the mourning after #2
“I’d be in more than just your shoes, Jordan. Trust me. I’d be all over you.”
“Wait,” I say. “No possessing me without permission, got it?”
Her head springs up. Something within her expression shifts. I can’t tell if she’s startled or guilty, but her eyes widen
just so, like she’s in trouble. “Are you drawing a line?”
“Stay out. My body is not up for grabs, okay?”
She drops her head back down against the pillow, hiding her face. She releases the slightest sigh. Into the bed, I hear her
muffled voice pout, “You’re no fun.”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this, to be honest . . .”
“If last night doesn’t make a believer out of you . . . I don’t know if anything will.”
“Why me?” I have to ask. “Why pick me? Of all the men—”
“Or women,” she slices in.
“You came home with me.” I rub my hands over my face. “Why?”
“I’m not sure I know,” she says. “I’m still trying to understand that myself.”
I give her a gentle nudge under the covers, what little cover I have left, sliding my knee along her thigh. The warmth of
it. “So . . . am I a sex exorcist now? The Sexorcist?”
“You’re not nearly as charming as you think you are.”
“What kind of demon are you?”
She hesitates. Takes us in, as if there’s something to be scrutinized in what we just said. Are you for real? She studies my expression, like she’s waiting for me to take it back.
“Are demarcations really that important?”
“I feel like in this case, yeah . . . A bit. I want to know what I’m sharing a bed with.”
“What. Not who? Is that how little you think of us?” Is she hurt by this? She’s teasing, but I can sense the slightest sting lingering
in her voice. She’s trying to play it off.
“I’m trying to understand this. All . . . this.”
“Have we deceived you?” Lilith asks. “Lied to you in any way?”
“Isn’t the devil called the father of lies?”
She laughs. A genuine laugh. Full-bodied. There’s a sultriness to it, hoarse in the morning. All husk. Probably from all the
screaming last night. I don’t mind, to be honest.
“You have seen too many movies,” she says. “You’ve read all the wrong books.”
“Wasn’t that from the bible?”
“See? There you are. All the wrong books, beginning with that one.”
“You’re avoiding my question,” I say.
“Are we?”
“I think so.”
“Well, we think you are asking the wrong questions. Ask us something more fun.”
“No.”
“No?” Lilith hesitates. She doesn’t like that, being told no. I can tell. Who denies a demon? Here’s a little postcoital standoff
for you. The battle of wills. Good vs. Evil.
Who the hell am I kidding? I’m no angel.
“Wouldn’t that be dull? Telling the truth?”
“Gotta keep this halo somehow.”
“You hardly have a halo, Jordan . . .”
Ouch. I walked right into that one. Still, it stings. What does she know? About me?
I’ve already seen what’s on the other side, haven’t I? I know exactly where I’m going. I’m in no rush to get back. Am I actually going to hell?
What if I’m damned already? Is there any taking it back? Absolving myself?
Do I even want to?
“So . . . Are you?”
Her eyes remain on me. “Am I a demon?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes.”
“Is your name really Lilith?”
Her body shifts. I roll onto my back, facing the ceiling, as Lilith nestles just next to me. “We have so many names,” she
says. “Too many to count. All in different tongues.”
“Such as?”
“Names you could never pronounce.”
“Try me.”
The name she gives drifts out from her mouth. Its intonation stings, all teeth. I’ve never heard a sound quite like it. I
don’t know if I ever will again.
It’s the wind drifting through a skull. The last gasp of a dying man. A death rattle.
“How about this one?” She gives herself another name. This one makes me dizzy. The room spins a bit with her lips as she says
it, the very air around her mouth distorting.
The walls hum. A million insect wings. I can feel the very vibrations in my teeth.
It’s a song. A song I’ve never heard but felt before. A song that exists in my mind, the shadows of myself, echoing throughout
the darkest corners. I can’t get it out of my head.
“Would you like to hear another?”
“There are more? Just how many names do you have, exactly?”
“Legion,” she says. “None of them suffice. No name can contain us.”
“Lilith it is, then.”
“Lilith it is.”
Now my mind is racing. So many questions to catch up with. Too many. They’re all backlogging my brain, ready to reach the
open. I want to ask them all at once.
Where do I even begin?
“So . . . if there’s a hell . . . that must mean there’s a heaven as well, right?”
“If there is,” she says, “I’ve never been.”
Faith isn’t something I factored into my life. Heaven or hell, I was never a believer. Not truly. I could deny it, couldn’t
I? Push it all away? Who believes in this sort of thing?
Now there’s no denying it, is there?
Demons?
Her?
There’s a part of me, the darkest part, the deepest recesses of myself, that fucking black chasm at the very center, that’s
screaming even now, a voice rising up—Yes, it’s true.
Maybe this is what I need. She can bring me back. Back into my body.
Back home.
“Demon,” I repeat. The word takes shape in my mind. Definition. “You’re a demon.”
“What does it matter what I am?”
“Because I’m fucking you.”
“And here I thought I was the one fucking you.”
“This is just about the weirdest postcoital conversation I’ve ever had . . .”
“Sorry.” She kisses my bare shoulder, working her way down my arm. She takes the slightest bite of my bicep, the scars there.
“What were you saying? We were distracted . . .”
“It’s been pretty hard for me to feel much of anything lately . . .”
“How so?”
“I don’t know . . . I’ve just been so numb to everything. Until . . .”
She looks back at me. “. . . Until?”
“I found you.”
“I found you.”
Look, just look at her. Those eyes. I find her hazel eyes—not her host’s, but something else, bands of gold and black lingering
in the deepest recesses of this body.
Someone else is staring back at me. A passing shadow.
She’s got inkblot eyes. A Rorschach test in each socket.
“I haven’t felt like I’ve been able to open up to anyone,” she says. “To be myself.”
“Is that hard for you? Opening up?”
“When you’re in someone else’s body, it is . . . I’m always so hampered by my host.”
“Can you stay? Here? With me?”
“You want us to?” She runs her fingernail across this thin rivulet of scar tissue along my collarbone. A pale creek of crooked
skin. “Stay? You won’t be able to get rid of me . . .”
I pull her in closer, tighter. “Will I see you again? How can I find you?”
“All you have to do is call.”
“You’ve got a phone number? I just reach out and touch someone?”
“Summon us,” she whispers into my ear.
I’m a lighthouse. I’ll guide you home.
We lay in bed, our bodies pressed against each other. The city seeps through the window, the sound of traffic, Richmond waking,
letting us know that the world still exists.
Balance has been brought back into existence. Heaven and hell are all in order.
“What is that?” she asks.
“What’s what?”
“That song you’re humming?”
“Am I?” I didn’t even realize I was doing it . . . I don’t even know what song it is. I press my finger against my temple.
“The harmony is here. Now it’s stuck. I can’t get it out.”
That’s what possession must feel like. Have you ever gotten a song caught in your mind, but you don’t remember what it is? It’s there, right there, at the tip of your tongue . . . but you can’t find it. You keep humming, the faintest hint of a melody drifting across your
tongue, but the words aren’t there. That isn’t a song. That’s her.
Lilith. She’s in my head.
“Hold on.” I sit upright in bed, dragging the sheets with me. “I want to try something.”