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There is something in the play of the world's weft that teaches us at the oddest moments of this thing called fate. Of course, there is no such thing, or at least, it is not a separate thing. Life, the rushing out and drawing in, is fate. It happens without our help, a condition of the sentience we all share. We are drawn into the warp of the world, the stairs mutate, the door changes, the doorway opens to an inner path that we cannot avoid, because we don't know it's there. That pathway through my heart keeps leading to an angel.
Oh, she's not an angel any more, she absented herself from us long ago, and paid the price. All of us, even the least, have a part to play, a structure to follow. She did not do so, and so strayed from the whole. She was punished, and I....I am her punisher.
But the rituals we have created are funny things, I've found. They are not the high-handed justice I am used to. I enjoy them too much for that. Hmmm, yes, I enjoy them. Her vulnerable form, laid out in front of me calls out to the deepest part of me, the brick and the stone of me, it rends my heart and shreds my soul and I can't get used to it. I revel....yes, revel in it.
But as she sobs in front of me, a part of me is her, still. I flinch for every crucifixion, I stretch for every blow of the cudgel, I twirl for every hanging tree I can string her in. I am with her, on her, in her.
Funny thing, isn't it?
As the knife buries itself in my shoulder, I stand bewildered. She is different tonight, somehow changed. Is she singing? I swear I can hear her singing in a wild, keening tone. The 11th century Pict women used to use that exact tone before joining their families in battle, greasy hair strung out behind them and iron-studded mace in hand. It is a sound that can cut to the very core of you, and...I swear...She's singing it now.
I've always imagined myself in her place, that was part of the revel for me. The exquisite pain, the shocking terror. She must feel so alive! But it's different now.
And I was shocked to the tips of my fingers, held up to her in supplication.
I did not feel alive, as my body tensed into the pain thudding through my shoulder, I did not feel vital. Where was my connection to the throbbing heart of the universe? Where were the loving gasps I've heard her make? The moans of shredded steel? I stood there, violated, waiting for something to happen, something other than the invasive pain, the ripping of my essence. My wings flexed and fluttered, too far away to matter much. Where was the love I craved?
She ran at me, howling.
She leapt into the air and hung suspended for a moment, balanced on the tip of a tiny shard of time. I have led many battles, commanded great hosts and legions, sent all manner of individuals to their rewards, marching in lock step, shields joined. I have engaged many foes one-on-one on the field of battle, protecting the slaughter of my army with the might of my right hand. Nothing I had done before had prepared me for this dark night of pain, in a sweating alley, under the edifice of my soul.
Nothing.
Knocked to the ground I tried to pull the knife from my shoulder. Laying on my back, looking into her eyes, I was defeated. She did not need to go any further; I was unable to resist. I tended her an offer of amnesty with my eyes, a white flag of surrender in my mute gaze. Enough already, she had won. Let it be.
She punched me in the throat, hauled me to my feet.
Where was the loving touch, the flutter of pain? Her grasping soul dominating me, riding me with locked thighs and an arched back? Where was the connection that I gave to her, the ritual that I had instructed her in for so long? She had taken me body and soul, and I expected that to be the end of it. The long of it. The short of it. The pain that I gave to her liberated her soul, stretched the supernatural bonds of her substance, beat against her heart in a rhythm of love and pain and hate and destruction. She embraced it, but now she was embracing me. Where was my liberation?
As she flicked out a knife and began to cut me, to torture me, I began to find my liberation. Standing before her, naked and bleeding, in mute supplication, I began to let her. To let her take. To let her take me. With each snicktey-swipe of her silent knife, I began to know her, better than I ever could have imagined. I began to move closer to her. As she took from me, I began to give to her. I relinquished, she relished. As my blood ran down my cheek, and into my mouth, I remembered...Oh, the coppery tang of her blood!
I once pushed down into the stinking, prairie mud, and drank my fill of her. Her slick body, heaving under mine, struggled against my wet jeans, as I tasted her, again and again. I remembered her blood against my tongue, writhing in a liquid fountain of her, her soul, her essence. I drank and drank.
Raising my arms, as she had before, I gave myself unto her utterly. I allowed her in. Take me, rape me, love me, hurt me, love me, hurt me. She tensed her muscles and pulled back her arm and, with a strength born of rage and love, began to beat me. She was mine! She was mine!
She cut away the last remnants of my clothes, and began to cut at me more slowly, purposefully. Blood dripped down my naked thighs and pooled at feet. She was beautiful, in her rage, in her revenge. As she moved closer I could smell her exertion, scent her soul as it hovered over me in triumph. I began to feel the tuggings of my soul at the core, the unleashing of the hate and rage and pain, but the utter inability to do anything about it. She controlled me, as she sinuously stepped closer. Her knife flashed again to paint my thighs with pain, to carve my body, to cut my soul. She was sculpting me, loving me, violating me.
I loved her for it, for this teaching.
I let myself become her, as she became me.
She stood in front of me, and strangely, our breaths matched. As I breathed out my pain and sorrow, she breathed in my love and my redemption. Her eyes lit as she knew the height of my pain, how close I was to letting it all go. We began breathing in rhythm, in tandem, as she leaned close and sucked the breath from my body.
She lay her knife against my throat, reached around me, her biceps tensed against my naked shoulder, grabbed on hard to the very essence of what I was. I knew then that she would take from me what I most prized, that which was me in the most elemental of ways. As she stroked, and touched me...there...I knew that she had gone beyond any ritual teaching, that she had leaped from the cliff with her eyes closed, that she would give to me the ultimate gift, and in so doing, love me ultimately.
She grabbed the root of my wings tightly.
I breathed my last breath into her, a gift to keep.
My angel!
copyright 1996 by David Micko
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