The Lockdown Is a Psyop, part 12: The Mask-arade

 THE CURTSY AND THE KISS

by Andy Nowicki

I. THE CURTSY

Something about the sight of the man caught Rayna up short from the start.

His very presence presented a paradox of sorts. His lean frame and milky-pale complexion

suggested a faintly supple insinuation of illness, but his ready, watchful, alert eyes struck her

with such force that she had to catch her breath.

As he met her helpless gaze with unsmiling, incorrigible implacability, Rayna felt racked with

confusion; her pulse raced wildly, her palms moistened, and she felt she would faint. Desperate

to restore equilibrium, she clutched at her chest as an inchoate spasm of intolerable expectation

swept over her.

Who was he?

Much as she pondered this question later, Rayna could never reconcile her immediate, avidly

visceral conviction of dread and anticipation with the man’s generally unprepossessing

appearance. It is true enough that he was conspicuously overdressed. At a party in which most

of the men wore jeans, shorts, and T-shirts, he was clad in a jacketed suit, an odd enough

wardrobe choice for even a formal gathering, given the sweltering August weather.

Yet when she first caught sight of him, this man of indeterminate age— he could have been

anywhere between twenty and forty— she found herself caught up in the most earnest,

penetrating gaze she’d ever had to endure from another person. He saw her, really saw her, in a

manner nobody in her life ever had before. It was more than a little disconcerting, yet not

totally unexpected; it even felt familiar, as if she had in fact already been mercilessly scrutinized

by his gray-blue eyes many times already, by those wide, extraordinary eyes which seemed to

be pleading intensely for something, pleading even as they held forth with an imperious,

implacable will that seemed able to burn to cinders all that they gazed upon, should they aim to

do so…

And then, after the shock waves had pummeled her for an eternal-seeming moment, they

suddenly dissipated into the smoke-soaked air of the crowded house, when the man turned his

gaze elsewhere and exited the room. Equilibrium was recovered with astonishing rapidity, yet

Rayna felt so exhausted, so… exposed by this electrifying event of intimacy, that she could

barely respond when her friend Sara called to her a moment later; she heard her friend’s voice

only faintly, as one might discern the distant distress call of a sinking ship.

*******************************************

Rayna Kisley wasn’t naturally disposed to shyness , and though her sweet, modest nature would

have been too embarrassed to admit this openly, she knew that being blonde and beautiful, and

possessed of a nearly perfect set of shiny white teeth, tended to dispel social anxieties which

may otherwise have cropped up in the consciousness of an eighteen-year-old girl. When you’re

a lovely young woman, the world is essentially at your command. But when your brains are

equal to your beauty, you learn early on that the power you wield ought not to be abused, both

for conscience’s sake and in the interest of prudence. Taking overt advantage of your beauty to

obtain personal gain is both unkind and unwise, though only the brainiest of beauties grasp this.

For her part, Rayna was smart, if not precisely brilliant. Still, her intuitive grasp of the

ambiguities of reality, including the darker aspects of the human condition, was insightful

indeed. She saw, readily enough, the “skull beneath the skin,” yet somehow avoided the

corresponding morbidity such a perspective would typically engender in one’s mind.

Perhaps it was mere youthful exuberance, but possibly her overall state of contentment— even

in the face of what ought to have been a propensity to sadness, but somehow avoided being

so— was due to some more auspicious quality whereby satisfaction takes the paradoxical form

of yearning; that is to say, where one essentially already comfortably bathes in the rays of joy,

yet wishes to draw ever closer to the source of this light, sensing that the dangers of such

proximity would be greatly outweighed by the benefits, since that which would certainly sear

one’s flesh might well also set one’s soul aflame with bliss. So the fulfillment fuels the hunt, and

the taste stimulates the craving.

For most of her young life, Rayna had been aware of a dull ache creeping ever more insidiously

into the solid core of her contentment. It was strange to know oneself as happy— for what

reason did she have not to be happy?— and yet at the same time to be aware that one lacked

some feature crucial to the obtainment of full-bodied fulfillment. She could never figure out

what she wished to have more of, or how she could be at once so content, and yet so

conspicuously aware of such a distressing lack of this ingredient, whatever it was, which she

knew must necessarily be added to her life in order for happiness to gain a true foothold over

her being.

Ever aware as she was of this puzzling circumstance, Rayna’s teenage years had passed like a

dazzling mystery: beautiful and sinister, familiar and strange. She knew she had everything, yet

also couldn’t escape the awareness that she truly possessed nothing. Cognizant of this latter

truth, she never spoke it. Had she tried to share this insight, it simply wouldn’t have made sense

to anyone. Neither Rayna’s friends— who at once looked up to her and bitterly envied her, with

the simultaneous awed idolization and peevish regard of which only only girls are so uniquely

capable of holding towards others of their own kind— nor her family would have been able to

make head or tail of such an observation, nor could she have managed to articulate it properly,

had she even attempted to do so. To them, she was simply a lucky, lovely, blessed, and beautiful

girl, with every rightful claim to glory, in this life and the next.

Indeed, Rayna came from a devout family, and had been raised up in the tenets of the Catholic

church. She attended Mass every Sunday, and regularly frequented “Young Life” events at her

school. For her, religion was a high-minded and solemn affair, an earnest and rightful thing that

she took quite seriously, to the point of compulsiveness. She badly wanted to please God, and

feared lest He find her wanting. This isn’t to say that Rayna was what some would unkindly call a

“fanatic” when it came to matters of faith.

Instead, it would be best be said that she felt an acute sensitivity to a kind of perceived

propriety, which she envisaged with keen alacrity. God, she was aware, watched her at all times,

but His eternal eye was especially vigilantly trained upon her when she reclined in the church

pew with her family. The Everlasting knew what was on her mind at all times, and Rayna

blushed to think of it, since she often entertained notions which would shock most people who

believed they really knew her. Yet, these features of her mindset aside, it would in fact not be

fair to say that Rayna’s religious perspective was either naive or overtly superstitious. One

would never mistake her for the sort of person who sees the Blessed Virgin Mary in a bowl of

spaghetti, or who keeps herself up at night fretting over whether her last confession had truly

been valid, since she may have forgotten to spill some obscure venial sin or other to the priest,

thus flinging all prospects of grace out of the window. A free spirit who didn’t get caught up in

distressing technicalities— if, as the saying goes, “the Devil is in the details,” then surely God

would sort out these pesky little demonic trifles and kindly cover a multitude of miniscule

misdeeds— Rayna nevertheless remained always cognizant of her unworthiness, and was thus

painfully afflicted with a never-ceasing apprehension of her Creator’s eternal vigilance.

Rayna loved God; she knew, in turn, that God loved her, in spite of her soul’s manifold flaws. She

wished to please her Lord in any way that she could, the way that one hopes to please a

gracious and loving elder. Though she knew from Sunday School that it was improper to

anthropomorphize God, she help but picture Him as a man about her maternal grandfather’s

age and height: a dapper, distinguished, and refined gentleman who, much like this widowed

elder, favored conservative sportscoats and seldom smiled. This God-man very much wanted to

think well of her— so Rayna intuited— He also couldn’t help but notice whom she really was.

Unlike everyone else, He saw through the “golden girl” facade she was so adept at projecting.

He alone knew her uniquely depraved proclivities, which she dared not discuss with anyone,

much less acknowledge too readily to herself.

Indeed, Rayna often felt haunted by the awareness of being altogether too free a spirit, of

having been granted an overabundance of good fortune and sweet license to let her mind and

soul run riot, all the while hiding behind a winsome exterior, which was as false as the aura of

wholesomeness she radiated to her friends, family, and fellow congregants. She possessed a

keen desire to be checked, to be blocked, to be put in her place, whatever “her place” was— she

honestly didn’t know.

But no one, it seemed, could do this for her. The boys at her school— including a rather cheery,

handsome, and robust lad she’d dated for nearly a year— had no idea whatsoever about such

matters. Chris Maundy— that was his name— had given every indication of being an earnest

Christian believer. They hadn’t had any classes together, but met at her school’s Young Life

gathering, and Rayna had initially been charmed by the innocuously goofy, boyishly flirtatious

advances he made on her from the start, which were too dumbly good-natured to be properly

irksome. Chris was a popular boy— a star baseball player, much sought after by the girls at her

school— and Rayna, though perfectly aware of her own good looks and high-status position on

the obligatory and unavoidable social totem pole, nevertheless found herself flattered to be

granted this kind of attention from such a luminary.

Chris was a good guy, and not at all dumb, but still somewhat dense, as boys tended to be, at

least in Rayna’s experience. Rayna, however, initially imagined that she saw “potential” in her

new beau, little realizing at the time her naive mistake. When young women think of their

suitors in terms of the potential rather than the actual, things rarely wind up going well.

Still, she’d gladly agreed to be his girlfriend— though she’d had certain misgivings from the

start— and stuck it out with him, through peaks and troughs, for most of their junior and senior

years. Their courtship encompassed the time of the senior prom, when they’d easily won notice

as the most envied “power couple” of their school: the President and First Lady of Springview

High.

Everyone was shocked when, a mere week after that glorious event, this highly photogenic first

couple— these two regally smiling specimens of prom royalty— ingloriously split apart.

Rayna, it turned out, had been the one to force the issue, catching her poor, unfortunate beau

quite off guard one evening by announcing that she thought it would be best if they were simply

realistic about things; she and he were, after all, bound for different collegiate institutions,

hundreds of miles apart from one another… of course they would stay in touch and remain

friends, but it would be silly to remain deluded about the reality of the situation. Theirs had

been a wonderful romance, and she would always love him and treasure the memories they’d

shared, etc. and so on…

Rayna hadn’t used any of these shopworn “Dear John”-esque tropes by rote or insincerely; she

had honestly meant to let him down easy, and she felt quite sick at heart when she realized just

how terribly she’d hurt him. Upon hearing her peroration, delivered in a cramped booth over

buffet pizza, salad, and sodas, Chris had said nothing for several minutes; then, swallowing hard,

he excused himself, leaving her in shock and dismay.

When he returned a moment later, his eyes red, he was all smiles, weirdly passive and

conciliatory. (Had he gone away and wept in the restroom, like a heartbroken little girl? She’d

hoped he’d at least gotten angry and punched the mirror, or maybe just muttered to himself

manfully, as he might after misplaying a line drive during a baseball game.) Still reeling with

guilt, she had hesitantly inquired if he was okay, and he had all too readily assented, nodding

with a disconcerting stalwart vigorousness. Finally, he spoke; she was right, he owned. No point

in delaying the inevitable. Might as well rip off the ol’ band-aid… he barely said a word after

that, yet Rayna felt appalled by his obviously forced and contrived agreeability. But horrified as

she was about hurting him so thoroughly— she’d somewhat naively expected that he’d bounce

back fairly quickly, without undue trouble, as he’d always struck her as the good-tempered,

easygoing, resilient sort— Rayna also found herself despising him in her heart a bit for giving up

so easily, for deflating so pitifully before her eyes, in such an indecorous, unbecoming fashion.

Why couldn’t he get angry? Yell at her, shake his head with savage vitriol, pierce her with a

venomous, murderous glare?

At the same time that he entertained these thoughts, Rayna reproached herself. Chris had

always been a sweet, gentle, happy-go-lucky soul— that, in addition to the more mundane

consideration of him being “cute,” was what she’d found so endearing about him. So now he

was supposed to transform, as if on command, into an entirely different person? This really

wasn’t a fair thing to ask of him, and Rayna knew as much; still, at this moment, just after having

dumped him, she found herself pining for just such a transformation to take hold.

Why oh why couldn’t she ever be put in her proper place? She’d just broken this boy’s heart, for

heaven’s sake; was he just going to sit there and practically thank her for it, putting on a brave

face, and smiling through his tears, like a goddamn woman would?

Still, Rayna couldn’t realistically blame anyone but herself; she’d known who he was all along—

he’d been a boy with potential, but that potential had never panned out. She’d been wrong

from the start, since she’d never really taken him as he was, but only for what she’d felt he

could become. She despised herself all the more for what amounted to a callous mishandling of

a vulnerable heart: a kind, tender heart that had been left in her hands, which she was now

aware of having fumbled spectacularly, causing a bloody mess of horrific heartbreak.

After that terrible night, Rayna actually contemplated finding some way to hurt herself, so

disgusted was she with how badly she’d botched everything. She couldn’t decide upon any

particular method, and felt frightened by the prospect of becoming a “cutter” (her pride surged

mightily against the notion of turning into “that sort of girl”), so she settled merely for going on

a kind of self-enforced fast for the next two days, during which time she cathartically reveled in

her hunger pangs, telling herself that she didn’t deserve to know the satisfaction of a full

stomach, given what she had done to such a nice boy.

Over the course of the week that followed, Rayna wondered at times if she ought to call Chris

up and beg his forgiveness. At one point she actually felt resolved to ask him to give her another

chance. Surely they could work things out; what was a bit of distance, after all? Certainly they

could visit one another on weekends, taking turns playing host, thus enabling each to show off

the other to all of his or her newfound college mates. Her girlfriends would swoon and be

overwhelmed with jealousy when they saw the comely beau who held her hand and smiled

upon her with such beatific joy, like a man truly blessed; similarly, his frat boy buddies would

elbow each other's ribs with voracious delight when she showed up in her little black dress, only

to grow astonished when she rushed into his-- this lowly freshman pledge's-- welcoming arms.

Oh, it would be perfect, perfect!

Rayna even took out her cellphone and nearly hit his name on her contact list to enable the

speed dial mechanism, before another thought struck her with brutal psychic impact: Chris

would surely agree to her proposal immediately. And that, she realized, would be so

disappointing to deal with. She didn't deserve to be taken back so readily; why couldn't her

understand that? Why would he never treat her as she deserved to be treated; like a terribly

flawed girl, whose selfishness and thoughtless disregard for the feelings of others had wreaked

such misery upon such a sweet soul as his, a soul utterly undeserving of suffering such

outrageous trauma?

She put away the phone. She knew right then that she would never call him and beg him to take

her back. Still, she couldn't help but thrill to the notion of him calling her, and getting up the

gumption to really, really tell her off something fierce. She even had a dream or two about it, in

which Chris didn't just call, but showed up in person, flying immediately into an insensate rage

at her base treachery. These dreams both terrified and electrified our confused heroine, to the

point where she scarcely knew what to do with herself.

But it was all hopeless, really. He wasn't going to call her. He had given up in dejection, and was

nursing his newly-broken heart. Rayna, curiously enough, also felt downcast and defeated. She'd

thought that taking his necessary step would have made things better, but instead it had

thoroughly wrecked everything, both for him and for her. It had been done, and couldn't be

undone, and ultimately it was no doubt for the best; still, Rayna loathed herself for having

forged this split.

Naturally enough, some gossip had followed in the wake of the breakup. It was sneeringly

speculated by some that Rayna had found herself a new dude, reputedly a man in his mid-

twenties. It was unclear where this bizarre and utterly unfounded rumor had originated, but

many believed it with great conviction, and could not be convinced otherwise. Meanwhile

Chris's friends had rallied, tribally, to his side, in a "bros before hos" display of loyalty to their

jilted buddy. Rayna could handle being thought of as the "bad guy"-- indeed, she saw herself in

this light to a large extent-- but she hated being slandered as unfaithful, and vehemently

protested her innocence, leading to the formation of some contentious threads on Twitter,

Snapchat, and Instagram.

*******************

As the melee raged, many an angry tear was shed, and several sleepless nights passed for poor

Rayna. Her mother and father, dimly aware of their daughter's distress, asked her several times

if everything was okay, and she always replied with a stoic shrug; it was just "some stupid stuff

with some kids at school" she told them, smiling wanly. This more or less mollified them; her

father in particular was a sweet and gentle, if quite hapless fellow, older than he looked, and

totally out of his depth when it came to the doings of the postmodern teenage girl. Her mom, on

the other hand, always pressed her for details, her tone full of tense anxiety, yet she too

remained at all times essentially clueless of the particulars of her situation.

Dear Mrs. Kisley, that is to say, if far more inquisitive than her husband, was if anything even

less knowledgeable about her daughter's struggles, yet she felt inclined to consider herself the

only proper conduit through which her husband, the silly poor man, would ever find out

anything noteworthy considering Rayna. A former bone fide belle herself, Rhonda Kisley hadn't

aged especially well; her looks had, alas, dried up rather rapidly after she'd hit her forties; dimly

aware of this unfortunate fact, she had latched onto Rayna (her own daughter and only child),

as it became more and more evident that the girl's beauty matched or even outshone her own,

even when she'd been at the peak of her loveliness.

Of course it hardly need be said that Rhonda loved her daughter with as much tender regard as

any affectionate parent could possibly heap upon her offspring, but it was also undeniable that

when Rayna came of age, some new form of attachment formed in the older woman's breast,

something that could be called parasitic in nature. It had formed, not merely as a result of a

desire to "live vicariously," as the cliche goes; instead, it amounted to an active drive actually to

become a new being, a wish to be reincarnated in the being of her own flesh and blood...

Rhonda assumed she understood Rayna because she in fact wanted nothing better than to

know her so well that mother and daughter would become nearly indistinguishable from one

another: so that, in a weird inversion of the marriage vow, the two would become one flesh,

“without any difference or inequality,” as with the Church’s theological dogma concerning the

coequal status of the Father and the Son.

It was, of course, wishful thinking. Then again, the truth is that we are all prone towards just

such wishfulness, once we become aware, consciously or unconsciously, that our treasured

bone fides are at stake. Rayna, for all of her preternatural insight, remained ignorant on this

front, and didn’t ponder the mystery overmuch; she only knew that her mother could be

irritatingly intrusive.

Luckily, she could always be thrown off the scent. Rhonda had always liked Chris— finding him

“simply adorable,” as she often announced with a sigh and a girlish blush— and she had been

crushed when the breakup had been initiated. In response, Rayna had done something she

rarely ever did; she told her mother an abject fib. Swearing Rhonda to secrecy, Rayna fabricated

a scenario that she hoped would cause her mother to get over her unbecoming affinity for her

ex: she told Rhonda that Chris had put pressure on her to do things that she didn’t want to do

until she was married. Rhonda, being generally gullible— and having grown up at a time when

such a circumstance was far more plausible for a young, pure-minded Catholic girl— took the

bait.

Afterwards, Rayna hated herself anew for slandering Chris’s name in this manner. The truth was

that he’d never been “fresh” with her (to use the vocabulary of Rhonda’s generation)… much to

Rayna’s significant disappointment.

The girl made her mother promise to tell no one, not even Rayna’s father, and as might be

expected, Rhonda felt exultant about being asked to share in this “secret”; it proved, after all,

that she and her daughter were in fact the same person, after all; sharing one and the same

drive for purity, willing to make sacrifices for the sake of their moral integrity, etc. And the truth

was that Rayna was still a virgin, and intended to remain one until marriage. Still, the fact that

Chris had never in the least challenge this aspect of her moral code had caused her to grow

exasperated with him.

What sort of guy didn’t demand it, after all? What kind of man was so easily cowed by a girl’s

expression of faint unease, after a few furtive gropes and lingering kisses in the front seat of his

car? Rayna had quite liked the way it felt to connect her lips with his, and had burned with

sudden hunger on those rare occasions when he had dared to thrust his tongue into her mouth.

She’d never exactly reciprocated these tongue-assaults of his, though she’d never reproved

them, either. What she’d wanted was for him to press the point more insistently, to do his best

to make her relent. Of course, she expected that she would still hold out against these demands,

but she earnestly wished to be put to the test. (She dreamed about such an event on many a

night; in some dreams, she managed to hold her ground and stave off her incipient mouth-

deflowerment; at other times, she gave in with delirious joy, as their tongues tangled together

with intense fervor and ferocity.)

But Chris never did press the point, and Rayna was never put to the examination which so

ardently desired. He was, instead, so acutely aware of her heightened sense of

discombobulation that he demurred immediately, withdrawing his tongue with instinctive

caution, muttering an apology afterwards. He had rightly perceived her apprehension, but had

completely misunderstood its source; the origin of her anxiety stemmed not from fear of Chris

displaying undue aggression, but rather from a kind of delicious insecurity about how she would

respond to it. Would she “pass” the test, and preserve her purity… or “fail” it, and tumble hard

into sweet, sorrowful perdition?

Alas! She never found out, because Chris hadn’t pressed the point. Instead, his concern for

propriety had caused him to withdraw and beg forgiveness for his near-effrontery. Rayna, of

course, hadn’t corrected him on any of the occasions when this had happened; it was important

to her that he discover this issue on his own— if she had to tell him such things, what good was

that? She might as well give him an instruction manual to her soul; such a gesture would be a

waste of time. She wanted a man who knew her already, who sized her up instinctively, who

read her like a book, discerning her secrets, calling her on her wretched lies and deceitfulness. A

man would stand up to her nonsense, instead of always clamoring to humor her, by God!

Rayna realized, of course, that it was terribly unfair to expect such things from her young ex-

swain. For all of her foibles, the young Miss Kisley was quite self-aware, and the manifestations

of her moral cowardice— seen in such acts as egregiously breaking Chris’s heart, and then

misrepresenting him as a loathsome Lothario to her own mother— caused Rayna to hate herself

with a white-hot fury, amping up her sense of feeling like one in need of searing punishment

and ruthless correction.

Rayna couldn’t handle the notion that people would take her for having wronged Chris in so

blatant a manner as some were now saying (that is, that she’d broken it off with him to be with

an older man), and this is why she felt so lacerated by the extent of the vitriol directed against

her by those who’d instigated the gossip.

It was all quite dispiriting, but the real kicker came about a month later, at graduation time,

when it got around to Rayna that the girl she she’d always thought of as her best friend had

drunkenly come onto Chris at a party, and that Chris had drunkenly capitulated to her advances.

Things had apparently gotten hot and heavy in the guest room of the house, with some reports

that the hookup had indeed “gone all the way,” resulting in the mutual deflowering of both

parties involved.

While naturally destroyed by this news, and the full extent of the betrayal it represented,

Rayna— beneath the hale of tears that marked her grief— actually knew a keen, lancing stab of

pleasure. This was what she had deserved all along! It had served her right, hadn’t it?

Rayna’s treacherous friend, a sour-faced brunette named Berenice Bentley, had always envied

everything about Rayna. Though pretty, with delicate pixie features and long, dark lashes,

Berenice knew she was nothing compared to the Kisley lass, the true belle of the school. There

was nothing for Berenice to do but desperately resent what she lacked, compared to all that

Rayna had. Rayna had lustrous blond hair and limpid blue eyes; she possessed longer legs, an

ampler chest, and a lovelier face; Rayna made better grades, and had a cuter boyfriend; she was

more of a darling to her teachers, was more demonstratively loved by her parents, and proved

more limber and flexible in cheerleading and gymnastics. It was more than Berenice could take,

and she cried over it often, but she discussed it with nobody, much less Rayna herself.

But this long list of grievous difficulties was finally topped when Berenice learned of Rayna

breaking up with Chris. Upon learning this news, the long-fuming brunette found herself seized

with a particularly violent spasm of fury. It simply infuriated her! Not only did her prettier, more

popular friend feel it her province to date the most gorgeous boy in school… she also felt herself

entitled to dump said boy just before graduation! This, to her, was the finally unconscionable

act, equivalent to stealing the biggest piece of cake— the one with all of the delicious frosting—

only to fling it into the trash afterwards, as a gesture of imperious disregard. How dare she do

that?

Berenice Bentley secretly resented her best friend Rayna Kisley

Berenice couldn’t help but take it all quite personally, especially since her own boyfriend— a

cute enough guy, but hardly deliriously beautiful like Chris— had kicked her to the curb with

hideous disregard the day after the senior prom; which is to say, he’d split up with her just a few

hours after she’d allowed him to plunder her virginity in a sloppy, clumsy, messy, thoroughly un-

romantic manner, at the end of a grim evening which had left her bleary-eyed and puke-

stained… He’d muttered something about how it wasn’t her, it was him, or some such nonsense,

but she knew in her heart that he’d broken it off with her because he could now never look at

her the same way, in part due to shame over his altogether undistinguished performance, but

largely, Berenice suspected, because he couldn’t respect her for capitulating so eagerly to his

inebriated lusts.

The timing of this jilt was particularly humiliating, as it was followed mere days later by news

that truly rocked the school: namely, news of Rayna jilting Chris. Berenice, whose own tears of

grief and shame hadn’t yet dried, felt herself doubly wronged by her friend’s act, as it signified

to her not only a haughty dismissal of a lad for whom Berenice had long secretly pined, but also

a galling lack of care for her own misfortune. Could she not at least have waited to do Chris in

like that? Couldn’t she have had the decency to tend to Berenice’s heartbreak and humiliation

first? Isn’t that what a true friend would do?

Instead, Rayna had done what Berenice was convinced she positively delighted in doing: she

had, plainly, upstaged Berenice!

After all, when all the girls at school had been talking about Berenice being “such a slut” on

prom night, they had at least been talking about her. But now Rayna— longer-legged, ampler-

chested, perfect little Rayna— had pushed her out of the limelight. And everyone knew that

Rayna was such a “nice girl,” too; she was what the boys crudely called a “cock tease.” Of course

they spat this vulgarism with venom, trying to maintain a dismissive demeanor all the while, but

the lust in their eyes betrayed their real thoughts on the subject… Until now, Berenice had

generally been a “nice girl” too, though never so impeccably “nice” as Rayna was. Now,

however, she’d officially cashed in her “nice girl” card, and had even begun to enjoy her

newfound notoriety, until that goddamned blonde bitch had once more thrust her much

preferred “niceness” back into view, obscuring Berenice again as the sun outshines the moon.

*****************************************

Yes, beautiful Rayna Kisley— curse her!— had upped the ante, had made her advanced state of

purity conspicuously plain. Even though rumors abounded that she’d ditched Chris to take up

with some rich college boy (For the record, Berenice hadn’t started these rumors, but she

secretly approved of them even while she pretended to deplore them), Bernice felt that, in their

hearts, everyone knew that Rayna was simply above the carnal stirrings that she so unfailingly

elicited in the opposite sex. As high school graduation neared, Rayna was yet again on top,

above it all, just as she’d always been before.

It was in the full gloom of these reflections that Berenice Bentley first conceived the notion of

somehow getting the last laugh by finally doing what she’d been tempted to do for so long: play

dirty.

She began this diabolical campaign by sending a text message to Chris, offering her support

purely “as a friend”— she had, after all, gotten dumped just a few days before he had (she

appended a rueful frowny face emoticon to this part of the text): maybe they could get together

and commiserate in the mutual misery? Chris had responded eagerly to her overture, and a long

exchange followed, during which both parties poured out their respective hearts; they talked on

the phone a few times, then met for coffee, and their affinity for one another only grew as the

days passed.

Berenice and Chris commiserated over coffee.

Berenice took part in these interactions without telling anyone, least of all her friend Rayna, to

whom she nevertheless offered abundant support in the latter’s attempts to win the furious

information war being waged on several social media sites. Rayna little suspected the brewing

treachery of her shorter-legged, smaller-breasted, non-blonde friend. Generally, our heroine

had remained willfully ignorant of some of the more unconscionable aspects of Bernice’s

personality, though she at time vaguely suspected that her bosom friend resented her, for some

reason; she even sensed, periodically, that Berenice perhaps didn’t particularly treasure Rayna’s

well-being as much as she wished to let on.

Whenever she pondered such a notion, however, Rayna always reproached herself for her

suspicions. Had Berenice not been Rayna’s ever-constant chum throughout the years, her

faithful companion since grade school? Had they not spend innumerable nights at one another’s

houses, staying up late and giggling over boys? Considering such severe thoughts against her

friend struck her as the basest of mental treacheries, and caused Rayna to hold her instincts in

check, even after she’d caught her friend several times blushing and behaving in an

uncommonly coy and girlish manner around Chris. Normally, Berenice didn’t do the “helpless

damsel” routine around guys; she instead favored either acting brazenly forward (Rayna

teasingly called it her “bossy mode”) or totally disinterested. It was only in Chris’s presence that

she seemed to grow disconcertingly awkward: laughing nervously, fumbling with her words, and

altogether acting adorably disheveled. Rayna wasn’t sure what to make of this act. She

suspected things, of course— she was no fool— but at the same time (as already stated), she

hated herself for harboring such suspicions.

Anyhow, if truth were to be told, Berenice wasn’t much on Rayna’s radar screen during the bulk

of their shared senior year. With concerns mounting about college— first sending off

applications, then waiting to hear back from prospective institutions— and afterwards the

hullabaloo surrounding the Chris breakup, Rayna’s friend, alas, did get shoved into the more

remote recesses of her consciousness. Berenice, of course, noted well Rayna’s distraction and

resultant drying up of interest in her affairs, and this only magnified the intensity of the former’s

fugitive grievance against her “perfect” friend, this oh-so-immaculate soul, placed so high on the

heights of unscalable, heavenly beauty and grace that even the perfectest boyfriend imaginable

still wasn’t perfect enough for her…

So a poisonously surging hate, long in formation, took decisive root in Berenice Bentley’s long

sick heart. She found herself actually willing herself into doing the very thing that she had long

fantasized about doing, but had never previously possessed the diabolical gumption to carry

out.

And though from that moment forward she never once hesitated in the follow-through, never

looked back, never reconsidered, never entertained even a second of doubt.. still, once it was

over, and the planned seduction was carried out, Berenice marveled with some awe, and a good

bit of shame, at the extent to which she had truly abandoned herself to her willfulness and spite

against her childhood friend, to the point where she had performed an act of unfathomable

betrayal.

All of the sordid business with Bernice Bentley and her treachery was now “ancient history,” of

course.

Once she found out what her faithless friend had done, Rayna cut her out completely,

determining never to speak to her again. Being of natural aristocratic stock, Rayna found herself

ready access to a heretofore unexplored haughtiness of spirit; this usually generously-souled

blonde turned lordly and cold, contemptuously rejecting her brunette betrayer’s attempts at

contact following the event. (Berenice had actually sent a text asking “Can we talk?”— as lame

and ridiculous an opening line as Rayna could possibly imagine, given the circumstances, a move

she had only met with icy silence.)

Though she kept up a frosty front, however, Rayna was naturally enough devastated by

precisely the awful artlessness of how she’d been targeted. It all made sense to her now. She

could hardly believe that she’d been foolish enough to see things differently. She had fatally

underestimated the depths of her ex-friend’s potential for malice and deceit, and was now

paying the price for her willed ignorance. It should have been plain to her all along that Berenice

had been sweet on Chris, and bitterly resentful of Rayna, first for taking Chris for herself (the

creme of the first-fruits, as ever, granted exclusively to the belle of the ball), and then for

breaking his heart.

A different sort of girl— one less in the grips of that self-willed affliction known as

covetousness— would have viewed Rayna’s breakup with Chris as a positive development, since

it provided her with an opportunity finally to pursue the dimple-faced boy of her dreams;

instead, as earlier reported, it drove her to new heights of fury, as it seemed to suggest a further

assertion of determined contemptuous disregard on Rayna’s part… a perceived contempt which

Berenice had always suspected Rayna of holding towards herself, but which Rayna in fact had

never felt… until now.

Following Rayna’s initial shock— which of course was punctuated with a hale of tears, fresh

upon the ones she’d shed following the breakup itself— the girl indeed turned icily indifferent,

both towards the boy she’d unaccountably rejected, and towards the “friend” who’d provided

him such dubious comfort in his time of need. Yet at the same time, as previously observed,

Rayna’s soul harbored secret spasms of gratitude, both toward her ex-beau and her ex-friend.

She thrilled at the sensation of actually, for once, being vigorously, violently, and remorselessly

put in her place.

*********************

It was, however, a regrettably passing conviction of satisfaction. For the most part, Rayna knew

very little pleasure following her personal and public catastrophe. Still, she did rather relish the

notion of having been thwarted.

Yes! She had often fantasized scenarios along these lines. Of course, many of the thwartings she

had dreamed up were quite mundane, like being in a hurry to drive somewhere and getting

stuck behind some creep who deliberately went too slow, or being at the store and desperately

needing to make a purchase quickly, but having the clerk determinedly ignore her. What caused

her some excitement was precisely the aspect of deliberation in these acts. Had the

inconvenience merely been caused by negligence, there would have been no charge, no “buzz,”

derived from the ordeal, but the idea that someone would willfully cause her deliberate distress

by keeping her from getting what she wanted when she wanted it— that is to say, the idea of

being thwarted— filled her with nearly unbearable delight.

From there, of course, Rayna’s fancies ran a bit haywire, jumping, jerking, and somersaulting

through her mind with regularity, leaving stinging little particles of joy in their wake, leaving her

enraptured by multitudinous prospects, each of which presented itself with delicious

allurement. Indeed, some of the scenarios she dreamed up were so dizzyingly intense that she

blanched at the vividness with which they assaulted her; she marveled that her mind could

conceive such fulsomely rich, oftentimes outrightly scandalous ideas. Rayna was not generally

impressed by her own imaginative capacities; she did not reckon herself one possessed of great

creative powers; she would certainly not claim to be a visionary— and yet, the notions which

blossomed within her consciousness made her feel as if she were in the grips of some willful

demon who would never again let her rest.

******************************

Still, this extended reverie had ended, right around the time of her high school graduation. On

that day, when she had collected her diploma and moved her tassel to to the left, Rayna had

thereupon flung away all that had previously kept her anchored to her pitifully insular

adolescent experiences. Now she was going to college. It would be a new start, with new

friends: a clean break.

Her grades had been good enough to win her admittance to State, which was only a two-hour’s

drive from her childhood home. She relished the prospect… it was a perfect setting, it seemed:

near enough to come home for the weekend, when such was desired, but far enough away to

savor of novelty and freshness.

And yet… when the time came to part ways, when her dad and mom had given her hugs, told

her to stay in touch, and waved as they drove away (her mother growing slightly choked up at

the moment of release; her father gently deprecating his wife with little staccato grunts and

delicate pats on the arm as they disappeared from her sight), Rayna was dismayed to find

herself copiously sobbing and feeling brutally lonely.

***************************

Freshman “orientation” wasn’t in the least orienting; all of the ineffectual, benign, juvenile, and

stupid activities— in which she was forced to participate, to her consternation and annoyance—

only had the effect of flinging her into greater spasms of doubt and terror. What on earth was

she doing here? She felt light-years away from everything she’d ever experienced as familiar…

she wanted out!

She missed Chris, but knew he was by now totally out of reach, having begun attending a major

West Coast school on a baseball scholarship. Anyhow, didn’t he deserve better than her? He was

a nice boy, who ought to find, and no doubt would find, a nice girl: one just as pretty as Rayna,

but less vexingly complicated. Rayna winced to acknowledge these things, but could scarcely

deny their truth.

Rayna even missed Berenice a little, and for a time actually pondered the notion of returning her

“We need to talk” text, left months before. She had heard that her ex-friend was attending

classes at a community college in their hometown…. thinking of it one melancholy morning,

Rayna suddenly ached all over at the prospect of hearing the other girl’s voice again. She

pictured herself greeting Beri’s apprehensive visage in a spirit of generous reconcilement and

earnest forgiveness; she saw herself leaning in and kissing Beri’s cheeks, in that exotic fashion

that they favor in continental Europe…. She imagined her friend’s cheeks thoroughly drenched

with tears of remorse, her face crimson with shame at remembrance of her wretched deed; she

imagined herself tasting the salt of her friend’s atoning, extenuating grief. Then Rayna, too,

would weep— weep both for the pain which had befallen her, and for the anguish her righteous

anger had caused the girl who had so grievously wronged her, leading this transgressor on a

desperate quest to obtain absolution…

Then her friend, restored by grace, would press her own lips to Rayna’s own face, damp with her

own tears of glad emotional release. She, too, would savor the salinity of her dear companion’s

supplication, baptizing her new life in which she relinquished her previously-held bitterness;

thus, having drunk one another’s tears and cleansed one another’s soul in mutual communion,

Rae and Beri would once more be united in the sweet affection that had graced their golden

girlhoods.

These fancies were quite wonderful to contemplate, temporarily salving, as they did, Rayna’s

sudden pangs of homesick sorrow. Indeed, such is a central paradox of the human situation:

only when one is caught up in the throes of an agitated mental state can one truly obtain a

foretaste of what is sometimes called “the peace that passes all understanding.” When all is

pleasant and secure in a person’s life, he seldom finds himself moved to contemplation of

eternal bliss and heavenly harmony. In such circumstances, when reality seems perfectly

endurable, even delightful, one is tempted to think that there may in fact no longer be any need

for a realm of otherness, a place where all the pains, torments, miseries, and terrors of our all-

too familiar lives are miraculously and graciously expunged from the record.

And yet, if a person fortunate enough to find himself in such a happy state must watch himself

lest he be lulled into undue worldly dependency, he is also spared the temptation faced by the

despairing soul, who, in addition to all of the pains he already faces, must also beware, lest in his

desire for glorious illumination, he utterly lose all self-possession and become a credulous truant

against all common sense and dignified consciousness, awash as he lets himself become in his

sentimental reverie of lions and lambs lounging together in delicious satiation and contentment.

A person does, after all, have to “live in the world,” does need to, finally, “pull himself together,”

must rouse himself out of his torpor and go about his business.

And slowly our girl Rayna managed, against all of her own expectations, to pull herself out of her

funk. As ardently as she might, in her weaker moments, wish for reconciliation with the one who

had wronged her so terribly, the young and lovely heroine of this tale instead opted to stick to

her chosen path of renunciation of her past.

Assisting her on this account was her pride, which rallied mightily, as pride has a way of doing

after an interval of being kept in check against its will. She would not, she decided, slink back to

her hometown after making this graduated step to an advanced state; she would refuse to

cooperate with that silly part of her which desired reunion with her blessed, if benighted past.

She would, rather, march dutifully into her future, head held high!

Rayna believed in God, of course, to the point of considering herself a devout Catholic, as has

previously been established. She merrily attended Young Life gatherings, embracing the

Church’s teaching on sexuality and planning to remain a virgin until her wedding night. On the

other hand, Rayna was a lively and spirited young girl, who knew the allure and enticements of

being pretty— something that every girl knows well in her feminine soul, be she in fact pretty,

plain, or homely. She had long ago learned that boys could easily be manipulated , that the very

manifestation of singular feminine attractiveness often caused them to behave with silly and

ridiculous deference. She accepted this state of things readily, as one acknowledges that cats

have whiskers and that summer follows the spring, yet part of her always disdained herself for

enjoying how beautiful she was, for being so eager to catch her own eye in the mirror, for never

being able to resist fastidiously bedecking herself in a manner perfectly designed to win the

attention of men and the simultaneous snarky approbation and grudging admiration of women.

Yet she got away with it, because… well, why wouldn’t she? Who, after all, rules the world more

than a beautiful young woman, one with full awareness of her powers? Rayna enjoyed it as

much as could be expected, yet she also loathed herself for loving it, and she loathed the boys

for letting her get away with it. Boys were so very silly! Such a trifling, pathetically docile species

they were: all preening brawn and superficial ego, with nothing truly animating their spirits

except an egregious eagerness to please pretty girls like her.

Yes! It was true; all of the lads wished to do nice things for Rayna, to treat her like she was

“special.” They always behaved so anxiously around her, vying with one another for her favor.

She wanted to shout to them: I’m NOT really that great! I’m NOT worth the trouble! In fact, she

was as pitiful as they, if not more so. Yet they still always bowed down before her, always

deferred, always ceded the power to her. And while there were undoubtedly times when Rayna

very much enjoyed possessing this control, there were also— quite often!"— times when she

felt very eager to relinquish it. Yet, how? And on whom could she bestow such an unwanted

gift? Very few of the guys she’d known acted like they even wished for this endowment. Surely

their ancestors had viewed the possession of masculine headship as their birthright; perhaps

this tendency had gone too far, and had shaded into an obnoxious chauvinism at times, causing

abuse and imbalance in sex relations, but had it now been stamped out so utterly? Did no spark

of it remain, anywhere?

It caused Rayna many a forlorn moment to reflect on the possibility that she was living in an age

when manhood, as it had long been conceived, for better and for worse, had somehow ceased

to be, having been replaced by… what? Indeed, who were these impostor beings who now

stood in the skins of men, who assumed their (sometimes alluring) forms, who spoke in their

low, deeply-resonant voices, who, in short seemed like men, but actually weren’t? And where

were the beings who had once walked the earth as true men? They couldn’t all have vanished,

so soon…

Of course, Rayna was still a few months shy of her nineteenth birthday; she’d never known the

golden age she presumed once prevailed— when men indeed inhabited their own actual skins

without shame— yet she couldn’t help feeling an odd sort of nostalgia for this halcyon age, even

if it only existed in her mind. Her mind, after all, was the terrain she inhabited most often, since

it was where she found she could be happiest. Over the last year of high school, when she

should have been imbibing the glory, accolades, and acclaim of being the prettiest girl at her

school with the cutest boyfriend, Rayna had instead spent most of her time furtively

daydreaming of things which she found she could tell no one. Indeed, her indulgent fantasy life

came to isolate her, not just from her parents, teachers, and peers, but even from herself. She

simply couldn’t reconcile the behavior of her mind with the day-to-day activities of her life. She

couldn’t make her notion of herself as popularly perceived fit with what she knew about her

actual tendencies, propensities, and habits; this, in turn, led to our secretly tormented heroine

feeling drawn to surreptitious indulgences behind closed doors, activities which further

reinforced her shameful sense of fugitive isolation.

At one point, while in the middle of one of these secret rituals, Rayna awoke to herself, took

stock of her surroundings, perceived what she was doing, and found herself most frightfully

assailed with a sure conviction of horror.

To be clear, it was most emphatically not mere apprehension or embarrassment that caught

hold of her at that moment, nor was it only a sense of disassociation or discombobulation, nor

just a feeling of dismayed astonishment, though all of these emotions played a role in the

overall intensity of her response. Instead, Rayna’s consciousness was flooded with a terrifyingly

full-tilt, pell-mell surety of her own wretchedness, in spite of all appearances to the contrary.

Yet— deepest agony of all!— Rayna could tell no one of these things. Yet all the while she

remained amazed by her inexplicable ability to maintain the same public face, to go on playing

the role of the golden girl: envied, lauded, and fawned over by all, when such ferociously vile,

clandestine desires filled her being! How, oh how did the mask never slip, not even just a little

bit? She felt a not-infrequent intimation of awe regarding the sheer tenacity of appearances, but

this awe never quite replaced the horror she perpetually felt, a horror which had sprung into

being at that moment of awareness, that awful instant of clarity, where she saw herself as she

truly was, when she felt compelled to to look through the lovely veil that covered a hell-blasted

core…

She’d held out against the inevitability of the advancing tide for this long, but surely would soon

arrive at her breaking point, when the cruel, sharp waves of truth would at last wear away her

beautiful exterior and expose who she really was, rendering her gruesomely naked before the

wide, unblinking, unbelieving eyes of the world… Yet somehow, even amongst all of her very

public senior year troubles, that rough patch punctuated by what girls call “drama” these days,

Rayna still managed keep her most mortifying scandal— the scandal of her mind’s unseemly

obsessions— successfully hidden.

And now, away from home, shorn of the comforts and benefits of her blessed youth, left

dreadfully unattended in a strange place, Rayna still found herself miraculously unscathed when

it came to the deep-down shame that occupied her heart with such tenacity. Would she, after

all, “get away with it”? Would she never be “found out”? The very notion repelled her, made her

hold the entire human race in contempt, especially the male half. All a girl had to do was be

extremely pretty, and she could not be touched! No one would ever dare make things the

slightest bit difficult for such a one; instead, everyone would just fall at her feet with obsequious

regard, lingering with loathsome supplication; none would question her, or fight her, or quarrel

with her choices: she could do no wrong… simply because she was beautiful.

Did they not know, could they not not even comprehend, that beauty was indeed, as they say,

merely skin deep, that the mantle which lurked just beneath her comely crust was in fact a

ghastly molten Inferno? Why did they have to keep endlessly deferring to her, that gaggle of

clownish, clumsy little puppy dogs? Even the grown men were really just boys, nothing more.

Some of them didn’t even dare to attempt to catch her eye, averting their glances downward

like lowly dalits before a radiant, luminous Brahmin goddess.

Of course, those who did dare to meet Rayna’s glance generally didn’t impress her, either. These

were the so-called “players,” the ones who looked only to leer, who aimed to suck her up and

spit her out. There was something refreshing in their committed swagger and contrivedly

unflappable braggadocio, Rayna had to admit, but at the same time, of what worth were they,

really? Such guys possessed no substance whatsoever. She could (hypothetically) allow them to

take her, in a physical sense, to violate her in every way imaginable, and yet at the end of it all,

she knew she would still remain perfectly whole, essentially unchanged. Their petty little

intrusions would be mere distractions, nothing more. They may well plunder the treasure of her

virginity, but what, truly, would they steal from her? The premonition of anticlimax was palpable

and inescapable; these sad, puffed-up fellows wore it like aftershave.

It wasn’t that Rayna felt at all casual about the notion of forfeiting what at one time would have

been called her “maidenhead,” or held such a sacrifice to be of no import. Indeed, she had a

built-up anticipatory delectation of the presumably approaching event. But when she did allow

it to happen, it would have to be with someone who didn’t merely intend to take her bodily—

any smirking, leering, no-account nobody could do that— but also to fill her with the delirium of

the woman who knows that she has been truly ruled over: not just used, but taken… Again,

though, where to find such a one, a man capable of owning her fully: body, mind, and soul?

****************************

None of these considerations, of course, were at the forefront of Rayna’s consciousness during

her fitful first days in the university town, in which she tried desperately to catch her breath,

renew her bearings, and summon back her self-possession. When at first she felt tempted to

surrender her ambitions and return home, her mind state remained essentially mellow, if sad,

but when she finally opted to take the plunge, forging forward defiantly, whatever might befall

her in the process— it was, in short, only at that precise moment that she suddenly felt jabbed

by a sharp shock, as if being pricked all over her body by a thousand tiny needles. Yet the

sensation wasn’t painful, only bracing, and it somehow felt familiar, calling to mind some of

those behind-closed-door reveries in which she’d indulged so liberally of late, savoring of the

not-unpleasant taste which had lingered in her mouth in the midst of many an ardent dream…

What could it mean, this mysterious specter that had her reeling helplessly under the force of its

will? There was a hazy aura of ill-defined inevitability about it, somewhat like death itself; its

presence lent an impression that all had been predestined, that every heretofore occurring

event had long ago been whispered forth into being, and that attempting to resist this brazenly

assertive entity would only yield up a plague of mental turmoil for oneself.

Yet that, too, passed. The effects of the “attack”— for lack of a better word— abated, and Rayna

returned to her state of equilibrium, barely the worse for wear when her new roommate Sara

asked if she wanted to attend a party with her on Friday evening.

Rayna felt awash in wariness when she first heard the word “party.” She had never been into

drugs or alcohol, just as she’d determinedly opted out of premarital sex, and “parties” usually

encompassed heavy displays of both chemical and carnal indulgences. Perhaps detecting her

unease, Sara assured Rayna that it was sure to be a tame, quiet affair, in all likelihood rather

boring, but that she (Sara) didn’t just want to go alone. Her father was on the faculty, she

explained; he was in fact the head of the English department, and he and his wife— Sara’s

stepmother— hosted an annual “back to school” event, in which English faculty and a host of

students and grad students were invited.

Sara revealed that she felt a certain obligation to attend, even though she’d never gotten along

with her stepmother, even to the point of having spent much of the final two years of high

school laboring at various crappy jobs to raise money just so she would be able to afford a dorm

room, and thus be enabled to get out of the house.

She paused momentarily after relating these things, and shrugged a bit awkwardly, seemingly

concerned that she may have shared too much about herself. Rayna studied her thoughtfully.

Plain, bespectacled, and rather shy, she gave the impression of one who had often been

overlooked. A studious girl, no doubt, one who had conspicuously prioritized her grades over

her social life. There was, however, pride in her eyes, as well as evidence of buried reserves of

abundant feistiness. She didn’t want to just knuckle under to Rayna or cede to her the role of

social “better,” though she also seemed painfully aware of her own plainness, particularly in the

presence of one so beautiful as Rayna, and appeared, in spite of herself, to suspect her social

inferiority in the company of such patent perfection. Still, the girl refused to signal her

submission, and Rayna immediately loved her for this. She found herself very taken with this

new girl, plain but proud as she was, and felt sure they would become fast friends.

Rayna decided that she would go to the party, but not because she desired to mix and mingle—

she was, after all, still getting over her homesickness, in spite of her newly-acquired mental

determination— but merely as a favor to her new friend, whose request had been so

refreshingly un-sniveling in tone that it had won her heart. Without condescension, Rayna

reflected upon the myriad ways that beauty can provide a shield against insecurity, to the point

where, much like with wealth, one feels generally insulated against matters which are of grave

and constant concern to others who aren’t so fortunate. On the other hand, how great a burden

can beauty be! When in its company, people can’t help but sit in entranced awe, as if awaiting

an answer to some overwhelming question.

How could they not see that the beautiful one, too, is also looking for the selfsame answer, and

that this answer eludes her as maddeningly as it does everyone else? The plain and the pretty in

fact both had a burden to bear and a price to pay; they were more united than either of them

sometimes realized.

**********************************

So the pretty Rayna accompanied the plain Sara to the latter’s “lame” party that fateful Friday

night.

On the way, while chatting with her newfound friend, Rayna found herself again assailed with a

peculiar sensation. This time, instead of needle-pricks, she suddenly found herself grow

extremely cold, as if her body temperature had been reduced to an unnatural level, in spite of

the fact that the air conditioner in Sara’s car was broken and the girls were riding with the

windows open on a sultry, mid-August evening. There was no natural or logical explanation

whatsoever for this physical transformation, and though it frightened and bewildered her,

Rayna dared not share the experience with her companion. Just like her scandalous solitary

rituals, this too would have to remain a secret from the world.

For somehow, in some manner, she connected the two phenomenon as springing from one,

identically mysterious source, though she couldn’t discern, much less define, what this source

was made of, or where it gained its strength, or why it held her so tightly in its thrall, rendering

her patently paralyzed.

Over the course of the drive, Rayna somehow managed to keep her mind’s panic contained

regarding her body’s inexplicable transformation, one which she dearly hoped was merely

temporary in effect, and would have no malignant side-effects. She kept her wits about her

while Sara talked, though she could barely pay attention to what her companion was saying,

fixated as she was upon her alarming metamorphosis into an ice-being… Lest one think it were

all merely taking place in her mind, Rayna even clearly discerned her impossibly frigid breath

condensing in the warm air, as if it were an icy winter evening rather than a muggy August night.

This incredible sight troubled her still further, lest she betray her altered state to the girl behind

the driver’s wheel, and cause her to become so overcome with astonishment that she might

lose focus on the road. Fortunately, however, Sara had assumed a pensive mindset, which led

her to be so lost in her own thoughts that she was precluded from noticing bizarrely

preternatural events unfolding in her midst.

Truth be known, Sara found herself preoccupied by a rather embarrassing interior conflict of her

own. Namely, she felt discomfited by how much she felt drawn to this newfound friend. In fact,

she found herself wanting to reveal things to radiant Rayna, things that she hadn’t shared with

others. At the same time, Sara’s defenses had kicked in ferociously, making her desirous to

maintain a scrupulously cool exterior, one which announced firmly that nothing was amiss with

her and that none of her needs had been unmet: i.e., “nothing to see here.”

This intense inner indecision which afflicted Sara resolved itself in her maintenance of an overall

air that most observers would mistake for thoughtful detachment, but which to Sara was merely

a kind of default demeanor, signifying her simultaneous desire to connect and to withdraw, the

push-pull compulsion that she often experienced in the presence of those who tempted her to

speak the words on her heart, even as her cautious and skittish mind worked overtime to

extricate from the feared emotional morass that surely awaited when she took the fateful step

of “forcing the moment to its crisis” by revealing the entirety of the landscape of her battered

soul.

Rayna, by the very fact of her beauty, had provoked this fierce private consternation in Sara,

who indeed felt slightly shaken by the extent to which she ardently wished to unburden herself

of the dark thoughts which had plagued her daily of late, all because of the gentle, gracious

luminescence of her new friend. Yet at the same time, she loathed herself for this weakness,

and rather resented the effect that Rayna’s presence had upon her, so for the bulk of the drive

to her father’s house, Sara mostly answered Rayna’s earnest “icebreaker”-style questions with

polite terseness, heedless all the while that the girl who was inquiring so innocuously about her

background and interests was simultaneously keeping up a stoic struggle to retain her wits while

enduring an inexplicable psychic invasion of her senses.

Driver Sara, little suspecting that any such mysterious trauma occupied the consciousness of her

passenger, glanced over occasionally, with furtive care, to behold anew the lovely countenance,

frequently lit by the mellow glare of passing headlights, of her interlocutor. At one point, when

Rayna told Sara “I love your dress”— just the sort of "girl talk" Sara knew so well and suspected

so strongly of being motivated by pathological disingenuousness and a hidden supercilious

contempt— the latter actually wanted to become angry. Yet she couldn’t become angry,

because she realized to her horror that she truly believed in her companion’s sincerity. (And

indeed, she was right; Rayna found her dress— a simple, black, no-frills knee-length number—

quite beautiful.) In response to this heartfelt compliment, the discomposed Sara muttered a

thank you, pushed a strand of hair from her face, and found to her own bemused astonishment

that her eyes had welled up with tears at the small but unexpected kindness shown by this girl

of such heavenly radiance.

Thus each of the two young women remained ironically unaware of the other’s state of mind :

Rayna, preoccupied with the unseemly frigidity of her body temperature, knew nothing of the

plain girl’s silent weeping; and Sara, overcome with her fugitive emotions, knew nothing of the

pretty girl’s frightfully inexplicable corporeal transformation. Once they neared the house, both

girls’ issues managed to resolve themselves; Sara’s tears dried and Rayna, much to her relief,

found herself at last thawing out.

Yet her heart had now begun to beat faster, and suddenly, as the two girls ascended the steps to

the doorway on the front porch, Rayna now found herself flushed by a feverish heat.

“Good Lord, how will I ever survive this night?” she asked herself, and God, with some urgency.

The two girls entered the noisy house, and it was at that moment, for reasons she never quite

understood— much as she thought about it afterwards— that Rayna’s eyes were drawn along a

trajectory where they met the gaze of the azure-eyed, defiantly overdressed stranger,

previously mentioned at the start of this tale.

At this very instant, Rayna felt the heat go out of her, and saw— yes, quite literally saw!— this

heat, which had previously occupied her frame, now hover in the air between herself and this

intense-countenanced stranger, before finally dissipating like smoke.

“You okay?” she heard a voice behind her ask. It was Sara, who, after remaining ignorant of

Rayna’s ice-ification in the car for the entirety of the ride, had suddenly taken note of her

friend’s discomforture. Rayna idly nodded, but found she couldn’t help but fixate upon the now-

empty spot where she’d seen visible evidence of her premonition fade into the miasmal ether of

the crowded house, in which conspicuously hung the sickly-sweet smell of pot…

The man had looked right at her! A pleading request, bordering on an outright command, had

animated his exquisite eyes while he regarded her, but now he was gone. Had he even been

there at all, or had she merely hallucinated him?

Rayna found, however, that she wanted to find him, wished earnestly for him to be real and not

a mere chimera. She glanced around in all directions, feeling momentarily a bit frantic, like a

pampered pet who has lost sight of its master. But Sara again called Rayna back to herself,

taking her by the arm, and leading her into the next room, where she introduced her friend to

her father, the head of the English department, who was clearly either drunk or high; Rayna

couldn’t tell which, but suspected both.

The man, bearded, balding, scrawny, and clad in a “London Calling” T-shirt, did not impress

Rayna favorably, and when he greeted her with the tipsy mutter of “Oh my, what have we

here?” she did her best to transform the grimace that came to her lips into a stiff smile, without

much success. They extricated from him, and Sara rolled her eyes at her dad’s besotted

obnoxiousness. “He’s about to divorce my stepmom,” she confided ruefully, and he’s already

living it up again…” She pronounced the phrase “living it up” as if holding her nose to protect

herself from a fierce and bitter stench.

The girls mingled with other faculty members, one of whom offered them a hit from a bong,

which they both politely refused. After this moment, having finally run the gauntlet of inebriated

adults and at last blessedly alone, Rayna and Sara fell together onto a couch in the spare living

room, giggling madly all the while, having bonded over their shared embarrassment at the

ghastly depredations of “cool” old people. They now talked freely, without reserve or restraint,

this pretty-plain pair, reveling in the glow of feeling slightly less alone in a cruel and cannibalistic

world.

But just as Rayna had begun to relax amidst this insufferable din of drugged reveling and

prodigiously ripening middle-aged licentiousness— the queasy unseemliness of fortyish

pedagogues and thirtyish pedagogues-in-training acting like frat boys and party girls— she all at

once felt gripped by another premonition of approaching apprehension. There were no physical

symptoms this time around; she neither felt pricked by needles, nor infused with arctic frigidity,

nor feverishly hot; she simply sensed, with a crescendo of conviction that nearly bowled her

over, that she would soon find herself confronted by a fearsome presence.

And, sure enough, her pale, well-dressed man appeared again a moment later, entering the

room from the far doorway. This time, for whatever reason, Rayna was emboldened enough to

hold his stare unabashedly, due to this force which again had stolen into her body, causing an

altered state of mind.

Indeed, Rayna felt gloriously drunk at this point, though in fact she hadn’t touched a drop. But

her boldness wavered, because the man’s stare was so piercing that it caused her to blink, then

lower her eyes like a docile puppy. Then, angry with herself for her inconstancy, she once more

willed herself to look him in the face. And now, instead of merely sitting thunderstruck before

the full, pummeling force of his countenance, she began to notice other aspects of his

appearance. Aside from his eyes, which had speared her pitilessly from the start, she also noted

that he was quite tall, rather thin, and severely pale. His milky complexion and gaunt frame, in

fact, contributed to a rather disconcerting sense that, in spite of his chiseled aristocratic

features, he could almost be described as somewhat sickly-looking.

Yet the impression he gave of not exactly being well was belied by a hearty and resonant

possession of spirit, an animation in his bearing which suggested— or rather, asserted— a pure

intimation of raw, primal power. And yet, Rayna also saw that this sternly imposing will seemed

to be tempered by another softer, sadder trait, which she found more difficult to identify. It

could have been that he seemed, in a way, exhausted, like one aware of having run his course,

yet still unable to catch sight of the elusive, much yearned for, finish line.

Or was he merely jaded, his spirt spent not so much by weariness as by a frightful absence of

some essential component, once possessed, now lost? Rayna, still pinned down by the lancing

beam of his commanding gaze, found herself rooted to the spot, not because she wanted to

remain where she was, but because she found herself simultaneously pulled in two exactly

opposite directions at once. She ardently desired to run right up to him, and yet with equal

fervor, wished to flee from his sight. He enticed and terrified her, all at once.

And again, before she’d even taken stock of his sudden barrage of contradictory desires, he had

once more vanished from her line of vision… When had their shared gaze been broken, and who

had broken it first? Rayna, breathless and dazed, found that she could not answer this self-asked

question. Indeed, to her, it seemed that his eyes were still boring into hers; their image

remained seared into her own eyesight, as if imprinted onto her very irises.

Sara turned to her friend, looking quizzical. Other girls in a similar circumstance would have had

something to say, some ribald or gently teasing comment, but Sara wasn’t that type of girl. The

incident which had unfolded, and which she had observed, did of course cause her to feel some

wonder and astonishment, but she drew no immediate conclusions, reasoned or otherwise,

from the unspoken exchange she had seen take place between her friend and this odd,

disconcerting stranger, here in this smoke-choked room.

Rayna sensed her companion’s questioning stare, and it briefly snapped her out of the depths of

her reverie. She looked back at her friend, but said nothing. Sara noted that the bewilderment

which had crept into her pretty companion’s face presently came to be tinged with a different

aspect, one which seemed to constitute a plea of sorts, though whether it signified a cry for help

or a heartfelt request for indulgence from a feared judgment, Sara couldn’t tell.

Sara nodded to Rayna solemnly. Not a word had been spoken between the two girls, but an

unuttered understanding had been reached: this was a serious matter, not to be referred to

again unless absolutely necessary. That which had just taken place between Rayna and that

mystery man, both girls now comprehended, had attained an alarming level of cruciality;

whatever it was all about, it was without question a painfully weighty affair, which couldn’t be

discussed without trivializing it or otherwise draining it of profundity. The anxieties and hopes

most alive to our minds are precisely those things we never discuss with others, much less allow

ourselves to think about, if we can possibly help it. Such indeed is the stuff of dreams… and

nightmares.

The moment passed, their conversation resumed, but not without a certain air of foreboding

lingering over, under, and around the words they spoke. However, neither girl called attention

to the dark presence which had crept into both of their minds, clouding their thoughts

profoundly.

Again, both perceived that this central subject must not be broached. Yet this secret

preoccupation took a very different form in each girl’s consciousness. For Sara, the “plain” girl,

the scenario played out before her eyes as it would for a spectator to a grand, somber, and

terrible ritual; there was about the moment a certain savor of fatalism, of a fearsome

inevitability that could not be contested, much like death itself.

For Rayna, however, the moment hung pungently in her mind like bitter incense, suffusing her

spirit with a mingled sense of dark apprehension and strange delight; she felt somewhat like one

who secretly adheres to an ardently-held creed, who finds herself finally called to a sure

martyrdom she had long been deeply dreading and eagerly anticipating; her nerves rattled and

her palms moistened, even as her heart swelled with a wild joy.

*******

Presently, Rayna found occasion to excuse herself.

By this time, the party was showing every sign of dutifully drawing itself down. Most guests had

staggered away, one hoped with certain “designated drivers” in tow: namely, those who had

refrained from partaking in spirits or substances at this gathering. A small number of stragglers

still lingered, mostly clustered in corners, engaged in feeble banter over trivialities— some

striving hard for caustic relevance, others settling for mere desultory gossip. Rayna wished only

to escape the fetid smoky closeness for a moment, to step outdoors in order to draw strength

from the full, lustrous vigor of the warm night air. Yet immediately as she stepped out of the

back door, she found herself lurching with a severe start, and felt all of her strength leave her;

her body buckled hard against the sudden force of an abrupt wind gust. Even more

disconcertingly, the hem of her dress flew up almost to her chest, and Rayna quite involuntarily

shuffled about with dismayed embarrassment, pushing her skirts down frantically but without

success, as the fierce blast of wind would not be denied…

Yet as soon as this comically futile wrestling match against the mischievous elements had

started, it suddenly was over. Rayna glanced about her with keen trepidation, even as she

adjusted her skirt pleats anxiously. To her keen relief, it appeared that no one nearby had

witnessed her humiliating molestation. Still, the outdoors had proved to be treacherous

territory, so Rayna made haste, doubling back to take shelter before nature could let loose with

any more unbalancing, dignity-robbing jabs at her confidence, security, and overall sense of

well-being.

As she approached the door and reached for the knob, however, Rayna was dealt an even

greater shock. For the door swung open of its own accord, and our heroine now found herself

face to face with the same towering, azure-eyed, sepulchrally-complexioned man who had

haunted her twice before that evening before disappearing preternaturally, seeming each time

to vanish into the ether.

This time, though, when she might have wished for him to prove insubstantial, he struck her as

all-too-permanently fixed to the spot. Had he in fact seen the wind blow her skirts up, just

moments before?

Rayna gasped audibly, cast a furtive glance at her feet, blushed with intense mortification. She

muttered something, cleared her throat, and tried to slip past him back into the house, but the

man didn’t move out of the way. She raised her eyes to plead with him silently; he looked back,

studying her intently, like an artist scrutinizing his canvas. Presently he shifted his stare, nodded

curtly, and stepped aside to give Rayna space to enter. This time, however, it was Rayna who

didn’t budge. For some reason, she found she wanted to stay within his eyesight, wanted to

allow his cool, careful gaze to caress her softly.

She blushed anew at these disconcertingly brazen thoughts, before another, even wilder one

alighted in her mind: suddenly, instead of fearing another modesty-robbing blast of wind, Rayna

positively longed for one, that she may be fully and fearfully exposed before this oddly familiar

stranger. She wanted him to see every inch of her long, tan, cheerleader’s legs, wanted him to

espy the black silk panties that clung to her crotch… What? Did she even find herself avidly

aroused by these imaginings? Were her loins moistening fervently right now, right here, in the

heart of the dark of this sultry night, on the stoop of the backdoor of this strange house in this

strange town? That wasn’t like her! And yet it was like her, as only she knew, but had somehow

temporarily forgotten in her abrupt loss of all mental self-possession in the presence of this

sinisterly dapper creature…

For just a moment, Rayna panicked. Could he see what had crossed her mind? Did he somehow

know her thoughts, simply from looking at her face? She met his eyes again, just daring him to

smirk for having unmasked the treasured secrets of her buried consciousness. Instead, she

found that he looked troubled, almost dismayed. When he finally spoke, he uttered the last

words she would ever have expected to hear under such circumstances.

“You poor thing,” he pronounced.

He spoke with a clipped, regal air, almost sounding like a high-class Brit, yet his intonation was

devoid of any noticeable accent or detectable dialect, and his tone struck her not as haughty or

dismissive, but as richly and resonantly… sorrowful.

Amazed by this, and a bit miffed, Rayna made a non-comprehending face; still, the man felt

disinclined to react. Instead, he walked past her, and began striding briskly away, having

apparently come to an abrupt decision to leave the party. Rayna-- bewildered, flummoxed, and

still burning with a queer conviction of unsatiated hunger-- found herself sorely vexed... it just

couldn’t end like this! She mustn’t just let him disappear again! After a panicked moment,

swaying gently as if drunk, she kicked off her heels and took off in a sprint after the man.

"HEY!" she shouted, trying to sound like she meant business, yet her voice quavered

uncontrollably. The man kept walking, as if he hadn't heard her. Why was she doing this? Why

did she not just cease with this mad chase? She wanted to turn around, but found she couldn't;

she continued to run after him; he was drawing her along, as surely as if she were led by a

string; try though she might, she could in no wise stop herself.

"HEYYY!" she yelled again, louder this time, with all of the fanaticism of a young woman in

desperate straits, unable to contain herself. She couldn't relate to what she was doing, felt so

alienated by her own behavior that she actually seemed quite apart from herself; with alarming

detachment, she heard herself screaming , saw herself running, felt abject horror at her

wretched and incomprehensible display of emotional abandon.

Then he quite unexpectedly turned round to face her again. Perfectly illumined as he was under

a streetlight, Rayna now drank in his features in more extensive detail: his close-cropped hair,

his elegantly chiseled forehead, his patrician nose, his cruelly sensual lips... It seemed to her that

every pore, line, and stray whisker on his face now shone before her, highlighted by the blaze of

the lamp. The man had assumed a sort of savage glow; the yellow light heightened the effect of

his already sallow complexion, giving him a jaundiced aspect. His eyes now held her with what

looked like a mingling of irritation, curiosity, and sympathy. Rayna again found her mind cast

into turmoil by this strange miscegenation of clashing impressions. The sense she had of his

earnest interest in her (for whatever purpose) had her tingling with a newfound thrill which

savored of untapped possibilities, but that nascent hope was instantly obliterated by a more

intense feeling aroused by the pity he clearly felt for her.

That he should pity her! It angered her to think of it. Just who was he, anyway, this somehow

faintly cadaverous, yet strangely enticing creature? He was tall, she now noted: frighteningly

tall, in fact. Hyperawareness of his stature, and of her own tininess beside him, only made Rayna

unthinkingly angrier at the insouciance of his arrogance.

"What did you mean by that?" she nearly shrieked at him, so greatly was her blood now boiling.

In response, he said nothing, but merely cocked his head slightly, attempting to gauge the

substance that dwelt behind her question.

"I'm not a 'poor thing'!" she declared. She tried to speak these words commandingly, yet her

voice broke ever-so-slightly on the final syllable. Taking a deep breath, which almost sounded

like a choked sob, she repeated: "I'm not a 'poor thing'! Don't you call me that!"

Now he looked impatient, like he'd heard quite enough. His face grew supremely lined and

hardened, and Rayna quailed inwardly at the emphasis of his bearing. The heat of her rage

dissipated instantly, and she almost apologized-- though she honestly couldn't think what she'd

done wrong-- because she couldn't bear to think of him continuing to hold something against

her at that moment. She wanted to plead, beg, crawl; wanted to disavow herself utterly; wanted

to perish, to be vaporized, to become nothing. But when he next spoke, in a low, gravelly

whisper, she found herself taken back anew.

"What?" she asked, unsure what she'd just heard him say.

"I said, 'You may do it, if you want," he repeated. He spoke louder this time, with an insinuating

growl.

She gazed at him in earnest, shocked confusion, though within the dark, silent womb of her

incomprehension, something new was in the process of being conceived. It was only floundering

inchoately at present, but nevertheless had come alive inside her, having been miraculously self-

incarnated. He discerned that she knew his meaning, even while not directly understanding him.

Just as she had recognized both contradictory aspects of his regard for her-- his curiosity as well

as his concern-- so he now beheld in her lovely young face a similarly glorious ambiguity: an

intimation of near illumination behind a countenance full of fierce, fiery astonishment. He licked

his lips, as if in anticipation of enjoying a fine meal.

"You may curtsy to me, my dear," he said, his tone even, his face unsmiling.

Although Rayna was only half-surprised by the answer, she still found herself squinting her eyes

in amazement. She couldn't believe that he had actually spoken such a thought, thus rendering

naked before the world what ought to have stayed modestly hidden away in the realm of mere

abstraction.

"You do know how to curtsy, don't you?" he asked, sounding only mildly interested in the

matter, conveying a sense of courteous amusement, his voice assuming an archly ironic lilt.

Rayna began to grow flummoxed again, outraged by his insolence; angry as she felt at his

effrontery for asking the impertinent question, however, she was even more upset because she

felt embarrassed by the answer, which she did not tell him. Still, in the thick of this dark, humid

evening, his bright face, yellowed by the spectral flare of the street lamp, perceived well enough

the crux of the circumstance.

"You poor, poor thing," he said again, with real, disconcerting compassion. Then suddenly, he

began to cough violently, nearly doubling over as each spasm wracked his frame. Rayna, quite

confused, stood and gaped at him, rapturously transported by her extreme shock at this sudden

transformation. Was this elegantly cadaverous man, after all, not quite well?

Seconds later, he had recovered fully and was studying her again with an even greater degree of

urgent intensity. His face had grown slightly flushed after the upheaval of his lungs; the red in

his face, mingled with the yellow of the lamp's light, now gave his features a kind of sickly,

tubercular aspect. She found herself wanting to reach out to him, to lend him aid and counsel,

to nurse him back to health. Yet she dared not reach out to him, or presume upon the liberty of

making any such gesture; instead, she could only be still, as the cruel, capricious wind again

began to tear at her, as if with invisible claws. It clutched again at her skirts, flinging them about

with a strength so savage that it seemed surely personal in nature. Once more her crotch came

to be mercilessly exposed, as her hair whipped about her face wildly, obscuring her features and

rendering her unrecognizable as a distinct being from the wild, whirling world that tossed her

about. This time, she did not fight the dehumanizing force which, as before, pulled, pushed,

prodded, and gnawed at the fabric of her being, rendering her a blank, faceless lump of flesh

before him, something to be shaped and molded by the will of Another...

As the rocketing gusts flung their furies into her face, Rayna heard the man again start to cough.

Was he, too, utterly helpless, completely at the mercy of forces beyond either of their control?

Would this murderous, meddlesome wind take them both down? Still, even if he was indeed

made of the same perishable stuff as she, he was nevertheless surely her ruler, appointed from

on high to bring her low; she must "reck his rod"; she must yield to his will with fastidious care,

must obey his commands to the absolute letter, must display proper deference under penalty of

punishment; it could not be otherwise!

These strange cogitations lanced through Rayna's mind even as the wind smacked and lashed at

her, like a butcher pounding raw meat; she buckled, swayed, and finally relented; she must

show him that she was his and his entirely, to do with as he pleased.

As this conviction swept over Rayna, her nerves were suddenly becalmed, and overwhelming

sense of peace enveloped her. Though the wind continued to shake her without mercy, she

nevertheless now felt caught up by some other force, even stronger and more compellingly

resolute; it gave her legs the will to move, placed her right foot behind her left and caused her

to bend both knees while her hands caught the swinging hem of her dress and held it firmly as

she lowered her head to him in worshipful supplication.

The wind at once ceased as Rayna Kisley curtsied before her heart's new master, whose eyes

now blazed with admiration and joy as he regarded the stooped figure before him.

II. THE KISS

What happened afterwards (after, that is, that improbable moment when Rayna Kisley found

herself curtsying before the man before whom her heart, for some reason, swooned, though

she barely knew this overdressed, cerulean-eyed stranger, didn't know him at all, in fact, except

for the fact that something about him had seemed hauntingly familiar all along), Rayna later

found that she had no memory of.

It was Sara who had discovered her, weirdly frozen in that very pose of elegant submission--

which Rayna had never before assumed in her life, had never felt compelled to assume, though

she realized now that it was because no man had previously drawn such a gesture out from the

depths of her feminine spirit-- and had urged her to "come back to earth."

Indeed, Rayna had seemingly drifted into some kind of trance state, one which enabled her to

remain in the curtsying posture for who knows how long (several minutes, perhaps even an

hour?), her eyes downcast, her hands clutching at her skirts, knees bent, her right leg behind her

left, right knee at a ninety-degree angle from her left knee: in short, an altogether improbable

pose to be able to hold for even a few seconds without incurring great discomfort.

When Sara had come across her friend, she was relieved at first (her disappearance from the

party for an extended length of time had caused her concern), then a bit alarmed when it

seemed that Rayna had become some sort of human statue; first, she tapped her friend on the

shoulder, and when this had failed to rouse her, she took to shaking her by the shoulders, at first

lightly, then with greater urgency as she began to worry that Rayna had perhaps sunk into some

sort of strange coma-like fugue state.

After even a violent shake had only minimal effect, Sara really began to panic, and she began to

yell out Rayna's name, even pulling her hair and slapping her face out of distress that her friend

might just be lost for good. Finally, Rayna began to show signs of reviving; her eyelids fluttered

lightly, but her face still looked distressingly blank; at this, Sara clutched her friend's face and

brought her own into mere inches' proximity, shouting, "Rayna, wake up, wake up, Rayna,

Rayna, wake up, please!"

Finally, the deep trance into which our young heroine had tumbled appeared to wear off; Rayna

came to herself, though she looked genuinely disoriented, and barely spoke. Sara, relieved, led

her companion by the hand back to their car; during the ride back to campus, Rayna collapsed

into a deep sleep; she revived briefly when they arrived at their dorm, but after Sara led her past

a few mellowly inebriated, utterly oblivious students hanging out in the halls and to their room,

she collapsed onto her bed and slept in her evening dress for ten hours straight.

"Must've been a hell of an encounter with that weird guy," Sara muttered ruefully to her friend's

unconscious, peacefully-dozing frame.

******************************

When the two girls discussed the events of the evening, Rayna found herself feeling a bit

defensive when it came to revealing her thoughts about the strange man with whom she had

first exchanged glances, before the two had engaged in a brief, odd bit of heated banter-- as

electric in its intimacy even as it was perplexing it its true nature-- after which she had, acting

upon his flagrant dare, made the most curious gesture to him, that of the curtsy. And she had

seemingly held that curtsy for some subsequent span of time, during which she had fallen into

the sort of disassociated state that still occupied her motionless frame when Sara found her

some time afterward.

Sara, first of all, wanted to know just why Rayna had been standing in what she described as

"such an unnatural position." Rayna, blushing just slightly, had muttered in reply, "It was a

curtsy."

"A curtsy!" Sara repeated with some incredulity, as if her friend were informing her of some

grotesque misunderstanding. Then, "Why were you frozen in the act of curtsying, then?"

"I have never done it before, never in my life," Rayna stated, though this certainly wasn't an

answer to Sara's pointed query. "i had never, never in my life, ever even considered curtsying

before anyone, much less a man..." And it was true. The very gesture seemed so laughably old-

fashioned, like something you would see in a costume epic set in the 18th century.

"So he made you do it?" Sara asked.

"He didn't make me do anything," Rayna answered. "I did it because I wanted to. I did it

because... because somehow it was the only thing I could do., the only thing I desired to do..."

And I'm not in the least sorry that I did it, she thought but didn't say, though her eyes now

flashed in fiery defiance, as if she were daring her friend, or anyone, to voice an objection.

"It's just so bizarre," Sara observed. "Who is this man?"

Sara had, it seemed, taken the liberty of making a series of inquires while her friend slept. She

asked her stepfather-- the very one who had embarrassed her the previous night with his

gruesome display of divorced, middle-aged licentiousness-- as well as several others in the

English department, if they had any clue who the tall, pale, overdressed man was, and none of

them seemed to know. All had merely assumed that he was some new hire that they hadn't

been informed of; even her stepdad, the head of the department, who really ought to know

who was employed and who wasn't, told his daughter that he figured the guy was "some

adjunct who had been sent our way from the dean's office, someone who was trying a little too

hard to make a strong first impression...." Many had seen him, but few, if any, had exchanged

any words with him.

"What was he doing there?" Sara asked. When Rayna shrugged, Sara began to feel somewhat

disconcerted by her friend's lack of inquisitiveness on this subject. Had the gaunt, suited specter

been some sort of interloper, perhaps even an imposter? The matter seemed of some import to

Sara, but Rayna exhibited little even in the way of curiosity, much less suspicion.

For her part, Rayna, sensing Sara's absence of interest in hearing about Rayna's true experience

of the previous night, and further intuiting that she wouldn't respond with empathy, sensitivity,

or even understanding, our heroine balked at even telling her the sort of things she actually

ached to share. How had she become so cold that she was even breathing frost into the air, and

afterwards, so hot that she might collapse from fever, and pricked by invisible pins and needles

just prior to the mystery man's initial appearance? These were sensations that she wished she

could discuss with her friend, but couldn't, due to the fact that these bodily experiences were

connected somehow to the personage whom she had encountered, the one whom Sara seemed

determined to view as some kind of menace. In fact, Rayna felt she'd already said too much

when speaking of the curtsy and what had prompted her to do it. She certainly couldn't tell her

friend what she suspected Sara already discerned: that Rayna had been uniquely captivated by

this figure, for reasons she could not now articulate.

Sara, unlike Rayna, had suffered quite a few heartbreaks through the years; the boys whom

she'd dated had, she felt, ultimately shown little regard for her; if they could not use her to their

satisfaction, they generally opted to discard her and "move on." She'd been counseled by

certain well-meaning mentors, including her own mother (embarrassingly enough) that she

ought to be satisfied with humbler, homelier lads than the ones she'd tended to gravitate

towards; boys of that sort, she'd heard again and again, were far more likely to be trustworthy

when it came to matters of the heart. And yet, though she'd tried to take her mother's advice, it

never worked; she resented having to lower her standards, simply on account of being "plain."

Further fueling her fury, as well as injuring her feelings and feeding her insecurities, was the fact

that her mother, whose beauty she had mostly failed to genetically inherit, would actually tell

her own daughter to "settle" for a plainer boy.

Thus, much as Sara genuinely liked her new friend Rayna, she struggled with the latter's beauty

and the opportunities it opened for her. A girl like Rayna Kisley surely had never been advised to

lower her standards, to seek out homelier, humbler men; instead, a girl like Rayna could surely

have her pick of the litter when it came to guys. Forgetting for a moment that Sara's own

mother hadn't particularly been a success in love (the recent divorce from her stepfather had

marked her third failed marriage, on top of suffering an initial tragic widowhood ; Sara's own

father had died young when Sara was just a toddler), Sara still felt that women like her mother

and girls like Rayna could never understand how it was to be without the gift of beauty; this, it

may be observed, contributed somewhat to her skeptical reaction to Rayna's unaccountable

reverie over this odd and captivating stranger who'd bizarrely materialized into her life.

Rayna, however, felt her own kind of distress at her friend's resistance to taking her (that is,

Rayna's) feelings seriously. She already was, after all, discombobulated enough at what had

happened to her. What she desperately wished for was someone with whom she could share

her confusion honestly, without receiving judgment or reproach. But seeing that Sara, a girl who

seemed pure of heart and sincere of mind, and who in any other circumstance would have

proved a more than worthy confidant, would apparently be unable to share Rayna's secrets for

reasons that Rayna could not fully comprehend, was distressing.

******************************

Rayna turned, as she often had before, to God and prayer. She found the local Catholic church,

which to her dismay was one of the all-too-common post-Vatican 2 house of worship whose

very architecture lacked proper reverence and did not invite a prayerful state of mind; instead, it

was a ghastly place which more resembled a plush hotel lobby than a proper temple of divine

observance. Still, Rayna's faith, as she understood it, told her that even if this wretched building

gravely lacked aesthetic allure, it was nevertheless an authentic church, one in which the

sacraments were dispensed, and thus a place where sins were forgiven and crooked paths made

straight through the intervention of the Most High.

She therefore attempted to ignore the frightful and unseemly decorative sacrilege: felt banners,

grotesque displays of "folksy" depictions of Jesus, and nary even a trace of good Mary, whose

motherly counsel and nurturance Rayna always sought-- her own mother having so often

proved unfortunately unreliable, despite having good intentions, as we have seen, leading even

to Rayna telling her the great lie about Chris, an act which Rayna still found unconscionable,

even if she trusted that her mother had told no one about it, desirous as she was, for

unbecoming reasons, to share in a secret with her daughter.

Rayna knelt before the folksily-bunted altar, uninspired and uninspiring as it was, and squeezed

her eyes shut, picturing in her mind's eye some of her favorite icons. Particularly dear to her was

one that she had once glimpsed in an exhibit of church art, displayed at a museum she had once

visited on a school trip, in which a solemn-faced Christ, with adult features yet diminutive

enough to be an infant, looks trustingly into the face of his dear Mother while placing a tiny

hand upon her shoulder. For her part, Mary stares placidly into the eyes of the viewer of the

icon, her countenance radiating an irresistible calm.

Rayna whispered a plea to the holy woman that Eastern worshippers call the Theotokos, or

"God-bearer," regarding her current straits. She knew that she was in the thrall of a man who in

some ways seemed more like a ghost or a phantom, yet at the same time, she could not escape

that nagging sense of familiarity, as if in some way, they had been acquainted before they met

the other night.

Perhaps she knew him from her dreams... Was that possible?

Rayna's dreams, like her frequently indulged secret fantasies, were a source of both intrigue and

shame to her. She had never related them to anyone, not even to her priest when she confessed

her sins, yet this new man carried a strong whiff of the ineffable essence of her clandestine

reveries.

"How do I know if he is good or bad for me? How do I know if his heart inclines towards that

which brings me into light, or if what so cries out to me about him is only a reflection of my own

darkness?" Rayna's earnest prayer did not take the form of these exact words, but this was the

essence of her query to the Theotokos. She sought motherly counsel, the sort that she would

never have attempted to solicit from her own, flesh-and-blood mother.

She knelt in her pew for a while, not so much out of an expectation or even a hope of actually

hearing an answer, but simply to allow the question to resonate in her soul, there in the

presence of the Divine. She kept her eyes shut, and focused on the lovely Marian icon of

memory, that apple of her mind's eye.

Presently she came upon a new thought: perhaps it was Mary who had suggested this thought

directly, or perhaps it occurred to her because being in this house of worship, however dreadful

and displeasing the decor, and directing her thoughts to her Mother in Heaven, had put her in a

state of mind wherein such a thought could simply suggest itself.

The thought was this: If "by their fruits, ye shall know them" is true, then we must learn what

this man's "fruits" are; once we know that, we can know how to proceed from there.

It made sense, Rayna reflected. Though of course, she had in a way already capitulated to him,

having been prompted to curtsy before him, a gesture that she had never before exhibited to

anyone, she now needed to discern if that curtsy had been bestowed in vain, like pearls before

swine.

Though it had merely been a curtsy-- that is, an old-fashioned signification of feminine

acquiescence, it had somehow felt more intimate than anything Rayna could imagine actually

doing with a man physically. She actually blushed to think of it now, how she had so readily

given him this token of her passionate esteem.

Though the act had already been performed, and could no more be undone than one could

recapture one's lost virginity, Rayna still had an opportunity to figure out if her impetuous

display had all along been an embarrassing mistake. So she would proceed.

"Amen," she whispered.

*****************************

But where to find this man, the one to whom she had been so bold as to make the recipient of

her first ever curtsy?

Days passed. Fall classes began. It should have been an exciting time for Rayna, a time for

meeting new friends and enjoying all of the freedoms that she had been denied when she'd

been living at her parents' house and attending high school. Yet amongst the flurry of new

activities and the abundance of novel sights, sounds, and sensations, Rayna found herself

otherwise preoccupied.

Naturally, looking like she did, Rayna was an object of male attention everywhere she went.

She'd been used to this, to some degree, but here it was plainly overwhelming, and slightly

irritating. Not only because a lot of the college boys seemed to have little in the way of subtlety,

much less chivalry, and tended to look at her the way that a gorilla might regard a banana,

simply presuming that she, the "banana" in question, just couldn't wait to be unpeeled. It was all

a part of the general campus atmosphere; "This is where we finally get to indulge ourselves

freely" was the prevailing mindset, both for the boys and the girls. Few students dared to swim

against this tide of unrestrained carnality, this Bacchanal-esque culture, helped along, of course,

by copious consumption of spirits and other substances at fraternity parties and elsewhere.

It seemed to Rayna that such behavior was practically being encouraged by the administration

of the school, or at the very least, that the unashamedly debauched excesses of her classmates

were being winked at by the professors and staff, who apparently saw such activities as a "rite

of passage" of some sort.

For her part, Rayna had no interest at all in taking part in any such degrading and thoroughly

repellent rituals. Instead, she chose to hang around with Sara, who had begun to warm to her

again once that "curtsy" business ceased to be a matter of discussion. Rayna, seeing that none

of what occurred that evening sat well with her new friend, therefore artfully deceived her

friend into believing that she had forgotten those strange events, and (though Rayna never

stated this directly), that she had therefore "gotten over" the mystery man, and had altogether

put that vexing incident behind her.

The resotration of rapport with Sara was a positive relief to Rayna, who knew that she badly

needed a friend as this juncture of her life. In Sara she saw perhaps the makings of the first

"true" friend, one who could be set apart from the ostensible friendships of her previous life,

prior to college. Then, she had mostly found herself thrown together with other girls who

occupied the same social space as her, who took part in the same school activities, and whose

conversations mainly consisted of gossip and small talk. Some of those girls had actually been

nice, some of them had been fun, a few had been funny, but Rayna wasn't sure if any of them

could really be trusted with the types of things that often occupied her mind; it never even

occurred to her to share such notions with any of her school friends, or even with her boyfriend.

Though Berenice's betrayal had been a shock, it hadn't been a total surprise, and it only

solidified Rayna's conviction that for all of her "popularity," she had essentially been alone the

entire time.

Somehow, all through middle and high school, Rayna had always on some level known that,

pleasant as her sheltered, safe, and pleasant upbringing had been, it would eventually come to

an end. Now, even though she had numerous objections to the collegiate culture, recorded

above, she nevertheless missed her prior existence very little. The only events which nagged at

her occasionally involved her-- in retrospect quite brutal-- handling of Chris, and her subsequent

humiliation afterwards at the hand of a jealous "friend." When she recalled these particular

incidents, she still ached inwardly; part of her wished that a resolution could be brought in some

mode or manner.

She took a chance, and opted to tell Sara of these things one evening, as the two girls sat

together at a coffeehouse a few blocks from campus. For all of her general perspicacity, Rayna

knew little concerning the sort of things Sara wrestled with, a few of which have been shared

here; she also little suspected that her beauty alone aroused so many conflicting responses in

her: admiration, envy, awe, and distrust being just a tiny sample.

Given how discomfited Sara felt at the very notion of having such a gorgeous friend, Sara also

felt confused by the fact that Rayna possessed a unique capacity to put her at ease; as a result,

while speaking with Rayna, she often felt diametrically opposing emotions: intimidation mingled

with self-assuredness; suspicion militating against trust; a sort of petty resentment vying with a

more broad-minded acceptance. Sara's confusion often registered at peculiar moments; a smirk

when she ought to be smiling, a wary cock of the head when she ought to be chuckling. Rayna

noticed these odd responses on her friend's part, but chalked it up to eccentricities in Sara's

overall manner of expressing herself, and didn't feel particularly put off by them. Nothing in

Rayna would have suspected that she herself (that is, Rayna herself) could be the cause of Sara's

odd conversational ticks; Rayna was of a trusting nature, born perhaps of a certain degree of

naivety.

In any case, Rayna related to Sara the entire sad saga of her breaking up with Chris, of Chris

pretending to be copacetic with it, while secretly being heartbroken, of Berenice, whom Rayna

had thought to be a friend, taking advantage of the situation in the most dishonorable way

imaginable.

"That was high school for me. That was how it ended, anyhow. That's why I'm happy to have

gotten out of there," Rayna declared. Sara stared at her evenly. "Sounds like a lot of drama," she

finally pronounced. What did she mean by this? Rayna took the comment as sympathetic, and

Sara also meant it that way, but in her mind she was, in fact, a touch envious. Drama never

happens to me, she sulked to herself. "'Drama" only happens to pretty girls like Rayna, and

never to plain girls like me. Still, Sara did her best to suppress this hidden resentment and

muttered:

"Here in college it only seems to have gotten worse. Everyone just drinking and screwing their

brains out."

Sara, who like Rayna went to church and considered herself a Christian, usually didn't use vulgar

phrases like "screwing their brains out," and the vehemence with which she uttered this

declaration surprised even her. Rayna merely nodded. "It's so depressing," she declared.

There was silence for a moment, during which both girls' minds flashed again to the strange

incident of the mystery man at the faculty party. Neither had forgotten this figure, the "curtsy

man," though each, for her own reasons, had neglected to mention it for the nearly two weeks

since he had briefly appeared, leaving a significant impression on each girl, though in radically

different ways.

As both girls remembered Rayna's encounter with the man simultaneously, neither even

suspected that the other was thinking of the exact same thing. Both had become convinced that

the other had put such matters out of her head. For each of them, this false impression of the

other put her unsuspecting mind at ease. Rayna, though her mind still fixated on her

remembrance of the man nearly every hour of the day, felt relievd to have thrown her friend off

the scent (or so she thought). Sara, for her part, was similarly gladdened that her friend had put

that odd and deeply distressing business behind her, yet in truth she too was haunted by the

memory of that night, of seeing that tall, pale figure stride through the house like a ghost, and of

coming across Rayna frozen in the dark in that peculiar curtsy-stance, unnaturally still, stiff as a

statue.

After the silent moment passed, the girls began to chat of other things: how other girls in their

dorm hall acted, how difficult the test in a certain professor's class was probably going to be,

what movie they wanted to see together later. The moment was forgotten by both girls, but

when each reflected later upon their conversation that evening, the recollection of that quiet

interval gave both of them pause.

**************************************

When left alone, Rayna continued to pray.

Every night she asked the Holy Mother that that man, her man, would once again show up. She

went through each day's routines, forever anticipating that he would suddenly appear. Perhaps

she would see him standing in a parking lot through the window during a boring class lecture, or

he would abruptly materalize in the dining hall, or perhaps when the doors were closing in the

library elevator, his hand would reach out to stay the closing of the door, and he would enter;

they would then be face-to-face and all alone with one another, Rayna and her man, when the

doors closed and the elevator began to ascend... Rayna kept anticipating these and other such

events, yet every day ended in disappointment. Why, having appeared, essentially from out of

the ether and stepping into her line of sight with no warning (save the odd physical sensations

she caught just prior to seeing him, which could simply have been signs of illness at the time, for

all she knew!), had he now seemingly dipped back into the ether, and refused to re-emerge? Did

he not know the effect he had had upon her? It was maddening to her that he seemed now to

be avoiding her; it seemed, well, plain un-gentlemanly!

"Are you not a gentleman?" she asked him in absesntia, but only under her breath, lest her

roommate hear her. There came no answer from the ether, so Rayna sighed, exasperated, rolled

over and attempted to sleep.

Rayna's dreams, as usual, ran riot. She had wished to be thwarted, she recalled; that very word

"thwarted" had a resolute flavor of bitterness which was somehow, to her soul's tastebuds,

sweet. Now, however, she chafed against this thwarted state; surely she wouldn't be left in this

mode forever? It would be unbearable, especially since Rayna knew that her heart had already

been won by this stranger, however prematurely. She thought again of the Blessed Virgin Mary,

mother to all of the human race, and how she had encouraged Rayna, or so Rayna believed, to

"test the fruits" of this new infatuation. She must exercise discernment, she recalled again. If the

man never showed up again, then he clearly was nothing but a strangely exhilarating diversion,

and Rayna was meant simply to move on with her life.

But what was this "life"? Rayna was happy, of course, to be away from high school "drama," but

why after all had she gone to college? Her grades had been good, of course; she had always

been a conscientious student, and college had just seemed "the thing to do," but she had no

idea what sort of benefit she was supposed to accrue from spending four years at this place. She

also hadn't a clue what she "wanted to do with her life," as the truism goes, and couldn't feature

the notion of working an office job, nor did she picture herself as a schoolteacher or a counselor

or any of the other professions that even sounded halfway non-repugnant to her.

But I have to do something, she thought to herself, as she began to drift off to sleep. Where in

this world is the place for me? She wanted a life of adventure, not one of routine and banality.

And she did not want to be alone. And she wanted babies, too. Or perhaps she was being called

to a life of self-abnegation. She had pondered such a notion more often than once. It was

strange to be so aware of one's own beauty, yet at the same time to feel a pull towards a

celibate, cloistered life. Odd as it seemed, this scenario appealed to Rayna more than the notion

of taking any other "job" that she was aware of. Yet how could she square her desire to have

children with such a calling?

"Test the spirit," something within her whispered as she entered the warm, cozy womb of sleep.

*************************************************

It is at this point that everything changed for Rayna. And it is here that our tale takes a radical

turn.

Up to this point, we have dwelt exclusively in the realm of what most would consider to be

"realistic" fiction. To be sure, certain fantastic elements have entered the narrative from time to

time, such as when Rayna began experiencing strange and unexplainable bodily symptoms just

before meeting "her man" for the first time, but at this point things head in a rather different

direction.

I tell you these things, dear reader, as a courtesy, so that the jolt of switching tracks, as it were,

will not be overly jarring. But I also do so as a means of begging your indulgence. There is, to be

sure, no way for me to demonstrate verisimilitude except to claim it, which amounts to a sort of

circular claim: that is to say, a claim that has little of substance to buttress itself upon.

For that reason, I am afraid that I must resort to that most shopworn of strategies: the appeal to

the "leap of faith." There is no particular reason why you should believe me or buy into any of

the extraordinary events that I am about to unravel for you, so I suggest you simply suspend

what you may consider to be your "better judgment" and make a wager, if you will, that I am

indeed telling the truth with regard to the portion of the account that follows.

*******************************************

When Rayna slipped off to sleep, she immediately felt peculiar, like she was flying, or perhaps

falling (she could not tell which; she only knew that she could feel herself moving through air

with nothing solid beneath her). She was of course alarmed at first, and even gave a sort of

shout (though her sleeping self remained utterly quiet, other than emitting soft easy breaths

that one typically exhibits during sleep, as Sara-- who had not yet fallen asleep in her own bed

across the room-- could later attest).

After a moment, however, Rayna somehow ceased to be fearful about her state. She was falling,

or flying, through utter darkness, but after an indeterminate amount of time-- it might have

been five minutes, or it might have been a half-hour--she found herself moving more slowly, and

in a more obvious descent, something like being in an airplane coming in for a landing, but really

more like the sensation of riding a softly falling autumn leaf as it sways back and forth in the air

before gently settling into a soft landing.

Indeed, when Rayna alighted, she hardly felt it at all. She touched down on her feet, and saw

that she stood on a dark, grassy plain. To her astonishment, she realized that her clothes had

changed; she no longer wore her nightshirt, but instead found herself in a beautiful dress, one

that she had never before seen, much less worn. It was multicolored, with a high crest and

ruffles around the collar. She felt herself utterly comfortable in this apparel, even though she

had never worn anything so formal, not even at school dances or at church or any other fancy

occasions.

The environs in which she found herself proved to be even less familiar. There was some kind of

light, but it was faint, and Rayna couldn't determine its origin; it seemed, in fact, to somehow be

projected from the ground, which for its part consisted of little more than tufts of dirt, with

occasional groves that slightly resembled leafy shrubs of some unremarkable sort. One could

hardly discern whether there was a sky above them, but there were no stars, no moon, and

presumably, one gathered, no sun. This seemed to be a perpetually twilit place.

Rayna's bewildered thoughts were interrupted when she heard something moving through the

air just a little ways away. She looked and saw what appeared to be a large blanket or a piece of

cloth, since it floated with the a lightness that seemed to belie its size and girth. Presently it, too,

alighted, and Rayna comprehended that "it" was in fact a person, and moreover, a man: namely,

the man before whom she had curtsied, the very one whom she had been longing to meet

again.

As he drew closer, she discerned that he too wore unusual garb, a sort of brownish tunic over a

pair of loose-fitting pants of unknown but exquisite-looking fabric. His outfit, strange as it was,

managed to be quite becoming, just as her own dress was flattering and tasteful, if a bit exotic

to one used to contemporary-world clothing trends and styles.

The man looked slightly different from before-- perhaps a bit less pale, though just as tall. Again,

Rayna marveled at how he could both appear so alien, while at the same time retaining some

aura of unsettling familiarity. Surely she didn't know him, had never met him once prior to the

other night, yet his very aspect was somehow redolent of something she had once smelled,

tasted, or touched, and which had impacted her greatly in spite of its obscurity, like a song

heard once on the radio during one's childhood which still left a mark on one's mind, even

though it was never heard again.

She stared at him for a long moment, astonished and speechless. He gazed back-- why, again,

did the softly pleading expression in his eyes trigger something in her memory? He didn't speak,

and she felt that it was incumbent upon her to open the conversation. She had, after all,

summoned him, in a sense, hadn't she? In asking the Blessed Mother for aid, and getting the

answer she had heard in her mind, it struck Rayna that this strange meeting was actually

happening at her request.

She forced herself to say something, but could only manage, "This isn't a dream, is it?"

"No," he answered.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"This is a sort of 'place between places,' or if you prefer, a 'world between worlds,'" he said.

Then presently, he added, "Shall we sit?"

Rayna and the man settled, a bit awkwardly, into sitting positions on the soft grass, Rayna

arranging the folds of her dress with some trepidation (after all, she'd never worn it before, and

it almost felt like it belonged to someone else, so she felt an obligation to be fastidious with it as

a "borrower" takes special care not to scuff or mar that which isn't hers).

"Who are you?" Rayna asked presently, following another moment of silence. Then, a moment

later, in exasperation, "Honestly, I don't know why it's up to me to ask these things. All of this is

incredibly bizarre...you say that this isn't a dream, and I believe you, it honestly doesn't feel like

a dream, at least not like any dream I have ever had before. But just the same--"

"I am here entirely at your behest," he told her. "Your intercessions have brought us both here. I

am honor-bound to answer whatever questions you have. You asked who I am. My name is

Aeric. I suspect that you wish to know my story. I shall tell it to you now, if that suits your

inclinations."

Rayna nodded. What follows is Aeric's story, as told to Rayna Kisley in this strange "world

between worlds."

************************************************

"I grew up, for the first time (Aeric began), in your world. My childhood and young adulthood

were wonderful, until I lost someone very close to me. I grieved this loss for months. People told

me that time would heal my wounds, but every day my wounds only festered. As a youth, I had

enjoyed all of the privileges of a loving home, but now none of that mattered to me, so wrapped

up I was in my sorrow. I felt ashamed of myself, and unworthy of living, as it seemed that every

attempt I made to forge a life for myself failed... I had begun with such promise, but now I was

proving to be a misfit and a walking curse. I no longer wished to be a liability and a pest to my

family, who had to keep bailing me out after all of my failures.

"To put it simply, I no longer wished to live. In fact, I became determined to bring an end to my

existence. The shame I felt at myself was horrible to bear. I was ready. I was sitting in my car, in

some secluded spot on a dirt trail somewhere in the woods, and I had the gun pointed into my

mouth, when I heard a voice... I swear I heard it, just as much as my own voice reaches you

today. And the voice was NOT my own. It asked me; 'Son of man, why are you preparing to do

this grievous harm to your body and your soul?'

"I removed the pistol from my mouth then, and I answered the voice, 'I have no will to live any

longer,' I wailed. "Please, whoever you are, leave me alone, and let me snuff out my life in

peace!'

"I didn't even ponder the singular strangeness of hearing a disembodied voice, nor the absurdity

of me talking back to that voice, whose origin seemed to derive from somewhere

indeterminate. It was not 'inside my head,' but again, I was unable to pinpoint its source, nor

did I even care to do so. I had passed beyond the point where I even gave thought to such

matters. Such was the extent of my despair.

"I thrust the gun's barrel back into my own mouth, and, resolved as I was, pulled the trigger

without hesitation. I cannot well describe what happened next. The gun went off, the bullet left

the chamber, but instead of launching itself in the direction of my brain, it somehow,

unfathomably, flew off harmlessly, hitting the rear view mirror in front of me with a loud clatter,

and ricocheting wildly around the car before implanting itself in the ceiling.

"I cannot explain how this took place without positing notions that run directly contrary to

physical science as we know it... I do know, as well as I know anything, that I pulled the trigger

when the gun barrel was inside my mouth, meaning that it ought to have caused severe, if not

mortal, damage to my person. Instead, the bullet somehow, after being launched inside my

mouth (I had placed my lips hard against the barrel, anticipating the recoil) passed through my

oral passage and out of the back of my neck without creating any kind of trajectory of

devastation to the inside of my head! It was as if that bullet had somehow transformed into an

object without weight, density, or substance-- a mere projection of itself, a sort of ghost, even--

before reassuming its actual physical qualities after its miraculous phantom passed harmlessly

through cartiledge, brains, skull, and skin...

"I sat for a moment, dazed, my eyes fixated on the bullet in the ceiling. I ought to have felt

grateful, because that 'magic bullet' saved me from death and my soul from likely eternal

torment. But what I felt instead was anger, like one who has been thwarted by cosmic forces

from achieving the one thing he devoutly wished to do. It was a sort of impotent anger, but no

less intense for all of that. I shrieked, uttered patently animalistic groans, grunts, and hoots of

incoate rage and desperation; it took me a long while to calm down.

"The voice didn't speak again for a long moment. As my savage outburst ran its course, and I

presently collapsed against my car seat, weeping softly, the voice suddenly spoke again, in a

markedly different tone.

"'I can send you to another world,' it said. 'To this world, you would be as good as dead.

Everyone would reckon that you must have died. You would not, in fact, be dead, but you would

be as good as dead to this world.'

"I agreed to this offer, though I still didn't exactly know the identity or even the spiritual

orientation of the voice which was addressing me. Angel, demon, or other? I could not discern,

but the truth was, at that moment, I simply didn't care.

"What I didn't know was that, in starting over in this new world, I would truly be starting over;

that is, starting... from birth! Or rather, I suppose, from conception.

*****************************

"Yes, I grew in the womb of a new mother, in a new world, and after I was born, I found myself

growing up as a child given the name of Aeric. (I didn't recall my prior life at all, until much,

much later.)

"My mother was a sweet woman who was nevertheless quite anxious, especially when it came

to me. We lived in a massive house, one which people in the world you know would call a

"McMansion," as it was gaudy but not built with a great deal of solidity. My father was mostly

away; I had the impression, from what my mother told me, that he was a quite important man.

"I never found out what he did, exactly, only that he 'worked for various well-placed people and

served in various roles in helping to facilitate necessary transactions,' or something like that.

"I must tell you a few things about this new world, the world into which I was reborn as a new

person... It is a world quite similar to our own in some ways, but terribly different in others. It

could be called a 'parallel' Earth, but I am unsure if any other such parallel timelines exist.

Contra quantum physics, which seems to posit an infinite number of alternative worlds, I have

long understood that there are only two: the one that you, Rayna, know to be 'Earth,' and this

one, in which my soul was packed away and fitted into an entirely new body, the skin suit before

which I come before you today...

"The new world into which I was reborn is quite superior to our own in various ways. It is a

streamlined world, a world of greater convenience and incredible technology. Interplanetary

travel is routine, and humanity has begun to colonize other planets and moons in the solar

system. There hasn't been a war in several centuries, because-- unlike in the world you know,

Rayna-- there are no countries. The whole world is united into a 'World Realm,' and such has

been the case for as long as anyone can remember. In my world, there is a unity of perspective

and purpose, which is almost unfathomable to anyone from the Earth that you know and that I

remember, the first Earth on which I dwelt. Everyone worships at the same altars, and reveres

the same gods.

"In this world, the old gods, or certain ones, anyway, never fell out of favor. That isn't to say that

the Church as we know it doesn't exist; it does, but it has been forced underground. Its

adherents are few and far between... very few, and very far between. Most believers must

content themselves with only very occasional access to the Sacraments, perhaps once or twice a

year, depending on conditions. At times, there are whispers of a planned revolt to take place

and such and such a time; a time to 'emerge from the catacombs,' as people in your world might

say. But such a task is infinitely harder in a world like this one, where unanimity of thought, at

least when it comes to spirital matters, is such an impenetrable monolith. There are some

people, who have found their way into positions of some power, who are secretly faithful

congregants, but it is still a very delicate and dicey situation... More on that shortly.

"In any case, the situation with the fugitive Church notwithstanding, it is the old gods that are on

everyone's lips, particularly Baal Hammon and Tanit. For example, in my youth my mother

would frequently exclaim, 'By Tanit, child, will you never go to sleep?' Or, 'Baal Hammon the

Great forgive me, but I just don't feel up to doing the laundry today...'

"The old gods are worshipped frequently at festivals and various other events, especially when

their favor is invoked for the success of some new venture or other. Our ancestors-- that is to

say, those from the ancient world who originally shaped the course of our future, were well-

known as top-rate navigators and excellent ship-builders. Through the centuries, that genius for

engineering, exploration, and colonization has stood our society in good stead, at least when it

comes to expansion of the Realm. It's the reason our ancestors defeated and wiped out all of its

competitors in the Mediterranean region and grew into the supreme world power that it has

been for centuries now.

"The World Realm, as suggested by its very name, reigns worldwide, from pole to pole. There is

no race or civilization that hasn't long ago fallen to our superior might and skill. Our legendary

industriousness, which has been termed the "Phoenician work ethic," has left its mark

everywhere. Our Empire, being as far-flung as it is, has absorbed men and women from the

tropics to the icy regions. The notion of petty nationalism, of establishing a state entity

independent of the Greater Carthagenic Realm has been unheard of for centuries, if not

millennia. (I speak of 'our' Emprie because old habits are hard to kick; for most of my life, I was a

proud adherent to World Realm doctrine, like everyone else I knew, or thought I knew..)

"Pride for Carthage burns in the hearts of all of humanity. At least, that is what humanity has

been persuaded to believe, and few feel the need to doubt it, since they seldom hear any

notions to the contrary. It has become customary, for all those who can afford to do it, to make

a pilgrimage to the ancient holy land, the city-state of Carthage, where it all began.

"Today, of course, Carthage is a modern city with sleek skyscrapers and all of the modern

conveniences, but the old city section still remains to the present. One walks the pilgrim's way (I

have done it myself), through the ancient cobblestone streets, and observe the ingenious

system of architecture put into effect, complete with running water and a sewage system, and

you realize why these, our ancestors, eventually conquered the entire world. They were about a

century or two ahead of all of their civilizational competitors; they perfected warfare; their

ranks of fighting men, under the great general Hannibal (his name meaning "blessed of Baal")

proved too overwhelmingly powerful for their main rivals to the north, whom they crushed after

the lengthy Roman Wars. Rome was sacked utterly, and all of its inhabitants put to the sword;

now, the world scarcely knows about that once-formidable civilization. History, after all, is

written by the victors.

"I recall, as a child, sitting at a tourist site just off the main square in modern-day Carthage,

being asked by my father to sit atop the Hannibal statue, which depicts the iconic general

astride his trusty elephant, the same creature he rode through the Swiss Alps en route to the

final torching of Rome... My father actually picked me up, and placed me in Hannibal's lap

(though this was technically illegal, huge numbers of people did it, and the guards stationed at

the site tended to be indulgent, even to the point of literally looking the other way, since it was

well understood, by the higher-ups, how much pride citizens had in this man, the one who

defended the Carthaginian way of life and paved the way for a Carthaginian-dominated heaven

and earth). I am grinning broadly in that snapshot, thrilled as I feel to be 'riding with Hannibal,'

even if the fierce-faced, musclebound figure was a mere statue...

"But let me return to a subject I had begun to discuss earlier. My mother, who was my conduit

to understanding the world for my first few years of life, often evinced an indomitable anxiety,

one that even my young self couldn't help but notice. Nothing was ever stated directly, and in

my youthful way, I came to comprehend that the thing that caused such consternation to my

mother (and therefore brought some inevitable distress to my young self) was a thing never to

be discussed, unless or until my mother or my father brought it up to me.

"In fact, I was almost convinced-- when I thought about this matter at all, which wasn't really

that often, considering the totality of my childhood-- that if and when I ever heard about this

unspoken thing, it would be via my father, not my mother. Or at least, it would be at my father's

instigation. But I also understood, somehow, that this thing might well never be brought up at

all. Such a scenario, in fact, gave me hope that the thing, which at times seemed so ever-present

and insurmountable, might in fact be so negligible that it may elude notice for the entirety of my

life. And far from making me feel curious about the thing, and more desirous that it be revealed

upon me, I for some reason came to disregard it as a likely quite trifling thing, a thing which

needn't in any way interfere the carefree delights of my youth.

"I believe that, for a stretch of time, I even forgot about the matter-- that is, the 'thing'--

entirely. During that period, my young self was preoccupied with the typical trifles of a young

boy's life. As my father was a high-ranking official serving the diplomatic corps for the North

American division of the World Realm, I was at times a bit haughty, aware of occupying a spot in

the social hierarchy, which I am ashamed to say I at times lorded over my peers. Some of my

schoolmates hated and loathed me for my mostly unearned high estimation of myself, while

others strove to be my friend, primarily for social reasons. Few actually liked me, though I did

possess one singular virtue-- aside from having a square jaw and a muscular frame-- that is, I

excelled at competitive games.

****************************************

"In the North America of the world in which I inhabited in my second life, the most popular

game is one called tophet, a word which in that world also has a quite different meaning, as I

will discuss later. Competitive tophet is a bit like rugby or American football, but more brutal.

Injuries are common, and not a few men have been seriously maimed or even killed. But those

who are tough, and fast, and wily, can do quite well as topheters.

"There are other games, like soccer, or track and field-- which derives from long-extinct ancient

Greece-- Grecians, like Romans, were generally put to the sword by our zealous Phoenician

ancestors-- but tophet is considered the authentic sport of our race. Other races on the face of

the earth play it as well, and love it just as much as we do, but that is only because the

Carthaginian race, the Phoenician heritage of the elite, has become the ideal to which all other

ethnicities strive.

"In order to hold a high position in the World Realm, a person doesn't have to be Phoenecian,

but it helps. Growing up, I came into knowledge that I myself was of Carthaginian stock, and that

in turn only made me more insufferably arrogant. Still, no one could argue with my results on

the tophet pitch, where I set all kinds of school records for scoring, assists, and tackles. It was a

day of triumph when I signed with the New Tyre professional franchise. Yet, as memorable as

that day was, what happened after the official signing was what truly left its mark upon me.

"I had turned 16, an important year in a young man's life, the year a boy is considered grown up.

A massive banquet was thrown in my honor, in which all of my successes were feted. I was

praised to the heavens by all of those assembled; they all agreed that I was as fine a specimen of

Phoenician manhood ever to have sprung from the munificent loins of the great Baal Hammon

himself. As conceited as I was, hearing these highly important people -- which included

numerous delegates and high priests, a sort of *potpourri* of local luminaries-- laud me so

effusively was just a bit much. But I nevertheless ate and drank to my fill, and afterwards

received the attention of more than a few temple maidens, who had been sent for, in order to

bring my evening to a satisfying conclusion.

"I had of course known the touch of woman by then, to the point where, pleasurable as it was, I

had even grown somewhat jaded towards matters of the flesh. Still, I did not neglect the

opportunity I had been given to sow every last morsel of my youthful oats...

"When the festivities were over, I collapsed from all of the wine, the food, and the fornication. I

must have slept for close to a day, because when I awoke, it was nearly dusk again. I found

myself alone; apparently, all of the comely company who had shared my boudoir had been

asked to leave. My head, of course, pounded miserably (I had been hung over before, but not

like that), and I devoutly wished to go back to sleep but presently became aware that someone

was speaking my name quite sternly, and telling me I needed to wake up.

"It was my father. Something in me realized that I really ought to pull myself together, since my

father took a certain tone with me when he meant business, and he undoubtedly was assuming

that very tone right now; even through the misery of my condition, I could discern the

importance of rousing myself, though I still little knew what lay in store.

"I forced myself to stand up, but was racked with queasiness, and I held onto my head for dear

life. I announced to my father that I might well vomit, then I ran to the bathroom and did just

that, copiously, for a good five minutes straight. When I staggered back to my room, it was with

a sense of shame at having my father see me like this. Yet had I not just been celebrated by all of

the gathered elites of the community? Had I done anything contrary to that which suited my

position? Was one who embodied the fierce, conquering spirit of Hannibal, as I clearly did -- so

all of the respectable representatives of the World Realm who had attended my banquet

unanimously agreed-- really supposed to be ashamed of himself for enjoying the fruit of his

labor, the spoils of his victories?

"Just as these thoughts raced through my mind, however, I saw that my father was favoring me

with an expression that I could barely decipher, but which seemed to betray some semblance

of... pity! This utterly threw me off, but also kindled some outrage in my arrogant young heart.

How dare my own father feel sorry for me? I was not a 'poor thing,' Baal damnit! Rather, I was

magnificent! Strong in body and stalwart in mind, and so forth... But I kept silent, and when my

father asked me to change my clothes and follow him, I obeyed him without objection and only

a modicum of sulkiness.

"Had I only known, at the time, what I would presently discover about myself, I would have

ceased to sulk, and begun to weep.

***********************************

"I followed my father down the streets of our town, past the familiar shrines to the various gods,

where I had participated in ritualistic ceremonies of various kinds, where out whole community

had frequently taken part in festivals intended to honor the pantheon of known deities for their

beneficence, to present reciprocal offerings in return for that had been so abundantly bestowed

upon us: prosperity, health, successful ventures into ever-expanding frontiers: cybertechnology,

energy efficiency, the harvesting of minerals on the Moon, the successful planting of colonies on

Mars, as well as lesser known triumphs of our collective Carthagenian will. I had nothing but

happy memories of these ceremonies and rituals, and I thanked Baal Hammon for all of what I

had enjoyed in my young life so far...

"Presently, my father led me into a building with a curious enclosure, with steps leading down to

a cramped little room. My mind was bursting with questions, but I held off, figuring as I did that

an explanation would of some sort would presently be forthcoming. We sat at a small table.

Moments later a door swung open and a man strode in. The man, bespectacled, balding, in late

middle-age, with a weathered face, wore a curious costume: a long black stole with a collar of

white. He resembled in aspect some of the temple priests I had seen at the aforementioned

ceremonies, yet I had never glimpsed a temple priest who maintained so subdued a demeanor.

The priests presiding at public ritualls tended to be loud, boisterous, and quite intimidating, but

this man had more the air of a scholar than a carnival barker. I stared at him long and hard.

Something about his get-up struck me as peculiarly familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.

"'Is the site secure?' my father asked the black-robed man, who answered, 'Our guys have swept

the place, no sign of worms. We can speak freely, as long as we make it relatively brief, lest we

attract attention for being down here too long.'

"(A 'worm' in this world is what one might call a 'bug' in the world you know, Rayna-- that is to

say, a planted device intended to record a conversation surriptitiously.) Again, I reeled inwardly;

what sort of scandelous things were going to be discussed at this clandestine spot?

"My father introduced this black-robed, white-collared man as 'Father Athanasius,' adding, 'That

is his priestly name, of course; for the sake of his personal security, I won't reveal his "worldly"

name."

"The man, however, shook his head. 'My "worldly" name is Hamilcar, and I teach Ancient

Carthagenian Literature at Baal Hammarabi College,' he declared. He looked at my father. 'I

have faith that the Lord will protect my body and soul, but should be should choose to remove

such protection, I welcome martyrdom,' he said.

"These words had the effect of causing my father some shock and consternation. I had rarely, if

ever, glimpsed such an expression on my father's face before, and I instantly felt alarmed.

Father had almost always presented himself, both to me and to the world, as a stern, highly-

competent, and no-nonsense man of importance; his typical demeanor wasn't so much fearless

as it indicated one who had no time or patience for such a thing as fear. To see him, then,

respond to Father Athanasius/Professor Hamilcar's words with such alarm thus shook me to the

quick, and caused my pulse to quicken. All of that said, I still pretty much had no idea what was

going on.

"As if anticipating the question forming in my mind, my father recovered from the shock of

seeing this man carelessly make his earthly identity known, and proceeded to tell me things that

thoroughly altered everything I thought I knew about myself and the world.

"'What you're about to hear is going to be difficult to accept,' he announced.

"That was the understatement of a lifetime! Of two lifetimes, in fact...

"I will hereby summarize what my father and Father Athanasius told me in a sort of tandem over

the course of the next few hours.

****************************

"First, I was told, I was not my mother or father's child by birth, but by adoption.

"My 'actual' father was a wealthy merchant and senator in the Westlands of the North Am

sector of the World Realm. He and his wife were unfortunate enough to be expecting their

firstborn child-- me-- at a time of great crisis. The Westlands were enduring a drought of

catastrophic proportions at the time (I even remembered hearing about it later), and when even

the best weather-changing technology failed, it came to be widely believed that Baal Hammond

was in fact displeased; the authorities deemed that a molk was necessary.

"I had of course heard whispers and rumors concerning molks, but generally believed that such

events were a thing of the past. The gods no longer expected such sacrifices from us; we had,

after all, proven our worth; Carthage had conquered the world, and was on its way to

conquering the solar system. Still, if truth be known, I was at times haunted by what I had been

told about these awful ceremonies, where appointed priests of Baal cut infants' throats, then

consigned them to a fire, kindled next to the god's enormous, bull-headed statue. It was said

that pipers and other musicians played heartily, and loudly nearby, in an effort to drown out the

screams of the little ones as they perished...

"As the date of my birth approached, my biological parents, who were secretly members of the

Church, knew that they would be asked to sacrifice me. (The point of the molks was, after all, to

give Baal Hammond those dearest to us, and thus expiate his wrath or slack his bloodthirst.)

Thus, immediately after I was born-- for the second time (though I didn't know that yet)!-- they

saw to it that I be transported to a distant location, where another secretly Christian couple--my

own mother and father-- would take me in as one of their own, the only one of their own, as it

turned out, since they had been unable to conceive a child.

"My biological parents in the Westlands claimed that I had been a stillbirth, in order to cover up

for my disappearance; thus, though they suffered the heartbreak of giving away their firstborn

son, they were at least able to take comfort from the fact that I had been spared the dreadful

ravages of the molk, and had been given a chance to live... My parents raised me, but elected to

keep me in the dark regarding their fugitive faith. They didn't want to risk exposing me as one

who, by official writ, ought to be arrested for harboring subrversive beliefs.

''Your mother and I, we wanted you to have a happy childhood,' my father told me. 'We felt

terrible about consigning you to a life of danger from your very emergence into our lives... We

treasured you so much, you were the answer to our prayers, so we just kept putting it off. But

now, with all of your success on the tophet pitch, and you becoming an adult...'

"Through my bewilderment, I comprehended what he was telling me, without using the exact

words: namely, that my ego was getting out of hand, that my proven prowess as a topheter was

making me insufferable. Put simply, I needed an infusion of humility, as well as a sort of 'reality

check,' given that much that I had believed to be real about myself was in fact not so.

"In fact, the very word 'tophet' had historical connotations of which I had previously been

unaware. Before tophet even became a popular game, the priest told me, it was the name of the

temple where the molks were held, the place where the babies were slaughtered, then set

aflame. The irony that I had escaped the 'tophet of death' only to return to the 'tophet of sport,'

where I had managed to excel, no less, didn't escape me, though I didn't know quite what to

make of it, in a cosmic sense, except that it signified the manifold ways in which I had been

favored by fortune.

*******************

"But what was this faith called 'Christianity,' or 'The Church,' which my parents and others had

embraced, in defiance of their Carthaginian heritage and traditions?

"As Father Athanasius explained to me, a certain percentage of the population had become

aware of a parallel reality, a world in which history proceeded down a markedly divergent

course. On this "other" Earth, a man named Jesus Christ was born. This man was not merely a

man, but also God. Not just a god among other gods, like those in the Punic pantheon known to

every right-thinking member of the World Realm and itsloyal colonies on Luna and Mars, but

THE God, supreme above all others.

"Jesus, the Christ (meaning "the anointed"), I was told, was God incarnate. In this parallel world,

God not only chose to take on human flesh and live among mankind, he also consented to be

put to death by human authorities, suffering a particularly cruel form of execution known as

"crucifixion," which was practiced by the Romans, who-- in this parallel world-- had (sacrilege to

proud Punic ears!) vanquished and exterminated the Carthaginian people instead of vice versa.

"But death was not the end of the story when it came to Jesus Christ, the anointed one, God

incarnate. Though the Christ was indeed put to death and thrust into the grave, he was bodily

resurrected. On the third day after his execution, Christ's disciples found that the tomb was

empty, the burial cloths set aside. Later that day he appeared too them, inviting any who

disbelieved the miracle before their eyes to examine the wounds left by the fearsome

instruments of crucifixion: holes left by the nails in his hands and feet, and a sizable gash in his

side, where the centurian's spear pierced him, which is not even to mention the scars left by the

scourging with whips which he endured prior to being hung on a cross and left there to die.

Incredibly, these devastating 'whips and scorns' were stil perfectly visible on Christ's

resurrected body, yet they did not hinder the heavenly health of his transfigured frame.

"The torments that Christ endured, known as his 'Passion,' were to a purpose; by offering

himself as a sinless sacrifice, he provided a means by which humanity could be cleansed of its

sins, and through something called 'grace,' defined as 'the inexplicable loving kindness of God,'

we could be directed to eternal salvation. This, and many other finer theological concepts, were

explained to me in a somewhat abbreviated manner, given our circumstances, by the priest.

"'Wait a minute,' I objected. 'This Christ person (at my passing reference, the pious Father

Athanasius crossed himself, a gesture that only bewildered me at the time), he only appeared to

people in this other world? How do we know that this other world is even real?'

"I now discern the supreme irony of me asking that question, having been granted incarnation

into both worlds (a truth about my history of which, again, I was at the time unaware). Father

Athanasius answered that for centuries people have been given visions and received visitations.

Around two hundred years ago, one young man named Joseph living in the east coast of the

North American sector of the World Realm was even reportedly taken up in a trance, during

which some heavenly entity recited the entirety of some document that has since come to be

known as the 'Holy Bible.'

"This Joseph, a barely literate man, was nevertheless miraculously assisted in this task,

completing a massive tome composed of 66 'books' (each of which was divided into numerous

'chapters' and 'verses'); at full length, this Holy Bible contained over 700,000 words. It was

divided into two sections: the 'Old Testament,' which told of the origins of the world and the

early doings of a certain desert tribe who were adopted by God in the early days, and the 'New

Testament,' which concerned the life and doings of Christ and the early Church.

"The Old Testament covered this tribe's triumphs and tragedies: how they were led out of

bondage, how they conquered the land 'flowing with milk and honey' that God had set aside for

them, how their fortunes waxed and waned through the centuries, how prophets tried to steer

them back to the correct way after they backslid and began worshipping false gods and taking

part in appalling rites and rituals that were an abomination to the true God, in spite of

numerous prophets' warnings to the contrary. Eventually this tribe is divided and conquered,

which is the historical point where the 'New Testament' essentially begins. While the Old

Testament mainly concerns the tribe in question, the New Testament expands its scope to the

entirety of mankind, extending the offer of salvation to all.

"This 'Joseph' of the eastern sector of North America was initially greeted with extreme

skepticism, even mockery, by many. Yet the more who were able to read the 'Holy Bible' that he

claimed to have had read to him by a spiritual entity (he was never clear as to the identity of this

figure), yet the more who actually managed to read the book found that it contained an

incredible amount of detail and such a vast scope of events that it seemed impossible to believe

that just one author could have penned it,

"Instead, this remarkable document seemed to be a collection of stories and accounts

concerning an ancient world so richly detailed that it almost seemed to be real. The only

problem was, it clearly violated history as everyone knew it. Throughout the Holy Bible, there

was no reference whatsoever to the rise of the mighty empire of Carthage. Granted, much of

the Old Testament predated the truly crucial events of ancient Carthaginian lore, namely, the

Roman Wars, where Hannibal's army defeated and finally sacked Rome, putting most of its

former citizens to the sword and enslaving the rest.

"Though nothing culturally Carthaginian was mentioned anywhere in this extraordinary book,

there were several references to Baal in Joseph's 'Holy Bible,' and to rites practiced by other

tribes in which Baal (also sometimes being referred to as Moloch) demands sacrifices quite

similar to our practice of the molk in the tophet arena. God's tribe were warned 'never to send

their children into the fire,' amongst other, similar prohibitions.

************************************

"Joseph's miraculous translation of the 'Holy Bible' became a sort of underground treasure,

especially when some bold soul with access to a printing press began churning them out

regularly. Soon the authorities were alerted, and the first Great Persecution began. Up to this

point, the World Realm couldn't really be bothered with what it viewed as an irrelevant, lunatic-

fringe network of nobodies. But slowly, powerful and influential people began inexplicably to

become converts, in addition to some amongst the merchant and mechanical classes.

"In its initial anti-Church propaganda campaign, the North American branch of the World Realm

authorities spared no expense, soliciting the assistance of the most brilliant psychonauts on

their payroll.

"These thought-control experts, in turn, dutifully crafted several persuasive texts for public

consumption (some intended for the page and others for the screen), which detailed the

actvities of a dangerous and subversive cult operating within the system, insidiously planting

seeds of confusion in the minds of impressionable World Realm citizens, whom they wished to

steer away from decency and honor, towards blasphemously perverse beliefs.

"'They want to turn us against the ways of our ancestors, against our traditions, against our

gods, against all that has made us great!' read an early anti-Church pamphlet. 'In place of our

hardy, life-enhancing ethos, these "Christians" would substitute their sickly, suffering, bleeding,

dying abomination of a supposed "god-man," a pitiful wretch whose greatest glory was

perishing publicly, in full view of his enemies. Such a failure of an ostensible 'god' has no place

amongst our culture; we are a proud people who intend always to prevail, and never to fail...'"

"Those in charge of rooting out the Christian cultists had a difficult task; they wanted to describe

the offenders in the strongest possible terms, in order to inspire vehement hatred against such

treasonous reprobates, who had inexplicably chosen to bow the knees before this alien, and

indeed entirely ficticious, god.

"The first martyrs were publicly executed by firing squad. Large crowds came to watch, and a

lusty cheer went up when the bodies crumpled before the bullets. This wasn't the first time that

'deviates' had been dispatched; the ruling regime had learned that such displays, ghastly though

some may find them, nevertheless had the effect of boosting public morale (letting citizens give

vent to their bloodlust, which keeps the population in a spirited state, always ready to devote

their energy to the next big project), in addition to planting the seed of fear in the heart of

anyone else tempted to 'go rogue' after the fasion of these loathsome lunatics.

"So things had always worked previously, whenever some unhinged fanatic or pitiful

meglomaniac had disturbed the peace or raised a minor ruckus by daring to promote a creed

that ran counter to the common good. But with these 'Christians,' a different, and quite

distressing pattern emerged. Rather than feeling demoralized by the sight of their own

comrades being put to death, these insufferable scoundrels actually seemed to take a perverse

inspiration from such events. They had a term, 'martyr,' which denoted an especial kind of

eternal glory attached itself to these hapless sots falling and bleeding before a screaming,

cackling crowd. The blood and bones of these 'martyrs' were even considered to holy objects,

which many of the 'Christian' persuasion took pains to gather up, in an altogether queasy and

quite unseemly manner.

"Indeed, how did any good, well-bred, true-blooded son or daughter of Carthage comprehend

the mindset of this abominable sect? Everything they did, the entirety of their beliefs, was

totally alien to all familiar notions of honor and integrity. They appeared to embrace death and

suffering, and to spurn the very notion of striving for victory and dominance; in fact, they

rejected the gods who had sustained our civilization for centuries!

"What is more, their notion of 'human dignity'-- fed no doubt by the absurd claim that their god,

whom they called "Christ," took human form and was willing to be tortured and put to death

by earthly authorities in this ostensible 'other' world, thus in some blasphemous manner putting

man on a equal footing with the divine-- caused them to oppose on principle such necessary and

appropriate rituals as the molk.

****************************************

"Such was the World Realm's response to the 'cult' of Christianity. Their abhorrence towards

and persecution of the Church had never let up through the years, but they had grown more

clever in the way they went about it. At first, the authorities had opted for conspicuous

condemnations of the Church and the holding of public executions of Christians, events that

were even occasionally televised (TV had been invented several decades prior to its creation in

your timeline, Rayna) . But presently it became clear that this approach was failing spectacularly.

"Firstly, as stated before, the Church adherents themselves seemed possessed of an altogether

disconcerting tendency to wish to be put to death for the sake of their faith, and making such

events an occasion for witnessing a singularly breathtaking stoutness of will in the face of mortal

terror and torment. Thus, viewers of these executions tended-- so reported the diligent

psychonauts who carefully monitored a representative sampling of viewers-- to react positively

to such displays of courage, and to sympathize with this blasphemous 'Christian' sect, and thus

to feel more inclined to question the righteousness of the World Realm and its representatives

who were inflicting such cruelties upon their adherents.

"Secondly-- but this unwanted consequence was truly naught but an extension of the first-- it

was found, shockingly enough, via investigations and surveillance by various WR agents and

assets-- that the more people saw such broadcasts, the more likely they were actually to leave

behind their traditions, customs, and heritage, and actually to become members of this strange

alien cult, birthed in another world!

"One secret report, prepared by a firm hired by the WR and afterwards intercepted by a Church

convert with contacts to WR intelligence (who was later found out and became one of the

martyrs himself), reported that

...though it had been widely believed that the fear generated by displaying the power of the

state in these public executions would dissuade those otherwise tempted to join this deeply

degenerate and subversive sect, we have found, astonishingly, that the exact inverse outcome

tends to occur. That is to say, those who witness these events feel more, not less of a pull

towards conversion to this cult.

"Moreover, those inclined to heap scorn and ridicule upon these "Christians" before seeing their

"martyrdoms," either in person or on live television, afterwards betray (again) an inexplicable

inclination to respect such individuals more, not less... We had banked on being able to play on

people's terror of death and also on their desire to conform, as it has long been determined, by

our psych-technicians, that employing these, the basest and most primitive of drives, is the most

effective way to steer our subjects towards behaving in desirable ways and believing in desirable

things. The influence of this new cult, however, seems to override such primal instincts in a

surprising and alarming number of cases... It is therefore recommended that we cease to display

executions of 'Christians,' as it seems plainly counter-productive to our interests...

********************

"Once Father Athanasius finished telling me of my origins, and of my parents' secret and

forbidden devotion, I was, to put it mildly, flabbergasted. All of what I thought I knew about

myself had been blown to smithereens before my face. (The only similar shock would come

later, when I became aware of my double-life, as one who has dwelt in two bodies in both

worlds, but we shall get to that presently.)

"After a long period of denial, during which I simply refused to believe this strange tale of my

supposed upbringing, I eventually, albeit quite grudgingly, accepted that it was true, though I

still did my best to hold these verities at a distance from my consciousness. Of course, I kept my

parents' secret. How could I do otherwise? I also felt deeply thankful to my blood parents for

saving me from being sacrificed in my infancy. Yet I did not, and could not, embrace this strange

cult whose adherents had rescued me from oblivion. In my heart, I wished to remain a loyal

subject of the World Realm, an a faithful adherent to the proper worship of the gods of our

ancestors, to the exclusion of alien sects and foreign deities.

"And so I made my choice, at age 16, to remain 'normal,' and to reject the faith of my parents.

Yet I stayed loyal to them, kept their secret identity secret, and while I knew on some level that

this act was in itself a form of treason, I nevertheless tried not to dwell too long on such a

disturbing fact.

"Even less did I wish to consider the ramifications of my very existence being contingent upon

this treasonous sect taking steps to save me from the sacrificial fire when I was but an innocent

babe. To think too much about such a matter would mean that I would have to reflect on other

babies getting their throats cut and flung into the fire at Baal Hammond's altar, and what the

continued embrace of such practices indicated about the culture to which I found myself so

attached...

"The truth is, as a rising star on the tophet pitch, where I came to be known as 'Aeric the

Magnificent,' I was motivated by patently base and shamefuly ignoble drives to continue along

the expected course. Had I ever been 'outed' as the offspring of cultists, it would have been the

end of my career. For years, I lived in near-constant fear of my secret being discovered; I used

this fear to motivate me on the pitch, treating every member of every opposing team as if they

were conspiring against me; hence the fierceness of my competitive spirit only magnified and

my fame gained momentum.

"Season after season, I grew ever more a celebrity of my sport; as I matured into manhood, my

name was on the lips of every young man who aspired to fame, fortune, and glory; also, I must

add, many a young maiden viewed me as the very masculine ideal; I was kept busy with, shall

we say, admirers; being in the mode that I was in, where I was fleeing from myself, I am

ashamed to admit that I indulged quite freely in the distractions offered by such 'admirers,' for

there is no better way to forget your terrors than to gratify your libido repeatedly and without

restraint.

"I went on like this for almost a decade, until I hit the age of 25. By then, I felt at the peak of my

game. To the public, I was like unto a god. The Carthaginians are a martial people, and even in

times of peace we glorify war, which is why the brutal sport of tophet is so enormously popular,

its appeal exceeding even that of the one they call 'football' in countries across Europe and

South America in your world, Rayna, or the other sport, also coincidentally named 'football,' in

America.

"I kept up a warm relationship with my parents, whom I loved with all the filial piety appropriate

to a son of the proud lineage of Carthage, and adhering to all of the traditions and customs

thereof. Never did we discuss the matter which had been brought up to me on that fateful day,

where I had learned that my mother and father worshipped a strange god from a different

world. There had long been an understanding between us: what they believed I was freely

invited to likewise believe, but it had to be my choice. They would continue to pray for me, my

father said, not only because they felt duty-bound to do so by the dictates of their faith, but

also, and more crucially, because I was their son and they wished more than anything to be

assured of my soul's salvation.

************

"But now, Rayna, I must tell you how my life was once again thrown off its expected trajectory,

like a moon suddenly flung from its expected orbit, hurtling inexorably, calamitously,

earthwards...

"Being in the world of professional sport, and moreover, being a superstar in the celebrated

game of tophet, I was often brought into contact with numerous celebrities of stage and screen.

I continued to live a scandalously debauched life, and was often photographed in gossip journals

in the midst of a drunken tryst with one starlet or another. I was regarded as a 'bad boy' who

'couldn't be tamed,' and my ongoing escapades were breathlessly recounted in media outlets.

But no one knew the secret I was concealing from the world, the secret which, if discovered,

could utterly undo me.

"Yet no matter how much I attempted to escape into hedonistic excess, I could never outrun the

fear which haunted me, hovering over my head like a malignant halo. Part of me knew that it

was only a matter of time before I was found out. Yet I never figured upon the course of events

which followed....

"It began at one of the gatherings I attended, in my accustomed inebriated state. There, I met

an attractive young woman who showed great interest in me. I had by now experienced

numerous such characters, but this particular girl possessed an especially unnerving capacity for

over-familiarity. Her smirking overtures caused me to suffer a discomfiting anxiety which I made

every effort to hide; I flirted back with all of the bravado at my disposal, yet no matter how

much I affected the arrogant cocksure posture of a world-renowned championship athlete, I felt

that she could see through me. At first this frightened me, but the fact that she was able to

inspire fear in me caused me to feel plainly enraged.

"I took this rage out on her a hour or so later, after the two of us retired to my expensively-

appointed hotel suite. Rarely, if ever, have I engaged in such rough and aggressive carnal

relations as I did on that day. I wanted to hurt this girl, teach her a lesson she would never

forget... I won't go into detail here about the sort of things we did in that hotel bed, but I found

her just as oblivious to my severe physical blandishments as she was to my manly bluster and

desperate swagger; in fact, the more unspeakable things I did to her, the more delighted she

became.

"I will not, as I stated before, provide any greater specifics of this unsavory encounter, except to

say that I came quite close to killing her. In fact, my hands gripped her throat at the very

moment when we both climaxed, and had I squeezed any harder, I would have shoved her right

from her 'little death' into actual expiration. I relented at the last moment, however, releasing

my hold and rolling over on my side, so I wouldn't have to face her.

"I heard her gasping for the air that had been denied her whilst I had my hands on her windpipe;

presently she recovered fully; I felt her body lean over to a sitting position, and heard her light a

cigarette which she'd apparently removed from the pants she'd discarded in the throes of her

ardor.

"We sat in silence for a long moment. As she sucked and puffed, with a disconcerting air of

nonchalance, I lay abed, gazing out of the window at the cityscape, the buzz of my bodily

satiation departing with surprising rapidity. I felt full of apprehension, and when she next spoke,

I was not shocked, for she only gave voice to what I had somehow known from the very start.

"'We know who your parents are,' she said.

I sat up, turned around to face her, but she was still looking away from me. She stubbed out her

cigarette on the nightstand ashtray, but otherwise just sat still.

"Who's 'we?' I asked her. The girl shrugged.

"I seized her, brought her face close to mine, grabbed her throat again. "Who's we?" I repeated,

in a more menacing tone. To my dismay, the girl only looked mildly frightened. She gasped out,

'I'm... just... the... messenger.'

"'I don't care,' I don't her. 'I might just kill the messenger.'

"'That... won't get you anywhere,' she replied, as coolly as one can possibly speak such words

when a man still has his hands pressing, softly but still conspicuously, upon one one's windpipe.

"'What do they want from me?' I asked a moment later, after considering that, much as I hated

it, she was right. Strangling this tart wouldn't solve my problems. I again released my grip. She

broke away, grabbed at her clothes on the floor, and moved towards the door.

"'They simply need you to cooperate,' she told me, in a tone which betrayed no emotion

whatsoever. She was, it seemed, little more than an errand girl, or so she would have me

believe. 'They will contact you soon. If you do what they ask, your parents will remain protected.

If you refuse to cooperate...' She left that sentence unfinished, and bid me a terse adieu.

"She left in a state of some fright, still clad in her underwear, her clothes in her arms. In the

silence which followed her absence, I came to the grim recognition that I had no real options.

"By this point, I cared little for my tophet career; it had brought me fame and fortune, but the

egoic glow was rapidly wearing off. I wouldn't have minded if they'd threatened to contrive

some scandal or expose some wrongdoing, real or fabricated, to ruin my reputation. But I had to

protect my mother and father. And if protecting them meant betraying this alien faith that they

had inexplicably embraced, then so be it; I would have to do what I had to do.

**************************************

"The first step was to announce to my parents that I had decided to embrace their beliefs. So I

contacted them, and we agreed to meet at an inauspicious location, to avoid prying ears, be

they human or mechanical. Now came the tricky part. When my mother and father sat across

from me, accompanied once more by Professor Hamilcar/Father Athanasius, I found myself

unable to speak for several minutes.

"I was supposed to put on an act, confess that I had come to the end of my rope, that I had seen

the futility of fame, acclaim, fortune, and worldly success, that I now wished to devote my life

and soul to a higher cause. I was supposed to earnestly ask to be baptized. Once baptized, and

thus officially on the Church roles, I could begin to do the treacherous work which I had been

blackmailed into doing.

"All I had to do, then, was lie. It wasn't like I hadn't done it before. But sitting there, in that

inauspicious location, looking into the expectant faces of my parents and their priest, I simply

could not utter a word. I opened my mouth, but all that would emerge was a sigh or a sputter,

and finally, to my consternation, a sob, followed by another sob, followed by a full-on deluge of

tears.

"Something was preventing me from making my false confession. I wasn't at all sure what it was.

Shame? But I possessed none! Consider the life I had been living, the grotesqueries in which I

had willfully submerged my soul over and over again! And here, my intentions, though stained

in deceit and saturated with the specter of betrayal, were not wholly ignoble at all; I wanted,

more than anything, to save my parents. I had that outcome within my grasp...but when I

attempted to give my false testimony I found that my body could only react with a mortifying

series of bawling spasms, which racked my body like violent seizures...

"When at last able to speak, I quite involuntarily told my parents and their priest everything. I

revealed that I had been sent to speak to them, under false auspices, to confess my faith and

thus to win their trust, in order to facilitate them taking me in to their inner sanctum, where I

would be enabled to expose their identities to the authorities... Again, I must emphasize that I

spoke these words not because I wanted to, but because I felt compelled to do so. Even as I

came clear about my coerced circumstances, something in me was screaming "NO!"

"Yet I was unable to help myself, and before I knew it, everything that had been meant to

remain secret had been rendered manifest. To my surprise, my mother and father and their

priest now exchanged looks charged with meaning. They did not seem shocked or alarmed by

this development; in fact, it seemed to make sense to them. Now I felt throughly bewildered.

"'We must now tell you the rest of your story,' Father Athanasius now told me, with another

sideward glance to my parents, whose faces were now grave, almost grieving.

"'For your own sake, we kept this from you before,' my mother managed to mutter, before she

too was overcome with emotion. I looked on with immense confusion.

'My father then related the following information to me: It seems that while I still dwelt in the

womb, my birth mother received a series of visions, in which it was announced to her that by

the time of my birth, one of those infernal molks would be held in her city, in an effort to

appease Baal Hammon in order to end the devastating drought. My infant self would thus be in

danger, and it would become necessary for me to be adopted by others who did not live in their

region.

"But the visions she experienced also provided further details.

"My birth mother was informed, by some apparent Heavenly messenger, that the child to whom

she would give birth was no ordinary boy. In fact, that boy's soul effectually straddled two

worlds. He needed to be protected, because he would prove to be a great warrior for God in

time. He would, in fact, play a role in helping to spread the Gospel to the ends of both earths.

"Thus, my secret birth, the effort to get me smuggled out of the city where the molk was taking

place, and my winding up with the two people I came to know as mother and father, all was

done with a HIGHER PURPOSE in mind. I was a man whose soul 'straddled two worlds,' whatever

that meant. I was one who would play an important role in fighting for the Church, apparently.

All of this baffled and overwhelmed me. I wasn't even a believer! And my life, so far, had

certainly been anything but saintly. I had reveled in all manner of sin, worldliness, and

debauchery. And I had fully intended to betray the cause that my parents so devoutly

embraced... yes, to save them, but also to save myself! If not for the fact that something truly

inexplicable had interceded, I would have gone through with my treacherous plan.

"I told them all of these things. I expressed my disbelief and strongly emphasized that, whatever

visions my birth mother had received, there had clearly been some mistake. The visions MUST

be mistaken, I stated empahatically. Or maybe there had been some mix-up; perhaps another

preborn child in the same area was meant to be identified as this future warrior for the faith.

There was absolutely, resolutely NO WAY it was me! I kept making this selfsame point, over and

over again, as if I were afraid to stop talking, afraid of what would follow...

"What followed once I finally ran out of breath was most unexpected, and most alarming.

"After only a brief moment of silence, there came a terrible crash.

"Before any of us could begin to wonder about what was happening, we perceived that the door

to the room had fallen off its hinges and collapsed. Men in gear were rushing in; they seized

each of us before we even conceived of the notion of resisting. In a moment, rough hands had

pulled me to my feet, pinioned my wrists together with a cuff behind my back, and thrust a bag

over my head, fitted with some kind of elastic clamp which immediately closed around my neck.

At last, too late, I lashed out, albeit blindly; I kicked and yelled, but to no avail against these

men. Something jabbed into my arm, and I passed out..."

*******************

Aeric paused for a moment at this stage of telling his story, which had held Rayna's rapt

attention as the two sat together in that strange "in-between place," Rayna adorned in the

beautiful dress which had somehow been been gifted to her in this realm where she dwelt while

her body slept.

She gazed at Aeric, this mystery man, he who had already captured her heart and caused her

knee to bend in reverence and awe, even before she knew anything about his life.

"This is where things get a little crazy," he declared, betraying no self-consciousness whatsoever

concerning how "crazy" his entire account has sounded up to this point.

Rayna said nothing, sensing that he would presently tell the rest of his tale, and needn't be

prompted. She remembered her spontaneous gesture of fealty and obedience to him, and was

bold enough to reach out and take his hand. He looked into her face for the first time, and again,

Rayna caught something in the way his features settled into a melancholic cast that seemed

hauntingly familiar.

**************************

"They took me in," he said. "And they took my parents, and they took Father Athanasius, too.

But they brought me to a different place than the others.

"When I gained consciousness, I found myself in a chamber with a most unusual and peculiarly

unpleasant smell... They had clothed me in some kind of ritualistic garb, which, strikingly

enough, resembled the jerseys we wore on the tophet pitch, except skimpier: an ivory white

toga that barely covered my midsection, and matching trousers. There was no furniture in that

room, the walls of which were a disconcerting bright red, although a set of white blankets had

been set up in the far corner of the room.

"Before I had much time to wonder at the circumstances in which I now found myself, I received

yet another shock. The pneumatic door slid open, and a woman entered whom I instantly

recognized: she was the 'groupie' with whom I had entangled at the hotel, prior to her

revelation that she.. no, not just she, but those she had called 'we,' knew who my parents were'.

But now she wore a World Realm soldier's uniform, and stood before me, hands upon hips,

gazing into my eyes intensely, wearing an expression which, oddly enough, seemed to suggest a

sense of awe and reverence. She was flanked by two musclar men in similar soldier garb, both

with weapons drawn.

"Immediately I ran up to her with the intention of doing greater violence to her person, but the

two guards were on me in a second. They restrained me and urged me to 'cool it,' but I fought

them, until one of them knocked me across the forehead with the butt of his pistol and I fell up

against the blood-red wall, dazed and shaken.

"I then demanded that I be released immediately, that my parents be released immediately,

that they didn't know who they were messing with, didn't they know who I was? The most

beloved athlete in the Greater Carthagenian Realm?

"'Yes,' she answered, her face unwavering. 'We do know who you are. Didn't I tell you as much

when last we met?'

"My head began to pound, and I couldn't reply, and she took this opportunity to continue.

"''We knew this day would come, eventually. We meant to use your infiltration to maximal

benefit, first, but you, Aeric, chose to blow your cover, silly boy. Yes, we had a microscopic

listening device implanted on your person; I placed it there myself during our little... tumble in

that hotel room. Suffice to say, we used it to track you and monitor all that you said, and all that

others said to you... Because you gave up the game immediately, which some of us always

predicted you would do-- myself included, Aeric, as I think I know you somewhat intimately by

now (here she smirked rakishly)-- we had to extract you immediately. Which brings us to the

present.'

"She knelt next to me, and began to stroke my chest gently.

"'I want you to know, Aeric, how exalted by the gods I feel to be living in this moment, and how

grateful I am to you, for providing me with this opportunity,' she purred. 'Even though you may

not know it, or understand it, you have helped the World Realm to no end. Whatever treachery

you may have contemplated in your mind, your bloodline nevertheless steers you rightly...'

"She grabbed my chin, pulled her face close to mine. In my weakened condition, I could only

regard her quite helplessly.

"'I am Tanit-Felicity,'" she declared. "'My namesake. as surely you know, is our Carthaginian

goddess of fertility. And well am I named, for indeed, I am carrying the child of the chosen one.'"

"An interval of silence followed, during which my mind was assaulted with a barrage of inchoate

horrors.

"'I am carrying your child, Aeric,' she stated flatly.

"I pulled my face away from her hand, shook my head vigorously, tried to laugh, to display my

disbelief, but the attempt at self-generated mirth only caught in my throat. Still, I persisted.

"'That is a lie,' I spat.

"'It's no lie,'" she replied.

"'I am not any 'chosen' one,'" I weakly protested. Tanit-Felicity just laughed.

"'Do you know who I am?''' She mimicked both my words and my attempt to assume an

authoritative tone. "Yes! Indeed, Aeric, We know who you are! We know you, better than you

even know yourself."

"'Who am I, then?'" I asked. I meant the query to be defiant, but it came out lamely, like a feeble

bleat from a dying goat.

"'You are a man who has lived two lives, in two separate worlds,'" she announced. "'You are a

man who lived in the OTHER world, then, by some unknown, uncanny magic, perished in that

place and came to be born in THIS place.'"

"I shook my head dumbly.

"'Before you came to manifest yourself here, most of our wisest sages and scientists thought

that the notion of another Earth, on which this Nazarene, the 'crucified god' lived, died, and rose

from the dead, was sheer, ludicrous, superstitious hokum. We thought that these so-called

'Christians' dwelt in delusion, and yet a minority of our metaphysical seers and psychic

intelligence collectors sensed that there may indeed be another world, existing somehow,

alongside our own.... Some of our men even believed that there were certain souls which had

actually, somehow, made the leap between this world and the other place. But all was mere

speculation, until we found you.

"'We have had our eyes on you for a long time, Aeric. Of course, we keep our eyes on

everybody, that's our job. But you were a special case, from the very beginning. We have had

our spies in your parents' church since before you were born. Your parents and all of their

friends really have no idea how much we have penetrated and infiltrated their circles, or just

how long we have dwelt there. Having you there would have assisted our efforts somewhat, but

it was honestly something we could take or leave, and when you immediately blew your cover

and told them the truth, we made the choice to extract you and just get on with the process...

"'The truth is, we have always been multiple steps ahead of you. We had our informers telling us

of your case a quarter century ago. When your people made plans to save you from the molk

when you were still in utero and saw to your secret adoption by the man and woman you grew

up to know as your mother and father, we received reports about your case. We knew the

whispers about you being one who would play a special role in the future, and that you were

one who had lived previously in the other world, in a different body.'"

"I was about to reply indignantly that all of that business of me having a 'prior' life in a parallel

world was sheer nonsense, when something extraordinary happened. It was like an electric jolt:

I fell to the floor and felt something coursing through me; I writhed desperately as it surged

through my skin, and then began to absorb fully itself into my body and mind. In seconds, I

recalled that I had lived in that other place, where I had been tormented by some terrible loss,

which had marred my heretofore charmed life, and had made me want to die. I recalled how

some being had spoken to me, had seemingly blocked the bullet I attempted to launch into my

own head (an act which bewildered me at the time but which now strikes me as a true miracle,)

before offering to give me an entirely new life.

"Suddenly, I was just as sure of having lived this first life as I was of living my present life.

Something within me whispered, though not audibly: Steady now, courage. Fear not, I am with

you.

"Tanit-Felicity, having seen me collapse, and as little comprehending what had happened as I

had, nevertheless pretended to take it in stride. 'Fainting, a most unmanly response to stress,'

she taunted. 'But you shouldn't feel stress at all, Aeric. It has been taken out of your hands... All

you must do... is watch.'

"She nodded to the two armed, burly men, who promptly grabbed me, pushed my arms behind

my back and began to fasten me with some kind of binding device, as had happened before,

when they snatched me from that room. Again, as before, I kicked and thrashed, but to no avail,

and as before, they shot something into my arm, which instantly took the fight out of me.

"'Don't worry, it won't knock you out this time,' cooed the girl. 'It will merely enable you to

watch what is going to happen next. It is crucial that you be here, Aeric, for you set all of this

into motion when you took me so forcefully in that hotel room... Just remember that you are

the progenitor through which the mighty Baal Hammon and his stalwart companion Tanit, and

all of the glorious gods and goddesses of our race, who have helped to make Carthage a

relentless devourer of all of its enemies and have scattered to the four winds all who seek to

thwart our ambitions to rule the world, and to expand into the greater galaxy, to reign for eons

and eons on end...'

"'Not gods or goddesses,' I grunted out. 'Demons!'

"That thought had never before occurred to me, but just then, by grace, it assumed such an

awful clarity that I just had to put it into words, render it sensibly manifest. I had never paid

much heed to doctrinal matters or public rituals honoring the 'gods' before, though I suppose I

went along with things, as any loyal citizen would... It never even occurred to me to question

our public rituals and sacred ceremonies. I had always been proud to have possessed

Carthaginian blood, and I never even envisaged that all of our successes had perhaps come at a

very dear price, that we might be enslaving ourselves to sinister forces, that our ambition to

conquer the world, then the solar system, then the universe, might just result in the

relinquishment of that which is most dear in us, that is, our very souls...

"The girl looked amused by my blasphemy. 'So now you're going over to the cult of the crucified

Nazarene!' she exclaimed. "Oh, your mother and father would be so proud, if only they could

see you now...If only...'

"She let those words, 'if only' linger in the air, to cruelly taunt me, but I refused to give in to her

provocations. Your parents have their reward in Heaven, regardless of their present condition,

the sweet, calm voice from within informed me. Do not fear that which merely can kill your

body... But steady now. Have courage.

"The voice kept telling me to 'hold steady' and 'have courage,' which of course filled my heart

with dread, as I wondered what ordeal was coming. But I resolved, with my newfound faith, to

'endure til the end,' whatever that end might entail.

"'It little matters to us if you choose to throw in your lot with a blaspehmous death cult, Aeric.'

the girl was saying. 'The integrity of your blood sacrifice is not contingent upon your mindset... It

is your blood, infused as it is with the magic that enabled your soul to travel between worlds,

that matters... This blood sacrifice will enable us to travel to that other place, in order that our

World Realm may expand still further. Your blood will enable us to plant our roots in that alien

soil, to ensure our dominion endures for endless eons...'

"She was speaking very quite grandiloquently now, and my mind struggled to understand.

'You're going to kill me?' I asked.

"'Oh no,' she answered. 'You must simply watch. Or be in proximity, anyway, though why you

wouldn't want to see this glorious moment for our realm is beyond me... but either way, suit

yourself!'

"She began to shed her clothes, first her tunic and trousers, then her undergarments, until she

stood totally naked before me. She gazed brazenly into my eyes, daring me to recall our time

together in that hotel room, when, in the gross folly of my arrogant carnality, I had relinquished

her my seed to her womb. I tried to cry out, as I could sense what was coming, but the sedative

prevented me giving full voice to my horror. She read my face, smiled grimly, as if to confirm my

fears, then strode towards the white sheets which had been set on the floor in the corner of this

otherwise blood-red room...

"It might have been my drug-induced grogginess, but it seemed that the lights dimmed slightly

at that moment, and something in the atmosphere perceptibly shifted; the air appeared to grow

thicker, somehow. I reeled under the oppressive change, lost my vision for a brief interval, and

when I came back into awareness I gasped quite involuntarily: an assemblage of high priests and

a psychonaut shaman, recognizable by his peculiar robed garb and bull amulet, representing

Baal Hammon, had entered the room. They were standing in a semicircle around the girl, who

lay prone on the sheets, her legs fully splayed, her face hidden by her hair. She and the priests

and the shaman had begun chanting something in ominous guttural tones, in a language that I

could not identify, though it sounded ancient and primeval.

"At length, the shaman gathered up his robe, and knelt in the spot on the sheet on the floor

where her legs were garishly, obscenely spread-eagled. He held something in his hand, some

kind of tool which a sharpened edge... I moaned, groaned, tried to move, but found myself

rooted to the spot, immobilized by whatever they had shot into my arm... I now knew for sure

what was happening, and with all of my will I wanted to get up, run a few paces over to the spot

where the men were grunting their awful incantations; I wanted to beat all of them to death, to

prevent what they were now in the process of doing. But I couldn't, so I began to weep quiet

tears of unutterable anguish. 'My... child, my child. You can't do that... to my child!' I gasped

feebly, but I knew they couldn't hear me, and it wouldn't even matter if they could.

"I lowered my head and the uncanny chanting reached some sort of crescendo; when I dared

look up again, I nearly retched with dismay and disgust. The white sheets had been stained

bright red between the girl's legs. The shaman's gloved hands now held a tiny object, soaked in

blood, which I knew to be the life I had conceived with this girl; my own unborn child had been

the blood sacrifice. I heard a low rumble, and became at once aware of an awful redolence; it

savored of smoke and death and fear; the men in the room sensed it too; they began to quail,

mumble excitedly, and grovel before a sinister presence that had coalesced in our midst.

"It had manifested in a manner not quite corporeal but still grotesquely tangible; indeed, the air

had now thickened to such an extent that I could barely draw breath, yet the priests and the

shaman somehow began shouting wildly, ecstatic with the thrill of meeting their god.

"'Great Baal Haamon!' the bull-amuleted man shrieked, holding high his blood-dripping hand,

which still bore the tiny frame and fragile entrails of my poor lost son or daughter. 'Here is the

blood of the sacrifice! May it appease your divine hunger and slack your royal thirst, and

through your power, may our entry be granted to the realm of the Nazarene, in order that we

may extend our power to heretofore unexplored corners of the universe!'

"The girl, for her part, was keening loudly; it was unclear whether this was due to the pain of the

invasive procedure, or out of the same ghastly excitement that was impelling the men who

stood above her to emit their own fearsome verbal ejaculations, prompted by the manifestation

of that nauseating entity forming in our midst... But I could do nothing, except groan pitifully

and feebly, having been anesthetized so thoroughly with the effects of their poison shot, and

feeling so heartbroken at my loss yet at the same time so murderously angry at those diabolical

souls who had wrought this atrocity within my eyesight...

"Presently my mind came to comprehend that another thing had, as it were, drifted into being

within that wretched room: a big, swirling, humming, undulating phenomenon, weirdly hovering

in the air a few feet away from where I lay. From it, there vomited forth a stream of what

sounded like harsh gibberish, but if one harkened more carefully, it seemed to be a cacophony

of innumerable anonymous voices.

"Suddenly I felt seized with an instinct to draw nearer to this vortex, as I perceived it as my only

possible manner of escape. At the moment, I didn't know what that vibrating anomaly was, or

what it contained, or if passing close to it might obliterate both my body and my soul, but I little

cared. What I did know is that it had been summoned by their fearful sorcery, and thus could

not be good, yet paradoxically, I grasped that God-- the true Lord of the universe-- could take an

appalling transgression against nature and turn it to good, just, and holy purposes (I could not

have spoken it thusly at the time, of course; in truth, I could articulate very little at that point)...

"But before flinging myself into the possibly obliterating vortex of such intense sight and sound,

I found myself being swept up by the evil spirt of Baal Hammon, and for a moment I surrendered

to his vengeful will. I felt his hideous strength rise up in me, overriding the sedatives. I

immediately broke my bonds, roaring like a beast, and lurched over to where those wretched

priests and that pestilent shaman knelt, still quailing with perverse ecstasy...

"What happened then is mostly lost to my memory, thankfully; however, when I came to myself

again, I saw that all of their bodies had been mercilessly mangled; they resembled, in fact, full-

sized facsimilies of my own lost child, which they had conspired to slaughter in my sight. The girl,

meanwhile, was screaming in terror, and turning to run; I reached out, gripped her arm, pulled

her to me; I gazed wildly in her face, aware that my body was covered in the blood of those

men, whom I had apparently torn to pieces before her eyes. Encountering my feral visage and

gore-soaked frame at close range took something out of her; her eyes went blank, her body

went limp, and she crumpled in a heap onto the while blanket still stained with the blood of her

abominable sacrifice. The vortex still swirled, and I leapt toward it, eager to escape the blood-

red room, then found myself tumbling headlong into darkness.

*************************

"I landed with a heavy thud in a place that seemed faintly familiar, but as my entire body

smarted with a pain that throbbed intensely through my frame for an interminable interval, I

just had to lie there for a while before I finally raised my head... and saw that I now stood

outside of a familiar sight: that deserted car where I had attempted to end my life, before

being entreated by that mysterious voice to relocate my consciousness to the other world.. The

infernal portal had taken me back to my original life, and the world I had voluntarily left behind,

to be re-incarnated in a new body in the parallel world: namely, the one I had just left.

"I had, that is to say, returned to the exact spot where I had previously ceased consciousness in

this world-- the world that you and I share, Rayna!-- and wildly enough, it seemed that no time

had elapsed since my departure... But one thing remained unchanged: the body I occupied was

still my foreign body, the body of Aeric of the World Realm, where Carthaginian rule held sway,

where I had dominated the brutal sport of tophet, but had fallen into disrepute when I refused

to betray my heretic parents. And... I was still coated in the blood and gore of the men I had

ripped into ribbons. My heart still hurt with the sickness of worry for the mother and father I

had left behind, but I also began to recall the parents I had in this world... how would I possibly

explain, how could they comprehend my transformation? Why had I not reassumed my old

body? Was it because I had allowed myself to be drawn under the wicked spell of Baal Hammon,

in spite of now knowing his demonic identity? Had I been cursed to remain in this foreign body

after being released back into my old world, with the effect that no one I had previously known

would recognize me?

"Soon, I was to ascertain that my form had degenerated significantly and quite suddenly. When I

leapt into that vortex, I had been muscular and tan, as befitted my athletic avocation and all of

the time I had spent in the sun, but now, after giving myself over to that infernal bloodlust, I had

become wan and pale, as you see me now... I have a cough sometimes-- it comes and goes-- as

well as certain phantom bodily aches and pains. One doesn't delve into the dark arts, however

temporarily, without consequence. I see that now, and have repented of my accursed deeds.

"In any event, I felt it best to attend to practicalities at that moment, lest fixation on the broader

questions drive me mad. I hiked to the creek that adjoined the path in the woods, which

thankfully were deserted at that time (else I might have been spotted walking in my gore-

soaked raiments, which may well have created a sensation); I bathed in the creek in the twilight,

just as ominous winds began to gust; before I knew it, the heavens themselves had opened, and

rain was plunging down upon me from above even as I lolled in the creek bed, with the water

cresting ever higher minute by minute.

"I lay there naked, having abandoned my bloody clothes, and felt as if I were being baptized for

the second time. Not merely was my body being cleansed of my recent sin of succumbing to

murderous wrath, but my soul was likewise getting washed clean of all the brutal, loathsome,

and filthy deeds I had committed in my second life, the very life which had supposedly been

furnished for my redemption, where the self-slaughter I had attempted had been miraculously

circumvented, and I had been given a new chance, only to find myself again heading quite

determinedly towards a new iteration of self-destruction, one from which I had again been

'plucked out.'

"How many chances would I be given? I recalled suddenly that verse from our Scriptures, where

Christ invokes the number 'seventy times seven,' meaning something close to infinity. Suddenly

it burst over me: I was loved by an unfathomable being, one whose most salient property, at

least as far as it manifested itself in my bizarre life, seemed to be a stubbornly persistent mercy

and a nearly un-extinguishable love.

"As the rain fell from above, and as I drifted there, naked as a newborn child, in a rapidly rising

canal, silent tears began to fall from my eyes. They were not tears of grief-- even though in truth

I had much to be grieved over-- but rather of gratitude. I felt like one who has been rescued

from certain death; despite everything that had happened to me, all that I had endured, I

nevertheless had been set free again from that which had held me in bondage.

"'Now, I see,'" I whispered to the wind. "'Now I know'." And I solemnly pledged, to myself and

to the one who had been my Rescuer, never to forget. As well, I would never forget all those

who had participated in this rescue, including my parents (in both worlds), and the ones who

had given me birth, and had, while facing enormous danger, helped me to be literally born

again.

But there was one more person whom I still needed to seek out, one who, in my first life, had

shattered me so thoroughly, so carelessly, who had brought the very thought of ending my

existence to mind. I needed to see her again. If for no other reason, I had to warn her about

what was coming."

***********************

Rayna stared hard at her interlocutor, who matched her stare with unabashed and guileless

intensity.

Presently, Rayna lowered her eyes and shook her head.

"I can't believe it," she muttered. "I don't believe it."

Then she looked back at him, and for just a brief moment, he transformed before her eyes. In

place of Aeric, for just a split second, she thought she saw a familiar face.

"Chris..." she could but whisper.

"Find me," he said, reaching out to her. Rayna tried to reach back, but at that moment the scene

began to wobble maddeningly before her eyes. Then, she felt herself hurtling through the air

again, as if suddenly launched from a slingshot. "No no no no no no..." she moaned.

Then she lurched forward abruptly, and realized that she had sprung up from her bed, sobbing

uncontrollably. Sara had rushed to her, was grabbing her arm, shaking her frantically.

"Rayna, wake up! It was just a dream!" she was crying.

Rayna, panting hard, felt herself slowly readjusting to being ripped from that incredible

conversation she was having, with that extraordinary man, in that bizarre place. It took a

moment for her to collect her wits, but presently she pronounced, with great conviction: "That

was NO dream."

***************************

It was still early, and dawn hadn't yet broken, but Sara, seeing her friend in such a wild and

disheveled state, had been jolted wide awake. The two girls sat together for hours, while Rayna

related the events of her "dream."

Never before had a "dream" of hers contained such intricate detail, which she was able to recall

afterwards with such great clarity. Fantastic as all of the particulars were of Aeric's account, and

loathe as Rayna was to believe in their veracity, if for no reason just because it was so

undeniably fantastical, she nevertheless would not budge from the notion that what she had

"dreamed" had in fact actually happened, in some manner that she could not explain or

comprehend.

"I know it's difficult for you to believe me," Rayna told her friend. "But I need you to try."

She spoke these words with such heartbreaking earnestness that Sara, whatever her secret

qualms concerning her friend, found herself moved beyond measure.

"I'm with you, Rayna," she declared. "I'm on your side. It's just all so strange..."

In spite of herself, Sara felt deeply flattered that a girl like Rayna was taking her into such

confidences. She even wished she could speak with others about this situation, drop hints about

her friend's wild and wooly mental state, engage in spiteful gossip under the guise of displaying

care and compassion. The truth was, she felt her friend had probably lost her senses, in the grip

of this fearful obsession which had overtaken her.

Still, it wouldn't do to tell Rayna that she found it all patently absurd. All of this business about

double lives and parallel worlds, and finding her lost love in the person of this new man, this

"Aeric"... well, it was plainly crazy, she didn't believe it for a second. And yet, there was

something in this account which deeply appealed to Sara, in ways that she was quite reluctant

to admit to herself. It was exceedingly exciting, for one thing, and quite romantic. She even

wanted it to be true. Indeed, it was her secret ardor for this fantastical romance to play itself

out, to prove itself to be more than Rayna's fevered imagination, that propelled Sara to remain

in league with her friend, even while her less credulous impulses lead her to be tempted to

engage in more ignoble behaviors.

*******************

Rayna, for her part, couldn't be talked down. For her, everything simply fit together, and now all

that remained was finding her man again.

"He said, ''Find me,'" Rayna muttered. "Where would he be?"

Again, Sara was struck by just how rapt she was; her fervor hadn't diminished in the slightest

since waking up from the encounter which she was most adamant HADN'T been a dream.

"Where would he be?" Rayna repeated, her eyes bright with the fanaticism of love, her brow

furrowed with intense concentration. Without another word, she abruptly got up and took her

leave. Sara watched her exit the door, still in her pajamas and barefoot, with open-mouthed

astonishment. She hadn't said where she was going. She hadn't even bothered to put on her

shoes, in fact.

As Rayna tore across campus towards her destination, her mind was continually assaulted with

new visions. Everything that Aeric had told her about his world, she began to see in her mind's

eye, as clearly as one might glimpse sights in one's own environment. The impressions which

overwhelmed her began to assume all manner of texture and detail, not just sights, but sounds,

smells: full-bodied sensations of all kinds.

She knew, in a manner that she couldn't readily convey to anyone, that all of these intimations

of Aeric's world were real, as real as the world she knew, and she knew this in a way she had

never known anything before... It little mattered that she was barefoot; it made no difference at

all that she was still clad in her pajamas. Though she was nearly sprinting, she felt no pain as the

naked palms of her feet struck the concrete, nor was she in any way conscious of being out of

breath; instead, Rayna remained resolutely preoccupied with the sensory revelations which

were tearing through her awareness even as she made her way to the place she needed to be;

knowledge of Aeric's sure, undeniable existence was animating her spirit, igniting a flame in her

heart, filling her mind with heretofore unexperienced clarity.

Outside of the chapel she finally stopped running. Though the place had been built, as

previously explicated, in an unfortunate era of Church history wherein much that had been

beautiful and reverent was junked in favor of ugly, clunky, and garish art and architecture, there

yet remained a statue of the Blessed Virgin just outside of the narthex, which retained the

dignity and glory of a refined and devout era of worship.

The Alabaster Lady stood, her hands outstretched, her eyes humbly downcast; she embodied

purity of heart and resolve of will in obedience to the needful dictates of the Divine. With nary a

thought, Rayna dropped to her knees, and began a litany of whispered invocations; the words

pulsed from her lips with such rapidity that Rayna scarcely knew what she was saying, yet every

word was an impassioned expression of gratitude that poured forth from her soul.

She thanked the Mother, her own Mother, the Mother of God and of us all, for bringing her

here, to this exact spot at this precise moment, the moment of awareness and fulfillment.

She closed her eyes, and seemed to fall into a trance; calm enveloped her being, and a delicious

intimation of inevitability overtook her. Thus she was not in the least surprised when she felt a

hand grip her tenderly at the back of her neck. Keeping her eyes closed, she reached behind her

and slid her palm into his.

"You found me," she heard him say. It was the same voice that she knew, from the "dream," and

from that fever dream of an evening, when she had met him at Sara's father's party. The hand

she now grasped for the first time belonged, surely, to the same man before whom she had

curtsied that night, when she realized she had met the man who truly ruled her soul.

"Chris," she mutterd dreamily, first in her heart, and then aloud. And then he had turned her in a

pirouette and was pushing his lips against hers. Her eyes remained closed; she did not know if

the man she was kissing looked like the boy she grew up knowing as Chris, the one she had so

callously rejected, whose heart she had broken, whom she had unknowingly driven to near

suicide... or if he still bore the exotic visage of Aeric, the man that Chris had become in a

different life, while living in another world.

It hardly mattered; a visage was just a visage, after all.

Both visages belonged the same man, the man she loved, the man whose strong arms now held

her just as sturdily as her father's arms had once gripped her during her youth.

At last they disengaged, and she remembered the details of his incredible history, which she

now knew to be absolutely true, and felt seized with trepidation for the future.

Would her world, their world, soon be subjected to an invasion it never saw coming, from a

realm it never knew existed?

Was a true War of the Worlds soon to commence, with surely fearsome consequences?

"Open your eyes," he commanded. And as she did, and gazed into the face of the man whom

she loved and who loved her, she realized that whatever happened next was without any doubt

under the protection of grace, the same grace that had ended her misery and longing and had

brought the two of them together at last.

"I see you!" Rayna exclaimed, and began to weep with joy, repeating "I see you, I see you, I see

you!" over and over.

The two lovers witnessed each other, before that statue of the Mother of God, and Rayna

herself felt as one reborn.

Their prologue was at long last over, and their real story could finally