Exit From Eternity

The chapel was cool and quiet, its walls as repulsive and uninviting as they always had been. I’d always had a hard time finding it hallowed, for nothing pure resided in its moss covered confinements. The mere fact that it welcomed me so gladly every time I stopped by was proof enough. Or had God suddenly taken a liking for the souls of the damned? I glanced up at the bleeding face of the crucified deity and smirked. Would a being, a Father, who let his own son die while stretched on a piece of wood for display, really go so far as to forgive us? The most hated of his own spawned evil?

My laughter echoed off the stripped, mocking walls.

Somehow, the bitterness of my thoughts still managed to amaze me, even after all these years wasted on aimless wanderings through this cancer-infested city, I was still able to stoop a little lower in my cynical mind. I should have known that his absence would bring out the worst in me. All that I ever was disappeared when he left me in Florence, bathed in soft cushions with his blood still coiling inside my veins, mixing in with mine. I was able to catch his scent on everything that moved. There was so much blood on my hands that night for I was killing his memory with every ounce of thirst I had.

I was taken here. Before that face – before those vacant, stone eyes and that crown of thorns. The naïve deity was staring me down with that empty gaze while my soul was being condemned to eternal damnation. Not a tear it shed for me, not a wince it produced as I cried for salvation, not a move. It saddened me to know those eyes were the last thing I saw in my mortal life when now I could have given anything to steal one last glimpse of the sunrise, or even better, to feel that prickly warmth on my skin without being set ablaze like gunpowder. What a pity now.

Long ago, my Taker, the shadow of my past whose name I had cursed many times over and over again, and who I was now waiting with anxiety cramping my ivory fingers, he was deaf to my pleas and felt like stone against my chest as he crushed me with his want. His chiseled features incited only repulsion on my part, he was far too perfect to mean well. His eyes, the two emeralds the Jealousy herself must have placed inside their sockets, their glint spoke of every mischief that he was ever up to. That night they were dark, black with lust and yearnings I didn’t understand as well as I do now.

“Laurent?”

I turned to reacquaint myself with my dirty past.
And then I looked up to the cross and that stone face, wishing it would smash and shatter against this unhallowed ground.

The emeralds morphed into onyxes upon the sight of my own infuriated orbs.

“Laurent, your anger is driving me insane,” He reached out with an elegant, gloved hand, which I left vacant, as he let it fall back to his side, “why do you keep chasing old grudges in this forsaken place?”

His pallid lips twisted into the beginnings of a smile. Mine remained pressed together in a hateful manner although my insides were burning up with an unexpected wish for his chest to try and crush mine again – right there – before that cold, resigned face.

Everything, every emotion his presence would stir up inside of me, every single wish – was a paradox. My entire existence, owed to him, it could be a coyly executed oxymoron, a battleground where anarchy fought with order and hatred with love while a single emotion stayed untouched, disdain towards that night in Florence and towards that unmoving face, towards those wrists nailed against rotting wood.

Auburn locks of hair swirled right past me and suddenly his chest was pressing my back, the touch similar to the one of marble and vacant of any signs of a heartbeat. His breath ghosted past my ear and brought shivers to my firm posture. My own marble was crumbling, exposed to the intoxicating closeness of his voice, of that breath still scented with borrowed blood.

“The night when I was taking you, Laurent, you bore the same expression,” his hands slid around my waist, and up my chest unclasping my cape. The velveteen fabric crumpled to the littered ground with a sad whisper, “and the blood I borrowed from you boiled inside my veins.” I felt his lips curl into a genuine reminiscing smile as they pressed against my neck. “I would have left you die and rot in peace… but your eyes, oh Laurent,” a chuckle mixed amongst his moans and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, aroused by the fermenting hatred inside of me. His hands turned me to face him and his eyes locked on mine. Both pairs of orbs black and restless against one another’s gaze. His well under his cool, controlling manner, mine ablaze with raging emotion.

I stared at that stone face again as his teeth attached themselves to my neck and stole from me yet again. I had no soul, so he decided to rob me of my pride instead – I moaned like the whore he thought I was. And he kept on taking and taking, drinking while I clutched onto his back, pulling him closer like a needy mess.

The thorn crown., the eyes staring at the sky, the nailed wrists, the nude shape, the rotting wood, the maggots in the dirt below my head, I was aware of it, coiling on the ground below the symbol of my long ago missed salvation. He lingered on top of me, stripping me off my clothes with black irises and lips shimmering with my blood, my pride.

I stared up at the sky as well, as his fangs nailed my wrists to a cross of my own.

The red was seeping everywhere.

I knelt up to face him again and pressed my lips to his own to taste what was left of me while my bleeding hands ripped off the remainder of his aristocratic attire. His neck, his chest, his stomach, I traced his body with my tongue trying to taste him better, pick up that scent to refresh the painful memories. The moans that erupted from the back of his throat didn’t sound low or cheap, they sounded divine, for there was my deity. And if that chapel long since hadn’t stopped being hallowed ground, I may have even felt a tinge of shame somewhere in the back of my mind.

Blood and dirt stuck under my fingernails and soon mixed with the skin of his back as he crossed all lines and joined our bodies in a blasphemous dance of hateful lust. He forced me to regard him with opened eyes as my mouth twisted into smiles and screams of pleasure and pain and blood flowed between us, flowed in vicious circles of death and rebirth into damnation while we crawled over one another like maggots crawl the earth in their blind and lowly lives.

Aurelien – the bringer of light – that would be the meaning of his name. He was the greatest paradox in my life. His chest crushing mine like I wanted to, and my eyes staring up at those of the crucified deity like he wanted to…

I didn’t know what happened until it was over and his body fell off mine, glimmering with sweat and blushing with my blood while growing paler and paler at the same time. His eyes, emeralds again, stared up at the sky in search of my salvation and finding his end.

His blood trickled off my lips and fingers, coursed through my veins poisoning me and infesting me with his life force and memories. I felt as if I was going to implode from the pain.

Aurelien – the bringer of light – and the Taker of my soul stared up at the worn ceiling boards vacantly, his eyes finding nothing but an exit from eternity.

I stood up from the moist dirt, my body smeared and flecked with dust, mud and blood and knelt before the cross, grabbing onto its wooden body and grabbing for the cold marble of the nailed ankles. I pulled it towards the sin-stained ground and watched it smash and shatter against his body.

I laid down next to the unholy mess to kiss the sunrise.

The naïve deity was staring me down with that empty gaze while my soul was being condemned to eternal damnation. Not a tear it shed for me, not a wince it produced as I cried for salvation, not a move.

The bitterness was replaced with foolish hope as the sunbeams inched our bodies on the unforgiving ground. And I dared to speak one last time:

If I die before I wake, pray the Lord my soul to take.