I see her face clearly only in my nightmares. Never in the daytime when I am trying to focus on her features
intensely. I try to focus on her eyes, the color exact unknown to me still, but the certainty to which I have in regards to this one unusual trait about them, two pupils in the left eye, is
there indefinitely. I circle my gaze on those two pupils, off centered and assured, as the only pull to which my gaze falls deeper into her spell. The shape of her eyes change constantly as
she displays so many gazes in a moment that her entire face contorts into an exacting emotion; crinkled half-moons in smiling, broken almonds in crying, and sometimes, only sometimes if I
stare long enough, the shape of a wildfire burning through life's forest can be seen in all its destruction. Those eyes have seared into my life at various occasions. I enter into rooms
cautiously now, perfectly aware that her hold on me is evident in every step I make, in every speech I give, in every moment I try to long for something other than her. I have
been woken out a deep sleep, covered by sweat and the lingering smell of mint and basil, and I shout violently out to her in the dark, "Show yourself!" I can still not see her
clearly. Her bellowing laugh, incessant and unrelentless, encircles my bedroom, violating my thoughts in daytime, her mocking of my continued quest to find her, to know her entire form for
myself. I get pieces of her in concentration: her button nose, all soft and unfrecked by the sun, her lips a full cherub's gift, and the blackest hair spiraling all the way down to her Eve's
curve in her spine. If only I could touch that hair! Yes, it's the fragrant smell of sage through her hair that could save the world's obsession with its own destruction! I want to know what
it would feel like to want to escape into something that feels too good. I want to become a sieve to the feeling of permanence. Come to me, my succubus, and let me be owned by something other
than my misery!
She knows what she is doing to me, fully and possessively. This Hierophant struggles to own me completely, and might just very win my devotion out of exhaustion.
I am normally the tempter; the precocious head surgeon at Ellis Hospital here in Schenectady, New York. I am handsome enough at my age, thirty-eight, to still attract the adulation and awe of
the younger med interns who forget to wear underwear under their uniforms. I can easily feast on their desperation for my own satisfaction, but it's rebellious at best. I am merely tasting
their souls to avoid feeling the pain in my own. I live vicariously through a smell, a touch, a glimpse if only to delay the inevitable facing of my own weakness, my own self as a liability
to the world. What is that woman's perfume? Is that musk or the smell of lavender? What kind of underwear did she pick out for herself today? Does she wear stockings? Is that a barrette in
her hair? I am restless, wanting and irrecoverable. Worst of all, this nymph-spirit knows it and tortures me daily to remind me of my true weakness.
Some nights I
fight her with words, with objects thrown across the room, in fits of anger as I pace in and out of every room of my house to get her off of my back. Once I felt a bite mark on my left
buttocks, sharp and intense, a pain so intense that it shot straight through a nerve, and upon further inspection, I noticed an imprint that looked like a simple circle. I lunged at the dark
space in front of me, trying to strangle this spirit out of my reach. She knew that it would arouse me, this temper game of lust and devotion, and I was unable to focus on anything other than
her.
I would rotate between sitting and standing, crying and laughing, dancing and sleeping, if only to garner her trust that I was her willing recipient. She is the one who has chosen me, or invaded by sleep if you don't mind me saying. It is she who has made me her devotee. It was her contamination that has filtered through my veins and made me permanently restless.
Ever since I visited that old, emaciated psychic woman who works out of a second-story building near the hospital on Jay Street, I have not forgotten what she had revealed to
me. The reading, an attempt to appease Katherine, my date-of-the-night, who had a desire to do something adventurous, led us both up the decrepit stairs and into the incense-filled room. A
single nightlight illuminated the cramped loft space. A two seater couch was offered for waiting guests and the small TV belted out various news stories and commercials. My accomplice entered
into the next room first, eager and ballooned with excitement. Her tall, lanky body slouched nervously behind a floral dress and matching heels. A nervous picker, she started every sentence
with a different moving gesture: a tuck of her hair behind her ear, a tapping foot, a wave of her arm stretching up over her head. She was always releasing uneasiness in movements. She didn't
speak, she moved. Her occupation as a physical therapist gave her the ability to use movement as a distraction, a coping mechanism of sorts. It had not been hard to pick her out at the
rehabilitation ward at the hospital. I had watched her one day maneuver from one patient to the next in different rhythms and motions. Without words, we exchanged glances that mirrored each
other's melancholy. Eventually we began sharing a love for Thai food and emotionless love. She needed some sense of direction in order to continue making sense of her life's purpose. I,
on the other hand, was perfectly complacent in accepting life's making. I have never fought for anything, loved anyone or desired to aspire to anything more than likeable. It is my belief
that when one wants something, there is only disappointment. I could have sat peacefully in my reverie except my date had interrupted my stare.
"Wow, that lady really knew
what she was talking about! I can't believe she could say all of that!"
"Oh, and do you have love and fortune on the horizon my dear?"
"You just need
to see her for yourself! I swear that everything she said to me was true! I don't know how she knew!"
I had my reservations about going. There was something in my company's
face that irked me. She was neither smiling nor frowning, and suddenly was not really even focused on me, but on the show on the television. I tried to touch her arm to regain her focus on
me, but she seems winded and cold, the goose bumps on her arms apparent. It was obvious the haggard woman had affected her with something. The question is with what because she was not
gone but for ten minutes. I decided reluctantly to see for myself what presence could have possibly stolen my date's attention so easily and turned around to enter into the crawl space's
darkness. A circular table was lit with candle votives, and a poster of a human body with rainbow rays was posted on the wall. The old woman cackled and gurgled noises and the room smelled of
old moth balls. The old woman moved slowly around to the other side of me, placing her walking stick up against the wall. She finally spoke:
"Sit down. You are afraid to sit down at my place?"
"No, I was simply waiting for your invitation!" I thought I sounded jovial but realized afterwards that it was probably
more pompous.
"You need to separate the tarot deck into three sections. Then you pick thirteen cards from the middle deck. Think carefully. The spirits are with us."
"Well this seems to be a silly game,"
I feared the woman took herself too seriously.
It made no difference in the woman's manner. She furiously shuffled my
thirteen cards while tapping her foot under the table nervously. The room seemed to get smaller when she spoke, in between a huffing and a wheezing sound came bits and pieces of my life's
beginnings; my parent's tragic car accident, my grandmother's crying at the funeral, my neighbor's daughter who first kissed me, my hidden crawl space in my childhood home, my attempts at
suicide in my teens. I was feverishly hot out of nowhere, the card's mysterious faces and descriptions made no sense to me, but the old woman kept talking and tapping, squinting and huffing,
and in her telling of the events in my life, she made various approving and contemplative faces. She told me grandiose stories of the heroes and heroines she presented in front of me and now
somehow I was connected to these stories. My life overlapped the drama of the cards and her voice quickened so that she could fit in every detail. I timed her breath with her hacking as a
minor distraction from my story. Her eyes did not lift until she turned over the last card, now facing me fully.
"It's the Devil card," she shot quickly.
"Well, what does that mean?"
"It means that you are about to be challenged. You are going to face a darker side of yourself."
My face
clearly showed my discontempt for what this woman was saying to me. How dare she presume that I had not already faced enough challenges and struggle in my life and that I did not know myself
already? Who was she to judge me, a bonafide professional, a caring doctor of many, a man of many interests?
"You obviously do not really know me."
"It is obvious that you do not really know you..." Her eyes looked downward. She knew I was not amused.
"I have never really believed in these silly card
tricks. Many people have faced adversity in their lives. It's not a stretch to be on target about that fact for many people who walk in here..."
"You may have good intentions, but your soul still longs for the truth."
I had decided that I was certainly done with this masquerade and decided to get up out of my
chair immediately. She followed suit slowly, picking herself up with the help of her stick. She blew out the candle but not before revealing something else to me:
"The Devil
card is also the card for marriage. Be not scared to face what shall come next for you."
I felt myself regret only one thing that night. In picking myself up out of the
wooden chair, I let out a small laugh. It seemed forced, the first sign of my apparent lack of control in the events of the evening. I found myself suddenly exhausted, and told Katherine that
I would go out and grab the car and pick her up out front. I needed those few minutes to myself alone, if only to compose fully the final few words the old lady said to me, almost as an
afterthought or allusion. Her words etched forcibly into my consciousness:
"She's out there you know. The one you fear most is waiting to be discovered."
