October 27

 

Time Unknown

 

 

…First are the smells, my head is flooded not just with the scent of cooking meat from the apartment below but the half-wrapped chocolate bar I left on my desk, the jasmine soap from the bathroom and the odd chemical tang of dishwashing liquid and detergent from the kitchen (and how is it possible I’ve never noticed before how intense that is and how it grates), I can feel every fiber of the carpet beneath my bare feet and the air on the skin of my arms and face and the sounds—so many, so loud—the sounds of music thumping from somewhere nearby, a helicopter whup-whup-whupping overhead and a bass rumble which it takes me several seconds to identify as my own heartbeat and I still taste the wine I drank an hour ago and the brightness of my computer screen nearly forces me to turn my head away but it’s glorious, a fire that glows unlike any we’ve seen before-and it is “we” now, because I share these wonders with another who has fit into me like a sleek hand into a glove, I can feel the energy she brings with her throbbing and pushing fire through my limbs and she tests them, moves my arms and then my legs and we’re outside, running through the October night, no shoes but it doesn’t matter because nothing can hurt us, not the speeding cars that we leap away from, clearing the hood of a parked truck as easily as stepping over a bump in the ground, we run, reveling in the rush of our own blood as it flows through muscles that she has made flexible and fit, it’s not just the particle-thickened Los Angeles air we can feel on our flesh and within our lungs, but we can feel the veil, too, the membrane that separates our worlds, we can almost glimpse what lies beyond it, the grimacing sidh and the shadowy dead ones, the things with shifting form like smoke and with black hearts that seek to suck and devour, and we see how thin that veil is, because it’s almost the end of the month (of summer, and of the year), it’s only a few nights from Samhain, when that skin will be thinnest, and one with craft—one like a Druid—could reach past, yet that world doesn’t interest us right now because we’ve heard something coming from one of the intersecting streets ahead of us, a voice raised in anger, and that tone reacts within her like a flammable chemical set on fire so we follow, moving so quickly that the houses and apartment complexes and parked cars are a blur, we run three blocks to where the buildings are a little older, a little more in need of repair, and coming from a bottom-floor apartment is the voice of a man shouting obscenities at a woman, who offers nothing but weak, sobbing responses, and we draw closer, standing outside the door of the apartment, listening, and something within crashes and shatters, and the woman cries out, and then the door is flying open (it was so easy to break its flimsy lock), and there’s a man, young, heavyset, wearing a stained T-shirt, drawing back a fist, but the woman is already bleeding from the nose, her eyes wide as she sees us, and he turns and swings at us instead; we catch the blow and laugh at the expression on his face as we squeeze his hand, grinding the fingers against each other until he screams; we force him down while the woman stands back, silent now, staring in disbelief; with our other hand we strike him again, in the temple, and he wobbles but doesn’t fall, and I know one more blow will kill him and we’re pulling back our arm a second time, and I know I can stop this now, I can take control and we can leave, return home before we take this man’s life, leave him to prey upon her until she dies at 28 or 32 or (unlikely) 40, beaten down and used up, but I don’t stop it, I want to feel this happening, to rid the world of this abuser and to know what death feels like; so I let her draw back our fist and bring it down again and this time his eyes roll up and he falls like a butchered steer, and we can no longer hear his breath or his heart so we know he’s dead, and we turn to the woman, and  I understand that by tomorrow she will describe us as a male, six feet tall and tattooed, and we turn to leave, half-drunk on violence, and her influence is ebbing as she takes us home again on middle-aged legs that pump now with a failing rhythm, as we reach home I notice the blood on my fingers and the panic I feel is mine alone and she leaves then, and in that instant, when all that she brought with her is suddenly taken from me, my legs give way and my eyes lose focus and…