Page 68 of Violent Possession

I don’t know when I approached. But I did. The ghost. Right here, in front of me. Older, with longer hair, with more tired eyes. But as beautiful as he always was.

I raise my hands. One trembles more than the other. The flesh always feels more.The flesh.

I touch his face. Cold skin. Pale. It doesn’t suit my fingers, and I only feel it with one hand, and he doesn’t move. He stays. This time, he stays.

I don’t recognize myself. The voice comes out, but it’s strange. It doesn’t seem to have come from me when I say, “You’re real.”

The ghost doesn’t smile. His clear, tired eyes drop. To my trembling hand on his face. Then to my eyes. He covers my hand with his. It’s not for me. I could never deserve that touch.

“I am,” he says.

In the beauty of this face, my hands. His over mine—my real one. Theonlyone. And the metal.

The fucking metal.

The veins in his irises are visible. His eyes. Something happens, and I don’t see properly. Everything blurs. Hiseyes—the veins in the unpigmented irises—looked at me like that once, a long time ago. There wasn’t as much warmth. But it was that color. It was that color, looking. A machete can’t cut through human bone. So they hit. Until it broke. And hewatched.

It was for him they hit. It was forhim. Me, too. I didn’t fight. I deserved it, at some point. I let it happen.

I can’t breathe.

“Myrddin.”

His voice.

And a soft touch.

His hands, leaving mine. They touch my face now. They are soft. It’s the same silky texture. It’s the same thing preserved in my dreams.

“Breathe. You are here,” he says. Everything he says is prophecy. Truth bends to him.

And Iletit bend.

The alley. Dark, narrow, ugly. A sin to contain him here.You are here.

It’s true. I am here.

I feel both my arms. It’s a tingling that doesn’t exist. How long has it been since I’ve had this sensation? A defective discomfort of not knowing where my nerves are sending impulses. To nothing. To a piece of metal.

I see him again.

Seraphim.

I’m breathless. I haven’t done anything, there’s nothing here but him, and I suffocate. His voice gives me the antidote and poisons me.

His thumbs move. They pass over the scars, the new cuts on the sides of my face.

“I am with you,” he says.

That’s the fucking problem.And yet, I let him anchor me. I let myself sink into a version of the story where he really was with me. A version where things didn’t go so wrong. A version where he stayed.

He slides his hands. He touches my jaw, my neck.

“Are you with me?” he asks, softly.

I shake my head. I can see him, now. The tremor isn’t as strong. But those eyes still move me in every possible way.

“I am,” I say. My voice comes out raspy, strange to my ears. Exhausted.