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It’s the twenty-first of December, the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. It is Michael’s longest. They used to call it Christmas, give or take a few days.
Snow crunches thick under his black boots. Amongst the pine boughs snapping with cold, he is somber in ebony. This is his personal tradition and it is for him alone. These trees are alive, in a fashion, thanks to his vitalum vitalis, but they only feign beauty and freshness. Something isn’t quite right with them, but then, that’s essentially what his tiny kingdom is now, something that struggles to grow and thrive, outwardly symbolizing the power of his rule, but all the while papering over an emptiness at its core.
This quiet plot of land is far removed from the excited bustle in town and the buzz of activity at court as everyone prepares for this evening’s celebrations. It’s a place of rest for those who have passed on. Only Michael is allowed here on Winter Solstice, save for the grave-keeper that comes for tending. It is enclosed by a tall, wrought-iron black gate salvaged from an old churchyard, but there is no church here, no Black Masses held, no dirges sung.
Plumes of his frosted breath pearl the air as he stands over one of the graves in the oldest part of the cemetery. This was the first of his many lovers over the years.
“Lover” is a classy term that he rather likes, found in ancient novels he hoarded before The Fall. It is more elegant than what they really were, companions, sex partners, people whose flesh he had tasted but who hadn’t really touched any deep place inside him. His first experience had been fraught with worry as well as wonder, and she had been caring with him. For that, he is grateful.
Michael concentrates and a rose from the greenhouse appears in his hand. He’s become adept at reaching through the ether to find things he needs without having to use mirrors, and he drops the rose on the grave as his salute to her and their brief passion.
There are more graves, more roses to conjure. Some were faithful, loyal servants in his kingdom. He pays his deepest respects to the plot that holds the synthetic remains of his beloved Ms. Mead. She has been gone for ages but his love and longing for her comfort never completely fades.
She and the favored administrators and servants are flanked by more “companions”. So many shes, so many hers and hims and theys, all hearts he tried to fill over his years as King of the New Earth (or at least this corner of the Earth thus far), minds, mouths, holes, all empty and yearning for his touch and his love. They had worshipped him. They wanted to be worshipped by him but that was harder.
All left traces of themselves on him, the way tiger lilies had left dustings of bright orange on his nose when he pressed in to inhale their scent as a child in Constance’s garden. He had inspired the full range their human bodies and hearts could hold, joy, lust, jealousy, eventually hatred in some cases. He had experienced fondness, even the madness of deep lust but in the end, it just hadn’t been possible to feel more.
Sooner rather than later, they all fell, to illness, to accident, or to the sudden, casual violence of this new world he is building. In his early days when he had still lacked control, some had been destroyed by his fiery power when he forgot himself, and he erupted in an outpouring of rage over some small thing.
A few were lost to their own despair when he had simply grown bored and moved on to a newer, more interesting face, a newer body with pliant, warm holes to fill. He regrets those the most.
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Michael comes at last to the grave at the farthest corner of this lonesome field. This one is removed from the others. Gloved fingers brush across the simple, elegant white stone, and it is smooth, barely weathered. He clears the arch at the top of debris and then, just barely touching it: Langdon. The one who lies in repose under this soil is his wife.
Before he met her, he had believed love was an intangible construct that was meant for others and not for him, but she had changed that, and it had been quite by accident. It was something he fell into naturally, for she was just too easy to love. What hadn’t been easy was gaining her trust; she knew who and what he was, he was darkness against her starlight, but finally, finally, she couldn’t help but adore him too. Michael knew it the minute her heart opened to his, knew she loved him even before she did. Her love was a deep, delicate thing, and he understood her faith in him was something sacred he should never abuse or break.
Myriad images of her now flow in and out of his mind of their own accord as he dully contemplates her name on the stone. He sees her concentrating over a task, absorbed in play, or arguing with him over his politics and all his “wrong opinions”.
In the fields at the Spring Equinox festival, she offered blessings to the plantings with sweet words of hope. Chatting with other women, she would tickle their children and shake her head at their mothers’ bawdy gossip.
Shrewdly, she assessed the words and actions of his trusted advisors and his opposition alike, and when he asked her opinion, she counseled him to be fair but firm, never to be cruel just for the sake of cruelty but never to tolerate disrespect from anyone.
And if she were in the mood, she could dance and drink him under the table, but was still somehow so graceful while she did so. She moved like poetry.
A vivid flow of endless summer days sipping lemonade from her mouth in the sunshine passes before his eyes; he can still taste it.
They’re followed by cool autumn afternoons when she would towel rainwater out of his shaggy blonde hair and stroke him before the fireplace as though he were a puppy, albeit one with fangs that nipped at her legs.
One of their favorite ways to pass a frosty winter’s evening was playing games. He would get through his work day as quickly as possible so he could rush home to share a meal with her, then follow her to their bedchamber.
He pictures her sitting by the crackling, drowsing fire with a cup of tea warming her hands as she ponders her next chess move or the card she will toss down. In the beginning, he had let her win but soon enough she was wiping the floor with him, even though he was the one who had taught her those games, and she would laugh while he swore with disgust. It was that sort of full-bodied, head-tossed-back laugh that made his soul smile.
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Sometimes when they played, she challenged him in other ways. Michael’s mind and body involuntarily flood with heat thinking of the first time she did that, casually suggesting they make the stakes higher by taking off a piece of clothing for every chess piece lost.
Speculative eyes had run over his long body when she said it, and he took in the slight bite of her own full bottom lip in anticipation. His answering smile was openly arrogant, but his pulse had already thickened. He readily agreed, rudely telling her he was confident he’d see her in all her glory soon enough but somehow, he found himself naked first.
Slyly innocent, Michael had complained of being cold and asked her to keep him warm and she complied, sitting on his lap facing away from him, and when she began to “lose”, his hands grazed her skin as it was slowly and tantalizingly revealed from throat to thigh. He gently pushed her hair away to gain access to her delectable neck and her shoulders, and they became hot and slippery in the chilly room with his wet kissing. She giggled when his hair tickled her back.
One hand was teasing on her breast while the other skimmed down to her undergarment and skillfully played up and down her hot cleft. Making a small sound in her throat, she moved against it and the growing hardness pressing between the globes of her backside. When she regretfully lost that last bit of cloth, he readied himself with a few quick pumps of his fist, then settled her back on his lap with a soft chuckle and a groan. Slowly, slowly, she sank down while he thrust upward, until his cock was fully seated deep in her honeyed core.
They didn’t move, just sat this way listening to the gale winds blow outside their window as she continued leaning forward over the set while he leaned back, keeping her balanced on his strong, corded thighs. Michael wasn’t even pretending to play anymore, all his senses thoroughly absorbed in this new contest. She took every pawn and rook and bishop with her breath growing shallow while his fingers plucked at her nipples and his cock twitched and throbbed inside her.
It was a delicious struggle, but she refused to give in and be the first to move. Wonderfully wet, hot walls gripped and flexed around his thickness, and his fair head fell back against the chair, eyes closing as deeper groans vibrated his throat and his broad chest at the terrific rhythmic heat.
Finally, he lost and thrust his hips upward almost lazily, just once, and she laughed with breathless victory. She bounced lightly on him and a gasp escaped him. Oh, then it was checkmate, it was checkmate, she had conquered his king and the board was knocked to the floor as he pushed her down on the rug and took her, hard from behind, unable to restrain himself from a wild plunging in and out of her silky heat.
Louder moans tore from her throat when he hit her sweet spot repeatedly and he could feel how much she loved him riding her like this, but he needed to see her face when she came. He turned her over and kept thrusting, and his long, ringed fingers wound snakelike down her belly to delicately rub her tight, tender bud. She couldn’t take anymore and just as he felt her wild spasming, hoarsely he commanded her to open her eyes and look at him. He fell into that gaze, into her ecstasy, her lips parted and cheeks flushing so beautifully. The pitch of her cries was music.
Michael was almost painfully open to her emotions, to the bright white flare of her orgasm washing through him on a tidal wave of pure euphoria. It sent him over the horizon and then the thunder took him too. When his ardor for her found its way out of his body through his cock, his cum flowed to meet the ocean inside her and he was undone.
Afterwards, when he pulled the blanket down from the chair to wrap and cuddle her, she slapped him lightly, making him declare she was the undefeated champion and could not be beaten and he laughed. Her energy was soft, radiating love and he wanted to absorb every bit of it.
Body now miserably hot and tensed with pent-up desire, even out here in this cold yard, he thinks of many more such passionate nights, days of tenderness, her eyes and her scent like sweetgum, beautiful and free under the open sky.
Best of all, worst of all, Michael thinks of their wedding day in high summer, probably the happiest of his entire long life, when he had held her hands in both of his while hers cradled his heart, and she had promised never to leave him.
She hadn’t kept that promise.
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They weren’t even married a full year when she was stricken with a sudden illness. He had known full well that by marrying a mortal, he would someday face her loss, but this was too bewilderingly soon, just too soon. Distraught, he couldn’t understand why his vitalum vitalis ability was failing him when he needed it the most. He searched in vain for something, anything that would restore her to health, but nothing worked. No one knew how to help her.
As she worsened day by day, he made an offering of his own blood to his Father to let her live, every last drop of it if necessary, begging him to grant her immortality, he knew it was possible, please, help her. Lucifer, the Great and Silent, remained quiet as he had in all times of need, unmoved by Michael’s wild grief.
Frantic, driven by sheer desperation to do the one thing he had never, ever thought he would do, Michael had prostrated himself before Yahweh and pleaded with him not to take her, he would do anything, just don’t take her, not to the one place in all the realms where he couldn’t follow.
Yahweh’s answer: a spiteful hand that reached down and plucked her from Michael’s grasp on the twenty-first of December, seven years ago to the day.
Bitterly, Michael could perceive this as nothing other than a “Merry Christmas, bitch”, a punishment for all that he had wrought on the Earth. What could he say? He was responsible for destroying the old world, but he was only hitting the reset button before the humans could do it first. He knew he owed a debt for the billions of faceless lives he had taken and he knew when that bill came due, he would have no choice but to pay up but not like this.
When he swam up from the well of agony, he was overtaken with rage against his Father, that his needs, his happiness, his deepest woe were utterly meaningless to him. Then the paranoia set in, and the thought struck him that maybe it wasn’t Yahweh who had caused his precious one to fall ill after all. Maybe it had been his Father, removing the one person from Michael’s life who might make him too soft and happy to rule savagely in his Dark name.
In the end, it didn’t matter which one of them was responsible, if anyone was responsible at all. The day he buried her, he quietly turned his back on them both, shut himself in his rooms and to himself became his own god, mighty and alone, even as he knew it was the last thing she would have wanted.
What she would have wanted. Standing before this mindless, uncaring stone, a familiar, bitter anger is slowly seeping in, but it is directed at himself, thinking of all the ways he had bent and conformed to become her ideal of him. She had shown him a vision of himself not as a monster or a god, but a wise and just ruler, a good husband, maybe even someday a father. He should have known that was an illusion dreamed up in the throes of a sweet, hazy passion and he was to blame for having mistaken it for reality.
Sometimes, and it’s harder to admit this to himself, he is also angry with her, for stirring such pure emotion in him in the first place, then abandoning him, breaking all the vows she had made under that beaming halcyon sky.
She was the one who had done this to him, snatched her love and her generous body and her comfort away and left in its place this desperate, terrible longing. All he will have as he faces the next nine hundred years is dreams of her, brighter than the Northern star against his dark sky but so far out of his reach.
Each Winter Solstice since she has passed, he has placed a lit candle in their bedroom window at night to guide her home, with the old chess set arranged on the table ready for play.
Obviously, he knows there are such things as ghosts, and although his home is not a draw for haunts like the place of his birth, he has been hoping against hope that a certain sweet one would come and play with him, rest her head by his on the pillow and hold his hand. But it’s never happened and tonight, he’s finally giving up. He is here to say good bye.
Hearing the faint echoes of her laughter as the last rose appears, Michael crushes it in his gloved fist, so tightly that the oils deep within drip perfume from the worn leather onto the packed white powder. His eyes mirror the vivid, piercing blue of the winter sky, the way it will look in another hour or so from now when pale pink sunset quietly washes it in a light, wet snowfall. His lips tremble and they are the swelling, soft crimson of the petals soaking up snowflakes on the ground. A single tear, just the one, he allows to wisp down his face.
This is his last Winter Solstice gift to himself, the gift of remembrance of the joy and the exquisite pain of all her love and frailty and trust placed in his unworthy hands.
Michael draws his black coat tighter about himself against the chill and straightens his shoulders as the tear freezes on the pale, cold marble of his sculpted cheek. These past seven years since her passing, he has been too sluggish with grief and apathy to attend to running his country or to nation-building. No more. A brand-new year will commence, and it will be a return to form. There will be more great work to accomplish, tighter controls, new territories to conquer, old scores to settle with single-minded vengeance.
He knows there are many who believe him too weakened by despair to govern and they have been growing more open with their disrespect. And lately, as his eyes and ears have begun slowly reopening to the world, he hears rumors, dark whispers that the death of his beloved Queen might have had a human cause, a powerful contingent in his own administration who had resented her influence over his decisions.
If that should prove true… if that is true, there are several pikes surrounding the walls just thirsting for skulls and entrails. If it is true, he will show all these motherfuckers who dare resist or challenge him the true demon-king he was born to become.
But before the red gloves come off, tonight, his courtiers and his mindless minions will celebrate with feasting and revels in the Great Hall. There will be good food, rare, old wine and new moonshine, and afterwards in the ballroom there will be dancing and fucking for days.
When he is drunk enough, when he has been drained of his yearning for her and reached his nadir, he will drown himself in someone’s tight flesh, maybe a few someones, anyone wet and willing, or he shall simply tell them they’re willing.
He will sink his mind and lose it in the moment as though there was no past and no tomorrow, he will get bloody and foul, he will unchain himself from all these plaintive, sad apparitions, from the one who had made him foolishly believe for a time that he could be better than this.
Resolute now about the path he will take, he promises himself he won’t come back to this place next year and turns to leave but a wind whispers across his cheek, gentle as a kiss.
It sighs, “Wait….”
Michael stops and whips around. Wondering, daring to believe.... but seeing nothing but mute grey markers, he shakes his head sarcastically at his own folly and finally goes. There are no such things as Solstice miracles, he chides himself as he trudges back to his residence, not for anyone over the age of five and most definitely not for him.
In the washroom, he gets fresh dressed like a million bucks, hair styled and glinting like firelight, readying the chartreuse cravat and the golden fangs and claws, but before he leaves, he sees there is a candle lit in the window of the bedchamber.
He spies the chess set and his gaze lingers when he notes that the white quartz queen has moved to checkmate the black king. Some pitying servant must have done this, and he knows which one of them would, but in his eyes, there is a lightening, just the very faintest, where before there was only the gathering dark.
Slowly, he reconsiders the night ahead and how he will spend it. There is a self-deprecating half-smile at the corner of his mouth as he loosens his cravat, puts the sharp metal teeth and fingertips on the hearth shelf, and takes to his leather chair.
Folding his hands in his lap and leaning the pale amber of his head against the high back, he allows himself this final indulgence of fantasy, just one last evening. The feasting can commence without him as he sits patiently, all the while chastising himself for this stupidity, maybe even lunacy, but nevertheless, he sits and he waits.
Closing his eyes, he is suspended somewhere between melancholy and a rising, shaky hope and then, the door silently swings open. A delicate draft of wind caresses his hair. He opens his eyes and inhales as the scent of sweetgum sugars the chamber. Heart pumping, breath catching in his chest, he waits while slowly, slowly, a gentle, white luminescence begins taking form before him. It lights up the room, it lights up his whole world.
Michael’s eyes glisten and his lips tremble into a smile. Softly, he breathes a short laugh.
He whispers, “Happy Solstice, baby.”