Come Resurrection - a short story by Lindsay Souvannarath

Hello, beautiful. If you can read this, please listen to my confession. You probably don’t know me, but I’ve known you for a very long time. And I don’t know if I should say this yet, but… I love you.

I do, I love you. I do, I really do.

I love you so much, that I built your entire world for you, so you may live on and on and on. I built it just after I met you. You were so beautiful lying there, with your dreamy eyes tenderly shut. Your near-translucent skin, which seemed to be growing paler and paler by the second. The way your limbs were twisted, delicately mangled at the joints to form such an unearthly vision of vulnerability. Oh, that must have been such a long fall. Not only did the building possess incredible height, but I know how the most glorious of angels must fall the furthest. Oh, my angel. My contorted angel on the pavement. Your soft flesh had been scraped away in just the right places, revealing your inner body’s artistic formation. No one could ever appreciate such a sight but I. No one but I could ever admire the curvature of your neck, bent a perfect ninety degrees to the right and twisted around twice, and only twice. As soon as I saw you there, I just had to reach out and touch you. I shivered in anticipation as I traced my fingers down your body, right to where it was already beginning to split. It stunned me with excitement, making me wonder at every second whether you’d burst apart.

And I carried you. I was ever so careful, making sure I didn’t damage what was left of your body. Some fragments of your skull fell out on the way, but I was quick to push them back in. Don’t worry, you were still in one piece when I brought you home. I brought you to lay on my bed, shattered arms crossed over your chest. You looked just like the pretty corpses in old fairytales. Even more so when I dressed you in my mother’s wedding gown. I took out my spellbook, ready to resurrect you. But no, the time wasn’t right. I was afraid I would frighten you away. So I created your afterlife, one just like the world you knew. Then I could keep loving you, you and your wounds, for what could be eternity.

But I think you’re ready to be revived now, to gaze upon the blackened eyes of me, your savior from below. You will live again, with love and beauty that will never die, as your wounds will always be fresh, and your bones just as mangled as they were when I met you. You’ll be able to feel my touch for the first time. Our fluids mingling together… your cold blood…

Don’t worry, my love.

I’ll be just as gentle as I’ve always been.