One early spring morning, life as I knew it stopped to a screeching halt.
I was very ill, took to the hospital, was given what turned out to be a bad batch of antibiotics, and sent home with a balloon for a heart. I just thought it was pain from vomiting, so I largely tried to ignore it and be strong. You know, power my way through the sickness. I began losing weight much too fast for a few days, and an excruciating throb resounded from my chest into my back, and kept me from sleeping. I was a comical sight, big breasts, tiny waist, thick hips from childbearing, and I didn't know it right away, but I was dying.
I like to think I'm a good little pagan. I keep my altar, I celebrate my sabbats, esabats, and blotnights grandly. I know the old ways, but seek to bring them to new life. I honor my gods in ways I know they'd appreciate. In the last few months, I'd managed to figure out an implausible, stupid workaround for astral travel, and ended up on a beach, walking alone and naked, until I met the lovely wonder I found to be my patron god. What happened the night the axe fell was nothing like that.
I had been retching and sobbing for a couple hours, completely witless to the pain that was tearing me apart from the inside out. I don't know whether I was really in the right world or not, maybe I had one foot here and one in the Dreamlands. I still don't know. I closed my eyes and retched again, and was surrounded by dark. It was like somebody killed all of the lights everywhere. I am twenty-seven years old and still afraid of the dark. I felt around stupidly, naked and groping, smelling the raw sewage that was my skin during prolonged illness. It was awful.
Out of nowhere, I felt hands under my arms, wet tangled mess that they were, pulling me up against a warm body that I recognized by smell and some sense I still don't know what it is. It was him, thank everything I find holy! Oh thank everything in the world! He'd come to save me!
He'd balled me up in his naked lap and held me. I didn't care anything for the nudity, I was far too focused on the pain. I didn't think the basal sobbing and begging I did counted as praying, but he came, so I figured it would all be okay in the end. I remembered the dogma from my childhood—that troublesome Yiddish boy promised to chase all wickedness from the world and heal the sick. My gods promised no more frost giants.
How many frost giants have you seen lately?
Surely stopping my pain would be little more than a sneeze to this powerful man.
I squalled and carried on, crying and begging him to stop the pain just so I could sleep for a little while. I stuffed my face in his ginger hair, no doubt my wet nose making it unbearable on his skin. The movies have it all wrong, you know. Every damn thing wrong but the smile. Somehow, I knew the smile just wasn't there this time. He made sincere comforting noises, attempted to hold me comfortably, but didn't address the real problem. I hurt so fucking much, though, I couldn't stop myself. The words tumbled out and I couldn't stop them.
"Please, for the love of god, please, please, please, Daddy, help me. Please make me sleep."
I have never even called my own father that. He was Da as a kid, and when I could talk plain, Dad. The deity looked down at me, with this unfathomable expression. I think it pulled something in that undying heart of his. He does so love the damaged.
He sighed against my head and said, "Never let it be said I don't love my children. I'm moving you flat on my legs. Cooperate."
I tried, but moving and twisting my back was worse than leaving it alone. I screeched the entire time. I was too focused on my splitting sternum to be shy about being uncovered, and I wasn't sure if the darkness was only there for me or both of us. He traced a nail down my throat, collarbone, and to the angry knot between my pedulous breasts. It stung like he was dragging a wasp across my skin. I knew a few inches down he would find old surgical scars from years before, but I didn't know why he'd pick now to touch me like this.
"This might hurt." He said, and did not lie.
I didn't understand it. His fingers sank into my skin like it was water. I felt his fingertips heavy against my traitorous bastard of a heart and it was agonizing. I didn't understand what he was doing, was he going to heal me? Was he going to pluck out the organ and eat it? It was pounding and the pain tripled in intensity. I was keening pathetically, I didn't have much energy to do anything else.
Just as easily as he placed them in, he slipped his fingers out and pulled me back up against him even though it hurt. "Please, please stop the pain, Daddy," My voice had gotten so little.
"No." Was all he said.
And in that moment, I was terrified he had forsaken me. I had a few seconds of the empty pain of abandonment, and then there was nothingness. Nothingness until I woke up, in my own bed, in unholy pain again, but rested. I caused such a hideous racket that my husband realized I was serious and took me back to the hospital. My heart was swelling and I should have sought treatment at the first sign of chest pain. The doctors worked their modern magick, deflating my angry ticking clock, shoving water and good drugs in my arms and saving me. My first real deep breath once my chest was free was the most incredible feeling on earth.
I had to thank him somehow. By refusing to help me, he may have saved my life.
I did my time in bedrest, bored but healing. I spent a decent amount of time celibate in bed with my husband, naked for the fever but untouched. I studied my craft and my faith, as I had little else to do. In time, I healed. My body healed, and my astral body healed enough for me to think about pushing beyond the wall of sleep and back to the beach world I visited once. I wanted to wait for the full moon in May, Beltane's moon. I'd store up power, do a strong ritual to boost my odds of success, and make contact again. It was a tall order, but I had absolute faith in my ability as a witch and my dedication as a heathen. I could pull this off, if anyone could.
The night was not a clear one, as I hoped. It was raining long and hard, and it's simply impractical to do a ritual outdoors in the rain when you're planning to be nude and your lawn has but three bits of grass on it.
I decided to commandeer the bedroom for the night. My husband was more than happy to play his video games in the living room and leave me to my worship space. He understood how important it was to me. I usually had my altar to him set up in the kitchen, where I do most of my work, both mundane and magickal, but I moved it in with me this time. I traced the circle in the floor with chalk, lit my candles, and stripped bare, casting my clothes outside the circle. I wanted to put all of me out there, hide nothing. I wanted to come to this thing in perfect trust. It was beyond great able to feel and enjoy my own skin again. My breasts hung as they did every day, the red down between my legs had grown considerably during my recovery, and I had lost so much weight that I had a kind of exaggerated hourglass figure going on. I sat cross-legged on the floor and did my thing. I had a much deeper appreciation for the deep breathing that led me into and out of my trance.
After about two hours of this deep meditation, I drifted back into myself. The rain was still at it. I could still hear Final Fantasy Seven in the other room. Instead of feeling drained like I often do after a ritual, I felt electric. Yes, if I was going to successfully push the wall, tonight was the night. My attempts before had been happy accidents. This would be different.
I cleared the ritual area out and got the bed ready. I left one tea light on in his green oil burner. The tea lights tend to extinguish themselves before they become dangerous, and I needed the scent to keep me in the correct mindset. The sensual vanilla and sandalwood reminded me of whatever his skin and hair smell like, and there is something under that scent, patchouli maybe, that makes the mind open up the parts that are otherwise inaccessible during mundane activities. I laid down and got comfortable, careful not to snag my nipple barbells in the sheets, and thought hard of my ritual for astral travel.
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
I watched myself board the plane and light a cigarette before sleep took me.
My body felt it before my eyes opened. Warm sand, warm surf curling up over the sand like a giant duvet on a bed. I had taken great pains to look nice in my regular body, and it had gone over to this one as well. Clean-shaven legs, though underarms and cleft left mostly alone, nails all pained gold. Though I knew it wasn't a good habit, I'd gone to bed with my makeup done. The steroids took a toll on my complexion and I was sensitive about that. I hoped I'd be pretty enough, but that's kind of like saying you hope clay is enough to build a storm shelter.
I wandered the shore as I always did, looking for him. I always found him in the end, lounging somewhere watching crabs scuttle around. This time was no different.
"Hail," I said, a little ways off from him.
