THE EIGHT OF SWORDS

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August 21, 2008

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THE EIGHT OF SWORDS

S. BOYD TAYLOR

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     You walk alone in your father’s labyrinth. Through the craze of brambles and glossy-leafed hedges. At the center a circle of swords stands where the arbor should be. Eight scimitars stabbed deep into a pile of bright roses. You have seen this before somewhere. You circle the swords. Touch the cold and lonely steel. Then you step inside and kneel among the blooms.
     The twins find you there. Summer and Snow. They orbit you outside the swords. Summer is golden as daylight and the flowers turn toward him. Snow is pale with silver hair and around him colors fade like winter. They move in time around you. Your sun and moon.
     Show us your secrets, says Summer.
     Show us the hidden places, says Snow.
     You grab a sword and raise it above Summer. But Snow smashes into you and crushes you down. He shoves his tongue in your mouth. Alive and wriggling and cold.
     You bite the tip off. Spit out the meat. Taste the icy and sour blood in your throat. He rears back and slams his fist into your skull and the bones slip and grate together.
     Summer pulls down the brambles and grabs up the rosevines and they look greener and more beautiful in his golden hands. He winds them round your arms and breast and eyes and deep between your thighs. But you fight him and the vines slip and you kick him in the jaw.
     You have seen this before. This is the Eight of Swords. The gypsy woman showed it to you when you were little. When she saw the card, she cried. Dirty tears from wrinkled eyes.
     Snow’s molars crack through your wrists. His mouth open impossibly wide. All around him, his shining silver hair. You smash him with your shattered stumps until you have no blood or air left to fight.
     When you are still, Summer peels the skin from your ribs. A single red sheet. Veins and arteries in triangles against the sun. The stained glass of your soul.
     They stare at the pulsing labyrinth inside you. All the twisted hidden places. The corners no one has ever seen. With red tongues they both rasp your bones to pearls.
     You close your eyes. Your heart slows. Breathing feather-thin. Your memories fall away. Childhood first, then racing forward. The crumbling stones that make you. There is a flutter in the depths. Tender. Fragile. A bird rising.
     Snow stops chewing and looks up. No, he screams, come back. You are what we want!
     Summer jumps for you. Mouth stretched. Hair glowing. Jaws tear through the edge of you and snag. For a moment you think you will fall. But you let that part of yourself go as well. One last tiny bit of self, that is all they get. Then you soar higher.

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S. Boyd Taylor lives in Dallas, TX, where he practices Internal Martial Arts, writes weird stories, and attempts to play guitar.
     He is a Writers of the Future Semifinalist and his first publication was when he was thirteen in a ‘zine called “Longbow” (1988). There’s an autographed copy roaming around somewhere, but the signature unfortunately reduces its resale value.
     You can find his blog here: http://nikwdhmos.livejournal.com/.

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