“You don’t.”

“It is over,” I said.

“Angelina, please, no.”

“Show me.”

“I dare not.”

“Show me.”

“Angelina, please.”

“Show me,” I demanded, “or we are dead. I have given you my life, my soul, and you have given me nothing. Show me the whole of you now, and we shall remake our vows. Together. Forever. Now. Before it is too late.”

She retracted from me, hesitant. I could feel Her hold Her breath, tentative, fearful, as She waited. I remembered, when younger, on my odyssey across the country, jumping from a high waterfall into the river below, knowing for extended moment after moment that eventually I would jump, yet not jumping and not jumping. Fear kept me back, but it was pointless fear, for I knew that eventually I would proceed. She knew me so well that She called up that memory for me; She stood on the brink of self-revelation, and I held my breath to calm Her fear.

She stood apart, and once again I heard the voice, the words crystal-clear, saw the lips as they spoke into my ear. I saw my body twitch in its unearthly sleep, in its physical recognition of pleasure, even as it lay entwined within the gaudy shroud of the cold corpse. Once again She implored me to let things remain as they were. “It is perfect as it is, Angelina. Let us be so.”

I shook my head. “If you be Satan himself, I must know it.”

The music paused. The silence roared in the darkness. She drew Herself up to a thin line of ephemeral mist and waited. One beat, two beats—and then She disappeared. Slipped silently through.

The breath I held released in a sigh. I had chased Her away—

But my reaction was premature, for the next moment the universe opened, and as horror after horror assaulted all of my senses, I understood Her reluctance to show me the vileness of Her nature.

Each of my fears was openly acknowledged; the things that I held most disgusting were presented in all their lurid detail; insecurities and faults were pried open and stuffed with insult; the soft spots of my being were punctured, the crusty worldliness of my experiences merely a scab to be picked and left to bleed.

The horror of the assault left me too astonished to retreat, to defend myself, to ward off being pelted by these insidious table scraps of Hell. My newly probed and freshly peeled being was a ripe victim for the salty lashes that all but destroyed me.

It lasted but a moment, stretched to eternity, and when the last clash of cymbals died down and the holocaust had passed, I had been sliced to thin ribbons and laid to waste at the feet of She who had attacked me.

The darkness settled down, quieter than ever, no music, no sounds, all had been expended in the extravagance of the moment, there was nothing left. Anywhere.