a beaming needle in a human haystack
Lilith
I just can’t shake this guy. Look at what he’s got me doing for him now . . .
I have to hunt down our former host.
What’s become of me? I’ve sunk so low. It will take some sifting through skin, drifting from body to body, until I pinpoint
her all over again. It’s practically impossible, locating one vessel in a mass of humanity. A miracle, you might say, if we
believed in the miraculous. Fantasies for man. Find one, just one, in the din. A grain of sand in an endless desert of sin.
There is such a fluidity to flesh. A tide I can ride. I swim through people’s dreams, their pent-up repressions, the desires
they hide. I hear it all. Every last secret.
It’s so hard to think straight, hearing all these voices, when all I want is to hear him. Jordan. Any one of these voids would be sufficient. I could simply pick from the plethora of vessels for a night on the town. But
no—it has to be her. I need to find her.
Our initial skin. The flesh we first met in.
It’s almost offensive, choosing to do this.
Prove myself to Jordan. It’s a cheap parlor trick to convince disbelievers.
Why such a vulgar display? Simply for him?
Can’t he just like us for, you know . . .
us? Me? Why do I have to slip on some mask and pretend I’m someone else?
This is who I’ve been for an eternity. The chip on
my shoulder spans millennia, and he wants me to be—what, exactly? Some bubbly tattooed party girl? Why does it even matter
what Jordan thinks? Why am I going to such absurd lengths, simply to gain his faith?
He tastes good, for starters. What a rare vintage he is. The salt, the sweat, the darkness—like chocolate. I find myself craving
more. Others bore me. I tire too quickly of everyone else. But with Jordan . . . there’s more. I tasted something else. Something
fresh. It was buried within, deep below the skin, practically at the core. A shadow, lingering. It overwhelmed me. Took me
by such surprise.
He’s not just a doorway . . . He’s a floodgate. What flows within him is endless.
I could drown in him.
But first, I need to show him who I am. What I am.
It’s beneath me, this trick. Still. I’ll play along.
For now.
I search for this skin, for his sake. Simply to prove myself. My very existence.
There she is. I sense her now. This skin has a hint of familiarity. Just a glimmer of dissoluteness. I have been here before.
Within her. The fissure of her own desire is thin, but it’s open enough for me to find our foothold. To crawl back into this
world and inhabit her.
Let me in . . .
The whisper is so faint, at first. She doesn’t hear me. Or perhaps she chooses not to.
Is she pretending not to notice?
She is at home, in her apartment. Alone.
There is no light beyond a green string of tiny bulbs branching across the walls, illuminated thorns on a rosebush.
The walls are adorned with flyers for musicians.
Film posters for a local theater. Have I seen any of these films?
I’ve ventured into the cinema before. I sat in the shadows, hidden amongst the rest—faceless, nameless, everyone’s attention enraptured by the lightshow.
I found myself transfixed as well, for a spell, marveling at the moving images.
What a fond memory. How I miss film. The beam of light reaching across the darkness, casting its shadows over the white tundra
of the screen. The fluid motion of images, the pictures at play, the crackle of celluloid within the projector, the hum of
its motor at the rear of the theater, the faintest scent of cigarettes from the man behind us, the smoke drifting in the air,
suspended within the darkened space, a spirit, a lonesome ghost, a phantom finding that beam of light and filling it, consuming
it, eddies of burnt tobacco swirling over our heads, while I, without my vessel, found myself drifting throughout the theater,
body to body to body, a river of skin, mimicking the motions of those bodies onscreen, coalescing giants, their towering shadows
bending and flexing and moaning.
Wouldn’t it be nice to go to the movies again? Sit in a darkened space, before that blank void of a screen, until it’s filled
with light? With stories?
I wonder if Jordan would ever go to the movies with us. Maybe we could take him.
What’s his favorite film? I wonder . . .
Sorry. Where were we? Our present vessel, yes. Our lovely little void . . .
Cara.
She’s a movie house in and of herself, an empty theater yearning for the show to begin.
What film will we screen inside her mind tonight?
What blissful cinema will I project inside her?
She moved to this city only a few months ago.
There is an absence at the very center of herself.
A wishing well in her chest. So lonely. So ambitious.
She wishes to make a film of her own, endless hours spent toiling away, crafting her story for the screen.
Already her self-doubt has gnawed away at her confidence, a dozen different rats chewing upon her assuredness, wriggling into her heart and roosting there.
Her self-worth has dimmed, her faith faltering.
She would sell her soul to make a movie. Be famous. A star.
That’s where I enter the picture.
Let me in . . .
She is so focused on the book in her hand, a novel I never read. She’s hiding in its pages without actually reading them,
avoiding me. Pretending she can’t hear me calling.
Her darkness is faint, barely a passing shadow, but there’s enough for me to inhabit.
Let me in . . .
There’s no denying that she hears me now. My voice permeates the atmosphere all around her. It tickles her ear, bristling
the hairs along the back of her neck.
Her book falls to her feet, pages fluttering. Cara turns to see where the voice could have come from. She swore it had been
right over her shoulder.
No one is there.
The apartment is empty. Of course it is.
Cara lives alone.
“Who’s there?” She waits. Sits in the silence. Listening. Breath held.
Let me in . . .
There I am again. This time, the whisper is more forceful. So near. It comes from within, pressing against her temples.
There it is. Her eyes dilate. Her lower jaw slackens just so. She remembers me. My voice. It all comes crashing back, the
memory of us. The gentle lick of my whisper scrapes against the inside of her skull. Only the spiders in her mind, crawling. How it tickles.
Cara stands. She takes in the room around her, even though she knows—positive now—that no one is there. Here. With her.
Only me.
She’s still searching, desperate to see. To find me.
“What do you want?” Cara steps back, away from the couch. She’s backing toward the wall. She’s searching, searching for something
to see, convinced she’ll find me.
It’s already too late. I’m inside now.
Peek-a-boo.
The string of lights constricts. The glow of each bulb seethes as the tendrils branch and stretch out further along the wall.
A trick of the mind, perhaps, but it feels so real to her. The illuminated ivy finds her legs, weaving over her knees, her
waist, wrapping around her body, before finding their way in. The thorns, each bulb, burn. They light my way in.
Let me in, I say one last time. Let me be your muse. Let me make you a star.
A bright, shining star . . .
“Yes,” Cara gasps. That’s all it takes. All I need. Acquiescence. Cara, my vessel, relents. There is just enough of a fissure
within her to slither through and settle.
There’s no pain. I simply swell, filling out our host, water pouring from a pitcher. I expand, take shape. My tongue becomes
a root, reaching down deep, branching out and grabbing hold.
This is my favorite part.
Where I become we.
The borders of our beings coalesce into one. No pain, no more fear. Just the gentlest rush of water pouring over. Her body
is so warm. It gives us presence. Depth. We stretch our limbs, every muscle singing in their bindings, finding the limits
within our sinew, testing their threshold.
We find the precipice of ourselves. The very edge of our body. When you exist without flesh, there is that fascination when
you reach the sudden end of oneself. The limit of skin. There is no going beyond these bodies. You exist and that is all there
is.
So we will live, confined inside. The gift within these limitations is sensation. To be granted touch, taste, sound, and smell.
It is a blessing, we believe. We have been granted the pleasure of your senses.
To feel.
Blessing. How strange. Maybe Jordan is making a believer out of us after all.
We are a blessing. The darkest blessing.
Now that we have our tender vessel, our familiar face back on again, it is time to take the night. We must find him. Yet another
grain of sand in a desert of so many.
A needle in a haystack, as they say.
Jordan. Sweet, gentle Jordan.
Our river.