i put a spell on you
Lilith
“I want to try something.” Jordan springs out of bed, grabbing our wrist and tugging.
No possessing without permission. His words. Stay out of my body. Does he know we were inside? Even for just a little bit? We didn’t admit to it. Now it’s too late . . .
What if he finds out?
Are we afraid? Of . . . what, exactly? Getting caught? When have we ever been afraid of that? This isn’t like us. Not like us at all. Just who are we
turning into?
The morning light outside the window strikes our eyes and we wince. It’s still early. We want to stay in bed. Feel the weight
of this body pinning us in place. The burden of gravity. The sense of flesh holding us down next to him. Why does he have
to drag us away?
“Where are we going?”
“Follow me.” He lures us into his living room. A spartan affair. Music, mostly. There is a turntable perched upon a pair of
cinder blocks. Several milk crates surround it, each brimming with brittle vinyl. Records with scuffed corners and faded covers.
“That night at the Flood Zone,” he says, “it was almost like I could see the sound in you.” He sits us down on the bare wood
floor, then positions himself before us. He drags a speaker across the floor. The cable stretches, all slack gone. He brings
it between us.
“Yes . . . ? And?”
“Sound waves are produced through vibrations. They create their own energy.” There’s something charming about how excited
he is. How animated. A boy, so eager to explain.
Jordan drags the other speaker across the floor and positions it between us. “Deaf people can only hear sound that’s internal
to them,” he says. “The music has to be inside.”
I’m pinned between these two black monoliths. Centered in each column is a copper crater. They look like totems to another
time. A sonic Stonehenge.
“The nerve endings in our inner ear convert vibrations into electrical impulses,” Jordan explains. “Our brain receives those
neural messages and reinterprets the sonic information and makes sense of it . . .” He flips each speaker onto its back, so
the glaring copper eye stares directly up to the ceiling. To the heavens, perhaps. “Even those who are hard of hearing process
these electrical impulses the same way. The messages don’t come through their ears . . . they come through their body. They
listen with their skin. Their bones.”
He leans in and kisses us, then pulls back, waiting for us to respond. We don’t know what to say. “What do you have in mind,
exactly?”
“I want to listen to music with you.”
“You have.”
“No, no—with you.”
We don’t understand at first. His insistence—you—suddenly sinks in.
Me?
He’s doing it again. Searching for some sign of myself. He’s not content with this vessel. The flesh simply isn’t enough for him. He wants more. He wants all of us. All of me.
Can we give it to him? What if he were to see what I truly am?
“Trust me,” he says. Trust. “This is an experience we can share.”
Jordan sifts through his records. Flipping from one disc to the next. He’s searching for the right sound. The right song.
What music will he pick? I’m curious.
Very curious.
“I want to listen to music with you. Through you. The two of us. No third wheel.”
Jordan stops sifting. His eyes widen, just a bit.
He’s found the one.
“Beats cause vibrations. More vibration, more sensation.” He tugs out a particular record. The cover is so scuffed. It must
be old. An ancient thing. A relic from another era.
Jordan holds up the record. A woman stares out into the distance from its cover. Her gaze focuses on a spot beyond the photo,
a gulf that seems to travel over time and space.
“I put a spell on you,” we read the sleeve out loud.
“Nina Simone,” he says. “Ever hear her?”
I’m not sure. “I can’t say we have.”
“You haven’t lived,” he says.
Lived.
Jordan slides the vinyl out from its sleeve. The blackened shellac catches the light in the living room and shines. He spins
the record between the fingers of both of his hands.
Jordan places the record onto the turntable—gently—as if it were something holy. To him, it is. All music must be. Look, just
look, at his collection. An odd assortment of songs and their singers. Musicians that expand beyond any particular genre.
Jordan powers up the turntable. He cranks the volume. There is the faintest hum of electricity coursing through the speakers already. The faintest sibilance, like a fire crackling. Each copper eye burns with an invisible intensity, ready to awaken with sound.
“Are you ready?” Jordan asks. His own eyes are so electric. There is an excitement there. He wants this—needs it—so badly.
It’s infectious. I can feel it spreading. Into me.
I can do this. Open up. Relent. “What do you want us to do?”
“Lean back.” He takes our hand and guides us all the way down. “Just like this.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right here, too. Trust me.”
Trust. Him.
Jordan crawls over to the turntable. He lifts the tone arm above the record. There is a breath before he rests the needle
in the groove, a moment of reverence that strikes us.
Music has always been a holy thing for him. A sacred rite. He’s sharing it with us.
With me.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
Trust.
Him.
We do as we’re told, sealing ourselves in darkness.
We can do this . . .
The crackle of vinyl hisses through the speakers, at such a loud volume it feels like we’re burning, immersed in flames.
We keep our eyes closed, even if we’re compelled to open them.
I can do this . . .
We feel Jordan rest his head against our chest, directly over our host’s heart. He’s pressed his ear against the very center
of us, quick to position himself on top.
“Hold on tight,” he says, taking our hand into his own. “It’s all about the reverb.”
Almost immediately, we hear the music.
Feel it.
Her voice captures us. There is no music accompanying her singing. It’s just her—
Nina
—crooning about a new dawn, a new day, a new life for her.
Just when she tells us she feels good . . .
The horns slither in, serpentine trumpets, writhing out from the speakers and wrapping around our skin. We feel them in our
legs, our thighs. The reverb embraces our bones. We are a tuning fork for this song. For Nina Simone. The brass embraces us.
She possesses us. We embody her song.
There is a hail of piano keys. We hear them striking, raining all around.
Then the beat begins. It’s sturdy. Thorough. The drums slide and skitter, and we feel the snare brush over us, the tiny tensile
legs of insects scuttling across the percussion.
The horns push against us.
Into us.
And all the while, her voice, the tremble of it, the firmness, reaches in and pulls us along. Soaring over it all.
The wooden floor of Jordan’s living room rumbles. The boards themselves threaten to snap, each nail holding them down loosening
with the vibrations, twisting free.
The room disintegrates in the darkness.
We’ve kept our eyes closed.
They are not our eyes.
I have seen with another’s senses, but now I experience the colors created by the song. Brilliant hues flicker behind our
host’s eyelids.
I no longer need this vessel to experience the music. The colors, the colors are everywhere. All around the room. The walls
break apart. The bones holding Jordan’s apartment together disintegrate.
The very body I find myself in melts. It happens so suddenly, I can’t help but gasp as I loosen. Unmoor myself. My grip relents on my host’s body—uncorked—and I begin to drift, untethered, as if I am floating, unable to touch the ground.
There is no gravity. Nothing keeping us tied to this flesh.
To this world.
I lift out, unable to hold on. I am flying with the music. With Nina.
With Jordan.
Look. Just look at him. An ink-black light branches out from his body. A spark of darkness. It starts out small, the faintest
shadow drawn out from his flesh by the music, much like a cobra seduced by a flute, weaving about the air above his chest.
The light expands, tendrils of shadow spreading everywhere, until it fills the room.
A new dawn.
A new day.
I’ve never witnessed anything like this before. Never seen such a dark star. He’s a beacon. Such a bright, blinding light.
Jordan doesn’t see it in himself. Is he aware of what’s inside him? What he’s capable of? You might not be able see it in yourself yet, Jordan, but I do. I’ll show you. Guide you.
He’s brought a little sliver of hell back up to earth. A shard of the abyss is lodged in his chest and here it is, beaming
so bright, so dark, calling to me.
Maybe there’s a new dawn waiting for us. What day awaits him and I?
What could we do together?
Hell on earth. What fun that would be.
Our host slowly comes to. We have to find our way back inside. Get our grip again. We need to remain tethered to flesh. Without
it, there’s nothing binding us. Anchoring us to this world. We will lose ourselves and I don’t want to lose control. We have
to find our flesh.
The song ends. Nina’s voice dissipates. The horns fade. What are we left with but the aftershocks of the song, dissipating
throughout our bodies, its lingering aftereffects tingle.
I sense pounding all around. Neighbors bang their fists against the wall, shouting through the floor for us to turn the music down. The anger is everywhere. It makes us laugh.
“How was it?” Jordan asks with a grin.
“Can we do it again?”
“What song’s next?”