The High Priestess

Upon Meeting a Beautiful Actress; 27th April, 1953

The night is mystically draping the world with darkness, ignorance and magic. A cloak of fear dances above hearts and blackens them with fright, supplying humanity with myth forever and ever, once and for all.

Out of this blackest veil looms an illuminated figure clad in pale white. Her eyes, heavy with the crystal night, gaze at life mercilessly and, as she lifts them upon the sky, the air of the world chills with fright. How is silence to bear her speechlessness? Her lips kiss no one but immortality and a smile is never to break such rigid an ice. Bliss. Bliss was her lips. Her beauty knew no bounds.

The breeze durst not smack her gentle cheeks. The rule of Death, Life and Birth, marked by her silver diadem, are in the hold of her grasp. She sways in her pure outfit that brushes on the stainless, marble floor. The world is a theatre of pain with her, a masquerade of nothing without her. She reigns over secrets and hearts, and the night herself would kneel weak before the power of The High Priestess.

She is a ruler of souls and a mistress of fright, the ruler of every mortal soul in this fraternity of evil. Her beauty terrorises the innocent and punishes the guilty. Below her whitest, purest veil, she concealeth atrocity and madness, fit for but a few mortals. Below the veil of the night, she concealeth her true self, My High Priestess.

Onto the throne of beauty and above a world of shame, a bright silver moonlight washes ignorance away. There are no secrets for her; the moon above her illuminates them all for her only. She breatheth in the moon as she raises her eyes up high. She cannot hide from the moon and the moon cannot hide from her. Her knowledge stretches above the world like a transparent, silken sheet; dancing and swaying to the tune of the breeze. The still of the night sounds like a seductive humming of hers that compels all five senses and stimulates a sixth one.

In her shrine of evil, she raises whispers to cries that reach her ears alone. Before her, eyes speak secrets in the gentle voices of the night, rather than in useless tears of weakness. For her sake alone, darkness is friend rather than fiend. Darkness coils about that woman and renders her stronger and softer than all. That is the woman I adore. That is My High Priestess. Pay your respects before the Lady of Shades.

If all the secrets thou can learn, then I beseech you to know mine! A breathless slave, I crave for mercy and a kiss, and I swear to thy beauty none shall ever know. You stand bemused and linger, but never shalt thou look at me! Fiend! Motionless thou seemest before my pity, and you order me to flee out of thy sight! Order me not, murderess! Command me not to flee, my Juno, for thou knowest I’ll be left with option none other but to obey! And yet so desperate to be scorned by thee, temptress of the night, I will not flee!

I raise my eyes to thine and I rebel. All shall I know, all shall I break, all shall I fight to get to you! I am The Magician, am I not? A joyless, faithless, lawless warrior I am. My cruellest self thou art, and therefore, I shall kneel. Your darkness I implore to be my shield! Give me my joy, my faith and my law, my High Priestess!

Your lips that crave to smile I long to kiss, do not retreat, my precious deity! Allow me to approach, allow me to be close enough to know what true resistance is! I beg thee not to withdraw my hand from the vicinity of thy lips that humbly long to kiss this purest flesh. Enchanted hands that long to touch, do not repent with might!

Your magic that confounds the flesh, how weak I am to battle! I toss my sword next to your sceptre; union of Life and Death at hand. My scorching touch, you can’t resist. However high in the rank, a woman’s body is always frail. The fire and ice thou thither unbind, I’ll never forget, I’ll never regret!

Thou knowest how to extract those fair secrets from me. Capture my eyes with thine and I cannot even dream of lying. And my flame of ice shall blend with yours, they stain us both and leave us with no other option but to meet again.

Accursed they be, those eyes of mourn. I shall behold them in my soul like stain, a stain thy blood alone can wash. Accursed they be, those eyes, the token of your shame and pride. This curse I place upon your shoulders; to be burdened with thine eyes in every life you lead. Until the day we meet again, until the day our souls are sent into the same path once more, thou shalt never be released from the burden of thine eyes! For those eyes you so much hate shall get me back to you. Thou shalt carry them for me to recognise thy soul.

Kenneth Adams

The above story is part of The Secret Life of Kenneth Adams which is to be published in due time.