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1996
Literary Art
Visual Art
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Trance of Darkness
Patricia Marsac
His fantasy destroys reality. Beauty is smothered in his dark cloud of hovering dreams. And I am the tool. The key. The outcast he sucks into his ruined world of self destruction. I lay stripped before him. Embers fall from his cigarette onto my quivering body—singeing the surface—setting my heart into flames. In the darkness he makes believe he is controlled by the night. He swallows me in his embrace of death, gripping hands slide up and down my neck. There is no terror in this room, although I am stiff and cold. Again he lights a smoke and slowly traces the lines and curves of my body with the smoldering end. What thoughts could consume him as I remain still before him, anticipating pain? My eyes are clenched shut now. I hate the anticipation. Let the pain come slowly, let the fear disappear to the place where he is. I become his fantasy, I transform into the creature he desires to be. Instead of awaiting the sensations, I beg for them. In his game I am not the same pawn that sat waiting to be moved. Somehow I have grown stronger than him, the player, the master...........Others have filled this very spot for him. Nameless faces like myself who were lured into his cave of deception. With each new catch he grows larger, leaving humanity behind. Now he cowers above me, ready to begin my next trial. He is filled with delight at my apparent fear. Yet my fear is his weakness, because my fear does not exist. He has been overcome and is lost in his own fantasy. As the key, I hold the power to lock the door. I am locking him out. With each step he takes towards me in an attempt to initiate me into his realm of night, I fly further away. I am aware that I am only a substitute for the flesh he can't resist. I know this and yet I go to him repeatedly, why? For the disgusting reason that no one else has ever awakened and fulfilled this hunger for pain. He has made me discover its beauty. Yet how do you name a feeling pain, when it truly brings you pleasure? How can I give in each time his game grows deeper knowing I am using his fantasy to create my own? The ultimate, the farthest, the extreme of reality is really already inside of each of us. We only have to desire that hunger and seek satisfaction in order to experience it, no matter what the cost. Using him while he makes me what he desires is a price I'm willing to pay. He presses that blade into my skin, but not enough to break the surface. Cold metal chains clasp my wrists, stealing movement from my arms. My body is vulnerable and at his whim. There is no end now. I feel my body respond to his touch. Then I realize that it is the knife I am responding to, not him, not his flesh next to mine, not his breath on my skin, not his hands, only the lifeless blade. He is running the knife up and down the length of my physical being and my soul is cut in half. I feel as though I am floating, spinning higher, in ecstasy. He stops moving. My back arches—reaching for the curve of the knife once again, the lingering sensation of the blade ringing on my surface. He slips it slowly near my neck, and lower, past my collar bone. I feel an intake of breath as he slowly, slowly, painfully slowly, pushes harder. The blood slides like the knife over my breast, a dark, thick contrast in the black room, I bathe in my blood, in its warmth, while he enjoys what he's created. And I start to hate him; to desire his blood spilled one nauseating time—one time for my whim only. I push away rational thought and return to the sensations that brought me to him. My eyes are open now, and I can see his panting body, too caught up in the rapture of the blood to recognize that its warmth, its flavor, its potent power of life came from me. He believes in it, but not me. He revels in my life, tastes my blood, but not me. I was only a catalyst in his experiment—a vessel to fill his lust. His face comes close to mine, then swerves down to the bleeding stripe that leaks my life. He runs his tongue across his teeth, feeling fangs with his mind. To him I am a victim now and therefore a piece of something he owns. I know though, unlike him, that when he awakes from this trance of darkness where he hides away, I will be the one who can remember. I am awakened in life. I am awakened as I die. I live to feel the pain. His fantasy destroys my reality.
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