New Skins Of Gods

The ouroboros is an old symbol, one we don’t quite know the origins of. It’s in nearly every mythology, all representing the same idea. The beginning is directly connected to the end, and life itself is a single strand, an unending circle of autocannibalism.

I wear one around my neck sometimes, double looped and pulled tight, and I hook and unhook the tail from the mouth, pondering singularities. It’s beautiful and bleak, the way things live to die, the way that serpentined wheel will never stop, only shrinking further and further until something microscopic remains. Still there, but never whole, one tail tip in the grave.

But interestingly enough, one of the prominent symbols of Loki is an ouroboros in duplicate; two snakes, wrapped in a complicated, almost celtic slither, an interlocking, graceful tangle. The god of mischief, clever enough to take two eternities all for himself. Father and mother, god and monster, villain and hero. My eternal shapeshifter, fluid as blood, muscle, and bone. He’s a bit of an inspiration, as multifaceted as the lies his silver tongue has spoken into being. How he is always depicted as more than just one thing, more than just one person, more than just one character in the Nordic tales I’ve come to love. The man who again and again avoided Ragnarok, only to birth its start.

I wear just one of his snakes, and try and live enough to be the other.

I’ve spent my life drawn to vampires against my will. Being born one of a billion Bella’s just hours away from Forks, Washington will make avoiding them just about impossible. Countless childhood hours of research were done in pure spite, primed and ready for academic rebuttals against sparkling marble skin and werewolf rivalries. I even read every book, wondering with every page passed how something so asinine managed publication. Anger eventually turned to obsession, until passing jokes made me barely bat my eyes, neck deep in literature and lore. I became a stereotype I should’ve seen coming, fascinated by fangs and burial rites and blood oaths. I contemplated immortality like fine wine, more curious about decay than ever, the idea of a knowing corpse.

Now, my friends tend to tease me over my more accidental vampiric qualities, left over from years of intrigue. The vintage dresses, the hand fan collection, The Picture of Dorian Gray; all together, they paint something gruesomely familiar. I’m a living ghost, haunting them with sharp grins and sharper claws made of crafted metal.

I’m the very thing I sought to stake, my own heart the target for the hunter I used to be. A bloodthirsty, pale thing, dining on writhing bodies instead of holy tomes. My frail form would’ve shaken, crucifix held desperately high if she saw me, unafraid of her tradition, her half-assed conviction. She’d invoke the name of a god we no longer share, and I would say it back with footnotes and grievances, none of them scorching my tongue like it should.

Funny how the monsters we fear end up being the ones we create ourselves.

I still remember a time when the snapdragons said more to me than my grandfather ever did. Hours were spent on the gravel drive, watching them gossip, giggling at every flutter of leaves, every brush of the wind. He was all ice, iron-wrought crosses and skin-bound omens. He wasn’t made for children like the flowers are. I can’t remember exactly what they whispered to me, a decade and a half ago, but I can almost hear their voices still, full of buzzing laughter and careful cadence. They were my piece of the wild in that house tamed by fear and anger, vibrant pinks and oranges and yellows that lit up the concrete, their own sunsets. My family was so scared then, worried about words on pages, about endings, but I’ve never been good at thinking ahead. So I ignored their warnings, unbothered by the devilish flames lapping at my attention, and turned my thoughts to things better suited for childhood; softer, pagan ponderings. Eternal damnation was a long, long way off, but the snapdragons held secrets for right now, tongues tipping out of playful petal mouths, beckoning.

I’ve been thinking about the devil again lately.
According to my grandparents, he’s been lurking around me for decades. I could see his bloody stare on occasion, glittering with curiosity from shadows and behind chain link fences, and I stared right back, ignoring their urgent whispers about magic and heresy. They never told me why I was supposed to stop looking, and that was enough to make me look harder, walk closer, ask questions where they’d actually get answers. He was delighted everytime, laughing at my bluntness and shooting it right back, and I grew to love our rapid fire banter more than scripture.
Now my eyes catch on him like barbed wire, pulling taut, and I am more enraptured each time. I was told he was the prettiest angel in heaven before he fell. The rumors weren’t wrong. He doesn’t visit often, as busy as he is, but he makes time for me most nights, helping me sleep with coaxing clawed fingers and blasphemous thoughts. I wrap an arm around his waist as we lay there, his pitchfork propped against the wall, tail swaying with lazy smugness in the air.
I know he’s winning the bet, cards carefully coveted as he plays God for my soul, but I don’t mind. The fire brand of his mark is still so much sweeter than heavenly fire. At least our gentle sin makes me feel whole.

A few years ago, I dressed as Dionysus for Halloween. I donned a blood red wrap dress, split savagely open over a floral white romper, trying best as I could to do the cross dressing god justice. I tied a feathered mask to my waist, the cherry tinted comedy to my tragedy. A friend painted Ariadne’s twilight on my eyelids, while her labyrinth threads wound fishnet patterns around my thighs. The flower crown around my head felt heavy, bursting over the wide black brim of my hat. I walked around the town as living heresy and raw energy, barely feeling the blisters those big black boots gave me.

My lips were stained purple, my cult-like cup perpetually empty, but I understood the god of wine and often rebirth more than I ever had. You will never catch the haze of delirium in his eyes, but the closer you get, the drunker you become. The tattoos on my skin felt real, barely washing off for days. The pentagram on my spine pulsed, framed by wings I hadn’t earned. What’s an angel to someone like him, demigod born of ashes and secrets?

What is God to someone like me, with his hands on my shoulders, his raw power spilling into my grape vine veins?