Mass
The lips of the congregants provide solemn kisses. I take these blind steps with honour: as reaper, as Priest. Each kiss is as though from one and I reciprocate such dignity in my own labial disposition, presenting with divine confidence. Frankincense, ash seed, nutmeg all loiter arrogantly in a June air, offering to orientate the white robe on my behalf. This is unnecessary for a servant of God, who negotiates the known path as strong wind, breaking and yet creating. I seek Him.
The church air is but stiller, the robe flickers blood red as I pass our altar showing candles and chalices I have seen before. It is in answering His call that the threshold to legacy is crossed. Mellifluous chanting seduces the ear, be they Sirens of purification? Faint footsteps would indicate my congregation. An appeal for sensual clarity is made by blinking, though redundantly. Another verse loses momentum before I submit to aural intoxication – my call – to find a tableau depicting my liberation.
The hymnal cessation is succeeded by two familiar angels chanting in parallel. As I rise before falling backwards, my eyelids produce four frames that combine to portray a young boy attempting to warn me voicelessly, the scene cut short upon my shoulder-blades meeting the altar. The robe is removed and my body screams of nascent panic. A million upright hairs denounce the dense air before turning inward as pins and needles. An overbearing musk threatens to suffocate before an anointing hand, starting with the forehead, siphons a pain that bleeds into paralysis. I seek Him but he is dead.
The angels cease chanting and I am no longer blind. It were better nothing would begin. The angels remove their robes and take stances of preparation. No hero’s journey. The lips of the congregants know and begin emphatic inculcations. I am the spirit who negates. The menace of the din is crowned as the lips of an angel arouse before forcing me to kneel at the feet of a mask no longer there. My robe tremors in harmony with the stentorian recitation of the angels, it is a sin to seek destiny.
The climactic moans of their congress defile the memory of my own, he will be theirs. The congregants now dance, fueled on lust and the sight of my binding. I cling to the pain in my ankles and wrists, the ersatz asphyxiation of my hooded inferno, as the only remaining signs of humanity in a chamber high on a paroxysm of adrenaline. The sacred blade and chalice clash incongruously, producing a clang that induces reverberating waves of blood to surge throughout my body, their vessel. There will be no illumination. I begin to choke on a familiar taste. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers.
