The Ritual (TQ Sims - New Orleans, LA)

The ritual called for two sons. I finally felt needed, wanted. Necessary. I wanted to please Father. I didn’t know he was ending the world.

Father mumbled ancient words none of us fully understood. I listened, learned the words, and began mumbling along. Father seemed happy until he cracked his eyelids, saw not my brother’s lips moving, but mine.

Father has been even more cold, more distant, since years ago I uttered two words: “I’m gay.”

The ritual called for two sons. We prayed over burning beeswax and resin. As Father mashed the sludge with a scarred finger, the world around us disappeared into the inky mixture.

Father smeared the ink across my forehead, but kissed a prayer onto my brother’s brow.

The ink spread, ran down my cheeks, onto my chest. I looked up. Ink moved all around us, staining the air, slipping over our naked bodies, moving in curls and waves that swirled into the dim void around us.

The purpose of the ritual was revealed.

The reality we had left was gone, destroyed.

Father reached out. Dark fluid slipped between his fingertips. He handed my brother the dish of ink. “Son, rewrite the world anew. As it should be. Bend every knee to my God.”

Without a word, my brother took the ink, and disappeared into the void.

We waited. Father wondered aloud why my brother did not write for him a way out of the void. He confessed after some unknown stretch of time. Father was supposed to leave. I wasn’t. A sacrifice to keep the old world dead.

Lifetimes passed. Ink swirled endlessly around us, spilling into the void.

Father cried out to his God.

Where father had stained me with ink, I felt my forehead pry open. Some Power gazed out of my third eye at him.

Father stared back, cried out, but not to his God.

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