Angel of MercyGet out! I slipped as I stretched to grab my briefcase, slamming face first into the stall door. I lay stunned, my face pressed against the cool, slimy tile, feeling the warmth blossom like a flower from the base of my skull.
The pair next door didn't seem to notice, as the gentle slurping and rustling clothing became louder, more insistent. Colored flashes, as I began to see through their eyes. "Stop it!"
They didn't.
I forced myself into a crawl, groped for the sliding metal knob, but it was happening far too quickly. Sweat ran freely, soaking the collar and armpits of my white Oxford shirt. I had the door open, and was halfway to my feet when the throaty groan told me I was too late. There was a flash of ecstatic lightning, I was looking down at a middle-aged man on his knees through halflidded eyes.
The orgasm hit the three of us like a subway train. The boy's eyes splattered open as he came and died, showering the businessman with warm vitreous humor as his life shot into me. The businessman screamed, a high pitched falsetto, sharp and pointed as an icepick, and I heard the echo through three sets of ears.
The boy collapsed, blood squirting from his nose and eyes, knocking the stall door open as he fell. The businessman scrambled over the twitching corpse, stepping squarely on one of the boys fine, white hands, the bones in it crunching like seashells.
I crawled to him feeling the last dregs of his essence flow and mix with mine. I closed the boy's ruined eyes carefully, shivering in the flood of images sluicing through my mind. His name was Anthony. I knew him; was him. He wasn't really dead. That's how I used to console myself, when I still did it, after I knew it was wrong...
"I'm sorry." I whispered, more for his benefit than mine. I sat with my hand over his empty eyes for a long time. I kept an old man from entering the restroom, calming the urge in his bladder, nudging him that what he really needed was more coffee.
My reflection beckoned from a cracked mirror, the fluorescent glare etching creases around my eyes and mouth, the skin hanging beneath my chin, a shiny highlight glinting from my bald pate.
But as I watched, the hard won wrinkles faded as my skin grew taut. My scalp tingled as the hair roots pulsed to life. I drew deep, draughts of air which despite the stench of piss and blood tasted sweet. Physically, I felt better than I had in a long, long time.
My eyes flicked across the corpse of the boy with a pang of self loathing. I'd kept myself from it for, what, going on twenty years now? My eternal vow of chastity, broken.
I sighed. Another broken promise.
Or, as Mark Twain once put it, quitting smoking is easy.
I've done it dozens of times.
* * *
I again found myself feeding largely on homosexuals and addicts, but for completely different reasons than I had in Tsarist Russia. After the first few weeks, it felt almost like old times.
The epidemic had reached plague proportions in NYC years ago. It wasn't even a story anymore. Gurneys lined the halls of every public hospital, every hospital; every hall. Magic Markered strips of masking tape displayed the 'room' numbers.
Ahead of me, a thick hipped woman with oily brown hair and a black dress unloaded a meal from a video bag. She fed the stick figure on the gurney chicken soup with a plastic spoon, speaking in a hushed tone. The man laughed. They'd been friends for many years. He wasn't nearly ready.
Those who didn't have friends to bring them food often starved here. Although perhaps they were the lucky ones. The disease was often worse than death. Not that I knew for sure, having never died.
I flitted through the reeking corridors, the smell of blood and fear and pain dizzying, seeking those who wanted to die. Euthanasia legislation was snaking its slow and tortuous way through congress, again. Soon to be shot down by the same pious, healthy politicians who'd stopped it the year before.
This time around, I filled a need.
I heard one calling from the end of the hall. He'd been a set designer, a dancer, a beauty. He looked up at me with huge, watery brown eyes, his face lost in the riot of purple Karposis sarcoma. His mouth was almost sealed shut by it, but the silvery umbilicus of glucose drip kept him going.
I would like to die. He said inside. I would like this dark man to kill me, if he would do it quickly and cleanly.
I laid a hand over his face, feeling for him, with my mind.
His breathing became labored, as he became aroused. It had been months since he'd been able to have an erection. One last time. His orgasm swelled and burst, his heart stuttering to a halt, the bleach damaged sheet suddenly stained with the final shot of life. I pulled my hand from his eyes, feeling the delicious power surge up my spine.
I filled a need. I didn't need to stop now. And I wouldn't. Couldn't.
Surpressing the urge to devour the entire hall of them, I glided down the stairwell, out an emergency exit, into the close summer heat of the Brooklyn night.
* * *
My mood was rather strange. I walked through city streets until dawn, gently steering away muggers and prostitutes. I'd had an apartment in one of these monstrous gray hives. A job. A few friends. I jingled my keys in my pocket. I'd left my wallet at a diner after devouring four blue plate specials and a pot of coffee. I no longer remembered my address.
Was I Anthony? Did I live in the North End with my blind mother and two sisters? Was I Peter, the pianist in his little booklined cell downtown? Did it matter who or what I was? I passed a cathedral, watched the fresh, rosy light playing over the stained glass. I'd been a catholic many, many times. It was Sunday, so I went inside, heard the mass, so pale and anemic since Vatican II, and took communion, half hoping the host would burn my tongue.
The inside of the wooden confessional was dark, but my eyes work well in low light.
"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned."
He was a young one. "How long has it been since your last confession?"
How to answer? Over a century. "A very long time, Father. I couldn't say how long." I felt for him with my mind in the dimness, though the wicker screen.
"Go on."
How to go on? Start with the beginning? "I was raped as a child. By a priest."
Sharp intake of breath. Silence. Then, "Perhaps I'm not the best person to talk to about this. There are other professionals better suited to this sort of thing. I'm aware that this has happened to some in my parish, but I must admit, I cannot bear to listen to it. I'm very sorry. I cannot hear your confession."
His words fell past me as I poked about in his mind. "I think you can, father. I think you're just the person to hear it."
"I can't have orgasms myself, is the thing. Nothing. But if anyone has one in my presence, they die. I live. I know things about them afterwards, see things. I dream about them. I'm a thousand picture albums, father. It was what made me realize that it was wrong to kill them, in the end..."
"I stopped believing in God after the revolution. I was a good communist, Father, for many years. An atheist. I denied my past. But one day I slipped, and took someone, a young couple who lived in the next room, and grew younger." I ran my hands through the sleek, glossy black hair that now ran halfway down my back. It needed cutting daily. "Every time, younger. I'm a boy again."
He was shaking his head. "I'm afraid what you need, young man, is a psychiatrist." I squeezed his mind, and made him believe it. The effort left us both gasping for breath.
"I....see..... Dear God!"
"I was a child. I'd been raped by one of you. I ran from my village, through the snow, over a hundred miles to the coast in my bare feet. Wisps of steam rose up from my footprints as I ran. I out paced trains and horses. The power flowed through me faster then, peaking quicker...
"I thought God had made of me an angel to smite the sodomites. Yes, I know how it sounds now, but we are creatures of our time, and it didn't feel wrong then. I wanted to tell God I'm sorry about it. What I did then. But not what I'm doing now."
"You're a..."
"No. I don't think so. I'm in a church here Father, after all! I walk the day. I have a reflection, but of course, any physical object must have a reflection, and I'm nothing if not physical! Perhaps the legends are based on creatures like me. Perhaps."
After a few moments, he asked, "What do you want of me?"
What indeed. "Absolution is out of the question eh? Mortal Sin? Forethought, sufficient reflection and full consent of the will?"
He nodded, forgetting I couldn't see him. It didn't matter.
"There can be no absolution."
"Tell me this then. Am I now Angel or Demon? Or something of both?"
He couldn't answer me; his confusion was palpable. His hands fumbled helplessly with his crucifix, as I gently erased the memories from his mind. Oh, I couldn't get them all. Memory is instant and everywhere, the tiniest bit in everything. Holographic, is the new word. But memories are filed in different places. Dreams. Visions. Nightmares. I definitely fell into the latter category.
Angel or Demon? One thing for certain, I was no longer myself. Whatever identity I'd fought for and maintained, during my abstinence was long gone. But what was identity, really? A wallet? A job? A single set of memories?
I had dozens. I smiled as I left the church, blinking against the daylight that should have killed me, had I been properly mythic.
It didn't really matter.
I filled a need.
Readers' Letters