Devil Dropped by at Midnight

The Devil Dropped by at Midnight


His words are like beads of glass - the Hebrew that once was the coarse, unremarkable bed of sand in the pit of the belly of the Earth
melted together by the pressure and the searing heat that radiates from between his devil’s lips.
The grains of sand blown into perfect, crystalline beads of glass
roll across the tabletop, their sides glossing against one another
in some chaotic dance, though the soft tinkling sound produced
is perfect, unparalleled, inexplicable.

The words are incomprehensible at first, too unrelated and too emphasized to coordinate,
they’re pieces of a thousand-year-old jigsaw puzzle rattling around in the hollow
of your skull;
beating like hearts and bleating like lambs on the altar.
But you lend an ear, you listen to what he has to say.

On the other side of the world, Bethlehem is bleeding.

He flexes long, copper wire fingers and his eyes are bullet casings filled with magma,
churning red and black and yellow, and the words falling from his lips are tangible, searing,
saying,
“Just listen. Listen to me. Just listen,”
again and again and again until you think your ears might bleed from the effort it takes to decipher the meaning, and he leans back and he wraps the air in the room around his shoulders like a shawl, skin crawling, eyes fixed forward.
A curious thing: he’s swallowed the shadows alive, no light is projected forward.

On the other side of the world, Bethlehem is bleeding.

Jesus Christ who once hung on the keystone in the doorway has fled for greener pastures,
ire left behind in a smudge of ashes on the floor. He pulls a tourniquet lank around the offending limb, and the flesh grows blue where blood has been. You think idly that He must not have gone, could not have fled, would never do such a thing, and you feel the pressure of his holy gaze burning a hole in the back of your head,
but the keystone in the doorway is blank and grey and solid,

and the figure at your bedside is sitting very still.


The drool slips out between barbed-wire teeth and rolls down the center of his chin,
a bead of red wine glistening,
and you think perhaps the shadows would call it blood but you can smell the alcohol, it’s sour and inhuman and too thin to be blood but perhaps too thick to be wine,
and if there was a compromise, it’s slipping out from the devil’s teeth.
A steel-wool tongue lolls out to catch the bead of blood.

On the other side of the world, Bethlehem is bleeding.

He lifts one bony hand and lays it flat upon the bed covers,
which turn black at his touch, corners curling inward on themselves.
Too fixated by the scene to move or to speak, you hold the blanket still beneath your chin and beg the darkness to swallow this demon back up, to take it from this place that is yours and deposit it back where it belongs, in the mud and the filth and the maggots of the Earth,
where its hands can burn only the soil and its perfect, ancient Hebrew can be heard only by the worms in its mouth; you beg the darkness and it reaches out to rest one soft hand upon your brow, draws your eyes closed.

In the morning, the bed covers will be flat and colorful and normal, and Jesus Christ will have perched himself once again upon the keystone, no ash or blood or wine smeared on the hardwood floor, and the darkness will be darkness and the air will be shallow,
and this thing that sat beside your bed and spoke to you, and stared at you, and beckoned will be gone and silent and forgotten.



And on the other side of the world, Bethlehem is bleeding.