Epilogues of a Long Night

I remember the way the wind danced the night the news was carried to me on wings of demons, as I sat on the gentle shoreline of the ocean. It carried the sand into childish cyclones, made it dance beneath the diamonds and among neon whitecaps, while somewhere a mile down the beach, the sounds of late night water lovers caressed the curvature of my earlobe. The glistening grains were captured to my lips, gritty, brittle, harsh, glued there by crimson saliva and violent heat, just as the others that were speckled against my smooth bare arms. I could feel the cool course of scarlet life slipping from my laxed fingertips, dripping and coagulating the shifting, blowing ground beneath my toes.

Something had forbid me to wear white this night, but I disobeyed it; I had never been the easiest creature to sit beside, after all. Argumentative, stubborn, snide, it was a wonder that I had even lived this long with all my limbs still connected to the remainder of my body.

Not that it would have mattered much for my kind even if they had been removed.

My life has been surreal since my path had strayed far from the man who discovered me, and led me into the depths of the River Styx and into the arms of Hades himself. I loved him, my arrogant unnatural abomination, with the cocky smirk and that raven hair that pleaded to swallow my fingertips. I loved him, the one who destroyed me, remade me, stole me, enthralled me. He was my new religion, as he spat at the old, and devoured me whole.

For the moment, I could find solace in being ignorantly alone. Several mangled cadavers littered the sand north of me, arms jutting out at impossible angles, one leg with a tattered thigh a few degrees to the west. The blank green eyes over the mother rolled to me, so glassy that they captured the moon and shone it back to me with as much life as any flat mirror would. The child had screamed the most, her shrill underdeveloped voice choking so mercifully as I slit her pale little throat and washed myself in her life. It felt so warm, its bath of crimson rain, that I could feel myself shuddering, the tainted lips cracking in a lunatic smile beneath the coating liquid; I wished it would never end.

It is rare that I take any sanctuary in brutish violence, especially when it is directed towards a child; whores and derelicts suit my tastes so much better. But tonight was special, that single solitary night that make the others burn in the flames of regret and rage.

My original God died tonight.

My first beloved left me, left this plane, for the sweeter treasures of a burning Hell and the sweet realm of sleep. There were rumors before this, the tentative whispered hush of the madman drunk on his own anguish and lapping at his angst. He devoured his pain more than he did the blood that coursed through his blue veins, and savored the bittersweet guilt that was the lingering aftertaste upon the tip of his tongue. They spoke of him, my fallen and abandoned deity, and I wanted to scream my fury at all their mocking tones, all their disrespectful and snide remarks.

Especially at him, my new religion.

At nights, his agony pricked the back of my mind, sharp needle fingers caressing the back of my neck before slicing in with cruel precision. Flickering flinches would slip through my gray storms and leave me stunned for a moment, long digits twitching with muscle spasms. I could feel the flat of his hand moving inside me, through the gaping cavity of my chest as he fingered the ventricles that serviced my heart that ran on stolen blood, could feel the lackluster fire that sat in the bottom of my gut, churning, flickering. Soon, lines merged, and our matching guilt danced and tangled themselves into one solid knot, where it blurred and become inseparable.

I wore the dress I frequently donned when I shared his company, that gauzy white piece reminiscent of the gypsy wear with loose flowing sleeves. I wore white, even after all the warnings of my spirit, and now lived to tell about it as it bore more crimson swatches than that light pristine cloth. Streams trickled down my calves, beaded lightly in places, dried to that brittle brown in others, and some had caked around my toes, binding sand to my flesh like slippers. I can still hear the drops running off the tips of my fingers, falling to the ground with quiet sounds of connection. My hair was tangled, matted with it, the golden tresses dulled to something more violent and full of malevolent rage.

The waves were beautiful tonight, glowing from the kiss of the pregnant goddess in the sky. I want to drown.

I could feel him as he slipped away, put out of his misery by some other god sent demon. The overwhelming power of satisfaction, of this final chance at a peace that had alluded for more years than any of us cared to count, crashed upon me as I had stood with Antrim in some dark alleyway wedged between two brick buildings. But my first God, he was happy, painfully happy as it devoured me for a moment, stroking all of my centers, all of my cores and emotions, as it forced the whimper that had locked itself in my throat.

My gray eyes had turned red before I knew it and my lips tasted of bloody tears, metallic, salty.

Then, there was nothing, this hushed silence that consumed my world for a moment, laying it’s harsh slap against all sound, all sight, complete and utter sensory depravation. I swore that I was suffocating, that the world had turned in upon itself, and chose me as its evening meal on this cruel hour. Never had I felt more alone in the world than I did in that solitary moment, staring at nothing while I felt the whispered comments in my ear, the vibrations of his sound, the pattern of his breath against my flesh, letting me know what he had muttered.

"Gone. He is finally gone."

But so was I, for the moment. I couldn't read the other's words, could not hear if it was that arrogant gloating that laden them, or just complete indifference. It did not matter, not now, when I felt the world had shifted onto its side to run me down. My hands shook as I grabbed an alley wall, nails digging into the mortar and brick, steadying myself as I stumbled away, alone, leaving the other to watch my decreasing back.

I had made it to my home long enough to change, long enough to slip into the clothes he knew me best in. I wept as I slipped the cloth against my flesh, feeling the comfort I had stored in this thick wooden chest. Golden earrings found the holes in my ears, rings slipped along my fingers, a chain around my right ankle, taking on the colors of the fine world. I stared into my reflection's eyes, noting the crimson tracks that refused to cease their path over the hills of my cheeks, some meeting the corner of my mouth.

My fingers grasped its side and pushed it over, listening with quiet satisfaction as it shattered against the wooden floorboards and littered the room like rain. I felt nothing as I padded across the shards, as they embedded themselves into the tender soles of my feet, driven in deeper with each blind step I took. I needed to walk, needed to get away from the empty feeling that had manifested itself inside of me at the disappearance of my maker, of my God.

It was my father, in vivid flashbacks and memories, brought to life to be sacrificed once again.

The shoreline is attractive when one wishes to be alone, and the tide can carry the remains away. I was savage and hardly myself, but part of me basked in the feel of it, in the power over my destination, rather than the simple bystander I had always been. This was my episode in church, only with a new graphic twist.

The other is coming; I can feel his age and presence somewhere to the north, lingering beside those discarded bodies. He has not spoken yet, and I am almost afraid of what he will say, but I have settled to the point of acceptance, making me bearable of many things.

After all, what did I do, but trade one religion for another?