Black Ambrosia

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  “Not everyone recovers from a poisoning as toxic as the one you suffered. Hardly anyone recovers without some brain damage. I took the liberty of examining you, and I must say, I’m quite surprised you survived.” He settled down on the edge of the bed, taking on a confidential demeanor. My awareness was growing; I was naked beneath the sheets. I localized the pain in my arm, and rubbed it.

  “I gave you a shot there to counteract the toxins. Now, Angelina, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me with the truth, okay?”

  I shrank away from this man. I owed him nothing. I wanted nothing from him and only wanted him away from Sarah and me so we could talk.

  “What kind of drugs have you been taking?”

  “I don’t take drugs.”

  “Oh. I see.” He backed off, thinking I lied. “Well, I think we’ll check you into the hospital for a while, just to make sure you’re okay. Sometimes toxins can have a delayed effect.”

  “No hospital. I’m all right.”

  “I disagree.”

  “I don’t care. I have no need of a hospital or you. Please leave.” I was wide awake now, and the thought of this man examining me while I slept was revolting, although I believe Sarah acted in a manner consistent with her beliefs.

  “Young lady—”

  “Angelina.”

  “Angelina, you have been in a coma for the past—at least twelve hours—”

  “Asleep.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Asleep. I was asleep.”

  “Angelina. I’m a doctor. I know the difference.”

  “Then come back tomorrow. I sleep every day, all day, just like that.”

  He was silent. We looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Then there was the briefest flicker of—something that caused him to jerk. There was some base recognition that passed between our souls, and he reached down to his black case, closed it, snapped the brass catch, and stood. He looked down at me for a moment, then turned and left the room. He and Sarah spoke briefly in her kitchen, then the door closed and a car started.

  At last. Sarah and I were alone. And the night was young.

  She brought hot tea to me, and a plate of fresh fruit and crackers. I drank the tea straightaway and she left to refill the mug while I smelled an apple slice and a berry. They were unappetizing.

  “The doctor said you were uncooperative and there was nothing more he could do.”

  “There isn’t,” I said as I sipped the second cup.

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “I’m not sure. I need to learn your ways. I need to become healthy, in mind and body, and I know you can help me do that.”

  “Oh, Angelina,” she said, and set down her mug of tea. “I can’t even help myself these days. I don’t have anything left to give.”

  As my senses came into focus, I could see that Sarah had gained weight. Her hair was lusterless and dirty, a pasty pallor had replaced the fresh-faced glow of her complexion. Little wiry gray hairs ringed her hairline and a network of lines surrounded her eyes. “What is it, Sarah? What has happened?”

  “A lot. Too much.” She looked at her hands and began to pick at her fingernails.

  “Tell me.”

  “Samuel’s father came to visit, saw that Samuel was obviously his child, did a little arithmetic to make sure, then he took Samuel away. We’re battling in court. I spent so much money on lawyers that I had to work two jobs, and I didn’t do either of them very well, I was so worried about Samuel. I got fired from both. Now I can’t pay the attorneys, and they won’t work for me anymore. Samuel is in San Francisco, and Victor says if I want him, I have to move there. He said I had no right to keep knowledge of his son from him. Christ, I hardly even knew Victor. He was just a one-night stand.” Tears flooded Sarah’s eyes and overflowed down her cheeks. She silently continued to pick at her cuticles.

  I was dumbfounded.

  Sarah jumped up and went into the bathroom. I heard her blow her nose, then she turned the water on in the sink. When she returned, her face was pink from the splashing and she was rubbing hand cream into her cuticles.

  “So,” she said. “Enough of my sad story. Back to you. The first thing you have to do is get straight with the doctor. He knows more than you do, Angelina.”

  “He knows nothing, Sarah. I was not in a coma. I sleep all day, and am awake at night. That’s one of the things I need to change.”

  “That’s easy to change. You just change.”

  She didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. I looked at her, saw how she’d changed, and felt reluctant to talk to her. This was not the Sarah of my memory. Rosemary’s words came to mind. “A life raft. Someone to save you. You will find that it won’t work.” I began to be afraid. Sarah had to help me. I had to at least try. “No,” I said. “You don’t understand. I’m afraid.”

  “Of?”

  “The light.” I rubbed the sparse flesh of my arm where the shot had been administered.

  “What do you think might happen?”

  “Well, the voice tells me that I can no longer live in the light, and She seems to be right. I can’t stay awake toward dawn, and as you can see, I can’t be awakened until night.”

  “The voice?”

  “I think it’s the devil. A she-devil. But I’m not sure. She makes me do terrible things. Terrible things.”

  “You hear voices?”

  “Oh, Sarah, it’s not what you think. I know it sounds a little crazy, but it’s not like when insane people hear voices that tell them to do things . . . My voice—there’s only one—She more like invites me to do things, and when I please Her . . . when I please Her . . .” Soft strains of the music played through my ears and the soft pain in my arm vanished. I listened for a moment, entranced. I’d forgotten how beautiful . . .

  “Yes?” Sarah’s voice was a harsh interruption. The music stopped. The pain returned, doubled.

  “What?”

  “Do you see her?”

  “Oh, yes. She comes to me in two ways. One way She’s like mist, floating and wispy, but with substance. The other way I see only Her mouth, Her lips and tongue. Teeth.” Sarah’s face faded into the dusk of the room and I closed my eyes for a moment. They were there, the lips, moist and perfect, quivering ever so delicately, a question poised there so eloquently I could have plucked it like a flower. Open, I thought. Show me the deft edge of tooth, the wet pink tip of perfect tongue. Show me. Show me.

  “What does she say to you?” Sarah’s voice rasped through me like a rusty handsaw.

  “What?” I said, irritated with her questions that brought back the light, the pain, the hopelessness.

  “What does she say to you?”

  And then I remembered, Sarah was to save me. I could not succumb to Her seduction. I had to stay with Sarah, stay conscious.

  “What?” I asked again. “I’m sorry. What?” Sarah sighed with exasperation. “I’m trying to help you, Angelina. But I can’t do anything without your cooperation. Now concentrate. What does this voice say to you?”

  I tried to remember some of the things She had said to me. There wasn’t anything I could repeat; we had shared feelings, experiences, excitement, peace. We had loved each other and said and done all those things that lovers do in their private world, and there was nothing really that I could share . . .

  And the lips parted and She spoke to me, loudly and clearly in the voice that was melodic and familiar to each cell in my body, each spark of my soul. The voice said, “I speak to you of love,” and my whole being thrilled.

  “She speaks to me of love,” I said.

  “And together we serve.”

  “ ‘And together we serve.’ ”

  “Together we embody the highest aspirations of mankind’s search for justice . . .”

 
Was this our wedding vow? “ ‘Together we embody the highest aspirations of mankind’s search for justice . . .’ ”

  “And together we shall be . . .”

  I caught my breath. “ ‘And together we shall be . . .’ ”

  “United in love and duty. Forever.”

  She had never spoken like this to me before, and I cried with the beauty of it. I echoed the final phrase of my vow in barely a whisper, and as soon as I had done so, the pain was gone; I felt strong again, powerful, wonderful, invincible.

  I sat up on the bed and looked at Sarah, poor pitiful Sarah, so nice, so noble, so misdirected. Great dark circles sagged from her eyes halfway to her cheeks.

  “Sarah,” I said. “Perhaps Samuel belongs with his father; perhaps I belong with the one who loves me; perhaps you belong with someone, too.”

  “Angelina, I don’t think—”

  But I had her wrist, and my strength was a thing of beauty. The powers of the universe flowed through me. I tightened my grip until I saw mystery, fascination, pain, anger, hurt, and fear cross her vision. They filled me, and I relaxed, basking in the sensations, in the aura that She was putting forth in the room. It was heavenly; it was wholesome; it was nourishing.

  And then Sarah began to fight in earnest. I laughed. She was so sincere in her endeavors. Before she had finished, both wrists and one collarbone were broken, and I mounted her and teased her, running my fingers through her greasy hair and letting it fall back onto her face, creating sliding moire patterns as the hair swirled across her features.

  Eventually she tired. I knew the taste. Prey must be played with for only so long, and then the hormones of exhaustion add acid to the blood. The climactic moment was at hand.

  “Sarah,” I said, and her weak eyes squinted up at me. “I knew you would help me find the way.” She squeezed her eyes shut in pain and misery, took a deep breath, and began a new attempt to dislodge me from my perch on her chest. “Thank you, Sarah,” I whispered, my lips brushing her small ear, and then I nuzzled the softness of her neck, feeling the tiny hairs tickle my face, tasting the salt of her exertions, smelling the odor of her fear. I nibbled on her groans and chewed to her screams, right through, so the sounds bubbled out with the nectar, watching the thick blood froth and flow for a moment before burying my face in the sweet fragrance and drinking my fill.

  And when I was finished, I heard the music, it swelled into great clouds about me; the lips spoke with pride into my ear, and I knew I had come home, at last, that whatever else I had thought had been in error—this was my destiny; this was the thing that made me the happiest; this was life, and it was life everlasting.

  She welcomed me back with kisses and floods of ecstasy, wave after wave of orgasmic pleasure, each cresting with the music and falling, only to rise again and resume.

  I lay in rapture all night, my body held tightly against Sarah’s, my face buried in her hair. When the music turned to the call of dawn, I pulled her from the bed and into the closet, bringing with us the soiled bedding. I dug the shoes from the corner and leaned her coquettishly against the wall, then I wrapped her, swathed her in all the beautiful fabrics I could find.

  As morning encroached upon my strength, I hollowed out a nest among the fabrics, then curled up in Sarah’s lap and closed the closet door behind us.

  COLIN W. SHERWOOD, M.D.: “I came back the next day to check on the girl, but no one answered the door. I really wanted to do some tests on her. She had no right to be alive, I mean it. I peeked in through the bedroom window, and the bed was stripped, so I figured Sarah was off doing laundry, or at work or something, and the girl had gone on her own way.

  “Jesus, you don’t think they were both . . . in the . . . while I was . . .

  “Jesus.”

  30

  I cannot believe that any mortal man or woman could ever experience the likes of the honeymoon that She and I had that night. I opened myself to Her so completely, so totally, that I felt filleted, exposed, with no secrets, nothing withheld. She touched portions of me that no man ever could, vulnerable spots no other person could ever even know that I had. Her intimate touches were probing but tender, letting me understand that my vow to Her was all-encompassing. Eternal life included stark honesty, and I held still for Her examination, and I enjoyed Her pleasure as She found me acceptable.

  We rode the music together as I bared my soul to Her. She tested, tasted, approved, and returned it to me, altered, marked, stamped with Her authority as judge. And when She was finished, I was joyous at Her final acceptance, and we flew to the heights, sweeping the stars with our love and our laughter, until I realized that I had given everything and She had given nothing.

  The music turned sour the very moment that sad thought entered my mind. She tickled me, cajoled me, tried to take my mind from it, but I insisted. The marriage was not equal unless She opened as willingly as had I.

  A minor chord strummed through the ether. What right have you to demand equality in this marriage, She asked.

  Dark clouds of deep notes echoed in the well that surrounded us. The stars closed the lid on my prison. She was not willing, and I was bereft.

  “Angelina,” She teased me, whispering across my ear, but I pulled away, the match unequal, unfair. The fun was lost, the joy had fled. Sadness flushed through me, the granite disappointment a huge, looming monolith.

  “Please,” She said. “You don’t know what you ask.”

  “I do know.”

  “You don’t.”

  “It is over,” I said.

  “Angelina, please, no.”

  “Show me.”

  “I dare not.”

  “Show me.”

  “Angelina, please.”

  “Show me,” I demanded, “or we are dead. I have given you my life, my soul, and you have given me nothing. Show me the whole of you now, and we shall remake our vows. Together. Forever. Now. Before it is too late.”

  She retracted from me, hesitant. I could feel Her hold Her breath, tentative, fearful, as She waited. I remembered, when younger, on my odyssey across the country, jumping from a high waterfall into the river below, knowing for extended moment after moment that eventually I would jump, yet not jumping and not jumping. Fear kept me back, but it was pointless fear, for I knew that eventually I would proceed. She knew me so well that She called up that memory for me; She stood on the brink of self-revelation, and I held my breath to calm Her fear.

  She stood apart, and once again I heard the voice, the words crystal-clear, saw the lips as they spoke into my ear. I saw my body twitch in its unearthly sleep, in its physical recognition of pleasure, even as it lay entwined within the gaudy shroud of the cold corpse. Once again She implored me to let things remain as they were. “It is perfect as it is, Angelina. Let us be so.”

  I shook my head. “If you be Satan himself, I must know it.”

  The music paused. The silence roared in the darkness. She drew Herself up to a thin line of ephemeral mist and waited. One beat, two beats—and then She disappeared. Slipped silently through.

  The breath I held released in a sigh. I had chased Her away—

  But my reaction was premature, for the next moment the universe opened, and as horror after horror assaulted all of my senses, I understood Her reluctance to show me the vileness of Her nature.

  Each of my fears was openly acknowledged; the things that I held most disgusting were presented in all their lurid detail; insecurities and faults were pried open and stuffed with insult; the soft spots of my being were punctured, the crusty worldliness of my experiences merely a scab to be picked and left to bleed.

  The horror of the assault left me too astonished to retreat, to defend myself, to ward off being pelted by these insidious table scraps of Hell. My newly probed and freshly peeled being was a ripe victim for the salty lashes that all but destroyed me.

 
It lasted but a moment, stretched to eternity, and when the last clash of cymbals died down and the holocaust had passed, I had been sliced to thin ribbons and laid to waste at the feet of She who had attacked me.

  The darkness settled down, quieter than ever, no music, no sounds, all had been expended in the extravagance of the moment, there was nothing left. Anywhere.

  And then the light touch of Her wispy fingers gently felt the bruises on my psyche and I moaned for Her to leave me be.

  “Look at me, Angelina.”

  What else could She do—there could be no greater condemnation than that which She had opened to me.

  But wait. Those were my terrors, my horrors. Where were Hers? Where was Her revelation?

  I turned my eyes toward Her, and at last I saw Her for who She really was. I thought She had pulled from me all the terror I owned, but upon seeing Her face, again terror ripped through me. And then amazement. And then hope.

  Finally, finally, I understood. Of course I could never escape Her affections. How foolish I had been to ever try.

  A younger, freer Angelina hooted with extravagant enthusiasm somewhere within my heart. And then I understood love, and freedom, and satisfaction—a satisfaction so deep, so adult, so solid and substantial, that the joy of our evening just past paled in comparison.

  My joints were stiff when awareness sloshed through my body. I disengaged myself from Sarah’s cold embrace and opened the closet door, listening. Heightened senses were suddenly mine, as was the ability to mask pain through the use of internal music.

  I showered, noticing a new posture of my body. My skin seemed to have a translucence about it; blue veins showed plainly. I no longer looked scrawny and unhealthy; I was lean and statuesque. Overnight, I had changed into a person worthy of worship.

  I dried myself and combed my hair straight back, using Sarah’s comb. My face had gained years, wisdom, confidence, character features that were ever so handsome. I viewed my face for a long moment in the harsh light of the bathroom mirror, then turned out the light. In the dim glow cast by the moon and captured by the mirror, my cheeks and eyes hollowed in the shadow of prominent bones and ridges. The skin of my face was clear and unlined, pale and fragile. Yet it was strangely incomplete. Something was missing.