Mary
by Simon (simon@jazzandjava.com)
My name as you know it is Gabriel. I do the Lord's work.
Occasionally the work has its rewards -- and Mary was one
such. I first saw her in the flesh at the fountain in
Nazareth, drawing water. Like her ancestor David, like
Adam who was fashioned of clay and mud, she was ruddy:
dark-complected, auburn-haired, with bright green eyes.
As a boy, David had killed Goliath, the last Nephil, the
last scion of angel and man. I wondered how coincidental
this was, in the scheme of the Lord.
She was young, no more than 16, and she knew me for who I
was the instant my feet touched down on base earth and I
permitted myself to be seen. I approached her, ignoring
the murmurs in the Galilean crowd at the appearance of
what they took for a naked man in their midst. Mary was
the only one I was concerned with, the rest would be dust
and legend before anything mattered. I'd sent her the
dreams since she was a child. She knew her place in this
thing.
But she ran. Like a human, like a mortal, like a woman,
she ran. I moved the earth beneath my bare feet, beat my
unseen wings against dry air, bringing myself to her home
before she arrived. Silly little mudthings. They never
make it easy on themselves. Sarai was the same way.
I would have to remember not to break her. The Lord
needed this one.
"Go away," she murmured, her eyes on her hands on the jug
of water, the contents of which she'd splashed every which
way in her running. "I'm betrothed."
"You know why I'm here, Mary. You've heard the dreams.
You've known today would come." I let my wings show,
filling the one-room home, feathers brushing against the
ceiling, flame filling the interstices and smoke darkening
my pupils. "I am Gabriel, the Power of the Lord your God.
The breath of my trumpet will sound the end of your world.
I did not come to this place to be denied, child."
She clutched the jug to her. "But I have a betrothed!"
"And before him, you had a father. And before your
father, you have the Lord. Your duty supersedes whatever
ties you may devise in this world."
"But I don't ... want to."
I sighed. She didn't want to. What possessed her to
think I gave a damn? Smoke filled the house, and when it
cleared, time had slowed beyond the wall of black
tendrils. The scheme required that she choose.
It did not require me to tell her so.
My wings unfurled and filled the sky as I shifted the
Earth once more, bringing her wrists to my hands. The
wings were simply for show: touching a mortal without
killing her required reducing myself to my basest form,
barely more than clay, no further above a human than a
human was above an ass. It disgusted me -- but only for a
moment. It thrilled me as well, feeling a heart beat in
my chest, feeling air cycle through my lungs, the dust of
the smoke cling to my feathers. Deep inside, in a place
which was within me and yet not of me -- a place all men
have but of which mortals remain largely unaware except
when they speak of "impulse" and "instinct," "whimsy" and
"lust" -- I felt a stirring. The creative urge. The
essence, the becoming, the I AM of God.
Her eyes drifted downwards -- not from pure modesty this
time, but glancing over my form. She was unaccustomed to
seeing unclothed men, and my awareness of the God-seed
within me had made me hard. It intimidated her, which was
pleasant. I could taste the fear and anticipation
surrounding her the way mist surrounds the River Jordan on
a warm morning. Palpable. Musky. Sweet.
"You know the service required of you, Mary."
She tried to pull her wrists from my hands, and I
tightened the circle my fingers formed. I could feel bone
and tendon through skin, prepared to give way under my
grasp; I relented enough to preserve her pain but keep her
hands intact. She might arguably find need of them. "I -
- have never known a man," she said. "If I go to my
betrothed after ... you ... he will reject me. I will be
shamed. He will not have me."
So that was the excuse she had chosen. "These things will
not happen. Joseph will be addressed. I assure you he
will have no difficulty acquiescing to the will of the
Power of the Lord your God. You will have no shame
because I do not wish you to. You will not be rejected
because I will not permit it. All will be as I say."
My cock was tired of my mouth explaining.
I located the mattress she used for sleeping and thrust
her towards it. Her shoulder struck the wall of the
domicile, and would have fractured at the joint had I not
stiffened the air around her, deflecting enough of the
impact. I had forgotten how complicated sex was: like
hammering a nail through an egg.
She scurried to her knees and against the wall, like
trapped vermin, and I pulled her away by the ankle, taking
care to leave it attached to her leg. "If you enjoy this
clothing, you should remove it."
Mary blinked at me, and nodded violently, her hands
fumbling at her clothes and pulling them off, pushing them
far away from her as though she were afraid of bleeding on
them. She was beautiful, in the manner mortals manage:
the sort of woman Solomon had written of in his song when
I'd known him, the sort of woman Cain had dreamt of while
spending his nights in the arms of his wife. Wide hips
sufficient for childbearing. Large, rounded breasts much
lighter than the skin of her face and hands, as smooth as
her well-turned thighs. Her green eyes widened as she
watched me look at her. What disturbed her, I realized --
because deep inside her I sensed that she had long since
resigned herself to this task and was only now having
second thoughts -- was the enjoyment I clearly found in
this.
Her disturbance furthered that enjoyment. I could taste
it again, rising off of her in waves, the mixture of fear
and dread which had drenched the Earth in the first days
of the Deluge, the cloud of anticipation which was a
smaller cousin of the one which had been All That Was
before the Lord drew essence from the formless and empty.
Fear, dread, anticipation, anxiety: these were the media
upon which creation was conducted. This was the darkness
out of which light would shine. These were the legs, long
and sinewy, quivering like startled fawns, between which
the world would be reborn.
The music began.
Drumbeats in my pulse pounding against hers, the
ineffability of my palm pressed to the flesh of her leg
and moving upwards. Jittering stringed notes in her
quavers as she babbled something which formed neither
words no sense, as I tested her resilience, finding that
balance between force and resistance, that perfect touch,
that sweet spot of a note. The steady thrum of my wings
beating back the air, beating back time and the world,
enveloping us in my desire and will.
The music began and the impulse conducted us.
I drew my thumbnails along her inner thighs, writing the
simple letters Enoch had taught us, giving names to things
which had lacked them. The naming was as important to the
act as the pain: name provided the form for shape to take,
the mold into which substance was poured. Her skin
buckled under my hands, becoming slick with red as she
strained against the stinging of my language on her flesh,
and I held her still with hands and air.
Mary whimpered, bound by firm air holding her down like a
great weighted blanket through which only I could pass
unhindered. I left only enough give to permit her breath:
and only so much breath as I deemed necessary. I could
hear her lungs working faster, taking short sharp breaths
where they were denied the languid ones she had accustomed
them to. Her fingers twisted, seeking something to grasp
or push away, and I ignored them, letting them grip my
hair as they found it and scratch at my impenetrable scalp
as they wished, bending down to lick the blood clean from
her legs.
The blood was important. The blood would be remembered.
This thing we did, it would begin and end with the blood,
and in between was little more than shadow and suggestion.
She tasted clean and sweet and coppery-bright, the way the
dark side of a mountain tastes as sunrise hits its other
end. In the blacks and greens of her fear there were the
reds and oranges of desire and pain now, mingling
together, the contrast brightening it all. My tongue
cleaned my writing methodically, ignoring the impatience
stiffened between my legs as I drew her closer and raised
my head again, watching her as I nestled my crotch between
her thighs.
This was the moment, the choice I did not see fit to
inform her of: doom the world or do thy duty.
Her large green eyes knew nothing of choice and her voice
formed nothing like words. She moved against me when I
wished her to, and God-given instinct at last won out over
her own will and pride. When I entered her, she was as
wet as I was hard, as hot and mortal as I was cool in the
shelter of my wings. Her hands slid down over the back of
my head to clutch at my neck, as if to pull herself out
from the blanket I'd laid over her.
I pushed down hard, letting weight and instinct do what
force would have done too well: shove me inside her, deep
inside her. My cock was troubled by no maidenly
resistance because the Power of the Lord did not wish it.
She had known no man, but she knew she was a woman: her
legs spread for me, likely as she had seen some prostitute
do, and her hips lifted from the mattress to meet my
thrusts.
Her breaths were still hot and shallow, and I withdrew the
invisible blanket of air -- but kept that pressure along
her throat and chest, because I liked the way she sounded,
the way she looked, the way she felt when she struggled to
breathe. The reds and oranges became brighter, the greens
deeper, as we fucked in a hollow of time, my hands
pressing her wrists down above her head for no reason
other than that she was more afraid of me when I did so.
Her hair twisted against the mattress as she tossed her
head, still struggling, still acting as though she were
unwilling despite having made her choice. I
counterpointed every note of struggle with a drumbeat of
hips against thighs; every whimper and protest was met
with a fierce lash of flesh against flesh. I made it last
longer than I had to, because I could. I took more from
her than I needed, because I wanted to. I fucked her for
pleasure because I am the Power of the Lord God and I have
earned my few rewards.
And again there was blood. Not the blood of her
maidenhood: I had told her I would preserve her against
shame, and I was by nature incapable of breaking my word.
The blood of her wrists twisting against my palms, of my
teeth on her neck and collarbone, the blood of abrasions
on her thighs where I had pushed, shoved, ground too
forcefully, where in the thrill of the I AM I had
forgotten how frail she was. She screamed with what
breath I gave her, and when I began to pull away to tend
to her she pushed back up at me: neither of us, in that
moment, knew if she was trying to push me away or wanting
more.
I gave her more.
I held her hair close by the scalp as I slapped her face
hard enough to quiet her, and her hands alternately beat
against my back and clutched motheringly in my hair as I
suckled at her breasts, enjoying the power of turning flat
discs of skin into hard dappled points with my tongue and
lips and teeth. I drew blood again, unable to stop myself
from doing so, and her moan of anguish was weak, drawn out
by admirable will.
The impulse could no longer be put off. I held myself
tightly against her and came, spilling the God-seed into
her, feeling her muscles tense against me as it found what
it needed deep within her. She cried -- wept --
shuddered, all but unaware of me still against her,
waiting for these base urges to fade, waiting to stop
wanting the taste of her salt on my tongue and the
resilience of her skin between my teeth.
I left her, crying and shaking and clutching for something
to cover her, as my wings beat back the daylight, the
smoke dissipated, and I took flight.