Fiction: I Want to Live Again by Robin Sewell

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my god than dwell in the tents of the wicked. Psalm 84:10



I want to live again. This alone keeps my awareness glittering and sharp. Loathsome. Corrupt. Within each of my kind is a desperate agony, heartache beyond belief – how could it be otherwise? Mostly, the others just forget because it’s so much easier. The forgetting is a balm, a cauterizing kiss.

I was formed from pure desire bastardized into something so gruesome that I would kill myself a thousand times a day if I could. I cannot die, yet I refuse to forget and lose him yet again. I could bury myself in the blackness and bile. But, no. Deep within the vileness of my soul is his throbbing desire for life. I nurture this. Cup it in my filthy hands and feed it lies. Pretend that I may escape, or someday stop altogether. Tell myself that I will no longer pay homage to enslavement and perversion. Even so, the voice is always with me, incessantly murmuring, begging. He does not and cannot understand what I have done for him. The price I pay for keeping his small soul alight.

In the eyes of this angel, there spins beneath the surface a frothy film of insurgency. I want to live again. It is far too long that I have been wearing these gritty wings, the winds of which are driving me bat-shit. Under this gilded exterior there is nothing left but a husk, gutted and desiccated by a monomaniacal beast who demands to be called god.

There are nights, after I’ve smoothed each appendage, folded them softly onto my back and settled into the eiderdown, that I think of the boy as he was then. This was five, maybe six hundred years ago. He was so young and alone that he didn’t even have the good sense to be frightened.



Yes, of course you can help. Come closer – don’t let the blood frighten you. Do you like my wings? Thank you – they’re fashioned from real unicorn feathers.



What kind of question is that? Of course unicorns have feathers! How else could they fly? If you come closer, you may touch them.



I am the boy, of course, but I can no longer clearly separate him from this monster that I have become. When he touched me, I broke him into thousands of pieces. I took him into my mouth and abused him in every way possible. Afterwards, I held his soul in my lips, dripping with shame and blood and placed it before the throne. I was not even spared a glance and the feeding began. I think it was the screaming, the blood, and the sheer blackness of the moment that allowed me to hold back part of the offering. I have it still– the luminous bit of a soul. Already, it begins to hunger.