He opens the door and slides into the dark of the entryway. He waits for a moment then walks quietly in through the outer transitional chamber into what was once the ceremony room, then her sleeping quarters, then goes through another door and he’s in the Lair’s shadows.
Brontë sits on the divan before the hearth where a fire burns. He notices she’s cut her hair and that maybe it’s darkened just a bit, not quite as brilliant gold as it was. Not yet having seen him, she gets up and crosses the Lair holding something in her arms; then Kale realizes itvs a baby. He’s baffled for an instant, then nods to himself oh that’s why she left then. Guess some man changed her mind after all. In the kitchen on the other side of the Lair she heats some milk; he’s stood there almost a full five minutes before — crossing back the way she went, steadying the bottle in the baby’s mouth — she looks up, astounded for a moment before she decides she’s not, really. He looks at the baby’s brown hair and eyes. He thinks maybe the dogs outside have gotten louder.
far above me I see it, I see it as I dreamed it, and maybe the lake sees it too in
“You shouldn’t have come,” she finally blurts, “they’ll find you.” She shakes her head. “I’m not worth it.”
Over Bronte’s shoulder, through a door ajar, is a glimpse of someone lying in a darkened room. He says, “It isn’t you I’ve come to see.”
its own dream of me, that flicker of light in the dark, up up and up and
2031
~ ~ ~
maybe the lake believes as I did that night that the flicker is the dream itself,
growing closer and larger, a small flash on the far horizon, up up and up and
~ ~ ~
Someone in the doorway. Who’s there. Another slave come for his discipline? no I don’t do that anymore. Who is it then … Brontë? Do I hear lightning? we haven’t heard the lightning for a while now … are we back at the lake? yes in the Chateau, I’m Listen to these walls and tell me what they sing: I know what they sing. They sing goodbye. They sing goodbye to me. They sing goodbye to all of us and the bedlam of our ecstatic days. They’re in such a hurry, the voices in the walls … I’ve hung on, well, it’s been awhile now, I won’t pretend to know how long but it’s been awhile. Long enough to leave Zed and return … but I may hang on for a while longer, you watch. So keep your songs to yourself
maybe I’m the first dream the lake has ever had, as Kirk was the first dream I
until it’s time. I may have one or two memories left. I may have one or two things to remember … so keep your songs to yourself until then. I may yet have some particularly poignant recollection that’s particularly unbearable … like the way I used to see other children with their small open faces and couldn’t stand it … so there are more memories I’m certain. More to torment me before I go…. If there’s a higher light and I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting for it to shine on me. Who’s in the doorway, come here. Whoever you are, come closer to the candle so I can see. Don’t mind the singing walls. Come closer closer closer … who is it. Let me look at you, let me take a…. Well well, if it isn’t. Well well, what do you know. After all this time. Finally worked up the nerve did you. Come for your discipline, have you. Here you are. Come for your humiliation: oh we must think of something special for you. Come for something special I’m sure so we must think of something special, for the ultimate slave, the ultimate submissive. The ultimate humiliation. Something far grander than the banal sadisms. Something that could lay so low someone so high … let Me think. I’ll think of something. I never pissed on anyone in My illustrious career but I must say it’s hard to think of something more appropriate for the likes of you: I think I could work up some piss for the likes of you. I’ve never made anyone bleed other than Myself of course but I must say it seems fitting now. So much blood the rest of us have bled for you over the years, a little bleeding back on your part hardly seems unfair, hardly seems asking so much. Did I say you could look at Me? you don’t look at Me until I tell you to look at Me, do you understand? your discipline begins now, your training begins here, at My feet, you don’t regard Me until I tell you. you don’t stir until I say stir, you don’t exist until I say you exist, you don’t
ever had, and now of course as I rise up up and up to break the surface of the
do anything or say anything until I tell you. Nothing about you is yours anymore, everything about you is Mine. Everything you feel, if you feel anything, everything you think, or think you think. Get on your knees. Lick the stone of the floor. Let Me put around your neck this collar of thorns, around your neck, you remember thorns don’t you. you’re familiar with thorns, you in particular, you of anyone, you most of all. No one’s ever done thorns like you, right? Don’t mind the blood. What’s a little blood. Don’t mind the flow from your neck now. What’s a little flow from the jugular. Here’s a leash for your collar, woven from the flesh of children, stained and soaked in lapsinthe, to remind you who you belong to. Tell Me, because I’ve never been straight on this: which is it that’s always best proved your existence? That you give children? or that you take them away? I think you and I made a bargain once but it’s occurred to Me lately I’ve never seen a bit of evidence you ever kept your end. I think I kept My end. Yes I believe so. I think I did. I think I did and then some. If it was our bargain that I would give up all the happiness of a mother in order to save My son from the chaos of the world, well then I have to say I think I kept My end. First you sent him to make Me so tender. Then you drove Me mad with it. So now lick the drops of your blood that fall on the stone beneath your knees, lick it, lick it. Lick it up. Lick lick lick. Suck it out of the pores of the stone. Did I say look up? Did I say to? There! that’s for looking up without permission. I’m the god here and you’re the woman this time, don’t think you aren’t. Don’t think the god-cock means anything within these walls, you’re the woman and w(W)e’re going to prove it soon enough don’t you worry, turd, sack of divine shit you. Here let’s see what you think of the point of My high-heel in your side, what do you think of that. How do you feel about that. Here’s another good kick for you, and another. Roll
water, I can see, I know that the silver flash above me is the gondola waiting,
over so I might consider grinding your balls to dust under My heel. Get up. Get up! What a stupid slave! There! that’s for being such a stupid slave. There and there and there. Now get up. you’re not even amusing now. you’re not even a diversion. Come here now, w(W)e’re going down to the dungeon. Come on or I’ll yank you down. W(w)e’re going down now. Get up off the floor, you disgust Me, come over here. Put this shackle around your foot and lock it. Now the other. Now one wrist, now the other. There. That’s more like it. It’s so you. Here, your collar’s loose, let’s tighten it, there. Pale is such a nice color on you. Raise your arms now: there. Slip the cuffs that bind your wrists up over this hook above your head. There. Now w(W)e swaddle you in latex, start at your head and leave just enough exposed that you might barely breathe, wrap you tight so you see nothing, wrap you tight so you hear little but the muffled moan of the world coming up behind you, the world you’ve made moan for so long. So that every sense is bound, deprived … wrap you from head to your feet leaving the almighty god-ass exposed bare for the sake of the lash of course, crank up the hook a little and hang you from your cuffs and hoist you until your toes barely touch the floor: there. So that when I flog you, you’ll spin in the air like a black cocoon, twirling above all the dead bluejays covering the dungeon floor around you. Let the god-toy try to imagine, for only a moment, what it might be like to spend eternity suspended in the Uncertain, as the rest of us have … and while you consider that, I think it will entertain Me to whip you for a while — there and there and there — before w(W)e get to the good part I mean, the best part where w(W)e make you a woman. As best you can through the latex, listen to the lake outside the walls, listen while you can before it dies. Hear the lake? or is it the blood pounding in your ears from the blows of My crop and the crown of thorns around your throat. OK then.