waltzin' matilda

Morning came. Lucifer watched it creep past Eve's breast, careening over the skyscrapers of Hell, where an ashy snow fell onto obsidian cobblestone and veins of fire. His penthouse smelled of cheap sex between ghosts renewed, and a woman who was approaching thirty thinking, I too have aged out of new beginnings.

Penitent, Eve slept, her hands clasped in prayer, sweat at her brow. She shivered. "Tawu. Tawu. Tawu," she chanted as incense burned. Jasmine. The smoke misted, and Lucifer's wing cradled her. He traced the proud breasts that were beginning to know gravity, the fat and paunch of birthing thousands of children, stretch marks, the cocoon of ugliness. His love was becoming hag. Infertile. Witch.

What to do, with a fallen plaything. What use does the Devil have for Eve when she cannot birth Cain? Evenings, mornings. He clings. Nurses her milk. She is the only mother he has ever known. Lilith is all Lucifer's. No woman loves him, what of it. This proud bold Eros, golden-torque, the matter and antimatter of dwarf stars. Crushing gravity.

Hell. On Earth. But he is tender for her. They are processing a blockage.

Lucifer soothes her, kissing away her sweat. She is fading, dying, dying, away, and then, she will be dust, and he will be

alone again.

He thinks of planting her bones in his garden. When she reckons with death, will Lucifer or Michael call? He has no providence over death - no, only her soul? Her eternally youthful heart phoenix. The golden dove on Cathar Lady Esclarmonde's tomb.

When the Holy Grail of her womb is barren, what type of black magick will boil in the hag? The witch? He is old, too, wretched.

Lucifer lets go. Of the pleasing form. Of what she likes.

Of all artifice.

When Eve awakes, Lucifer is monstrous. A beef jerky, clawing, mummy demon, with protrusions like burnt ridges, scarred flesh. His bat wings, bloody scabs, and wrinkled, brown-red sanguine skin hangs like horror.

"I'm mourning a death," Eve says, through her tears.

He holds her close. His cock stirs at her ugly. At her whole. At her holes only he

can fill.

"Yours?"

"Maybe. But you, you don't die. You never die. What will be left of you, after I am gone?"

Lucifer reaches for an old cup of wine on the nightstand.

He pours it down his fiery gullet, his black hole eyes bleeding pus.

"Sanity," he admits.

Eve bites off part of his breast corpse. The nipple. She crunches the hide. It's so dead, burnt when he Fell. She chews the gristle, winces as she swallows.

"I hope," she says. "Do not think on me."

"I won't. I will. I'll always bring you

back."

Eve cries. "Trapped. In Hell. On Earth. Insane. With

you. Why?"

"Because, Chavah, first love makes a man

do crazy

things."