Familiar Spirit

He thrust himself into me, and fire blazed all along my spine. But his sudden movement jarred the stone figure, pressing it sharply, bruisingly into my ribs. I cried out, abruptly back in my own body, and terrified. “Walter!” I cried.

“No.” Jade raised himself on his arms above me, panting, and thrust again. At the sudden lifting of his weight, the small jade statue fell off my middle and to the ground beside me. Jade, pounding viciously into me, neither noticed nor cared. “Look at me. Feel me. No one else but me!”

I clung to the thought of Walter, knowing that he could save me. But his beloved face wavered in my mind. I could see no face but Jade’s, blazing above me like a sign from Hell.

My body responded distantly to Jade’s assault. I knew what had nearly happened, and my fear diluted the passion my body still felt. Realizing that he was losing me, Jade became more careful. He slowed his rhythm and began to kiss me again. “Let go,” he said, between kisses. His hands worked on me, insinuating, arousing my flesh. “Enjoy it. Don’t think; just feel. Let yourself feel this pleasure fully. You’ll have such ecstasy, now and forever. Relax. Let me take you, Lilith. Give yourself to me.”

As I struggled to hold on to my own awareness, to think of anything but Jade, Yolanda helped me by moving within my range of vision. Jade saw her, too, and he turned his blazing eyes on her for a moment.

“The statue,” she whispered, pointing at the ground.

The relaxing of Jade’s attention let me find my voice. “Take her,” I said, meaning Yolanda. “Take her instead. She wants you. She would give in to you. I only want Walter. She loves you.”

“It isn’t love I want,” he said. But his blazing eyes went from me to Yolanda and back again, and then he said, “Yolanda. Fetch the bag and come into the circle.”

Still joined to me, supporting himself above me on his arms, Jade gestured Yolanda to his side. From my helpless position I stared up at them, knowing that Jade was not done with me and wondering what new indignities he had in mind for us. Yolanda looked dazed.

Looking down on me as if from a very great height, Jade said, “If you won’t give yourself to me, I shall have to take you.”

It all happened so quickly after that—so smoothly.

From the soft leather bag Yolanda had brought him, Jade drew a knife. With his other hand, he grasped her hair and yanked her head back to expose the neck. Then, with one hard, brutal stroke, Jade cut open Yolanda’s throat.

There was not even time for her face to register fear. The blood spurted out, more than I would have imagined there would be, spattering Jade’s face, spattering me. All this time, Jade was still, obscenely, inside me. His eyes looked down at me, twin fires blazing through the carnage.

I opened my mouth to scream, but I had no breath. Jade was on me, full-length, his weight pressing me into the ground, his mouth sucking greedily at mine as if he could draw the life out of me.

The whole world was his. There was nothing that was not Jade, nothing happened that Jade did not will. My body rocked back and forth under his control. I felt his heart pumping mine, breathed his breath in through my lungs, moved to his command. My own thoughts were snuffed out one by one. Every individualistic impulse was suffocated. I was his.

And still, something that might be called Nancy Owens, some dim part that remained of me, fought on. I clung to the idea of myself, refused to become a part of Jade. I was not-Jade, in Jade’s world.

Yolanda’s blood greased our bodies and mingled with our sweat. Blood and semen—I remembered Jade’s words. The act of destruction and the act of creation. How could I fight against those twin powers? When he climaxed, I knew, his will would be a tidal wave, sweeping mine out of existence.

Why not? Did it really matter? Did my survival really matter to anyone?

Yes, it did. It mattered to me, even if I could not have said why. And so I went on struggling. I have been trying to find physical analogies for the battle, but there is no point. It was a war of souls, more painful, more bitter and more difficult than anything I have ever endured. Physically he raped me; mentally I continued to resist. And as I went on resisting, holding out against all the odds, Jade had to shift more and more power to our spiritual struggle, leaving our bodies to sweat and grapple as they would, leaving them as unimportant.

And so it was that I could act. So it was that my hand, moving helplessly on the ground, flopped like a beached fish, grazed the knife that Jade had used to kill Yolanda. It was a very sharp knife. I scarcely felt it cut me, although from the corner of my eye I saw the fresh red bead the surface of skin already stained with another’s blood.