Page 35 of An Immaculate Deception

“Yes.” He starts unfurling the cloth. “Let the ancient spirits guide you.”

He starts wrapping this cloth around my eyes, blindfolding me. It is a thin, semi-sheer fabric, and I can still see the outline of his body and the glow of the torches to my left. Everything else is blurry.

“Before you enter the flaming pentagram, you must release the old you.”

“How?”

“I’ll show you.”

He takes me by the hand and guides me forward. I feel the heat of the flames, and see their glow pass me by on my left. We move past the podium. The flames are behind us. I remain oriented, and I know when we reach the table behind the podium. It is cool and dark. The blindfold seems unnecessary.

He lifts my hand and presses an object to my palm. I close my fingers around it and find it is smooth and round at the edge. The handle of the ceremonial dagger.

He stands close to me on my right side.

“What lies before you is an effigy of you,” he says. “This ritual effigy is a wax and mud doll that represents the old you, the one called Madalena. It symbolizes your past, your attachments, the identity assigned to you. Raise the dagger to it.”

I reach for it with my free hand. I feel the upward tip of the doll’s nose, lips, then my hands pull outward slightly, and I feel the straw-like texture of the doll’s hair.

I raise the dagger with both hands. I conjure to mind all my life’s attachments, the old me, which is inseparable from the world around me. Then I think of Leandro and his rejection of the baby. I think of Mother and her threat to take the baby away from me. I feel nothing but spite for all of them, and I bring the dagger down, furiously, again and again. I want to be free, and now I’m starting to feel an inkling of freedom. The scent of copal makes my head buzz.

Breathless, I spin around to face him. He whispers words I don’t understand, but there is a music to them, a resonance. His hand caresses my cheek and brushes my lips, then lingers there for a moment. I close my eyes. I can feel that he is looking down at me, though I cannot see him. I instinctively reach toward my face to remove the blindfold, but he stops me.

“No,” he says.

I follow him back to the edge of the flaming pentagram. I stand on the outer perimeter of it, feeling the blaze on my skin. It is so bright. I hear his voice: a soothing, low chant in some other tongue. He stands on the outside, too, waiting for me.

I step inside. My feet touch the chalky, warm surface of the pentagram. The flames rise all around me, engulfing me in a vortex. I am the light rising out of the abyss. I am the ancient spirit who has been invoked. I spin around, laughing, free as a newborn. I know what I want.

I stretch my hand toward him.

19

He crosses the threshold and a profound wordless communication passes between us. He stands over me, so close that I can see him even through the cloth. His eyes lock onto mine and for a moment he is very still. Then he takes me by the wrist and pulls me to him abruptly and holds me from behind. He moves my hair aside with the back of his hand and brings his lips to my neck. He holds me close as he kisses me. I feel it resonate through my body. He moves up, planting soft kisses on my ear, jaw, and cheek.

I spin around to face him. His eyes are full of knowing, soft and focused as a pure light beam. His arms wrap around my back and he draws me to him, then our lips meet. Slow at first, then deep and lingering. I squeeze strands of his hair between my fingertips. He draws me into a tight embrace and my heels lift off the ground. My body fills with air.

Had I never come here, had I chosen not to come inside this house, I would have gone my whole life without knowing this feeling. That is the final thought that passes through my mind before it folds into itself.

He slides off my chemise and casts it aside. He lays me down on the ground and runs a gentle hand over my skin. The flames shimmer and flicker like a constellation of stars. I smile, laugh, as he whispers secrets into my ears, and I hear his voice. I feel the chalky lines on my back, warm and slick. Slick with something else, too, just beginning, hovering in the periphery of my awareness, and no more.

He is powerful. His grip on my body is firm and sure of itself. His strong hands, which I secretly coveted from afar, I now bring to my lips. He could be the reptilian beast devouring me, shivering, making me sigh. Whispering: What you want is not love, but destruction. No matter what happens from here on, know that this feeling is real. This feeling is true. All else is false. This is what you must return to.

We are rising. Above us there is no ceiling, around us there are no walls, no boundaries to give form or shape to our surroundings. We have no past or names, just this. We are particles of light and vibrating sound waves and darkness. I’m rising.

I am at the center of the pentagram, vast, and my hair is wet. The floor is slick and metallic. Even when he’s not talking I hear his voice. I disappear inside of it. There is no I, only him, and it feels good. He pulses deep within my blood.

Lumps of my hair are sticking together. Sticking to my shoulders and arms. My back and the backs of my arms are wet. He draws me up to his lap and I straddle him.

There is never a moment when I pull down the blindfold. I simply notice the red on the floor, at the edge of my vision, at the outer perimeter of my awareness. I don’t care. I don’t stop. I don’t stop when I register shifting figures in the distance, shadows moving, or the dangling hand beyond the flames.

The fire burns bright and exquisite. Time slows to a crawl, stretches taut into a space of utter stillness, stops, then crawls again, with no end in sight.

20

I wake up feeling good. My body feels strong, and all of the aches from the carriage accident are gone. The room is dim, but a little bit of sunlight filters in. As I look around me, for a moment I do not know where I am. Doctor Lobo is nowhere in sight. At the far end of the room, there is a single boarded-up window through which meager wisps of sunlight filter in. The podium is now bare, and the long table has a large tarp over it. It is only from these that I understand this is the same chamber that I spent the night in. Only now, without the flaming torches, it looks completely different. I see the bare walls at the far end, and no other furniture.

Something isn’t right. My hands and hair are wet. As my eyes adjust to the dim lighting, I discern that the floor around me is slick. I wipe my finger on it and smell blood.