what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
There are some things you cannot be sorry for.
In life, there are some things you must simply own. You must acknowledge the misdeed by looking it in the eye, by saying, yes, I did that, and I am not sorry.
This, this is a world I no longer understand. What had been conceivable to this point has suddenly been cast inward; what is right is wrong; what is wrong is right; my life, my very survival, is an insult to my morality.
(And who I am—the man named Vercingtorix, the man who has fought and bled for a hundred battles upon dozens of beaches, who has turned the salt-sea pink as roses with the blood of the dead—lies dormant beneath my faux death).
What remains—
What remains is unforgivable.
What remains watches, languid, from beneath the waves. This “survivor” stares at her approach with primordial hunger; and lunges only when she is near enough to touch. She is swifter, of course; and before the frenzy can continue her mouth is pressed firmly against my jugular, teeth against that thready, weak pulse. The pressure is a reminder of how close I was to non-existance; how close I was to not to rebirth, but to death. Those terrible new lips peel back from the shark-like teeth and I hiss into the water as she deftly, instinctively, flips me into a position of surrender.
No. You are mine.
Those teeth remained bared. Those eyes remain spiteful; full of pitted, treacherous loathing. Perhaps she is my Maker. But I will never be hers.
My blood ribbons out from my wounds; the flow is nearly delicate. I cannot help the way it reminds me of the old fable; we are bound, irrevocably, by red strings of fate. And mine drift into her too-bright eyes. I withdraw from her, back to the bottom, coiling and uncoiling. Everything I am is new. Everything I am is unfamiliar. But beneath that unfamiliarity, beneath the self-disgust, lays something more instinctive, more primitive. Perhaps it is hunger. I do not think so. I think it is even more intrinsic.
It is the transformation—on the most inherent level—from prey to predator. I have never felt like prey before; but in this instance, my lips stretched taunt and rippling over serrated fangs, I realize I have been prey my entire life.
And will never be again.
(This, in many ways, is the most tremendous loss I have ever suffered).
“No,” I breathe out; my voice is weak. It does not sound like mine, aside from the seething hatred behind it. “No. You don’t get to be sorry.”
There is blood in the water.
I know it is mine. But she is a fool for showing the weakness of her regret. It might as well be an arterial bleed. “You do not get to take away who I am and say sorry.”
I think, if not for the pit of hatred opening within my breast, I would have died. I think if I were not so spiteful a creature, the sea would have already swallowed me.
But my fate has never been to die easy.
“Maker.” Never has a word been twisted so reptilian, spoken so cruelly, a caustic blade.
But my eyes convey what I cannot physically. Oh, the thread between us is thin in all but disdain.
In life, there are some things you must simply own. You must acknowledge the misdeed by looking it in the eye, by saying, yes, I did that, and I am not sorry.
This, this is a world I no longer understand. What had been conceivable to this point has suddenly been cast inward; what is right is wrong; what is wrong is right; my life, my very survival, is an insult to my morality.
(And who I am—the man named Vercingtorix, the man who has fought and bled for a hundred battles upon dozens of beaches, who has turned the salt-sea pink as roses with the blood of the dead—lies dormant beneath my faux death).
What remains—
What remains is unforgivable.
What remains watches, languid, from beneath the waves. This “survivor” stares at her approach with primordial hunger; and lunges only when she is near enough to touch. She is swifter, of course; and before the frenzy can continue her mouth is pressed firmly against my jugular, teeth against that thready, weak pulse. The pressure is a reminder of how close I was to non-existance; how close I was to not to rebirth, but to death. Those terrible new lips peel back from the shark-like teeth and I hiss into the water as she deftly, instinctively, flips me into a position of surrender.
No. You are mine.
Those teeth remained bared. Those eyes remain spiteful; full of pitted, treacherous loathing. Perhaps she is my Maker. But I will never be hers.
My blood ribbons out from my wounds; the flow is nearly delicate. I cannot help the way it reminds me of the old fable; we are bound, irrevocably, by red strings of fate. And mine drift into her too-bright eyes. I withdraw from her, back to the bottom, coiling and uncoiling. Everything I am is new. Everything I am is unfamiliar. But beneath that unfamiliarity, beneath the self-disgust, lays something more instinctive, more primitive. Perhaps it is hunger. I do not think so. I think it is even more intrinsic.
It is the transformation—on the most inherent level—from prey to predator. I have never felt like prey before; but in this instance, my lips stretched taunt and rippling over serrated fangs, I realize I have been prey my entire life.
And will never be again.
(This, in many ways, is the most tremendous loss I have ever suffered).
“No,” I breathe out; my voice is weak. It does not sound like mine, aside from the seething hatred behind it. “No. You don’t get to be sorry.”
There is blood in the water.
I know it is mine. But she is a fool for showing the weakness of her regret. It might as well be an arterial bleed. “You do not get to take away who I am and say sorry.”
I think, if not for the pit of hatred opening within my breast, I would have died. I think if I were not so spiteful a creature, the sea would have already swallowed me.
But my fate has never been to die easy.
“Maker.” Never has a word been twisted so reptilian, spoken so cruelly, a caustic blade.
But my eyes convey what I cannot physically. Oh, the thread between us is thin in all but disdain.
