Woolgathering

  ***

  When she woke she was numb, numb all over with that kind of drowzy, dreamlike haze in which one's limbs were flaccid, their conscience light and lenitive. There was still a tiny pain in her heart, but it was just loneliness. She wished the sneakers would visit her. She knew they wouldn't. So her hand moved slowly to her crown, and she petted her hair, thinking of him, instead. When she closed her eyes and stroked her head like this she could almost see him, could see the features blurred by time, but whose expression remained fond as he patted her, as he spoke those words she couldn't forget.

  "You're a good girl, aren't you? Why—."

  The girl halted the thought. It was too precious, the second half of what he'd said— it was all the whispering of a demon, of a heretic, but she was vile so it was precious. Her heart was weak and depraved. It needed those evil words.

  You're a good girl, aren't you?

  A smile tugged at her face. There was a crack of light arcing through her dark curtains, and for once she basked in it, let it warm her bones with its effusive glow. She lay there, indulging while she could. To atone, she knew she would have to read that last chapter, face the horrifying truths of God and the heavens, so for a time she allowed a smile— stretched her limbs, petted her own head, and dreamed of that kind, ingratiating demon who'd stolen her childish heart.

  It was too fleeting, her rendezvous with sin. Soon that peremptory, wriggling black spot in her conscience began to reprimand her; her spirits sunk back into their appropriate low, her features drooping into the sorrowful and fortitudious visage of the holy whom she knew she would never be. Taking deep breaths to steady herself, she reached under her mattress and retrieved the book.

  The girl could hardly lift it, it weighed so heavily in her grasp. It was with the pallor of fear, with her eyes round and wide and her lips drawn that she pried the pages open a crack with her fingers. Already she could feel an icy wind breathing out, roiling in smoky convolutions to fill her lungs, bringing her agonizingly to life.

  She swallowed. Gooseflesh crawled over her skin. Her hair was standing on end. Her heart threatened to beat out of its cage.

  Arduously, she began to read.

  She read of hell spilling over the earth, of heaven raining fire, of beasts and devils and seraphs with blood over their snowy robes and cool murder in their eyes as they dispatched the infidels and weak. She read the sum of those who would be deemed worthy to enter the kingdom, and how the rest would be plunged evermore into a great lake of fire, burning to the end of their days.

  And the girl knew. She knew she could never make it, knew she could never pray or bleed enough to earn the wings to fly. She pictured herself writhing in that bed of fire, raped by its blackening tendrils, tormented by the nightmares and mirages flickering in its ruby depths. She imagined watching as magma continued to pour down from the clouds, wondering why God had bothered to make hell when there was so much fire and brimstone in heaven, so much suffering on the path to it. Then God would hear her wretched thoughts, and, livid, he would plunge her deeper in the lake, and she would feel everything burning, burning, burning! She would feel her soul tearing into smoldering pieces, melding with those of demon and heretic alike. The pages beneath her hands were spotted now with tears— she was heaving over the black, dogmatic ink.

  Then that last word fell like the blade of the guillotine.

  Amen.

  Her fate was sealed.

  Shaking her head frantically, stomach twisting for dread as her heart stopped, the girl flipped the page. Surely there was more! Surely that was not the end, surely there was more for man than this! Surely—!

  Her eyes fell on the last sheaf of paper, one previously blank, but onto which she had scrawled, in an untidy hand and forever ago, the final words of her demon.

  You're a good girl, aren't you? So why are you walking to hell?

  Gambit

  I.