Magnificat

The poet Samsky had had enough of life. It had flown, snicked and
scattered. Now it was merely the embers of a catseye. And the sky had
stopped speaking to him. He had a spinster aunt named Magma whom he had
never met. She owned a small boarding house by the sea. He wrote to her
to ask if he could come and didn't wait for an answer, arriving the
next day. She was rotund and sympathetic, and her nose wrinkled and
twitched as she showed him the room she had already prepared. He lay on
the bed, exhausted from breathing. He had brought nothing with him but
an untidy sheaf of hand-written papers, in his coat pocket. He did not
think Magma had noticed.

A few hours later, as a quiet evening mist was falling, he went to the
sea. Silently he pleaded with it to show him some mercy and spare his
life. Feeling rejected and throwing his papers at the water, he went
back to the boarding house and threw himself down the narrow, sharp
staircase. He strayed in and out of consciousness a few times, and
eventually chose unconsciousness. He had bruised and broken the soft
fruits inside of him. Magma came, and saw, and left. Lying on the
floor, his breathing becoming shallower, the poet Samsky bled to death
within.

Magma the witch, Magma the witchling's child, Magma whose daddy was the
cloven-hooved fiend himself. Magma seen through a piece of cut glass
that hisses when you look at it. Magma mourning by the waxy feet of the
dead poet, striking at her own chest with blood-hardened fists. Magma
with an uncertain fear in her rapid eyes, frozen stock still for
fractions of hours at a time. Magma with an iron glee tightening her
face, her arm repeatedly carving an arc of stinking air, up and down,
up and down, in out in out in out. Dirty, wicked Magma, Magma the
bitchling, greedy Magma ripping at the holes to make them bigger and
sticking her whole hands in, sucking and tearing and retching and
laughing?

The girl was called Virginia. Magneve looked at her through the
letterbox. Her eyes were grey. Eyes of dumb animal. No, hopeless. No,
in fear. Magneve licked her dry lips.
"What do you do then? Work?"
The girl sighed.
"I only want a room - it's raining. Please! Ah God - I'm a student
nurse. Trainee."
The chain was unslung and the bolts drawn back. Virginia put her heavy
bag down and began to stretch. Magneve's eyes were everywhere, darting
crab eyes, eyes of a Dead Sea thing.
"You're not a poet then?"
"What?" The girl was too surprised. Magneve was hasty.
"We don't take poets here there've been happenings, incidents,
accidents, if you're a poet please leave, if you're a poet - you're a
poet-"
"What do you mean? What are you talking- yes, I write poetry, but why
should that-"
"Down the stairs - down the stairs-"
Magneve was babbling, trying to crest red panic. Dirty spittle was
staining her chin.
"The stairs? I just felt I should come in here. For a bed. A warm,
bed."
The girl was speaking slow and trance-like. Magneve's eyes narrowed to
the slender belly and the slash of white skin visible.
"You're carrying," she said.
The girl's eyeballs stickily rolled up. Her eyes left the floor, and
met those of Magneve. Her lips parted a moment to make a small
diamond.
"Yes." she said.

Virginia. Virginia the sweet, Virginia the innocent. Virginia who has
a splotch of hated flesh growing inside her. Virginia who lingers at
the top of the staircase, unaware she is holding Magneve's sweaty, bony
fingers in her own. She thinks she might be a spirit, because she can
hear the unsteady ramblings of dead poets all over her body. The male
cling and kiss and plead. The female shriek outraged, pulling at her
uterus. Magneve has assured her it will work. Samsky is there,
repeating his name over and over - "C. Samsky. C. Samsky." He sobs,
apologising. Virginia lets her head fall and the weight of it drag her
body down. She tumbles, and the sharp, narrow stairs bite into her
frame on each bump. She is aware of her own head turning slowly to the
side, stilled, resting on wood. Exhausted, she whispers a thank you to
Magneve and Samsky inside her head and then lets herself sink.

Magneve looks, looks, looks down at the body of Virginia, covered with
spilled child. The girl is, as she had thought, still alive. Magneve
begins to chant rabid canticles. For Virginia, Magnificat. Samsky's
startled spirit begins to plead with his descendant, sensing a block
somewhere. Magneve's eyes are opaque. Samsky begs. The skin on her lips
is splitting and opening, and red flesh is beginning to bloom out. Her
nose is drawn back, skin pinched, into a cutlass of bone: her face is
stopped with greed. Samsky calls to the water and implores it not to
betray him once more. Magneve's sense of smell makes the distinction
between the blood of the dead and the blood of the living. Samsky cries
out.

Virginia, the sweet.