Sacrifice the Heart

The following character scene is inspired by Hozier’s song “The Angel of Small Death and Codeine Scene” – a live version I have embedded here because I’m seriously listening to this song on repeat.

The ground is frozen solid, harder than rock, with a thin crust of ice rippling across its surface. I only feel its hardness, it’s strength, that which I envy beyond belief. The coldness doesn’t reach me, doesn’t even react to my skin as I touch the ground. My hand is bloody, thick drops fall from my fingers, staining the ice at my feet. I ignore the fact I literally just ripped my heart out and laid it at her feet. I’m not the only one. Numerous numb bodies surround me, each reaching out with their hands to give the ultimate gift.

Everyone of us has our eyes uplifted. She is the only thing that grabs our attention. She walks among our hearts with glassy eyes, not even seeing us or caring that we’re worshiping her absolute perfection. Her hair is long, thick, a swirl of honey and cinnamon colored curls falling down across her lean muscled bare arms. It’s pulled over both of her shoulders, covering her heavy chest, falling almost all the way down to her curvaceous hips. She exudes sensuality from her deep red pursed lips, down her bare arms and legs to her soft steady feet, toes and heels stained with the blood of those who love her.

She reaches out and grazes her fingertips across my forehead. My entire body lurches forward, wanting only to feel her touch. My bloody hand reaches out to touch her but she has already passed me by. I turn, ignoring the ache in my bent legs and twisted back, desperate to keep in her view.

Great black feathered wings spring from her back. She is clothed in black silk that drapes seductively around her body, leaving her back bare and open. Her wings begin as strong muscle in the middle of her back and then reach out to an almost eight foot span. Each black feather is tipped in an even darker color, darker than black, the stain of blood. She’s flicked her wings through our sacrifice, tasting each of our offerings with her powerful wings.

Suddenly she stops and turns back around towards me. I feel my body stand as if I’m pulled up by invisible strings. I can still feel the beating of my heart as it speeds up, despite the fact that it now lays at my feet, completely in the control of this exquisite and terrible creature before me. Her steps are just as even and purposeful as they were when she walked past me, yet this time she comes straight towards me.

Her eyes are no longer glassy. Instead they glow with an intensity that makes me yearn to look away even though I know that will never happen. They’re blue but not a blue I’ve ever encountered before. It’s stark and bright at the same time. You could lose yourself in those flaming eyes and I have every intent to do just that for the rest of my life. She reaches her hand out towards me, once again running her finger tips across my forehead. She gives me a lift of her lips that I interrupt as a smile when it could just as easily have been a frown.

Then I hear a voice in a my head. It’s as hard and cold as the ground at my feet but it pulls at my gut forcing me to listen and to do what it says.

Come with me.

I stagger forward as she turns away from me. I am stumbling in her wake, my hands reaching out so that if she stops I may be able to touch her, to feel her sweet skin, this creature who has gained my everlasting devotion. I love her. I don’t even know the name of this angel or from where she came, but I have given her my heart and I will be hers for always. I stumble over the hearts of those useless sacrifices, the ones she’s ignored.

I tilt my head, confusion ripples through me for a split second. How am I able to follow her if my heart, the only thing worthy enough to sacrifice for this terrible beauty, still lays upon the frost-bitten ground, now almost a mile behind me? This thought is gone within seconds as she looks over her shoulder and gives me that smirk again. And once more I am her slave.