Lilith, the Unconsoled

By Karl R. De Mesa



The Gift had plagued Lilith since childhood, coloring her world in a gamut of stray thoughts, towering dreams and wicked intents. The Gift, she often mused, made you its own creature shaped from pure sight, made of a collage of possibilities.

When her best friend’s child was born she called Lilith over to have him blessed. Lilith clearly saw the death in the child like the seed of a bomb that slept until it heard the call for its appointed time. This child would not live long.

“We named him Milton,” her best friend said.

Lilith smiled and traced a warding rune on Milton’s forehead, “I bless you, Milton. May the good Lord and his Saints smile upon you and keep you from the dark for the rest of your days. Amen.”

Three months later Lilith rushed to the hospital on her best friend’s appeal: Milton was found pale in the crib, without breath. He was spared that night however and so they took him home. Aunt Lilith slept over to guard him as Milton’s parents gave in to exhaustion in the next room.

Lilith, her eyes ablaze with the Gift of True Sight, saw that the seed had detonated, its rot spread to the infant’s limbs and organs. Milton would suffer long from the disease before his very short and happy life was extinguished.

Lilith did not weep when she cooed Milton to sleep. She did not weep when she laid him down in the crib, picked up a pillow and smothered him with it. She did not weep when she heard his pitiful choking. She wept, however, when Milton finally stopped struggling and his tiny fist let go of the pillow cloth’s corner.

The rain of Lilith’s tears was a momentary balm in the fury of her soothsaying. The Gift gave unto others but tormented its owners, like Lilith, leaving them with the knowledge of future events they could neither alter nor convince others that their predictions held water. This thought did not console her. Milton was still dead. The Gift still plagued her. One of these must be remedied, she decided, and quickly before death and decay became the only fortune she could tell.

She donned her jacket, checked on her sleeping friends and drove through the winding roads up to Antipolo. When she reached the overlook point where Manila lay sprawled beneath like a jeweled blanket, she threw her objects of power down the maw of the cliff: crystal ball, Tarot deck, tea leaves, cat eyes. With these gone she incanted the first spell she ever learned. Two blossoms of flame appeared on each palm.

Her mother Cassandra always told Lilith that death magick is the easiest thing to do because we are such fragile, watery creatures. The hardest trick was to look into the future and live with the knowledge of what you saw there. “I have seen the future, child; it is murder,” she had told Lilith. “And I can tell no one. Not even you would believe it.”

Remember to keep your eyes open, Lilith thought even as she brought the burning fires up to her face. Yes, she had foreseen this. This. Right now. The way her flesh is being seared. Burning pupil, cornea, iris, Gift spilling out with the vitreous humor. She had foretold this and she had not believed it. Neither could she alter it.

Because all time is one with the Gift she is starting now, she is ending now. The flames are sparked, the flames are dying. She scents the charred state of her eyes. She’s sure she has held on long enough to make certain all sight has been destroyed.

All time is one with the Gift. The Gift is one with time. She is starting now, she is ending now. She is falling now. She is finding the grass soft, the night air is being found without apparitions. She is being free now. She is being lost now and glad of it.