I choked, gagging on emotion. My stomach, the odd thing that I’d neglected so long that I could no longer taste food, cramped until I was left vomiting air onto the pristine grass. I saw her feet, shook my head until I was in vertigo, my vision blurred and failing. Fire crept up my spine until I felt flushed, ill from shock.

‘Stop it.’ I said it somehow, even as heaves took my stomach again. My fingers clawed the grass, left an ugly patch on my Catherine’s grave. That knowledge, somehow made it all settle again. This person, this thing, was not her, could not be her, for the same reasons that I came to this place every single weekend. She was dead.

I wondered if I’d already entered Hell. I wondered if somehow I’d forgotten and taken my own life and simply couldn’t remember doing it. Maybe this was my torture. Maybe I’d already fallen.

I gathered what strength I had left in me to stand. My eyes stared at the scored patch of grass I’d left on her grave. I finally, with great effort, met the eyes of the thing before me. The sensation of my throat closing didn’t keep me from studying each detail. The earrings she wore were the same ones I’d given her for her 26th birthday. The birthmark that distinguished her eyes from any other set, was there.

I took her in quietly, and studied her as she studied me. ‘You’ve changed, Gabriel.’ She said.

I didn’t reply. Some part of me was still trying to decide if I had tipped over into insanity, or if I’d already taken the flightless fall to Hell. I felt confusion, looked down at my hands to see if they still had substance. When I looked at her again, I’d regained some of my composure, felt the tide ebbing back out. ‘You are not her.’ I said. I turned from her and picked up the dead lilies from my last visit. ‘Go away.’

I turned and walked away, light and shadow playing off of my body as the sun tried to break through the heavy growth of trees. ‘Gabriel.’ She said my name and I only walked faster, wanting to get away, crawl back into the sameness of my grief, the comfort it offered me. I saw the shadow of someone ahead of me and was glad for there to be someone else here, someone else who could break the disquiet that was thick in the air.

I stopped short when I saw who it was coming through the gate. ‘Michael.’ I said, flatly. There was no denying him. I saw him as clearly as I felt the hollowness of my own empty soul.

‘Gabriel.’ He replied. ‘You’ve wandered here long enough. It’s time to come Home.’ The last word echoed and I felt its power strike me.

‘No!’ I backed away from him only to feel the impostor come from behind me and wrap her arms around my waist. I felt her cheek rub against my back just as my Catherine had. My shoulders began to burn. ‘No!’ I raged, and tore her arms from around me, shoving her until she went stumbling and fell at Michael’s feet.

‘Where were you when I prayed to come back?’ I felt the burn intensify in my shoulders. ‘Where was He?’ I gestured wildly at the sky, hidden by the canopy of trees.

‘He wants you back.’

‘Now? When he knows he’s going to lose? He could have come at any time! I begged him. I BEGGED him to come and take me after she was gone.’ I felt my skin split on my back and cried out. ‘No! No!’

‘Gabriel.’ I heard her say. I felt blood skate down across my back. Felt my life begin to echo in my head as if I hadn’t lived it.

*****

‘Gabriel.’ It was His voice. ‘I’m going to send you to them. They need guidance. Help. You will be my watcher. The guide for the faithless.’

He’d never been given a chance to protest, to beg not to leave Him, or leave the warmth that living in heaven had given him. He had simply opened his mouth and cried, only to realize that he had been born into the very world he did not want to visit.

Somehow he’d managed. His mother had been an addict when he’d been born, and the first struggle was overcoming his own addiction to the chemical she’d unknowingly pumped into his new body. She’d passed not long after he’d been born and Gabriel had been adopted and adored by a childless couple living just outside New Orleans.

There had been temptation, growing up, yet somehow Gabriel had remained true to his purpose. He was there to guide and protect, to offer hope and faith. He had. He had protected, comforted thousands in his time there.

His father had passed away two years before he’d found himself in the hospital watching his mother die from cancer. It didn’t seem fair that their lives, already short, were to be consumed by worry and sickness. He had watched her fade away like a ghost, had whispered in her ear and shown her just before she died what he was, and seen the joy, the peace that took her in those final moments. He always knew which way they were headed, and been glad to see him be welcomed into heaven, thinking, one day soon, he too, would return home.

He’d watched them clean her room, watched the shell of her body be taken away, before he’d turned and walked down the long hall leading from the cancer wing. He’d seen her parents leaving, their eyes filled with tears. Something caused him to stop at her door, to push it open. It was there that Gabriel had learned the depth of true temptation.

Catherine had a glow about her that could not be superseded by the tubes going in and out of her. He’d spent the night with her, laughing and later, comforting her when the chemicals in her body reduced her to tears.

Catherine was his reward, he reasoned, his own joy amid the sadness that was his time here. Catherine was his home. He was where she was. She was where he was. And for the years following, up until the time the cancer came and claimed her back, they were one.

His Catherine. His personal joy. When she’d died, there was nothing left to give. The one that had been sent to guide, to give faith, was empty, faithless.

*****

Her hand rested on my chest. I grimaced, not from the contact, but from the agony of having the wings torn out of my back. They unfurled, forced out by a greater angel, a stronger power. I was light-headed. Dazed. My vision, an angel’s vision, was sharp, bright and lit on her face.

‘Catherine.’ I said, thickly. ‘Catherine.’ I cupped her face.

She was crying. ‘I love you Gabriel.’

‘Catherine.’ I said again. My thumbs stroked the wet skin of her cheeks. I smelled the scent of wood polish and ash, of thousands of lilies. Everything began to fade. I saw her take something and press it urgently into my hand, and then everything faded.

When I awoke, I unfurled my palm, only to see my cross, the one she’d given me, snaked around my fingers. The scar on my arm, healed.

I turned and saw her sleepily blink her eyes open. ‘Good morning.’

And I smiled for the first time in a century.

…It would seem this is your favorite piece. I’ve gotten several emails about this one, neglecting my more sordid tale of drug use, or the darkness that are the Djinn. Several different avenues to take on this one, fed to me by a hopeless romantic who wishes to remain nameless, an editor (who corrected one of my more embarrassing typos) and a regular with a fertile mind, yet no desire to take on the gauntlet. Others simply wanted more and only offered their desire to see this take another step.

Who are they? You’ll find their voice hidden within this next chapter of Sehnsucht. If it goes well, it should be blended with my own.

-D
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I knelt in front of the altar, my hands fisted, one over the other, in front of me. My mouth and nose rested against them and instead of closing my eyes, I stared with blood-shot eyes openly at the red cloth leading to the altar, and beyond to the large stained glass window which held the image of Christ. It was hours past midnight, but the image was clear, illuminated by clever lights hidden behind it.

The church had been my home for several hours, the altar my resting place for more than a few of them. The guests had long since left, my family departing two hours behind them. My priest, the last of them, eventually retired to his offices, and later, onto bed. It was only through trust that I was given access to this sanctuary, he had known me, helped raise me, as a child.

I heard their arguments clearly in my head, repeated over and over in the dark hours following their abandonment. I, for my part, listened and still did what I did. I walked calmly over to the altar and knelt down, my fingers clasped and prayed. Eventually, in the face of my stubbornness, they left.

She wasn’t coming. I knew that, but couldn’t find it in me to walk out, even hours later, behind them. It wasn’t that I was praying now, no, I had figured out that God didn’t listen to me decades ago. I simply sought an understanding. Knowledge.

When my knees began to ache, I would sit back against the rail and look back over the pews, still decorated with white ribbons and lilies, hundreds of lilies. Their smell was haunting and I knew, without saying anything out loud, or even in my head, that I would always associate the smell with her. I wondered if I would ever forget any detail of the church as it was then, with its silent and quiet beauty, and the smell of her mingled with wood polish and ash.

Tears welled and then later, streaked down my cheeks. I did this to myself. I had not called the florist, nor the guests, nor the priest to tell them what had happened. I couldn’t bring myself to make the phone calls and I couldn’t give anyone else the knowledge without it breaking me in two. I was so fragile yesterday when the doctor had told me and even the simple movement of sharing the burden was too much for me to handle. Her mother was no stronger, nor her father then, but they managed to start. Somehow.

I walked into the church not dressed for a wedding, not as a happy groom, but faithless, God-less. What guests there were then, said nothing to me and only saw me collapse in the same place where I was to swear my undying love and loyalty only an hour later. If she had been able to appear.

I sobbed and it echoed loudly. My hands covered my face, and my palms were soaked in the hot wetness of my tears. I struggled to find some scrap of calm, but it was useless. Raging hate for him filled my body. I pushed from the floor and my fingers tore at my shirt, ripping it open, buttons clattering somewhere in the distance, the nails on my hands leaving blood red trails on my skin.

‘I HATE YOU!’ I screamed at the mocking image of him, peaceful, illuminated. ‘I HATE YOU! YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME!’ I raced up the steps and tore the red cloth off the altar, toppling the heavy brass crucifix above it. It scored the wood and cut my arm as it fell over with a thud. I flung the cloth to the floor. Blood ran down my arm, wet the carpet on the floor.

‘I hate you.’ I said flatly then, and reached for and snapped the chain around my neck that held, ironically, the gift she’d given me days before she died; Before she died, the day before our wedding. She loved my faith, she told me when she had pressed the cross into my palm. She loved how I knew how to make everything right.

I watched beads of blood snake down the chain and finally drip from the cross itself before I tossed it onto the pile of cloth and cross. I didn’t care. Everything was gone. Taken. Ruined.

Those steps, removing me from the light of that colored glass image, removing me from the scent of lilies, wood polish and ash, were the last I’d ever take inside a church, I’d sworn then. A century later, in the shadow of St. Catherine’s, I saw her again.

Yes, Really.

(more…)