Abyss (Songs of Megiddo) by Daniel Klieve Read Free Book Online Page A

I’ll wear the tux if you wear the dress.” I’d challenged.
    “There might be something to that,” Meg had cut in. “You’d look sexy in eyeliner, Naithe.”
    Back in the present, I smiled a private little smile...enjoying the memory of that night. It had been only days ago: the last full weekend before the wedding. Nerves were frayed – mostly Naithe’s – and tempers were short – mostly mine – thanks to a last-ditch-effort by Naithe’s mother to slip another dozen guests past us and onto the guest-list unnoticed. I had to hand it to her: she didn’t do things by halves. She’d gone so far as to organise seating for them, call the caterers, and forge the requisite place settings. If it wasn’t for Naithe’s eagle eye – and, of course, the paranoia instilled from years of living with the woman – it would absolutely have gotten past us. And, if Meg hadn’t been with us a week early to help us with the last of the preparation, it would have been me having to attempt to rip the woman who gave birth to my fiancé a new one, instead of her sister.
    Meg, like any goo d younger sister would have – or so I assume is the case, since my experience in this area was and is severely limited – had tried her best. We never actually discussed it, but the impression I got was that she’d been...well...torn apart. That any of us had been in a celebratory mood by the time the wedding rolled around was almost entirely due to Meg quickly moving past the hostility, and arriving at our apartment with what may or may not have been a hand-shaped red imprint on her face, and enough alcohol to kill a camel.
    That’s not right. Is it?
    Well it would have killed a camel. It just may have been...y’know...overkill.
    Naithe twitched awkwardly. I bit back a small laugh as I realised that he must have had an itch that he was desperately trying not to scratch. He rolled his eyes at me with a distrac ted little smirk. My eyes clutched hopefully for his...trying to read him again. This time – closer to one another as we were – it was easier.
    I could see resolve. Resolve was good. I could see certainty. Certainty was even better. I could also see that strange, focussed edge I’d occasionally seen in people’s eyes when they were looking at someone, but didn’t know – or didn’t care – that they were being observed.
    The first time I’d actually worked out what that look meant was a couple of months after I first met Naithe. I’d been doing my makeup in the bathroom mirror at the time. He’d e lbowed in next to me to brush his teeth. It was...well...gross. I liked my personal space. I hated when a person I was getting off with viewed their encroachment on that personal space as a way of establishing – or, worse, viewed their encroachment as a sign of – intimacy. The extent of the irritation I’d managed to muster, in this case, was a raised eyebrow and a smirk as I glanced over at him; a wordless ambivalence, conveyed through a shake of my head that said: ‘oh, really?’. When he’d bent to spit, my eyes had dropped to the reflection of the top of his head...but grazed past their own reflection on their way down. Then I knew.
    Love. It’s all in the eyes.
    So...yeah. I was naïve. And let’s not even get into what it says about me as a person that I needed a mirror to show me what love looked like and – worse – that I was in the mirror when I’d worked it out. I mean...I know what Freud would have said. Once he’d finished laughing at me, that is.
    Noticing me staring at him – no doubt with an idiotically cartoonish grin now plastered across my face – Naithe feigned exasperation, scowling. He couldn’t hold on to the veneer of seriousness for very long, though...quickly letting a broad smile overwhelm the bottom part of his face. For a minute, we stayed just like that: facing one another, smiling stupidly...our bare feet cool and slightly damp in the fresh-cut grass. I mimicked a twitch. He