A Compulsion to Crawl

There are no mirrors in the garden.

There were many statues in the garden.

Their great, grisly faces were common. But there were others with delicate planes and marble flesh who were strangers to the masses. They bore no sharp canines to tear skin and limbs or horns atop their heads. Silk coated their frames, and pearls draped across their chiseled collarbones.

They were elegance itself.

These milky-makings had their devoted worshippers. The ones who came every week and spoke to the marble as though they could answer. Plants grew through the crevices between stones in the garden. Green tendrils grasped the feet of the pious before their legs were covered in barbs of thorns. The pious stayed despite the red ink trickling down their body. Some gathered handfuls of the ink, leaving smears of life on the breathless figures, until they drained the last.

There was a new worshipper today.

Her golden hair was neatly curled with a hot iron. Rich brown eyes looked at the monstrous statues for a moment. A sneer crossed her face. She turned to the marble statues and gazed at their beauty. Like a moth to a flame, she walked to them, her pink organza dress flowing as she took each step. The flowers bloomed to a perfect blush as she passed, advertising themselves to a new customer. A viewer might assume the worshippers lacked intelligence or common sense. No, the garden’s pious did not lack reason. Rather, they let something take root that does not belong, like an ashen splinter caught in skin pink from blood. The lie of eternal life achieved by an individual’s sacrifice, and their worship of the statues.

The flowers and thorns all whispered in a hushed cacophony: stay, if only for a while. What harm is there in resting a bit? Is it a transgression to take a peek at what’s behind the velvet curtains? The woman stepped over the thorns growing ever thick around the marble statue before her. It was the figure of a man, handsome as a god, lifeless as ever. She stood mesmerized, eyes trailing over the perfect anatomy of its ligaments and joints. The woman did not realize the brambles attaching themselves to her hem, nor the first time she bled. She stayed, from the sun’s rise to the moon’s dawn, wrapped possessively in the arms of death. When the sun peered over the tall hedges of the garden, the light touched her skin, marred and bloody. Her eyes fluttered at the feeling of warmth. The plants hid themselves in the shade. They peeled their bodies from hers, slithering away into the ground. She lifted her gaze to the sun beyond and met her own face. No longer in the garden, the woman took quick, frantic breaths, turning her head in all directions. Where did the comforting touch go? She had not known such a splendid sensation in so long.

Heat rose to her cheeks as a growl erupted from her throat. She clawed at the mirrors on every side of her body. Her fists pounded at the glass, shattering all but one pane.

A glass cage.

Her chest heaved and slowed as she looked at herself. She had walked into the garden looking like a pristine princess and now she appeared as a wild animal. The woman’s smile turned to a frown as she saw the cuts along her body.

Her body.

Where did the comfort go Where did the comfort go Where did the comfort go Where did the comfort go Where did the comfort go Where did the comfort go Where did the comfort go Where did the comfort go.

Her face turned up to the mirror before her, and a crazed grin stared back. She reached in her mouth and pulled the skin wider, her dark brown eyes as obsidian as night itself. Her head flung backward and forward, smashing into the remaining mirror, collapsing the structure to the cold stone below. The woman crouched down on her knees, hands scraping over broken shards and porous ground, leaving trails of blood behind. On all fours, she crawled to the statue, where he stood in place, ivory chest rising and falling with the breath from her lungs.

{cover art: The Sense of Sight by Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds}