Handler

Marmaroth. 

That is the name of my handler.

He’s tall, with sky-like hair – night-like, rather – dark, and midnight-blue. His nose is high, his voice is low – docile, almost – and his tone chimes like glass, resonant. When he breathes my corpse tenses, and when he exhales I’m released; When he speaks his timbre rattles my modest head and I can see the basalt pillars that hold up my sane gaze shudder, threatened by the most immense, most obscure. 

We form a hard team, him and I.

Dangling from his chest, small palms gripping his fingers, I behold him in awe as the harmony of an organ batters my ears – the shrieking expanse of each note eats at the cord connecting us. I behold him and I am but a child, suckling, as he smirks, for a second chance at life.  

My soul is filled with bile, and when I behold him, it is plucked out and thrown. I behold him and I am reborn. I am bound with sweet roping, cold chains, and I am freed, captive, freed.

‘Who is fit to hold up these pillars of lead?’ I thought.

‘Who is fit to run this degenerating corpse?’ 

It wasn’t me, that was for sure. 

Confronting the divine like this makes my flesh feel as though it may part from my bones. I am so small, like a babe, so at the mercy of something far more mysterious.

I am held up by luck and an angel, you see – every step I take is sponsored, every inhale of air is commanded.

I am held up by luck and an angel, lest I die in this exhausted body of mine far too soon – and how sad this is. How grand, but how sad. 

--

From thousands of years hidden away in the deepest craters of human belief, from trillions of seconds passed, melted into even god’s veil, I – my poor soul, at least – had vanished, leaving in its place a dirty, dry, hollow husk of a man. I had stood for years, the coveting wind screaming, howling for me - howling for my return. But one day it stopped its howling, as if even my breath had given up on me, depriving me, finally, of my right to live. 

I had overstayed my welcome, and as the thick liquor of night swallowed me up once more, I began to wonder if the sun had ever even existed for me in the first place.

Through standing in sure death in the numb space between Heaven and Hell, standing in breathlessness on the edge of time, this ashen child had slipped through fate, and contacted an angel rare. 

A deal was struck, a small palm was warmed, and the bronze pillars of heaven were cast into lead. My dry bones turned wet, ruddy hair grew ivory, dust was shaken off and tear-struck eyes were harvested. I stood from my grave, touched the mud with my bare toes for the first time in ten thousand years and—! Ah, with my heart built up of brass and veined with gold, with pupils now of the beastliest stars, such was the influence of an angel.

“I’m alive,” I had said, wiping away tears. “I’m alive.”

--

I love him, my handler. 

I now know the night that fate-angel harbours can be compared to no other, but, even so, when touched by his feeble hand and made his slave-apostle, I saw light, and the sun warmed my frigid breast, my frozen back, and the tip of my trembling nose for the first time in memory.

Handler, handler, you carry my key to Elysium in life, and in second death a more graceful end. I am tired, handler, of the toils of this fate – I found myself sad, longing for a more pleasant space. This savage tale is not for me; What was written in my bones was said to be unchangeable, oh, how they lie! I was said to have died many winters past – I, a sacrifice? How frigid.

Take these limbs, take them and bind them – they’re yours, really. 

Do with me as you will. 

I will never again be led by red tied hands to an earthy, early rudden grave – by your hand I dance on what is blue and what is ruthlessly gold. Immortal.

“Amen, for I may live again!” I remember wailing like a newborn, reborn.

“Oh, the joy,” I had rung out like the church-bells behind. 

“I am held, I am held!”

--

…In my earlier youth I believed I was possessed – bewitched, at best - and, having to face the face of the Godhead, in mass I had fainted many a time. And still, even now, how heavy-headed I am when faced by the divine, this shell of mine harboring such a formidable beast of grace and yet stuck, rotten, in an earthly Adam-husk. These words are not mine, these actions puppeteered. This show of red has no place in prayer. 

The young angel trapped behind a beating wall of flesh, rots. 

There is a deep cut between myself and myself, and myself. There is a severance, and it is bloody. I felt it – and still feel it now – the sting of a gaping wound.

In infinite living death, teasing the six-foot Earth’s maw with every intake of air: Marmaroth, how did it feel when you ate my soul?

I love you, my handler, puppeteer of this worm-eaten form. I love you, God knows I would’ve died without you, and yet-

Give me back to me, Marmaroth. Rip out my parasites.

My gut is bloated and writhing, I am hot and will soon burst.

My gut is bloated and writhing, I am hot and will soon burst.

Give me back to me, Marmaroth. Give me back.

Untie these strings. Reverse my haunt.

You can listen to a recording of this story at: Purple Radio Spotify