tom traubert's blues

Lucifer was nursing a jug of whiskey in a brown paper bag, skipping rocks on the Styx. The blood red waters clamored with frogs of violet tones, poisoned by toxic waste from graveyards that had no end, and the smoothed volcanic pebbles crested the waves one after the other, skipping on into eternity.

The fire of the whiskey was warm.

His bed, it was cold.

She had left, Eve - eidolon cleft from his ribs. When he has shaped his golden Galatea into an idol worthy of worship, he never thought the part of his heart shard he imbued her with would run away.

He had been Adam, they were in Gan Eden, and the fruit of the Tree was good.

Now, she had taken the house. Taken all the money. Taken Gan Eden and locked the gates with Uriel's sword. Lucifer was down on skid alley, homeless, no harvest his heart. Barren in the gutter, he saw floozies cavorting with gamblers, men with mange, demons snorting spicecrack and drinking down drops of bloody fentanyl.

The highs - they never came soon enough, and every hospital was shaped like them. Lucifer went in and out of asylums and wards - Asilos Magdalena - he had the suicide hotline as his number one speeddial, razors in his pocket, and a revolving door by his office that went straight to the ICU. Hooked up, fed up, drip drip Thorazine - every reflection in the stainless steel (are these scalpels carving my body like a kitchen hog? The blood, on my flesh - it is not my own. these clamorings of rain.)

every reflection, her.

Lilith cooled her wings by a promontory Dis Beach, sleek as rain pelted them. She had sienna skin, green black hair, and Lucifer's bite marks were on her leather clad chest.

"If I am Sophia's abortion, what happens to Sophia?" the Demiurge asked Barbelo.

Barbelo shrugged, lit a Chesterton. "We howl like Ginsburg, Lu."

"Does she ever go back to the Pleorama?" His eyes misted. They were no color - the iris, whites, pupil. Just blank canvas.

Empty space.

Lucifer took a drag off Lilith's cig.

"How can she go back?" Lilith smiled serenely. "She's tasted freedom. Beyond Man. Beyond even you. Where Eve goes, fate follows."

you left me far

behind.