Finger of Obsidian

By Peter Jansen

> The wind moaned in the eaves like a mother grieving for a lost child, and sporadic drops of rain tattooed the window glass.  Night's conquest had left the land permanently lightless, and from all around came the sounds of squid-faced workers erecting buildings and then tearing them down.  They knew of no routine other than this.  The window blinds were only half drawn, and the starlight that entered the room in an ethereal shaft lit upon the face of the sleeper and made it elfin, graceful, unutterably beautiful.  It was a face made for laughter and tears, joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats, beginnings and endings.  It was not the face of vanity or pretence, rather the very embodiment of virtue in all its splendour.  It was the face of long-gone heroism and ancient unspoken valour, but lacking the lines of aged taciturnity.  Moreover it was not the face of the tempting Serpent, nor that of one its vile underlings of the crawling kingdom.
The sleeper lay underneath the blanket while machines breathed for her and monitored her vitals signs, and the pillows which supported her bandaged head were adorned with talismans and religious icons, things of hope and power, buttons, flowers, pictures, medals, brooches, poetry, prayer.  Her hair aspired to the high lustre of burnished gold, and her face was as pale and round as the moon which, bashful that night, hid behind a conspiracy of clouds.  There were two empty chairs at her side, blue molded plastic, space-age things, and on one lay a mother-of-pearl rosary.  On the other lay a hand-carved jade crucifix, in graved with INRI by the hand of a master.  The room was small and rectangular, and the hemmed cotton sheets were drawn up over the twin swells of her breasts as if painted there by Van Gogh.  Her arms lay at her side, the muscles limp, the fingers lax and straight.  Her breaths were regular and measured.  She was in the room between the hospital wings, a room! between the worlds, hovering at death's door with her hair blowing in the wind, watching the restless dance of the dust-devils, watching the shimmering aurora borealis, poised on the threshold to the stellar birthing room.  She heard her name being called from far away, on two separate vectors, on two different planes.  Cosmic loneliness in the borderland between this realm and the next had claimed her survivor's heart, armoured as it may have been, guarded as it may have been.  She was acutely aware of her solitude in a strange country.  She was acutely aware of what demons might do to her in an attempt to erase her beauty and was frightened, yet at the same time exalted, for she was climbing to the summit under divine guidance, under the watchful eye of He Who Goes Before.  The door stood open, and beyond it was light.
The sleeper was loved.  She had been christened in starlight.  The shadows fell on her in alternating horizontal bands, fingers of obsidian delivering a lover's caress, but of a different nature than that delivered by the wind; the wind's diaphanous touch was eros and not fondness.  The crickets, barely audible over the steady hum and hiss of machinery, offered their condolences, having given up already, without much of a struggle, which was typical of them, albeit bitter.  Outside, the corridors teemed with the potted gift rosebushes of multitudinous well-wishers and fountains of sympathy.  The sleeper was marred, marked, defiled, branded, scorned by the gods.  She had been bloodied and broken, bruised, used, a flaccid marionette in some madman's idea of children at play.  The contusions were large and elliptical, mottled purplish-bluish-black, things of broken dermis and burst capillaries.  She was a mutant of the mind, crestfallen, pitiable, weak as a kitten.  She had in! dulged in the pleasures of the flesh: sex, drugs, and murder, and it had made her laugh.  She had been a teller of tales, a bewitching babe-of-the-woods, one who had lain coiled and waiting, fanged and clawed, to spring from inside Pandora's box when another opened it.
The night was ebony, deepest ebony, and her soul was the antithesis of this night.  The pilot lights of the life-support equipment were the eyes of rabid rodents, peering out of the dark, tails twitching, gnawing through lathing and insulated wires, spreading the plague in the holds of sailing ships.  The respirator sustained her body, but could not recapture her mind.  Her mind was untethered, free-floating, discorporated.  Her mind was unfettered, unchained. She had slipped into coma painlessly, and did not wish to return, although she held the key and was gazing into the lock.  The place of coma was soft and warm and satisfying, and without the hateful barbs and stings of incarnate life.  The place of coma was her Valhalla.  The cicadas proffered her name to the stars. Her name --Desiree-- reverberated in the celestial ballrooms and banquet halls, the meeting places, the eating places, the dancing places.
At the end of the corridor of rosebushes, a door opened, seemingly of its own accord.  A presence passing through incited the flowers to bloom anew, infusing them with new life, harmonized, vibrant, triumphant.  The angel was a living lightning rod, charged and jittering with the adrenals of Zeus.  The roses bowed their heads in thanks as he passed.
At the end of the other corridor, a second door opened, but the creature which passed through it was base and fallen, a thing of darkness.  The roses shrivelled and died when he passed.  His breath was pestilence, his mission sombre.  The wilting petals pinwheeled to the linoleum under the demon's poison touch.

Angel and demon locked eyes.

Wave and particle.

Angel and demon.

A mutual singularity of purpose.

A sunburst of fate.

Desiree was free at last.
Comments for Peter Jansen? Email him:jansenm@sympatico.ca