The Chamber of Subjection
By Unbearable Invention
"The time is out of joint." – Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 5
Chapter One: Our Lady of Flowers
I. I. I. You.
Muses make the anvils shriek, their arms mahoganied into membranes of darkness—a deep cadaverous darkness swelling in the soul of Severus Snape. –Step away from the pensieve, Potter. A hidden secret slithering its way from Spinner's End. But Harry. I. I See You. Moths of flame fireworking their way into the center of my sweltering desire, swollen in lavender: sanguine pain papers over the contingencies of an anachronistic pederastic desire: mementos of Lilly linger in these loins like sallow legs veiled in vines. How passé. Phaedrus scissoring through my mind as a single crippling thought penetrates deeply: I want you Harry. A martyr-like bulge between the intertwining shadows of my trousers: gored and gutted like St. Sebastian fucked by arrows: a wounded eyeball sliced with a razor: the ectoplasmic schoolboy opens his undulating spectral mouth. Lilly. Oh god, Lilly. Semen stains the blue variation of every fraudulent catastrophe: Lilly looks at me and licks her lips: fluids ooze from our pores as we become lost in hate-sex. –Oh, Lilly. I. I. I. Goddamn it. I will not touch him. I promised. Sunsweeping rims of friction: the sharpening horseflies of pain and residue of schoolchildren. No more eunuch despair. From bend of bay to veer of frothy sea, I will follow thee, Lilly: a sexual stillborn resuscitated from the etherized void of so many broken years pining for my ruined muse.
–Harry, I said step away from the pensieve.
Challenge the demarcation between you and I: spheres splinter into driftwood as corporeal containers swallow the sea or the sea swallows me. –I didn't see anything, sir. I-It was an accident. Ramses fissures boy frontal.
-Get out, Potter. Get out.
Contagion. Mitochondrial memories: the residue left by Lilly Potter: lips like lavender and November. The marauders circle me like dementors. –Stop it, James. Leave him alone! A phantom child mouths psalms inside my belly: he learns to drink the thunder. Harry, I mouth the word to myself. That is who he-is-will-be. Snape gazes at me: pale canopied skin swathed in invisible bandages. Swollen sarcophagus-esque breasts: hooveprints of milk gather like silent apophyllite: the milk of redemption hides in her like invisible tumors. Oooooooooo, Sirius discharged, speaking seventeen electronic words as he orgasmed. Snape's deformed penis pukes black sperm as it caterwauls like a bleating lamb inside my agnostic womb. Blood and semen intertwine on the pale wreckage of my thighs. Bristles of pubic hair embrace like octopus tentacles. –James. Wait. No, not James. Not this time. Now it's you. Severus. He frowns: his face an inverted skull sulkily staring into the ceiling as he absently twists my nipples into a rouge powder. Lavender. Contagion.
-What shall we name our child? Snape asks Lilly.
-Haaaaaarry.
-W-What? Harry asks.
-The Polyjuice Potion. You stole it. Harry. You stole it.
-I promise, I did not, sir.
-Contagion, Potter. Contaaaagion. I say to him.
Limbless curses: a fading tattoo little more than a gnat-netted reminder of Death Eaters lost in the purgatorial past I too often try to forget. I am. Will be. –Make love to me, Lilly commanded, from behind. I want to feel the vermillion feast festering inside of me. The rectal blossom blurs like an old photograph: slow and lugubrious thrusts challenge the static ontology of you and I as her narrow pink pathway momentarily doubles as an early grave. I feel remorseful, calling her a Mudblood so many years ago: she turned away, and went to him: an unexpected tightness as I burst into a silent scream: Harry is a verb that needs the dramatic flourish of an Elizabethan actor as I discard the stories of his absentee father. The broom closet cloistered as an angel-headed ulcer. My wand pointed at his porcelain face. Killing words lingering on my lips. Now. You're all I have left. Open wide and give us a kiss.
-Have you ever read Death in Venice? I ask him.
-What?
-A masterpiece of Muggle ingenuity. Thomas Mann. A classic story. But, aaaaah, Harry, I must tell you: I am no Aschenbach. I am not some juvenile neo-Platonist—some withered old eunuch groping for god on the seashore. And I do not make love, Harry. I fuck. I fuck with hate in my heart.
The dementor leans forward: a puff of Pettigrew wafts off its befouled shit breath. No. Not now. –Yeeeeeeessssss. My fear stinks of stillborn hexes: the pensieve glistens in the moonlight: I make love to Lilly in a prism of starlight and semen: a kudzu-colored gartersnake descends from Harry's throat as I scream, -Polyjuice Potion! Where is it? The Dark Lord gestures at the mangled body of a woman. –Dead or alive, he says to me. –She will know my seed, Severus, and she shall know the throbbing gristle of pain and desire. Libidos blue: his vulture-belly full with the sins of an intersecting past and future. No. Not now. Not this kiss. Not from you. Lavender. Contagion. Secret.
[to be continued]