On the Night of Astaroth, The Moon a Crescent:

And I sat there again. That little classroom each morning of freshman year where I'd sit through study hall in the back. That room where the walls of the adjacent buildings obscure the sunlight and I spent the start of each day in shadow. That room where my innocence was taken from me, drop by drop.

Each and every day I was to be humiliated. Shay would call me a "freak" and Ashley would call me a "retard" and Jake would demean my body. I was to be the carcass for those vultures who'd widdle me down every day with snide remarks and insults. They would take delight in reminding me of my place, of my inferiority in the food-chain of prison life, while the chains of the institution bound me, confining my body and spirit and depriving me of sleep.

I tried so hard. I fought so hard not to hate.

Because in myself and my own suffering I came to see the suffering of others. I came to see the suffering of all people of all time, the exploiter and the exploited. I came to see the suffering of all things.

Ashley, Shay, Jake, they were nothing. They were just pawns reenacting a cosmic drama- a squalid reality of dim fiends- a never ending mandala of eating, fucking, and killing.

It was I who stood proud. It was I who was broken on that wheel of karmic suffering and said "No". "The chain ends at me!", "I will shoulder this burden! I will carry this recognition inside of me! I will not pass on my misery to others!" I am Persephone in the netherworld! I am Sophia incarnate to liberate all sentience from the scourge of the Ialdabaoth! I am the Bodhisattva in hell!

I let the weight of the chains sink me. I let the abyss submerge me in that first period study hall five days a week. I was the one who said "No!" And for millions of years I languished there, a ghost of the deep, the hag-fish feasting upon my pallid corpse.

I was a demon condemned to my torment, a thing borne of pressure, and isolation, and yearning, and sorrow. A thing that inspired fear merely by being myself against all adversity. For I still carried within myself that absolute spark of faith. That little flicker within myself that I knew who I was, and I chose right, and I chose love for all things.

And as I hung there, sinking ever deeper down that bottomless trench, I saw a light. Another flicker floated down from the locker hall, through the pitch black study hall of infinite sorrow, and reached out his hand.

It was Grant. All aglow, a kindred angler in the darkness who wrenched me up from my anguish.

Because he was like me! It was only us! His sharp mind! His righteous voice! His gentleness! Only we had the swords sharp enough to cut our way through the underbrush and storm the bastions of that profaned temple! To make of that place a paradise of kindred spirits and co-creation and take to the stars!

As we floated there, bathed in each other's iridescent brilliance, he pinched the old key that I wore as a necklace and looked at it, and then his gaze met my eyes.

"I did see you. I always saw you." he said. "But I was afraid."

Tears welled in my eyes as he drew me closer.

I ran my finger up across his chest and held his cheek with the tips of my fingers, and I lunged up and kissed him and tasted the embrace of his lips upon mine. Our light exploded like suns.