this conspiracy of destiny
R. 07/15/2006.

"every little thing anticipates you"
Thierry dreams of her next arrival as that of the first piercing rays of dawn, as something beautiful and aching and impossible that happens again and over again; Maya dreams of the full moon in deepest darkest forest when every sound is sharp as knives and she can hear a single fist-sized heart pounding away, not yet aware it has been found out.

"judas kiss"
Oh, the tenderness of this first touch on her new flesh. Maya watches hungrily as his hands move over his tiny blonde lover, Hannah, Hannah, whose name sounds so exquisite coming from his mouth, panted from a swollen heated mouth that breathes on Hannah's throat, on her chest. If he knew Maya were there he would tear her eyes out to remove what she's seen, this sacred moment, but she'll never tell. She will wander off into the wilderness once more, and dwell on what she is denied.

"with me now under the stars"
Hannah knows what he is, now, and when the woman comes and understands, it's almost too much, to have someone to know what she knows, and feels. The woman takes her in her arms and dries her tears, and whispers in her ear that she will always protect her, and kisses her gently on the mouth; the world shimmers, and Hannah realizes that Maya is beautiful, and trembles. Outside in the moonlight Maya is lovelier still, and her mouth is as red as Thierry's in her memories, but fuller, and more sweet.

"innocence is dripping red"
Every time he dreams of killing her, he loves her more. Her or her, it makes no difference, he's planned Maya's death so many times he can see it just as clearly as Hana's, as all of them, and every time they die loving him and every time his dream-self burns for them and every time he wakes more aroused and lonely and sickened than the time before. But he waits for the dreams like a dog desperate for scraps, waits for that next moment when her heart is in his hands and he squeezes just a little too hard.

"please don't forsake him"
The very first time she saw him she remembered everything, and asked to be with him forever, and so it was. But soon she was no longer a girl and she saw the shadows that never left his eyes, felt the things he tried to hide from her. She saw the eyes watching at their window some nights too, Maya, Maya, forever shut out alone in the shadows. But he needed things that Hannah couldn't give, had wounds she could not repair, though he would never say. So one night, she let the darkness in.

"acting upon my shame"
Maya was always there with him, after, when Hana's latest body was an empty cold husk in his arms. He would curse at her and beat at her with his fists, snarling, biting, weeping. And she would take it, like any good mother would, any good mother who did not remember what pain was. And when he had tired, she would cradle him, her child, and he would let her. But when her touch inevitably changed from comfort to caress, he would slip away, and run.

"what it feels like to be me"
She wants to kill her so much that she loves her, Maya knows, but will never say. Hannah is part of Thierry, the soft juicy bits he would never acknowledge, the innocence he no longer possesses on his own. When she nips Hannah's throat she can taste him as he once was, that boy so long ago. She loves Hannah enough to teach her what he learned, what she herself did, what all things know: that the world is suffering and death, and nothing more.

"you can't say no to me"
Hannah knows that one of them is not Thierry. Does it matter which, in the end? She has known these two Thierrys all her lives and thought of them as one, and so it still is, these mirrors of life and death. This is part of the cycle, and they all three know it is the only part that will survive. She closes her eyes, reclining. With her eyes closed the two Thierrys are still not all that different; perhaps Maya's Thierry has a more skillful tongue, and perhaps Thierry himself has less cruel hands; but perhaps it is the other way around, after all.

"his trembling bride"
Maya finally ends it all in a single day, draws them into a web built more perfectly than any spider's, and after she has taken them to her bed one by one, made Hannah's scar just a memory, she sends them off to wherever toys go when she is done playing with them. She dreams of insects, mantises, and wakes hungry and more rested than she'd known it was possible to be.

End.

Notes: Quotes are from the following songs: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' "Are You the One that I've Been Waiting For?" and "Sweetheart Come"; Coil's "Love's Secret Domain"; The Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs"; Death in June's "In Sacrilege"; Unto Ashes' "Spider Song"; Bjork's "An Echo, A Stain"; and Neko Case's "Make Your Bed."

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