the mourning after
Jordan
My throat is so dry. I’m so parched. I need water. I can hear the brittle crème br?lée crackle of my chapped lips splitting
before I even open my eyes.
I must still be in the hospital, hooked up to God only knows how many different machines. The needles are embedded in my skin,
reaching in deep, tethering me to these feeding tubes. IV drips. Heart rate monitors. They’re endless, all these snaking cables
and wires.
So why can’t I feel the bed beneath me?
That’s odd.
Where’s the stiff pillow? The saggy mattress? There’s nothing beneath me. I swear, it’s like I’m held up by the tubes and
wires of every machine I’m connected to, supposedly keeping me alive. I have the uncanny feeling of suspension, like I’m hanging
in the air. Gravity’s got me in its grip, but I’m not going anywhere, held aloft by . . . by what, exactly?
I’ve still got my eyes closed. Nothing in me wants to open them, see what’s waiting on the other side of my eyelids. Then
I’ll know. And knowing is half the battle, G.I. Joe says.
Me, I’m thinking ignorance is fucking bliss right about now. My body still feels broken. The stitchwork still itches. But
the beep of my EEG sounds more erratic than normal. Metallic. It doesn’t have the steady rhythm of my heartbeat. It shivers.
Jostles. Bells around my body.
This isn’t my bed. This isn’t the hospital at all.
I can’t avoid it any longer. I need to see. I need to open my eyes and—
Oh. My feet aren’t touching the floor.
Because there is no floor.
I’m suspended, somehow, naked in the pitch black, unable to reach the ground. I kick through the air and immediately hear
that crescendoing shiver of metal again.
Chains.
Links rattle all around me, Christmas bells chiming, and I feel a sudden pinch in my skin. A sting in my shoulders. The pressure
digs into my flesh all around, like teeth.
My arms . . . What’s wrapped around my arm?
I try lifting my hand, reach behind me to see what’s dragging across my back, only to feel this immense pressure across the
lower slope of my spine, these metallic fangs digging into the tissue along my muscles. The more I move, the deeper these
teeth pierce my skin.
That chime only grows louder the more I struggle, links rattling all over, filling the air.
I’m covered in chrome.
Bike chains.
I’m strung up in the air by endless reams of linked metal, miles of bike chains, all of them wrapped around my body, twining
my arms and legs, digging into my skin and drawing blood.
Each endless tendril spans out in a different direction, lost in the surrounding shadows. I can’t see how far the chains go
or what they’re even attached to, if anything. These links could go on forever. It could all be a chrome cobweb and I’m the
fly, trapped.
I have to get out of here. Have to try.
Whenever I stretch my arm in either direction, the chains rattle. Ring out and echo. Listen to the bells toll. The sound disperses,
spreads and fades into silence.
Just how high up am I?
How low?
I glance down and there’s nothing, nothing beneath my feet at all.
Just darkness.
So I shout at the top of my lungs, “Help me!” The sound goes nowhere, fading fast.
Silence.
I have to escape.
Now.
Blood rises from my skin. The links have gnawed their way into my flesh, drawing blood along my back, my arms, thighs, everywhere,
guttered by the hollow pins and plates, each chrome segment drenched in red, drip, drip, dripping into the abyss below.
I need to free myself from these chains. Need to pull myself out of—
My body slips. Gravity grabs hold and tugs, until I slide down a few inches before halting. Maybe I don’t want to let go.
Maybe it’s better if I—
I start to slip again, slower now, dragged down. All the blood is greasing me up. The chains are losing their hold on me.
My skin. I’m slipping, plunging further down, until—
I’m free.
I slip out from the metal web, the dozen or so bike chains that held me now rebounding upward, chrome chiming in the slightest
vibrations, as I take the plunge.
I’m falling. No end in sight. My arms swipe through the air but there’s nothing to grab. Nothing to hold on to. I kick and
scream but there’s nothing, nothing at all as I keep falling.
Falling—
—until I bolt upright in my bed, entwined in the bedsheet. The covers are soaked in sweat.
The weight of my body recalibrates. Dream logic is gone and I’m crashing back to reality. Physicality. Corporeality. I feel
like I’m full of cement, my body nothing but brick.
“Jesus fucking Christ . . .” The vertigo dissipates. Slowly. I just lie there, catching my breath. Let the dream wash away
from the rest of me.
I’m alive. I’m alive.
But not alone.
Lilith doesn’t do her disappearing act this time, ditching me while I sleep. As a matter of fact, she’s still out like a light.
Well, that’s a first . . .
Funny, to wake up before she does and find her—this body, at least. Her host, whoever she is, rests just next to me. Her breath
purls over in her throat, the softest riptide of oxygen, like waves gently crashing against my shoulder before washing back
out into her lungs.
Who is she? Her host?
There are cracks in the plaster that I swear weren’t there before last night. Fresh fissures within the wall branch out across
the bedroom, spreading out from where we lie.
How in the hell did those get all the way up there?
I run my finger along the crack, gypsum dust crumbling across my skin. I press my hand against the Sheetrock, and it sinks
further in, cratering above our heads.
Christ . . . did we do that? I bet I’ll have the bruises to prove it, my body all mottled in black and blue. Rational thought went right out the window
last night. This is worse than a bender. Reality distorted and I’m waking up with the strangest aches and pains.
It’s always the morning after, in the light of day, when the flood of questions and second-guessing kicks in. Here it comes . . .
Lilith says she’s a demon. Possessed by one, at least . . . and I slept with her. Twice. Maybe it’s my mental well-being I should be worried about. I need to get my head checked.
I don’t believe her . . . do I? There’s no way, absolutely no possible fucking way that she could actually be a demon. Demons don’t exist. Demons aren’t real.
Because if they are real, then what does that say about me? Who falls for a—
“Bad dream?”
Lilith’s eyes are open. They’ve found me, locked onto mine.
“Yeah . . . You could say that.”
“We get those, too.”
“Oh?” What do demons dream about? “What about?”
“An old flame.” She winks, then burrows into me. The tip of her nose brushes against my bare shoulder. “Don’t worry, he’s
long gone. History by now.”
“How long did it last?”
“A lot longer than it should’ve,” she says. “It took us years to break free.” Her face is partially buried in the blanket,
these cotton dunes. She looks . . . happy. Content. Softened, somehow, by the sun. Her hair slips into her face.
“You stuck around this time.”
“You seem surprised,” she says with a hint of a smile. What a devilish grin. I only see half of it, her face buried in my
bed, the sheets washing against her cheeks, so the corner of her lips reaches directly up toward the ceiling. A crescent-shaped
vermilion moon.
“Sorry. Yeah, I guess . . . You just don’t strike me as the sleeping in type.”
“It’s unclear what we are,” she says. “You tired us out.”
Pillow talk with the devil. “I don’t make a habit of one-night stands with demons.”
“We don’t make a habit of waking up next to humans.”
“Who am I talking to now?”
“Who do you think?”
“I’m sorry, I . . .” I’m trying to find the right words. “I want to know how this all works.”
“This is as new to us as it is to you.”
“How’s that?”
“Chatting.” She rolls over and stretches, a feline sprawl. “Afterward.”
The blanket tugs away from me, dragged along with her body, exposing the slope of her spine. Her skin is flushed, warm with
sleep. I can see the creases in her shoulder where the bedsheets pressed against her overnight, this slight fracture in her
flesh branching outward. It reminds me of porcelain, the infinitesimal cracks spreading through the glaze.
She has more tattoos than I noticed before, so I play a game of Naked I Spy . . .
I spy a tat of a briar patch and thistle. I spy a tat of a pair of seamstress shears. I spy a tat of a cherub, staring blindly
at me . . . and I can’t help but stare back.
I swear that angel blinks at me, the ink shifting across her skin.
I press again, more persistent this time, “Who are you? Am I talking to you or your . . .”
“. . . Host?”
“Yeah.” Host. So that’s what she calls them. Us, I guess. People. Humans?
“Just me,” she says.
I can’t help but think of every goddamn exorcist movie I’ve ever watched, where a priest demands the demon name itself. They
always obfuscate, sidestepping the question.
It’s all a game. These demons duck the truth from some dipshit in a clerical collar.
“Who is she? Your host?”
“A void,” she says. “There is a space within her. A chasm. I crawl in. Take a spin.”
“Sounds like you’re hot-wiring a car.”
“I’ve been known to go on the occasional joyride.”
“What would you call . . . this?” This, meaning last night. Meaning me.
Meaning . . . us.
“Good question,” she says after considering it for a spell. “No dings or dents just yet. We’ll try to leave her body in the
same condition we found her in, we promise.”
“So . . .” I start. “Let me see if I’m getting this correct: Whenever you want to go out for a night on the town, you pick
whatever body you want and just . . . slip in?”
“In a sense.” The way Lilith says it, the words sound like one—innocence.
“No long, drawn out I’m-hearing-voices-in-my-head, am-I-going-crazy-or-is-there-really-a-demon-inside-me kind of possession? Just in and out?”
“If you say so.”
“Casual demonic possession,” I say. “Unbelievable.”
“Belief. Have you lost your faith in us already, Jordan?”
I don’t know how much faith I had to begin with, to be honest, but this all sounds absolutely batshit. “Would you believe
any of this if you were in my shoes?”