take me
Jordan
The morning light finds us. Our bodies.
What’s left of them.
We are in my bed but it’s no longer my bed. We are in my apartment, but it just doesn’t feel like my apartment anymore. There
is nothing to this space that feels real.
I’m still in my body, separated from Lilith by an endless stretch of flesh, but it no longer feels like mine.
It dawns on me why I’ve felt so outside of myself for so long.
I’m empty without her.
I’ve been possessed by Lilith. Consumed by her. She has overtaken every thought I have. Even my mind doesn’t feel like its
own anymore. I don’t know if I’m in control of myself, if I ever really was. All I feel now is the ache of her absence. She’s
not with me. Inside me.
Something’s missing within. The very chambers of my heart feel cavernous, my bones an abandoned structure. I’m empty without
her. I feel exorcised. I want her back.
Back inside.
Lilith is still inside her host, Cara, when I come to. She’s so far away, even when she’s resting just next to me. There is
a gulf of flesh between us. We could be closer.
I reach over to wake her, touch her, but I hold myself back.
This flesh is so thin. My body is so weak without her. I only feel complete when she’s within me. I ache for her all over.
The muscle memory of my demons.
Love is possession. We invite them in. Let them take over.
Come into me, we say. Take me, we say. We give ourselves over. Not just our body, but our entire being. We share this space, this corporeal real estate.
People have possession all wrong. It’s not about being invaded by another entity. It’s not the overtaking of autonomy or losing
one’s sense of self.
It’s love. It’s sacrifice. Cohabitating. Not just your body, but your soul. Your heart.
We can make a go of this, Lilith and me. Together. In here. In me.
I’ve got the body, and she’s got the soul.
I give this to you, I want to tell her. Me, all of me. I open myself up to you. I want you inside me. I give you this space. This place in my heart. I want you to share it with
me.
I need you. Come in.
Take me.
Lilith’s eyes slowly open, finding me beside her. “Hello . . .”
“Good morning . . .”
She hesitates, taking us in. There’s a question in her eyes. “What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“That look,” she says. “So serious. Something on your mind?”
“I’m ready.”
“. . . For?”
“You,” I say. “I need to see.”
She lifts her head, just a bit. “See . . .?”
“You. All of you.”
“We talked about this,” she warns. “You won’t like what you see.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
After a moment, she says, “Nobody has ever seen us before. Not like this.”
“I want to. Just you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Lilith hesitates. “I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be.”
“What if it frightens you? What if I frighten you?”
“I’m ready. Show me.”
Lilith takes a deep breath, then stills herself. Her body halts. All movement simply ceases. Her skin ripples. The surface
of her flesh looks like a pond of water. Someone has tossed a pebble into the very center of herself, the subsequent splash
sending an echo across the surface, these thin rivulets of skin resonating outward, one ring after another.
A pattern. The rings continue to ripple through her skin, starting near her chest—her heart—and reverberating out across her
neck, her cheeks, her forehead.
I watch the ripples spread down the length of her arms.
It begins as an eclipse. At first, I can’t tell for certain just what exactly I’m looking at. It’s as if the sun is rising
directly behind Cara’s body. No, not behind. From. A solar flare fans out from her flesh, rising higher by the breath, lifting up from her skin and into the air above her.
A sun. She’s a black hole sun.
I’ve never seen such radiance before. I wince from the sheer heat of it, bringing my hand up to shield my eyes. I don’t know
how long I can look at it without blinding myself.
It’s her. Truly her.
Lilith.
The brightness blanches out everything in proximity to herself. The surrounding atmosphere heats up, all the gas and dust
in the air burning, creating this blinding corona of light. Luminous echoes warp and distort the air around her the higher
she rises.
Lilith is in the air, utterly unencumbered by human constraints. She is free of all flesh, released from her host’s body. She is laid bare before me.
Light bends. Magnetic fields twist into themselves. Tendrils radiate out from her translucent hemisphere. Each branch weaves
about the air, like bands of electricity.
“You’re beautiful,” I say.
She is a sun. A black hole.
I’m staring at a star elevating itself, rising into the sky. A solar body here before me.
She is a radiant demon.
A blinding angel.
“Take me,” I say, breathless. “Let me be your body.”
“Jordan . . .”
“I want to be your home. Your everything. I want to hold onto you and never let go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Take me.”
“Let me in.”
We kiss. It’s like drinking in the sun. The fire of it, a flooding supernova, forcing its way past my lips, down my throat,
into my lungs, my stomach, and radiating outward.
I’m burning. We’re burning.
I am a lighthouse. But now we hold the sun. Our light is Lilith.
See how we burn.
We take in our hands. Marvel at them. See how they glow. The bones beneath our skin look like filaments, seething red. There’s
a power in our grip. A majesty we never had.
What can we do with these hands?
Our hands?
Cara stirs. We hardly notice. Not when our own hands draw so much of our attention. Look at the blood seething through each
vein, red ribbons on a gift of skin.
Our skin. Our blood.
Our love.
“Where’d you go,” Cara mumbles just next to us. Her words are slurred, all groggy, as if she were climbing out from a coma.
She must feel our absence, the retraction of her imaginary friend, her closest confidant, her strength, the sudden chill it
leaves behind.
The emptiness.
“What . . . what’s happening?” We hear the panic filling up her voice in our absence. A certain clarity comes to Cara’s eyes.
She is outside our grace. Our light. Nothing but fog.
“You should leave,” we say, together.
“Where . . . where did she go?”
“It was fun, really,” we say. “We owe you so much. But we’ve . . . found someone else.”
“What are you saying? Where is she?”
“It’s not you,” we say, “it’s us.”
What does that absence feel like? To have been embraced, fulfilled for so long, only to be cast out? The loss of Lilith, who
made every decision, who took control, who gave Cara the grace of uninhibition, of freedom from herself . . . only to be abandoned.
Alone now. She must feel so alone. So cold and empty.
“Wait,” she says, horrified. Repulsed? “You’re inside . . . him? You’re leaving me for him?”
“You brought us together,” we say, already bored with her. “If it weren’t for you, we would’ve never met. We’ve simply come
to realize we are . . . a better fit.”
“You . . . you can’t just ditch me!”
“Why not?” We are trying not to be cruel about this, but sometimes it’s better to simply rip the Band-Aid right off. A momentary
sting is preferable over an endless ache.
“You needed me.”
For a while, yes. Then we found each other. A home in each other.
“Let’s not draw this out any—”
Cara’s fist finds us. She strikes our chest. Just a clumsy pummel, but it’s followed by another. And another. Soon, Cara is hammering her fists against us.
“I gave you everything!” She can’t control the tremor in her voice, rising. “All of me—”
She won’t stop hitting us. Buffeting Jordan’s body, a drum to bang on. Our body.
“You need me!”
The emptiness of exorcism. The coldness it leaves behind. That feeling of having shared something with another, only to be
abandoned. Alone all over. Left with nothing but yourself. The same insecurities. The nagging self-doubt. The self-loathing.
We understand how lonely that must feel for her, but come on . . . Cara was never our forever flesh.
“You can’t have her!” She keeps striking us. Our chest. Our face. The dependency of her, her neediness, her emptiness, is
too much for us.
What should we do? We ask ourselves.
Our simple answer, Break it off.
No—not break. A clean cut. A split. What do you do with a loose end, but sever it?
It’s not just your darkness anymore, Jordan. It’s ours now. Ours, together.
Our hands find their way around Cara’s throat as we press our lips against hers. Skin. Just skin. The warmth of her struggle.
Feel our hands. Feel their strength. The prowess. Insurmountable majesty. We are unstoppable. We love our hands.
How they squeeze.
All I’ve wanted was to feel complete, Jordan says. All I’ve ever wanted was an accomplice, Lilith answers back. A body to experience everything this world has to offer.
Look at us now. A lighthouse needs a bulb. The bulb that burns eternal.
I am the lighthouse, Jordan says. Lilith replies, I am the light.
Look how bright we are together, we say.
Our grip tightens around Cara’s neck. There are no boundaries between us now. There is only us. We need to shed this extra layer of skin, like a serpent, discard this unnecessary flesh, until there is only one. Only us. Together at last. Forever.
Let’s see what these hands can do . . .
Cara’s body bucks against ours, struggling under our grip. She’s trying to cry out, make a sound, but it’s caught in her throat.
Cinched within our grip. The air won’t slip in or slip out.
Her breath is ours to hold.
To extinguish.
Is this what you want? Lilith asks. Jordan asks back, Is it what you want?
The answer is right there in our hands.
We embrace our darkness together.
Let it shine, let it shine . . .
We find the filament in Cara’s eyes, that spark of life, and watch it slowly fade. It only takes a few seconds, witnessing
the electricity of her existence dim down to nothing.
We’ll take a snapshot of this moment. A cherished memory. Something we’ll never forget. Cara brought us together. Fitting
that she’s our first. First of many, we hope.
To new beginnings.
Cara’s arms stop thrashing. Her muscles slacken. Her body is now empty. The weight, the inert heft of death, so heavy and
yet, lighter than air.
Released of her demons.