The Tower

Kara resisted getting up. She stretched her long legs out, and pretended like she couldn't see the sun sneaking through her bedroom window. All she wanted was a few extra minutes to stay entwined in her sheets, cumfy in her little cocoon, nice and warm and lazy. But, she knew she couldn't.

Today was going to be a busy day, she reflected with a mixture of glumness and excitement. She threw aside the covers and got up. Stretching cat-like, and smiling, Kara thought of everything she had to do today. She had a bunch of errands in the city to run, including dropping by the Asian market and picking up ginseng and yarrow root, and all the other exotic herbs and spices that Bailey always seemed to be needing. Then they'd swing by their favorite used book store, and spend an hour walking up and down the cluttered isles, maybe finding what they came for, maybe not - but having a great time nonetheless. Then it would be a couple hours donating time at the Women's Health Clinic. And in the evening, they would help work out the plans for this year's Samhain event at Orion's Belt. True, Samhain wasn't exactly a Hellenic type festival - her days to commemorate the dead came at the Genesia and Anthestria - but it was such an important event for the community that it transcended it's Celtic and Wiccan origins. It was the closest thing they had to a Pan-Pagan festival - and she loved dressing up. She still hadn't decided what her costume would be this year. She was thinking that Bailey could go as a Witch, and she'd go as her Familiar in a cat-suit leotard, equiped with ears, whiskers, and a tail. But she also liked the idea of going as Laura Bush, with Bailey dressed as the Shrub. Maybe she could talk her into wearing the costume afterwards, with a strap-on. Political commentary in its heighest form.

Kara walked over to her small altar and lit some frankincense for her Patron. She smiled at the little statue of the Goddess rising from the ocean on a conch shell, and recited Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite by heart. She lifted a flower she had placed on the altar bowl the night before, smelled it, letting her mind clear in preparation for the busy day, and then set it back.

Kara walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of orange juice. Bailey was in the living room, huddled on the couch, watching the news. She paused for a moment, taking in the woman she loved. Bailey was tall and very slender. You could count her ribs, and her hip bones jutted like knives. Her red hair was cropped short, almost to the scalp, which made her strong chin and cheek bones appear a little severe. But she was beautiful to Kara's eyes, and she loved holding her close, wrapping that sharp, angry little body in her soft, warm arms and creating an island of safety with their love. Bailey had the most incredible hazel eyes, and when she stared at Kara in a certain way, she just melted. Kara, on the other hand, was very much like her Patron. Her auburn hair tumbled down her shoulders in an unruly tangle. She was all soft curves and voluptuous flesh. She could stand to lose a few pounds - but Bailey liked to rest her head on the pillows of Kara's breasts, and Kara liked feeling the scratchy bristles of her lover's head against her cheek. Kara had the softest, fullest lips imaginable - almost like Angelina Jolie's. Bailey could kiss them for hours at a time, and she never grew tired of them.

Kara carried her cup of orange juice into the living room, and sat down on the couch next to Bailey.

"Whatcha watching?" She asked, casually glancing over at Bailey. Her heart leapt into her throat.

Bailey had pulled herself into a tight ball, her legs folded against her chest, her arms holding herself together, as if she might break apart at any moment. Her face was red and puffy, and tears streamed down her cheeks unchecked. She looked like one of the Shoa victims, a living ghost. She stared back at Kara with haunted, empty eyes, as if she didn't comprehend what she was seeing. She tried to speak, but couldn't quite get the words out. Finally she just gave up, and turned back to the television.

Fear clutched at Kara's breast. What had happened to the woman she loved? What awful thing had done this to her? Did she have a stroke? An overdose? What the hell was the matter, and why was she so engrossed in the television? Kara turned to see what was on the news, and felt all of the air go out of her, as if some ghostly hand had just punched her in the stomach.

The screen was filled with the Twin Towers rising up against a perfect blue sky. There didn't seem to be any clouds in the sky - except for the dark, black billowing ones that spewed from the burning crater in the steel and glass ediface. The shot switched to the streets below. The dozens of emergency vehicles. The streams of people fleeing the scene, ducking behind buildings and cars. The Firemen and Policemen directing everyone, or heading into the burning building.

Oh, how horrible, Kara thought. A fire in the Twin Towers. She hoped that everyone would be alright. It looked like the Emergency crew was handling things well. They seemed to have gotten there early, and the crowds were orderly, all things considered.

And then the image changed again, and she saw an airplane slowly fly into the building. They showed the shot from several different angles, and she listened to the frightened news reporter talk about how this was the second airplane to hit.

Two airplanes. One could have been an accident. A terrible, terrible accident. But still an accident. Two of them meant .... what did it mean?

The newsman didn't know what it meant. He described several different scenarios. In almost all of them, America was under attack.

Kara felt an emptiness spreading through her body, where all of her certainties had been. America. Under attack. Those words sounded so alien. It couldn't be under attack. America was the strongest nation in the world. She didn't think of it with pride or boasting patriotism. It was simply a fact. America was the world's leading economic and military Super Power. She felt no real connection to it. America was just somehwere she lived. When she thought of America, she thought of megacorporations and a polluted environment, the hateful fundamentalists that kept her from being able to marry the woman she loved, hawkish foreign policy and glitzy Hollywood movies. America was George Bush and Jerry Falwell and Britney Spears.

America was also her home.

And someone had hijacked two of its planes, and driven them into the Twin Towers.

She thought of all the people on board those planes, and the people in the offices, and wondered what their last minutes had been like. Some secretary getting coffee for her boss, pausing at the noise, loud like the thunder of heaven, and then boom, an explosion of fire and metal and glass, and death everywhere.

It was too horrible to think about. She just wrapped her arms around herself, and rocked gently, watching the news.

* * *

About twenty minutes later, the tower collapsed.

As everything seemed to do that day, it happened slowly. It reminded her of an avalanch. She could almost see the pristine white mountain dotted with tiny green trees and rocks, and the slow spill of tons of snow as the side of the mountain collapsed. Except that this was a tower. In a city. And it was smoke, and metal, and concrete, and fire, and glass. And it was beautiful to watch the side of that building slide down, because buildings aren't supposed to do that. They're sturdy, made to withstand anything. And yet, there it went, crumbling like a house of cards. And there was a great billowing cloud that burst outward on the city street, like the mushroom clowd over Hiroshima. And the people ran, trying to escape death. And she knew that thousands were still trapped inside. And she thought, if concrete and steel and glass can move like water, what must it have done to the people inside.

And as she watched the people run, screaming, covered in ash and concrete dust, she felt something inside her die, a light being snuffed out.

* * *

Two more planes had been hijacked. One, which went down over Pennsylvania, and the other one which was crashed into the Pentagon.

She had a strange reaction when she saw the flames rising out of the smashed hull of the Pentagon. She thought she'd feel happy. Kara had been raised with a good counter-culture ethos. She hadn't been born in the 60s, but her parents had been at all of the protests and anti-war demonstrations, and she would have been too, if she could have. When she was older, she had become a devoted activist, and during the 90s, there had been plenty of opportunities for protest. Especially for environmental and anti-nuclear causes, and for the economic and human rights of Third World peoples. And while there hadn't been a whole lot of anti-war demonstration, she had never quite forgiven the Pentagon for Vietnam, and was sure that they were plotting little covert wars all over the world all the time. Abbey Hoffmon had tried to levitate the Pentagon during the 60s. Kara had often thought that if he had gotten together with some Wiccans, he just might ahve succeeded. And yet, seeing it there, like a great beast who's been wounded, she couldn't help but feel compassion for the people who worked there, and a growing anger. These terrorists had targeted us. They had destroyed our buildings, our Pentagon, tried to obliterate our White House. Who knew what else they were planning. There could even be other airplanes in the air right now, with hijackers on them.

Maybe one headed for her own Seattle.

As Kara sat there, numbly watching television, waves of emotion washed over her. There was relief that all of her friends and family lived out West. There was fear of other attacks, and of what would happen after this. She knew that America would retaliate. It had to. Whoever was responsible for this would be punished. If America didn't rise up and defend itself, there would be other, far worse attacks. That scared her, because she didn't want to see the military might of America unleashed upon the world.

Ares was a terrible God. In Homer, even the other Gods called him "hateful." And yet, Kara could sense that he was crouching just behind the picture, bound with copper chains, whispering about revenge and honor. And Kara knew that America would be seduced by his whispers, and would break the chains placed on him by the other Gods. And like a terrible beast, he would rise from the ashes of the Twin Towers, and stride across the world, leaving death and destruction in his wake. Already he had walked the world twice during the last century. Now he was about to do it again. And with revulsion, Kara knew that she - or at least a part of her - wanted to see him loosed. The people who did this had to be punished. The thousands who died that day couldn't go unavenged. The evil-doers had to be punished. It sickened her to hear herself say that, to feel the anger, the fear, the blind hatred. But as the image of the plane flying into the building, or the towers collapsing was shown again and again, all of her objections fell by the wayside. In just one morning, the world had changed. And nothing would ever be the same again.

She felt so alone. She knew that Bailey was sitting on the couch with her, just a few inches away. But it felt like she was the only person in the world. That everyone else had died when the towers came down. That everything good and loving and normal in the world had been crushed by falling debris. She felt so empty. Like someone had taken her, and split her open, and dug out all of her insides, her liver and muscles and blood and brains and all her emotions, and then sewed her back up. She could feel the hollowness where her heart had been, and she wondered what it had felt like to feel real emotions. All she could feel was this fear, and anger, and this terrible alonenness. She vaguely remembered that she had had plans for today, things she had wanted to do. Instead, she just sat on the couch, staring blankly at the screen. She no longer heard what the repoerters said. It was just static in the background, as she watched the towers crash, and the smoke rise, and the plane fly into the building, and the people die. So many people. Husbands and wives and lovers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and friends. All those families disrupted. Never being able to see their faces again, to touch them, hold them, and tell them that you loved them. Kara ached for their loss, a dull throb that echoed through the emptiness of her body.

She knew that they wouldn't be the only ones to lose people. There would be war. Sons and daughters would be sent over seas to fight and die. Our soldiers would kill their soldiers, and probably their civilians as well. And they would deserve it, because they had flown planes into our buildings. And what if that was just the start. If they flew more planes into our buildings, or sent soldiers into our country. She saw machine guns tearing bodies apart, stealing lives. She saw bombs dropped, and familiar buildings turned to rubble. The skies darkened, and the streets were red with blood, and everywhere, death and destruction and fear, and the Mad God Ares laughing as innocents were slaughtered.

And her Patron. What of Aphrodite? Her time was over. The world was dying, and it would never have need of love and laughter again. There could never be beauty again. Instead of lovers touching each other, there would be bullets ripping apart flesh. Delicate flowers would be stomped on as the armies of the world marched off to war. Tanks would drown out the sound of birds singing, and water fountains would flow red with blood.

The world was ending, and she was alone.

Bailey's hand reached across the cavern that had separated them all morning, and settled on top of Kara's. Kara looked down at it. It was bony and masculine, the fingernails nervously chewed down to nubs. Bailey's thumb rubbed her hand gently, and Kara looked up into her lover's face. The eyes were bloodshot from crying, with dark circles under them. Her hair was spiky, and her cheeks were blotchy. Bailey tried to smile, her lips quivering, as she said, "I love you." And Kara smiled, because she was no longer empty. She felt her heart swell, joy and love returning to blot out the fear and impotence and anger that had taken root in her all morning. She took Bailey's hand in hers, and reached across the couch, kissing her deeply. They then made love with a rare passion and frenzy. They kissed and groped and held each other close, needing to reassure and be reassured that the other was still there, alive and loving, trying to banish the ghosts and fears and anger with pleasure.

And from her place on the altar Aphrodite watched, and smiled. Recovery would be slow, but it would come.