center
Oh for the powers the gifties give us. To see ourselves as other see us. --Bobby Burns
Well, one can only pose in such a position for so long, gore-streaked, leaking life-blood, wings aspread for the feast. I mean, it's quite melodramatic and all, even striking if the light is behind you. But, the light in this alley was pale, dim yellow and reflected off of countless windows. After awhile, after she's left, it gets faintly ridiculous, and I hurt too much to stand there like that for long.
I lowered my wings, and looked down at my body, red and black with sweat and blood. Head hanging, I thought for a moment. I had been through a journey of discovery, an exploration of a part of my soul that I had seldom traveled, never seen. But now I was standing in a dark alley with blood dripping from various wounds, exhausted. My battlefield reflexes took over, and I flexed and reached to the sun, with wings made of meadow green and daisy gold. I began at my feet, and caressing their inner arches, I began to heal.
I passed my hands over my left calf, over my lower back and back down the inner thigh, and down to my right foot. Up, and over the hard ridges of my stomach, and circling my nipples, both hands on the back of my neck. My hands outstretched to the last golden rays, the light faded from my wings and I hid them again. I stood naked, with the residual glow from the healing highlighting the curve of my back, the tilt of my head, perfect, angelic in every way. The light, dying, glinted off of a small silver hoop, lying in the mud.
Such a gift, from her, could not be wasted.
As I picked up the small silver earring, I received surprising flashes of pain, of loneliness and yearning. It was not hers then? A passing victim's perhaps? There was justice in this ring of pale silver, which looking closely, was wreathed in delicately etched pine boughs. She had left it for me, none the less, there was nothing better to mark my passage through the wilderness.
Such an event could not go unremarked. Grimacing, tender from the pain that had already been inflicted this evening, I strained to reach to the outermost limits of my wings, to grasp a single feather. Each of our wings are special, unique in some way. In a real sense, our wings are our souls, ourselves. Losing even a small part of them diminishes us, as if we had lost a part of ourselves we never even knew we had. Reaching to the outer edges, I grasped a small feather, made of adamantine and light, slick already with the jagged sharpness of the spear of Saul that pierced David and pulled.
In ripping a feather of my soul, I was again transported to that special place I had prepared as she cut me, as she crushed my throat and breathed her sweet fumes into my body, as she caressed me. But there was no one there to take my sacrifice. She had left, there was only me. Only Michael. I had the charge of protection, of righting the wrongs heaped upon humankind. The shaft of my feather disappeared to an atomic point, even unto the sub-atomic level. It widened quickly to a jagged edge, sharp, but wicked.
I threw my head back and screamed.
I plunged the feather into my vulnerable nipple, and the blood poured down my stomach. Ragged indrawn breath into the wind, I threw the feather to the breeze, and quickly connected the silver earring, and let the blood coagulate and heal on its own.
I dressed again, pulling on my jeans and cut-off shirt, black as the oil pooled next to me in the alley. Sitting on the curb I pulled on the square toed boots, buckled with silver, etched faintly in golden serpentine design. I felt a faint tug from my chest, to the right, to the club at the end of the alley. It was time to dance.
The bouncers didn't even look as I joined the crowd at the door, except maybe to gasp lightly, and think upon past wrongs. The crowd was considerable, and being held up by a slightly porcine looking man at the door, showing a picture to the manager.
"Have you ever seen, her?"
The manager nodded slightly, mouthed "tonight," and pointed to the interior of the club. The man, fat, white shirt pulling out of his barely buttoned pants, entered the club. The line began to form and move, with a life separate from the teeming entities that comprised it. There is a feeling in humans, before they enter a gathering. It is a coming together, a celebration of diversity, a gaudy striving to be the most noticed. This young one here, barely old enough to grasp the bottle he was downing, tattooed against the pale skin of his skull. This older one there, slouching, exuding a cynicism born of fire and wild times. They are each trying to outdo each other, before the solemnity of the gathering, bowing to each other's differences.
The crowd pushes forward and we enter the gathering.
The outskirts of this crowd are nervous, jangled. The older man bellows at a young woman.
"Where is she?"
He is sweating, and holding a grimy picture. One of those sweet pictures, that belie the violence of life, a neutral blue background and an innocent, smashed smile. The bruises are so apparent, the hurt so near the surface, the makeup so desperately applied.
He wanted her back, goddamn it.
I pushed to the front, near the man, as he disappeared into the shadows of the lights bouncing off of the black walls.
I rounded the corner and climbed the steps to the upper levels. Along the steps were arrayed the cool ones, the ones who were too self-conscious to dance, the one who were projecting their pain like armor, their hurts like the ramparts of the walls they were intent on erecting around their souls. They stared at me in muted fascination, unintentionally drawn to me, to my salvation. I caressed one tender boy, my hand lingering on his long, dirty hair. Oh! The wrongs he had done, the fantasy of violence that he lived every day. I could have taken him then and there, but I sensed there were larger wrongs to protect against this night, swirling in this club, as the music throbbed on and on.
I edged nearer the dance floor, fascinated as smoke poured from the jets concealed underneath the stage. The strong fans in the ceiling drew it upwards in great columns of mist, of storm and lightning, as the strobes illuminated it from within.
I moved onto the dance floor, swaying.
As the dancers began to celebrate the gathering, with wilder, more abandoned movements, I was drawn back, and forwards to the great festivals of old, and the great gathering yet to come. They plugged into a current that's timeless, existing at one end as an inutterable groan against a rough fire, and the other as a floating ambiance, wisp of sound against an undulating night. Here they were in the middle, with an energy that poured from them and into the timeline, up and down.
The crowd swirled and the man stumbled onto the floor.
Now he clutched an empty vodka and ice in a slack hand. In a strangely appropriate gesture, he had shoved the picture down the front of his pants, against his hardness, dancing. He had discovered a new territory. Never had he seen such glorious young flesh offered to him. He would beat it out every one of them, and was lurching through the dance floor in ecstasy. He entered one of the columns of mist and night, as I stepped in from the other side, enfolding the entire column with wings invisible on one side and strong as the steel of my heart on the other.
We began to dance.
I pulled him close and took in his evil, his violence against his own flesh. I breathed his excuses, his petty reasons. His father's heavy hand, his mother's drunken lurches against his innocent boyhood. I saw his drunken joy at the slap of his hand, his breath panting against her cheek. He moaned her name, as I clung to him and changed the tune to one slower, more sensuous.
"Melissa."
I pressed close against him, and he swayed with me. I loved him in that moment, and realized the gift she had given me. The ability to love my prey, that's what I was missing. I had always despised my enemies, deplored their atrocities. But she taught me love, in the harshest way possible. I had to love them, love him. As I pulled him closer, my arms encircling him, my biceps pressing into his soft side, I caressed his sweaty back, letting my fingers play along his ass, his massive thigh. He began to breath in rhythm with my panting. I towered above him. He reached both hands up my stomach and pulled my shirt over my head, licking my chest.
His tongue encircled her earring, pierced through me. I caused it to glow, pine boughs standing against the silver, he gasped and moaned her name for the last time. I bent down and gave him a long kiss, our tongues wrapped up in each other's dreams. I put both hands on either side of his neck, and gently, lovingly, snapped his spine, bringing him home to the Kingdom.
I loved them all, even her, and was eager again to plunge into the ritual. I left his corpse on the dance floor, and flew into the night.
End: Alley
copyright 1996 by David Micko
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