Give Me That Body (Oneshots)

Yaksha (2013) - Take It From Me

Green-eyed boy, it is not often I speak to you. "Monster", listen to me. 

It is twenty years now since you have come to me, here, in the belly of my mountain. Here, you wash your hair in my basin and you wash your skin. You look at me and you lick your lips, your skin, golden from the sun, pink fingernails, pores visible upon your nose. Young vampire, delicately cleaning the dirt from between your toes. 

To me it is still happening, as I stand beneath your window now, in your grass, looking up at your shadow. You are seeing me, and it is dark inside of your room. You are seeing me, in your youth, and you are seeing me now, when you are so old. 

In my mountain, there is still red in your eyes. When you are tired, the little vessels burst and your eyes are more and more green. When you sleep I look at your eyes if you leave them open. 

In the mountain, it is twenty years since I first smelled you, and the sediment of the places you had walked, in your five hundred years. Twenty years that I have had you in my mind, twenty years and many thousands of years now, of you walking barefoot in my city, and the smell of you I held inside of my head, of your fragrant sweetness, as you walked. In my mind, the shape of you, fragrant and mourning for the long dead. A lovely color to me, you, this night-blooming lotus in my head, walking in the market. And your smell is not changed. Still fragrant sweetness. Still mourning for the dead.

I know the shape of you in my arms, when I pulled you from your path, and held you, and how you said to me, lips still, "Spider," with tenderness. How you wanted to die and I said, "Hush, do you see him?"

"Who?" 

Inside of my head, you touched me, with your long, brown fingers. I held you close to me, my arms crossed over your chest. You said, "Cold," about me, to yourself.

"Be quiet and listen for him," I said. "Do not touch me. Stretch your fingers out and find him."

As I stand under your window now, you close your eyes and I feel that you are seeking with your fingers, remembering what I tell you to remember. You stretch out with your fingers and look for the dead. Rather than seek inside of yourself, you look for your child in the dark. You must stop this.

"I see him," you said to me, aloud, in the market. The predator who stalked you. "I see him. He wants me."

"Stay here," I said, and I let go of you. Your finger hooked onto the strap of my linen bag, as I went, releasing it after a step. 

I caught the one who had been hoping to eat you in the market, and I gently broke his hips. I gently broke them, holding him as if he were my brother, so that he would not die but could not run. He had too much pride to cry out, even while we ate him together in my mountain. I gave you what I had. 

You said your name was "Aurvha", in the mountain. You said your name was "Raske", in the wood. You said your name was "Faya", by the sea. You said your name was "Leechtin", beside an unknown ocean. I say my name is nothing, and you call me, "Yaksha." You call me "Monster."

Now you are as pale as the desert. Now your lips are flush with red. You are at war with everything. 

Come with me, I say to you, under your window. I say that to you, as I have been saying it for all of your lives, to Raske, to Faya, to Leechtin. 

What will we do? you ask me.

In my mountain, cleaning your skin of blood, cleaning between your toes, safe from the one we have eaten, you said to me, stretching your fingers out to me, looking into my eyes, I do not know what has happened to me. All I know is that I loved a man. I cannot remember how it was when I was living. 

I see everything.

Elder, you said to me. Tell me about my life.

Upon my lap you laid your head, and that night you slept with your eyes open, and in your sleep you wept blood. Your green eyes were bloodshot, almost black with your tears, and I watched you. I know that you sleep because you are tired. But I never grow tired. All of your former life is lost to you, and you have only your grief because it is so new, but it will also pass away from you, and so you give it to me, to hold. You gave it to me then, and you give it to me now.

And these days you say, "I cannot remember anything of the man I loved, and yet inside of me I feel him standing, and I do not know what it is to say love and to see through so many eyes. Now I am so alone."

You think of your life as a many-sided jewel, and the light drawn into it blinds you, and so you are blind.

In my mountain, you said, "I cannot remember the name of the man I loved," when you woke. "The most beautiful name."

"Close your eyes to the world and you will see him. You try to know all that there is. You are looking all around him and he is standing just in front of you."

You fear losing the world. You fear that if you look back too quickly, you will forget that your feet stand on the earth, and that you will swim so deep into your head that you will drown there. Sometimes you are so afraid that you come to me in your mind. I am here.

For you the entire world is those whom you love, and you fear that to lose them is to lose yourself. You think of yourself as new whenever it is that you start your loving over, whenever you close your eyes and dream.

You look to me, who have never closed my eyes for so long. You look to me, who has never whispered a name, and you say, "I loved him. Do not forget the boy I loved."

In this land, there are few stars. You do not come to me, but I am here. I have always been. 

In my mountain, after twenty years, you massaged my feet. You pushed your fingers against the arch of my foot, and I felt it in my shoulder blades. You looked at me and you saw all that I was, pale as yellow goats' milk. My hair grey and my eyes black. You knew that we are the same, and that you will be like me. You knew that I was older than even you when I was made, and you pushed upon my arches. 

You knew that if you did not go by morning, I would kill you.

But you no longer wished to die.

"Monster," you say, in your window. "It is hot."

"Come," I say to you.

You come wrapped in linen, and you cover me in silk. We walk together, and you trail me, holding onto my clothes. The silk is balled up in your hand.

Here in this strange country, where you stay in order to be near to your dead, you have one who says that he loves you. A boy you love, who has both eyes open. You have many who fear you. They are devoted to you.

And yet you are drowning. You tremble. You have lost your child. The one who held you to this life.  I walk into the water and you follow me. In the deep shade of a dying lake tree, in whose hollow belly I have often slept, you show your throat to me, and I know that you have been violent to the boy you love. 

"Take it from me," you say. "Take the blood away from me," you beg.

When I think of you, I think of how you left me, because I feared I would come to want for you if you left me, and I do not fear. Fear is dangerous.

I touch you, night-blooming lotus. I press my fingers gently against your throat, which is still but for the slow, insistent beating of your heart.

I know what it is to be a man. I know myself. I do not close my eyes. 

You hold me so desperately that I nearly lose my footing on the silty lakebed, your fingers digging into me, through the silk you draped over me. 

You are afraid, and so you do not know what you do. 

I leave you sleeping, a pale shell, where you crumble, half-submerged in the water and dreaming in the deep evening. 

I leave you. 

I know that you will come to me.

I know that it will be soon.

I know that it is only a matter of waiting.