“We give you flesh through blood, we give you body though spirit.”
“Flesh through blood,” came the antiphon. “Body through spirit.”
The Prelate kissed the dolch. The cloaked Surrogoti stood at opposite points of the Trine. The Prelate turned to face them.
They joined hands. They looked down and they prayed.
“Walk with us, Father.”
“Protect us.”
“Bless us, Father, and deliver us. Give us strength to do your will in this holy time, we your unworthy servants. Let us walk unseen and speak unheard so that we may give to you again. Bless us and come among us, Father.”
“Flesh through blood.”
“Body through spirit.”
The Prelate felt risen. He closed his eyes and looked. Show me, he prayed. I beseech thee. He saw black like onyx and endless chasms of flesh and loss. The sky was red beyond the stygian terrascape; lattices of distant fires pulsed slowly throughout the chasms’ rough clefts like glowing veins, and the merged black mutterings of chaos deafened the endless gorge. It was beautiful. The Prelate swept down into the abyss, no longer a man but a great svelte bird. Down and down, into lovely chaos, into the grace of the tumult. Visions soared past, dark blood colors and movements of things barely seen. Each crevice of the vale wound through oozing slabs of rock, escarpments and catacombs, riven earthworks and bottomless pits. Carry me away, thought the Prelate upon gorgeous black wings. The void’s screams flooded his bead-black eyes with tears of joy, the fury of truth, its quickness and its infinity. The gorge descended further into tenebrae, leading him to some inverted pinnacle older than history. A mile or a thousand miles off he could see the blessed summit, but below the chasm’s gushing black, movement began to reveal itself beneath the sheen of sulphurous smoke. Beaked scavengers picked through piles of twitching bodies; sluglike excrement- dwellers sloughed flesh off bones. Gaping holes in rock disgorged corpses charred to sticks, billowing smoke sooty with human fat. Beautiful, dreamed the Prelate. Figures less than human emerged from gaseous cracks: faceless, indescribable ushers that pawed at the pitiable human horde, drinking up their screams, inhaling their blood. Naked shapes in swarms struggled throughout slime and shit only to be trod upon by the chuckling attendants of this place. Bodies squirmed with vigor as skulls were cracked apart and plucked of their pink meat. Limbs were torqued out of sockets, spines were yanked out of backs, bodies were slowly and methodically squashed and gazed upon as bones snapped and organs burst. One usher sunk huge genitals into a squirming woman’s rectum while another curiously twisted her head around and around till it came off. Other bodies were skillfully flensed by nimble claw-hands, dismantled piece by piece. Faces were shorn off living heads, fingers and toes were nibbled as tidbits. Grotesque genitals rose to plunder any orifice in reach. Inhuman hands pulled open scrotums to expose raw testicles to flames. Needle teeth sunk into glans, bit off nipples and breasts, hands and feet, ears, noses, scalps. The ushers rejoiced in their determined work, peerless in their execution. There was no end to the workings of their beauty. One of the ushers forced a man to eat parts of himself; others directed children to dissect their mothers alive, then themselves. Whole tangles of writhing human bodies were submerged into pits of steaming excrement, held under until they drowned, and huge, misshapen feet plodded systematically upon carpets of pregnant women till their wombs disbirthed. Placentae and fetuses were set aside upon hot rocks, to cook.
Here was recompense. Here was truth.
The Prelate looked for the day when he, too, would join the ushers in their holy onus.
The earthworks led on. The Prelate glided serenely over turning fire and smoldering pits. The screams, like beautiful music, faded behind. Plinths studded the precipice, black cenotaphs and dolmens old as the world. Higher and higher the Prelate sailed, and down and down until soon there was no sound at all, only the serenity of this lightless, ancient place. He could feel the beauty of its presence, he could almost touch it, for it was coming…
Closer, closer…
The Prelate stopped.
He hovered in infinity, staring.
Before him stood the Father’s obsidian throne, and in it:
The Father.
The Father of the Earth.
“Aorista!”
* * * “To you we give our faith forever,” wept the Prelate down into the Trine.
“Flesh through blood,” chorused the Surrogoti. “Body through spirit.”
The Prelate turned and held up the jarra. “My love, Father. My gift to thee.” He held up the dolch. “And your gift to us.”
The Surrrogoti raised their arms.
“Give us grace, O Father, to fulfill your destiny.”
“Baalzephon, hail!”
“Aorista!”
The cement floor, around the Trine, grew warm.
Veronica looked up from her worktable. She heard footsteps. But when she peeked into the hall, the stairwell was empty.
The footsteps had sounded misplaced. They hadn’t even sounded like they were coming from the stairs.
It must be my brain thumping, she thought. Her work lay before her. The basic sketch was done. Yesterday’s sketches had lacked something, but today she realized what.
The sketches had lacked her.
Last night’s dream of the burning man had been the most detailed yet. The Ecstasy of the Flames, she thought. The Fire-Lover. The vacant space at the flame-lover’s side needed to be filled. Veronica had filled that space with herself.
Thus far her only attempts at self-portrait had been deeply expressionistic. This would have to be different, though; she would need to paint herself not in abstraction, but in a physical reality. She’d never done that before. The prospect excited her, but it was also a little bit scary.
What if she failed?
Sudden voices distracted her. Now she was sure people were in the hall. How could she have missed them when she looked a moment ago? The voices spoke in French. Marzen and Gilles were easy to tell apart. She got up again and listened through the door.
Gibberish composed the entire exchange. Then a third voice spoke, in English. It was Khoronos.
“She is tainted. I made a serious error.”
“Ja,” Marzen agreed. “Vut do vee do?”
“It was my error,” Khoronos said. “I will assume my state of accountability.”
“Tomorrow?” Gilles asked.
“Tomorrow night,” Khoronos instructed. “But don’t worry about it now. You must go.”
Gilles and Marzen departed down the hall. Veronica peeked out the door. Both men were dressed in sleek, dark suits. Marzen seemed to be carrying something. A black pouch?
A door clicked shut to her right. That’s where they’d been, in the room made of mirrors. Khoronos had called it his “muse room.” What did he do in there? Veronica could picture him sitting in the silver room all alone, contemplating his wisdoms.
She heard Marzen and Gilles leave out the front door. Then a car started up and pulled off.
What had Khoronos said? She is tainted. Who did he mean? She shrugged it off.
