Requiem for the Fallen

by Tabitha Vohn

  ***

  “For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ…these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them! for they have gone the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core. These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit witherith, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”

  He loved when she would read this.

  “Aw, how sweet, they mentioned me,” he’d joke.

  They would be lying across the old leather couch, surrounded by books and candlelight. The wood would be crackling in the open fireplace; it would splinter and break, dismembering into endless fragments of light that rose into the air like an ascension of souls. His hand would run absentmindedly through her hair, and her arm would drape back across his chest, and curl around his shoulder so that her fingers could knead away the cords of tension that always seemed to reside at the back of his neck. His voice would be a caress, just above a whisper, and hers took on a childlike quality, soft and lissom, because they spoke low and confidentially.

  “How can you believe it?” he’d ask.

  She closed the book in her lap, keeping a finger in its place, and rested her head against his chest.

  “Because it’s true.”

  “It’s fairy tales. Designed by cowards afraid to live; so they make up their myths and their cautionary tales, to keep all of you conformed and keep you slaves. They keep you from the best part of yourselves,” he said, his hand sliding over the curve of her hip.

  Her brow furrowed.

  “And what part is that?”

  He leaned his mouth to her forehead. Kissed her. Whispered, “The knowledge that you can do anything. Knowledge and power; it’s ours for the taking. It’s everything.”

  “Life,” he continued, caressing her, “is pleasure. Blood is ecstasy. We live and we die and it’s gone. Why spend your whole life denying what you are? We are beasts. We are gods.”

  “Gods who turn to dust?”

  She waited a moment to see if he would answer.

  “And where do you believe the power comes from?” she asked.

  “It’s bigger than us. It’s old as the earth; older, maybe. It’s knowledge passed down through centuries. And it’s ours to do with as we choose.”

  “And you believe it’s good?”

  “I believe it’s what we make of it. Just because some people give it the name ‘evil’, doesn’t mean it’s evil to everyone, or that evil is necessarily bad. It just is.”

  She smiled.

  “What’s funny?” he asked, breathing into her hair. Somehow they had managed to keep anger or ignited passions out of these discussions.

  “Oh, just that I fundamentally disagree with you on everything,” she said with a sad laugh, reaching her head to nuzzle into the hollow of his neck and kiss him just below the ear where his vein pulsed.

  “Heh,” he said, shifting their weight, turning her to face him. “Tell me what you think.”

  She flipped back a few books.

  “Eh,” he chided, shooing her hands away from their task, “I asked you what you think.”

  “This pertains,” she said. “You can’t tell me, with this cavern full of books, that you contest the validity of knowledge gleaned from them. This,” she said, holding up the book, “serves to support my contention.”

  He sighed.

  “Okay. Let’s hear it.”

  She began to read: “’For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present in me: but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not: it is no more I that do it, but the sin that dwelleth in me. I find a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?’ “

  “This is the core of our disagreement in philosophies,” she said, closing the book.

  “Keep goin’,” he said, his fingers tracing the curve of her neck.

  “I could agree with your philosophy, if I could agree that the pleasure we seek is truly valuable, or evil ambiguous.”

  “Valuable?”

  “Beneficial.”

  “To whom?”

  “To ourselves. But it’s not. We, as human beings, are beasts, I’ll give you that. But we are beasts programmed to self-destruct. We crave our own destruction the way that an addict craves their next fix. We submerse into that dark, ecstatic high that we get from lacerating ourselves, from wallowing in our own sickness; greed, violence, drugs, lust...It is pleasure, but it’s the pleasure of insanity, because it kills us. It destroys all that is worthy of love, until we learn to love evil, and only evil. Until the remembrance of being well and whole are just a muted abstract somewhere in the recesses of memory, tucked away where our souls used to be.”

  “If there is a ‘repression’ that some of us choose,” she continued, “it’s a repression of the sickness that was never meant to be in the first place. It was born out of free will, and it had to be because only true love is born out of free will. But freedom opens both doors. And that sickness cannot be recognized without the aid of the greater power that empowers the soul. Once the soul recognizes the sickness, it recognizes the true root of the so-called pleasure that once held it captive; it reveals its true nature. But there’s no magic fix; an addict never loses the desire for his drug. You can press it far down into yourself; it’s still there. You live with it. It’s a part of you. Our natural selves are born sick; we are born doomed to crave the darkness, to be the animal, to seek the power, to self-destruct. But we’re also spiritual creatures. Our duality is our portal to hope, and only true freedom is found in that hope.”

  The tension on his body was thoughtful.

  “I think it’s just an eloquent cop-out for cowardice. It’s being afraid to take the risks that really come with being alive, of fuckin’ living.”

  “Spoken like a true addict,” she said, her hand cupping his face.

  “You’re a shit,” he murmured into her ear.

  She laughed, releasing her hand, and placing the book back on the shelf that was hers.

  “Well,” he said, “even if you are right, I’d still rather be fucked than give up the right to think for myself.”

  “Do you really believe you are? Thinking for yourself?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her hands brushed over the Ouija board that sat in the corner, the rows of books dedicated to opening portals and doors that she knew were better left closed.

  “Um, this is me you’re talking to,” she said, sitting to face him on the couch. “I know you’re not afraid to be honest with me.”

  “Honest about what?”

  She sighed.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “You know the depth of what we philosophize over. All of this deconstructing that spins us around and around and doesn’t bring us any closer to the real truth.”

  “Which is…” he said, brushing a
lock of hair from her eyes.

  Tabs took his hand in hers, wishing that she could close her eyes, and that all the energy of her spirit would fuse with his and, just for a few moments, that he could have just a taste of quiet waters, and the warmth of the light.

  “Which is that you know the nature of the path you’ve chosen, and I mine, and they are enemy paths. There are only, and have only ever been, two paths. You are on one, and I’m on the other. And neither of us will ever convince the other any differently.”

  “If that’s true,” he whispered, “why am I here with you? Why are you here with me?”

  His mouth would find hers. She’d kiss him with open eyes until the sweetness of it was like warm liquor silk in her throat, and all of her consciousness closed, languid and supple, against the simmer of his skin.

  “Hmmm?” He breathed into her ear.

  “Because,” she said, tracing the lines of his jaw, “it’s worth it to try. You’re worth it.”

  “So,” he said, breaking away to stroke her neck, “who do you think will win?”

  She paused for a moment, studying him. If he were to pin her wrists to this cushion, seek her out in the darkness, how could she say anything but yes?

  “The victory is not important. It’s what’s lost in the battle that matters.”