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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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