning torches towards the sarcophagus tomb from which she’d emerged. Consumed by panic, she tripped over some unknown debris lining the tomb floor and stumbled back into the opened sarcophagus.
Scrambling frantic, she looked upon the coffin and what she was sitting on. There before her, laying still with the calm of the dead, was her husband’s mummified corpse.
She screamed.
For several minutes, she screamed.
Sweating profusely, she gazed upon her husband’s still form and shakily pulled herself out of his resting place. She collapsed upon the floor, seeing the chamber and its details for the first time since her awakening. A sudden sickness gripped her soul, looking upon the destruction wrought upon her beloved’s shrine.
Sadiki, that monster! He sealed me inside Akhenaten’s sarcophagus. He destroyed the offering jars and the hieroglyphs around us, which had been protecting us in the afterlife. He desecrated my husband’s tomb in every way he could out of pure spite!
She looked upon the destroyed chamber and clenched her fists.
How could someone be so cruel? What is he, that he can be this monstrous?
She shook with a pure, primal rage, both of her hands now burning in the chamber. The bandages along her body began to blacken, and she could smell her own flesh begin to boil and blister beneath them.
I can’t let this monster hurt my people. I can’t let him do to them what he’s done to me. To my husband!
The linens blackened further, and she could hear the sizzling of her own flesh. Her face began to burn with unholy light, and she felt the pop of her eyeballs as the fires burst them too. She gritted her teeth, grinding them in a sudden, righteous anger, feeling her cheek muscles melt and drip off of her face with a sickening plop upon the dusty floor of the stone chamber.
Eyeless and skinless, she could somehow still see the stone chamber before her through a plume of burning, fiery light.
I can’t.
Her face exploded, and the blackening, fleshless skull beneath was enraptured with a reddened blaze of swirling, psychotic hellfire.
Mid-August
Thebes, Capital of Egypt
The Royal Palace
1327 B.C.
Pharaoh Sadiki smiled.
Three years now, Sadiki mused, eating a piece of the delicious leftover roasted chicken from last night’s Banquet Night. Three years since I took everything that was rightfully mine.
Banquet Night had become something much different since Sadiki’s takeover. Gone were the gathering crowds and merriment and laughter. Gone were the overly-massive spreads of food handed out equally to all, regardless of societal status or breeding.
The halls of the royal palace were empty now, as they had been on Banquet Night for the past three years, save for the cries of a young slave being idly beaten by Sadiki’s newer, more violent guardsmen. Sadiki wasn’t sure what that particular slave was being beaten for, but he was content to listen to his cries of anguish echo through the halls. The guards did such hard and difficult work – they deserved their fun.
Nefertiti had barely kept any slaves around. Those she did were ultimately little more than indentured servants, who could eventually earn their ways to freedom with hard work. Sadiki had never agreed with the woman’s piss-poor policies. The throne would always have need of lesser beings to do the lion’s share of the harder work. The kind of work that royalty need not associate itself with – they were above such concerns. Sadiki, of course, was above it all. If there was a chance they could become free, who would be left to do the work? Thebes would fall into ruin and anarchy. The pharaoh had hundreds of slaves about the royal palace now, all idly snatched from the general population of Thebes and forced to wear heavy chains and padlocks so they would not escape so easily.
These new slaves would thus, need firm handling. Thus, his less morally-focused guards and staff. Pharaoh Sadiki smiled as another shriek echoed through the halls.
He looked upon the banquet table, filled with several huge platters that were already becoming spoiled and rotten from being left out all night instead of properly salted and stored. There was a line of slaves circling the table, ribs poking out of their chests as they looked upon the food with despair – Sadiki had ordered them to pray to each and every Egyptian God individually until he commanded them to stop.
That was sometime before dawn. It was nighttime outside now. He smirked at how some of the smaller ones were shaking from kneeling for so many hours without respite. Four guards surrounded all the slaves, and would idly break the fingers of anyone who reached for the food, changed their kneeling position, or fled the table before the pharaoh gave them permission. Most of the slaves were nursing several broken fingers, praying for mercy from their pharaoh-God.
Probably tomorrow will be long enough, Sadiki mused. Can’t let them starve to death, now. I only want to teach them the value of obedience to their God.
The Pharaoh’s eyes snapped up as a bevy of beautiful women emerged from the curtains, carrying more trays of roasted poultry to their God.
The women had all been hand-selected by the royal guards to be faithful servants to the Pharaoh-God ruler of Egypt – pulled from their husband’s and father’s homes by divine edict. They had all been taught what their ruler liked and did not like from his consorts, and had been warned about the consequences of their actions, or inactions.
Sadiki spotted one of the newest picks right away, watching the girl’s arms as the shook the closer she got to him. She was barely fifteen.
“Exquisite,” the pharaoh smiled, gesturing toward the girl. The other consorts – the ones who’d been there longest – noticed his demeanor change towards her and a sullen silence fell among them. They knew her future all too well, just as they’d known their own pasts. Sadiki yanked her toward him by her thin hand, almost ripping her off her feet, then kissed the hand gently. “You are a lovely creature.”
“Th-thank you, my pharaoh,” she tried not to think of her parents, who begged and wept as the guards dragged her from her home last night.
“You will come to my bedchambers this night,” he said. It wasn’t a request.
The girl whimpered, desperately forcing herself to smile as she looked into his cruel, vicious eyes.
“Y-y-yes, yes Pharaoh,” she choked out, sobbing. “I will d-do whatever you ask.”
“Very good.”
Pharaoh Sadiki raised an eyebrow as the shrieks echoing throughout the halls changed their pitch. They seemed louder somehow, and deeper. Hardly the sounds of a badly-starved slave. No, no, these were the sounds of his own men shrieking in terror and being just as suddenly silenced. He shoved the fifteen year old girl down against the stone floor and rose from his throne.
“Guards! Get out there. Now!”
He pointed toward the chamber entrance and watched as the guards abandoned the slaves sitting around the banquet table and retreated in the direction of the screams, which were starting and stopping with alarming regularity, each scream a different guard’s voice. Pharaoh Sadiki stared in the direction of the screaming, listening to the voices change over and over until they sounded like those of the guards he’d just sent out to investigate. He could now hear the sounds of a scuffle in the outer halls, the visitor penetrating further into his palace as a shrieking, black-haired young woman ran through the entranceway, panic and terror in her eyes.
“Amunet!” Sadiki roared, stepping away from his consorts and running towards the woman who was now his wife.
“My Pharaoh!” Amunet shrieked, terror and panic in her voice as several guards filed in with her, taking defensive stances around the pharaoh and his wife. She clambered into his arms, clutching him tightly before seeing the row of consorts standing next to his throne.
“Calm down, woman,” Sadiki said. “What is the matter? Tell me what is happening outside my throne room!”
She glared at them, and pulled herself away from her husband slightly. She quickly composed herself, but could not stop the tears from running freely down her eyes. “S-s-she’s back. We-we killed her, and now she’s back and there’s no escape.”
“Who?”
“ME.” a demonic growl echoed off the stone walls as the entranceway lit up in an unearthly shade of gold.
Pharaoh Sadiki gasped as he beheld the stranger before them. The monster was wrapped in burnt, blackened mummy’s linens, enwrapping a shapely feminine figure underneath. Her limbs were thin, and he could see a horrible, dangerous fire spitting out between the fibers of her frame. As if her entire body were made of the unholy light. She wore the bangles and jewelry of a queen, but the ruby-red jewelry had been changed – each edge sharpened, warped and elongated into shapes that were altogether unnerving. Floating atop all this was a fiery, flaming, fleshless skull, boasting with twisting, swirling hot flames of dark red and an endless plume of soot bursting from the tip of the flames. The bony skull tapped its teeth together, clicking with a quickness that was no longer human. He watched the monster’s head jerk and twist as it stared in their direction, manic, moving as if it was seized in a constant epileptic rage.
Pharaoh Sadiki looked into the monster’s eyes and felt an indescribable terror permeate his rotten soul. He looked into the creature’s eyes and he knew.
“N-N-Nefertiti?” he choked out, shaking as his wife burrowed her head into his chest and clutched him for dear life.
“YES.” the demon spat, its mandible opening and closing at uneven and unnerving angles with each word. The Ghost Rider looked towards the guards surrounding her quarry. “I’VE COME FOR THE DEFILER AND HIS WHORE. THE REST OF YOU MAY LEAVE IN PEACE.”
Amunet’s eyes widened, glassed over in fear as Sadiki snapped to attention and growled at his guardians. “Get her! Stop her!”
The Ghost Rider growled as the guardsmen leapt toward her, brandishing their swords to defend their Pharaoh-God from this nightmare creature. The first guard slashed in her direction, and the Rider seemed to barely move, slamming her fist through his throat and deftly beheading him, incinerating his entire body as she did so. Another guard attempted to penetrate her with his staff until the Ghost Rider grabbed the sword in her gloved fist, shattering it. As he stumbled, she gripped him by the neck and pulled him close. The guard screamed in terror as she gazed into his eyes before opening her mouth and engulfing him in flames.
The five remaining guards enclosed the Ghost Rider in a circle, brandishing their swords between them and the Rider, wielding them as shields against the fury of the woman-creature once known as Queen Nefertiti.
She circled her fleshless skull around on its axis without moving her body, looking at each one of the guards surrounding her as she unraveled one of the burnt bandages along her forearm. As the guards attacked, she shot the length of bandage out like a whip, wrapping it around one of the attacking guards. She swung the bandage around her in a circle, carrying the screaming guard with it and sending him flying headfirst into each and every one of her attackers in a slew of painful and jarring snaps and cracks as bone slammed hard against bone and bodies were bent in disturbing directions from the multiple impacts.
Not one of the attacking guards had managed to reach her. She was simply too fast.
The Ghost Rider raised the guard she’d coiled up high into the air and slammed him down into the stone floor below, obliterating him and another guard instantly in a mess of blood and bone. The other downed guards groaned pathetically, their bodies broken by the Rider’s initial swing of the whip.
Nefertiti – the Ghost Rider – coiled up the blackened linens atop her forearm and walked over toward the pile of bodies below her.
“I CAN SEE THE INNOCENT BLOOD STAINING EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOUR SOULS. THREE YEARS’ WORTH OF INNOCENT BLOOD,” she said, her eyes alighting with furious red flame. “I’LL MAKE THIS QUICK.”
She opened her mandible jaw wide with a sickening click and a plume of flame erupted from her outstretched mouth, engulfing the pile of downed guards and cremating them before any one of them could scream. She reached up and leisurely popped it back in with a click and began chattering her teeth together once more, jerking her body back to face the now completely-unprotected couple. The rest of the palace’s tenants – the guards, the consorts and all the starved slaves – had all long since fled.
Pharaoh Sadiki and Amunet held each other, shaking, too terrified to move. Suddenly, the Ghost Rider closed the distance between them in a tenth of a second, and the terrified pharaoh could smell the sulfur and brimstone on her breath.
Ghost Rider gazed into the trembling pharaoh’s eyes, her blazing skull shaking with rage.
“AMUNET. FIRST.”
The Rider tore Amunet bodily away from her husband, and the monster that was once Queen Nefertiti of Egypt clutched her bony fingers against her former aide’s throat, badly-choking off her oxygen.
The former queen growled, the flames surrounding her skull catching and sparking with a hot-tinged fury and pitch black smoke fumed above the flames. Her eyes swirling like burning coals, the Ghost Rider growled – rather than asked – a single question towards the restrained woman. It was a question that had been burning in Queen Nefertiti’s mind relentlessly, for every last moment since her cursed resurrection.
“WHY?”
The Ghost Rider’s hollowed eye sockets alighted with a raging pyre, and supernatural flames burrowed into Amunet’s wide open, terrified eyes.
The flaming skull of Queen Nefertiti saw a jumble of images and watched as the story of Nefertiti’s young life danced across their conjoined minds. The Rider watched Amunet’s travels amidst Egypt as Sadiki’s new wife, gazing as the fields of Egypt grew fallow and frowning as the guards seized nearly all the crops as tribute to the royal palace. She saw them strategically feeding the scraps to whichever farmer fed Sadiki’s ego the most, or provided the most supple wives or daughters for his use. The queen watched the very first time Pharaoh Sadiki laid a hand or a fist upon Amunet’s gentle body, and knew her helplessness against the one everyone now thought of as a God of Egypt. The Rider watched as Amunet cried herself to sleep every night, listening to the erotic screams of her husband and his consorts merging and mingling amongst the different, far more disturbing types of screams emanating from the badly-abused slaves throughout the palace halls. The Rider felt as Amunet felt, in that horrible moment – utterly trapped and ashamed of every awful thing she had become. She watched as the young wife had repeatedly been forced by her new husband to do whatever he decreed, and felt her terror of the man he had become. It would be thousands of years before the term battered wife syndrome was coined by foreigners to Egyptian soil, but here it was right here and now. Queen Nefertiti felt such disgust in her soul.
Amunet’s memories stretched further backwards: The vizier’s ascendancy to the throne, and their fights over how to best control Egypt now that Nefertiti had died. The day Sadiki cemented his rule with the reclamation of divine right. Their wedding night in the palace. The increase of slaves and the first of his consorts.
Even Amunet’s secret meeting with Vizier Sadiki was laid bare for the Rider to see, whispering in the darkened halls of the royal palace, just after Nefertiti had asked her to fetch the chariot that fateful night. She watched the couple planning her own murder, isolating her in her husband’s tomb. The destruction of all the relics laid out in her honor. The Ghost Rider’s stare burrowed ever further into the screaming woman’s horrified mind.
Finally, Nefertiti found the very first memory. Before the three years under Sadiki’s monstrous reign. Before the three years under Nefertiti’s gentle rule. It was in the very first weeks that Nefertiti took the throne, following her husband’s death, that Amunet sought solace in Sadiki’s arms and started believing his venomous lies. Amunet had helped plot against Nefertiti ever since then, trying desperately to circumvent Nefertiti and forestall her kind and gentle policies in a vain attempt to keep things from coming to a head with Sadiki and his psychotic ambition. Amunet thought she’d been protecting her queen this whole time, with years and years worth of cover-ups and lies.
All the lives lost, all the sacrifices made, all the cruelty of Sadiki’s twisted regime. Had Amunet simply told Nefertiti what Sadiki had been planning, how many lives could have been saved? How much of the blood spilt by Pharaoh Sadiki and his psychotic guards could be laid at Amunet’s feet? How much suffering had those who survived his rule endured, because of Amunet’s actions?
Queen Nefertiti could feel the monstrous thing burning along her brain, aching for the chance to make her former aide suffer further. It was like a devil, screaming for release. Oh, how Nefertiti wanted to let that devil fly free.
“HOW MANY PEOPLE COULD WE HAVE SAVED, AMUNET?” The Ghost Rider’s voice broke, more Nefertiti now than Spirit of Vengeance. “HOW MANY COULD HAVE BEEN SPARED HIS CRUELTY?”
Amunet stared into the Ghost Rider’s unblinking gaze, completely frozen in an overload of terror, screaming suddenly as she felt the pain and suffering of Sadiki’s victims awash upon her soul. The beatings of slaves, the kidnappings and rapes upon his young consorts, the casual murders of convenience. She felt the agonies of all his many victims, and knew that she could have prevented it all, but instead did nothing.
The woman’s skin was beginning to blister and burn, her retinas glazed white from the penetration of Nefertiti’s Penance Stare. In the few minutes that the Ghost Rider had borne her way into Amunet’s soul, her face and hair had started to overheat and blacken. Her flesh reddened, and the burns were eating through her skin. The wounds should have been agony, but Amunet could feel nothing but the screams of her husband’s many victims. Her eyes could not close, as she relived thousands upon thousands of lives’ worth of suffering. Even now, as the Ghost Rider kept staring into her, Amunet was living through her own personal Hell.
The Ghost Rider realized the full extent of Amunet’s suffering and sighed. Queen Nefertiti finally understood why Amunet had betrayed her: Because she hadn’t believed in Nefertiti, or her unshakable kindness toward the people of Egypt. She never had. She made the mistake of believing in Sadiki instead, and she paid her penance long ago for her betrayal.
With that understanding, came acceptance.
“I UNDERSTAND, AMUNET,” the Ghost Rider sighed, her eyeless skull twitching in the flames as the fire in her eye sockets dimmed. “AS A FINAL KINDNESS TO YOU, I’LL RELEASE YOU FROM THIS TERRIBLE PATH YOU’VE SET YOURSELF UPON.”
A wisp of flame burst from the eyes of the Ghost Rider, and gently engulfed the woman called Amunet in its supernatural hellfire. The Ghost Rider watched as Amunet, whose mind was now lost in memories of fear and cruelty, was slowly turned to ashes by the rhythmic lapping of the dark pyre. Everything that Amunet was, or ever could have been, turned black and crumpled to the stone floor before the Rider’s eyes.
The former queen’s heart ached at the loss of her friend and at the terrible truth behind her betrayal. The Ghost Rider stared at the pile of ashes that had once been her best friend and confidante. The fiery demon seemingly stared for eternity before lifting her head up to face the monster that had started them all down this wicked path of darkness.
As she expected, Pharaoh Sadiki was long gone. Yet, in her mind’s eye, she could still see him. Riding away desperately by chariot. He’d had quite the head start, as his chariot raced through the sands.
“SADIKI,” her voice boomed off the walls of the main hall, as she ran full speed through its entrance, scaling the entire royal palace on foot in less than a second and arriving at the chariot stables. She saw an empty bay for the chariot Sadiki had taken into the desert and its rough, unyielding terrain, and the two more chariot bays that sat untouched. A fire ignited behind the Ghost Rider’s eyes. “THERE IS NO ESCAPE.”
She touched the abandoned chariot and the hellfire spread quickly, enwrapping the vehicle as it began its fiery transformation into the Ghost Rider’s vehicle of unholy vengeance.
Three Hours Later
The Pyramid of Akhenaten
Unyielding Vengeance
The Rider clasped her hands along the massive stone door, drawing it open with ease, and tossed Sadiki’s beaten, bloodied body inside like a used-up rag doll. Pharaoh Sadiki screamed, hitting the floor hard and scraping along the hard stone floor from the force of momentum. The pharaoh groaned, hearing the door of the chamber forced shut by the Ghost Rider’s immeasurable strength.
“THE CHASE WAS – THRILLING, DEFILER,” the Ghost Rider growled, gesturing wide and glorying in the resurgence of supernatural flame from the torches lining the room. “BUT NONE CAN OUTRIDE THE GHOST RIDER.”
Pharaoh Sadiki shrieked in pain, rolling himself off the ground to a sitting position. As the Ghost Rider slowly strode toward him – unnervingly slow strides – Pharaoh Sadiki began to shuffle backwards away from the flaming monster in abject and absolute terror.
“You sick, twisted bitch!” Sadiki screamed. “I killed you! I killed you, and you’re supposed to be dead. I–!”
The pharaoh’s fearful rant subsided as he looked about the room, realizing where he was. He was now in Pharaoh Akhenaten’s tomb, yet again. Sadiki scuttled behind the sarcophagus in which he’d deposited Queen Nefertiti’s brutalized body three years prior, next to her decaying husband’s corpse. As he kept the sarcophagus between himself and the Rider, Sadiki saw the carving of Akhenaten’s face in the sarcophagus lid.
The stone face which he’d destroyed, had been completely restored. Sadiki looked upon the walls at the hieroglyphs – prayers for the dead that he’d also destroyed – fully restored. The canopic jars, the food offerings and the stone figurines that protected her deceased husband, were no longer laying crumbled and smashed as Sadiki had ordered, but stood firm and whole around the sarcophagus itself. Even the dust and the spider webs that had surely covered the room in the three years since its desecration and abandonment – were now fully removed. The room was immaculate – it was as if Sadiki and his men had never stepped foot inside Akhenaten’s tomb.
“How? How is this possible?” Sadiki asked in a choked, hoarse whisper.
The Ghost Rider paced back and forth, and the fires surrounding her skull crackled and popped in the light as she fingered the supernaturally-altered and stylized necklace across her mummified, blackened chest.
“BELOVED AKHENATEN,” she said, ignoring the defiler’s question and instead regarding the silent, stone sarcophagus before her. “I HAVE A FINAL GIFT FOR YOU. THE PENANCE OF THE MONSTER WHO DESICRATED YOUR TOMB, AND VIOLATED YOUR WIFE.”
Pharaoh Sadiki gasped, breathing in sharply. In a fit of desperation, he reached for one of the canopic jars and smashed it upon the ground, pulling a sharp dagger head from one of the broken pieces. He braced himself against the wall, concealing his terror with a sudden rage that readied him to use his newfound weapon against his pursuer.
“I’ll kill you, you sick little bitch. You stay away from me, do you hear? You stay the fu–!”
The shrieking pharaoh saw the Ghost Rider gaze in his direction, but never saw her move. Before he could even blink, she’d pressed him up against the wall, her hands squeezing tight against his throat. The pharaoh inhaled a plume of brimstone and coughed, his eyes still wide open as the fleshless, burnt skull of the Ghost Rider gazed upon the helpless man.
“YOU VIOLATED ME, YOU MONSTER,” the Ghost Rider growled, more Queen Nefertiti than Spirit of Vengeance now. “YOU BEAT ME, YOU BRUTALIZED ME, YOU MUMMIFIED ME ALIVE, AND YOU RAPED ME AS I LAY UNCONSCIOUS, BY YOUR HANDS. SHAMED ME INSIDE MY HUSBAND’S OWN TOMB, NO LESS.
“BUT YOU LEFT SOMETHING OF YOURSELF BEHIND, INSIDE ME. THE DEMON WITHIN ME SAYS IT’S HOW I’M CONNECTED TO YOUR AURA NOW. IT’S HOW I FOUND YOU. IF YOU’D NEVER LAID A HAND ON ME, I MIGHT NEVER HAVE FOUND YOU.”
“No! No! Lies, all lies!” Sadiki shrieked, stabbing the jar shard into the Rider’s stomach. There was a hiss of smoke, and the pharaoh yelped in pain, dropping the jar shard and realizing his hand was now simply a mass of disastrous third-degree-burns. The Ghost Rider never moved, never flinched, and never drew her eyes from the man. Never even acknowledged his pathetic attempt to stop her.
“AS IT STANDS, THERE IS NOWHERE IN THIS WORLD YOU COULD HIDE FROM ME. THAT IS, IF I WAS EVER GOING TO ALLOW YOU TO LEAVE THIS CHAMBER ALIVE.”
Pharaoh Sadiki breathed out, and couldn’t stop the tears from flowing down his eyes.
“I THOUGHT EVERYONE DESERVED TO BE TREATED WITH KINDNESS, EVEN ONE SUCH AS YOU,” the Ghost Rider, shrieked, grasping at her killer’s head with both her hands and forcing him to look into her hollow eye sockets, which already glowed with red, burning rage. “IT IS A KINDNESS TO THE REST OF EGYPT, WHAT I DO TO YOU NOW.”
A tunnel of burrowing flame shot out of the Ghost Rider’s hollowed eye sockets and slammed into Sadiki’s tear-filled eyes. The cruel pharaoh was enraptured in images – the faces and the souls of all those he’d wronged in life. From the perspective of the victims, he watched his own monstrous actions. He shrieked in agony, reliving each beating, each rape, each murder, each cruelty he’d inflicted upon everyone in Thebes, and in the whole of the Egyptian kingdom.
Pharaoh Sadiki’s flesh began to boil and blister and char, and his eyes sizzled like hot, runny eggs on a frying pan, dripping down across hot, sun-burnt red cheeks. The pharaoh shrieked helplessly as the flames ate away at his body, and at his soul.
It had been a cruelty to inflict the Penance Stare upon Amunet for even a few minutes, the Ghost Rider thought to herself, as she unraveled every last horrible memory of every last horrible thing the once-vizier had ever done in his life, and laid his soul bare as it burned in her touch. It had been a Kindness to finally let her die.
Ghost Rider watched the pharaoh’s blackened and charred flesh begin to heal and mend itself at her command. Then, she watched the hellfire burn at his flesh once more, peeling away layers of skin in horrific third and fourth degree burns, idly letting them turn septic. Another thought, and the burnt flesh mended once again. The Rider shrieked with laughter as a lifetime of Sadiki’s own, perverse, sadistic evil was turned back upon him. The Rider kept watch as Sadiki’s mind twisted and burned at the horrible, unyielding onslaught.
You, my dear Sadiki, I could stare at for hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Years, perhaps. Maybe even, forever.
The Ghost Rider’s blackened skull roared with fits of psychotic laughter as the pharaoh’s soul burned, and burned, and burned, and kept on burning, writhing in the harrowing Hell it created for itself.
Vengeance, finally, fatally, had been served.
PENCIL OF VENGEANCE
This was FUN.
I LOVE the Ghost Rider. There’s something about a flaming skull monster clad in biker’s leathers and concerned about punishing and destroying the hell out of the guilty monsters of the world that really strikes a chord with me. The Ghost Rider can just peer into your soul and see all the horrible, monstrous shit you’ve done, and turn it all back upon you. Shrieking, fleshless eyes peering into your mind, burning out the stain of evil upon your soul, and the Rider might either let you survive the experience (Danny Ketch’s Noble Kale) or have you die in utter agony (Johnny Blaze’s Zarathos). If you spill innocent blood, NOTHING will stop him. Nothing. No police. No law. No lawyers and their spinning the law to cover rapists and murderers. No trial. Just the Ghost Rider’s wrath burning out the souls of the guilty, and the vengeance for all the innocent souls so horribly wronged by the monstrous bastards of the world. It’s a chilling, yet exciting concept.
So Gavin McMahon gives me the opportunity to tell my own Ghost Rider tale. This time, a Ghost Rider of history, embodying one of the Seven Christian Virtues (Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, Humility). So I’m thinking, Ghost Rider of History. Completely new status quo. We’ve had Zero Cochrane of the future. And several more from the more (relatively) recent past in the original SoV mini-series. So I’m like:
Has there ever been an Ancient Egyptian Ghost Rider?
Yes, that is how my mind works, my friends. And yes, there is NOW an Egyptian Ghost Rider. I decided to base her on an actual figure from history. There was in fact, a Queen Nefertiti, and a Pharaoh Akhenaten, and they were both responsible for creating a new religious belief system in Egypt in an attempt to change it from a polytheistic society, to one devoted solely to the god Aten. So I figured I could center the story around her, as I’m sure those belief overhauls wouldn’t sit too well with everyone. Granted, I changed a lot of the other details. My Nefertiti never had offspring before she died, and there were no such people as Amunet or Sadiki that took over afterwards with a blighted kingdom. (Actually, Tutankhamun was their son and future ruler of Egypt, with a different female ruler in-between if I got it correctly.) Additionally, there is new evidence to suggest that the real Queen Nefertiti was only actually co-regent, and never full queen of Egypt. But, I liked the idea of a wife continuing her husband’s rule and making it her own.
So the heretic beliefs of monotheism in a polytheistic culture, the kindness and equality of her rule, her refusal to embrace divine right to rule Egypt as a justification for her continuing to stay in power, and a ruler who chose his wife to rule in his stead instead of his Vizier, all added up into a monster named Sadiki, which means “faithful”, and the traitor Amunet, which means “the hidden one.” To overcome a character like Nefertiti, a woman kind enough to give up divine right and push hard for equality in a culture where pharaohs were often killed and usurped from the throne, and to provide her with a sufficient reason to make a deal with the devil, I made Sadiki just about the most awful kind of human being to ever exist. Even the kindest person in the world would have to take action against THAT if she could.
Additionally, there were never any motorcycles built in ancient Egypt, and I think Gavin would kill me if I made a time portal to the future juuuust so Queen Nefertiti would have something badass to ride as the Ghost Rider, so my research turned up the use of Egyptian chariotry, and in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance he actually transformed a damn earth-mover into a flaming vehicle, so why the hell not a fucking Chariot of Vengeance?
Furthermore, Ghost Rider fans might notice some similarities between this Ghost Rider’s movements and mannerisms and those from the Ghost Rider inTaylor/Neveldine’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. No, you’re not imagining it. That movie has a decent script, but not enough character development to bring it all together. The character of the Rider, however, is phenomenal, and I love every single scene where he appears on the screen. He is clearly an agent of Vengeance, but also a demon that thrives on chaos, and fear, and terror. Every time he appears on the screen, it’s UNNERVING. THAT’S how the Ghost Rider should be portrayed, my friends. In the end, he’s such an insane force of nature that Nefertiti can barely contain him.
So in short, crafting an original Ghost Rider character from the ground up? IMMENSELY fun. I hope you enjoyed reading Queen Nefertiti’s Ghost Rider as much as I enjoyed writing her.
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