Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 3:00 P.M. HAST} Persephone Makes a Bid for Her Freedom

Gentle Tweeter,

How could you ever bring yourself to love so deeply if you truly knew how brief a lifetime can be?

All the great myths aren’t in the past. Glory is not limited to the days of yore, and not all the heroic acts have been performed. As proof I grab my cat. I slap the bitter words from Satan’s mouth. Yes, CanuckAIDSemily, an irksome girl ghost can backhand the Prince of Darkness, smack across his Ctrl+Alt+Scalding kisser. I snatch up Tigerstripe, and I sprint away. I don’t fancy returning to Hell and being humiliated. Nor do I hanker to enforce God’s pronouncements banning birth control and gay marriage.

Henceforth I will prove my own existence. I will prove that I steer my own destiny.

As my former-Wiccan, former–Green Party, former-living, breathing parents once strove to save polar bears and white tigers, I make my bold move. Into this scorching tableau so evocative of my father’s ignited draft cards and my mom’s inflamed brassieres, I scramble.

Behind me my damned parents shout from the windows of the Town Car. “Leave it, Maddy,” says my mother. “The sad old Earth is so yesterday’s news.”

The blissed-out souls of burned-alive Boorites continue to pour into the Lincoln, each righteously certain that their destination is a well-deserved celestial reward.

My former-recycling, former-biodiesel, former–Earth First! father shouts, “Let the silly sperm whales and mountain gorillas just burn, honey! Get in the car!”

After all their years of trying to rescue illegal aliens and crude oil–marinated sea otters, this is my opportunity to try to save my parents. Perhaps to save everyone. Attired in my ooze-despoiled shirt, bearing my cat and my Beagle book, I frantically bolt down the mountain. Lugging my kitty as I’d once carried that fragile jar of sloshing tea, I take flight into the blazing canyonlands where artisan pinnacles soar overhead. Into this bland, washed-out, cataract-colored landscape I flee, rescuing the only creature I can.

Oh, my soul’s beloved, I feel the rhythm of his ghost heartbeat beneath the melody of his purr. Oh, my Tigerstripe, I breathe the ghost sweetness of his fur. Such is the perfume your heart smells when you feel love.

In the distance a spark of blue flashes. It’s the shade of electric blue my nose sees when I sniff ozone during a lightning storm. It’s the blue my fingers see when I touch the sharp point of a baby pin. It’s something not so much identifiable as it is inevitable, and I chart a course to reach it.

The angel Festus flutters, buzzing his tiny wings in my hot pursuit. He’s singing God this and God that. His angelic voice sings how the Lord commands me. The power of Christ compels me. “Return to God,” he sings, “as the Almighty is your real maker!”

Satan steers his Lincoln behemoth on my heels. He’s honking his horn and flashing his lights as obnoxiously as any long-haul trucker barreling down an upstate throughway. “Abandon yourself!” Satan howls in anger. He shouts, “It was no accident when the autodialer of Hell connected you by telephone to your bereaved family. I direct your every move! I am your true father!” Whether he’s chasing me or herding me, I’m not certain.

Me, my stout legs are dashing over the white plastic terrain even as it shatters like the Ohio River beneath the escaping feet of Eliza in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Baying at my chunky rear end are my mother and father, my nana and papadaddy. Shouting after me is the soul of Mr. K. So, too, is the succubus, Babette, demanding my immediate capture.

Yet, Gentle Tweeter, I am not helpless. I’m an escaped slave in a blazing world.

I’m Persephone reinvented, determined to be more than a daughter or a wife. Nor will I settle for some celestial joint-custody agreement, shuttling back and forth between residences in Heaven and Hell the way I continually jetted between Manila and Milan and Milwaukee. My new goal is the reunion of all opposites. I will strive to reconcile Satan and God. In doing so, by resolving this core conflict, I will resolve all conflict. There will be no separation between perdition and paradise.

As all of creation founders around me, only my purring kitty, gathered snug in my arms, only Tigerstripe trusts that I know where I’m bound.

The End?