Gore Magick
Anno Aegrōris 1
Read Original (2 Ante Aegrōrem)
A cloud of angels encapsulated me, singing with the essence of human voice distilled down to the pearl at its core. Their melody rose and fell—exalted and whispered—a broken choir that my mind interpreted as rhythm despite no clear pattern emerging in my ears. Each dragged itself in careful arcs that left scintillating white tracers beneath my eyelids.
And as my mind grappled with these dancing outlines they snapped into the shape of a memory that never seemed to leave my head entirely—falling down the path of least resistance. A jagged void tore itself out of my stomach before I’d even recognized the image, raw nerve exposed to the air as it collapsed and became whole again. My own remembrance never failed to surprise me with its cruelty, especially when I could not even recall whether it was real or simply a dream.
Irrefutable memories are a rare blessing. For so long I’d fluctuated between lucidity and intoxication—between sentience and unconsciousness—often unsure of where I floated until the tide swept me in one direction or the other. But I wonder why this particular image divided my mind with such symmetry—why one detail feels like fantasy while the next lies undeniably seared into my brain.
I let reality flood my senses, finding my vision tempered by darkness, my weight seated firmly on the basement couch that bent at the corner to fringe two walls. Coral streaks of moonlight lay anchored to the window, igniting the once-white leather in saccharine orange at its plateaus as a fainter pink trickled down its frame. And the light that could not pierce the glass remained stuck to each panel as a membrane of rose quartz and amber.
She sat beyond the vertex—baptized in moonlight—adroitly curling Benjamin Franklin into a snowman’s nose. Black hair concealed her face as she leaned forward, dark clothes leaving only an arm and a waist stained roseate, inhaling a thick line of blushing cocaine from the glass table between us. Her hair fell back into place as she lifted her chin, covering the unused nostril.
She rolled the bill to me without looking, adjusting her hair as it landed beside a few lines of my own stardust. My heart accelerated—the anticipation almost as potent as the high—clinging to the belief that I was allowing myself a night of leisure. Yet I could not ignore the fingers burrowing into my head from behind, peeling back the veil of innocuous pleasure to reveal a single word—”relapse.” It struck my chest with urgency, but as the sight of vanishing powder replayed behind my eyes I became an ethereal figure who could not be harmed.
I picked up the banknote with a preemptive exhale, my next breath containing flakes of powder that left a warm streak of irritation from my nose to the top of my throat. Cocaine began swarming my blood irreversibly, and I could only imagine my remaining days ticking down.
But those worries faded towards ambiguous noise as she finally turned her head to gaze at me, her left hemisphere flushed by the moon with a narrow slice excised by wings of black eyeliner. She tilted her head by a sliver, mouth ajar—either an emergent smile of intoxication or simply a breath circumventing her powdered airways. Her pierced septum arose from the shadows, a faint coating of powder stuck to the dark steel where its edge glimmered fuchsia. I wonder why she stared for so long—if she was only inspecting my face or proudly exhibiting her dusted steel.
I held the gaze firmly, challenging how long she’d grant me the privilege of examining her features, guessing blindly at the contents of her psyche. “You’re a real rockstar huh?” I asked quietly, certain that her expression was not untouched by the drugs. Her lips finished their curve—this time a clear smile of acknowledgement.
Without notice she stood and paced around the table, eyes locked on the staircase that glowed just barely scarlet enough from the window beside to be visible. I figured she saw or heard something of interest, but her gait drifted with apparent wanderlust. I uncoiled the bill with my thumb and shoved it back into my wallet before following the heavy steps of her raven boots as the heat in my nose began to fade.
My living room appeared more aquarium than terrestrial space, the wall of mosaic glass permitting a brighter influx. She placed a boot sideways—the onset of a ballet—and gradually turned as she swept her eyes across the room, her expression sharpened as though she could smell the muted sunset on every wall.
I stepped in front of her and planted myself ankle-over-knee in a couch chair, hoping she could feel my eyes on the side of her head, and I masked my desire behind capability as I spoke. “If there’s anything else you want, just let me know.” I’d have given her all the drugs in the world just to watch her take them. Perhaps I was selfish—burning my flower for a brief enrichment of its colors—though I likely would have burned just the same had my narcotic pipe dreams come true.
She turned her neck indifferently until her eyes found mine, letting them rest on my pupils before strutting closer. She turned her hips and reached a boot over my thigh, hands guiding her weight onto the chair’s arm before placing the other foot beside it. And from the pocket in her ripped jeans she removed a small bag of MDMA—its champagne crystals ground into a coarse powder—before dipping the black nail of her index finger into the dust. I hadn’t even noticed that she took my drugs with her, but I had no reason to complain. She pinched a nostril with the same hand’s thumb and made the powder vanish, leaving her finger clean to grab another scoop. She held it to my nose, head still upturned despite her eyes hanging low enough to meet my own, and I kept them locked until the nail was empty once more.
With two fingers she sealed the bag and stashed it away before swinging her shoes back to the floor. And once again she drifted towards the mouth of the staircase as though it were the next step in her choreography. I matched her pace as we ascended to my bedroom, wondering exactly what she sought.
The scent of peaches and charcoal lingered from the joint I’d smoked a few hours prior, its siblings laying on the windowsill beside a smaller pile of cocaine. Her attention fell on the drugs and gradually tilted toward the glass doors that separated us from my balcony. And she turned back to me before letting her weight fall onto my bed, reclining as though it were her own.
She pinched the mound and brought those fingers to the space between her navel and the clasp of her belt, hips slightly raised to flatten her abdomen. With her fingertips she sculpted a neat bump and licked them clean as I looked back to her eyes, finding them eagerly returning my gaze.
I grabbed my wallet again and flipped through cash, hoping another hundred would show itself so that I would not keep my glass table waiting. Her voice broke through the muffled scraping of my thumb over each note—almost stern. “Money isn’t everything.” After a quick glance I returned the wallet and leaned down with the side of my face to her stomach, its warmth tangible against my jaw. I could have lingered for another moment, but the tiny pink mountain urged me to scale it. I angled my nostril to sniff every flake as I pinched its double, dragging them over her moon-flushed skin. And as I lifted my head I swabbed my nose’s fringe—hoping to inhale any stray residue—before falling supine beside her.
She rolled onto her elbow, back turned to me as she carefully picked up a joint by its median from the windowsill, examining it like an unopened scroll. At that moment I couldn’t have imagined anything better. “If you want one, just let me know.” She grabbed a lighter that always accompanied my papers as the other elbow indented the soft mattress. And with a metallic snap she kindled the joint’s apex, rolling it between her fingers with a gaze so blistering she may not have even needed the flame.
When I expected it to land between her lips she turned it coals-up and held it to my own. A faint smirk tugged at the corners of my mouth, pinching it on the filter as I played her unspoken games without resistance. Her face descended towards mine as though she could not miss a single detail, shaded so that her features appeared only warm gray imprints on the darkness, and I felt a single breath billowing towards my pressed lips. Even so, the moonlight refused to be eclipsed by her face, painting slender lines between strands of dark hair. Another snap roused me to inhale, fire bending into the paper’s crown like an arc of lightning, fibers glowing as their atmosphere sizzled. Yet I did not let the vapor reach my lungs, warmth swirling behind my teeth as I preserved it for her.
Like a flower’s petal she plucked the joint from my mouth, and I stifled my breath as time slowed to a lethargic crawl. A cherry blossom unfurled between my lips, its carpel stretching and twisting through the air. Her mouth lay barely open, face perfectly still as though she’d not breathe without me. But as the smoke grew near its path quickly bent, stretching into thin filaments as her nostril siphoned them.
As the cloud’s final traces rushed into her nose, a tonic chill diffused from my ribs to my skull, flooding my brain with a euphoria that left icy residue on my bones as it trickled back down my spine. The numbness had spread behind its original site, leaving my palate a wooden slab without nerves. Had I lost all inhibition I would have taken her in my arms and danced, but I confined my vigor and simply imagined the ribbon curling down her throat to where it pooled in her lungs.
I let out my breath as she placed her chest on mine without breaking our gaze, swinging her feet to the carpet before slipping between the balcony doors. I lifted my chest and stood, my body gliding deftly into place, and slid the doors a bit wider for myself. The breeze wafted over my face like a splash of cold water, glass-filtered strands of moonlight becoming a lush, homogenous aura.
The moon nearly eclipsed my entire field of vision, its poles spanning from horizon to empyrean, seeming no more than an arm’s length away. Its pearly surface was only a dusting for the coral skin beneath, mottled with ruby craters and streaks of orange so bright they appeared golden at their centers. She leaned on the rail, arms rigid as though keeping the immense gravity from lifting her, entranced eyes visible on the back of her head. I was no stranger to the moon, but I’d never examined it with such reverence. I wonder why.
Her hand released its grip on the rail and began to rise, fingers relaxed around a small empty space, emanating golden ripples as it dragged against the welkin’s viscosity. Her index finger began to extend, and as it reached fruition its tip pressed into the moon’s blushing cheekbone. She dragged the finger down its jaw, painting a line of deeper fuchsia where the surface had been abraded, and swiped the stardust-laden finger across her tongue.
Swirling in the back of my skull was a feeling that remained hazy no matter how I adjusted my lens—more the lingering metabolite of what I hadn’t noticed—I’d found something never once encountered. I’d found a body living habitually within an artwork—a synergy driven without strife by its own blood—a bulletproof assurance that the night would never end.
Death reminded me of its presence, speaking of how its scythe grew closer with every flake in her nose. Yet I swallowed a morbid grin as I prophesied my own continued indulgence, racing her to hell as long as she kept running. I wonder why such thoughts even linger.
I placed my own hands beside hers—leaving enough space for another person between us—and I spoke, feeling that there was no better moment. “Are you ever worried?” Her gaze clung to the moon as though it were speaking louder than I was, and I continued. “About… your body and your mind?” She tilted her head just enough for me to see both eyes, and gently shook her head. “I’m a rockstar.” she told me as though she’d owned the label her entire life. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” In spite of all reason I truly believed she was made of steel—at least her mind—and a hedonistic jealousy prodded my stomach.
I sank into a deep pit where nothing was real except my own hopes and fears, and from all the formless matter came words—so visceral that I could not take another breath without speaking them.
“I just want to be a rockstar like you.”
Every curl of my tongue sang like the rattling of pills and the rushing of air through a banknote.
With such a statement hanging in the air I felt no need to disturb it, and so I found my eyes drawn to the moon’s gravity. I began to wonder why it appeared so large and so vibrant—a globular crystal floating in a dark soup of stars. And that rumination extended down to me like a beam of light, questioning why—among billions of possible lives—I lived one that was so hard to understand.
Another chill reminded me of my own skin and I shifted my eyes towards her. But in the image before me she had been erased, nothing more than a cold breeze in the space she used to occupy. I turned my shoulders to look at the glass doors—untouched since I had last moved them—finding nothing beyond. I tried to recall if I’d heard her footsteps—or even felt her presence wander—but no explanation would change the fact that she was gone. I wonder why I’d been given a night like this just for it to vanish beneath my awareness. A darker part of me wished there had not been time for us to drift apart, but I knew this was only the night air chilling my mind—a nocturnal poisoning in my veins.
After all, I didn't really know her. She was only a nameless presence that stepped into my reality for a quick thrill before returning to whatever abstruse realm she hailed from, and her face would soon dissipate from my thoughts. I didn’t really know her.
I opened the drawer in the night stand beside my bed and grabbed a bag of crushed oxycodone, its cornflower pigment desaturated by the light. I shook out a trail of powder and swept my credit card through 4 slender lines, letting anticipation drown me as though surfacing for air would be lethal. I rolled up a bill, not fastening the tube nor considering which president I’d chosen, and filled my unused nostril with a piercing rapture.
I fell into bed and closed my eyes, knowing that I was moments away from being too sedated to form another thought about the ghost laying beside me. But as I sank into darkness I couldn’t help but pray that somewhere in my dreams—in my opioid-induced phantasmagoria—those shimmering lines would fall into the same place again.
I just can’t help but wonder why.