In Fog And Mist, She Comes To Me

Never in spirit. Never in soul. Never inside.

The smoke whispers that truth to me in the dark of the night and I stare into it unblinking until it makes my eyes sting and my nostrils burn. There is no hazy inconsistency tonight, not like last night. Tonight the world inside of the tent seems so very real.

I think because it is.

She's waiting for me, caught in candlelight but hidden in shadows. A veil pulled up over her face that frames her in the guise of a bride but it is dark and every layer of clothing she wears is moth eaten and old. Tonight she is showing her age.

"Baba Yaga," I whisper, my lips not moving.

In return she cracks a grin but she does not smile and though there is a glint in her eyes it is almost mirthless. The only bemusement she gets is at my certainty because, as she puts it next, I have no right to be.

"Is that who I am?" she asks, "I've been her before. Others have too, though. Baba Yaga not and is. Baba Yaga totemic. Men need her to exist, to be real. Need someone to blame for the power they cannot have and women need her too. Need a memory and a history and a help to get all their dark deeds done. Who is Baba Yaga to you, dear? Grandmother or witch?"

I shake my head, "I never read the book."

They still sit in a bag on the floor of Rachel's dorm room. I left them there and dashed out the door and went to a movie and a date and more. A confusion of feelings and an embracing of...

"Life," she says, "Love. Passion. Knowledge. You can get these from a book but I am here, can you not just ask me instead?"

"You might not be real," I tell her, "And even if you are real, you might lie."

She nods sagely, considerate. Then she leans back in her chair and places her hands in her lap and she looks so composed but so alien at the same time.

She isn't a grandmother, kindly and considerate. She isn't a witch, sinister and scheming.

She isn't... human.

"Not," she agrees with my thoughts, "Not corporeal either. But you surely have to know that by now. Not substantial. Not physical, except temporarily."

"Still have intention," I point out, "Still have a plan. A purpose."

"Perhaps," she muses.

"For me," I finish.

Because that's the end of this, the truth and the looming certainty that is hovering above me. The creeping horror prickling under my skin and insisting on attention.

She has a plan, a purpose, a need. And I am a tool she is using to accomplish it.

"So sure," she replies bemused, "Well what is it then?"

I swallow, pushing inward and outward at the same time. Examining thoughts and moments and little points where I'd glanced at something wholly bigger.

But the problem was that I was caught in tunnel vision.

I only saw a corner, a point, a wall. I never took in the totality of the picture but was still at all times so aware of the scope and scale of it. So high above me and so imposing, so terrifying as it threatened to collapse down and bury me under it.

All I was, am, and will be is the lynchpin. The turning point. Not even the finger that flicks the domino and starts the collapse but merely just the first of them to fall. I don't incite anything.

I just am the first to get hit.

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