To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows

by Sam Richard

  My legs had started to fall asleep and the urge to pee had built up to a painful intensity, but I couldn’t move. I needed to know how the story finished. Clearing his throat, he said, “I awoke in the jungle. Alone, confused, exhausted, and bleeding. Orienting myself, I realized that I wasn’t far away from camp, from the ritual. Stumbling towards the dim glow of fire, and coughing up blood, my mind tremored. What the living, stinking fuck had just happened? Several other ritual practitioners heard my rustling and came running out to me. They had looked for me for three days and they were sure I was dead; supplies were running low, so they were to leave tomorrow. Then they saw the blood. My knees went weak and the world was, once again, engulfed in darkness.”

  “There are old gods, there are new gods; merciful traitors and fetid little shits, Nationalist martyrs with grenades in their asses and guns stowed in the bellies of sheep, awaiting a confrontation. That which we know through science and inquiry I will continue to doubt, and beautiful autopsies await the faithful. The Zodiac doesn’t give two shits about you, me. And the star brightened Void is as empty and uncaring as ever, even with life beyond. Even with Kiki out there, a slave to the Red.” As he rose, I noticed a fine white scar on his chest. How had I never seen that? He hobbled away before I could even react. As he reached the door, he spoke softly, “I never got all the way back to Kiki, to Mars. And it has haunted me since. I try and I try and I doubt if I’ll ever make it all the way.” And like that, the door was closed and he was gone. And that was the last time I saw old Bill. Sitting there, I struggled with what I had heard. Was this real? Has Bill lost his mind? Granted, he’s always been pretty out there, but rarely has he said anything so unbelievable, so implausible. Is there life on Mars? Did Bill save the Prince of Mars? What the fuck am I even saying? I was haunted by his story, unable to think of much else.

  Three days later I got the call that he had died. Issues related to a heart attack. Grief stricken, I headed over to the house. Marcus was there, his eyes were glazed over and he looked half-dead. Handing me a letter, he said, “Bill wanted me to give this to you.” He shut the door and lumbered down the hall. I sat on the porch. With tears rolling down my cheeks, I opened the letter. It read as follows:

  I never told you how the story ends. Over the years I searched and searched for a way to get back to Mars. Was it the Jungle? Was it the Ayahuasca? Was it the Ritual? Was it all three? Or something else, perhaps? I tried every combination, recreating the events of that day all the ways I could think to. A few times I got back to Mars, even. I would awake in Kiki’s bed, startling him out of sleep but we could not touch. These never lasted long and we could only share a few words before I came rushing back across the Zodiac and finding myself in my house, or in the jungle, or in a hotel – wherever I had done the Ritual, taken of the Vine. The last time I went, the castle was in ruins and there was no one around. Piles of bodies lie amidst the rubble of the once standing city, I feared the worst.

  Since then, I decided I needed a greater understanding of what had happened to get me there, no more blindly trying. I gathered a few of my chemist friends to help analyze the various Yage concoctions I had made – the varieties that nearly got me there, the ghost essences. We determined that the locale from which the grass and vine were most powerful, the brew that got let me stay the longest. More research revealed that there was an outbreak of a particularly powerful fungus the year I was in the Amazon. We retrieved the vine and root from the very jungle that propelled me to space and were able to bribe a mycologist to give us some archival spores from the fungal outbreak.

  And with that, I will say goodbye. Not just to you, but to everyone. Marcus knows. He’s not happy but he knows. There is no body, my casket shall be empty. For I am not dead, just resurrected. Anointed by Stars and baptized in Red. When you read this, know that I am home. I will find Kiki, and kill those Barsoom bastards.

  From across the stars,

  Bill Lee

  I KNOW NOT THE NAMES OF THE GODS TO WHOM I PRAY

  "What does the violence say to you?" She asked as I drank deeply from the endless wells of her grey eyes. This was the first time we died together; it wouldn't be the last.

  Not her first time dying, but mine.

  "How does it smell? What do you taste? Where does it hurt?"

  Her voice sang into me, working its way deep into my bones.

  She drew closer, pressing the knife deeper, between two ribs, the blade slowly beginning to slide into my aorta. With every subtle bit of pressure, I could feel my blade piercing into hers. The pain an inferno in my chest, like a sheet of hot iron, draped upon my heart. I cried. Tears running off my face and onto her shoulder. It wasn't the pain. This was the first time I felt how she had at the moment of death: alone and scared.

  I feel lucky that I had here there with me, that first time I was caressed by death; guiding me, holding me, loving me.

  The knife pierced into my heart like a stake through soft soil, only slightly jarring, and I could feel myself letting go, not just of her but everything.

  "Stay with me," she whispered, "don't go until I'm ready, too."

  Her lips were warm and soft on my ear and cheek as she nuzzled into my beard. My legs felt detached. They were cold and numb, but I could feel her bony thighs dig in, as she pressed closer to me, at war with the tension of my knife inside her. With all my waning effort, I pushed my hand as hard as I could, weak from exhaustion and internal blood-loss.

  I felt her aorta on the other end of the freshly sharpened metal. It was tense before it snapped.

  And then there was nothing.

  I don't know for how long. Only darkness. Silence. And her.

  She never left. I could always feel her presence, even in the nothing. Like the feeling of a spouse sleeping in the other room even though you haven't spoken a word in hours. You just know they're there.

  I vaguely recall feeling that after she died the first time. It burned, but it was a small reprieve from the harshness that consumed my reality, so I appreciated it, even for the pain.

  The darkness cradled me in the same feeling of absentee closeness. It was the only sensation in the darkness.

  And then I lived again.

  Back in the dark room.

  That second time we pressed the knives against our necks as we embraced. Her hair ticked at my cheek as she whispered my name over and over again. It felt like home.

  "Together we feast," her breath was frigid on my ear.

  The knife felt lighter in my hand this time, but no less sharp.

  My lips flicked against her cheek as we mutually pulled out blades across each other's throats. Her neck was so delicate; the skin seemed to flake away with the slice and stretch apart under the pressure of her anxious blood. It ran ice cold down my shoulder and chest.

  Our first shower together since she died.

  I gasped and trembled, trying to lock eyes with my love, but my head grew weary on my slumping shoulders and I could no longer think. The lights went out around me.

  The darkness wrapped me in its arms and carried me away again, for a time. I could feel her closeness and nothing else. My lover, in the bed next to me, or in the adjacent room, or our twin burial plots; becoming the nothing, together.

  Then there was harsh light shining directly into my eyes. She was walking towards me, blocking the brightness; her olive skin seemed to radiate in the backlight. I remembered the first time we fucked, the first time she died, the first time we died together. It all felt like one memory of warm and cold. Our fluids melding us into one organism; first crying out and then in utterly silent.

  She placed the shimmering knife in my hand and kissed my forehead; her lips were ice against my burning skin. I tried to recall the first time we met or what our wedding was like. I could feel the ghost of the subtle weight of my wooden wedding band on my naked finger; remembering the way it felt when she first slid it on that cool autumn afternoon.

  But it was just a flash. I could conjure no
other details but her endless, grey eyes.

  She sat down next to me and pressed her knife against the inside of my thigh, near my groin. Reflexively, I did the same to her. My breath was shallow, anticipatory as I stared at the spot of soft brown hair between her legs.

  We cut into each other, aiming for the femoral artery. An ever-expanding swell of crimson grew on the floor beneath us like a blooming flower. The quiet sounds of rich liquid dripping into itself filled the concrete room.

  Her insides were rubbery against the metal blade and a piece of her seemed to evade being cut. As my vision darkened and blurred, through tears I thought I saw a shape moving beneath her flesh.

  And then there was nothing.

  This time, I stopped feeling her around me in the nothing. The phantom sensation moved its way inside me. Inside the me that didn't exist in the darkness. If I had a body and that body had a chest and that chest had a hollow, that's where it would have been.

  After a seeming forever, the nothing came to an end.

  This time the light was dim and she was straddling me. Her grey eyes piercing into mine. She opened my mouth with the tip of her knife, the shimmering metal cold against the heat of my lips. Inserting the blade into my mouth, it kissed the back of my throat sharply and I tried not to gag. A trickle of warm crawled past my lungs. Slowly, she dragged the tip cross the roof of my mouth halfway to my teeth. The metal ran along the ridge of my palate, sending warm blood to dance with my tongue.

  She opened her mouth to accept my blade. She didn't blink; she didn't gag as I mimicked what she had done to me, grazing the tip of the knife along the roof of her mouth.

  Her teeth were perfect, like crudely carved pearls.

  A snake of bitter, red liquid slowly moved down my knife and onto my knuckles.

  She didn't blink.

  Her grey eyes stared into me like an auger boring a hole in the earth. Into them I sunk. Remembering all the times she had given me that same look when she'd taken me in her mouth.

  There was a twitch behind the endless grey, something I didn't recognize. It stared at me for a moment before we pressed our faces into the knives.

  The darkness was cold this time. There was nothing but cold. I couldn't feel my body or my mind, but I was frozen.

  "Sometimes we forget how to taste," she whispered, her lips unmoving. Her beautiful voice crept towards me from behind, like an echo in slow motion and getting louder as it went. Passing through me, the sound wave caught up to her just as she lip-synched the words.

  Her grey eyes stayed locked to mine, unmoving and unflinching. I remembered staring into them, sliding the wooden wedding ring I had carved for her onto her slender finger. Her face was so full of warmth and love, her beautiful, brown eyes beaming with joy. I could remember being so happy. I could remember nothing else.

  "And other times we forget how to stop."

  She walked towards me, knife in hand, as always.

  Sitting atop me closer than ever before, I could feel my penis graze her open lips. She wrapped her arms around me, placing the tip of the knife at the base of my skull.

  I did the same.

  My mind filled with piles of dusty, crumbling antlers, discarded hooves, and tusks left over from wild beasts long dead. Spider-webs hung too long, growing powdery and decayed. Trees brought down under their own weight, stuck in sodden dirt. A world of failures.

  My mind filled with her. Our skin connected more than it ever had before. The insufficient weight of her, the tactile coldness coming from her mouth, coming from her cunt.

  I could feel myself shrivel inside. I could feel the person I had once been scream down at me to drop the knife. But I placed it at the base of her skull, hugging her as tightly as I could.

  I needed this to last forever. I couldn't go without her, ever again.

  But it would never last. It would always end in death.

  Her jagged pearl teeth dug into my shoulder. Their cold numbed the pain, as trickles of hot blood dripped into the crux of where our chests met, forming a lake that would flow over and onto the floor. I said nothing, but inside I begged her to bite me again, to keep this intimacy going to keep the greater intimacy at bay.

  She shifted her weight, atop me, positioning herself for greater leverage. The knife gouged into a spot in my skull that should have been hard but was soft and pliable. Hers was much the same.

  I wanted to grunt or speak or yell, to bring her focus back to me, to the real me that was she was sitting on, but my vocal cords wouldn't sing as I wanted them to. They wouldn't sing at all.

  I could only do what she needed from me.

  In unison, we pushed out knives into each other. As my skull and my spine were severed, I wondered why I couldn't stop myself from following through. Hot blood poured down my back, pooling in the chair under me. I don't remember much else before the darkness came, but for the sensation of something sharp clumsily grabbing at my chest, as if shrouded by thick leather.

  The nothing felt ominous and greedy like it wanted to leech everything from me. But it already had. I was nothing, no one. I had no body, probably no mind or spirit. I was merely a subtle sensation in a sea of darkness and void. And that void was uneasy in its silence and full of malice.

  The next time I had eyes to open, the room was coated in pale, blue moonlight. We were facing each other, knives at each other's groins. The room had no ceiling and reeked of iron and decay. I had never noticed a smell before.

  "Our deaths walk no course. Neither kicking against the jagged tides of the middle, nor wading through the calm flow of the upper." A grimace passed over her typically emotionless face. "We cycle in and out, forever, until all things end."

  With no other words spoken, we plunged our knives into each other, cutting upwards past the pelvic bone, severing through flesh, muscle, and fat, until metal met sternum.

  Slopping entrails, organs, and blood fell to our feet in a precise, clean motion leaving our chest cavities gaping open. For the first time since the first time we died together, I felt a sense of freedom. Death lingered at the door long enough for my knife to fall to the ground, into the visceral miasma. I approached my love and crawled into her open cavity, finding her warm for the first time since she was alive. Not the warmth of life, but warmer than the cold blood she had spent atop me all since our reunion.

  My ear pressed against her spine as I caressed her unbeating heart with my hand. My legs dangled out of her like a child sitting on the edge of a dock. She didn't speak. I couldn't, but I was able to hum. It echoed against the inner walls of her body, soft and rhythmic. Looking up her throat and neck, I noticed something large burrowing away from me, just catching a glimpse of a tail, and a series of wide hollow channels through her frostbitten muscles and frozen tissue.

  Despite my intrusive closeness, she felt far away, distant. Like she had been shut off.

  I slowly fell into the void, still clutching at her frigid, silent heart; wishing with everything I had inside of me that I could squeeze it hard enough to get it going again.

  And then the darkness overtook me.

  It was only menace now. Not silent and black. No void to speak of. Just unending, sinister emotion. I had no body with which to scurry away or defend myself or cry. I had no mind with which to reason with the malevolent darkness. I only had the ghastly feeling, and nothing else.

  There was no light this time, I only knew I was out of the darkness when I felt my skin grow stiff in the cold damp of the room. I heard her before my eyes adjusted to see her.

  My love was walking towards me, a lean shadow in the underdeveloped light. She held a knife, but I held nothing.

  Her grey eyes glowed with malice and pain, and her face was contorted and vile. I wondered if this is how it was when she died the first time. I thought of her warm hands, the way she would touch and caress my leg when we sat together. I thought of her beaming smile, how inviting and loving it was. I thought of all the ways we felt as one.

  I thought of
staring into her brown eyes as she came; drunk on sex and love. She was like an intoxicant.

  I could feel that subtle smell rise to meet my nose. Her sensuous aroma swam around me, swam inside me. It was all I lived for; all I died for.

  Her glowing grey eyes, exactly as I remembered them. Her unnaturally long, sinuous arms, dragging the knife across the naked, stone ground. Her arching back, hunched and sickly. Each column of her spine jutting out through the peeling flesh, just like always.

  Her long, coiled fingers wrapped around the dragging knife. The sharp ridge where her wooden ring once lived below her gnarled knuckle. The viscous black fluids dripping out from her perfectly jagged, pearl-coated mouth. The black running down her bare concave chest, tricking into the vacant place where her heart once beat. The heart I once caressed. The heart that so cruelly stopped suddenly one hot summer morning.

  I remembered it all. Our beautiful lives cut short by unknown and unseen illness. The monstrously lonely months and isolated years spent without her. The desperate fucking pain. All the sorrow, and the anguish, and the dreams, and the bargaining. The begging. The prayers.