She spreads the night as wide as she spreads herself, which is as wide if not wider than the sight of any open door I’ve ever known. Gazing at what her fingers reveal, the town in which I’ve spent so much of my life is torn to pieces before my eyes. It offers as much resistance as a sheet of wet paper adorned with my lamest poetry, and yet I don’t feel sadness at this, just a slight heaviness in my heart, as that which has been a constant to me is now merely a shadow of what once was. I’ll be dancing with those shadows for the rest of my life, so it’s not as if they’ll be lost, and yet never again will those moments be as real to me as they used to be. Still, now isn’t the time to concern myself with shadows, for the light of the forest is where my future lies. Gritting her teeth, Meeko stretches the canvas until the threads it consists of snap like the strings of a guitar. The sounds they make are guttural and heavenly all in one, and as they snap in a wave that mirrors the wave of sounds coming from the mouths of the trailing animals, so the neon choir sings and screams as her fingers pull the veil wide open. Truth be told I’ve glimpsed beyond the veil many times before, and yet it was always at the hands of some external force; some other other that had mysteriously appeared in my life to show me the way. This time though—this was different. Not only was this no mere momentary glimpse but the hands were my own—it’s true they belonged to Meeko—yet the two of us were one and the same; as indivisible as the dance of life is from the dance of death. Dribbling spit down her chin, she growls as our hands fling the curtains as wide as they’ll go, and with a sharp intake of breath, the pure light spilling from beyond meets her face like the hand of her dearly missed father.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US