INFECTIONS OF ITS TABOO
(previously published in The Fear of the Unknown, charity anthology for cancer)

I waited in the death parlor.

An ambience of candlelight and wind-wraith curtains kept me charmed as I waited. Flames twisted and twitched a palsy melancholy; shadows wrenched and stretched sublime upon the walls; and the wind sussed through the open window and sighed, billowing sheers and velvet as if ravenous angels hid within the folds, breathing, breathing....

All the while, her form lie still-ever so damnably still-upon the bed.

Such a beautiful scene: the walnut frame so lushly carved one would believe lilies and hyacinths and fat peonies bloomed from the wood, that belief further enhanced by the floral spice of the wood oil and by the delicate silk draping the canopy, much like a profusion of petals. And she slept an eternal beauty within this garden. Waiting for the unspeakable that would overcome her, pollute her flesh, her blood, her bone until nothing remained but silence.

For now, death blushed her cheeks the faintest of lilac. Her waxen skin glistened as if with dew, a pale flower of the dawn. I'd bathed her earlier. Still-ever so damnably still-the water clung, tenacious as the cancer she had harbored in her flesh and suffered.

The chair creaked beneath my weight as I shifted, my back stiff from the long vigil. The sound reminded me of her final moment, when she gripped my arm and pulled me near, her chilly mouth against my ear, her final breath and groan creeping into my mind, my heart and soul. A shuddering awful sound of fear and madness.

With hands crushed against my eyes, I fell from the chair and collapsed, crumpled as if all bone had turned to dust. She had been my unfailing support, my foundation, my strength. She had been my life.

Shrieks and retches exploded, echoed within the death parlor.

But still-ever so damnably still-the quiet of the dead pervaded, a hush settling from the beyond, its tone as deep and dark as the void. Such terror it incited. I dreaded this knowledge: the unbearable noiseless din of nothingness, the fate of my flesh and blood, my bone and marrow, my life and spirit. The fate that already claimed my Julianne.

Save me from the silence, she had cried the last night, please I'd rather have the pain, not the silence, not the silence.

Her grip, gravestone-cold, and my heart had stopped, jounced, stopped again. Too much trauma for such a simple organ--her passing had killed me some. Better a surgeon tear apart my chest and rip out my heart, for it would beat still—ever so damnably still.

Tears like silence fell.

The door opened, softly like a velvet chain rattling for my attention, and a man dressed in a mourning suit entered.

"We are ready," he announced, his voice muffled by the mask he wore. The mask was made of snake skin and long feathery plumes of emerald, amethyst and sapphire, like the face of the Aztec god, Quetzacoatl. It inspired a vision: of their stone-temple steps overflowing with sacrifice--red, from which the demon fled.

I waited no longer.

Not trusting my voice, I nodded, and the man ushered in the others, all donning the elaborate faces of gods. One woman, in an Ibis-faced mask, cradled Mia.

"Come," she said, holding out her arms, offering my daughter, who slept swathed in funeral cloth, "and we will begin the ceremony."

Rising on unsteady feet, I approached her and let her slip Mia into my trembling arms. She smelled of milk and of Julianne still—ever so damnably still.

Bells rang, piercing the heavy gloom, frightening the evil winds from the curtains, the ravening angels from their perches. Wild dancing went on around Julianne. Women in harlequin-lace gowns twirled, their tulles of color bleeding round and round, as slender bejeweled fingers clutched midnight hair and threw fistfuls of strands, like grim confetti, upon her corpse. Men brandished obsidian knives, cutting, inflicting wounds. Like scarlet sins riven and redeemed from hearts, blood dribbled down arms and hands, and stained her--red, from which the demons fled.

All around the living bonded with the dead. Without touching. Decay was considered taboo and contagious, a plight, a pox, a plague which they would cleanse through these rites. Driving away dangerous spirits, sparing Julianne from possession and themselves from insanity, from infections of its taboo.

Disturbed by the clamor of ceremony and chaos, Mia awoke. She eyed me with a blue intensity like the sea before a storm, and then she howled, her cries cutting a knife of despair within me. She hungered for her mother, for sweet milk and warmth. Cries I knew well.

Nine months in a diseased womb, tumors and cysts her embryonic siblings, she had endured, thrived, borne herself from such misery. Mia had arrived all vibrant pink and downy, wailing for all life's wont and get. Julianne had shuddered, in relief, in exhaustion for having endured, thrived, birthed such perfection from her wasting body.

Mia, her mother's gift of miracle and joy.

I rocked her in my arms, singing nursery songs and dancing amongst the others. Not as wild, but solemn and grief-ridden, a lullaby rhythm. Still--ever so damnably still--she cried.

"It's time," someone whispered in my ear, words as hot as Mia's skin. "Console Julianne for the other world."

I nodded again, my voice choked with aching song and love. As the others retreated from the room, I kissed my precious daughter, over and over, hugging her tiny body against mine before placing her upon Julianne. Mia calmed; her tiny hand kneaded the clay flesh of her mother. Mother and daughter lie together, comforted.

The ibis crept to my side and placed a lit taper in my hand. "Lest the danger and darkness spread." Then she too left.

The flame bewitched. Julianne loved the light--all illumination, bright or faint; always walking, dancing, aglow in the sun, the star, the moon, even in firefly and fairy glitter.

Without further dalliance, I lowered the gold-flickering wick to the bedding and the silk drapery and watched our memories rise as smoke, as sinuous wisps of silent screams. The bed burned. Bodies, like wood and ember, were destined for ash.

Mia's high-pitched, utterly tormented cries crested the crackling roar of the fire, and I begged for the silence.

As I waited in the death parlor still--ever so damnably still.