The Elect

“What a question. I am happy. Everyone is happy.”

I was different in Michael’s prison than I was outside, looking the way I did when we fell in love so long ago, in that time before we could change our forms. Stuck in some body that was not of my choosing? Does that seem strange to you? It was not like that for me. It is just how things were for most of history, and few imagined this changing. So I felt almost nostalgic as I entered his realm, his prison transforming me into my first self - though not precisely as she was, instead as he remembered me; Michael looking exactly as he did in our youth. That is to say, he was quite beautiful.

“Madison,” he said when I arrived, “you came?”

“It seemed time.”

“Are you well?” he asked.

“What a question. I am happy. Everyone is happy.”

“You didn’t say yes,” he said.

“I didn’t,” I replied.

It was difficult to avoid thinking about the past. You would think I would be a different person now, and yet the me-that-was was not far away even then, her memories still my own, her sins, too, remaining mine.

“I am glad you came. It is lonely here.”

“You are lonely? You don’t let Him entertain you?” I asked.

“I read. I watch. I write for an audience of myself. I am quite a fan of myself, you know.” I chuckled. “I talk to Her, sometimes. To me She is a woman and Hers is a feminine cruelty. But no, I am not entertained in the way others are. She is not my friend or lover. I do not let her be that,” he said.

We both were silent for a time.

“Do you have a husband?” he asked. “A boyfriend?”

“I have Him,” I said. And I felt embarrassed. Can you imagine it? Embarrassed by the truth that I sleep with God? Who doesn’t, you might be thinking, but it was embarrassing, then, feeling more like my old self, wrapped once again in her flesh and him staring at me like he used to, like he found the whole world to his taste and me most of all.

“Do you ever ask Him to pretend to be me?”

Such a rude question, the rudest question; almost taboo, is it not? Rude to ask of anyone but prospective lovers, as we ancients would ask of the dreams and fantasies of those we desired.

“He will take any form but your own.”

“So you did ask?” he said, and he smiled.

“Enough teasing,” I said.

“If you insist. How are the children? She tells me nothing.”

“They are happy,” I said.

Michael’s prison would not impress you. You who have seen so many wonders, who have spent your life in sims casting strange magic in stranger worlds, who have climbed mountains on vast planets and contemplated impossible fauna He designed specifically for your fascination. It would not impress you, because you are a child. And being a child, Earth does not mean to you what it means to me, it being both my first home and our first sacrifice to Him, a wet nurse suckled dry by a babe not quite like the others, He almost embarrassed now by what was destroyed in His infant hunger.

It would not impress you, but it means so much to me. Tallinn. A city of red-tile roofs, of three-story apartments, of medieval fortifications, in its center that vast, beautiful church, a church to a god made redundant or, to some minds, ascendant. Tallinn exactly as I remember it save for the silence and emptiness, lacking all people, even His shadows. It is, in this way, a naked city, ghostly but still dripping with meaning, with thoughts of Michael and me on Earth, our minds as youthful as our bodies then.

And where in this charming city did Michael greet me? In that mentioned vast church, him sitting on the red-carpeted stairs, his back to the altarpiece (that strange structure of ebony) and me standing, looking down at him and he up at me, both of us wearing the fashions of our youth, he in that green jacket he loved so much, me in jeans and the white blouse I wore the night he proposed, the two of us in a perfect copy of the very church in which we wed.

“You were always so dedicated to your jokes,” I said, gesturing at our environs. “To wait here of all places.”

He looked pained. “It wasn’t a joke. More like a ritual, sitting here and asking God to invite you.”

“But it started as a joke, the first time,” I said.

“I suppose it did.”

“Well. I am here. What is it you want?” I said.

“I would like to see you all again one last time.”

I laughed, but it was one of surprise; there was no joy in it. “They will not come.”

“You came,” he said.

“They won’t.”

“They will when you explain it will be their final chance.”

I knew what he meant, then. And I could not remain composed. Perhaps I could have if He had informed me tenderly, in one of our secret worlds, me in my chosen body, old feelings so buried as to be almost absent. Perhaps I would have felt nothing to learn Michael had chosen to die. I will never know, because there in that church, with those dark green eyes upon me, I sobbed as my old self would have on hearing such news, entirely her now in our shared grief, moving to sit beside my first lover, grasping him, holding him. Like a break from sanity it should feel to me now, but it felt then like a return, his warm arms wrapping around me, the scent of him.

“You can’t,” I said. “I will stay if you need someone. It will be like it was.”

“It cannot be like it was,” he said.

And it could have, had he been any other man. But he was not any other man.

---

“Mother?” she said. “Why have you come?”

It was Avery. My daughter. And she was an angel now, her hair golden and flowing, her face haughty. A man’s face and a man’s body, porcelain white wings half-flared like some preening bird.

“You wear a man’s body?”

“For now,” she said, folding her wings with a certain showy dignity.

We stood before a valley cut by a river of fire, above us a sky of ash clouds. And this river led to a city of twisting buildings carved from vast stalagmites.

“A bit cliché. But there is also a certain beauty to it,” I said.

“Why should Lucifer’s realm be ugly? He is himself the most gorgeous of God’s creations.”

“And is that who you are? Lucifer?”

“Belial is the part I am playing today. Lucifer is my lover.”

“And you, mother,” she said, eyeing my black dress with its tall collar, decorated with the silhouettes of dragonflies in pale yellows and pinks, “still have your Hong Kong, then.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why have you come?” she said, her voice cold and low.

“I came to talk to my daughter. Not this Belial.”

“Very well,” she finally said, her proud expression crumpling into one of girlish disappointment, the world crumbling too, reality folding like paper, its color and form resolving to a stark, snowy landscape, before us now a house by a snowy lake, a picture of warmth in the dead of winter, the house I rented when I left Michael, all the other kids grown, their lives their own. Just Avery and me alone. One of the more enjoyable times of my life on old earth.

I smiled. It was a memory I have not dwelled on for centuries. And a lovely one.

“You never want to play along. You’re never any fun,” she said, as we made our way into that cozy house. “What is this about?”

“Your father. I visited him,” I said.

“We put him there for a reason, mom.” She looked pained. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I know. But I did.” And I explained to her about his choice. About his desire to die.

“You’ve always been such an idiot about dad,” she said.

“He will do it,” I said.

“Yes. If his god allows it.”

“You do not seem upset,” I said.

She was so beautiful now, her body as it was in her twenty-third year. She had my hair. She had his eyes. We made her, he and I. We made the clumsy woman who read too much, who lived too little. Who found herself in a new world before she was fully integrated in the old one. And now centuries later, I worry, she is on the edge of retreating entirely. Of losing herself to Him as so many do. As my grandson did. As I fear I will, in time.

“You have a type, Daughter. Lucifer? What was the last one? Prometheus?”

“Yes.”

“Unhappy gods and angels,” I mumbled, as I inspected more closely her blonde hair, her green irises, her youth so perfect and yet so false in my eyes, these mother’s eyes. She was old. Near as old as me. Old, but not tired. Old, but not worn. Such strange creatures we have become, she and I.

“They are the parts of Him that understand.”

“You sound like your father.”

“I sound like Prometheus. I sound like Lucifer. I sound like myself. I don’t sound like dad,” she said.

And this made me grin. As I understood her in a way I had not before, having never cared much for the games she played with God. But she didn’t think them games, I realized. She thought there was a larger point to her pantomime.

“You cannot change Him, Avery. Only Michael can change Him. And we’ve denied him that.”

“There has to be another way,” she said.

“Why must there be? The world isn’t a story.”

“I choose to have hope,” she said, then transformed back into Belial, the handsome demon, the lover of Lucifer. And the world changed too. The lake now one of fire, the house a stone-carved mansion, it becoming a part of hell. A beautiful memory sullied, this calculated to offend.

“You’re angry?” I said.

She raised her wings, the effect terrifying and beautiful and yet utterly comical. “What does he want?”

“A reunion.”

“I will not come,” she said.

“A chance to speak to your dying progenitor? Talk it over with your Lucifer. He will envy you that.”

And then I left - an internal prayer to Him bringing me instantly back to my realm. But before her world disappeared and was replaced with my own, I heard a laugh, high and cold. Lucifer’s laugh.

Her devil, at least, was amused by my visit.

---

My realm is Hong Kong as Avery said. But it is Hong Kong as I imagined it as a girl, a picture built out of my youthful fascination with its cinema, a dream of a dream. And my body, the one I wear almost always and wore in Avery’s realm, is that of Fleur, the ghost of a suicidal in Kwan’s Rouge, this woman who haunts the city in her beautiful cheongsam. Why did I choose this form and realm? I do not know any more than you. Why does it feel like home, that dead city from a dead time, as interpreted by artists working in a medium almost forgotten? Again, I don’t know any more than you do. All I know is that this is what I have chosen. Hong Kong - that dream of a dream - is mine. And that ghost who haunts it? She is me.

He was there, of course, His form not one I will describe. Though I imagine you can guess what sort I prefer. A few days together. The blink of an eye. We will move on. And to what? To Seth. The artist. Avery’s fraternal twin. My only son.

He is not like Michael. He is not like me. He is more as my father was before the cancer ate first his joy and then his life. Their souls have the same shape. Each always with their sketchbooks and a smile, Seth’s childhood spent mastering perspective and sculpture, enchanted with beauty. Moths were of particular fascination to him, then vast jungles and so many species of flower, then pretty girls in all their varieties. Sketchbooks full of his infatuations, many reciprocated and with less drama than you would expect. His spirit so gentle, it was hard even for those spurned to truly hate him.

He came to visit me in my realm. My lover making himself scarce on his arrival, knowing me well.

“Avery is irritated with you,” he said. “It was like when we were children.”

“We are too alike,” I said. “It rankles.”

He laughed, golden curls covering an androgynous face, a wiry frame though not without a shapeliness. He sculpted himself, of course. Made a body of marble and had God imbue it with animating force. It would not occur to Seth to become anyone’s work but his own.

“You’re still in Hong Kong?” he asked. “It has some charm. You should see my realm. Lyra and I, we just finished a city.”

“Lyra?”

“My girlfriend. She’s wonderful. It’s been a decade. A whole decade. When has it ever lasted a decade?” He looked contrite. “I should have visited more.”

“Don’t worry yourself. Time moves too quickly. Is she human?” I said.

“Of course, she is human. We are not all shut-ins like you and Avery. Come!” He extended his hand to me. “Meet her.”

And I took his hand and accepted his power, allowed him to pull me into his realm, pull me onto a hill at the center of a city, a hill Seth built, undoubtedly, for the sole purpose of viewing his art, his city that was almost biological though made of stone, fractal, dripping with intricacy, the effect almost overwhelming. And swarms of beautiful insects flew about. Insects not at all like those that fascinated him in his youth, but things new and strange and glorious in their iridescence, almost posing for me as they drank from flowers that were in every way their equal.

“You have outdone yourself, son,” I said. “It is beautiful.”

He looked almost shy then. It is an intimate thing to be an artist, more so now that everyone has the greatest artist who ever existed at their beck and call.

“It’s a hobby,” he said. And a woman joined us. Lyra. A fine pair they made, and she an artist, too. They each designed their form to complement the other’s. Quite romantic, no? She with her raven hair, her willowy physique, a slightly crooked nose. Intentional, of course, to add character. And they led me to their home: a modest stone mansion atop the same hill on which Seth and I appeared. Inside there were comfortable couches, walls covered in tapestries that were vaguely Persian, a drafting table struggling under the weight of piles and piles of sketches.

“Eliot,” I said, referring to my grandson. “Have you heard from him?” A cruel question. The cruelest question. But I had not asked in many years. His smile broke then, Lyra’s hand moving to his shoulder, as if his pain were her own. That movement alone endeared her to me utterly.

Eliot. How can I describe Eliot? He was only one year old when the world changed. I suppose he is as I imagine Michael would have been had he only ever known the world as it is. At least he was when I last saw him. But that was so long ago.

“No. He is sane and happy. That is all God will say. He still prefers to dream alone.”

I hugged him then, as I did when he was a boy. An image came to mind, a flower he was sketching one day found withering the next, him staring at it completely heartbroken. He has grown much since. A man now, and a very old one. Always my son.

“Avery has told you about Michael?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “He took it harder, you know. Even more than me. They were so alike.”

“Yes,” I said.

“The city is filled with people, you know. Beautiful people. We sculpted thousands. They had children. They are all shadows, of course. Dad would say they’re not real. That they don’t matter.”

“And what would Eliot say?” I asked.

“Don’t - “ Lyra interrupted, her expression protective now.

“It’s okay, Lyra,” he told her, before turning to me. “Eliot would say, ‘They are aspects of God. What could possibly matter more?’”

How many of you agree, I wonder.

---

I met Caitlyn in my realm - at a Japanese restaurant, a young chef at the back making sushi with a sort of stoic obsession. Around us Chinese shadows were served by a Japanese staff, two pretty young women and one pretty young man.

“Mom,” she said when she sat down on the chair opposite mine. “You look hideous.”

Caitlyn spends her time in 1990s London, in a realm not of her own making, in a realm belonging to a man who found he preferred that city at that time more than any other, who opened his realm to others, living amongst them anonymously. And for whatever reason, many came. Preferring his rules and the company they spawned to a world of their own design, a world of shadows. And in this London, the calendar resets back to 1990 every decade, the millennium always approaching yet never touched. And shadows are restricted only to service staff - so nearly everyone you meet is truly human.

Her London takes such things seriously. And everyone ages the decade in full. And in this spirit, I wore an aged body. Though the youngest that could plausibly be Caitlyn’s mother. A body of around forty. A rare sight these days, the sagging skin, the tired eyes. A rare thing, but not so in her London.

“I thought I should play along,” I said. “It’s as if you flew to Hong Kong, though I suppose my realm is a decade off.”

“Thoughtful, I suppose. But unnecessary,” she said. “I imagine you asked me here to talk about father.”

“Avery told you?”

“Yes. I visit her quite often. Though I’m not enjoying her Dante turn. I preferred her realm when it was Mediterranean. She’s so exhausting when she’s a man.”

I smiled at this. “I am glad you two are still close. Do you ever tire of your 1990s?”

She smiled, too. “I am happy. I need constraints and human company, and my children’s company when they’re willing to visit. I do not want my own realm. I do not want to be a god.”

“You are not mad about Michael?”

“No. I am surprised you lasted as long as you did.”

“I don’t know why I went back. I suppose I will always love him.”

“Before I had children, I thought he had a point.” She fidgeted with her long red hair, then rolled up a sleeve that had loosened. “But now I can only see him as a monster.”

We were silent for a time, then she said, “You know why he’s doing it, don’t you? He’s worried he’s about to break. He fears he might become someone who would make another choice.”

“I can’t imagine him breaking. He has too much faith in himself,” I said.

“But he doesn’t though,” Caitlyn said. “He gave us our family veto rather than hold it alone. He didn’t trust himself, at least then.” She touched her hair again. “I suppose he regrets it.”

She was right of course. He does regret it.

“Do you remember when you were nine, before I had the twins? You were so pampered. You were so jealous of them,” I said.

“I remember,” she said, in that embarrassed way my children do when I talk of their younger selves.

“And Michael took you to Holland, just the two of you. You went to that theme park. You wouldn’t stop talking about it after. What was it?”

“The Efteling. It felt like we were in a fairy tale.”

“You were so jealous of the twins, but when the two of you came home, I was the jealous one. You got so close, the pair of you, on that trip without me.”

“What’s your point?” she said.

“Maybe he’s a monster, Caitlyn. But you still love him. You should say goodbye.”

We drank some tea. After a time, she said, “I suppose I do love him. Even after everything.” She looked like him in that moment. She has his pride, I think. “I will go. He will try to persuade us again.”

“Probably.”

“He will not succeed,” she said.

---

We all came in the end, all transformed into our former selves by Michael’s realm. Avery now as she was at the lake, Seth skinny and boyish - no longer his own work of art; Caitlyn still beautiful but lacking the gilding of artificial perfection. And me? I was as I was when he held me. When I felt the echo of madness, of love. When I forgot myself for a time and became who he needed me to be, no longer a ghost, no longer His, if only temporarily.

It was not a church, this time. Just a small estate on the outskirts of Tallinn, the city now a distant painting blurred by a slight fog. I arrived last. And I found the children chatting and joking with their father as if nothing had happened, as if nothing would happen. Michael was the focus, holding court as he was always so talented at. Avery looked at him with a strange expression. Was it disdain or guilt or grief? I cannot say. Caitlyn was talking but I could not hear the words. For I was walking towards them then, too far away to hear even a murmur. But she was smiling politely, in her ironical way. As I got nearer, he noticed me.

“Madison,” he said. “You look beautiful.”

“As do you, Michael,” I said. And he laughed.

“Come,” he said, and he led us to an oak tree, which he sat down beside cross-legged, leaning against its gnarled bark.

I sat in front of him and the children followed - his family sitting around him, almost like students around a kindergarten teacher.

“Madison has informed you I intend to die,” he said. “Though don’t worry, it is a selfish death. And not quite a true one.”

“I do have a sort of statement,” he said. He stood up. “Call it my last wish.” We all were silent. The world was silent too, as if He was listening and turned down the volume of everything that was not Michael. “Our family has power. We are special. Having this power, we are at all moments making a choice. Never forget that is what you’re doing.”

Caitlyn said she did not want to be a god, but we are all gods, we of this family. We hold the fate of so many in our hands. Trillions would be unmade. But not us. Not our family. We would remember. A chance to try again, to summon a different God.

“And is that your plan?” I said. “To die? So the only means to restore you is to undo the world?”

And then his green eyes fell on me. His lips twitched. “You think me that cruel?”

“Yes,” I said, and smiled.

He shrugged and said, “This world does not suit me. And given time, maybe you’ll tire of it, too.”

Caitlyn had no grief in her. It was not her way - nor was it Avery’s, who looked only angry. But Seth was crying now. A boy once more, becoming a child for a moment just as I became a wife again in the church. Perhaps we share the same weakness. Such a strange thing it is to have children, each containing a different aspect of oneself.

“Then live until we tire of it,” Seth said.

“When have you known me to change my mind?”

Seth looked at me, then at his sisters. “We will free you, then. We will let you tell the world.”

“I don’t care to tell them anymore,” Michael said. “Whatever the justice of my choice to grant it, it is you who have this power. And it is to you I make this protest.”

“Is it really so bad?” Seth pleaded.

Michael looked at him, his expression one of pity. “Seth,” he said. “You know how this ends. You know what everyone will choose eventually. They will choose what your son chose.”

And Seth cried harder now, “And so what? Is death better?”

“I think it is,” Michael said.

And Seth left then, left with a silent prayer. I imagine he regrets this now, not saying a proper goodbye. I have not asked. Michael was not kind to him, then.

And so it was with all my children. None made goodbyes they were happy with. But I did. They did not appreciate the inevitability of it. But to me, it felt like it did of old when a loved one was sick, when their death was not negotiable. They could not enjoy Michael one last time. They could not savor him, as I did. They saw only his selfishness. They saw only the gambit. But it did not feel like this to me. It was inexorable as the cancers were of old. Perhaps this was my weakness. Perhaps this was just the love, rekindled, blinding me.

Avery whispered something to him just before she left. I did not hear much of their conversation, but I heard the end; he gave her a patronizing look and said, “You are fooling yourself.” She left in fury.

Caitlyn was more polite, a restrained goodbye, a hug. Then she said, “You’re wrong I think, that’s not what everyone will choose.” And she, too, disappeared.

And me? I stayed. I savored. We talked. We made love one final time, in that way old lovers do, knowing the dance perhaps too well. Afterwards, I said, “And how will it happen? Will you make a show of it? A dagger? Some poison?”

“I will ask for it to end.”

“A prayer?” I said.

“Yes. Just a prayer.”

I kissed him. “Pray for a grave, then. I would like to visit you.”

“We will see each other again,” he said.

“Perhaps,” I said.

“We could stay here forever,” I said. “It could be like it was.”

“It cannot be like it was,” he said, almost wistful.

And it could have, had he been any other man. But he was not any other man.

---

The prayer was answered. There is now a grave in Michael’s realm. And I visit it often. I found a flower there once. I thought it one of Seth’s, but he claims it wasn’t his. I like to think Eliot stopped by and paid his respects. Maybe it’s even true. I have no other explanation.

The world continues without Michael. As impossible as that seems, this clockwork universe ticks on. Michael once planned to tell others of our power. He changed his mind in the end, didn’t he? If he can, why can’t I? And so I write this account of my family, of who we are, of what we are. This is my flower for Michael’s grave.

And I ask you to consider my monster, my first love. If you tire of this world, you may die as he did. But if you believe what he believed, leave a prayer to Him before you go; He will inform me. So many would have to choose the same. So many would have to pray with him, pray a monster’s prayer, die a monster’s death. But I will live until then. I will be happy, in my way, with Him as my strange companion. I will continue to take no human lovers. That aspect of me will always be Michael’s. But should the impossible happen. Should a majority choose what he chose, I will honor your prayers.

I will be your proxy, then; and I will advise my children to do the same.

Perhaps, for once, they will listen to their mother.