In the Shadow of the Temple

Mother told me not to go there, ever, so how could I resist?

They called the shadow of the temple dangerous. Beneath that great spire next to the sprawling globe of roofing tiles – intricately carved with the graven images of beasts and flowers – the suns could not reach. The soil in the shadow lay untouched, dark, and damp. There were stories of giant worms that reached up and grabbed young souls foolhardy enough to trespass into that forbidden stretch of land. Some said the shadows of the dead roamed there, hungry for flesh. Others said it was something more mundane, a kind of sickness, or possibly a flesh eating bacteria that thrived there thanks to the lack of light. But no matter who told the stories, the outcome was always the same: No one ever came back alive.

The interior of the temple always clamored with life. The monks and abbesses walked from window to window, maroon shadows cloaked in red hoods and turbans darkened by the lack of light.  They sang their harmonious hymns to gods that few of us outside the temple knew or could ever understand. They planted the sun-kissed lands in front of the temple and grew crops. Because they loved us, they kept enough in their storage barns to feed all of us in the village in case there was another drought or another famine.

I hitched up my skirts and walked forward. I paused to examine the land from my vantage upon a hill. From here, it just looked dark. The stretch of land sat still, unmoving, unthreatening.

I thought of Mother, of all the things she told me never to do: never to go out with boys, never to give my heart, never to kiss. When I told her that Kamine had died from an infection from a stubbed toe, she shrugged and told me I was better off. But I wasn’t. I thought of his lips, those lips that never kissed mine. She said boys stole hearts and crushed souls. And I couldn’t argue that my soul felt crushed, but I couldn’t blame Kamine. I would have willingly given him my heart and soul just to hold the memory of one unimagined kiss.

I started walking down the hill. The grass gave way to rocks. The rocks gave way to sand. My feet slipped and I lost a shoe. I reached down to grab it, but it was already gone, sucked down beneath the moving sand of a sand trap. I tread carefully, watching for the other sand traps that littered the waste. They were easy enough to see for the most part, tiny rotating things. I knew some of the sand traps were larger, and harder to see because they moved in larger swirls. Those were the ones that a person really had to watch out for. The large ones are the ones that would suck down more than a shoe. They would suck you down whole, enveloping you too quick to be heard if you screamed.

I looked behind me and saw my sister. She was watching me in silence, crying. I wanted to tell her to go back, to not watch, but I didn’t want any of the adults to see me. I didn’t want to draw their attention. If the adults saw me, they would surely try to stop me.

At the edge of the shadow, the air grew cold. I breathed it in, and it tasted metallic with an underlying stench of sulfur.   

I took my first steps into the shadow and felt it cover me. I looked up, and the suns were gone. For the first time in my life, I was without their light. And, for the first time since leaving home that morning, I felt afraid.

The ground beneath me felt solid enough. I reached down. It was cold to the touch and dry. It was like the sand on the edge, but it felt lighter somehow, less substantial. It drained through my fingers like a cloud of dust.

A monk looked down at me through a window high above. I could not see his face, so I could only imagine his expression. Was the monk worried? Mournful? Angry? I had no way of knowing. I do know he did not yell at me to leave like I expected. There was a quick movement. A nod perhaps? And then the monk was gone, leaving the window empty.

And then the hands reached up. I felt them caress my leg, up my calf, towards my thigh, beyond. I shivered with something that might have been terror, but felt more like something else, something I had never experienced but had imagined on many lonely nights.

And then there was a kiss. There was Kamine, and I let him pull me down towards him. I went willingly. And we made our bed in the dust together. It was bliss, it was death, and my sister watched it all.

And I looked up one last time as Kamine, or what I imagined to be Kamine, caressed me. I saw my sister’s face, and she wasn’t my sister at all. She was my mother, and she cried for me.

I closed my eyes before the dust fell down on me, enveloped me in a cool embrace, but it didn’t matter. The dust penetrated everything, even my closed eyelids. The dust in the darkness was unrelenting and fierce with hunger. I gasped with short quick breaths until there was no air left, no life, and the shadows swallowed me whole.

When I awoke, there was no light, only the songs of the monks and abbesses, and they sang my name. They whispered the story of my marriage with reverence and terrified awe.

Sally

The Pastor Comes A Courtin’

Pastor Jason shook hands with Momma and Daddy at church. Momma asked what such a fine young man was doing without a wedding band? He said he just hadn't found the right girl yet. He looked to me and smiled.

He never asked me out, but he asked Momma. Momma agreed, and he took me on a date. He took me on a walk down a nature trail and talked to me about God while he did things to me I thought God should never know about.

Marriage

I suffered morning sickness on my wedding day.

The Honeymoon

I sat down on a toilet seat that was cold and wet with his urine. Before going to bed, he put a fresh roll of toilet paper on the roll. He made it go under. I prefer the paper to go over.

Birth Pains

Still newlyweds, he would not come to the hospital with me. I was there all alone while I miscarried that first time. It was the same the other three times. He said his parishioners needed his comfort, and he had God's duty to perform. My stillborn infants' dead eyes never saw their father. Perhaps that was for the best?

The Parishioner

Cathy Jacobs, a single mother, kept having children out of wedlock. All three of her children looked like Jason.

Insomnia

There were recurring dreams of my children. They looked like me, not Jason. They looked nothing like Cathy's children.

I woke up sweating and feeling an empty pit in my stomach. I touched the scars from my last C-section, and went to the bathroom to cry. Once again, the toilet seat was wet and the toilet paper went under, not over.

The bastard!

The Request

I asked for a certificate of divorce the next day. He quoted, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." I mention that divorce is permitted in the case of infidelity. He claimed there was no infidelity, and even if there were, a Christian woman would forgive.

Trapped

He refused the divorce. I talked to Momma, and she told me I was being ridiculous, that Pastor Jason had opened up so many doors for the family. She told me to stop being so selfish.

"Besides," she reminded me, "you don't have a job. What would you do?"

I had no answer.

Jason moved us to a big house in the country. I was only allowed to leave the house on Sundays. I sat on the front pew, listened to him preach, and forced a smile on my face.

Bruises

He no longer slept with me. The only time he touched me was when he hit me. As lonely and isolated as I was, I made him hit me a lot. I know it was wrong, but I enjoyed the touch.

A New Day

There was a new parishioner. A middle-aged man named Charley. He was a tall blonde with an athletic build. Despite his age, he looked younger than me. Before coming to town, he used to play football in the city. He's retired now.

He smiled at me. I smiled back and uncrossed my legs.

A Second Request

I asked for a divorce again. Charley promised he would provide me a way out.

My husband refused, quoting "And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery."

He hit me and called me a sinner before leaving me alone in the house. Jason drove away to be comforted by his parishioner.

Salvation?

Reading the Bible, looking for a way out, I read "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Hell." I didn't want to sin. I understood I had to cast off the hand.

A Bonfire

I got up to go to the bathroom. The seat was wet and the toilet paper went under, not over.

I had enough.

I took the roll of toilet paper into the bedroom. I straddled Jason, used the sheets to hold him down, stuffed the toilet paper roll into his mouth, and lit it on fire. His screams were muffled as the sheets caught the flames.

The firemen found me laughing in my nightshirt while I watched the blaze burn the house to the ground.

The Caged Bird

On Sundays I am surprised by how free I feel despite being enclosed in my cell. I sing and write long love letters to Charley.

He never writes back.

Blinders

Walking out on the downtown streets, I watched piles of trash float in the water coursing down the gutters. A used condom stuck to the bottom of my shoe. A bearded skeleton of a man sat naked in the rain, shivering.

People walked by as if they could not see the pitiful figure sitting on the curb. Seeing him, I realized I had walked past him many times, but never noticed him until now. I looked up to the dark clouds overhead, watched a bolt of purple lightning strike between the clouds and felt the rain splash my cheeks. The rain camouflaged my tears.

The crowd walked around him, and began to walk around me. I stopped, but the crowd moved on without me. I saw my coworkers pass me by, heading to the refinery, getting ready to work that stinking Martian clay into fuel. I took my black trench coat off my shoulders and bent down to drape it over the naked man.

He looked up to me with his wrinkled and hardened face. A glimmer of a smile appeared through the veil of his beard: pale rotting teeth and bleeding gums.

"Thank you," he said to me.

"You're welcome."

"I've been here for five years now. No one has noticed me. They walk past me, leaving me here cold and shivering in this unending artificial rain."

There was another flash of lightning overhead. I saw his face, saw through his face, and saw something majestic, but just as quickly as it appeared it was gone. The wrinkled visage returned.

"Look at them passing us by, looking forward, looking to their work, looking to their paychecks, looking to get wasted, looking to get laid, make babies, and send them off to Institution. They don't see us. They're obstructed by their own self-imposed blinders. Do you know why horses used to wear blinders back on Earth?"

I shook my head, bending down closer to hear his raspy voice over the howl of wind and the roaring rain.

"The old stagecoach drivers would put the blinders on so the horses wouldn't be spooked by what was around them. That way the horses could only see the trail ahead and not be distracted by the dark shadows hiding in the brush lining the trail. It kept them on course."

His smile widened and he pointed across the street.

"With your blinders off, what do you see?"

Wasted and crumbling buildings lined the other side of the street. The remnants of an old mine now used up. Beyond it the world ended. There was a maroon waste beyond a clear Plexiglas wall as far as the eye could see.

"Now look at me."

I looked back to the man. The lightning flashed again, and this time the brightness seemed to linger. In the light, I saw the true features of the figure below me. He unfurled his wings and glowed against the dingy world surrounding us.

"Do not be afraid. I come with tidings of great joy."

I felt a smile widen on my own face and fell to my knees. I held up my hands to the figure rising above me.

He reached down and touched my mouth. It burned as if touched by flaming coals, and my lips were sealed.

He floated further up and shouted down at me. "Spread this message because it is good! Let it take root! Once you do your part you may join us."

The sky parted and I saw others in an unreal whiteness above the clouds. Above the Plexiglas dome I glimpsed ultimate knowledge and unity before the clouds closed to me.

I sat naked on the curb and looked around.

No one had seen. The patrons of this world walked around me. They always looked forward thanks to their self-imposed blinders. Wondering how long I would have to wait for the next prophet, I sat down naked and began to shiver.

Known Meets Unknown

When the crewman found the angel hovering outside the ship, the first thing we did was cut off her wings.

It screamed. The scene was awful in every sense of the word. Something about that sound made everyone in the entire room cry, even the most hardened atheist skeptic among us fell to their knees and wept and secretly wondered if there might be something more to this universe than empty space, radiation, dead planets, and stars.

It was the ultimate tragedy, and it was beautiful, oh so beautiful.

I carry those wings with me to this day. As the surgeon who performed the exploratory surgery, I felt I deserved some trophy, no matter how token. The wings are brittle now. Most of the feathers have fallen away. The dry surface of the hollow jointed bones glisten with pearly iridescence. In those swirling mute colors I can almost see another way, but the wings are dead. They will never move again. We sacrificed our guide in our determination to make our own way, to understand the universe on our own terms.

The angel did not survive for long afterwards. She looked at me with blank white unblinking eyes and a chiseled face that betrayed no expressions. Yet, her cry echoed in the small chamber, and I felt her sense of pain and betrayal. I understood her confusion. It made no sense to her, and it made no sense to me (I was just following orders, after all), but it happened, facilitated by my own hands. She bled air and song and life, and we returned the favor by severing bone and flesh and fiber.

I fear it was unavoidable -- when the known meets the unknown, the unknown always dies away. Unable to accept a mystery, too egotistical to accept there may be any other way, we always kill what we cannot understand.