James Baldwin - Stained Glass

Jenner broke for me with a bellow, hindquarters not quite as fast as her forelimbs. I saw her as I twisted back, trying to drag myself away, as the insectoid DOG brought down a leg in its death throes. We were no longer slowed, but it seemed to take forever. The dull crack of her spine, the gape of shock, the agonized struggling as the insect pulled her off the ground like she weighed nothing and threw her back and forth, impaled on the thrashing limb.

“ Chet! ” I roared the command of my easiest spell, my fastest spell, and shoved the shield up and forwards. “Jenner!”

Mason’s claws screeched over the shield of energy, slipping across. He regathered for another blow, but a lean figure sprung in from the side. Angkor, bloodied and battered, his lip and forehead split, swung the fire axe we’d taken from the safehouse and buried it deep into Mason’s flank. The tiger was so screwed up with overgrown Yen that it couldn’t even roar; it reared up and twisted in pain as Angkor hauled the axe back and chopped into his neck and shoulder. Whatever it hit shattered: the blade and Angkor’s arms oozed with honey, which he wiped across the head as he dodged the crippled animal’s paws and spines. When Mason got close to me, I pulled the knife out of his body and stabbed whatever came to hand. With the two of us working together, glass broke free and the structure began to collapse. Mason tottered to one side with a moan before falling to struggle and kick on the ground.

“That sick rapist motherfucker is getting away!” Angkor snarled, whirling with the axe in hand. He was exhausted, his hair plastered to his face and clumped with sweat.

“Jenner,” I wheezed. No matter how I tried to focus, the pain was coming back. Kutkha was there to hold my metaphysical hand, but his cool, calming presence could only steer the course as gravity began to press me down with insistent hands. “Children. On the truck.”

Angkor went to his knees beside me, dropping the axe with a clatter. He stared into my eyes: his own were a very dark, very intense gray. It was an unusual color to see in an Asian face. I watched interestedly as his pupils grew larger and the rest of his face receded towards a great height, framed by light that grew more and more intense. The pain in my stomach was fading into white noise, a tingling and throbbing instead of wracking, burning fire. The oily, acid taste in my mouth was gone. I had been tired for so long now… months and months. Kutkha was right, again. It felt like sinking into a deep bed; a deep, quiet darkness.

“Hey! GODdammit, Alexi! You can’t die!” His voice rang out from far away. It had a pleasant mouthfeel, blue and silver and green, but I couldn’t see him anymore. “Alexi!”

Alexi… lexi… exi…

Angkor’s voice echoed on, stretching out forever.

Somehow, I remembered this feeling… the oceanic expansion, an inescapable pressure dragging me backwards, faster and faster until the darkness turned to pure light and sound. The words faded into a heartbeat larger than the sum total of all the planets in my solar system, of all the galaxies in the Milky Way. It was GOD, the YESbeast, the Mystery. The Star of Stars, which could only say one thing.

…LoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYou…

We were drawn through the interstitial ocean towards a bright core, as close and distant as the Sun. Kutkha was my caul, an elegant, winged form that encapsulated my awareness as we soared through what had to be the cellular fluid of GOD’s mass. Every second of every moment, I was wracked by memory that was not my own. Rapidly cycling flickers of imagery, voices, faces… hands and whispers, the flick of a lighter, Zarya’s eyes, bright and blue as the Earth from space.

After a timeless space, the feeling of distance and motion contracted. Kutkha plunged through a prismatic haze like a blue-black arrow, through a sky of dancing color and light until he broke through the clouds into a white sky over a white forest, a land of pure Glass.

To my surprise, I saw myself standing on the rise of a small hill. I was hairless and pale, toned and aesthetic in a way that my body had never been. A long sarong of sheer fabric fell from my waist to the soft white loam beneath my feet. My bare palms and forehead were pressed to the trunk of a tree that looked like pink coral, stretching out with an arc of branches that shivered with pleasure in the soft, warm wind. Many of the thinner branches were wrapped lovingly around this man’s back and shoulders and thighs, this Me-Not-Me.

Suddenly, he lifted his head and turned it, nostrils flaring. His eyes were my eyes, silver-white and colorless. The branches of the tree withdrew from him just as my awareness collided with his and then rebounded away, faster than light, faster than-

I heaved a deep breath.

White floor, white tiles, blue uniforms, murmuring voices. The world spun; I tried to get up, to run from The Deacon and Mason and get to Jenner before she died. My body, wracked with pain, was pushed back down by several pairs of hands.

“DOG!” I tried to speak. It came out as a gargle around something in my throat.

“Put him down! He’s going to pull the tube out!”

Heat flushed up my arm, pounded in my head, and I forgot about the tube, forgot about the DOG and The Deacon. I fell back down to the hospital bed, and slept.

The first indication I had of dreaming, of being lucid in my dream, was the recognition of sound. It was dark, but I heard the Ukrainian Community News Radio and the drone of conversation, punctured by laughter and the bang and tinkle of a small bell striking a door as it was opened and closed. It was the sounds of Mariya’s deli. The white wooden front, never materialized visually. I heard the blue and white awnings whipping in the salty, humid air of Brighton Beach, and I smelled it, the cakes and tea and mingled cologne and perfume of the customers. All I could see was the dark Green sea as I lay semi-conscious, my mouth dry with longing, my heart hammering. Something wet lapped at my cheek.

Eventually, I opened my eyes within the dream and found myself lying on my side in dark warm water, staring into Vassily’s deep blue eyes. He lay facing me, his hands loose by his face and throat, his black hair wet and trailing in the water. He breathed softly, watching me. I stared back in confused wonder.

Vassily’s mouth crept up in a wan smile. Wordlessly, he shifted one hand toward me, and caught the tips of my fingers with the tips of his. My hands were bare, ungloved, and very pale in the inky water. A shiver of sensation lanced from hand to groin, so intense and so foreign that I jumped, sending ripples through the suspension around us.

“We need to talk, Lexi,” he said, his words burst like bubbles in my ears. Unseen, but felt in the ears and mouth and mind. “River’s got to move on. Okay?”

I was sedated, conscious. Everything was warm. Everything hummed with life. “ I’m tired.”

“I know. But Life’s hard and dirty.” He laced his fingers through mine. “ You’re a radio, man. You have to pick up the signals, play the music. You need to stop with the me-me-me bullshit, not when the bad guys are coming. We’re all so huge. There’s so much to do.”

“Radio,” I repeated. For some reason, it made sense. The word felt terribly literal. “Vassily, I just… I… miss…”

His hand slid over my face, hot and smooth, and his lips drew towards mine quickly. Vassily, Zmechik, struck with his mouth like the snake he was named for. It was sweet, so sweet, a moment of contact as natural as breathing. It might have lasted for a moment or an hour, but it was not forever. We broke apart. And that was okay, too.