An Encounter

She walked down the grey street in her grey clothes, head bowed against the grey rain that soaked the grey city but never washed it clean. Her knuckles were pale around the handle of her bag, and her jaw was clenched tight. There was nothing before the birth of our Great Civilization—only a miserable darkness not worth speaking of. Teach them that. That is the truth.

It was a lie, and when she spoke it aloud in the classroom she could feel her lips being burned as grey as the rest of this place, and her mouth filled with the taste of ash. It sickened her. It sickened her to the point that she had betrayed herself, her heart climbing up her throat and into her mouth, red as passion, as blood, as love, quivering with terror and need.

“Except,” she had said. “Except for…”

And now she walked home, feeling marked, splashed with paint, a target for the eyes of the law and the cruel, cruel hands of its enforcers. When she reached her tenement building she saw a police vehicle parked at the curb in front of it. She stopped.

There was a grey-uniformed officer and two gun-toting underlings at the door. They started to turn back around towards the street. She turned as well, head bowed, face obscured, and hurried into an alleyway.

She heard no footsteps behind her, no shouts for her to stop. She kept walking, her heart beating red and fearful in her chest.

Beneath her feet, the ground changed from rough, featureless pavement to smooth flagstones. The light dimmed. Her footsteps echoed. She looked up, and her eyes filled with wonder.

Light. Pale yellow candles burning in sconces, smelling of beeswax and sending up thin plumes of bluish smoke. A priest in a crimson robe, walking, swinging a censer that trailed frankincense-scented smoke. An aisle between several rows of dark brown pews, at its end an altar covered with a deep purple cloth, and crouched before it… a thing.

She walked towards it.

Somewhere near yet also far, a voice raised in worship: pater noster, qui est in caelus, sanctificetur nomen tuum.

The thing: perhaps a statue, perhaps not, twisted and lopsided yet somehow far from grotesque, every inch of it gilded with gold. It glowed beneath the candle-light, the color so rich she felt that, if she touched it, her fingertips would come away stained and shining.

She longed to touch it, longed with all her red, red heart.

Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.

The face was made of a human death-mask, exquisitely detailed down to the individual hairs of the thin brows—but the eyes were empty pits, blacker than the deepest shadow.

She was halfway down the aisle.

Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.

The body was bulky, thick like a barrel while the limbs were spindly. Each hand clasped a golden cup filled to the brim with a dark red liquid, and each too-long finger dripped with jeweled rings. They were red, orange, green, blue, purple, white, and pink, all of them smoothed and shining. More were inset over the body. Their placement was haphazard, asymmetrical—wild, but made of such precious things.

She reached the foot of the altar, and the thing turned its head towards her.

Et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.

“What are you?” she breathed, and mounted the first of the three steps.

Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.

The second step, and she reached out a hand.

Sed libera nos a malo.

The third and last, and her fingers were so close to the golden mask she could feel warmth radiating from the metal.

Amen.

She touched a cold, wet concrete wall, as the grey clouds overhead continued to cover the grey city with grey rain. She shuddered, then sniffed the air—frankincense, maybe, for a moment… but then it was gone. She hunched her shoulders under her coat and left the alleyway.