reborn

I moan, I writhe. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. Time is meaningless.

cw: sex, madness and tarot

I’m on the plane back, circling endlessly, waiting for a thunderstorm to pass the airport. My bladder is about to give out. The seatbelt sign stays on the whole time as the pressure builds in my body.

I catch a cab home — work’s paying — and by the time I make it home my whole body is burning up. You hear the key in the door and meet me there, a glint in your eye. It’s been a week. You push me into the bedroom and onto the bed. I’m trapped as you straddle me. I wrestle my way on top and pin you down. You’re laughing as you fight back — threaten to knee me in the balls. We take turns to tear each other’s clothes off.

I love the routine of pulling your jeans off, making sure I get your undies in the same smooth gesture — a grey g string caked with yellow discharge. You grip my back hard as I push in and you finger a pimple on my shoulder.

“Can I pop that?”

You squeeze it without waiting for an answer, a sharp pain biting through my shoulder.

“That was naughty of me wasn’t it?” You smile at me.

I roll you over and spank you. The sting bites my palm as a red imprint of my hand blooms across your ass.

I lie in bed afterwards, my body burning up. I sometimes feel lethargic after sex or a flight but this feels different. I feel a fever getting its claws into me.

Influenza, my old friend, it has been a while. I know your touch — the contours of your heat, the particular bite of your cold. I moan, I writhe. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. Time is meaningless. I slip in and out of delirious sleeps — my best friend shoots me, I get to the end of semester and realise I forgot to attend a class and am going to fail, my parents die, I die over and over and over again.

You bring me soup and electrolytes as my body leaks fluids from everywhere. Tears stream down my face — for the pain, for lovers and friends I have lost, for a world doomed to fascism and climate collapse. I sweat, oh how I sweat, the sheets are drenched. My pores are springs expelling tainted water.

I’m haunted by phantoms. Real and imagined. Always at the periphery, waiting. Madness finds the edges of me.

And then it breaks. I’m reborn. Time regains its linear quality. The sun streams through the window: it’s morning. The curtains are open and I’m bathed in bright light.

The world is vibrant and I am a part of it. I feel purified and my body is born anew.

I get out of bed, I walk, tentatively at first. Step after step. My hunger returns. I need food, love, adventure. I grab a mango from the kitchen bench. A knife. Two incisions, either side of the narrow pip. I lay them, skin against the chopping block and cut cubes into the dense orange flesh. The sweet smell hitting my nose.

I walk into the backyard, invert the mangoes and bite into them. The juices dribbling down my throat, down my chin. I lick and slurp and inhale them. I walk amongst the veggies — red, lush tomatoes, figs overflowing from the tree, cucumbers everywhere, flowers, peas, sunflowers.

I need to see if this is for real. I lace up my runners and make my way to the creek. I run past the gully of sunflowers, over the old stump, past the yapping dogs. Every smell, noise, sensation hits me clean. I feel like I’m on acid for the first time

Something splits open. I see life moving around me, through me, from me. I need to see the witch. I get home and grab my phone, texting her immediately.

——

I tell you I’ve never felt better. You look skeptical but are happy I’m walking again.

“Let’s get out of the city. I need mountains.”

Your skepticism deepens into full doubt, but as I stand there grinning I watch excitement creep over your face. “Fuck it. We’re on.” We grab our packs, tent, sleeping bags, stove. Throw them pell mell into the back of the car.

You warn me we have no spare tyre and that it’s on me if we end up stranded in the middle of nowhere. I tell you its a risk I’m willing to take. You throw me the keys and tell me I’m driving. I hate driving but I love adventure so it’s a compromise I’m willing to make.

We drive and we drive. With no reception for long stretches we listen to old songs downloaded to our iTunes — New Order and local weird bands from both our teen years. As the mountains start closing in you read me news articles of The Button Man, who has apparently killed 12 people over the past 5 years in the region, leaving nothing but a button after people disappear. And then more recent news stories of a cooker who shot two police and disappeared into these very mountains. The police say he must be dead, but none of the locals think he is.

I tell you to stop otherwise I won’t sleep for the next two nights.

We wind up the mountain — from towering gums through to snow gums and eventually above the tree line. We sigh as a 360 degree vista opens up around us. Clouds dot the sky and the sun blazes ahead.

We park and divvy up the food. I’ll take the heavy stuff if you take the rubbish bag. You weigh it up and decide it’s a fair deal. As we walk the packs settle on our backs, rubbing against our hips and shoulders.

I laugh that yesterday I was stuck in bed — that I couldn’t move. And today I’m hiking mountains. Birds circle and snakes slither as we push on.

As the sun sets we make it to the campsite — an old cattleman’s hut by the river. We set up and, exhausted, collapse into the tent. You kiss me, your lips lingering, as the river lulls us to sleep.

For days we are alone in the hills. I wake up and run, leaping over a black snake, running through swarms of bugs before making it back in time to strip off all my clothes, my naked body plunging into the icy river. My heart stopping as I submerge. We climb to the plateau again, reaching above the tree line, and lie in fields of wildflowers. You’re naked and tanning, while I read in the sun.

We eat mango and cheese and tomatoes and crackers. Back at the tent you pull my pants down and grab my cock. You push me onto the mat and wrap your mouth around me. I lie there leaning into the sensation before I pull you up to me, tasting myself on your lips. I kiss you as you navigate me inside you. Flies are buzzing around the tent as you ride me. You cum. And again.

“I can’t keep going,” you say. “My knees are fucked from hiking.”

I kneel behind you and grab your hips as you push back into me. I collapse onto you as I cum, grabbing a sweaty t-shirt to wipe it off your back and ass so it doesn’t get on our camping stuff.

We lie there for hours, as the sun bathes us in light. You nap on my stomach as I read until its time to light the fire. The smell of smoke infiltrating everything — our clothes, the tent, our hair, our throats. The sun sets a vibrant orange and I ask you — is this Vanilla Sky? Am I still dreaming from the fever?

Everything seems so saturated still — the colours, the emotions, the sensation. You run your finger down my arm, gripping my hand. As it gets dark the Milky Way expands around us. Stars in every direction.

“I don’t want to go home. Can we please get a bunch of friends and spend an entire summer in the mountains?”

You agree we have to. We climb into our sleeping bags and you tell me — if either the Button Man or The Cooker come tonight, can they please at least make it quick.

—-

She ushers me to the table. An altar of cards, candles and divinities I don’t recognise against the wall, a spice rack on the other side. Cinnamon, cumin, paprika. Normality amongst it all. My friends swear by her. All of them. Even the skeptics. They say she divines things into being.

I shuffle the deck, eyes closed, and ground myself in the room. She cuts it in two and pulls the cards. My year ahead: The Tower, always here. I’m condemned constantly to shatter and remake myself, it seems.

With relief she tells me it is positive. There is no change without destruction and my life is going to blossom. Seeds and fertility everywhere — new projects, loves, creative ideas. Start a garden, she tells me. Turn your ideas into something real.

“It feels like you’ve been born anew. I see it everywhere, growth, energy, life. It’s pouring out of you.”