It is said that She was given sight just so The Universe could exist through her perception of it. Stars died and came again to life, corpulent and bursting all over with auroral sunfire, and were given meaning only after falling into The Deeper Well.
There are two holes through Eternity, twin paradoxes both, gasping open first toward Infinity and drowsing closed towards Entropy. She blinked, and The Deeper Well shuddered, impaled upon a nimbus crown of light and held there by the howling dark defining it. Ta’Om, who circled the sky with his mendicant cloak of stars, shattered the vacuum of space as he first whispered her name, thick with the placental breath of his chest.
“She of Many Colors,” he murmured, and the words glossed Her eyes over with nebulas, thick with the phosphorescent nectar of Creation. She blinked again, and The Universe broke into a million ribbons of pain. Prismatic shards laced between Her flesh and His flesh; rainbows and razors on the skin of the Gods, they bled locked together in the perpetual effervescence, in the cyclical twilight, of their passion.
The bloodwine of their lovemaking watered the soil of the Earth, and Mankind first cried out in their shared agony: Ye Gods, why can’t you hear us?
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ...
The scene that has held me back on my novel for the last, oh, I dunno, SEVEN MONTHS because it was critical and I just couldn't get it right?
Yeah. That one.
DONE. Unpolished on a first edit, but wrapped as it all fell into place. The flow is authentic.
Finally... I can move forward in this story.
Thank you, whatever force reached through the shimmerthread veil of otherworld to give me the needed inspiration.
* * * * *
THIRD SCENE OF CHAPTER IX
Chthonic and trackless, I fell against the glittering undergrowth: diamond cut foliage basking in the Otherworld twilight. I was in a succession of moments, vibrating with it and drained of some fundamental vitality.
Sweating.
Shivering.
Straddling a difficult Eros between the flesh of the Altwald and the polyrhythmic press of my body to that dampened earth, it was palpable to my awareness. Self became a creaturely sensation, capricious and tilting towards vertigo. Deprived of the benefit of empirical reason, I spent that evanescence translating patterned shafts of light into tactile sensations; a robust breath of color that rode along my skin with all the splendid delirium of an artist deep within his craft. I turned over on my stomach and stretched against the soil. The Earth was new and eager under my touch, young enough to respond with the undiluted affection of a child.
The Bright Man… He was deep in his fury; I felt his presence as surely as I felt the backdrop from which all things began. I opened my eyes slowly.
“I will not be drawn out!” How many times had he said these words? It seemed he had been caught in the momentum of his own emotions, stimming this stereotypic vernacular, for a long time though I was only now processing it as something significant.
“Are you flesh?” He whispered, clutching the sides of my face. His voice hurt, inside and out, cutting to the very marrow of my understanding.
Was I merely dreamwalking again, subconsciously responding to aerial summons, or had I truly made the crossing, bodily and of my own volition?
It was a distinction that mattered to him, though I lacked the context as to why.
Father. I splayed my fingers across his breast and spilled the thought into and through his elastic skin; skin that took on its own white-hot glow at each colliding vertex. Violet magic was pulled from me, effervesced through the sun-bleached tendrils of light snaking upwards and around my arm. I am here, all that I am, and under my own will.
For that ripple in time, the world spun for me and me alone. I leaned upwards, balanced both hands over the sharp angles of his hips and kissed him full on his too-wide mouth. He shot to his feet, skittered backwards, and threw me into the fragrant brushwood. My head lolled to the side and I couldn’t help smiling. I felt contagious under the electric shiver of these hallucinations.
Are they hallucinations? I wondered, once, briefly. Did it matter?
“NO!” He was screaming, tendons and veins standing out red and angry across the whole of his body. “No, no, no!” As I watched him wail and convulse under the sheer force of his denial I saw him as a chalice. The Bright Man; gilded under Providence, balanced somewhere between too much history and not enough time.
I laughed; I laughed until I felt resplendent with it. More than a little intoxicated and reeling, I rocked forward until I was teetering on the cusps of my knees. He seemed paralyzed by the noise, a diffuse radiance fading from his chest even as I watched. Yet he was fixed on me, cataloguing my every nuance.
It felt like coming home. More importantly: I was right.
Father… Of the many and varied things that he was and had ever been, he was that, too. Blood of my blood, and possessed of a spirit that responded to the same heartsong of my soul. My father.
I knew it in my bones, and that knowledge skittered through my awareness in flash-fire parlor thoughts.
“Father.” I said it out loud, smiled and caught his eyes, eyes that were the very twin-set of my own. The Bright Man was a flux of subtle movements, body language that seemed to capture and absorb the many-splendored luster bleeding from the very quintessence of this place, this time. He was listening, albeit with all the gun-shy strain of a cornered animal.
I stood, examined all the little eccentricities that defined my Shadow Self: the pulse of purpled veins bleeding color into all the delicate corners of my flesh, the halo of dark hair that caressed my shoulders as though floating in gossamer seas, claws, fang-teeth…
Beautiful witch-eyed girl… Yousef’s words.
When next I spoke, it was with the conviction of absolute supplication.
“Please. You reached between worlds to find me, or protect me, or maybe because you didn’t have any other choice. It’s time to tell me why.”
* * * * *
“Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010/2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
To Tally, with love...
Exciting things are in the works on "Paindancer."
In the meantime a passage from the "Book of Taliesin", dedicated to my son - named after the Chief of Bards himself.
Taliesin Orion, Tallymander, My Little Nomad, Aelden Prince... You inspire me to laugh, to create, and above all thing to persevere.
For all that and merely for the creature that you are -
-------------------------------------------------------------
"I have been in a multitude of shapes,Before I assumed a constant form.
I have been a sword, narrow, variegated,
I will believe when it is apparent.
I have been a tear in the air,
I have been the dullest of stars.
I have been a word among letters,
I have been a book in the origin.
I have been the light of lanterns
A year and a half,
I have been a continuing bridge,
Over three score Abers.
I have been a course, I have been an eagle.
I have been a coracle in the seas;
I have been compliant in the banquet.
I have been a drop in a shower;
I have been a sword in the grasp of the hand:
I have been a shield in battle.
I have been a string in a harp,
Disguised for nine years.
In water, in foam.
I have been sponge in the fire,
I have been wood in the covert.
I am not he who will not sing of
A combat though small,
The conflict in the battle of Godeu of sprigs."
~ Excerpt from "The Battle of Godeu", Book of Taliesin VIII
Sunday, May 08, 2011
"Paindancer" - Second Scene of Chapter IX
I've been away awhile. I'm okay with that.
"Paindancer" is straddling the 40,000 word mark. Momentous, as once I cross that boundary it's officially a novel.
I really... really... really... like how the imagery of this scene - and the pacing - came out.
---------------------------------------------------------
I tried to sleep that night, I really did. Despite the amicable terms we’d parted on – as much as humanly possible, anyway – my conversation with Sialk had left me feeling provoked and anxious. I felt like I still needed to give her a few days, unless Mallory called me first. It was complicated. Everything was complicated all the fucking time. I was sick to death of complicated. I wanted to tear it apart and rebuild from the rubble.
Time to deconstruct… I couldn’t tell whether the thought was mine or not. It appealed to my sensibilities either way.
I yawned, glanced at the clock, and cracked my neck. I pulled a loose knit shrug over my head, left my hair loose and rummaged around for pants. I leafed through the clean laundry basket left at the foot of my bed and paused for a moment. The corduroy patchwork pants I’d worn to Salem’s when I stormed into his apartment and… well… yeah.
Running my hands over the fabric, I spread them over the bed. On some of the lighter patches you could still see a spray of tiny rust-colored droplets; blood from my back, whipping off his belt and onto my clothes. It hadn’t come out in the wash. I hadn’t noticed before. I touched the reddish inkblots and shivered all over.
Whatever I could or couldn’t have with Salem now, it wasn’t this. Flashbacks of that night crowded my mind.
His Beast. His passion. That exquisite cruelty he had kept leashed until I’d driven him to let loose the reins.
The coppery tang of my blood comingled with his as he backhanded me across the floor.
The way he fit inside me.
The slippery belt tightening around my throat.
My faerie-fire surging through him like the tide.
His face in those moments…
It hurt to love him and realize one of the best nights of my life was one of the worst of his. Human though he was, his Shadow Aspect wasn’t a challenge or a mystery ripe with incentive as mine was. His scared him. He didn’t want to go there again. Wouldn’t. He fought his darkness; I tried to reconcile light and dark.
I wished he trusted me, or even just himself, enough.
Complicated.
I pulled the pants on and grabbed my iPod before taking off into the midnight haze.
I queued up a playlist as I walked: The Silversun Pickups, Fuel, The Verve Pipe, Live, Snow Patrol, The Sisters of Mercy, Gossamer, The Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox 20, Nirvana, Depeche Mode, Eluveitie, Gaelic Storm, and so much more…
Time to burn it to the ground.
I cranked the volume to eleven, fit the earbuds to my ears and clipped the screen to my waistband.
Finavir. I hit play. The noise hit me like a punch to the gut. My lashes fluttered against my cheeks as I let the sound absorb into and around this mortal coil. My fingers rapped against my stomach.
My hands crackled over with static-fire. My core was seafoam against the moon. My toes grappled with the earth. My hair strained against the ragged edge of the wind.
And I danced; abstract and freeflow. I responded to the music like a lover, let my fingertips raise and amplify goosebumps in fractured curves across my skin. It was like throwing back one too many energy drinks; I couldn’t not move. The electric-threaded vibration assaulted my ears, ran through my body in a bubbling jet. I felt invisible wires affix to my wrists, my hips, my ankles, shoulders, neck, and along each delicate fingertip, each lacing back and toward a rhythmic subversion of self. I relaxed into it, let it pull me here and there, up and down, and back in upon myself. Every movement was a lush and dangerous surprise. I was a marionette spinning entropy across the forest floor.
I let it take my breath away.
And there was the light, always the light, a pale and emergent radiance. Only this time instead of photons racing tangents through dead space, the candle-blaze flickered from my gaze and caught on the midnight breeze.
A subtle silvering of the atmosphere at first, the more it caught and held my attention the brighter the definition grew.
For God only knows how long, it was all I thought about. I was sweating, dancing on a turnstile, making love without direction, as I painted the air with my eyes.
A glance here, a pulse of eyelashes there, a surrender of vision… Whether I created it or merely uncovered it I don’t know, but I saw. A dense and fibrous network extending as far as I could see in every direction, light dripped through the skein like dew collecting through a spiderweb at sunrise. Brighter here, echoing there, and all of it tethered back towards the undifferentiated brilliance of Finavir.
I tore through the fine latticework of strands as I passed, demolishing old pathways and recreating them anew in my wake. I felt it. Galvanized spirit-threads snapping against my skin in a sensory spray; I reached out and touched pockets of heliotrope crossfire. I was breaking the surface-tension and bathing in the overflow.
Where were my fireflies in this shining morass?
I felt their tremulous and impending warmth, and that was enough.
I was closing in concentric circles around Finavir’s trunk; Finavir who punched through realities like a monolith crucifies the sky. The scintillating reverb was roping me in.
I let it. I spun en pointe, rocked on my heels and back again.
Closer, closer, closer… My breath boiled in my lungs and lightning scalded my skin. Otherworld ley lines became a tangled snarl of razorblades, flaying and peeling my human visage from my body.
I slipped fully into my Shadow Self at the same moment I went crashing through Finavir and into The Savage Garden.
---------------------------------------------------------
“Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010/2011
"Paindancer" is straddling the 40,000 word mark. Momentous, as once I cross that boundary it's officially a novel.
I really... really... really... like how the imagery of this scene - and the pacing - came out.
---------------------------------------------------------
I tried to sleep that night, I really did. Despite the amicable terms we’d parted on – as much as humanly possible, anyway – my conversation with Sialk had left me feeling provoked and anxious. I felt like I still needed to give her a few days, unless Mallory called me first. It was complicated. Everything was complicated all the fucking time. I was sick to death of complicated. I wanted to tear it apart and rebuild from the rubble.
Time to deconstruct… I couldn’t tell whether the thought was mine or not. It appealed to my sensibilities either way.
I yawned, glanced at the clock, and cracked my neck. I pulled a loose knit shrug over my head, left my hair loose and rummaged around for pants. I leafed through the clean laundry basket left at the foot of my bed and paused for a moment. The corduroy patchwork pants I’d worn to Salem’s when I stormed into his apartment and… well… yeah.
Running my hands over the fabric, I spread them over the bed. On some of the lighter patches you could still see a spray of tiny rust-colored droplets; blood from my back, whipping off his belt and onto my clothes. It hadn’t come out in the wash. I hadn’t noticed before. I touched the reddish inkblots and shivered all over.
Whatever I could or couldn’t have with Salem now, it wasn’t this. Flashbacks of that night crowded my mind.
His Beast. His passion. That exquisite cruelty he had kept leashed until I’d driven him to let loose the reins.
The coppery tang of my blood comingled with his as he backhanded me across the floor.
The way he fit inside me.
The slippery belt tightening around my throat.
My faerie-fire surging through him like the tide.
His face in those moments…
It hurt to love him and realize one of the best nights of my life was one of the worst of his. Human though he was, his Shadow Aspect wasn’t a challenge or a mystery ripe with incentive as mine was. His scared him. He didn’t want to go there again. Wouldn’t. He fought his darkness; I tried to reconcile light and dark.
I wished he trusted me, or even just himself, enough.
Complicated.
I pulled the pants on and grabbed my iPod before taking off into the midnight haze.
I queued up a playlist as I walked: The Silversun Pickups, Fuel, The Verve Pipe, Live, Snow Patrol, The Sisters of Mercy, Gossamer, The Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox 20, Nirvana, Depeche Mode, Eluveitie, Gaelic Storm, and so much more…
Time to burn it to the ground.
I cranked the volume to eleven, fit the earbuds to my ears and clipped the screen to my waistband.
Finavir. I hit play. The noise hit me like a punch to the gut. My lashes fluttered against my cheeks as I let the sound absorb into and around this mortal coil. My fingers rapped against my stomach.
My hands crackled over with static-fire. My core was seafoam against the moon. My toes grappled with the earth. My hair strained against the ragged edge of the wind.
And I danced; abstract and freeflow. I responded to the music like a lover, let my fingertips raise and amplify goosebumps in fractured curves across my skin. It was like throwing back one too many energy drinks; I couldn’t not move. The electric-threaded vibration assaulted my ears, ran through my body in a bubbling jet. I felt invisible wires affix to my wrists, my hips, my ankles, shoulders, neck, and along each delicate fingertip, each lacing back and toward a rhythmic subversion of self. I relaxed into it, let it pull me here and there, up and down, and back in upon myself. Every movement was a lush and dangerous surprise. I was a marionette spinning entropy across the forest floor.
I let it take my breath away.
And there was the light, always the light, a pale and emergent radiance. Only this time instead of photons racing tangents through dead space, the candle-blaze flickered from my gaze and caught on the midnight breeze.
A subtle silvering of the atmosphere at first, the more it caught and held my attention the brighter the definition grew.
For God only knows how long, it was all I thought about. I was sweating, dancing on a turnstile, making love without direction, as I painted the air with my eyes.
A glance here, a pulse of eyelashes there, a surrender of vision… Whether I created it or merely uncovered it I don’t know, but I saw. A dense and fibrous network extending as far as I could see in every direction, light dripped through the skein like dew collecting through a spiderweb at sunrise. Brighter here, echoing there, and all of it tethered back towards the undifferentiated brilliance of Finavir.
I tore through the fine latticework of strands as I passed, demolishing old pathways and recreating them anew in my wake. I felt it. Galvanized spirit-threads snapping against my skin in a sensory spray; I reached out and touched pockets of heliotrope crossfire. I was breaking the surface-tension and bathing in the overflow.
Where were my fireflies in this shining morass?
I felt their tremulous and impending warmth, and that was enough.
I was closing in concentric circles around Finavir’s trunk; Finavir who punched through realities like a monolith crucifies the sky. The scintillating reverb was roping me in.
I let it. I spun en pointe, rocked on my heels and back again.
Closer, closer, closer… My breath boiled in my lungs and lightning scalded my skin. Otherworld ley lines became a tangled snarl of razorblades, flaying and peeling my human visage from my body.
I slipped fully into my Shadow Self at the same moment I went crashing through Finavir and into The Savage Garden.
---------------------------------------------------------
“Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010/2011
Saturday, June 19, 2010
A Few Author's Notes:
JABOTICABA TREES:
Pronunciation: zhuh-boo-ti-KAH-buh
Pronunciation: zhuh-boo-ti-KAH-buh
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JABOTICABA TRUNK
Jaboticaba trees are native to South America, most notably Brazil. They can take up to forty years to reach maturity and bear their first fruit. The trees are profusely branched, beginning close to the ground and slanting upward and outward so that the dense, rounded crown may attain an ultimate spread as wide as it is tall - usually attaining a height no more than 45ft. The fruit grows directly on the branches and trunk of the tree, and may produce a harvest only once or twice a year (October; January/February).
JABOTICABA FRUIT
Jaboticaba Fruit has a thick, puplish-black skin and a tough, juicy white pulp containing anywhere from one to four seeds (that are swallowed whole). Traditionally, Jaboticaba fruit is eaten by biting a small hole in the husk and squeezing the pulp out and upward from the base, discarding the skin. Jaboticaba has an astringent flavor that’s sort of similar to muscadine grapes – slightly sweet and low-acid.
JABOTICABA FLOWERS
Jaboticaba has a long history of holistic medicinal uses - including as a treatment for digestive troubles and asthma. It is also well loved as an ornamental tree both in its natural form and more recently as a bonsai breed.
JABOTICABA TREE
~ Lineia
** None of the information here is my intellectual property, photos or otherwise. Some of the text was copied and pasted from other web sources.
*** Special shout out to Heather Feher, who supplied much of the information I have on the Jaboticaba trees.
"Paindancer" - Pages 46 & 47 (I literally JUST wrote this)
WARNING: Adult Language; Adult Themes
I just adore this scene. It makes me laugh, like, everytime I read it.
* * * * *
“One new voicemail: Thursday, at five eighteen pm.” The automated faux-feminine drone on my cell announced itself with robotic precision. Early afternoon sun beat through the windows, uncomfortably warm. Mallory and I had just woken up.
“Sidonie, it’s Salem. Just calling to check on you. Call me back.”
I wanted there to be more to the message, some room to maneuver between the lines. But there wasn’t. I stared at the tiny screen, angry with him and flagellating myself for expecting something different.
Mallory came bouncing out of the bathroom, toothbrush sticking haphazardly out of the side of her mouth as she hopped up on the bed.
“Who was that?” She asked, inhaling and slurring the words together as she attempted not to drizzle toothpaste-foam all over my comforter. I snapped the phone closed, tossing it over on the nightstand. The sharp thud as it collided with the tacky ceramic cougar lamp was immensely satisfying.
“Ahh… no one. Salem. I mean, my tutor. Calling to check on me, you know. You look adorable.” I rolled over in bed, tweaking the corner of her panties, hiding half my face under the covers and peeking up at her. She gave me a long appraising stare, squinting her eyes half closed and brushing her teeth in agonizingly slow strokes.
Suddenly her eyebrows shot up and she leveled the lathered white head of her toothbrush at my face.
“No way!” She dashed to the sink and spit
“No way, what?” I blinked, calling after her.
“Mr. Ostrand? Your teacher, the one you had five years ago? The dude that married that pagan chick?”
“Yeah – ”
She advanced on the bed, hands rapping against her waist. “You’ve slept with him, haven’t you?” She grinned fair to split her face, her eyes glittering with scandalous aplomb.
“What? No… I mean…” I tried to hide under the blanket, but she ripped it off. She pounced on the bed like a great and drowsy lioness, pinning my wrists to the bed with one hand and straddled my chest.
How does she DO that? I thought, half rankled and half amused that she could so easily read me.
“Vixen.” She whispered, lightly tickling under my arms. “You will tell me absolutely everything.”
I squirmed, bubbling with laughter. “And if I don’t?”
“Oh…” She slithered down the length of my body, nipples barely grazing my skin. She gripped my hips in a vise-like brace, flickering her tongue over the damp slip of fabric covering my clit. “You will talk, Milady.”
I grabbed fistfuls of bed-sheets as Jaboticaba fruit erupted in tantalizing profusion behind my eyes. In this, too, there was healing.
* * * * *
My mother watched Mallory leave later that afternoon, an aggrieved expression distinctly out of sync with the rest of her impeccable composure.
“I am so glad,” she said, “that my room is on the other side of the house.”
I blushed, ducking out the back.
* * * * *
“Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010
I just adore this scene. It makes me laugh, like, everytime I read it.
* * * * *
“One new voicemail: Thursday, at five eighteen pm.” The automated faux-feminine drone on my cell announced itself with robotic precision. Early afternoon sun beat through the windows, uncomfortably warm. Mallory and I had just woken up.
“Sidonie, it’s Salem. Just calling to check on you. Call me back.”
I wanted there to be more to the message, some room to maneuver between the lines. But there wasn’t. I stared at the tiny screen, angry with him and flagellating myself for expecting something different.
Mallory came bouncing out of the bathroom, toothbrush sticking haphazardly out of the side of her mouth as she hopped up on the bed.
“Who was that?” She asked, inhaling and slurring the words together as she attempted not to drizzle toothpaste-foam all over my comforter. I snapped the phone closed, tossing it over on the nightstand. The sharp thud as it collided with the tacky ceramic cougar lamp was immensely satisfying.
“Ahh… no one. Salem. I mean, my tutor. Calling to check on me, you know. You look adorable.” I rolled over in bed, tweaking the corner of her panties, hiding half my face under the covers and peeking up at her. She gave me a long appraising stare, squinting her eyes half closed and brushing her teeth in agonizingly slow strokes.
Suddenly her eyebrows shot up and she leveled the lathered white head of her toothbrush at my face.
“No way!” She dashed to the sink and spit
“No way, what?” I blinked, calling after her.
“Mr. Ostrand? Your teacher, the one you had five years ago? The dude that married that pagan chick?”
“Yeah – ”
She advanced on the bed, hands rapping against her waist. “You’ve slept with him, haven’t you?” She grinned fair to split her face, her eyes glittering with scandalous aplomb.
“What? No… I mean…” I tried to hide under the blanket, but she ripped it off. She pounced on the bed like a great and drowsy lioness, pinning my wrists to the bed with one hand and straddled my chest.
How does she DO that? I thought, half rankled and half amused that she could so easily read me.
“Vixen.” She whispered, lightly tickling under my arms. “You will tell me absolutely everything.”
I squirmed, bubbling with laughter. “And if I don’t?”
“Oh…” She slithered down the length of my body, nipples barely grazing my skin. She gripped my hips in a vise-like brace, flickering her tongue over the damp slip of fabric covering my clit. “You will talk, Milady.”
I grabbed fistfuls of bed-sheets as Jaboticaba fruit erupted in tantalizing profusion behind my eyes. In this, too, there was healing.
* * * * *
My mother watched Mallory leave later that afternoon, an aggrieved expression distinctly out of sync with the rest of her impeccable composure.
“I am so glad,” she said, “that my room is on the other side of the house.”
I blushed, ducking out the back.
* * * * *
“Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
"Paindancer" - Pages 37-43
I wanted to post this section because I'm always insecure about writing dialogue and these couple of scenes are almost all dialogue. As always, commentary - good or bad - is not only welcomed but encouraged.
The first scene I wrote a couple weeks back, the second one I just revised and expanded on this afternoon.
Enjoy!
* * * * *
Why, I thought, my toes curling involuntarily, didn’t I do this sooner? The tattoo gun hummed, pounded and punctured along the greased expanse of skin. Mallory had presented the design to me once she pulled up to the tattoo parlor, picking up on my growing skepticism.
“One of the benefits of art school.” She had said, unrolling the vellum on the hood of the car.
Highly stylized black lines – almost oriental – slithered down the page, accented with only the barest hints of brown, green, white, and purple. I didn’t know what to say, and I reached out to run my fingers over the fine and sensuous brushstrokes. I loved it completely.
“Jaboticaba branches.” I said softly.
“I knew you’d like it.” She said, preening, and eminently pleased with herself. “And you doubted me, silly girl. Here – ” She said, hiking down the corner of my jeans and tucking the bottom of my shirt into the underwire of my bra.
“Umm… Mallory?”
“Hush, you.” Grabbing a sharpie from the dash, she placed a dot under the top hem of my panties, close to the hip. “This is the base, see? And it curves around your bellybutton in a dusting of those little white flowers.” She indicated on the paper which part of the piece she was talking about. “And it snakes around your ribs, a few branches hugging the perimeter of your breast,” More dots… “ – before curving under your arm and into the final spray along the back of your shoulder. A bit should bleed over onto your arm and onto the back of your neck, but not too much.” She capped the marker, grinning like an idiot.
“Wow…” I tried to picture it done, suppressed a surge of excitement.
“How expensive is this going to be?” I asked, cringing inwardly. I wasn’t exactly sure how the cost of a tattoo was calculated but I had the distinct impression that it wasn’t cheap.
“Free.”
“Free?” I repeated stupidly, not really processing it. “Wait, I mean… no. You can’t pay for this. It’s beautiful, but – ”
“No, Sidonie. Free. As in ‘we’re not being charged’.”
“What?”
She grabbed my hands and pulled me toward the door. “Just come inside. Jesus, you’re difficult.”
As it turned out the tattoo artist who owned the place was Mallory’s husband, which was more than a little bit strange to wrap my brain around.
“Sidonie, right?” In spite of the industrial piercings, neon red faux hawk, sleeve and facial tattoos I got good vibes off him. That didn’t help the awkwardness any, but still…
“Yeah. Hi.” I shook his hand, glancing at Mallory who was loving this.
“I’m Sialk. Mallory’s said a lot of good things about you.” His coloring reminded me of Yousef, but his features were softer, more open. Amerasian, I thought, probably from somewhere like the Philippines.
Pause. Fidget.
“So, umm… what’s that?” I asked, indicating the domino mask of reddish orange feathers around his eyes.
He touched his face. “Phoenix feathers.”
“Oh… I guess that should have been obvious.” The name of the shop was ‘Industrial Phoenix’. He laughed, devious but free of malice.
“Mal already showed me the design. Want me to sketch it out on you, see how you like it?”
“Sure, but… I mean…” I didn’t get this, like there was some subtext I was missing. “Why the charity case?”
Sialk grabbed what looked like a joint from his back pocket and lit up, giving me a long appraising look. “Mal told me what that shit monkey did. The way I figure it, any chick who fucks up her rapist as thoroughly as you did deserves a big shiny prize.”
For a minute I didn’t know how to respond, just stared. Then I started to giggle.
“Shit monkey? Really?” I laughed harder, laughed until my face hurt and Mallory and Sialk were looking at me like I’d completely lost it, and then they were laughing too. All the tension in the room evaporated, and I decided that even if I didn’t get it that was OK. It was good to see Mallory again, and I liked Sialk. I could feel my eyes sparkling under the fluorescent lights. This could be… fun.
And it was.
Mallory hung around while he marked it out, offering helpful suggestions, touching where he touched and generally making an adorable nuisance of herself. She was so distracting, and I spent a lot of time blushing while her husband played connect the dots.
“Want to see mine?” She asked as Sialk finished the outline and started to set up the needles and gun. I eyed the contraption warily – the thing looked like a Borg probing device.
“Uhh… sure.”
“This was the first one he did for me.” She said as she hiked up her skirt. On the outer curve of her thigh, starting at the hip and scrolling all the way to the knee was a phrase.
We say with our hands that which we cannot give voice.
“That’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.” Her pretty teal gaze caught his and held. There was a tenderness between them that I shied away from. It wasn’t mine, the expression fundamentally extrinsic to me somehow. I thought of Salem and my heart gave a painful squeeze, remembering the delicious scratch of his stubble across my throat. The way he bit and tore at my lips even as he kissed them…
“And this one,” She pulled the sleeve of her blouse down, revealing what looked like a Pocket Dragon sleeping on a fading bed of maple leaves in the hollow just below her collarbone. “Sialk did that one when my dad died.”
“Geez, Mallory. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s OK. It was a couple years ago, but you know how much he liked Real Musgrave’s work. This way I’ve always got a little piece of him with me, right? And this one,” She pulled the shirt off entirely and turned around. “I’m getting finished today.”
Wings covered the whole of her back, trailing down below the hem on her skirt. I looked away, my mouth going dry.
“Butterfly?” Brilliantly detailed, golden yellow and russet, she looked like a pixie courtesan.
“Cosmic moth.” She laughed. “My uncle’s been trying to breed them at the Shreveport Zoo. Sometimes he lets me help. Hey, Sialk?” She plopped down in one of the tattoo chairs. “Where’s Irena anyway?”
“She’s supposed to clock in at around two. We’re all set over here, Sidonie. Go ahead and lie down. I’m going to start at your bikini line and work my way around.”
I scooted my jeans further down around my hips and tried to get comfortable. “Who’s Irena?”
“The other artist here. She also does most of the piercings.”
“She’s going to finish coloring in my wings while Sialk works on you.”
Sialk dipped the needle into a well of black ink, turned it on, sucked the color into the gun. “If you feel faint or need to take a break, let me know, OK?” He managed to be intimate yet impersonal at the same time. I felt… safe.
I nodded, caught somewhere between fascination and apprehension as the hollow point drilled into my skin for the first time.
It was glorious.
* * * * *
About ten hours later Sialk helped me off the work table and led me over to the floor length mirror. I was so sore I could barely walk straight but I felt calmer than I had in weeks.
“What do you think?”
The fresh ink positively glowed under the golden spun incandescent lighting. I gently fingered the flesh skirting one of the branches, understanding why people throughout the vast network of history had found some greater connection to enchantment transcendent through such otherwise mundane tools: pigment, a filament receptacle, and to lay agony willingly on the shrine of universal humanity and say, “I am perfect in my suffering as I can never be elsewise.”
Purged and permanent and beautiful beyond boundaries, the tattoo stood out against my skin like a benediction.
“I think she likes it, yeah?” Irena threw a tie-dye Grateful Dead bear in my general direction, glancing off my shoulder. Irena was from Pietermaritzburg, South Africa and her accent was liquid ear-sex. I’d been drowsing under the gun and listening to her and Mallory talk for the last eight hours on and off.
I laughed, feigning a pout. “Yeah… And ow.” Irena had a long-limbed burnt umber symmetry that owed less to conventional ideals of beauty and more to cocksure charisma. I liked looking at her: cheekbones cutting across her face like razorblades, small fierce eyes, and a perpetually sardonic quirk on her too-full lips.
“Stare at me all you want, Savuri, yeah? I have no taste for that.” She’d been calling me that all afternoon and I had no clue what it meant. It was nice to listen to her say it, though.
Mallory leaned over, affecting secrecy. “I think she likes you.”
“Next time I work on your color I slip with the needle, hmm? Muss up Master Red’s fine penmanship?”
“A dire threat indeed.” Sialk tossed her a cigarette, smiling good-naturedly. “You can be replaced, wench.”
“Racist or sexist, I can pick which one, yes?” Irena straddled her chair, taking a long drag.
“Only if I was white. Or straight.”
Mallory massaged his shoulders. “Honey – you’re half white. And half straight come to think of it.”
Sialk brought a finger to his lips, his face severe, signaling for quiet. “Shhh… nobody has to know that.”
I giggled behind my hand, my eyes sparkling.
“Irena?”
“Yes, what?”
“What’s Savuri mean?”
“What? You don’t have internet? You look it up if you want to know, ey!”
“Yep.” Mallory said. “She definitely likes you.”
* * * * *
"Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010
The first scene I wrote a couple weeks back, the second one I just revised and expanded on this afternoon.
Enjoy!
* * * * *
Why, I thought, my toes curling involuntarily, didn’t I do this sooner? The tattoo gun hummed, pounded and punctured along the greased expanse of skin. Mallory had presented the design to me once she pulled up to the tattoo parlor, picking up on my growing skepticism.
“One of the benefits of art school.” She had said, unrolling the vellum on the hood of the car.
Highly stylized black lines – almost oriental – slithered down the page, accented with only the barest hints of brown, green, white, and purple. I didn’t know what to say, and I reached out to run my fingers over the fine and sensuous brushstrokes. I loved it completely.
“Jaboticaba branches.” I said softly.
“I knew you’d like it.” She said, preening, and eminently pleased with herself. “And you doubted me, silly girl. Here – ” She said, hiking down the corner of my jeans and tucking the bottom of my shirt into the underwire of my bra.
“Umm… Mallory?”
“Hush, you.” Grabbing a sharpie from the dash, she placed a dot under the top hem of my panties, close to the hip. “This is the base, see? And it curves around your bellybutton in a dusting of those little white flowers.” She indicated on the paper which part of the piece she was talking about. “And it snakes around your ribs, a few branches hugging the perimeter of your breast,” More dots… “ – before curving under your arm and into the final spray along the back of your shoulder. A bit should bleed over onto your arm and onto the back of your neck, but not too much.” She capped the marker, grinning like an idiot.
“Wow…” I tried to picture it done, suppressed a surge of excitement.
“How expensive is this going to be?” I asked, cringing inwardly. I wasn’t exactly sure how the cost of a tattoo was calculated but I had the distinct impression that it wasn’t cheap.
“Free.”
“Free?” I repeated stupidly, not really processing it. “Wait, I mean… no. You can’t pay for this. It’s beautiful, but – ”
“No, Sidonie. Free. As in ‘we’re not being charged’.”
“What?”
She grabbed my hands and pulled me toward the door. “Just come inside. Jesus, you’re difficult.”
As it turned out the tattoo artist who owned the place was Mallory’s husband, which was more than a little bit strange to wrap my brain around.
“Sidonie, right?” In spite of the industrial piercings, neon red faux hawk, sleeve and facial tattoos I got good vibes off him. That didn’t help the awkwardness any, but still…
“Yeah. Hi.” I shook his hand, glancing at Mallory who was loving this.
“I’m Sialk. Mallory’s said a lot of good things about you.” His coloring reminded me of Yousef, but his features were softer, more open. Amerasian, I thought, probably from somewhere like the Philippines.
Pause. Fidget.
“So, umm… what’s that?” I asked, indicating the domino mask of reddish orange feathers around his eyes.
He touched his face. “Phoenix feathers.”
“Oh… I guess that should have been obvious.” The name of the shop was ‘Industrial Phoenix’. He laughed, devious but free of malice.
“Mal already showed me the design. Want me to sketch it out on you, see how you like it?”
“Sure, but… I mean…” I didn’t get this, like there was some subtext I was missing. “Why the charity case?”
Sialk grabbed what looked like a joint from his back pocket and lit up, giving me a long appraising look. “Mal told me what that shit monkey did. The way I figure it, any chick who fucks up her rapist as thoroughly as you did deserves a big shiny prize.”
For a minute I didn’t know how to respond, just stared. Then I started to giggle.
“Shit monkey? Really?” I laughed harder, laughed until my face hurt and Mallory and Sialk were looking at me like I’d completely lost it, and then they were laughing too. All the tension in the room evaporated, and I decided that even if I didn’t get it that was OK. It was good to see Mallory again, and I liked Sialk. I could feel my eyes sparkling under the fluorescent lights. This could be… fun.
And it was.
Mallory hung around while he marked it out, offering helpful suggestions, touching where he touched and generally making an adorable nuisance of herself. She was so distracting, and I spent a lot of time blushing while her husband played connect the dots.
“Want to see mine?” She asked as Sialk finished the outline and started to set up the needles and gun. I eyed the contraption warily – the thing looked like a Borg probing device.
“Uhh… sure.”
“This was the first one he did for me.” She said as she hiked up her skirt. On the outer curve of her thigh, starting at the hip and scrolling all the way to the knee was a phrase.
We say with our hands that which we cannot give voice.
“That’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.” Her pretty teal gaze caught his and held. There was a tenderness between them that I shied away from. It wasn’t mine, the expression fundamentally extrinsic to me somehow. I thought of Salem and my heart gave a painful squeeze, remembering the delicious scratch of his stubble across my throat. The way he bit and tore at my lips even as he kissed them…
“And this one,” She pulled the sleeve of her blouse down, revealing what looked like a Pocket Dragon sleeping on a fading bed of maple leaves in the hollow just below her collarbone. “Sialk did that one when my dad died.”
“Geez, Mallory. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s OK. It was a couple years ago, but you know how much he liked Real Musgrave’s work. This way I’ve always got a little piece of him with me, right? And this one,” She pulled the shirt off entirely and turned around. “I’m getting finished today.”
Wings covered the whole of her back, trailing down below the hem on her skirt. I looked away, my mouth going dry.
“Butterfly?” Brilliantly detailed, golden yellow and russet, she looked like a pixie courtesan.
“Cosmic moth.” She laughed. “My uncle’s been trying to breed them at the Shreveport Zoo. Sometimes he lets me help. Hey, Sialk?” She plopped down in one of the tattoo chairs. “Where’s Irena anyway?”
“She’s supposed to clock in at around two. We’re all set over here, Sidonie. Go ahead and lie down. I’m going to start at your bikini line and work my way around.”
I scooted my jeans further down around my hips and tried to get comfortable. “Who’s Irena?”
“The other artist here. She also does most of the piercings.”
“She’s going to finish coloring in my wings while Sialk works on you.”
Sialk dipped the needle into a well of black ink, turned it on, sucked the color into the gun. “If you feel faint or need to take a break, let me know, OK?” He managed to be intimate yet impersonal at the same time. I felt… safe.
I nodded, caught somewhere between fascination and apprehension as the hollow point drilled into my skin for the first time.
It was glorious.
* * * * *
About ten hours later Sialk helped me off the work table and led me over to the floor length mirror. I was so sore I could barely walk straight but I felt calmer than I had in weeks.
“What do you think?”
The fresh ink positively glowed under the golden spun incandescent lighting. I gently fingered the flesh skirting one of the branches, understanding why people throughout the vast network of history had found some greater connection to enchantment transcendent through such otherwise mundane tools: pigment, a filament receptacle, and to lay agony willingly on the shrine of universal humanity and say, “I am perfect in my suffering as I can never be elsewise.”
Purged and permanent and beautiful beyond boundaries, the tattoo stood out against my skin like a benediction.
“I think she likes it, yeah?” Irena threw a tie-dye Grateful Dead bear in my general direction, glancing off my shoulder. Irena was from Pietermaritzburg, South Africa and her accent was liquid ear-sex. I’d been drowsing under the gun and listening to her and Mallory talk for the last eight hours on and off.
I laughed, feigning a pout. “Yeah… And ow.” Irena had a long-limbed burnt umber symmetry that owed less to conventional ideals of beauty and more to cocksure charisma. I liked looking at her: cheekbones cutting across her face like razorblades, small fierce eyes, and a perpetually sardonic quirk on her too-full lips.
“Stare at me all you want, Savuri, yeah? I have no taste for that.” She’d been calling me that all afternoon and I had no clue what it meant. It was nice to listen to her say it, though.
Mallory leaned over, affecting secrecy. “I think she likes you.”
“Next time I work on your color I slip with the needle, hmm? Muss up Master Red’s fine penmanship?”
“A dire threat indeed.” Sialk tossed her a cigarette, smiling good-naturedly. “You can be replaced, wench.”
“Racist or sexist, I can pick which one, yes?” Irena straddled her chair, taking a long drag.
“Only if I was white. Or straight.”
Mallory massaged his shoulders. “Honey – you’re half white. And half straight come to think of it.”
Sialk brought a finger to his lips, his face severe, signaling for quiet. “Shhh… nobody has to know that.”
I giggled behind my hand, my eyes sparkling.
“Irena?”
“Yes, what?”
“What’s Savuri mean?”
“What? You don’t have internet? You look it up if you want to know, ey!”
“Yep.” Mallory said. “She definitely likes you.”
* * * * *
"Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Johnette Napolitano - Suicide Note
I'm working on "Paindancer" while I listen to this song on repeat. I am completely infatuated with it. Her voice is liquid ear-sex. For realsies.
Thanks to Monk (of twistedmonk.com) for introducing me to it. Though I have never met or had a conversation with the man, I have enjoyed his writing and work for a long time.
Thanks to Monk (of twistedmonk.com) for introducing me to it. Though I have never met or had a conversation with the man, I have enjoyed his writing and work for a long time.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
"Paindancer" - Preview
A taste of the novel I've been slaving over. Enjoy!
__________________________
“… and the Wren called back to the Hawk upon the wind, named him ‘Darling’, ‘Heart-Skein’, and ‘Tempest of the Forge’…”
It seemed I had walked this path always, the voice and the strength occupying previously subconscious headspace coming finally into focus.
The Bright Man smiled, touched my arm with the ease of long familiarity.
“It was in this way the Wren pierced the veils of immortality and secured spirit in the natural hierarchy.” His odd hunched grace, the too wide mouth, the elongated features should have unnerved me. Yet here, in this place, the rational mind was the dream with the same dissevered composition. “No earthbound creature can subjugate one who knows them so completely, that names them in truths beyond language. Not for nutriment. Not for pleasure. Not for sport. Do you understand?”
I nodded, mute. Though to say I understood was an overstatement. I reacted, viscerally. Too many half-articulated emotions grasping for freedom from the tip of my tongue; my head felt over full and cluttered. Opalescent flowers shuddered and bled in the dust.
“’To create of the Self a vessel in which there is no Self’… Remember what it was to be empty and the mirror therein that gave you power. That is the essence of the Wren.” Sadness surged through him, tangled the supple finesse of his too wide mouth as though he were merely the conduit for the concept of ‘sorrow’. “That was her gift to you.” He said, laying one spindly hand across the upper quadrant of my abdomen.
“And you?” I didn’t know why I said it…
The Bright Man rocked back on his haunches, his double-jointed knees sketching zigzags in the ether as mercurial laughter bubbled and boiled from his lips. He threw out his arms, catching sunlight like cinders on his skin.
Is it a blessing or a curse, I thought, to experience each emotion undiluted by the one that came before?
“The Savage Garden!” He cried, heliotrope dripping like clouds of dry ice from his eyes as he pointed at me. “The Kingdom and the Glory, oh, beautiful, bedeviled child!”
Dandelions ruptured into saffron starbursts, withered, and spent their seed twining on the breeze. Downy seedlings caressed my face and clung to my hair.
“The residual self-image of Earth Herself; this is where She comes when She dreams.” The Bright Man smiled his radically outspread grin, and if it weren’t for the childlike delight suffusing the whole of his features it might have been terrifying. Blinking back the glare, I took in the panorama.
Great and fleshy leaves hung suspended from the canopies, pulsing with their own sanguine fluids. Tree-bark glittered with its own near-metallic mysteries; fruit blistered along the trunks in tantalizing clusters. I flexed my toes in the soil as clover tried to snake around my ankles, leaned over and plucked a Jaboticaba cherry. Distended, the peel taut and begging for release, I bit a hole in the purplish skin as I had hundreds upon thousands of times before. A small brindle-brown bird alighted on the back of The Bright Man’s hand as I squeezed.
At the zenith of ripeness, Jaboticaba had never been so realized. The fruit positively wept juice in my mouth, my teeth slicing through the harvest-veins with razor like precision. I felt like the mythic Taliesin, scalding my tongue with those first exalted drops of wisdom. I tore into another, and another, and another. Peels drifted to stain the earth like bruises. The Bright Man watched me with avid yet reticent interest, stroked the wings of the recherché songbird twittering at his ear.
I ate until pearly sap dribbled from the corners of my mouth and the muscles circling my torso began to tick with an obscure, sallow vibration.
“What’s happening?” I gasped. Afternoon throbbed into twilight. Rinds and uneaten fruit rolled out of my grasp as I began to shiver all over.
The pain was an exponential thing, starting as a dull ache akin to fatigue and creeping upward in time with the tintinnabulary ripple pinprickling over my body. I was doubled over, clutching the swollen mound of my belly. A queer skittering sensation registered against my palms.
“It hurts.” I implored The Bright Man, curled on my side in the lush grass beds. He fidgeted above me, the elastic skin covering his face expanding and constricting wildly. I moaned into the ground, unable to summon the breath to scream as the pain crested inexorably higher.
As though coming to a decision, he suddenly pounced to straddle my waist pinioning me with one hand to my throat as he pressed the opposing fingertips into one menacing apex. The bird took to the air around the lambent whitecap of his hair caught, it seemed, in that sovereign halo.
“No – ” I barely got the word out before The Bright Man drove his taloned hand like a stiletto into the soft flesh skirting my navel.
Then I found the strength to scream; then I clawed at the forearm lodged to the wrist in my gut. The sharp, muscadine-like fragrance of Jaboticaba spirits assailed my nostrils even as firewater sluiced from the wound. He heard none of it, eased his hand from the gash with infinite tenderness. His fingers smoldered in chartreuse rivulets. Agony devolved into an immaterial presence hovering in the air between us as he compelled my attention. Violet sparks diffused into violet tinder as our eyes locked.
“Choose.” He said as I gagged on the wine frothing from my lips. The Bright Man was an eternity unto himself surging toward entropy. In my imperfect understanding of age, I withered. Glowworms writhed, devoured, and gurgled in pestilent supernovas from the ever widening cavity howling beneath my ribs. I was beginning to fade, and I welcomed it, detached myself from it.
The Bright Man took a handful of the larvae in his hand and squeezed, popping the tiny grublings in a zit-like cluster until their bioluminescence greased his fingers. Seeming older than the perpetuity of his form, he laid his palm across my forehead in viscerous baptism. Luciferase radiance obscured my vision; I closed my eyes.
“You are a Madonna in the oeuvre of primacy itself. There is no Beauty without Tragedy to deepen it, lend it meaning.” Fireworms stretched, split their skins, chaos shooting candle flies into the milky, Cimmerian haze.
“Be beautiful, earth, flame, daughter, but never forget – ” Was it regret that deepened his voice? Feathery, versicolored wings caressed my face.
“ – that our talents should inspire such grief…”
__________________________
"Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010
__________________________
“… and the Wren called back to the Hawk upon the wind, named him ‘Darling’, ‘Heart-Skein’, and ‘Tempest of the Forge’…”
It seemed I had walked this path always, the voice and the strength occupying previously subconscious headspace coming finally into focus.
The Bright Man smiled, touched my arm with the ease of long familiarity.
“It was in this way the Wren pierced the veils of immortality and secured spirit in the natural hierarchy.” His odd hunched grace, the too wide mouth, the elongated features should have unnerved me. Yet here, in this place, the rational mind was the dream with the same dissevered composition. “No earthbound creature can subjugate one who knows them so completely, that names them in truths beyond language. Not for nutriment. Not for pleasure. Not for sport. Do you understand?”
I nodded, mute. Though to say I understood was an overstatement. I reacted, viscerally. Too many half-articulated emotions grasping for freedom from the tip of my tongue; my head felt over full and cluttered. Opalescent flowers shuddered and bled in the dust.
“’To create of the Self a vessel in which there is no Self’… Remember what it was to be empty and the mirror therein that gave you power. That is the essence of the Wren.” Sadness surged through him, tangled the supple finesse of his too wide mouth as though he were merely the conduit for the concept of ‘sorrow’. “That was her gift to you.” He said, laying one spindly hand across the upper quadrant of my abdomen.
“And you?” I didn’t know why I said it…
The Bright Man rocked back on his haunches, his double-jointed knees sketching zigzags in the ether as mercurial laughter bubbled and boiled from his lips. He threw out his arms, catching sunlight like cinders on his skin.
Is it a blessing or a curse, I thought, to experience each emotion undiluted by the one that came before?
“The Savage Garden!” He cried, heliotrope dripping like clouds of dry ice from his eyes as he pointed at me. “The Kingdom and the Glory, oh, beautiful, bedeviled child!”
Dandelions ruptured into saffron starbursts, withered, and spent their seed twining on the breeze. Downy seedlings caressed my face and clung to my hair.
“The residual self-image of Earth Herself; this is where She comes when She dreams.” The Bright Man smiled his radically outspread grin, and if it weren’t for the childlike delight suffusing the whole of his features it might have been terrifying. Blinking back the glare, I took in the panorama.
Great and fleshy leaves hung suspended from the canopies, pulsing with their own sanguine fluids. Tree-bark glittered with its own near-metallic mysteries; fruit blistered along the trunks in tantalizing clusters. I flexed my toes in the soil as clover tried to snake around my ankles, leaned over and plucked a Jaboticaba cherry. Distended, the peel taut and begging for release, I bit a hole in the purplish skin as I had hundreds upon thousands of times before. A small brindle-brown bird alighted on the back of The Bright Man’s hand as I squeezed.
At the zenith of ripeness, Jaboticaba had never been so realized. The fruit positively wept juice in my mouth, my teeth slicing through the harvest-veins with razor like precision. I felt like the mythic Taliesin, scalding my tongue with those first exalted drops of wisdom. I tore into another, and another, and another. Peels drifted to stain the earth like bruises. The Bright Man watched me with avid yet reticent interest, stroked the wings of the recherché songbird twittering at his ear.
I ate until pearly sap dribbled from the corners of my mouth and the muscles circling my torso began to tick with an obscure, sallow vibration.
“What’s happening?” I gasped. Afternoon throbbed into twilight. Rinds and uneaten fruit rolled out of my grasp as I began to shiver all over.
The pain was an exponential thing, starting as a dull ache akin to fatigue and creeping upward in time with the tintinnabulary ripple pinprickling over my body. I was doubled over, clutching the swollen mound of my belly. A queer skittering sensation registered against my palms.
“It hurts.” I implored The Bright Man, curled on my side in the lush grass beds. He fidgeted above me, the elastic skin covering his face expanding and constricting wildly. I moaned into the ground, unable to summon the breath to scream as the pain crested inexorably higher.
As though coming to a decision, he suddenly pounced to straddle my waist pinioning me with one hand to my throat as he pressed the opposing fingertips into one menacing apex. The bird took to the air around the lambent whitecap of his hair caught, it seemed, in that sovereign halo.
“No – ” I barely got the word out before The Bright Man drove his taloned hand like a stiletto into the soft flesh skirting my navel.
Then I found the strength to scream; then I clawed at the forearm lodged to the wrist in my gut. The sharp, muscadine-like fragrance of Jaboticaba spirits assailed my nostrils even as firewater sluiced from the wound. He heard none of it, eased his hand from the gash with infinite tenderness. His fingers smoldered in chartreuse rivulets. Agony devolved into an immaterial presence hovering in the air between us as he compelled my attention. Violet sparks diffused into violet tinder as our eyes locked.
“Choose.” He said as I gagged on the wine frothing from my lips. The Bright Man was an eternity unto himself surging toward entropy. In my imperfect understanding of age, I withered. Glowworms writhed, devoured, and gurgled in pestilent supernovas from the ever widening cavity howling beneath my ribs. I was beginning to fade, and I welcomed it, detached myself from it.
The Bright Man took a handful of the larvae in his hand and squeezed, popping the tiny grublings in a zit-like cluster until their bioluminescence greased his fingers. Seeming older than the perpetuity of his form, he laid his palm across my forehead in viscerous baptism. Luciferase radiance obscured my vision; I closed my eyes.
“You are a Madonna in the oeuvre of primacy itself. There is no Beauty without Tragedy to deepen it, lend it meaning.” Fireworms stretched, split their skins, chaos shooting candle flies into the milky, Cimmerian haze.
“Be beautiful, earth, flame, daughter, but never forget – ” Was it regret that deepened his voice? Feathery, versicolored wings caressed my face.
“ – that our talents should inspire such grief…”
__________________________
"Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010
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