We could wield another death by the handle or we could let ours eat us from within. |
In the final hour of my innocence, I watched the saltwater lick the sand in the blazing heat of the day. That was before Johnny arrived, his smile a Devil’s, like a serrated knife between his lips. He slashed his way to me with his razor leer through laughing children who crumpled like leaves into ashes in his wake, bleeding from their necks. At my feet in the sand lay a gun, like a gift, and when I held it, I understood that I was chosen. But when I raised that cold, cold metal up to his white teeth, only smoke poured forth, and Johnny laughed. He named me one of his and swept me to refuge in the abandoned church where the morning light shone green. Each day, he lay the knife at my side and unlocked my cage. We were two angels of death then, Johnny and me. Today we would board a school bus full of children, tomorrow slink into the suburbs at twilight or obliterate a city street if Johnny felt bold. We always left one standing, one who inevitably chose to become like me. The other choice was to die, and we were afraid. We could wield another death by the handle or we could let ours eat us from within. Johnny was the only one who did not fear his death, and when we asked him why he chose the knife over the darkness, Johnny just laughed and laughed. In winter, Johnny held me under the orchard trees, feeding me poison apples like a serpentine lover, promising that he would permit me to live with their forbidden taste on my tongue. In summer, Johnny dragged me to the seafloor, where we danced a watery waltz on the limestone with the ghosts. I remembered them from my old dreams, and when I cried to them to be as I once knew, Johnny laughed and laughed and laughed. And when my fear at last became too much to bear, I fled to a house belonging to strangers and hid under the bed like a child. They found me, shaking and silent, but the strangers knew my name and granted my plea for salvation. Away we flew, their wings beneath mine, our path jagged across the world because the places where he could not find me were always changing. But Johnny’s laugh followed me all through. In the stink of the swamps, in the fire of the sunset, in every crack on every orchard tree, Johnny laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. When I fell screaming from the sky, they said that I was mad and left me all alone. Fear was a pointed heart in my throat as the prayer poured then from my lips and the corners of my eyes: Let it be true, O God! O God, O God, let me be mad! |