The Gospel According to John 6.54
Bible, The New Testament
For me, it was the bite. It began with that first bite. The flow of blood. The drag of his eyes, up. The force of his
will, which had a body and gravity of its own, dragging my eyes up.
Then his extraordinary beauty. His copper hair and ivory skin. His eyes amber and glittering, with their
expression at once of hope and hurt, and longing. In their profundity the jagged aura of a soul lost long ago, and wandering
still.
Until that precise moment, you must understand, everything was in control, nicely in control. In my control,
nicely.
Yes, for me, it started here, beyond my depth in this man’s eyes.
For me, it starts here ...
I’ve got my eyes on my mom. She’s Faye. And she’s like transfixed, that’s the word. And I look at what she’s
transfixed at, and it’s this mosquito on her knuckle right next to her wedding ring. She’s got it right up in front of her
face, and this mosquito’s got his nose, his proboscis thing as she calls it, shoved deep into her knuckle, sucking up all
this blood into his body which is first transparent but starts turning blood red.
I look back up at my mom’s transfixed eyes and there’s this second where they do this weird thing, the pupils
like flutter, then her eyes lift off the mosquito, only it’s my mom lifting them, like it’s this heavy load on them that she’s
got to lift them, like with muscles, and she lifts them higher and higher and higher and then stands there, even more
transfixed, transfixed to the nth, transfixed like she’s staring down a long tunnel at something way down at the end,
something scary yet fascinating.
I follow her eyes across the street, up to the second story of this hotel, and there’s this guy standing in
this window. And he’s naked! Only because of the window sill, all I can see is his chest and the flat of his stomach, so
it’s not like shocking, it’s not like this guy is exposing himself or anything. He’s just standing there transfixing my
mom, and he’s got this look on his face just like the look on my mom’s face, like they know each other. Or knew each other
a long time ago. He’s got this whole attitude of disbelief, like he’s in a photograph titled Surprise! with his arm up like
he just threw back the drapes just this second, and just saw her, and froze. His lips are pressed together in this hard,
straight line, and he’s got this face like out of the movies, like think of the handsomest man you’ve ever seen and
multiply him by a million. His hair is jet black, and his eyes are like, they’re like black, too. Black, black, black, like
Carlsbad Caverns when they turn out the lights black. Only with fire right in the center of them. Even at this distance I
can see these black orbs with this fire in the center, like this laser piercing all the way across the street and
transfixing my mom.
I look back at my mom, and the bloodsucker on her finger is huge, his guts full of my mom’s blood. Now I don’t
want you to think I’m the kind of girl who faints when I see blood. I mean, I’m not indelicate or anything—in fact,
my mom’s always saying I’m sensitive beyond words, “Angie, you are sensitive beyond words”—and I can stand the sight
of a little blood. It’s just, first of all, I’m a vegetarian so blood’s not my thing. And second, right while I’m watching,
the mosquito’s guts get so full of my mom’s blood that suddenly he poops! This yellow poop! Yesterday’s blood! I mean gross!
I need to give you the whole picture. It’s very important that you understand everything. It’s late Friday
afternoon, I’m dying to get out of here, I’ve been in school all week, I’m going home to Santa Cruz de K’u for the weekend
(big thrill), it’s the hottest day in the history of time and the hottest place in the known universe, right upside this
blazing white hospital wall on the streets of Mérida in the Yucatán Peninsula of México. Like my dad says—who dragged
us here in the first place—the Yucatán is like this skillet sticking out over the Caribbean, flat and hot and cooking
in the sun all day long. Then the very second the sun goes down, the bloodsuckers come out, first the mosquitoes in the
dusk, singing in your ears and crawling up under your hair, then deep in the black of the night, the vampires.
So here’s my mom, transfixed by the naked guy in the hotel and the mosquito on her finger, whose butt now is
rubbing on her wedding ring as he starts to make his getaway, pulling his proboscis thing out of her knuckle, then pushing
it back in and pulling it back out, sucking up every last drop. But when he goes to fly away, he’s so fat that he can’t take
off right but dips down in front of me, and I splat, right between my hands, right in midair, splat! And the echo of the
splat ricochets back at us off the wall of the hotel across the street.
My mom jumps at the noise and looks down at me like she’s just made the roundtrip return from the rings of
Saturn. “Angie,” she says, in that low voice with that tone of surprise that she uses when I’ve done something very very
surprising, like get an A. “Angie.” And she’s breathing like she just did two extra laps. I open up my hands and there’s
like a half gallon of my mom’s blood all over them. “You got him,” she says in that same voice and she looks up again at
the hotel window across the street. I look too. The naked guy’s still there.
And my dad drives up in the Jeep.
For me, it started centuries ago, in the black mountains of Moldavia. 1643 in the year of their Lord. (Ha!) 1643, and I
was in love. You must remember this. This you must remember. Her name was Ilona. Beautiful. Soft. Soft voice... soft hair...
eyes... soft. She was the other half of my being. Boring? So beautifully boring. I was Greek. She was Moldavian, married to
a brute named Johannes. He took her whenever he wanted. Used her as a beast. Never even saw her soft eyes, simply took her.
And she loved me.
We made plans to escape. We would go to Greece where we would be married. We would have children. We would
live a good life. And after many years and much love, we would die. Together.
That night... that first night... I waited outside her window. The father and brothers were in the front of
the house eating their uncouth food, laughing and howling and belching, yapping at the mother to bring them more, more of
their uncouth food. Johannes was in the bedroom with Ilona. She endured him without a sound until he was done with her, had
planted his brute seed and left to join his brute family.
I rapped softly on the window. She turned, saw me, reached under the bed, brought out her packed bag, threw
her cloak around her shoulders, and came to me. She opened the window, and we kissed. The smell of her... soft.
She returned quickly to the bed and picked up the child, her brat with Johannes, a she-child merely three
weeks old. She came to me and gave me the brat to hold while she let herself out the window. It puked softly in my arms,
its mother’s milk.
Ilona took back the child and we moved quietly through the woods toward my carriage. We could see through the
windows the creatures at their food. The baby whimpered. Ilona held it closer. We crept faster. The baby cried out loud.
The slavering from the house stopped. They came to the door in a pack. The moon was full. We were easy to see. There was a
moment of utter silence before they raised their shouts and came after us.
We ran now, but Ilona was hampered by the child in her arms. A shot rang out and I felt a blow to the back of
my right leg. I fell to the earth upon a sharp rock which cut deep into my left knee. Ilona stopped, turned back to me,
tried to pull me to my feet, but I had no control of my left leg. Something had been severed.
The carriage was near now and I dragged myself to it. Ilona pulled at my jacket to help me along. The pain
was blinding. The blood pounded in my ears. I crawled onto the floor of the carriage. Ilona handed me up the child, climbed
into the seat, took up the reins and slapped them hard on the horse’s back.
The carriage lurched forward, but the creatures closed the gap. Johannes in the lead got his hand onto the
back of the carriage and started to pull himself on board. Ilona turned and lashed him across the eyes with the horse whip.
He shrieked and fell back onto the road.
I saw the father take aim with his musket. He had it propped on the shoulder of one of his sons. I pulled
Ilona down below the seat. The bullet whistled over our heads. We took a bend in the road, and we were free. We laughed.
For one moment only, we were free. And we laughed for one moment only.
Before us lay a crossroads, in the middle of the crossroads a haycart. Ilona reined the horse to the side. The
carriage slued. It tipped and overturned. Ilona was reaching for the baby in my arms when I was thrown from the carriage,
Ilona’s beautiful, horrified face ripped from my vision. I took the fall on my back and shoulders, saving the child.
I remember the carriage wheels turning, the scream of the horse thrashing in its harness. I remember the
confusion of sounds, the wails from the baby, the calls of the pack as they came running up. Ilona lay like a broken doll
in the spokes of one of the wheels of the haycart. Her legs and arms were at fantastic angles. Out of a great gash across
her neck, blood flowed out, poured out, Ilona’s blood drained from her body in a flood. I dropped the baby in the dirt and
dragged myself to Ilona. I pulled myself up beside her to lean against the haycart wheels. I tried to pull her from the
spokes, but only one leg pulled her free. I drew her head toward my own. I drew her breast into my arms. She was limp.
“Ilona, Ilona, Ilona, Ilona, Ilona...” I could do nothing but repeat her name.
I put my hand against the gash in her throat stop the gush of her blood. It spurted with her heartbeats
through my fingers and soaked into the dirt. I clamped my mouth to the gash. Her blood filled my mouth. I swallowed. Her
blood filled my mouth again. I swallowed. There was no stopping the blood. Into the soil or into my body, Ilona’s blood
would not stop flowing. Until, of its own, in smaller and smaller beats of her heart, the blood ceased to spurt.
I looked up finally to Johannes and his father and brothers who had now come near to watch. Terror and glee
mingled in their eyes. The brute mother now approached and picked up the baby and turned away.
“I’ll kill you!” Johannes said and started toward me. I pulled my knife. He stopped, drew back. I turned the
knife and plunged it into my own heart.
There was blackness.
I do not know for how long there was blackness. An eternity, but mere moments, for the full moon was still at
its zenith when I next became aware of light. I could hear the voice of Johannes: “Oh, God, may you not receive this
creature into your kingdom, this suicide, this Greek adulterer. May the earth spew him out so that his body shall remain
incorrupt, without soul and without redemption, wandering in darkness through all eternity.”
I left my body, a purity pulled out through its pores, and rose above the scene, above Ilona and Johannes and
his father and brothers and mother and baby, and the frightened driver of the haycart, on his knees and praying to his god.
There was no noise at all but the voice of Johannes and the wind in the trees. I hung high above them, gazing at my own body
splayed out in the center of the crossroads, the blood leaking from around the knife buried in its heart, Ilona’s blood
dripping from its mouth.
And for me, it started here.
Copyright © 2004 Robert Locke
All Rights Reserved