Abyss (Songs of Megiddo) (3 page)

Perhaps that was why the words resonated with her as they did.
She could still remember the first time that she’d seen them in their original context. They had crawled into the heart of her...gnawing away at her peace of mind...her resolve...and her ethical self-estimations. They had – with a slowly building efficacy – sown toxic distrust that connived and corrupted, pushing her focus inwards and onto her own motivations and ambitions. She could recite the passage from memory:

‘If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once in the sky
...that would be like the splendour of the mighty one.’

“Now I am be
come death”, Janissary murmured...baleful and – for the first time in as long as she could remember – unsure of what, good or bad, was to come: “The Destroyer of Worlds.”

I
– Pueblo

~ Kayla ~

23/11/2023

I usually don’t tell people this part of the story. Even with friends
– close friends – I tend to just...swerve around it on my way to somewhere else. It makes sense, though: I’m in a very different place now. I’m a very different person. And, living exclusively with and around people who went through damn near the exact same thing that I did, it’s not remotely surprising to me that no one asks about it. The topic doesn’t really come up. We all just sort of...skip over it.

And that’s for the best, honestly. It really, really is. W
hen you already know the ending... when
everyone
already knows the ending...what does it matter if a few details vary along the way? Wanting to know one another’s versions of what happened in and around the time of The Crisis? It’s a bizarre thought. It’d be a bit like all of the people who survived the Titanic disaster getting together to regale one another with stories about the random crap they did on the boat up until the point when the shit began to actively hit the fucking fan.

And that’s the thing. That’s it in a nutshell
, actually: survivors just don’t see the things that they survived in the same way that outsiders do. To outsiders, stories like ours can be interesting. I mean...I know that better than anyone: I’m a journalist, after all. I
was
, at least. Once upon a time. But even if I hadn't been, it doesn’t exactly take a clairvoyant to know that people like their Human interest stories the same way that they like their midday soaps: dramatic. Well, dramatic...and sexy, generally.

But for survivors: for the people who actually lived through it? I can’t speak for
everyone, obviously...but for
me
: when someone who went through the same thing that I did is giving their account, all I’m thinking – the whole time they’re telling their story – is: ‘and then it happened’. And that’s how every single one of those stories inevitably ends:
and then it happened
.

Beyond that, though
...this part of my story is about the old me. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a worthwhile distinction to make. Maybe it isn’t. But, in my experience, when people change enough – in profound enough ways and in a short enough span of time – they tend to end up feeling as if their old lives were, quite literally, lived by other people. People who looked like them, and who had a lot in common with them, certainly...but who, fundamentally – emotionally and psychologically – were
not
them.

And sure, they
remember
. But there’s this feeling there, when they talk about the lives of the people who they once were but no longer are. It’s a feeling that mirrors what you might feel in...oh, say...going through someone else’s journal, and then deciding to start telling people the deeply personal parts. Add to that: it’s not just
anyone’s
journal, for them. It’s one that belonged to someone close. Someone dear. Someone that they carry around the last sliver of the personhood of, and are – in a way that is, to them, very real and deeply intimate – a child of...or the legacy of. Someone that the world believes
was
them...but who only they know the truth of. It feels wrong, somehow, to tell those people’s stories. It feels like a betrayal. It feels...like disrespect for the dead. As, of course – in a certain, strange way – it
is
.

And that is, in fact, very much how I view this part of my story: as belonging, fundame
ntally, to a different person; me though she, for a time, was.

She and I
– we...‘the two of me’...however you want to put it – had this in common, though. She, just like me, was not the person she’d once been; she was born, that is, of the pain to which her previous self had succumbed. She, just like me, kept a part of herself permanently closed to the outside world; that part of
her
old self that lingered in the scars left behind by what had ended her, once. And she, just like me, had demons that she considered to be better ignored than exorcised. As a result, she shared her existence with, and was haunted by, darkness and dissonance...growing forward through time, though rooted in the past. The past: where she was born. Just like me.

When I think back
to The Crisis, the first thing that springs to mind always seems to be the day of the wedding. After all...it was a critical juncture in her life.
My
life. And it would have been, regardless of what came in the days that followed. So I guess I’ll start there.

It was a small ceremony. We
– Naithe and I – were married in Pueblo, Colorado...in a little pavilion that had been set up in a park by the river-walk. The cream-coloured canvas, carefully arranged over a minimalist web of aluminium and plastic supports, was lined with broad sails of gauzy white and green fabric that billowed in the breeze. I still remember it like something in a photograph. I remember the vibrant blue of the sky that day...and the crisp, though surprisingly warm breeze that gently freshened the air with the smell of fresh-cut grass. We were lucky, that day. Lucky, that is, for a day like that.

Maybe a half
of a kilometre beneath our feet was where the hole would be. Maybe it was already there, even then. I’ve never been entirely clear on the specifics of that.

§§§

I hazarded a glance out at where the guests were all gathered. Naithe looked incredibly uncomfortable, standing out in front of them all in his shiny tuxedo. He hated crowds. Still...we both knew that it could have been worse.
Would
have been, if his mother had had her way. Thankfully, our crowd of ‘dearly beloved’ was exclusively made up of close friends and family.

His
close friends and family, though.
His
.

Now...the thought didn’t exactly hit me like a ton of bricks. It didn’t really ‘hit me’ at all. It just sort of sidled up and whispered in my ear. Told me what I already knew, but made it seem
...different.

When Naithe and I had been drawing up seating arrangements and planning for guests’ dietary requirements, I’d definitely been
aware of how totally alone I’d be. As petty self-awarenesses went, it was pretty old hat. Still...deceptive, how there’d been no sharpness to that awareness at the time. It had taken until that moment – when I was preparing myself to actually make my way out there in front of them all – for the awareness to develop a cutting edge.

For a moment, I felt
...not like a fraud, specifically – nothing that dramatic...but...alien, perhaps. Foreign. Laid bare as lacking a range of life experience that everyone in my immediate vicinity had probably never questioned the normalcy or universality of. Lacking those things that most people would have looked for as evidence of...well...a past. A normal past, that is. Whatever the hell ‘normal’ even means. A past, I guess you could say...that had...y’know...‘narrative depth’. Nuance. More nuance, at least, than you’d be likely to find in the case of...oh, I dunno...a Tamagotchi? Or a Volkswagen? Things with a definite social context and history, but where those elements lacked complexity and – more importantly – a certain kind of distinctive Humanness.

In a dark, unpleasant little nutshell, I just felt totally unable to
relate to the situation that I found myself in. Equally, I couldn’t seem to convince myself that anyone there could really, genuinely relate to me. I mean...what kind of bride has no family? No friends? And what kind of person doesn’t care?

I caught myself thinking back to first
-year University, and that Lit’ elective where I read The Stranger for the first time. Camus’ focus – the way people can just turn on those who aren’t...‘quite right’, by the standards of the majority – had resonated deeply with me at the time. And, admittedly, ever since then as well. The main character, there – Meursault – lets his difference slip publicly when he isn’t sad enough – or, rather, doesn’t seem to care enough – at his mother’s funeral. Me? I turned up to my own wedding...alone.

Meg Arden, my best friend and Maid of Honour
– who also happened to be Naithe’s surprisingly young aunt – prodded at me. I looked over, questioningly; mouthing the word ‘what?’ with a mildly agitated little shrug.

“They’re playing that song you guys picked for just before the big entry. So it’s almost
time. Got your game-face on?” she smiled, elbowing me playfully in my corset-clad ribs. I hissed up an inward breath, desperately sucking for air as my lungs – blocked from properly filling thanks to the corset – threatened to give in and just...collapse under the weight of themselves, like dying stars.

“Ha,” I managed. I felt her hand squeeze my shoulder as she craned around me, trying to get a slightly better look at my face.

“Kayla? Are you good?” I tried to smile and nod. I managed half of a grimace and a bobble-headed little head-bob. “Shit. You’re actually in trouble, aren’t you?”

“Just the
...corset.” I muttered. She moved in front of me, tilting my head up; taking my face in her hands and turning it side to side; and staring into my eyes with a clinical scowl. She was inspecting me, I realised.

“Tell me what’s up.” She suggested: “You’ve got
...” She listened to the song, doing the math: “About a minute and a half. Make it count.”

“I’m
nervous, Meg,” Our eyes met. “It’s just me, here.” She frowned.

“
‘s not a very ‘Kayla’ thing to say, Kayla.”

“I know.” I admitted.

“Look,” she sighed. “Weddings get to everyone. Don’t overthink it. My family loves you.”

I cringed. Through
that lens, my feelings almost seemed like a betrayal. Naithe’s family had become the thing I was agonising over not having...and yet...for fairly obvious reasons, their affection for me wasn’t all that helpful. Not at that particular moment, anyhow.

I tried to focus on the first thing, instead
...and how right Meg was: that I didn’t sound like myself; that it wasn’t like me to agonise over things like this. Again, it didn’t help. The fact of the matter – unpleasant as such realities are for those of us who prefer to treat the emotions that we have as if they’re choices that we’ve made; imagining that, if we wanted to, we could just think them away – is that, sometimes...too often, frankly...the only way out is through.

And, apparently, this was going to be one of those times. Because thinking about it
– and so clearly realising that I wasn’t acting like myself – didn’t calm me. Not in the least. If anything, it had the opposite effect.

I felt suddenly
, inexplicably overcome by a sensation of falling: stumbling...tumbling down the instep of the uncanny valley. Something about the feelings I was having just grabbed me – hard and rough – and wouldn’t let me go. The person that I was – who I was seen to be – was more than my identity; it was my protection. It was, at least in part, designed to put a wall between prying eyes, and the scars and contusions left behind by the less savoury of the incidents that punctuated my personal past. As irrational a fear as I, even then, realised it was...I somehow believed beyond logic that, without that facade, I’d be open and exposed. That – through the eyes of the wedding guests – I was going to seem like I was all cover and no book.

All makeup and no face.

I shivered. I didn’t like that.

For some reason, that specific combination of elements – the idea of a mask hiding an absence – it drew me back to...then. To that particular time and place; that single moment that had lasted for an entire year. It was hard – literally: difficult
–
to think about. It was as if irregular little slivers of my mind had been cut away...leaving my ability to access the memories...garbled. Divorced from context; disordered and rough-edged: the associations...fractured. All meaning: lost. The only thing I really, solidly remembered from that time was allegorical at best: I remembered that I’d turned inward...to find myself trapped on a scuttled and sinking ship, in the cold and dark of my ego’s friscalating twilight.

And, of course,
I remembered
why
. 

“Hey.” Meg cut in on my downward spiral, gripping me by the upper arms on either side and leaning forward: looking into my eyes. “Get it together. Tell me who you are.”

“I’m not
that
far gone, Meg.” I rolled my eyes, trying to shrug her off. She squeezed, consolidating her grip.

“
Who...are...you?” She reiterated.

“I’m
...Kayla?” I answered awkwardly. Hearing myself say the words, I realised that they felt good. And then I realised what she was doing. “I’m Kayla.” I said with a little more confidence.

“Damn straight you are.” Meg
tossed me an approving, authoritarian little nod. I smirked. Knowing that she understood me as well as she did helped. Probably as much – if not more – than the strange little exercise she’d devised. It meant that I could be close to someone without being completely in control. And if I could manage that, then...

“I am. I’m Kayla Donohue, and I’m
better than this moody, adolescent shit.”