Chapter VII
“And then we came forth to see again the stars.” ~ Dante Alighieri.
1: The weight of the antlers.
Regaining consciousness, I was immediately aware of a throbbing pain in my hands. They were hung above my head, supporting my weight as my knees swayed limp underneath me. Standing up straight to relieve my blue hands, I saw a fire in front of me. Rob was tied up in the same manner as me; we were both stripped of our clothing, and he had a black bag over his head. Through the smoke, a nude woman approached me. I know her, I knew her like a rabbit knows a fox, or a mouse knows a snake.
“Fear not, for I wish to offer you a gift.”
”Why… Why,” I started, but my voice was too weak to finish. She answered me, not in English or any discernible language. But in some pre-Babelian vibration. Her voice sounded like the trees, it sounded like the birds, and I understood every word.
”I saw the morning star descend into the deep,
reborn as the fallen gods.
He keeps me
far from heaven.”
She stepped closer, so close I could smell her; she smelled like sage and cannabis. Her Morphean lips kissed my skin before she bit into the flesh over my heart, and she drank from me. She drank greedily, as if I were her favorite. It hurt like hell, but felt like heaven. A slippery, welcoming sensation washed over me, a falling sensation. My head grew faint and rolled back, revealing the stars to me. They're so bright, there are so many, a gifted glimpse at what God sees. I was shrinking, or rather, the universe was receding.
“You can stay down there.” She said without pausing from her drink. “Let me lick the grief from your lips, and drink every ache that you hide.” She placed a gentle hand near my navel and rose to look me in the eyes. She had the blood-soaked smile of a wolf and the soft eyes of a lamb. Her eyes were as green as spring moss, and they were as yellow as autumn tamarack. Her skin was dark; she could have walked the Nile as a child, or been at home in the ancient empires of Persia. She had tattoos on her face, intricate patterns, and unrecognizable symbols. On the skin of her neck, she wore an owl, done in red ink. Her chest was covered in writing; it flowed down her abdomen and around her ribs. She was beautiful. Next to her seraphim were but shadows. She was so beautiful it almost hurt, like a pressure behind the eyes.
She bit the pad of her thumb and placed it to my lips. She began to sing; her voice was angelic, and with every breath, the chorus of heaven echoed through the breeze.
“Become she that walks in blood,
don the dress of shadow spawn,
Forget the sun, forget the dawn,
the dances in crimson has begun.
drink of me and taste the grace,
shed your skin, accept your fate.
close your eyes and you will see—
redemptions just… a drop… of me.”
Her warmth filled my mouth, and I could taste peace. The hum of her song reverberated in my wisdom teeth. As she sang, the trees danced to her tune, the leaves swayed in cymatic patterns, bent by her words. As she reached the back of my throat, I found it; nirvana. The mythical state every addict searches for. To me, it's the loss of all sensation, where all that remains is awareness, and even that is questionable. My body is just a concept, a faint memory viewed through a dusty window. I could exist here forever, I could die here in bliss. All my pain faded, memories of the crash blurred. The pearl—gone, all of it sank away.
As gravity shifted, my head lowered, and I saw Rob. Still hanging from his wrists, knees limp beneath him. I saw the woman as she was, a star fallen in a well, blinding, yet covered in mud. If I stay here, I can join her, finally join the stars. But I knew deep down that I’d be damning Rob to the mud. I can’t leave him here, I can’t disappear this time. My body had already practiced disappearing; it knew how to let something living become nothing at all. I can’t hide forever. If I stay, I’ll have peace, quietness; I’ll have rest, and no turmoil. But at what cost? What would she do to him? It took all my strength to reject her. I fought against peace, and clawed my way back into pain.
I spat her blood out of my mouth and onto her face. The moment I was free from her, every sensation, all thirty-three senses flooded back into my body. The dirt beneath my feet was freezing, cold like I’ve never known. The heat of the fire all the way over there was excruciating; I felt every molecule radiate off the logs and heat my skin. I felt the rotation of the earth around the sun, and the pull of Sol along the Orian arm. The weight of the air pressing down against me felt like I was diving in the deep; movement of any kind felt like swimming at the bottom. The wind screamed so loud; I could hear the footsteps of ants, and the stars burning above my head. I could hear Rob’s heartbeat and the pulse in his swollen hands. The light of the fire seared deep into my retinas. I looked up to stop the burning, but the sky was just as bright. I saw the stars, all of them, every last one; a vista denied to all of man. They burned ferociously, and I knew them all by name.
2: Nephilim.
As Rob regained consciousness, the witch approached him.
“You’ve met death,” she said, removing the bag from his head. She grabbed a handful of his hair and lifted his eyes to hers,
“I can smell him on you.” Rob saw her bloodstained face and Ari’s bleeding chest. He pulled against his restraints in a rage and cursed at the witch. She looked to Ari,
”He doesn’t satisfy you, does he? You won’t know true love until you’ve lain with one of the fallen.” She smiled and looked back at Rob, leaning in to whisper in his ear,
“I can help with that.”
The witch placed a finger against Rob’s chest and, with a sharpened nail, cut into his skin, writing Abaddon. She then licked the blood from her fingertip and stepped back. She grabbed an unburned stick out of the fire; a stick sharpened into the shape of a sword. She drew in the dirt with the point of the weapon. First a triangle, then a square, and finally a circle, each large enough for a person to lie on the ground within their borders. She meticulously surrounded the shapes with a strange writing, symbols unrecognized. She dipped leaves in a dark liquid and shook them over the triangle, wetting the soil. The whole process took over an hour.
When she had finished, she picked up a wooden bowl that had been warming near the fire. She approached Rob and placed the bowl to his lips. Rob spat in the bowl in protest. The witch grabbed his jaw and forced it open, then poured the liquid down his throat. It tasted like copper and dirt; there were chunks of mushrooms, berries, and something else, something Rob couldn’t quite identify. Almost immediately after drinking the stew, Rob’s stomach felt airy, his digits tingled, and all the hairs on his body stood on end. His knees gave out as the witch undid the knot around his wrist. Rob fell to the ground, landing in the triangle. The witch seated herself in the circle opposite the fire. The forest around him filled with smoke. He felt pain, a burning in his groin he hadn’t felt since he was eight. In the haze, he saw his mother, her eyes wild with holy rage. She hissed at him, I won’t have my boy grow into a disgusting pervert. The same words she had screamed that day the Playboy magazine blew across the yard. You won’t be a victimizer. I’ll burn the evil out of you. Her face warped into the face of the witch. Both of them are smiling, threatening.
The witch read from a book that looked older than the Bible. As she chanted through the verses, her voice filled the air. Rob could see it, her voice. The sound wave vibrated through the air, forming geometric shapes that floated above the fire. The shapes shifted and expanded. They collided and multiplied until the whole sky was a kaleidoscope of non-Euclidean patterns. All around Rob, space itself warped, and he could see the hidden places between the atoms of the atmosphere. The dancing shapes were in these places, too, fluid evolution from one form to another. They combined until they resembled the human figure. The figure was enormous. Rob thought he’d get stuck underneath its fingernail before it picked him up, or held him. It had wings stretched out in every direction; the feathers looked like shards of stained glass. Looking at it should have blinded Rob; like looking at the core of a nuclear reactor. Rob felt like a two-dimensional being struggling to observe a three-dimensional object. As the figure moved, color itself fled. Rob realized it didn’t inhabit the space between the atoms; it was the space itself. Rob was in that space now, and that space was in him. Language lost all meaning. Rob’s thoughts raced, not in words, but in the emotional language of animals and infants. His mind was wiped clean, memories, identity. An awful process of derealization and depersonalization; un-becoming.
3: Thrice.
I screamed as Rob convulsed on the ground. His eyes rolled back, and he foamed at the mouth. My wrists bled as I pulled against my restraints. Rob’s gasping turned into a guttural growling; he sounded like a bear. His seizure stopped, and he propped himself on his hands and knees as he puked a dark, foamy liquid. He dug his hands into the dirt, pulling back the top layer of soil until he found clay. Frantically, he pulled the blue clay out of the earth and plastered it over his face. He built himself a mask layer by layer, working the clay into four horns protruding from his forehead and two tusks from his cheekbones. Rob wasn’t there anymore.
Panicked, I pulled my weight against my wrist and bit into the ropes holding me captive. My muscles cramped, holding my body off the ground, and I gave up long before the rope did. I leaped again, and my wrists burned as the rope dug deeper into my skin. This time, I bit into the tendon behind my thumb. Feeling both the elastic band between my teeth and the razors pressing into my flesh was excruciating. There were no other options. I clenched my jaw and snapped the cable. The pain was sickly, my head felt faint, and my stomach nauseous. I felt each fiber snap between my teeth as the cold sweats set in. My thumb, limp, collapsed to the palm of my hand as I voraciously pulled my hand through the restraints, freeing myself.
With one last look at Rob, I saw empty eyes, and ran into the dark as fast as my weak legs would carry me. I was swimming in an ocean of sensation, drowning in a flood of vibration. The insects sang their songs, and the beasts of the night stepped on fallen leaves. I heard them all, every call, and every plea. It wasn’t long before I heard footsteps following after me. I hid behind a tree and looked back to see the silhouette of horns hunting in the shadows. His breathing was harsh and gravelly. He’d cough to clear his throat before letting out a perfectly normal-sounding,
”Ari?” Then fell back into the guttural rhythm, “Ari?” He said, “Ari?” He was getting closer. I got down and crawled, scraping my knees against the frozen ground. As I moved away from the sound of his voice, his breathing stopped. My ears heard everything, but I couldn’t find him. One thump, then another; his pulse had slowed to once every ten seconds, then stopped entirely. I stood up, scanning my surroundings. His eyes glowed black, staring right at me. I ran as fast as I could as he silently closed the gap between us.
Like a crack of lightning, the shock from the blow to the back of my head traveled through the entirety of my nervous system. My vision flashed white as I fell to the ground. The force of the blow lingered as a relentless pressure. What used to be Rob picked me up by the throat and hurled me against the trunk of a tree. He suspended me in the air as if I were weightless. Aside from the clay plastered to his skin, he carried no odor, his touch was numb, he was empty space, a mirage bearing Rob’s image. As he pressed me against the bark, I was crowded by his absence.
”Is that tight enough for you?” A malignant voice left Rob’s body as he squeezed my throat. He wielded the wooden sword and placed the tip on my abdomen. Impossibly sharp, the edge entered my epidermis, then my dermis. Both my hands were around his wrist, trying to pull him off me. I reached for his face, but instead of attacking, I cradled his cheek. That face, under all that blue earth and hate, used to look at me with so much love. He was so gentle with me. I pinched his skin and squeezed him three times. As his blade reached my muscle tissue, his eyes flashed for a moment with recognition. His breathing made a sound again, and his grip loosened.
God, if Rob’s still there, bring him back. Please. I’m sorry, I am, I’m so sorry. Bring him back. Please.
He released me, stumbling backward away from the tree. He writhed and screamed in agony. His joints twisted and his muscles contracted. The harsh guttural growls slowly fell into the grunts of a normal man. He fell to his knees, hunched on all fours, and looked up to me, and managed one word
”Run.” I stood but hesitated,
”Rob?” My voice cracked. The growl crept back into his throat, then faded again. His pulse similarly oscillated. He’d lunge to attack, before crawling away. He awkwardly made his way to his feet, like his bones were backward. He placed the handle of the sword on the ground and the tip under his breastbone and collapsed onto it. Before my scream ever escaped my lungs, the blade exited the back of his neck, and Rob died a third and final time. I spent years in silence staring at his body, frozen in shock. My knees gave out, and I crawled to him. I wept for weeks before kissing him. The forest died with him; it was quiet. His blood warmed my hands as I held him. I pulled the wood from his body and wiped the clay from his face. My tears wet his skin as I scrubbed the earth from him. I slowed time to lie curled up with him in the dark, feeling though I’d never be ready… How am I supposed to leave you here? How am I supposed to go on? I closed his blue eyes, kissing his eyelids, touching his skin for the last time. I stood up and backed away, not letting myself look away. If I turn now, this here, this moment, will be the last time I see him. This will be the last image I remember of him. I’m not ready… God, I’m not ready. Rob’s no longer here, but he’ll never be gone. I promise, I’ll remember.
4: Here.
I honored his last wish. As I ran through the forest, the cold was biting. I felt my blood retreating inward, abandoning my fingers and toes—a needle drip, siphoning away my life. I was running through autumn and into winter. I wondered if the cold was a peaceful way to go; I envisioned a hunting party finding me, nude in the snow, white as a ghost. There’d be three of them, his name would be Gabe, and hers would be Lucy. But that won’t happen, I won’t let it; that’d be disrespectful.
After miles, just as Sol greeted a new beginning, I found the shack and the Chevy. I crawled into the driver’s seat and found a Slayer hoodie in the passenger side; a ghost of a past life. It felt like a thousand years ago. The weight of this journey was crushing. This trip had cost me everything, everything I had, everything I was. I wished so bad to fade away, to hide from it. But that door was closed. Hiding is forgetting, and Rob deserves better. I won’t forget him, or hide from the pain, I made a promise. I’ll feel all of it, for him, and for me. Because I’m still here; here I am.
The End.