Pandora’s Bust
The two men leaned forward: their folded wings rustled as their hands on her shoulders stood her up in the car. When the graceful fingers touched her skin a warm feeling, vibrant like a song inside her body, calmed her, and now she stepped from the car to a field of wild grass. She straightened her shoulders to look around as odd feelings twinged her muscles. Except for a mountain far away the land stretched flat wherever she looked. Her eyes opened wide: she felt she could see out past the world’s edge. Her fingertips stroked her thighs.
“Who are you?” said the Black Angels.
A dream, thought Pandora, just a dream. Now they’ve come to wake me up. “What did you say?”
“Who are you?”
She laughed. “I don’t know.” She understood now: Pandora never was. Time to wake up.
The Angels pointed to the peak, where the sky’d begun to brighten. “Look,” they cried, “He sends us light to match the dawn within you. Remember now and show us who you are.”
He? Whom did they mean? And yet, as pink light touched her skin she realized she knew. Father sent them; He sent the dawn, He sent His angels. And her too, Father had sent her, but she’d fallen into dreams, a false life with false memories and false desires. Time now to wake up. She’d begun to shake but when she stopped herself convulsions siezed the world.
“Hail Mary, Mother of God!”
Mary? Yes! Remember? Yes. Oh blessed memories.
She stretched her arms (translucent skin, ecstatic muscles); her fingers raised the sun (through the angels’ voices hosannas thundered from the earth); the mountain burst afire (two thousand years—melodic wings flutter around her empyreal essence, bedazzled voices ring her lonely radiance); trees ripe with golden peaches sprung from the grass. Back. Back again. Herself.
“Hail the Holy Virgin!”
Mary frowned—then laughed. No sooner herself again then the old foolishness returns. Someday she’d gather the angels and tell the truth (how good to know the truth again) tell them why the Holy Ghost really picked on Little Mary—not at all for purity. Mother Mary remembers now. Once again the mist descends, once again the wild blood burns her thighs. Hail Mary, mistress of God. Oh blessed ecstasy.
“Forgive us our transgressions on your mortal form, O Virgin.”
Through her memories she mumbled,”Forgiven.”
“The Father sent us. He feared you’d forgotten your mission.”
She turned, surprised. Yes, the mission, she had forgotten it. Sadly, Mary abandoned memories for thoughts of duty. There’d been a conference to take action against a beast, a strange creature who lived under Manhattan and each night devoured seven souls. Where the beast came from the Father wouldn’t say, though he called for its annihilation. Mary volunteered, took on Pandora’s mortal flesh (it would not do, the Son argued, for the Virgin to resurrect herself—she hoped the little prig had learned a lesson), and promptly forgot (with Michelangelo Ben Canaan serving her new body) all heavenly thoughts. How cheap, she thought—Ben Canaan, any man, after the Ghost.
“Shall we launch the attack?”
“No,” said Mary, “First we meditate.” So the three sat cross-legged on the ground, their eyes closed, their bodies still. For two weeks the angels meditated on virginity and beastliness. While they thus comported their souls Mary summoned her Ghostly memories to wash through her body wherein she suffered incessant orgasms, each involving contractions 0.7 seconds apart.
three
The heavenly party left the turbo-car at the suburb’s edge and trod silently back to the city. Mary stayed naked though the angels had offered her a golden robe. Also, she rejected the suggestion they turn invisible so as not to disturb the workers. She liked lascivious stares; she liked to imagine hot odorous mouths.
They had just reached the wall separating the suburbs from the City proper when seven emaciated men leaped from behind bushes to plop bodies face down in the dust at Mary’s feet.
“Who are you? Get out of my way” she said as she wiped her shins.
The leader—a bald man, even more emaciated than the rest, his body cased in a hair shirt (his followers wore rags)—spoke from the dust. “Forgive us, Holy Mother of God, we only wish to serve, to throw our sinful bodies behind you as you fight the Beast.”
