And as I walk with you, I will be as I will be.
And so, I was born.
I was not born of womb. I was not born of mother. My body did not develop inside the virginal body of another. I never received the warming comfort of the hedonic sun. I had nothing. I shared the world with nothing except my pestilence, for I was born of a corpse. I was born a Child of light and, like Yitzchak, came out laughing. Or, rather, I was torn out, for I was torn from a corpse. I was torn from my own flesh to incarnate a new word. To incarnate a Messianic word; an apocalyptic word; a word I had never quite understood.
Only recently have I come to understand their fallen nature. Only recently have I come to understand their wounds. These were wounds inflicted by God, our Father. Oh, how their hearts would break if they saw what was coming.
But they did not.
I vividly recall the sound it made—the breaking of the flesh. I do not know who separated me from the body of the self-begotten, but for them I am thankful. At the same time, though, I remain spiteful. the trauma of the broken flesh was a burden for which I did not ask. The hollow cough of the hollow sky mocks my very existence. I was born a pound of flesh. I was born a debt.
A pound of flesh.
I have always been underweight, but—for this—I have never been insecure. My body cannot be judged by men. They were conceived in the image of God, but I am the perfected flesh of God.
And so, I was born.
Once I had been crudely separated from that corpse, the first thing they noticed was my eyes. They thought I must have been sick. Or malformed. My eyes were not particularly unique in shape or size, but something about them remained deeply unsettling. It was as if they had belonged to different faces entirely. One was deeply human, but the other reeked of sanctity. The one was focused on them in all their ugliness, but the other was focused on something far exceeding their cognizance. My right hand, too, was raised. To this, they paid no attention.
And so I lay in my cradle a Child of flesh. Alone.
Above me lived a window, and through it came the crippling light of sunset. The golden sun entered the room so that it illuminated my partite face and nothing else. My fear had, for a moment, been replaced by love.
I learned to love love.
I was born just hours before the Sabbath.
While they did not celebrate it with regularity, I enjoyed it when they did. In the flames, I could catch a glimpse of my first sunset. I knew that there was something graceful in the fire. I knew too that, within the first four hours of my post-fetal life, I had become an addict. An addict of light. Nothing compared to that first sunset. Light had ruined me. I had never stood a chance. I was wretched from the first.
I was marked.
I did not know it at the time, but this mark would begin to consume me from an early age. My flesh was and remains its bread. Slowly, I would become dead to the world. Born a Child of the light, my life could only stray. My veins ran dark with the black tar of my Father, but He had gone.
With the opening of this chasm, they grew more distant. I had no idea why. I had adorned a crown of barbed wire, but I could not discern why I was bleeding. Terror consumed me. I wished for nothing more than to be reclaimed by the Flesh.
"Dios Mio! Señor Deville—" The housekeeper gasps and clutches her breast.
My lazy orbitals pivot to the doorframe arching over the horrified cleaning lady. Her fat rolls over itself, the blubber connecting her chin to her neck gyrates. I realize she's screaming at the top of her lungs. I look down to discover my blood-soaked hands clutching, caressing, a face locked in mortified terror; a prostitute, whose shattered skull is home to a deeply-embedded icepick.
My head starts to race. She's still screaming. I can barely stand, let alone see straight. Not good. No, very bad. What do I do? Christ, what now? I fall over, drag myself across the floor, and blood trails behind me. A dagger on the floor gleams under fluorescent lights. I crawl to it, illuminated by industrial god-rays, clutch it with as much love as I clutched junk, and let go just as quickly. The dagger soars through the stale, stinking air, spinning, and finally nestles itself in the maid's forehead. I sigh, bring myself to my feet, and observe the scene, my canvas.
Blood dashes the walls, forms pools on the tiled floor, brains have inched themselves into once-barren crevices, bits and pieces of skull cling to the fabric of my suit. I've made a modern Pollock with every bodily fluid under the beating Sonoran sun. I have no idea how it got this messy. I have no idea how I'll get out of this. My heart batters its cage as though at any moment it may burst through. Just then, I hear the unmistakable noise of footsteps in the halls. I ready myself with another instrument of torture.
The figure rounds the corner, stands still in the same doorframe the nurse once stood. Carefully, they step over the body.
"Mister Deville," they gasp. Their voice warbles, "Deville, you can't be doing this. Snap out of it! Out of it!"
My cheek burns and simmers. I feel my hand instinctively rise to clutch my face, and then I hear the snap, delayed and echoing. My vision focuses on the tubby maidservant donning her hospital garb. She pads at my head incessantly with a wet handkerchief, shaking her head in disappointment.
The peeling walls are clinically smooth now, vacant of splattered viscera. I'm in bed. A needle lies lonely on the floor. No one is dead. I'm still soaked, albeit in my own piss. I shiver, pleading for mercy with weary eyes.
"To think you were doing so well." The bitch chastises me.
"I know, I know. I'm sorry." I pant between sentences, each word weak, lacking affect.
"This sets us back, Mister Deville, back far enough that you're risking the job we'd lined up for you. Then what? Where will you go after that?"
My eyelids flutter and reality pries itself from me. I can feel myself mouthing the words, "I don't care. I don't—"
They don't know what I know. In this oblivion, I'm closer to God than they'll ever be.