The faceless thing we ad.., p.32
The Faceless Thing We Adore, page 32
“This is what I always was. It didn’t choose me. I chose it.”
The flesh of the sky closes over. The light on her face fades. Something gone, irretrievable.
“Fine,” she says, with a hardness I’ve never heard from her. “Fine. Then I have something for you. Bon fucking appétit, faceless one.”
And she opens to me, and makes an offering.
I open to her, and I take it.
I inhale an image of a girl at the edge of the sea, hair newly shorn, unfamiliar clothes loose, staring in playful wonder at a pebble between her fingers. An instant liking of that awkwardness, that love of the world. A sense of stumbling, being unable to get anything right, up against that girl’s bold curiosity, willed ignorance and occasional surprising cleverness. Of a throat growing tight at the sight of slender, muscular arms growing tanned, bright eyes flashing with enthusiasm, a jutting hip and a pierced belly button when her t-shirt rides up. Of a giddiness, Why is she looking at me like that, of shared laughter like bubbles bursting. Of admiration, She ran right into the cave for Myri. She’s good, isn’t she? She’s brave.
Of a desperate urge to reshape herself into something that could fit around this girl’s sharp edges. Of finding comfort pressed against an unfamiliar body, of that body growing familiar, of an ecstatic kiss on a beach at the lip of disaster. Of shock at her realization that she’d follow her into darkness, into her own destruction, just for the brilliant way their minds sparked together. Of realizing, You are my courage.
And then a despite. You are you and I am me, despite. Desperate hope, despite. The taste of her on her lips, despite. A search for comfort in those arms, despite. A cycle: You’re what I fear, and you’re my courage; I can’t face my fear of you without you to tell me it’s okay.
Kiera takes all she feels for me, the bold, beautiful, clever thing I am in her eyes, and she gives it up irretrievably, and I swallow it whole, and it’s gone.
She watches me enjoying it, face steady, and she’s harder now, bitter and brave.
“Thanks for that whole resurrection thing, by the way,” she adds. It’s sarcastic, but sincere, too, like she’s saying a thing she has to, to clear it away.
“Finally, she says it,” I say drily.
Kiera wasn’t here. I’m alone.
The sky spasms with bursts of pleasure. I feel vividly, hungrily alive.
At the brink, we dance.
Time and space grow a distortion of the groves. Bioluminescence dances. Music echoes, changing, thudding drums, clanging guitars, the ringing of goat bells, askew.
My coils wrap around arms, waists, necks, enjoying sweet, pulsing bodies. But loosely, they’re free to move, because at the brink we dance.
The coils hide the sky and sea, which is good. I don’t think they want to see what those things look like now.
People are crying anyway.
But at the brink we dance. I remember that giddy night before the ritual. I want them to have that again.
So I tell them, Dance. They dance; they want to please me.
There’s Frida, arms above her head, hips swinging. She’s chosen; now every moment is precious because they’re dwindling and what waits after is all she yearns for. There’s Aksel, hands on her waist, knowing her moments are dwindling and he isn’t following her.
There’s Zina and João, dancing a hammed-up samba inside a curl of tendrils. There’s Darya turning circles to make the luminescence whirl. There’s Maisie in Ana’s arms, making a weepy joke about how sixty-eight is too young to be devoured by a god, but they dance as they cry. There’s Pietro, staring blankly at his wedding ring as his limbs go through the motions of happiness.
They’re grinning. The grins are rictus.
Kai finds Kiera, curled among my coils, whoops, and pulls her up. She screams, animal panic, seeing her murderer lunging at her again. But the Unseen said, Dance, so their fight becomes a dance.
They all look to me, again and again: Are we doing this right? Trembling, sobbing, fraying, holding to one thing: The Unseen wants us to dance.
And this isn’t right; I want a night of bliss and glory, a bittersweet goodbye. So, I reach inside them, to tease out pleasure and calm and euphoria.
And those things flow, in moans and giggles and cheers, but I just paint a veneer over the terror, sending minds spiraling as they struggle to contain things that don’t fit together.
João screams as Zina kisses his neck. Darya’s lost in the lights, pupils dilated, spinning. Ana and Maisie cackle, poking at my tendrils like they’re a cute joke. Kai holds Kiera’s flailing limbs, “It’s okay, it’s me,” and she’s wild-eyed with panic, dissonant with the honey taste on her tongue. She clutches that fear like it will keep her alive.
Jonah and Teresa dance with their daughter. She tries to push them away, but they tighten their grip. She glares, refusing to cry.
This is all wrong. I’m giving them a new world. And all they have is fear and helpless hope that they’re doing enough to satisfy me.
It hurts. They’re suffering. They’re not making me happy at all.
I let it end.
CHAPTER FIFTY
TORN APART
A PERFECT DAWN.
Wisps of cloud reflect the bronze-gold sunrise. Foam bubbles trap light. Mist hangs in hollows. Blossom’s peachy.
The island remembers itself, a final pure moment as everything draws its breath.
Through my spreading tendrils, I find quiet perfection, a rich sunset over the Philippines, a swarm of stars over the Atacama Desert, luscious sunshine in the Pamir Mountains. The mindless processes of the universe resume, galaxies coalescing. Reprise.
Nobody’s reassured. The precision’s eerie. It feels like goodbye.
Here, too, that perfection tells them that it’s time.
The quiet is paralysis. They stand bedraggled in broken masks, torn suits, sweat-stained dresses. Eyes don’t meet. Nothing will give comfort now.
I quail, too. I’m the end of everything.
Then it passes; I smile. I’m equal to this. This reality was made to disappear into me.
They don’t try to hide the fear. Tears fall. Lips murmur desperate prayers to the thing about to consume their world. My poor children, they’ve wandered so far in the dark, and their fate’s come to claim them.
They see Aoife, my body returning to itself. I feel like me, breeze on my skin, lemon and honey in my mouth. But just like this sinister peace, my human form reads as a threat. I’m a thing wearing their dead friend’s face. However deep the love, the terror’s fathomless.
But what’s fear except self-preservation? No self, no fear. And they gave over their selves long ago.
They look to Jonah.
He doesn’t speak as a prophet, no proclamation of glory. He just says, “It will be all right,” with practiced ease, as though he truly believes it.
I feel in the workings of their bodies how that warms them. The irrelevance of their selves suffocates the fear. They’ll go to a new world. They’ll be butterflies. I’m grateful to him, briefly; he was right, he can give them the comfort I can’t.
Jonah says, “Kneel.”
They move like music to a conductor. They trust. They kneel.
I look to see if Giulia is refusing to kneel. But no; she’s sunlight over the Indian Ocean, a whirl of gases in a nebula, a tasty twitch in my tendons.
Among the living, there’s no resistance. Even Myri sinks to her knees. Even Kiera. This end is easy. All they have to do is follow.
Jonah kneels last. “It’s time.” A tremble of victory and reverence. “If you will give yourself, stand.”
My excitement ripples galaxies. Among those tender, beloved bodies, those minds unhinged by stifled terror, are the ones who will surge through me, so soon.
Of course, Frida stands; most zealous, cheeks flushed under the eyes of her god; she’s laughing, deranged by love and dread. I feel her heart leap and thunder. Once I teased her about her ring, now; now. She’ll be exquisite.
Others stir, made bold.
Aksel stands, a fuck it shrug. He looks at Frida, a sad twitch to his smile; she beams. Pietro stands, sigh final. Maisie strokes the sand, then rises. Zina hugs Darya and whispers, “This isn’t goodbye; it’ll build somewhere beautiful from me, and you can go there,” and I shiver thinking how her creativity and poise will taste.
Kiera tenses; pain and desire crack through me, but she stays still.
Myri stands.
Jonah freezes.
Something says, No, far away.
Small, fierce, hood thrown back, red hair spilling. How quickly those hollows in her filled, her humanity resurging even as the world disintegrated around her.
It’s not submission in her eyes; it’s defiance. It’s not me she’s looking at, it’s Jonah.
I drink in his utter despair.
“Glorious, right?” Her lip quirks.
Jonah can’t answer. He can’t move. He kneels, open-mouthed, silenced by his own story as it prepares to swallow the last person who is still a person to him. He kneels, open-mouthed, as I win.
Myri steps forward, relishing her final rebellion. The other offerings steel themselves and follow, hands intertwined. I burst with love for them and watch them with a god’s detached gaze and a god’s infinite greed.
Even the breeze stills. A chant spreads: Adore, Unseen, surrender. Its resonance stretches something open.
Warm, frightened bodies kneel and brace themselves. Eyes downcast, or taking a last look at the world. The offerings exchange glances and turn to me, a silent agreement to look death in the eye.
They see there how very much I love them.
I speak to them in sunlight and thunder. “You are so loved, my children. Now, we emerge from our chrysalis.”
The Unseen unfolds luxuriantly, its presence in my body spilling into its presence in the universe, ready to break out of both and break them in the process.
They see me, an echo of a girl at the heart of something indescribable. They see me and grip that chant, each other’s hands, looking to their prophet, the hand that shaped them and brought them here. Just trust, trust, just—
The offerings cling to each other, sobbing panic and joy.
Myri stares forward. This is what she saw when she screamed. She offered herself as a vessel to stop it. Now she offers herself again, to have one thing on her own terms.
Her lip trembles, but her gaze is steady as my jaws open.
There is no moment except this one. This will be the last one.
Except it isn’t; it’s lost under a scream.
Jonah staggers forward, mouth open in an animal wail.
He stumbles, unbalanced, eyes wild, scream formless. He runs to Myri but can’t form her name.
Robes askew, hair flying, a comically pathetic mockery of Giulia at the ritual.
I pause, maw wide, but taking nothing yet; a deliciously petty part of me wants to watch what will happen.
My followers, too, watch their prophet snap and collapse. He isn’t a leader now, not a voice of judgment, not the first offering, not a gaze that pins them. Just a man, flailing and yelling. Just a man reaching for his daughter, refusing to lose her for a final time.
“No”—finally forming words—“Myri, don’t—”
What blasphemy.
I feel it in them, the wrench I know, the reality before their eyes and the reality in their minds screeching apart.
A high-pitched laugh echoes. Kiera’s cackling, head thrown back.
“Oh, god,” she chokes. “You fucking idiot. You killed the world, this is so fucking funny, you wanted to control us so much you killed the damn world and we’re going to die, and you can’t even stand up straight.” She looks around at all the blank faces. “It’s so hilarious.”
Others join, confused laughter, cruel laughter. The last threads of their story have snapped and sent them tumbling, and they make noises that might not be laughter at all.
There are things human minds can’t process. Some knowledge is forbidden, because it would break us. They say things like me, unknowable, tear minds apart. That’s wrong. The things that break us are the ones we know, the people so intimately woven into us that when they fall, we fall.
Jonah slows, realizing what he’s done, looking at Myri, and Myri watches in frozen shock as the laughter makes them bold and they descend on him.
It’s Teresa first, standing and reaching for her husband.
That strange smile as she comes to him, gentle. That off-key look as she takes his hand, head cocked curiously, and snaps his wrist.
I don’t know if she means to. She’s swirling down through a dark place. They all are.
Look, he’s howling in shocked pain, confidence and wisdom gone. He’s nothing, he’s a man, look, he can feel.
That’s why it’s slow, at first, blankly interested people coming to discover the fragility of the man they gave themselves to. To learn that a kick to the stomach can wind him, that a slap makes him flinch, that he’ll screech again when his finger snaps. That he’s human. Meat. As flawed—breakable—as anyone.
In minds fragmented by terror, that discovery awakens rage.
They don’t need drugs or pounding music or a bellyful of rendered corpse. Jonah achieved what he’d wanted, with that. They’re stripped down, fragile as butterflies. There’s nothing to stop them from kicking and tearing, burying their terror and loss in violence.
Jonah’s cries become screams so fast.
They take a lot longer to go quiet.
I feel every rupture, every crack. I ride with him to the brink of death. Feel his despair, his understanding that every manipulation, every rush of power, brought him here, and he’s over.
The last thing he’s aware of is me smiling inside his every cell.
The wave engulfs Jonah and falls back, and all is still.
I stare down at my prophet. Meat, seeping onto the sand. He will go into me with the rest of his reality, mulch.
The triumph is sublime.
I soak in it. Admire all the clever, reckless ways he’s broken.
The quiet is aftermath, reality folding in as minds catch up to what bodies have done.
Kai’s screaming at his bloodied hands; Frida sobs; Zina’s shaking Darya and shouting, “What did you do?” as if her knuckles aren’t torn from punching; Ana stares at the jagged fence spike she drove into Jonah’s gut, bemused.
Myri kneels on the sand, her father’s blood soaking her jeans, pressing her hands against his chest, his spilled-open belly, yelling.
She looks up at me, pleading: Bring him back.
I could. Life’s easy to play with. I could knit those bones, fill those lungs, mold that brain into the shapes that made him Jonah. Say, I forgive you.
I look to Teresa.
Her eyes are clear. Clearer even than before Sage’s death. They’re bright with violence, but behind that is the sharp mind and fierce love she spent years blunting to please her husband. Her flowered dress is bloodied. Her smile’s broad.
I know that smile. I return it.
No. I will not bring this man back.
I let his remains wisp away. Just molecules. Like with Craig, it astounds me: How did a construction of crude matter have such power over us?
They watch, baffled and distressed. He’s gone. They did this, and they’re alone beyond the brink.
I don’t want them to hurt. I love them so much.
“Just a man,” I say in the fading of Jonah’s colors. Words they’ve read in his bones and entrails. “He served his purpose, brought you to me, our infinite love, our final union.”
They fall quiet and turn to me, a vast formation of space and color and warped matter, Aoife’s shadow at its core, its jaws starting to loom open.
Jonah stood between them and me, smoked glass over the sun. Now they’re exposed before me.
They were stripped away, piece by piece, in kind whispers, in violence. They’re empty, pinned butterflies. There’s nothing left for them, of them.
Only me.
I know and they know what they’ll do.
Ana throws down the bloodstained spike, Kai wipes his hands, Zina releases Darya’s shoulders, Teresa pushes her hair back, indifferent to the blood she’s smeared through it. Myri puts her arm around her mother’s shoulder. As one, they kneel before my maw.
Take this from us, their movements say, this us. We gave it away and got it back shattered and we don’t know what to do with the pieces. Take those pieces. Make something beautiful.
Perfect; bittersweet joy. They became my family, now they’ll bloat my power. All those universes in their skulls and skins will flare inside me, fuel and spark.
This is what we’re here for. We understand now.
Only one person holds back. Only one will persist and see what comes after.
The seed of my new world’s pressed against an olive tree, throat too tight to pray, manic laughter extinguished. She can’t look. The seed of my new world is fear, fear that says, Let something of me survive. Yes. I knew Kiera was worthy.
The others reach for each other, fingers twining, final kisses on bloodied faces, gore-smeared fingers wiping tears. Whispers.
They’re killers, hollowed out and at their ends. But before, those gestures and murmurs were Jonah’s, part of the world he wove. Now, they’re their own.
I feel the life in them, electricity fizzing in their cells, the spiral, fractal brilliance of their minds, the utter fucking miracle that atoms came together to make this. That hideous appetite peaks, and I cannot resist.
Existence trembles before me, recognizing its end.
This excitement is familiar; I felt it in an airport, once. Leaving behind everything, heading into a new world.
I open wide. A rip, jaws dripping raw desire. A doorway to where the old reality will digest and the new one gestate.
They stare into that place and quiver and adore me ever more deeply. Look at those faces. I recognize that expression.
I can’t remember what the fight was about.
