I had never been in shock before the occasion he set upon me. So acute was the experience that I think I should be unsurprised by any hereafter violation of my frame—though I thought it a sturdy one!—he proved that I had strung through me like all others an order of nerves, and that not only I had it, but it had me, and was me! I was at once electrified and suspended by a vivid knowingness that I was flesh and could spill, that beneath my durable, agentic outside—the one which everyday I felt and used with success—was an inside quite inversely pregnable and mucous. That I was mortal, and afraid to die—he taught me this with his unyieldingness in combat, and with his fearsome teeth, which passed alarmingly through the flesh of my cheek, so thoroughly, in fact, that the apex of one of his fangs gnashed against my own molars—His teeth, I remember thinking, How and why are his teeth in my mouth? And, rest assured, dear Reader, I have not forgotten the bottom two! His powerful jaw brought upward those fangs and pierced them into my neck, just behind the chin—wherein resides so preciously my life, the essential course of my blood and breath, and all were spared but by a near miss.
There I lay, encumbered totally by his hulking form, and have nothing but to whimper. He is firm and enveloping against my back. I sense—with my bones, surely, for my ears have taken to ringing interminably—a low growl reverberating in his chest. Then, briefly, as if punctuating the beastly sound which filled me from him, a shudder possesses his frame, and I wonder: What emotion of his did I just feel?
“Miguel…” It is all my effort to speak; I feel my tongue is not mine, and the muscles in my face rebuke me instantly.
His teeth slip sickeningly (it is all so terribly wet!) out of my mouth, yet his hot, heaving breaths remain near—they linger and push against my face—with each exhalation he is serving to me the smell of my own blood. I shut tightly my eyes, for I think of courage, and I feel shameful at having none in this moment.
“That was easy for me, y’know that?” His lips move against the shell of my ear; my entire frame jolts impotently as one fang-tip pricks at the cartilage.
This is precisely (not a second sooner, for I am foolish and easily awed) when my eyes open.
Make no mistake; my lids still clench with cowardice, fear wetting my lashes and the apples of my cheeks—I dare not bear witness to my end! No, not those that see—I do not wish to see! It is those inward gazing orbs, by which one comes to know, those snap open and behold my assailant with searing acuity.
They see that to be his ally is to be poised upon a foundation as ephemeral as a strand of spider’s silk—that against the weight of my faults it sags and sways—that his hands have always been about the line—that his proud and skillful fingers strum the rhythm to which I dance. Oh! And how his tantrums send violent tremors throughout!—and in response I wobble, I bargain, I capitulate, I slip!
Suddenly, his immense taloned hand seizes the back of my skull and wrenches my face from the floor. In my periphery, refracted by a welling of tears, looms his blazing countenance, eyes wild and undeniably infernal.
“You think you can make it out there on your own? You’re only alive because of me!” His warm breath billows more fervently against my face as he speaks. “Where are you gonna go, huh? What do you think you’re gonna fight for when all our dimensions crumble away, too? There is no other way, no other fight, no one else to run to. I’m all you’ve got, do you understand me? I know what needs to be done and I will do it.”—it is here in his tirade that Miguel’s severe voice mellows into an almost tender lament—“You’re soft, little Spider-Girl. You’re… inconsequential. The universe can dispense with you—but I…”
I groan pitiably; my tongue is not mine.
“It’s all the same in the end, really,” he continues, though, it seems, his conference is now with himself. “Allowing you to leave or putting you down…”
Miguel’s claws retract from my scalp, his fingers take up a fistful of my hair and he shakes me gently by the blood-soaked tresses—the motion is a swaying to the tune of his inner discord (and thus my fate! it seems to is my annihilation and fro is my liberation)—all the while those glowing, seeing embers embedded in his skull burn into my flesh and through to my spirit.
Time always flows molasses-slow over life’s precipices, and upon one I was teetering, for forever—I was only sure time moved at all because he breathed—and did I? Did I let air into my lungs? Did it make a sound when it passed out of my trembling lips?
I was, against my will, a prop in this macabre tableau for many infinite seconds—here was my painfully craned neck and his knuckles entwined in my hair, there was the blood in his teeth and smeared down his chin—to an outside witness it must have appeared a picture of wild hunger—one, dear Reader, you have surely witnessed before, if only against another backdrop:
Envision, if you will, a day melting into violet and crimson; the sun reposing fatly and ripely upon the distant plains; hear the arid grasses hiss all around in a thick and sweltering breeze. Then recall the digging of her hooves into the earth, how her elegant legs wobble beneath her weight; see her eyes glazing as her tawny coat becomes sticky with her insides; watch as his head dips and rises, his mouth fills and his throat puts away. Do you notice just how gently he holds her? Does his posture not exude a sort of quiet pride and satisfaction?
I am speaking, of course, of the calm which follows the catch; of the feline holding tenderly his meal in her last moments; of her dozing into eternity as he rends and licks and relishes.
I am certain that the same hunger and satisfaction were roiling within Miguel, and I was unquestionably placid and ready like the sorry little mammal aforementioned. But that the ground here was cold and inanimate and I could not see the sky, and his supple, snarling mouth was marked with the sanguine hue of passion rather than the deep reds of a natural feast. Should I have died, I would not then enter him, but be kicked aside!
A cry issues through Miguel’s gritted teeth and pours like warm honey over the crook of my neck (so sweet are those light and unadulterated notes that attend only his most pained expressions). His arms constrict around me and his fingers press into my flesh—they are blunt and unwounding once more, though they grasp at me with bruising force—my lungs are emptied, and I think I am in the midst of a human embrace, and I think: It is over.
Thus the fear in my body undergoes a transmutation—the frigidity of terror, with its glacial grip on my spine and crisp rime seizing my veins, turns to a thick fog. It is the fog of impotent dread and it billows against the inside of my skull, imbues me with a sense of mobility, of looseness, of distance from myself, of obscurity.
So, instead of by its own natural and self-contained communications, my proprioception is delivered to me by his touch—my stomach, my ribs exist because his palms and fingertips impress upon them; I know my spine curves because his powerful abdomen, with its respirations and feverish writhing, informs me so; an awareness of my legs position—splayed without dignity—is granted to me simply by his own leg draped between mine.
It is all to say that I am grounded by Miguel just as I am dazed by him. It is my saving grace that the force of him has its counterpart: the floor, solid and immoveable (it does not heave with passion) and cool to the touch. It is my only evidence of being someplace objective, rather than all-consumed by the grasping and mouthing of a beast.
When at long last he releases my limp frame and rises abruptly to his feet, I shiver at the loss of contact.
“Christ!” he gasps.
I see him no longer, but hear him pacing, hear him cursing and exacting his residual fury upon the steel walls and articles of technology about his workspace.
Then a moment of silence commences, wherein even his footsteps come to a halt, and time is viscous once more. My ears sift through layers of small and sundry sounds—my own bodily functions throbbing—the work of a thousand mechanisms and their electric ichor purring and humming, buzzing and choking upon the floor—the air steadily rushing in and out of Miguel’s nostrils—his low voice meandering through the vacant space—
“Dios te salve, Maria…” Hail Mary…
His words are as hushed and as lilting as a faraway brook.
A dozen or so words pass without meaning into my ears before I realize that he is engaged in prayer. Upon concluding, he begins again, reiterates the supplication as his footsteps draw near and far in a linear path beyond my head. Intermittently, I glimpse the lower extremity of his slinking form, and proceed to watch for lapses in its surveillance. He moves swiftly, as I have known him to, but there is a frantic aspect to his pacing that leads me to believe he is not with me entirely, but someplace else—his conscience averted to the heavens.
Here is my chance!
I make to leap to my feet.
Alas! I am so very heavy!
His fervent prayer trickles on, rivulets of remorse spanning the open air, pooling in my ears like blood. “Santa María, Madre de Dios…” Holy Mary, Mother of God…
I try to crawl—but my limbs forget how!
“Ruega por nosotros pecadores…” Pray for us sinners…
I command my body to move, as it has done a million times before!
“Ahora…” Now…
It will not move.
“Y en la hora de nuestra muerte.” And at the hour of our death.
My body is not mine.
“Amén.”