I rejoice. What for you may ask? I lay (mostly) in the earthy ground,
embittered – as hard as a kernel. Why then have I earned the privilege to
be happy, content? The answer is that I rejoice in the torment of others,
and indeed myself, mostly myself, if I have to be ghostly-transparent.
When I grabbed Lockwood’s unwilling wrist and wielded it back and
forth like a saw over the cruel, sharpness of the windowpane glass, it
made my face crease into a malevolent smile. His long, hopeless face
looked right at me: petrified, stupefied with fear. An outcrying of blood
dripped in, and throughout, the jagged windowpane, satiating its
darkened thirst.
Do I have a personal vendetta against Lockwood? No. Am I prejudiced
against men? No.
Do you want to know the truth behind my violent outbursts? Is it due to
insanity? Personal grudges? My untimely death? Hate? Despair? The
truthful answer is:
love.
As Emily described so emphatically, my love for Heathcliff was
otherworldly, perniciously strong like bolts of tightened steel. Her
words:
‘My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of
little visible delight, but necessary.’
Like blood, air, sustenance – I breathed him in and he remains: a willing,
perpetual lodger. He tickles my splintered heart with a crow’s macabre,
dun-hued feather, and I laugh. My cavernous shell rattles with his
presence – a sticky film that binds, enfolds pieces of me: twists, entwines
our souls.
We are one and the same, Heathcliff and I, akin to the Tudor rose where
white and red merge: a fused, potent hybrid. This togetherness, and
blurring of identity. makes us a symbol of alternative, subversive beauty.
Ours is heathen, otherworldly, deathly sublime.
Our combined petals are now black and glossy: decadently velveteen like
a wild hare’s pointed ears. I caressed those infantile, tender petals, held
them close to my heartstrings. With time’s expectations, it dyed them
inky black – no longer did any healthy pink flesh remain. It was like being
willingly drowned, completely submerged, in a chest of gelatinous tar.
You can never quite remove the residue or the skin-clinging smell like
pungent onions after such a completeness, an overture of self.
His soul wanders brooding, fierce and unrelenting, catching on rock
snags, heather-clad outcrops, memories of us.
As children, I would hold his grubby, tanned hand and be lost, swallowed
wholeheartedly, whilst dashing across The Moors with him. My soul sang
of contentment, in those natural, feral days. We were fierce like fighting
dogs, ready to bite any intruder; any disturber of our sanctity. And we
did, with no remorse, reflection.
The Moors were ours: to run unshackled, ride wild horses upon
bareback, and kiss under sheltering trees. Our being: a life force ran
between us, AC/DC like a fine-tuned circuit board. Electromagnetic – an
energy chemically fierce, unstoppable…
A love as ferociously dangerous as ours, struggles to keep a flame
flickering in this mortal world. Our muted, gothic feathers roared
ardently like a phoenix close to rebirth. We burnt too ravenously:
scorched the Earth.
Our true reunion was in my death. It was then, and only then, that
Heathcliff could finally, and completely, lock his soul to mine with a
lover’s timeless padlock.
I returned to him freely, nightly, perpetually in death. Of course I chose
to. Linton separated our bodies but he could never stop my soul,
carelessly skipping, back to him – always him.
Heathcliff so close to me now, like we were as children, craves for death,
a longing that eats through membranes of self. Chews them, then spits
them out on the cold stone-clad floor. He drinks to oblivion, refuses to
eat: a continual effort to rid himself of his physical shell. Mortal cufflinks
shattered…
His body, writhes and frays, on the periphery of being – it teeters there in
my enclosed childhood bed. His tears soak into the embers of me,
rekindle my stony heart.
Finally, after days of hell-alarming torment, he lets go of this cruel,
misunderstanding, prejudiced world – floats to me, wills it so.
I lace my willing immortal fingers with his: they interlink and lock
perfectly. A marriage of two minds. My soul refitted, with tiny pieces of
him, moulding, healing the shattered cracks.
We wander now like nighttime demons, traversing, gliding on Top
Withins’ downy moors – our wild childhood playground, our souls’ joy.
I’ll never let go of his firm, endearing, life-giving hand.
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