Fire, Snow and Blood.

She was fire, snow and blood. Red locks that flickered in a
fanning breeze. Skin smoother than winters first ice that even the
sun refused to besmirch, and lips that the mere words of men fail
to encapsulate. Thats how I try to remember her. Smiling, loving
me. In a sun kissed meadow. The long green grass blowing upon the
slight incline, looking as though it was made from the softest of
cloths, stretched upon a great treasure, hiding it from the prying
hands of greed. A universe built just for two, us two.
But instead I remember fire, snow and blood. The crumpled
engine block smoldering beneath black smoke. Snow falling as it
had the days past. Her blood. The feel of it on my skin, beneath
my nails and upon my lips. The taste of her life.
That was when he came. I say he, but it was no he. It simply
was.
The side mirror was cracked, showing a hundred portrayals of
how the lack of its figure approached the car on the other side of
the road, its wheels still spinning, finding no purchase in the
chilled wind. My emotions swirled. As if for a moment gravity
forgot her hold on me. The sounds of the licking fire retreated,
as did the calls of the birds that braved the season and the
gurgling of the half frozen stream the bordered the road. The only
sound was that of my hardening heart and her failing breath,
captured in the screaming absence of sound that echoed from the
lack.
The strangest thing was the waiting. Waiting for its potent
presence to be turned towards us. My ears rung, as if I had been
standing my entire life in an engine room and only now sampled
quiet. The world no longer turned for me. The stars and the moon
no longer journeyed the sky, the wind no longer rattled and the
ground no longer vibrated. Sound was movement, and the universe no
longer moved for me. Only then when it was taken from me did I
realize the sound of sunshine, the taste moonlight.
It could not be seen, the lack, but it could not be ignored.
If it stepped it would of stalked. Had it eyes they would of been
alight with the single ominous purpose of their owner. I did not
fear it, it was not a thing to fear.
It came to us. If it had hips they would have bent was it
reached what would be a long, thick arm in the smashed window and
lay long lean looming fingers upon her shoulder. Her closed eyes
flinched minutely as her lips, ill fitting of any adjectives known
to me, kissed the last breath she would ever sigh.
My heart thumped, a pick on bedrock. Then it beat, a soft
fist on a table. Then it tapped, a lover's knock on the window of
his counter point in the still of dark nights and secret trysts.
Then a kiss as soft as a shrew's nose testing a dandelion.
Finally, the ultimate silence as it moved no more.
Nihility.
An infinite enclosure of ever shifting color and a dearth of
pigment. Like closing your eyes in a bright room. A mixture of
yellows and reds, blistered with twinges of pinks and purples, all
wrapped in the encasing certainty of darkness. My stillness was
absolute, I did not move as there was nothing to move through. My
chest neither rose nor fell as there was no air, and I needed
none. My veins lay still as no heart pumped the substance of life
through them. I did not blink for my eyes suffered no atmosphere
to dry them. My stillness was so that I questioned had I still a
body. What need would I have of it here.
"Why do you linger in the house of Death?" The question was
not shouted, nor whispered. There was no anger nor curiosity
entwined upon its forming, it simply was and it came to my
conscious so. Without reprimand or evasion. My response came from
me like a peeling thought that may have been discarded before
comprehension.
"Where is she?"
"Considering her fate. Why do you not proceed?" The time between
questions and answers stretched as far as the unfathomable
deepness of the un-living silence of this place. Time was for the
mortal. A gift that the immortal can not comprehend.
"I want to see her." There was no fear in my thoughts, no boast or
pomp either. Such things are for the spinning minds of simple men,
in this place there was no fear, no doubt only truth in all its
forms, many more forms than I came to understand.
"You may, but not here."
"Why?"
"She is not here."
"Then you will bring me to her."
"I can not."
"Why?"
"It is a place I may not go, but you may, you are meant to. Why do
you linger?"
True silence.
"Show yourself." my call in my true voice, a sound no living
person had heard.
"Show me your self, Man."
With the natural ease of one who knew not what he knew I pulled to
me the shape to which I had been born to and died in. Naked, shown
in the splendor of my sculpting.
"And how would you see me?" The lack queried, "As your poets
depict?" Before me a rolling shadow accumulated and from its
stygian shade stepped Death. Clad in the darkest of shrouds he
took lurching steps, creaking as his bone fingers twisted on the
giant scythe he held. A sourceless light met his rising head to
reveal a skull beneath the eaves of this drooping cowl.
"Does this please you?"
It expected a response but I gave it none and so it continued
with its display. "Or shall I take the form of the last one who
stood in my house." The dark smoke billowed about, reclaiming it
before disappearing, leaving in its wake a young woman. Her face
and naked body were sacred by pox. Her teeth lessened by
malnutrition and scurvy. In this airless place and stink of living
decay came to me. "It has been many a moon, as your kind count,
since any have stood here. She was the last. A fresh mother who
could not see the beauty in her proceeding coinciding with her
delivering of another. She battled, begged and bargained. But in
the end she proceeded.
"Or shall I take the form of the one you seek?". The image of
a woman half starved faded into a representation of my love. The
outward appearance was well formed but my soul noted the absence
of her fire, noticed the lack.
"Show me as you are." I demanded, but the words had hardly half
traveled when her form melted into the ever present and ever
missing ephemeral colors.
"I am the brother of the wind," The words came from the entirety
of nowhere, and thus, everywhere. "Son of the showing and the
hiding. Sickness is my sister and Luck my companion. My form can
not be seen by one such as you."
"What of war?" I asked "Is he of your brethren"
"I sought War a time ago. I found him not to exist on any plane I
can reach. I have come to understand that he is of the creation of
man and not of the Creation."
Questions were abound in my raging mind, yet I know with
certainty this was not where my answers lay.
"Show me as you would have me see you."
"I find this fitting." From the inescapable nothingness came a man
of hight less than my own. His head was balding, crown wrapped in
a halo of brown curls hiding the sporadic grey.
"To who did this form belong?" I asked.
"This is the man who's automobile you hit. He was happy to
proceed. He was driving home to catch his wife in the throws of
vehement intercourse with his sister, but you and your playful,
flirtatious engagement of the one you seek canceled his
revelation."
"Did you tell him what he would of found?"
"It is not my place to impart knowledge, that comes when you
proceeded. I am of the knowing, not the telling."
"Yet you lay this knowing on me. Why?"
"To entice you to proceed. It is the path and there is no other."
"Tell me. You know of my world, of how the artists show you. Is it
true then what the story tellers say? That you can be challenged,
for passage back to the living?"
"I have entertained such frivolous wagers before, yet I have never
understood how men knew such as I have never been bested."
"We are of the knowing too, just not of the understanding of our
knowledge."
"We are all of the Creation. What is it you seek."
"To be returned. Both myself and her, to live together."
"You have lived together and died together, most never know such
beauty. But I shall accept. What shall the match be?"
"A game of chess. I wager my soul and my service on the outcome
that I can end the game in four moves."
"So it shall be."
In the infinite closeness between us a chess board appeared.
I was to be white, the first move mine. I picked a piece and moved
it. As did it. A second piece moved, followed by his second. My
third turn. Its third turn accompanied by a smirk. My fourth and
final act of the game. I lay unshivering fingers softly upon the
fine bone that formed my king piece. With a slight flick of my
wrist the king piece fell side ways, bouncing from the stone game
board and tumbling into the abyss.
"And so you are defeated." No satisfaction in the words.
"Alas I am not. I wagered on my ending of the game, not on my
victory. Her and I shall be returned."
Anger burst into its so far timbre-less voice. "You deceived
me! And so it is fitting that I deceive you!" The form of the
middle aged man faded, leaving me with naught to look upon but the
transparency of the lack. "You shall be returned to life, but she
shall not. You will grow old, and fade for longer years than any
of your kind has witness, but you will have no happiness as the
partner of you soul shall stand wistfully out side the gates of
beyond, knowing no rest and knowledge, waiting for her love to
come. But From her I shall take the memory of your face, so when
the time comes she will not know you. And from you I shall take
the knowing of her name so that you may not call her to you. She
will wait, and all she will know is waiting, never will she learn
that which is to be learned. So even in the bliss of what you
shall come to understand your soul will ache from loneliness and
you will rue your deceiving of me. This you shall know from now
until the ever and your heart shall quake when you remember her.
"Go wretched mortal! Live a hollow life, die a dismal death
instead of the one ought to you and forever know that you shall
never find her."
I let the form I held fade into the lack and watched the
lack. It seemed then that its twisted taints began to vibrate and
shake. A humming and rattling came to my clouding mind. The
restrictions that had left my thoughts on my dying started to
reform. Pain seeped into my vision. I could feel the numbness of
my limp, cold body. My eyes cracked open slowly, frost dusted my
eyelids as I looked into the red, puffing face of the man who
pulled me from the wrecked car. "Come on buddy." He huffed, ice
caught in his ginger beard and laying atop his trucker cap. "My
starts! I knew you where alive!" He exclaimed when he noticed my
stare.
Slinging me over his shoulder he proceeded to jog from the
burning car. That was the last vision I had of her; Fire, snow and
blood.