Furnace

by Livia Llewellyn

  The only darkness within you, inviolate Mina, is me.

  Outside our bodies, outside of dreams and sleep, the beautiful sun is breaking across the jagged mountains, golden light creeping through slender trees and sparkling snow. Streams and strands of me pour like the morning mists from your limbs, minute shards of ice that settle against the branches, burn away. Later you will wake, you will rise, you will turn your face upward into the light of a world that is the mirror of your soul, and you will continue your descent into my kingdom, swelling like the great and gentle ocean until there is no more darkness, no more water, no more lies and dreams. Until only you remain, and your right to begin.

  Come to me.

  Lord of the Hunt

  Every slow Sunday a woman named Connie wanders the Tacoma Mall, searching for something she’s never found: the last thing she’ll ever desire. She’s lighter than dust, with a hole in her heart the size of her nameless hunger. Connie sifts through sequined racks of silk, strokes gold-capped columns of perfumes. Glittering makeup stains her fingers, necklaces slide through her hands. Her breath mists display glass as mannequins pose, sloe-eyed, silent and unmoved. Connie is unmoved. Each bright bauble only leads to another, only whispers of better things. She wants the clasp and chain of all possessions, she wants to feel the weight of want’s end. As always, Connie drifts in disappointment, down to the very last store.

  It’s sat there for decades, a musty emporium, looking as if the mall had been built around it. Medieval armor stands guard at the entrance, heralding the presence of fake antiques crammed inside. Connie enters, tobacco and cedar scents biting at her eyes. She fondles scrimshaw pipes and chess sets, examines lighters etched with Celtic symbols and feathered Tlingit masks. Worn pastorals carved into sideboards gather dust, goats and shepherds cavort in gilded frames. They stare out at her, past her with hollowed eyes, and she past them, hollowed. Connie sees them every time. Usually nothing changes.

  Usually.

  The statue crouches in a grime-covered cabinet, partially hidden behind a cracked crystal ball. She points to it, casual in movement. Nothing to get excited over, she just hasn’t seen it before. The old man unlocks the case, grasps the bronze creature with tissue-paper hands. He drops it on the counter. The glass groans. Connie sighs.

  A god stands before her: muscular legs, barrel chest, the hirsute face of a devil, masculine and strong. Antlers jut past sharp ears, a crown of tangled bone pierces the air above him. Connie runs a finger through the horns, over the chest down to his phallus, erect between fur-coated thighs. One fingertip catches a rough edge of metal, and her hand snaps away in quick pain. In silence she reads the phrase carved on the base, her cut finger wrapped in her mouth.

  CERNUNNOS

  LORD OF THE HUNT

  “How much,” she asks.

  “Well, you see, it’s one of a kind.” His voice washes over her, tremulous and soft, as he turns the worn price tag away. “I’m not even sure I could part with it.”

  “I understand.” She does understand. Connie stares into the face of the creature, noting each weathered line. She sees how delicately the artist carved each vein in the arms, how the metal was ticked a million times over till the antlers seem coated in velvet. How could anyone part from him? How could anyone want for anything, after possessing him? Connie licks her lips. Her feet shift as hot blood pumps and plummets between her thighs.

  “I couldn’t afford it, I’m sure,” she mutters.

  “Oh, if you want something bad enough, you find a way to pay.”

  Connie half-listens. She stares at the statue as she licks her wound. Blood wells at the phallus tip, then disappears. Connie squints.

  Does the metal swell, move? Does the chest stretch, inhale? Does his cock quiver?

  Connie quivers.

  “I have ten thousand dollars.” The words drop out of her, unbidden. It’s true, she has a savings account, of sorts—bits of metal scrounged over the years, rolled and rubber-banded, handed to a smirking teller at the end of each working week. Her only cushion for the oubliette of a lonely future she’s been falling toward for years. Money for pills and pabulum, bedpans and the grave.

  The old man shrugs. From hidden corners of the store, someone laughs, and branches scrape soft against cabinets. “That’s a lot of money to be carrying around. Are you sure you have that much?”

  “I can give you a cashier’s check. I just need to go to the bank—there’s a branch in the mall. Please.”

  “It’s not much. What’s ten thousand dollars, anyway, if you can throw it away like—” The old man shakes his hands. Dry leaves pinwheel down the aisles, gather in whispering clumps by the counter. Connie mashes them against her soles, grinding them into the floor.

  “Please. I want this.” Her hand steals over his, light as her whisper. Her fingertips move in neat circles on his skin. What is she doing?

  He blushes and lowers his head. Connie wonders—has a woman ever looked at him, ever touched him like this? How would it feel, to be swept into such antediluvian emotion, to feel the bright rush of lust at the end of life, knowing only the void of dark will ever follow?

  This is what I want to know.

  “Well. Come back at closing. I’ll clean the statue for you.” He pats her hand, grandfatherly, and moves it away. Connie smiles, ashamed. She murmurs her thanks, stumbles out of the store. In five hours, Cernunnos will be hers.

  “Victory,” she says, as it quickens inside.

  About her, pale mannequins smile.

  ***

  Fading sunlight follows Connie as she rushes through the mall, damp fingers clutching an envelope. As she moves down the halls, security gates lower, cutting off protests of lingering wanderers. But all stores must close, as all days must end, even the longest of the year. Solstice, Connie remembers. After today, everything falls toward fall like a lover’s last embrace.

  The emporium door is shut, the lights are dimmed. Cupping her hands, Connie presses against the window and peers inside. No movement, no man, no statue. Did he change his mind? She knocks hard against the glass, pain nipping her knuckles. From within, a muffled voice speaks, and she shouts, “I said I’d be back, let me in!” The high ceilings echo her excitement, as if invisible flocks of harpies ride the stale air. Calm down, she tells herself, as the old man opens the door.

  “Here.” She thrusts the envelope at him, and he takes it, juggling keys as he locks the door behind her. “Ten thousand dollars. Cashier’s check. Like I promised.” Her voice is rich and throaty, coated with longing. She used to speak like that all the time. That was forty years, half a lifetime, ago.

  “Yes, like you promised.” The old man stares at the envelope, nods his head. “I cleaned it up for you, it’s in the back. But I can’t find the box it came in. Let me go and look around again.”

  “No!” Connie winces at her sharpness, starts over again. “It’s all right, I don’t need the box. I can put it in my bag.”

  The old man frowns. “Those antlers will tear your pretty purse right up. Sit down, relax. I’ll be just a minute.” He walks to the back of the narrow shop, vanishes behind a door. Connie leans against the counter, thinks about antlers tearing, carving maps into mysterious leather lands. Her head bows down, rests against cool glass. Her future is gone. All she has is this feeling clotting up her heart, ripe and ready to burst. Her eyelids close. Behind them, forests rise.

  ***

  Howls, full-throated and lush, roll through the woods with the rushing wind. Connie starts, elbows sliding off the counter as she opens her eyes. Overhead, mechanical ticking has replaced the rustling of leaves.

  The time. Connie bolts upright, stares at the clock. In the dim gloom, the hands relentlessly eat the seconds away. She gasps, laughs a little, horrified. It’s just past eight. She’d fallen asleep, wandered in the woods, for three full hours.

  “Hello?” Connie calls out, tentative. Beyond the drone of the clock, silence crouches and waits. She steps away from the co
unter, searching for a glimpse of light. Her fingertips stay at the counter’s edge, ensuring the rest of her doesn’t drift away. At the far end of a row of armoires, the wooden door stands silent, no light shining from behind. The old man has vanished, and with him, the statue. Her fingers spasm into fists as they remember the warmth of the metal, the heaviness of her longing. A prick at her finger was all it took.

  Connie slips off her jacket and shoes, lets her purse fall to the floor. As her hands drop the strap, they slide up her waist, cup her breasts and squeeze. The weight of her flesh grounds her. She arches her back, stretches up and out, dispels the last of sleep, moves forward. She’s paid the price, paid for years. She’s not leaving without him.

  The knob turns easily under her grasp, the door swings soundlessly open. Rows of metal shelves rise to the ceiling, crammed with boxes and crates. Connie’s heels click against concrete, carry her past cobwebbed weaponry, boxes of spiced snuff. Overhead, a single bulb casts out a sickly glow, barely visible. She grabs the chain and flicks it off. “Better,” she whispers.

  From ahead and below, a wet grunt breeches the dark. Connie freezes, hands to mouth. The sound has a greedy, longing tone. She drops to a crouch and sniffs the flowing air. Musky, copper-cold.

  Connie sidles to the end of the aisle. Against the wall, on a worktable, tools and dust cloths lay scattered under rivulets of blood. Her eyes follow the spray, up— Droplets fall from the ceiling, and she licks her lips, recognizing the taste. Strips of bronze, melted and curved, smoke at her feet. She flips over a piece, reads the half-word:

  CERNUN

  He’s free.

  “Not for long. I’ll find you,” Connie vows, with lips sweat-salted plump. To the left, another corridor, an open door. Red hoof prints point the way. She follows the wide pattern, ghosting his wake. Shelves give way to furniture, crammed in layers like abandoned centuries. Dressers drip with carvings, armchair gargoyles tongue the air. Beyond the opening, concrete dissolves under dirt and scrub. Further beyond, from out of the cavernous black, a distant, mournful howl. Connie hesitates. Everything looks bigger in the next room, wider and wilder. How will she find him in that vast space? How will she carry him back?

  What if I don’t need to?

  Snuffling—the rustle of animals from behind, of furlined limbs weaving through table legs. Connie slips through the door, locks it tight, and enters a warehouse of forever. Crumbling mausoleums and statues line cracked roads, furniture perches on barrows and plateaus. Just past the road, wood-slatted shacks and houses lean against each other, yellowing price tags hanging off doorknobs. Connie looks to the horizon as she walks, to jagged mountains covered in ruined buildings. Fluorescent lights dangle from bare branches, casting shadows over obelisks. She notes how the cords hang upward, as if gathering the light from a sky crammed full of stars. Bright flashes draw her to banks of cabinets half-sunk in the ground. Connie gasps in pleasure at the sight of jewel-crusted creatures and blinking marble busts, resting on rippling velvets. All the antiquities of the world are here, all the mysteries, all the desires. All the things she’s searched for, that she once would have loved. They’re not enough, not now.

  At the end of the banks, three roads fork out from the one. A dog lies in the middle road, gutted and scattered. Connie follows his serpentined entrails into a narrow valley crowded with long-forgotten gods, sleeping and marked down for sale. Alabaster spiders spin webs over limbs of cerulean, muting the blue with needle-thin shards of silver. Wolves race past her now, boars and beasts—Connie jumps into the crook of an indigo goddess as an auroch thunders past, hooves pounding half-circles into the ground. Challengers, all answering the call of their lord.

  Rising from the goddess, she follows them, follows sounds and scents of battle and death. Ahead, another fork. Down the right path, fat columns cluster and shine in moonlight, flanking travertine buildings. A price tag flutters from a post. Connie plucks it out of the wind, and reads:

  LIBRARY, ALEXANDRIA

  INQUIRE AT REGISTER FOR PRICE

  The left-hand path leads into trees, the largest she’s ever seen. Hulking colossi thrust from the earth, branches brushing the ground like unbound hair. No stars or fire here, no sign or sight of man. Only blood mist of the dying, the hard light of the moon, and the guttural breath of a warrior, as he waits.

  Connie drops the tag and takes the left path, her hand on her heart. Heaviness blossoms, spreads dark-stained lust through her limbs like blood in water. She thickens. Bones crunch under her feet, animals shudder, release death rattles into cold air. Another time, another place, she would have cowered and wept. This is not another time, another place. This is the only time, the only place. There has never been anything else.

  He stands in the center of a clearing, alive and hot-blooded, magic pumping hard under oily bronzed skin. Thick muscles flex beneath coils of brown hair, tumid curves of flesh swing between his legs. A feral face turns to her—not human or demon but something of both, sharp and sensual. Bloodied mouth, and eyes like slivers of gold. At the end of his grasp lies the auroch, its life jetting out in rivers around their feet.

  Come to me, she would say, if she could speak. Be with me. Be with me. But language does not belong here, no longer exists. Her tears spell his name on her skin. Connie steps into the clearing, arms out. He moves back, dissolves into shadowed trees, and disappears. Night winds rush through the forest, and needled branches buckle and crack, filling the air with ozone and evergreen. Connie stands, awe-struck and uncertain, warm ground beneath her feet. She came for him, but how can she tear him away from such desolate beauty? How can she tear herself?

  The trees give no reply.

  Connie’s hands move from button to button, parting the fabric of her blouse. Her skirt slides down in a silken whoosh to the ground. She sheds her clothes like unwanted skin, and walks to the center of the clearing, shivering in pleasure. Her body hasn’t felt the naked air in decades. Arms raised, Connie stares up at obsidian night, endless and terrible. Unbearable: unless she opens herself, unless she lets herself drown.

  This is what I want to know.

  Dark earth lifts as she lowers herself, dark earth cradles her spine. It displays her hair, her breasts, her limbs in the upthrust language of love. She is desire, the chthonic void, the true endless O of night that the horned god might bow down to, might enter and rest in her deepness, eternally loved.

  And He does; and He does.

  ***

  Every slow Sunday, a young girl named Josie wanders the wide corridors of the Tacoma Mall. She tries on clothes she can’t afford, carves her name into furniture displays. Stolen earrings slip into her pockets, purloined chocolates slide into her mouth. Lately she’s followed young mothers around, staring at fat babies cradled in arms. She cradles herself and feels nothing. She wants weight, she craves substance and purpose. Usually she never finds it.

  Usually.

  She sees the statue in the emporium, in the cabinet over the counter. Josie fingers the lighters, the yellowing pipes: but the statue catches her heart. The old man lifts it, carefully places it down on the counter before her. Josie wipes her eyes.

  A goddess of gold, stag-horned and heavy, squats on a pedestal. Large breasts rest against a stomach bulging with child, hair drapes her shoulders in velvety waves. Wide mouth, wild eyes. Josie cups the statue’s stomach, rests a finger in the groove between her legs. She feels warmth, wetness, the slow beat of two hearts. Josie’s eyelids flutter and close. She feels her deepness.

  Josie smiles and opens her eyes, speaks with a lover’s full sigh.

  “How much.”

  In the Court of King Cupressaceae, 1982

  OCTOBER 23: A DARK WAVE DANCE AT THE COMMAND OF YOUR KING

  THE VOIDOIDS. ALIEN SEX FIEND. BLACK FLAG. FALCO. THE POLICE. GARY NUMAN. VIOLENT FEMMES. YAZOO. LENE LOVICH. THE DEAD KENNEDYS. MINISTRY. THE DAMMED. STIMULATORS. EURYTHMICS. THE CLASH. BUZZCOCKS. THE. SLITS. NOMI. SEX PISTOLS. SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES. BLONDIE. THE
POLICE. SPLIT ENZ. ROMEO VOID. ELVIS COSTELLO. NINA HAGEN. THE VISIBLE TARGETS. BAUHAUS. B-MOVIE. VISAGE. PETE SHELLEY. ENGLISH BEAT. SHRIEKBACK. THE VAPORS. XTC. YELLO. THE SPOONS. THE SMITHS. DAVID BOWIE. TOTO COELO. THE MOTORS. NEW ORDER. OINGO BOINGO. JOY DIVISION. WALL OF VOODOO. B-52’S. THE BEAT. GENERATION X. KING CRIMSON. GANG OF FOUR. THE FLESHTONES. THE FIXX. PATTI SMITH. HAYSI FANTAYZEE. THE CRAMPS. THE CARS. ULTRAVOX. BUTTHOLE SURFERS. TEARS FOR FEARS. FLYING LIZARDS. X-RAY SPEX. GO4. THE STYRENES. DEVO. GRACE JONES. MC5. THE THE. ART OF NOISE. TELEVISION. DEPECHE MODE. INXS. THE FALL. BRONKSI BEAT. OINGO BOINGO.

  903 BAYVIEW STREET. AT THE NORTHERN EDGE OF SEHOME. 11PM.

  DEAD OR ALIVE.

  ***

  Knox and Severin stand in front of the mirror, outlining their lips with black pencils. They are not the ordinary pencils from the sad makeup section at the local supermarket—Knox bought these at the store only he is able to travel to, no matter how many times Severin follows him, only to find herself alone on the flat suburban streets of Bellingham, alone and lost under the silver sky. Knox colors his lips in with the pencil as well, filling every plump red fold with layers of waxy black, black to compliment the black and gold-specked powder circling his fern green eyes. Severin fills her lips in with a cobalt blue, the intense blue she sometimes sees as the sun sets over the silver bay and the far Western range, the blue that wells up out of the nothingness that occurs between the rising of the day and the ebbing of the night, that strange and timeless hour when the entire planet seems transported to some ancient universe without light or heat or stars. In her tiny dorm room bathroom, under the bright buzz of florescent tubes, Knox and Severin silently draw. When they finish, they stare into the mirror, at themselves, at each other. Severin flicks off the light switch. The tiny room plunges into darkness, but their reflections remain bright in the silver glass, skin like pale moths, hair like flame, eyes like fireflies. Slender green threads of electricity travel up and down the spikes of their mohawked heads. Knox turns to her: their tongues touch tip to tip, briefly, and small sparks arc out from their blackened fingernails, leaving feathery singe marks on the yellowing countertop.