Corrupted Vessels

tRaum Books

Munich, 2023

This is a work of fiction. No part of this book

may be copied or redistributed without express

permission from the author.

Cover art and layout by Rysz Merey.

For Alachua County, Florida,

and all the memories I left there.

I. River watched Ash dance around the shadowy squat. He fiddled with the old Instamatic camera he’d stolen from his parents’ attic before he had left their home forever. Ash’s auburn curls swung in the opposite direction from their hands as they swayed and made slow, mystical gestures through the dusty air. It was late winter in the deep South, so the weather was pleasantly cool, the humidity bearable. River tried not to wonder how the two would fare without air conditioning once summer came creeping in with its clinging, sticky, fry-an-egg heat.

Ash would take care of everything, River assured himself. They’d said so. They’d promised. And they always had so far. Ash was special, a prophet. The silver and quartz rings on their fingers, charged like mystical batteries with moonlight and salt water instead of electric current, flashed beneath glints of green light. The light leaked through cracks in the inexpertly boarded-up windows of the abandoned house’s second floor. Ash was humming. Then Ash was mumbling words that sounded like nonsense to River, but that he knew were really an angelic language.

Yes, it had seemed crazy at first. Apart from speaking to angels though, Ash didn’t act like a crazy person. They were smarter than anyone else River had ever met. They could talk to all sorts of people, blending in easily among groups of men or groups of women; groups of dive bar pool players or gay nightclub ravers or upscale coffee house yuppies. Ash would simply adjust their posture and voice, take some jewelry off or put some on, and they would immediately be accepted into the fold. River, Ash’s opposite, a perpetual outsider, had to skulk around the outskirts of the room until Ash returned to him triumphant, bearing a wad of cash or several scribbled-down phone numbers or an offer of food and a couch to crash on for the night. Ash had kept them both safe, sheltered, fed, and clothed for months of homeless wandering. Neither had gotten sick or badly injured, no one had attacked them or stolen from them, and the cops hadn’t bothered them even once in all that time.

River remembered how much worse it had been for him before he had joined up with Ash. The only explanation for this kind of luck was genius, or magic. And if Ash, the genius, told River it was magic, who was he to argue?

River propped his bare, muddy feet up on the side of the doorframe. The peeling paint felt scratchy beneath his toes, and he scooted his back more firmly into the small, overturned table he was leaning against. The house was a mess now, but River was sure he and Ash would be able to fix it up into a home—and a temple, the way Ash wanted, of course. In any case, a place where they could both live for a pretty long time.

In the next room, Ash traced planetary symbols into the dirt and dust on the floorboards with the toes of their boots.

River decided to take a photo. He didn’t use the camera much, but this seemed a worthy occasion to commemorate. Ash was deep in their ritual trance, paying no attention to River’s activities, so it was probably safe. He lifted the camera, focusing on Ash, but making sure his grubby sweatpants and grubbier feet were in the frame too. This picture would be about the two of them together.

Click. Flash.

The Instamatic barfed out a snapshot; a blank gray square in the middle of a shiny white frame. River held it close to his face and watched the image form in slow patches. It looked good in the end, although his feet were washed-out blurs. Ash was a ghost in the background, their long copper hair and one pale hand the most visible parts of them. That was fitting, River thought, and he stuck the photo inside his Book for safekeeping. It nestled snug between his favorite pages, the ones with the black-and-white printed William Blake drawings that Ash had colored in with pencils. Ash had also given the drawings new titles, their photocopied handwriting sharper and blacker than the lines comprising the photocopied images. The picture of the beautiful, naked young man floating in a sphere filled with other nude figures was colored in shades of green and blue and gray, and Ash’s swirling letters underneath it read, RIVER ASSUMES HIS TRUE FORM IN THE FINAL DAYS. River, who did not look much like the beautiful, naked young man in the drawing at all and did not really believe he ever would, was touched almost to tears.

Are you contemplating the world to come, kid? Ash’s lilting voice jolted River, made him bump his head against the table. He hadn’t noticed his friend stop their ritual and cross the floorboards to stand beside him. It always amazed River how Ash could move without sound like that, even on old, uneven wood floors, in big, clompy boots. He looked up at Ash and tried not to sound awed, or spooked.

"I’m not a child, said River. I’m nearly sixteen. That’s, what, seven years younger than you?"

"Oh, more like seven thousand, said Ash. Your soul is old, little River, but mine is far older. You’ll always be a child to me." They chuckled.

River felt a surge of frustration. It was not a new frustration, it had been with him since he had first met Ash.

Ash bent gracefully and plucked River’s photograph out of the Book. A tendril of their hair tickled River’s cheek.

What’s this? they asked. "A picture of me? River, you know you’re not to take pictures of me. Or of yourself, for that matter." Their voice was light, but River knew what was coming. Still, he tried to plead his case.

I would never use it against you, Ash. You know I wouldn’t. I would never even show it to another person. This is just for me, just so I’ll have something to remember today. It’s special, and I want it to stay clear in my mind forever.

I believe that you believe that, Ash said. But you deceive yourself as to your true motives, River. You don’t just want the memory, you want a piece of me. You want to control me and control my power. I can see that possessiveness in you, swirling through your aura like a dark fungal stain.

River felt his face burn.

Of course Ash knew what he was thinking, knew his frustration at his age, his inexperience, the wrongness of his body, his recurring doubts, knew his jealousy of Ash’s grace and sureness. He could never hide anything from them, or pretend to nobler feelings than what he had.

I’m sorry, River whispered.

That’s all right, Ash assured him, tousling his lank, greasy hair as though it wasn’t disgusting at all. I’ll help you purify that stain. Let go of that possessiveness. You know what we have to do, don’t you?

Yes, said River. He swallowed. But it’s a pretty long way back to the nearest body of running water, that creek near the highway—

No, no, Ash clucked. "Water is your primary element. For a photograph of me, we must perform a fire purification."

My feet are in it, River pointed out.

Faces and hands, said Ash with authority, contain more of a body’s spiritual essence than feet. Do you have a lighter, River?

I have a few. Most of them work, I think.

Fetch me one that’s yellow, or red.

River stood and pulled his army surplus jacket from behind the other side of the table. He rummaged through its pockets until he found a miniature neon orange Bic lighter. Will this work?

Ash nodded.

Acceptable. I’ll begin preparing the ceremonial space in the front yard. They shook their head, rosy lips quirking in a rueful smile. I had hoped we’d get the house a little more cleaned up this afternoon, but this— they brandished the photograph at River, is much too dangerous to leave for later.

River could sense the wretchedness accumulating around him like a fog. He could almost feel the clammy touch of that fungal stain only Ash could see. I’m sorry, he said again.

Don’t apologize, said Ash. Their tone of voice that made it clear they were long suffering, but magnanimous enough not to hold River’s fuck-ups against him. It’s all right. What sort of spiritual guide would I be if I didn’t help other fleshly pieces of God achieve enlightenment? If I didn’t protect them from themselves and model correct behavior?

River cracked his toes in the dust and dirt on the floorboards. They hurt, and left big ugly smudges like wounds.

Thank you, Ash, he said, sincerely.

Ash made a small fire outside the house and burned some fish skin they’d been keeping in their fanny pack (which allowed River to identify the source of a particular unpleasant smell that had been bugging him for days), some pine branches carved with angel-letters (which looked like aimless squiggles and spirals to River), and River’s photograph (which melted from the edges, devouring Ash’s ghost and River’s feet lick by lick of greedy flame and oily black film). It was not a complicated ritual, but it took some time, particularly the branch carving. Ash did most of the work, but River knew he had to witness the whole thing, standing attentively by Ash’s side without touching them.

He focused until his eyes watered, even when Ash mumbled in the incomprehensible angel language for minutes on end. He kept his face a mask of reverence, even when Ash produced those wobbly, rotting shreds of fish skin and the smell made River gag. Ash would know if River’s mind wandered, if he became bored or impatient or irritated. Ash always knew.

River wished that he understood the world the way Ash understood it. Barring that, he wished he could always approach their rituals with the awe he knew they deserved. But he couldn’t, not any more than he’d been able to absorb the pastor’s booming sin-and-damnation oratory when his parents had dragged him to church as a child. Of course, the pastor had probably been full of shit and Ash was probably right about everything. River no longer cared about his secret irreverence towards Jesus and Satan, but his conscience still spasmed with guilt that he had to work as hard as he did to look and behave in a spiritually acceptable manner for Ash.

Finally, as stars began to wink in an indigo sky and the song of night insects became oppressively loud, the photo and the fish skin and most of the branches were nothing but a smoldering rubble of sticky black stuff, charcoal, and ash.

My holy namesake, said the prophet, and they thrust their hands into the mess, rings and all. More proof that Ash was no ordinary person: their flesh never burned. They used the soot to paint dark swirls across their pale cheeks, chin, and forehead. They drew lines between their freckles as though the flecks of pigment formed a map of constellations. Turned smiling to River and opened their arms wide. He rushed gratefully into his friend’s embrace, savoring the softness of their cotton T-shirt and of their small, unbound breasts beneath it, the slight, hard curve of their stomach, the wiry muscle threaded through their whole body. He didn’t mind the filthy handprints they left on his neck and back, the sooty dandruff in his hair.

It’s finished, Ash sighed. All my power is fully returned to me. You saw the angel in the fire, didn’t you, River?

River thought about it. He remembered sharp spears of gold and orange, a low red and blue guttering, embers. No faces apart from Ash’s face in the dissolving snapshot.

I don’t think so, he said.

Well. You are still learning. I saw the angel. A heralding angel, a messenger of momentous change. It looked at me through the curtain of flame, with a mouth of ash and burning-cinder eyes, and it spoke into my mind. Ash paused dramatically. River, dutiful and curious, leaned in closer to Ash’s chest, their beating heart.

What did the angel say? Tell me.

We’re going to meet someone new soon, River. Maybe this week—maybe even tomorrow. Someone very important to both of us: another of the chosen fleshly gods. Whether of air or of earth, I do not know.

The bottom dropped out of River’s belly. He was, suddenly, furious and terrified at the idea of having to share Ash with anyone else. Ash had spoken of finding the other two lost, amnesiac elemental deities trapped in human form ever since River had known them, ever since they’d met in the Asheville public library, back