UNDER A VIOLENT MOON

 

Richard Blaine discovers that sometimes dying with love is far better than living without it.

UNDER A VIOLENT MOON

“Finding your way through thedarkness is how you discover the light.”

– Richard Blaine

 

“Kindly death,” once wrote EmilyDickinson, “is lurking everywhere.”

Wasn’t it just.

Helen Mayfair snapped beside me. “Thatis not what she wrote.”

“You can hear my thoughts?”

“Thankfully, no. Your years ofliving sequestered from the others has you speaking low to yourself.”

“Well, it was close to what shewrote.”

“No,” she sighed like a disappointedMiss Myers.

“Because I could not stop forDeath—

He kindly stopped for me— bears noresemblance whatsoever to what you said.”

Sister Ameal beside Helen curtlysaid, “Your inane sniping has had at least one benefit – it has temporarilystalled the advancing Amal.

”They’re real?!” I yelped.

You heard of Indigenous Tribes?Well, the Amal are what you might call America’s Indigenous Monsters.

When the first Chitimacha,with the Atakapa, Caddo, Choctaw, Houma, Natchez, and Tunica came to whatbecame New Orleans,  

The Amal werealready here waiting for them.

Happy predators they.

Being soul-eating creatures ofblack mist, the Amal were not exactly chatter-boxes. So, their human victimsnever learned from whence they came.

Perhaps, oozed out from somenether region under the primordial ancient sod of what became Louisiana.

Who knows?

All their victims knew was thatthe Amal were drawn to despair. 

Before the Indian tribes arrived, those mistycreatures must have had to subsist on depressed alligators I guess.

But despair has been chief residentin these parts with the arrival of humans. 

Slavery, corruption, voodoo onlyadded spice to the mix.

Sister Ameal whispered, “I mustleave you. My despair will only lend them speed.”

I frowned, “You despair, sister?”

“Greatly before your birth. Now, notso much. But merely the echoes of that darkness are too much for the Amal toresist.”

And with that, she was suddenlygone.

I shook my head. I didn’t knowwhat shocked me more: her disappearing act or the fact that my birth had meantsomething to her.

The shadows kept oozing along thewet stone of the alleyway. Right towards us.

I frowned, “Why are they stillcoming? I haven’t a smudge of despair. 

I’ve long since learned tomorrow is promisedto no one. If I die today, I’ll die laughing that I made it this long.”

Helen knocked on top of my head asif it were a door. “Imbecile! I despair.”

“You? Why? You’re beautiful,intelligent … a force of Nature.”

“I love … “ The next word cameout hushed, “… you.”

My chest emptying, I cocked myhead. “I know I’m not the greatest catch in the ….”

“Oh, Richard! Our love is forbidden.”

“Y-You’re going to be a nun?”

She reared her head to the darksky as if to bay at the moon. 

The Amal froze, quivering as if in ecstasy. This wasgoing to be so bad.

“No! You and I are … I am evenforbidden to tell you clearly. We are … of two different species!”

“Y-You look human to me.”

“Appearing and Being are twodifferent things.”

Exasperated at how things weregoing, I snapped, “What were you and Sister Ameal doing out here anyway?”

“We were both worried. You havebeen gone hours!”

“What? It hasn’t even been anhour since I left.”

“For you perhaps. But out here inreality, it has been hours.”

Helen drew her dainty revolverfrom the small of her back. I didn’t know what good bullets would do againstshadows.

I was going to show them the HandMirror of Enigmas myself, so I should talk.

She moved to my left, and I frowned.

Helen smiled sadly. “This isthe side your heart is on. It is the side where I choose to die.”

I started to speak, but she puther fingertips on my lips. “To die with you will not be so bad a thing asliving without you.”

At those words, a tremendous goldenlight blazed all around us as the Amal screamed in agony.

Helen rasped, “The ShekinahGlory!”

Having read every book in theorphanage’s library and most of the ones in Stearns’, I knew the term.

The Jewish rabbis coined thisextra-biblical expression, a form of a Hebrew word that literally means 

“Hecaused to dwell.”

It signified that it was a divinevisitation of the presence or dwelling of the Lord God on this earth.

The Shekinah was first evidentwhen the Israelites set out from Succoth in their escape from Egypt. There theLord appeared in a cloudy pillar in the day and a fiery pillar by night.

I blinked my eyes.

The Amal were nowhere to be seen.The alleyway floor was turned to gold. Real gold, burnished as if polished foryears … or eternity.

It didn’t stay, of course.

The alleyway soon became aspitted as the surface of the moon … and about as far away from God as the moon,too.

Helen whispered, “I guess when …one of my species feels love, He appears.”

We never spoke of her admissionafter that.

I had many more chess games withMr. Morton, each one nastier and trickier than the last.

Helen was distant for a time. Butlittle by little, she began to laugh again.

We grew closer and closer, neverspeaking of how each of us knew how the other felt.

Then, the morning came when Helencame to me with what I knew was my draft notice in her trembling, too long tobe human fingers.

She leaned up, her lips becomingready for the kiss about which I had long dreamed.

I arched as if tiny daggers ofice pierced me.

Copper snowflakes swirled aboutme in a storm of fury and sound.

Then, nothing.

If Helen Mayfair had a theme, this would be it: