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It’s a strange thing – this world, this life, this action-turned-tradition of sitting across from the devil and spilling your soul like blood into his open hands. He accepts your offering with a look in his eyes that tells you that he will honor you, honor every part of you, and you know that there is no turning back from here, from this moment.
You’ve defined your life by memories that stick like bright gold stars in the painted darkness of your mind. Sitting on the boat with your father, passing him a screwdriver amidst the bleakness of the roiling waters of the sea. Failing tests you should have passed, tripping against the barriers of your mind, set to the backdrop of snow and sleet, white so stark against the dark moonlight. Sitting here in this room, whispering words you did not know you knew how to speak, set to the chorus of a mourning song.
And you remember your nightmares, your dreams plagued by haunting figures and haunting words, and you have always struggled with sleep but this is a new level of fear, and you find yourself going nights without closing your eyes. It is far worse to close your eyes than to lie awake all night.
Sometimes, in the darkness as well as in the light, a voice speaks, unbidden, in your mind, the timbre shaking you and the softness reaching every corner of your brain, every cell. The voice sounds like freedom yet cages you, keeps you from the promised salvation. You untie yourself from want and wish and tether yourself to this voice, to your becoming.
You wade into the quiet of the stream, into the silence that you can no longer feel, and you let the voice carry you through the current. You used to define your freedom as escaping the voice, escaping the man who has torn your already-frayed life apart, string by string. You’ve long since given up your freedom, because you know now that your freedom is an unattainable goal. Freedom now feels like the string that ties you to the voice, to the man, and it is no longer your freedom, but your freedom with him. You have written this distinction in the sand, and nothing but the waves can wash it clean.
Your bones seek the water like your hands seek violence, and you find yourself and lose yourself in the desire. You find beauty in blood, and you know this is the voice’s doing, the man’s careful words and soft intonation like a spell, a prayer. You do not know if he wishes for you salvation or damnation. You do not know what these words mean to him.
He is the devil. He is smoke.
And smoke he is, and the devil he is, and you do not know what that makes you or the string tethering you to him. The world has long since turned strange, and morality far stranger. You would have rebelled at this man’s hands on you once, but now you reach for him.
You know how this memory will shine through your mind. His hands on you, his blood mingling with yours, the absence of space between. And the stars shine into the darkness, and the blood is dark, and the blood is all you see. The stars seem almost hidden from your eyes.
Your bones still seek the water, and your hands’ desire for violence has been sated. All you feel is warmth, and you feel the string that tethers you to him tighten, pull you closer, chest against chest. It is freedom that calls you now, and you hear nothing but his voice and his breath, and there is a strange sweetness in your mouth, and you know that this is where it ends. There is nothing left for you, or for him, except to fall. You have long since bitten the fruit, the juice running down your chin, your arms, and he may imagine himself the devil or the savior, and you know now that your place is at his side.
The descent is as sweet as the ascent, and the water soaks into your clothes and into your bones, and you breathe in salt and sky and darkness, and you reach, reach, reach for him.