We sat together, at a little round table in that quiet corner of the universe. A sweet smelling microcosm that looked like just another diner, just another bistro for the dead pseudo-intellectuals pondering the meaning of life after death, arguing over whether their stock quotes were still high while playing hookie in the world's dust, wishing their sons and daughters went on to law or medical school after their rising to the ether.
We ate our powdered manna topped with raspberry and nuts.
We drank our tasteless glowing green teas, ignoring the sugar cubes of light as they flitted away into the bright, black sky, star-spangled and striped.
She sat across from me, waving stubby cherubic fingers at the sugar pyre-flies, her eyes so wide it pained me to look at them. She didn't ignore them. She loved them. She tried so hard to catch one in her fingers, to taste it with her tiny, pink tongue, and laugh like old bells strung up in an attic. I never found myself so hateful and attracted at the same time. Death dredged up strange things in men's hearts. And here she was, as always, stalking me in yet another pivotal moment of my miraculous existence. Just what did she see in me? What about me was there security? Where was there goodness in this man's dead skin?
I saw nothing.
But her twinkling angel's eyes did.
Such a supple thing in that white sleeveless gown. What a racy thing for a little girl to wear. Yes, little girl. Every time that I saw her, she was small, she was slight. She was like a pale wind come to life. An airy sprite come to tease and pull at my hair, but I knew she meant well.
That music box.
Not a word about the box. That precious gift she'd given me one winter city night. Save me, she'd begged. She lifted it to my eyes. Her plain, wooden music box with the clay angel spinning aimlessly inside. Save me and it's yours.
I did. I saved her. I freed her like the delicate bird she was, watched her fly away into that hard urban darkness as though to never be seen again. But I did see her again. And that time, she came to stoke the fires of pain with her tinkling voiceless voice. I didn't mean to. Oh yes, she did. She meant to give me glimmers of hope and snatch them away. She meant to torture me with her mystery, the secret of life she guarded so close without even knowing it.
She sat there, blowing bubbles of life, giggling when they popped and sprayed the air with a shimmer of green-white stardust. She was the perfect child. Pale but rosy, round and soft. So soft. Her skin looked as if she'd bleed if I touched her. A cherry.
A cherry.
That was a nasty thought.
But nowadays, I was a nasty man.
I'd broken it after she left the last time. That box. Crushed it between my fingers and ground it under my heel. I wasn't thankful anymore. Not after she left me behind. What good was a friend that left me behind? What good was a friend that vanished when I needed them most? She was no friend of mine. She was just another bag of useless flesh flaunting its existence like it mattered to me, to anyone. She didn't matter, not after what she did.
And now here she sat, as if nothing had ever happened. As if we were old friends reunited.
And I sat there wondering. Flesh?
I reached for her fluttering hand. I spied her fingers splay out in my palm. So small, so small.
What a dear smile.
I pulled her over the table, spilling our tea that wasn't quite tea, crushing our bread that wasn't quite bread. I dropped her in my lap and pushed her head back on the table, her white hair spilling like water beneath her. I hated her and I loved her, this girl. Oh, in the waking world, the living world, every parent on the street would have shot me dead, or try as they might to beat me within an inch of my existence. No one in their right mind handled children like this. But I knew better. I saw past her ploy. I'd show her who she really was.
"Sephiroth…"
My name from her lips fought a moan from mine. How delicious it sounded, this girl cherub calling my name in agonized awe. Oh, I'd show her who she really was. No one could hide a thing from me. My eyes, my nose, my ears, my tongue, they were always sharp and always waiting, always knowing.
Her supple fists twisted in mine; she had to have known it was no use. Her elbows beat repeatedly on the blue-clothed tabletop; she had to have known. Her little chest in that little gown heaved as though it would burst any second; she knew. And she accepted it. I saw it in her eyes. I saw the blue one cry I accept your vengeance. I saw the green one scream I give you my body.
I had her.
You haven't lived until you've tasted a child's mouth. The bland bitterness, the clueless sorrow, the saccharine innocence growing stale and hard. To think, I was once this girl. I was once innocent, but the lips of science dared to taint me.
I ripped that chaste white gown apart. Let the dead scholars around me stare and gasp and hiss and whisper. Innocence lost was innocence destroyed. Pass on the pain, the suffering. Spread the disease. Poison the cleansing water. Violate this poor thing who dared make a friend of me. Show her that good left this stone temple to rot. Prove that I carry no mercy for those who abandon me.
Show her there was no purity even after all the skin, all the blood, all the meat and the bone fell away.
She didn't kiss back. Oh, why would she? Given who I was. No thing, no person, wanted me as I wanted them.
How artless was a child's body. Too few curves, too few angles, to be called beauty. But the face, that face. It was heaven, plain and simple. This was vigilance, this was compassion, this was calm, and this was love.
"I'll break that love…"
A new low in humanity if it dwelt there, still.
Her red mouth cried. Hands on my head, fingers uselessly ripping at the strands.
There was that sickening pride in taking one's innocence, the way mine was taken. There was that rank triumph in giving this girl a crash course in reality, that it was ruthless, perverse, and murderous. There was no room for children, for people like her. Virtue promised a quick death.
I loved her and I hated her.
They threw their tea, as though that would stop me. The lost souls cursed but never rose from their chairs. Hypocrites. She needed saving and no one lifted a finger. The heartless beast would win.
I didn't feel the change beneath me. I still heard the gentle cries and felt the frantic squirms but the change eluded me. I was so wrapped up in myself, wrapped up in my dirty deed that…
What were these wispy arms, this milky breast, these cloudlike thighs that held me? This was not the child I…
Death dredged up strange things in men's hearts.
This was a dream. This was just a dream. God's dream.
God had a dream. And it was a woman. And she was so beautiful, the mere glow of her skin vanquished all worldly venom. In her breast was the milk of eternity. And in those thighs blazed an inferno of life, love and lust in which no human would ever indulge, because they belonged to God's. Her arms were mother to all. Her lips were a string of dreams and heavenly isles. She was gorgeous. And I hated her and loved her and wanted her more and more. I wanted to poison her. This little girl.
No.
I looked up. I saw clearly.
And I felt defeat.
I was truly dead. Because nothing like this lived in life. This was a woman. This was God's Woman. She unfurled, she bloomed in my failure to drown that sweet innocence. Her dream lips pursed and kissed my brow. Her chest swelled to meet mine, igniting my twice dead heart. My hatred burned, my sorrow fumed, my love crackled like idiot moths too close to a flame. There was no escape now. My evil failed. I failed. What would Mother think when she found out I failed in conquering a tiny-bodied thing? That now it had me trapped in its feminine rapture, and tastefully so, might I add? If this was the ultimate ending in death and failure, I'd die by the souls of millions, I'd fail by the thousands of ways one could fail.
Suddenly, my folly didn't seem so bad.
Here, in this universe of the dead, I lost. In the end, evil would not win. She would take it so, love it, hold it, until it gave up the ghost. This girl turned woman was a trick. She was the end wrapped in pure white skin, winged with silver-white hair, touched with rose lips that whispered my name over and over. As if I and my manhood were God's gift to women. And modesty be damned, I thought I was, in life, that gift.
I laughed, she and I slumped against the toppled table, wrapped around each other's bodies like a couple of brazen beasts in the middle of the woods. I liked this. I could have stayed like this. Conquering this Woman. God's Woman. Making her my own, when she was really breaking me down to nothing. To take, to lay me down to sleep in the world's dust, the world's great womb and blood.
Was this what the Planet thought of me? Was this how I should end?
Then don't wake me. For once, let my will rest.