30

I cannot believe that any mortal man or woman could ever experience the likes of the honeymoon that She and I had that night. I opened myself to Her so completely, so totally, that I felt filleted, exposed, with no secrets, nothing withheld. She touched portions of me that no man ever could, vulnerable spots no other person could ever even know that I had. Her intimate touches were probing but tender, letting me understand that my vow to Her was all-encompassing. Eternal life included stark honesty, and I held still for Her examination, and I enjoyed Her pleasure as She found me acceptable.

We rode the music together as I bared my soul to Her. She tested, tasted, approved, and returned it to me, altered, marked, stamped with Her authority as judge. And when She was finished, I was joyous at Her final acceptance, and we flew to the heights, sweeping the stars with our love and our laughter, until I realized that I had given everything and She had given nothing.

The music turned sour the very moment that sad thought entered my mind. She tickled me, cajoled me, tried to take my mind from it, but I insisted. The marriage was not equal unless She opened as willingly as had I.

A minor chord strummed through the ether. What right have you to demand equality in this marriage, She asked.

Dark clouds of deep notes echoed in the well that surrounded us. The stars closed the lid on my prison. She was not willing, and I was bereft.

“Angelina,” She teased me, whispering across my ear, but I pulled away, the match unequal, unfair. The fun was lost, the joy had fled. Sadness flushed through me, the granite disappointment a huge, looming monolith.

“Please,” She said. “You don’t know what you ask.”

“I do know.”

“You don’t.”

“It is over,” I said.

“Angelina, please, no.”

“Show me.”

“I dare not.”

“Show me.”

“Angelina, please.”

“Show me,” I demanded, “or we are dead. I have given you my life, my soul, and you have given me nothing. Show me the whole of you now, and we shall remake our vows. Together. Forever. Now. Before it is too late.”

She retracted from me, hesitant. I could feel Her hold Her breath, tentative, fearful, as She waited. I remembered, when younger, on my odyssey across the country, jumping from a high waterfall into the river below, knowing for extended moment after moment that eventually I would jump, yet not jumping and not jumping. Fear kept me back, but it was pointless fear, for I knew that eventually I would proceed. She knew me so well that She called up that memory for me; She stood on the brink of self-revelation, and I held my breath to calm Her fear.

She stood apart, and once again I heard the voice, the words crystal-clear, saw the lips as they spoke into my ear. I saw my body twitch in its unearthly sleep, in its physical recognition of pleasure, even as it lay entwined within the gaudy shroud of the cold corpse. Once again She implored me to let things remain as they were. “It is perfect as it is, Angelina. Let us be so.”

I shook my head. “If you be Satan himself, I must know it.”

The music paused. The silence roared in the darkness. She drew Herself up to a thin line of ephemeral mist and waited. One beat, two beats—and then She disappeared. Slipped silently through.

The breath I held released in a sigh. I had chased Her away—

But my reaction was premature, for the next moment the universe opened, and as horror after horror assaulted all of my senses, I understood Her reluctance to show me the vileness of Her nature.

Each of my fears was openly acknowledged; the things that I held most disgusting were presented in all their lurid detail; insecurities and faults were pried open and stuffed with insult; the soft spots of my being were punctured, the crusty worldliness of my experiences merely a scab to be picked and left to bleed.

The horror of the assault left me too astonished to retreat, to defend myself, to ward off being pelted by these insidious table scraps of Hell. My newly probed and freshly peeled being was a ripe victim for the salty lashes that all but destroyed me.

It lasted but a moment, stretched to eternity, and when the last clash of cymbals died down and the holocaust had passed, I had been sliced to thin ribbons and laid to waste at the feet of She who had attacked me.

The darkness settled down, quieter than ever, no music, no sounds, all had been expended in the extravagance of the moment, there was nothing left. Anywhere.

And then the light touch of Her wispy fingers gently felt the bruises on my psyche and I moaned for Her to leave me be.

“Look at me, Angelina.”

What else could She do—there could be no greater condemnation than that which She had opened to me.

But wait. Those were my terrors, my horrors. Where were Hers? Where was Her revelation?

I turned my eyes toward Her, and at last I saw Her for who She really was. I thought She had pulled from me all the terror I owned, but upon seeing Her face, again terror ripped through me. And then amazement. And then hope.

Finally, finally, I understood. Of course I could never escape Her affections. How foolish I had been to ever try.

A younger, freer Angelina hooted with extravagant enthusiasm somewhere within my heart. And then I understood love, and freedom, and satisfaction—a satisfaction so deep, so adult, so solid and substantial, that the joy of our evening just past paled in comparison.

My joints were stiff when awareness sloshed through my body. I disengaged myself from Sarah’s cold embrace and opened the closet door, listening. Heightened senses were suddenly mine, as was the ability to mask pain through the use of internal music.

I showered, noticing a new posture of my body. My skin seemed to have a translucence about it; blue veins showed plainly. I no longer looked scrawny and unhealthy; I was lean and statuesque. Overnight, I had changed into a person worthy of worship.

I dried myself and combed my hair straight back, using Sarah’s comb. My face had gained years, wisdom, confidence, character features that were ever so handsome. I viewed my face for a long moment in the harsh light of the bathroom mirror, then turned out the light. In the dim glow cast by the moon and captured by the mirror, my cheeks and eyes hollowed in the shadow of prominent bones and ridges. The skin of my face was clear and unlined, pale and fragile. Yet it was strangely incomplete. Something was missing.

I returned to the bedroom closet. Sarah’s jaw was stiffening with the rigor, and it took all my strength and the high heel of one of her displaced shoes to open her mouth. With my fore­finger, I swiped the back of her tongue, bringing forth a thickening scoop of the elixir of life for which Sarah had no further use. Returning to the bathroom, I applied it slowly and carefully to my lips, evenly coating each curve, each nuance. Then I licked my white teeth and spoke softly to the new face, the starkly chiseled features that looked back to me, and I said, “Angelina,” watching the tip of my tongue show for the briefest of moments as the L came alive. Yes. It was Her. In my mirror reflection. These were the lips, the teeth, the tongue. Dark, wet, and seductive, the lips now had a total face to bring them true life.

She and I had become one—or was it always so?

“I almost gave up. In Santa Fe. We’d missed her and I tasted the disappointment of the waiting game, searching the newspapers, putting out bulletins to uninterested policemen, and knowing she’d probably slip us up at her next stop anyway. I knew someone else would carry on; I knew someone else would continue the search, I didn’t have to; I could go home.

“To what? To a stupid job in a boring town with my punk brother and my worn-out father?

“As much as I hated to admit it, Angelina had given me something to live for, something to look forward to, other than just living, growing old, and dying in Westwater.

“And I guess I was kind of afraid of catching her.

“But then that cop finally, finally fucking remembered that she said she needed to get to Red Creek, and it was right then that I knew Angelina’d changed. She’d turned, somehow, and she was looking for a place to rest, lick her wounds. A den. A hole.

“I smelled a wounded animal when I read that cop’s statement. A wounded animal is unpredictable. Angelina must have been delirious to talk to a policeman at all, much less tell him where she was going. Yep, I smelled a wounded animal, and when an animal’s wounded, you’ve got no choice but to track it until you find it. A wounded animal must be brought down.

“A wounded animal changes the whole hunt. It’s changed, insane, dangerous. Everything changes when you’re looking for a hurt one. There’s no time to lose, and no longer a choice. I was in for the duration, because I had chosen the hunt.

“Extinction is unnatural. Everything escalates. If an animal is not too far gone, it’ll go into heat, to try to breed before it dies.”