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We're all sick. I was sick back in the old days, you're sick now. Does any of it matter? To shut him up she pulls him up to her and forces her lips on his mouth. She drinks the juice there. They both sink to the floor. He coughs and wheezes as she pulls open his robe, and in the shadowed light of the kitchen she cannot see his body, cannot even feel him as he enters her. He is so emaciated, so light, that he seems to not be there. A knife is in her hand -- how did it get there? One of the spells is coming over her. It would be so easy to plunge the blade into the heaving ribs of this man, the bones so plainly visible underneath the jaundiced skin. Then perhaps herself? Like one of those old dramas about love and honor and dignity? No, too silly. People like that do not exist any more because they have killed each other off. Like a process of  |
evolution. A mission, she was here on a mission. There was a certain person in town who must be killed. Yes, that was it, kill, the simplest directive of all. There were many of those kinds of things, but that was in the past. No more messages, no more commands, just her atop this old man, this is what is she is now. The old man's mouth is wide open, a rattle rising from his throat, and she stares at it, half-expecting something fearful to emerge, her own mouth open and ready to accept it, while the politician on the television is making an important point: Sacrifices will need to be made. Some of the border towns are indefen- sible… *** The temple is now a museum. Freshly painted, railings and carefully paved courtyards having  |
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