I posted comments and sent emails on Facebook when I clearly should have been watching the American football. Now everyone will know that I am that despicable outcast that does not luv the American football. I wuz not invited to any parties full of potato chips and beer and 49er fandom. I did not even know that there would be parties to miss because I did not even have the good graces to realize the football wuz happening!
It wuz today! Oh my godz! And I didn't know to scream stuff like "Go 9ers!" I didn't even know I should be posting scores in my status. I didn't even know the name of the opposing team. It is a ball fashioned from pigs skin that is not shaped like a ball but rather like an inflated vagina pictogram, or possibly a lemon. Very big mens will run with it and throw it and crash into each other to take possession of it. It's not a sport I likes.
I will tell you about the sportz I do likes.
I likes to watch the Christians being thrown to the lions. This is my favorite event. Also, I like it when the big mens are given pointy objects and made to fight to the death, and if they wont fight, then the lions eats them too. When the lions is full we bring out the bears. We don't want the bears to gets hurt so when the mens fight with the bears we don't let the mens have any pointy objects. Instead we roll the mens in honey and give them a football, then let the bears in. We call this "Goldrush Rugby."
When the bears is full we take away the footballs but keep the honey and bring in the South American ants. We don't want the ants to get hurt either, so we tie the mens to posts. We calls this event "Raisins on Celery." It's very slow but the mens screams the loudest in this event. We usually use this time to replenish our supply of krispy Kale Chips and refill our horns with mead. Then we plays some drinking games while we listen to the mens screaming and Katy Perry improvises a Merce Cunningham inspired dance routine in a skimpy patriotic outfit for the youngsters on a hovering stage above the field.
If Katy's not naked enough the kidz boo and then we chain Katy to the lego wall on the hovering stage and release the dragon. We never worry about the dragon getting hurt. He is bad ass. By then the ants is done and the field is cleared for the fireworks and laser show, but the people is already leaving the stadium or turning off the tv and posting the scores on Facebook:
Lions 30 Mens 0 Bears 10 Mens 0 Ants 4 Mens 0 Dragon 1 Katy Perry 0
Go Lions!
Then we run out into the streets to tip buses over and light them on fire. We play kick the can and freeze tag by the warm light, organizing teams in accordance with which corporations sponsored our technical educationz or put our party's politicians in power (as is their constitutional right) or issue our paychecks. Then those of us who don't need abortions (our constitutional right) or some cosmetic surgery head home for bed so we can get up for work in the morning. The rest beat feet to the clinics before they're closed for the midnight Taco Bell run.
"The price would be heavy," La Mujer said with a mixture of certainty and skepticism, the black curls clinging to her sweaty, tanned and rough cheeks as she leaned closer to Rose, the young white woman who sat in a wooden chair by the old kitchen table.
La Mujer’s eyes seemed to wax catlike for a moment, glinting yellow with flecks of orange and black as she spoke. Rose trembled despite the heat of the nearby hearth and pulled her handmade shawl tighter around her narrow shoulders. In the next moment, however, she had regained her determination and answered forcefully, thrusting onto the small round table a leather pouch that jangled with the promise of gold and silver.
"I can pay," she said through clenched teeth. Her pale complexion immediately flushed with red undertones and her auburn hair, once neatly combed in a tight bun, had fallen slightly, leaving strands of wavy hair dancing around her temples.
Seeing the young white woman speak with fire, La Mujer threw back her head and laughed for far too long. Just as Rose was wondering if the full-bellied cackling would stop, La Mujer slammed her hands down on the rickety table.
"Gold is fine for me, but I’m not the one who will extract the payment I’m talking about."
The candle between them flickered, coins spilled from the pouch and the younger woman flinched.
"Don’t waste my time," La Mujer spat. "You say it was El Cuervo that took your sister? Nothing from this world can touch him. He has very powerful dark magic. That is what you will need to defeat him, AND THAT comes with a very heavy price."
La Mujer fixed her stare intently upon Rose, looking for something inside those pale blue eyes.
"I understand," the young woman said at last.
"Do you?" La Mujer asked doubtfully.
"I would give my life. I would give anything that was mine to give. My soul? Is that what you want? Take it. What good has it ever done me?" Rose was shaking, now with anger rather than fear. "You say he has dark magick? Then give me darker magick. Do you hear me? Give me the devil himself to ride El Cuervo down and carry him back to hell!"
La Mujer smiled a mirthless grimace. The fire of the hearth cast shadows on the deep etchings around her eyes and cheeks, the light crawled over her scars of battle and the marks of the burning sun. She tapped her finger thoughtfully on the table and regarded the other woman for a moment.
"I know just the thing," she said, scooping up the bag of glittering coins and carrying them to the worn straw mattress in the corner.
When she had stuffed the treasure out of sight she went to the hearth that crackled and burst with licking flames. Using a pointed dagger she kept tucked beneath her stained rope belt, she scratched a large circle into the dirt floor just in front of the flames.
"Bring me that hat," La Mujer commanded, her hand gesturing to a black hat that hung on the wall.
La Mujer kept her eyes on the thick line of the circle as the young woman rose tentatively from the creaky chair. Rose walked quickly to the hat hanging to the left of the wooden door. Beside it a black linen sack dangled from another rusty nail protruding from the adobe.
As the younger woman reached for the hat something moved within the sack. On impulse, she quickly jerked her hand away, hastily snatching the hat.
"The cup too," La Mujer demanded.
"And the pitcher?" the young white woman asked.
"Just the cup."
La Mujer beckoned Rose into the circle and put the hat on the young white woman’s head. Her old, wrinkled hands took the cup and spilled the water onto the floor, emptying it completely outside the circle’s ring. Her eyes closed slightly, taking on a somewhat detached, distant look as she began murmuring something unintelligible.
She took the younger woman’s arm and pressed the pointed dagger into the soft white flesh near the underside of her elbow. Rose stifled a cry as the blood began to flow. La Mujer, still murmuring, swaying gently, caught the warm liquid in the earthen cup. When the cup was nearly full of Rose’s blood, she released her arm and licked the edge of the dagger, then placed it back beneath the rope belt wrapped around her thick waist. The younger woman clapped her white lace handkerchief over the wound and applied pressure, chest heaving, eyes shifting nervously from her arm to the cup.
La Mujer took the hat from Rose’s head. Raising it and the cup high, her murmuring increased to a fever pitch. The walls began to rattle and there was a deep, almost guttural drone that moved through Rose’s ears into her stomach and then out through her limbs.
La Mujer was vibrating softly, then her chest began to convulse, her arms and legs moved spastically in bursts and fits of energy. She held onto the cup, not spilling a drop as her full body heaved with the heat of flowing energy. Just as it seemed the little makeshift cottage held together with crooked nails, crumbling wood and adobe could endure no more La Mujer fell silent and a with a sudden gust the candle and the once roaring flames of the hearth were snuffed out.
There was a momentary darkness and then green flames sprang to life within the hearth. The young white woman gasped as the eerie light revealed a ghostly figure standing in the circle with herself and La Mujer.
"Amara," it whispered tenderly to La Mujer.
"Si, Damon, soy yo." She grinned
"Why have you called me?" The specter rasped.
"Porque carino, la mujer blanca paga su precio." Teeth flashing as her grin widened, she offered the cup to the specter’s lips.
As it drank the form became more material, its colors growing vivid and clear. The green of the flames slowly transformed and within moments, the hearth was restored.
Standing before them was a muscular young man with dark hair and blazing green eyes. His complexion was tanned, like La Mujer herself, but his cheeks were smooth and undamaged by sun and time. His clothing and boots were black leather and his spurs gleamed silver.
La Mujer placed the hat on his head. He flexed his hands and arms and smiled wryly at the young white woman with wide blue eyes.
"So," he said, "how can I be of service?"
"I want you to hunt down the man called El Cuervo."
As she answered she felt her legs buckle. The man in black caught her and steadied her.
"Hmm," he said, "his kind don’t die easy."
La Mujer laughed. "Lucky for her, your kind don’t die so easy either."
He looked the white woman up and down, noticed the purple and white print of her modest dress, the white lace frill along her neckline, the slight disheveled curls at her temples, the wound on her arm.
"What do you want Cuervo for?"
"He has my sister."
"You got a name?"
"Rose Evans"
"And your sister?"
"Grace"
"You just call me Damon." He turned to La Mujer, "Amara, my guns."
La Mujer left the circle and fetched the black linen sack from the wall. Returning, she dipped her hand inside and withdrew two thick rattlesnakes and set them hissing into Damon’s rough, outstretched hands. The snakes coiled eagerly around each of his arms and writhed their way into his empty leather holsters where they transformed into gleaming six guns.
"They will need to feed and you will need to feed. You understand mi querido? Your power and theirs will wane unless you take life. For you, it must be her blood…while she lives. When she is gone…" La Mujer shrugged, looking away into the flames. "But your babies there, they will have to kill, one way or another. The greater the prey, the more powerful they become. Understand? Just like old times."
* * *
Under the moonlight they rode in silence, Rose and Damon side by side. The desert cold was still around them. The stars shone brightly.
After hours of quiet, many miles of desert were spread between them and La Mujer’s adobe hut on the mountainside. The spectral gunman made into flesh by chant and blood inhaled deeply and sighed.
"Smell that night air. There’s something special about the air at night. The stars and moon, the silver light, they change me somehow. Make me new."
Rose nodded silently, looking up at the sky full of light. She stared again at the black horizon, her body full of chill.
She asked, "Are you sure we’re going the right way? I mean," she said hesitantly, "there are no tracks."
"No, no tracks Miss Evans, but I’m sure."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because I used to ride with Cuervo’s gang a long time ago. I know where home is, way down past the border, beyond the river in the land of the dead. I know where Cuervo likes to roost. They wouldn’t have gone straight home after taking your sister. They would have gone east a bit first, grabbing more white girls, burning more farms, taking what they needed, having what they wanted… so we’ll meet up with them eventually in the canyon. All the routes home funnel into the canyon. We’ll get there first and wait in the caves."
"You were one of them then?"
"For a while after the war."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"And how did you die? I mean, you are dead?"
"Was dead. Now, thanks to you, not so much. Cuervo’s woman; that’s how I died. I ran off with her and he came gunning for us."
"So you’ll have a chance for revenge," she said.
"Looks that way." They continued in silence for a while before he stopped by a tall lonesome mesquite and dismounted.
"Why are we stopping?" she asked scanning the deserted landscape for explanation. His answer stopped her cold.
"I need to feed."
* * *
Before crossing the Rio Grande they stopped in a small waste of a town. The dust covered buildings were rickety and slap shod. Light and noise roared from the saloon until they entered and then a hush consumed the place and all eyes fell upon the grinning hired gunman and sickly looking young woman. When the shooting started Rose Evans, already pale from blood loss, crouched under a table and covered her ears. When she came to again it was because Damon was pulling her from under the table. He put her on her dainty feet and pressed a decanter of brandy to her lips.
"You need something too," he said and led her to a wooden table where a round man in a vest sat gazing vacantly over a plate of meat and potatoes. A perfect bullet wound in the center of his forehead trickled blood. Damon pushed the corpse from the chair with his boot and gentle guided Rose Evans onto it.
"Eat up," he told her as she stared at the slab of meat.
She covered her mouth to prevent herself from retching and shook her head. The bloody scene came through to her in short bursts and she felt as though the room were spinning. Shoving the chair away from the table, she let it topple as she ran to the street outside and doubled over. It was starting to rain.
Damon joined her, un-tethering the horses and putting the reins of her mare into her trembling hand.
"I’ll be dead won’t I? By the time we meet Cuervo?"
Damon glanced at her and took a swig from the brandy, but said nothing.
"That’s the price," she continued. "You’ll take my life bit by bit and I’ll watch your guns take the lives of strangers. My soul, all that blood, on my soul. I never noticed I had one till now." Her hair was loose and wet and heavy under the weight of rain. Her face was pale, her blue eyes wreathed in shadow. "But you’ll save Grace, won’t you? Get her away from him. If you don’t kill him, at least get her away."
Damon lifted her onto the horse and took another swig before pressing the bottle into her hands. He looked radiant, almost godlike with his black leather clothes collecting moisture and clinging to his muscular frame. The six guns shone like lesser stars. They looked bigger and more menacing than they had in La Mujer’s hut. He swung onto his horse with one graceful leap and urged it forward as the thunder rumbled ominously overhead and a silver rod of lightning tore through the sky behind them.
* * *
They entered a short series of caves and waited. When Cuervo and his minions entered the narrow canyon, their raucous voices echoed through the red earth, stirring Rose Evans from troubled dreams. Damon pressed a finger to his thin, pale lips and they waited for the noise to die down. She drifted in and out of sleep for a while longer, waiting, waiting.
Was it a dream when she watched Damon un-holster one of his guns and let it slither onto the cave floor as a rattlesnake? Not a dream when he took a small drink from the tender wound on her arm? A scream. Then another.
"Vibora! Vibora! Aye!"
Gunshots ricocheting off the cave walls. Damon creeping away. More screams and gunshots. Terrible laughter. She pulled herself up and used the wall to steady herself as she crept towards the noise. The earth quaked and she stumbled to her knees, crawled a while, emerged into the main cavern.
There stood Damon, guns barking hungrily. Something was flying through the cavern screaming. A raven. A rattlesnake brushed against her hand, hissed at her and kept going. Against one wall a line of young women tied together in a train, mouths gagged, eyes wide.
And Grace. Not with the others, but standing among fallen bodies, searching for something, a pistol, pried from dead hands.
"Cuervo! La Mujer envia sus saludos!" Damon shouted with a grin. His gun barked and the bird fell from the air and landed with a heavy thud as a man.
"No!" Grace screamed, aiming the pistol at Damon and firing before running to the fallen man.
Rose stumbled towards her sister and tried to pull her away.
"Grace, Grace, it’s me."
"Rose? You?" Grace’s voice was full of disbelief as she hastily regarded her sister, then shoved her away. "Go home!"
"Grace, I came for you, to save you."
Damon and his guns were finishing the last few men. He seemed illuminated by shadow, if such a thing were possible, taller, more menacing than ever. Lightning flashed beyond the cave mouth.
"To save me? From what? From soaring above the world? From taking what I want when I want it?"
Grace was laughing, tears streaking her cheeks. Her pale hair hung loose over her shoulders as she kneeled to caress the face of the dead man before tugging his jacket off of him.
"I don’t understand." Rose said meekly as she watched her older sister.
"I’m Cuervo’s woman now," Grace said, "that’s all Rose." She continued pulling on the jacket and gently guided the dead man’s arms out of it. Without glancing at her sister she said, "you should have stayed home."
The jacket was covered in glossy black feathers that glistened as another flash of lightning illuminated the cave. Damon now stood silently as Grace slipped a ring from Cuervo’s tepid hand and placed it on her own. She kissed his cold lips, then bowed her head and shrank down.
In the blink of an eye Grace was gone and a raven leapt up screaming. It circled twice over Rose before flapping out of the gaping cave mouth into the canyon.
* * *
Rose awoke again on horseback, Damon’s arms encircling her.
"Grace?" she croaked.
Damon stopped the horse, slid down and lifted her off as well. He laid her gently upon the ground. The thirsty earth had already soaked up the rain, giving off a perfumed scent. It hardly felt moist against Rose’s back. The clouds were scattered like phantoms across the violet sky. The east glowed pink to herald the dawn.
"Grace is gone." Damon told her. "Soon you will be too."
"I know," she rasped through pale lips. "The others? The girls?"
"I cut them loose and pointed them towards the border."
They sat in silence for a time.
"You’ll fade too, won’t you?" Rose asked, her voice weak and brittle.
"By tomorrow night."
"What will you do till then?"
"I’ll say goodbye to La Mujer."
Pink was bleeding into the violet sky, seeping into it like ink from a spilled blotter, highlighting the clouds.
"She’s the one." Rose rasped after a moment. "The woman you stole from Cuervo."
"Yes," he said, his black eyes smiling, full of mischievous delight.
They sat in silence watching the sky slowly brighten. As the sun’s golden crown crested the horizon Rose pulled the soiled handkerchief from the wound on her arm and Damon took his last drink. A brown dove cooed softly in a nearby thicket of mesquite and coyote willow and a small shrew scampered to its den as the desert cast off the night and shone softly into wakefulness, brilliant, golden, and sharp.
Later, much later, Andrina was caught in the net of a fisher of men. She was a soulless thing like all of her sisters, except for the youngest who had earned hers through sacrifice. But when that priest looked into her eyes she felt a pang in her chest. What eyes they were, round and silver like moons with amber striations radiating from the darkness of his pupils. His hair too was silver streaked with black, like lightening flashing in a tempest, it hung long around his face, undulating as the sea in the brisk gale that blew over them, rocking the tiny boat. Helpless in his net, Andrina gazed back through long black lashes and the pale hair that hung limp and heavy around her face. She had never seen a priest before, and so his long black habit revealed nothing to her of his occupation, but it impressed her nonetheless. She had never seen a fisherman wear such a garment. He did not speak to her at all before he cast her back into the sea, and after following him and singing her most alluring song to no avail, she at last swam reluctantly back to the depths.
As the tides ebbed and flowed the pang in her chest grew into an unbearable torment. Creatures such as herself do not sleep, but they dream with eyes wide open, concealed in kelp forests whose swaying lulls them like a silent song. But her dreams were only of those eyes and the way he flung her into the sea and never looked back. She could not bear to dream, and soon could neither eat nor sleep. She found no pleasure in the arms of the sailors that she dragged into the watery abyss and sucked their last breath from them with deadly apathy.
Desperately, she followed her younger siblings' example. After arduous searching, she found the sea witch in her caverns, gumming the bones of dolphins and drowned children. The witch drew herself up out of the silt, stirring the water momentarily to muck. Then her one remaining golden eye locked onto the pale face of Andrina and she commenced to indulge in a laughter which began modestly but soon rumbled through the caverns, disturbing other dark things that once lay sleeping. “Another little mermaid tormented by love.” the witch gloated, “And with a priest, no less. This should profit me well.” “Love?” Andrina felt insulted. “I cannot love. I’m sick, witch, and I’ve come for a remedy.” “Silly thing.” the witch said rearranging some bones to form her magic circle. “You are sick with love. You were contaminated by that priest. You’re only hope is to make him love you back. You must seduce him if you wish to be released from your torment. I will do for you what I did for your sister. I‘ll give you legs. Now hurry and leave before you transform. I love to eat things that have legs. You have one year, and if he hasn‘t made love to you by then, I get to eat you anyway.” The witch quivered as she spoke this last line. Then her laughter swelled again, shaking slimy things from hidden crevices in the deep.
Andrina arrived with the storm, tossed onto the earth by titanic swells of white capped water. She hated the legs from the moment she stood on them and each step brought pain as though a dagger had been thrust into the arches of those horrible feet. Andrina dragged herself away from the angry mouth of the sea and staggered up the first path that presented itself, up to the church on the cliff. Above her the stained glass sparkled in the darkness, red and blue and gold, candle light flickering from behind so that the colors blinked like stars. The priest's boat was torn from the dock behind her and smashed in the waves while the wind howled and the icy rain pricked her flesh like needles falling from heaven. Naked and shivering, she burst into the chapel where her priest kneeled at the feet of the virgin. He turned as the doors were flung open and she limped, wild eyed and chest heaving, across the threshold to collapse in a pale heap. With the same somber attitude with which he had cast her out of his net, the fisherman priest rose and shut the chapel doors against the storm. When he lifted her from the floor, Andrina wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips against his, but the priest held still as though a snake were at his feet, his lips unyielding. Then very slowly and gently he pulled his head away from hers as she lost consciousness again.
Having never slept before, Andrina lost a week to slumber in the priest's bed. When at last she awoke he fed her broth and bread, things she had never tasted, things that made her stomach sour. He tried to speak to her, but though her eyes remained fastened to his, she could not understand a word that spilled from his tongue. She tried to kiss him again, but he pushed her sternly, though gently, away.
He converted a store room into quarters for her and showed her how to stuff her own mattress with straw and scented flowers. He made her wear a scratchy gray dress and showed her how to draw water from the well. She was made to kneel before the altar with him several times a day. He attempted to teach her to speak his language though she could scarcely manage to feign interest in the coarse sounds that he uttered. He taught her to tend the garden, but things of the earth withered in her care. He built a new fishing boat and took her out with him, and here she excelled. She would cast the net and sing in her own tongue until it was heavy with fish. After discovering this talent he sent her to fish alone and tried to teach her to sing his own music. She would not look at anything written on paper, but he taught her to repeat after him and was amazed by the perfection of her memory. She could perform complex melodies if he sang them or played them for her on the organ but once.
Thus routines were established and Andrina fell into step with her priest, each footfall filling her body with searing pain. Every Sunday he rang the bell and one old woman would trek up the path and take a seat in the pews to listen to the mass and take the sacrament and hear the priest play the organ as Andrina sang. Andrina grew weaker with each passing day. The priest was immune to her physical charm. His eyes were more hypnotizing than her own, his passion distilled into religious fervor. Only her voice could reach him and this he bent into his songs of worship, his will stronger than her heart. Andrina’s pale hair grew brittle and her eyes lost their sparkle. There were days when she could not move about without the assistance of a cane, and yet worse days dawned when she could not rise from bed at all. Her priest ministered to her then and she followed his eyes with her own, as entranced as if she were in the kelp forests of her home.
The seasons passed, 1, 2, 3, 4 and the old woman from town died. Her casket was carried up the cliff by two men with coarse faces and tight fitting suits. They lowered her into the ground and left the way they had come, walking stiffly down the dusty road. Andrina, supported on her cane, watched them go and thought of how she would like to draw them down into the darkness and suck their last breath from them. The priest prayed for the old woman and buried her and made Andrina come into the chapel and sing. His language was beginning to make sense to her. “Ashes to ashes.” she heard, “dust to dust.” It terrified her that she could understand this, she who had once been immortal, she who was now running out of time.
That night, she slipped into her priest's bed and he flung her out, just as he had flung her from his net eleven moons ago. He made her kneel with him and prayed for her forgiveness and salvation the rest of the night. As the dawn broke over the sea outside and peeked through his small window he clasped her face in his hands and said: “My child, god's love is infinite. Seek his love, not mine. The flesh will die, your immortal soul will go on at his side if you abide by his commandments and do his work.”
Andrina formed her mouth awkwardly over the words leaving large gaps between each utterance: “My flesh was im-mortal…I lost that to be at your side. I have no soul. Your love is my on-ly salvation, since you caught me in your net. Save me, please, save me, my love.” she wept and the priest, taken aback by her first words since her arrival, turned pale and released her warm cheeks. He clambered to his feet and left her alone on the cold stone floor.
Andrina went out in the boat and sat upon the sea weeping. The wound in her chest had only grown in the months that had passed. She whispered farewell to the sea and the long life which now seemed like a distant dream. She wondered if it had been real at all, or if she had always been a mortal creature, the crippled daughter of a fisherman perhaps, weak minded and fanciful. She wondered if she might escape the witch’s appetite by running from the sea and settling inland, she wondered if she would die somewhere surrounded by stone and root and if some priest would lower her stoically into the earth mumbling about ash.
At that moment the sea hissed and bubbled near the small boat and a black dagger broke the surface of the water, a pale hand wrapped around its barnacle encrusted hilt. As the knife rose into the cool air the sea quieted beneath it and Andrina could see the face of her sister, Arista, just under the shimmering surface, black hair radiating from around the pale oval like the rays of a dark sun. Andrina recognized the dagger that had been cast away by their strange youngest sister long, long, ago in the moment of her sacrifice. Andrina herself had been the one to place it in her hand. Now it was Arista who offered it up. Trembling, Andrina seized the dagger, her finger tips brushing against the cool slick flesh of her sister’s hand before Arista sunk back into the depths. Andrina concealed the dagger under her dress and turned the boat back to shore.
The priest was gone for most of that day. Andrina waited for him in the chapel, but would not kneel at the feet of the virgin. She paced and felt the bite of the earth sting her feet. As dusk approached she nearly gave up hope that he would return, but then he came into the chapel looking pale and weary. She limped to him and shaking he pulled her against his chest. For a moment the pain in her heart was eased, almost transformed to euphoria, but then he spoke into her hair, the heat of his breath touching her scalp: “My child, my vow is to God. I can do nothing to break my covenant with him.” She tried to turn her face up to kiss him. “Save me, please.“ she begged, but he held her until she stopped struggling, “No!” he cried fiercely though softly, “What you ask for is not saving, you would damn us both!” The sun was slipping away behind the stained glass, leaving them wrapped in gloom. The moon would rise soon. She fell limp in his arms and wept for a moment longer. Her hand was wrapped around the dagger's hilt as she spoke into his chest: “I will not die for your God.” She plunged the knife into his belly and he gave a little startled cry as he crumpled heavily around her. “Now you can feel my love, as I have felt yours.” she whispered. The chapel doors blew open, a sudden gust coming up from the sea. Andrina pushed her priest off of her onto the stone floor where he lay bleeding and gasping like a fish. She took hold of the hem of his habit, and wincing from the pain in her feet, she dragged him out of the chapel and onto the dirt path.
Storm clouds were gathering over the sea and the lightning flashed over the water. Silver against black, like his hair. She pulled him through the dust, ashes to ashes, down the path cut in the cliff, the dagger lodged in his belly, his blood spilling into the earth as they went. The moon was rising, silver over the water, like his eyes, as she stumbled and fell and crawled still dragging him behind her. Her knees were torn by the rocks so that she too bled and her blood mixed with his and with the earth. On the beach she struggled to her feet and dragged him into the surf, then collapsed with him where the sea met the land. She wrapped her arms around him and sang her most alluring song to him, waiting for the waves to pull them free. The mouth of the sea opened hungrily around them and swallowed them up, pulling them into the deep. Now Andrina gave him her kiss, drawing him down, down, down with her into the inky depths, far beyond the place that nets can reach, mortal dreams peeling away from them in their descent. She was a soulless thing like all of her sisters, except for the youngest who had earned hers through sacrifice, but when that fisher of men looked into her eyes it left a wound in her heart that not even eternity could heal.
“Elizabeth.” Even before she opened her eyes, she could see the contradiction. The softness of her mother’s hazel eyes that mixed like a winding snake through the stern tone that only slightly dimmed the sparkle in her gaze. “Elizabeth. It is time to wake from your dreams. Let the colors rest, they will reappear once again when the sky turns dark. Elizabeth, I want you to listen to me. Today is a new day, yesterday on the eve of the solstice you began your first blood. Now is the time of change. It will never again be as it was.” With sleepy eyes, she looked at her mother, regal in her flowing gown of black and gold satin. Yards and yards of fabric draped from her shoulders. Her large breasts bulged slightly beneath the dress, but those were the only clothes the eye could see. every other inch of her, even her ankles and toes were buried beneath her soft gown. An inch tall golden crown ringed the top of her head and a ruby stud stood like a drop of blood atop each earlobe. Her mother walked towards her bed from the open arc of the doorway she had stood beneath. “These are yours now Elizabeth, these are the earrings of blood. The gift your grandmother left to you, the gift you will one day leave to your granddaughter, for the blood is the gift of all women. It is the river of life, the red current that flows from your legs.” She looked into the eyes of her mother, the eyes which were so soft and green, the eyes that smiled at her with the ever-flowing love of a glimmering waterfall. But there was something else, perhaps a sadness, something that Elizabeth had never seen, a sort of pain that leaked from the deepest cracks and fell into her open eyes. She looked from her mother’s eyes to her open hand. In it were two ruby stud earrings, the same as her mother now wore. A lone red stone on a simple gold pin. Red the color of blood, of fresh cut life. “Wear them,” her mother said. “They are a symbol of what you now carry, of what you can now do, of the power you now have. They are the symbols of a new time. You are new, not as you once were. You are different and the court will now see you as such. Your dolls must be put away, today, all the things of your girlhood will go, you are now an empress.” The words stung and prickled the place between her own growing breasts, she looked up and saw the weight of them in her mother’s eyes, then she looked around the room. It was a girl’s chamber, the only place in the entire walled compound that was entirely her own. Pink curtains hung from the series of tall glass windows that overlooked a green countryside. In the corners of her room were the mountains of stuffed animals she still played with and occasionally cuddled at night. There was her collection of dolls on the wooden shelves. Her eyes scanned the room until they settled on the dress hanging over the back of a chair. Her mother looked at her, then to the chair with the pink velvet dress draped over it. “The dress will have to go too.” She turned to look at her mother, turning her head more slowly than she ever had. “No,” she said in a careful tone, “please, not the party dress. It’s the only thing I want. You can take everything else, just please, do not take it away.” There was absolute pleading in her eyes. A desperation in which her mother would never be able to forget. And though her heart hurt, she pulled the words out. “It’s a symbol of your girlhood, Elizabeth. How will you be an empress, how will you learn to rule if you cannot separate yourself from the things of girlhood?” “I’ll be able to do everything, as you have told me before, much of what we do comes from the inside, not from what we wear.” “It is both Elizabeth. It is how others see us, as well as how we see ourselves. As you begin this new path, there cannot be any confusion within you. You must be clear of your purpose. The dress might only confuse you. You are now a woman and an empress.” They both turned to the dress, a mess of pink fabric and layer upon layer of a lacy white petticoat. Her mother spoke without turning her head. “Your first blood has come Elizabeth. It is time for you to understand the change as deeply as the rest of us understand it. The dress is of your girlhood, as are the toys. This is a new phase, the true change will come from within you, you must understand it and come willingly to your destiny.”
I looked in my rear view mirror and saw the blue edge of the continent in the reflection. It was a thick line of deep blue. Up the hill I went, further and further from the breaking waves and clans of surfers and screams of the dingy boardwalk. "The city on a hill,” what they called the university of Santa Cruz. I passed the west entrance and kept going. The road began to curve and twist through the incoming forest that seemed to emerge in an instant. Green and black and holding secret promises. In the thicket were animals that refused to show themselves and caves that I had only heard about. I drove on. I was looking for the right place. I wasn’t sure exactly where it was, but I kept driving, passing plenty of pull-outs on the road. Sometimes, as I approached one of these flat dirt spots, I would press on the break slowly and look to the right, surveying the land and trees, but then I wouldn’t move, I wouldn’t turn the wheel to the right and the car would keep on going. The sky was a bright blue and through the open driver’s window I felt the crisp air of an approaching fall. The day held the promise of cool wind and yellow leaves, but for a moment, perhaps just for this one day, we could all pretend that summer still lingered and the sun would be ever-present. I saw a black car parked on the long pull-out ahead. The road had straightened momentarily. The “parking lot” was a three hundred foot long space, just wide enough for a single car. The earth was a bright tan dust. On the right was a metal fence that was held between thick dark wooden posts. I saw the aerodynamic car empty and waiting. Usually the sight of another car or person would have made me keep driving, I wanted privacy. But something about the sight of it pulled me in. I found myself turning the wheel to the right and pressing on the brake pad. The car came to a stop under my command and I pulled the keys from the ignition. I sat. It was very quiet. The left side of the road was lined by thick pine trees that grew out of an elevated conglomeration of rocks and earth. The right was a narrow field of dried grass and weeds. They were nearly four feet tall. Behind them was a wall of tall pine trees that stretched into the mountains. There were a couple of narrow paths that began at the edge of the road and disappeared into the trees. I picked the one closest to me and headed in carrying a large gray sweatshirt and a woven purse.
I walked, deviating from the trail once I was beneath a ceiling of green pine needles. I let my body lead the way until I saw a thick trunk that called to me. The earth was slightly elevated at its base, but yet flat enough for me to sit upon. I leaned against the bark, on a thick pad of leaves and very thin twigs. There was sap and decomposing yellow needles. It was the smell of earth. The smell of the cycle. I let it fill me. I nearly cried with the warmth of it, with the calmness of the elements. The earth and tree were like the loving arms of a mother I might never have had. Without thought or judgment, I felt them holding me. “Will you help me?” I asked the tree. “Will you please take all the sadness and fear that I have? Can you take it out of me and transform it into oxygen?” I leaned into the giant beauty. The old man. The calm wonder. I imaged a backwards flow, a multi-channeled river that escaped through my back and head, taking with it all the sadness and anxiety my muscles had held for a week. The bark was solid and strong, I heard thoughts inside, “how come you don’t do this more often? It feel so nice.” The bark was scratchy and soothing. I let a tear roll down my cheek. “Please take what I don’t need.” I imagined the flow of tension move into the tree, up the trunk, into the branches and needles and disperse into clean oxygen. There were birds somewhere in the thick canopy of pine needles above my head, but my eyes were closed and I could not see them. Their sounds were pretty and trebly and short, I imaged little birds with thick breasts. I leaned against the tree for a while until I felt the moment was right. I opened my eyes. The day was bright, the sky was a bright blue. I could feel the cold wind coming, but we still had a little more time. Rays of light shone though the branches and warmed my thighs. On my lap was a gray hooded sweatshirt with the word INDEPENDENT across the front in a thick red font. I picked it up and held it to my nose. It smelled of him. The faintness of his Tommy cologne I liked so much, vaguely smelling of grapefruit. I inhaled again, there was sweat and fabric softener. Its softness soothed my face. I imagined his eyes and lips. I let another tear run across my cheek. I put it back in my lap and cleared the blanket of needles and twigs from a small space in front of my crossed legs. I found the deep brown earth, then I dug my fingers into it, making a small shallow hole. I pulled out the knife from my pocket. I held the silver blade to my finger. I tried a couple of times to force it through my skin, but it only left a faint indent on my flesh without the gash of red that I needed. I unfastened the safety pin that I always wore on my pant’s pocket. It was small and not created for this purpose, but it did the job. I just needed a little bit of blood. I pushed the tip into the pad of my pink index finger. A small red bead formed. I watched it drop into the small hole within the earth. It disappeared into the soil. I thought of his face. I tried to feel him in his cage. I remembered his smile. I pulled the sweater over my shoulders and wore it. I imagined his skin. I imagined the shape of his shoulders in the sweatshirt and the way he would wear the hood when he was cold. I took a deep breath again and smelled the remains of him. My back fell into the tree once more and I asked it again to take what I didn’t need and transform it. I imagined his DNA within my blood. I imagined a small part of him fusing with the earth. I pulled out a small piece of paper and a pen from my purse. I wrote a few lines about him and us and what I wanted and hoped for. I wrote it quickly, letting my hand move nearly as fast as my thoughts. I folded it and held the flame of a lighter to it. The ashes fell into the hole with the fallen drop of blood. I sat for a while longer, feeling the steadiness of the tree holding me close to the earth. I covered up the hole and placed some stones over it. Then I stood and began to walk back to my car.
The ambulance door is open and I can see a stretcher with a woman upon it. She lays on her back, her heavy head is tilted to the side. Outside, the day is bright with the light of early morning. The ambulance is parked haphazardly on the dark asphalt, the drivers having ignored the fading parking lines. The emergency vehicle is white, which startles me for some reason, I thought ambulances where red…but maybe that’s just a backward memory. I look to the massive bridge in the near distance. The mouth of its giant body is half a block away. Its gaping form connects this land mass to the less populated city on the other side of the bay. The bridge is old and its design is more crude than the streamlined bridges being built today. Its dark steel structure has grown almost purple with the daily beating of sun and water vapor. Its immediate closeness lends a strangeness to the neighborhood. The constant coming and going. No commitment, just movement. My intellect searches for a more concrete reason to explain my anxiety about the bridge, but the answer lays not only in the bridge, but also in this abandoned industrial zone. There are vacant lots of grass surrounded by chain link fences, empty parking lots with dry weeds pushing from the cracks. Scattered among the dead brush are some small yellow flowers that have offered themselves to the sun. Overhead, there are crisscrossing concrete overpasses, and the freeways create geometric shadows upon the empty lots. I know this is just a small pocket of desolation. A couple of blocks away, there is a thriving metropolis with car horns blasting and pedestrians that fill the streets, but here, where I stand, there is no one. This is not the quiet and tranquility of an olive grove, here, the lack of life seems purposeful. The violence here is silent. The killings and drugs are hidden. It is close, but hidden from sight. The silence is heavy, waiting for a gunshot or a scream to fill the space. Despite the daylight, I sense lurkers in the shadows. At any moment, I expect to see Spiderman leaping from the rooftop of a crusty warehouse that litters the landscape. Old buildings, relics from a time of industry and financial progress. The entrepreneurs are gone and the night creatures have moved in to fill the shadows and empty lots. I expect they will find bodies near the bridge tonight. I turn to the ambulance, a woman with light red hair is on the stretcher, she lays on a puffy pillow and her body is covered with a white sheet. She has many clothes on her torso, she is dressed for day in mid fall with her sweatshirt and gloved hands, not the day that whispers of heat and sunshine. She is propped on a pillow, but her head is tucked close to her chin and has dropped to her right shoulder. There are two people in white doctor’s jackets. A man sits on a chrome stool within the ambulance, in between the woman’s legs. A female assistant stands further in beside him. No one sees me. The woman is pregnant, but I see no belly lump. She has a bit of blood on her mouth, a smear of red over her lips and covering the pale skin of her upper lip. She winces and cries out softly. Intuition tells me she has requested an abortion. She moans again softly. I stand still, locked in a position of curiosity and fear, I thought it was a painless procedure, but she seems to be hurting. Her brow is wet, her straight shoulder length hair is pasted to her face, covering her face in prison bars of red hair. Her eyes are just slightly open, through the small slits I can barely discern the whites within. I turn to the doctor and his assistant. The man is leaning in. His face is turned from me, and only his graying hair and large white hands are obvious. He looks like a large man, probably at least 6 ft when standing. The woman beside him is much younger, probably only twenty-five at the most. She stands elegant and tall, her black hair is pulled back from her eyes and falls past her shoulders. The man leans into the space between the woman’s legs, scooping and pulling and sucking her insides. The blood around her mouth has grown to bigger, covering her chin and nose. The doctor is using force, a lot of force. It seems more than necessary and as I stand there, I realize he is trying to hurt her. He is not just pulling out the fetus, as she wanted, he is pulling out her uterus, scrapping the soft walls of her womb with hard metal instruments and doing it painfully hard. He wants her pain. She is a baby killer. My stomach churns, these are not doctors, they are members of an anti-abortion group that have managed to disguise themselves. The two “doctors” begin to talk amongst themselves. The woman on the stretcher is suddenly wide awake, her eyes are opened wide with fear, revealing the blue irises and exterior white. She is scared and stunned, but unable to move or scream. With a sudden knowledge, she realizes she has been poisoned and has had all her insides removed. She gasps and collapses further into the pillow. Her breath is gone and she is still. I look closer at her face, it is nearly covered in blood. The two infiltrators move close to her face. Standing above her, the man grips a sponge, squeezing blood onto the woman’s already red features. The assistant opens her cupped hands, releasing a thick white liquid that mixes easily with the blood. I stand paralyzed, unseen, wondering if I am actually here. Wondering, in the midst of this theater of violence, what my role is, what my role was, what my role could be.
