‘Ascension of the Ego from Ecstasy to Ecstasy’ (1913) - Austin Osman Spare

I.

The late afternoon heat summons beads of sweat down my spine, gluing my shirt to my back like a garter snake’s skin eager to be shed. Sprinklers wave over green suburban lawns. Luiz claps a hand to his mouth and snickers, frantically whispering, “She’s coming!”

We duck behind the bushes lining the long, semi-circular driveway. From here I can still see the front of her mansion, the weather-worn gargoyles, the huge four-pane windows looking into their living room and kitchen. The corny secret admirer letter sticky-tacked to her door. In the perfect, late summer air, we stalk Jenna Masterson.

She stands on her front step, hair golden in the waning sunlight, and yells, “I know you’re out there!”

“What are you going to do about it?” Luiz yells back. It’s become a game by now. This is the fourth day Luiz and I have taken to camping out in front of Jenna’s house. She knows, of course, otherwise it would be creepy. Luiz has a crush on her. It’s just a bit of harmless fun.

A car pulls into the driveway and gravel crunches under its tires. Luiz swears and grabs my arm, but I yank him back down. Her dad might not have seen us. If we run now, my mom is definitely getting a phone call.

Her dad steps out of his car, shuts the door, and stands still for a moment as if tasting the air to find us. He’s an imposing figure, tall and sturdy like one of my dozen Rescue Hero figures at home. My heart has scaled into my throat, heartbeat reverberating in every vein. I can practically chew it.

He turns and makes the slow march to his front door. Luiz exhales into my hair. Jenna’s dad reaches for the doorknob, pauses. He snatches the sticky-note confession, eyes gliding over hastily scratched innuendos and proclamations of love. The paper crumples in his fist.

He slams the door, but his rage reaches us out here in the bushes, the roar of his voice shaking me to the pit of my stomach. Glass smashes to a thousand pieces against the wall. Luiz gasps as we watch him march through his castle, window by window. The king has found the princess courting paupers.

He pauses in the kitchen. He extracts a cleaver from the knife block.

Luiz jumps to his feet, but I tackle him and clap my hand over his mouth. He bites down, drawing blood, making my nerves burn, but I hiss in his ear, “Do you want to die too?”

Jenna’s dad appears in her bedroom window. She screams so loud, I hope the neighbours hear and do something, anything, before it’s too late—

Blood splashes against the window, the curtain, the pink princess wallpaper.

The ground pounds my feet, then, and Luiz and I book it without thinking. Jenna’s house vanishes into memory behind the horizon and a horde of other McMansions.

II.

Jenna’s absence from school is never questioned. Her friends complain and call her names, wondering how she could just disappear without saying goodbye or promising to keep in touch. Her social media accounts vanish without a trace.

As far as anyone knows, her family moved. A simple answer to a simple question.

Luiz and I keep our mouths shut.

III.

It’s my first party, my first five beers, and the first time a girl leans in and kisses me. Her smell intoxicates me more than any alcohol, sandalwood perfume and pomegranate body wash and her sweat, impossible to hide forever.

When I close my eyes, Jenna’s blood sprays her window. Her dad roars like a lion as it guts an antelope. A shiver wrings out my spine and I shove this girl away, whatever her name is, and I run out of this stranger’s house and down the road, streetlights passing over me like drunken strobe lights.

I run until I reach the darkness of the forest, far from any suburban McMansions, and I surrender myself to waves, crashing over me.

IV.

Luiz is all over the news.

Nine different entry points, they say. Alcohol, cannabis, and bath salts all coursing through him. No one can say for certain whether he knew the man he stabbed to death, but that’s because they’re asking the wrong questions. It isn’t about whether he knew the man. It’s about whether the man was wearing the lion’s face, if their features matched naturally or if the drugs obscured them so much it no longer mattered.

He is tried as an adult and sentenced to ten years.

V.

I cradle the old leather tome in shaking hands. The brass clasp yields the secrets of ancient paper, unknown languages written in ink and English translations crowding the margins. The empty university library whispers its silence in my ear, promising its secrecy. “You aren’t the first,” it says, “and you won’t be the last.”

Over the last month I’ve cased this library with a stolen student ID, searched for the book using convoluted instructions from armchair occultists on obscure forums. I have no guarantees this isn’t another dead end. It would be wrong to say I have hope.

But it feels different already. Heavy from more than the weight of paper and leather.

Moonlight shines in through the shattered window, cuts into the darkness of the room. My supplies crowd the nearest table, dancing in the firelight of the single blood-red candle. Blood, hair, spit. Paper, iron, gold. The remains of a life gone to shit. The will of a soul gone to mould.

I clench my fists to quell the tremble, and I rest the tome on the table.

I say the incantation three times, the rough, timeless words tumbling out of my mouth like uprooted teeth. The hairs on my arms raise like quills. The candle flame flickers.

A hush sweeps over me. Complete and utter nothing.

The silence of the library grows louder, an absence of an absence. A chattering in the darkness, a gnashing of teeth.

A voice from the stacks, which says, “What do you desire?”

“Jenna Masterson,” I say, my voice quivering. “I want to make a trade. Bring her back to life.”

“No small feat. What have you brought me as payment?”

“The blood of a barren woman. The hair of a crook. The spit of a saint. A page from the Bible. Iron soaked in holy water. Gold from the only woman who ever loved me.”

“Is that all?”

I swallow hard. “And my soul.”

“The deal is done.”

A puff of air snuffs the flame.

I drop to my knees and convulse. The muscles in my arms and legs seize, as solid as tree trunks. My teeth gnash and chatter, cracking and splintering and slicing my tongue in half, the small pink muscle flopping under the table. Fire burns in my gut, eating away at me, spreading outward until I’m burning, all of me, trapped in an inferno of my own making. My screams fill the empty library. I wriggle across the floor, knocking over chairs, and my skin comes loose like the paper wrapping of a straw. My fingers claw at my clothes and discard them in the darkness, then my skin, tearing at the excess, pulling and prying until I’m free, I’m free, I’m free.

The convulsing stops. I shiver as the draft of the library kisses my new pink skin, scaly to the touch. My old skin lies akimbo like a body at a crime scene.

I get dressed and clean up, swallowing mouthfuls of blood.

VI.

In the crowded market, the smell of street meat and the sounds of jazz in the air, I see her. It isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, but I swear to God—

Heat sears my chest and I double over, nearly loosing the hood from my head. Old habits. I swear to others, now. I fix the hood, adjust my sunglasses, hide my new features.

She’s never seemed so real before. The sunlight glitters in her golden hair. When she smiles, her dimples provide the garnish to her five-star face. Her blue eyes hide mischief and wonder, and she bobs her head to the music.

He appears by her side, a sausage in each hand. The years have been less kind to him, grey invading his hair, wrinkles etching into his face like enemy lines. He stoops now, and his once-full muscles sag.

I shove through the crowd. Someone gasps at the sight of my wretched claw on their shoulder. The hood falls away, but I care no longer, consumed by need, by hunger.

By revenge.

I sink my fangs into Jenna’s father.

“Oh my God!” Jenna screams, battering me with her fists. “Dad! Get off my dad!”

H̷E̸.̵ ̵K̸I̵L̷L̸E̶D̸ ̷Y̵O̷U̴.̶ I spray neck tendon over her memory, snapping my teeth at a ghost. Y̴O̵U̷.̵ ̴D̶O̶N̷’̶T̴.̴ ̴U̸N̷D̷E̴R̸S̴T̷A̷N̶D̶.̷ ̸I̴.̷ ̵D̸I̷D̶.̸ ̷T̸H̷I̵S̶.̴ ̷F̴O̴R̵.̷ ̶Y̷O̶U̵.̵ ̶I̵ ̶B̶R̸O̷U̷G̶H̶T̷.̸ ̸Y̸O̶U̴.̴ ̷B̶A̴C̸K̴.̸ ̷H̶E̴.̶ ̸K̷I̴L̸L̶E̴D̷.̸ ̷Y̵O̵U̵.̷

The horror on her face clouds her vision. Even as a phantom, she cannot recognize me for the monster I have become. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Blood burbles from her father’s neck, a stream sweeping away his life. “I̴T̷'̶S̷ ̸C̶H̷A̸D̸,” I tell her through meat and fangs and half a tongue.

The recognition slaps her in the face. “No. No, you fucking idiot, I mean I ran away from you! It was a prank. We wanted to scare you. We moved because you were stalking me!”

She drops to her knees and sobs, because her father has gone bone white in my hands, his blood soaking my hoodie. I let him fall to the concrete, sausages rolling onto the road and gathering a gravel crust. Onlookers take videos or call the police, but they fade into the background so all I can hear are Jenna’s next words.

“I was never dead.”

🪟😈