Communion Wine by Christa McDaniel

​Communion Wine

         He had an affinity for matches.
        It wasn’t of particular concern, however, as he only ever held them lightly between his pristine teeth, the brick red ends hovering just short of his painted cherry lips. Painted was a good word for him. His skin had that blended watercolor look of rose and apricot strokes. He had so many shades of cinnamon brown, caramel-a box of the most delectable chocolates-flittered through his hair that one could get lost in the strands. He could generally be described as beautiful, but the word seemed to lack the depth that swallowed you up in his brandy-wine eyes. Which also seemed appropriate because if you sat too close to his gravitational pull, you’d get drunk. But more than anything, you noticed the matches.
         Maybe because the depth in his eyes and the searching expression that clung to his features made him appear to belong in one of the cold, high ceiling halls of paintings portraying Jesus on the cross or dilapidated churches. Maybe because I feared that pulling him from his search of thoughts would make him too real. All I really knew was that every morning, at seven sharp, he took a seat in the middle row of the wooden pews, bundled in the same threadbare pullover, a match hovering between his painted, cherry lips.
          That was where I came to worship.
         I couldn’t say when the historical significance of the Crusades on non-Christian countries lost its significance and the exact shade of his eyes or the way he gripped a pen became the subject of my studies. All I knew was suddenly he existed and within a single moment, I knew everything were was to know about a two-inch stick of wood, and that an interested party could buy a book for 1.39 at the convenient store down the street. I couldn’t tell when the exact night was when I stopped closing my notebook at 8:00 pm sharp and instead slipped like a mouse through the dormitory halls, down to where my cumulative GPA dropped, but my heart beat accelerated.
          I’m not particularly sure why I thought wedging said box of matches between the scratchy wood of the door and lock twenty down and one across from where my plane of existence started was how I wanted to lose my position as valedictorian. All I was really sure of was that if those matches struck the cedar wrong and lite up that room in a blaze of mistakes, the boy with the cherry painted lips would step out unfazed.
            “Not that the difference between any of this is of any particular importance to the ongoing of adolescent, but my bright students, I would at least appreciate that you might entertain the notion of seemingly paying attention,” the teacher rapped his metal yardstick on the hard oak of his desk. The yardstick sliced through the thick haze hovering in the air among the students. The resonating thwack brought Adam back to earth, a blush rising on his cheeks as his eyes connected with the teacher’s. A mix of disappointment reflected down at Adam, so he pretended to busy himself with his notebook, allowing his bangs to brush his face, offering him a haven from a meaningless apology.
            As if with the intention of rescuing him, the metal bell on the wall broke the silence, and a hustle of teenage boys stormed the stone floors and marched like a herd of buffalo into the halls of the school. With the ruckus to further shield him, he snuck a glance back over to the other side of the room. The only other boy yet to thunder out into the hallway took up any empty space the room offered. His gaze lingered on the match held loosely between the boy’s lips, but quickly returned to his notebook as his classmate finally stood to leave. Before he could follow, however, the teacher stopped him.
            “I was disappointed that your paper for my literature class was not up to par with your usual work…your history one was fine, but it isn’t this period I’m worried about…is everything okay?,” the teacher’s voice fazed into that annoying parental concern teachers at a boarding school would often adopt.
            “Yeah…” Adam responded generically, “I mean, I’ve just been tired. Busy, you know, Professor Morgan? I actually have class-"
            Professor Morgan interrupted, his graying eyebrows scrunching, “-no distraction is worth your future.”
            Adam was struck by surprise at this comment, the color returning to his face, “I-yeah-“
            “-Ten pages. Pick your own topic. I want it by Monday, and we’ll see what we can do as far as keeping your marks.”
            “Thank you, sir. I’ll get on that.”
                                                                                                                               ***
             There was the same gravitational pull that I couldn’t claim to be resisting. Even across the cold cafeteria with its fluorescent lights ad haze of sizzling dishes, my eyes sought out his boozy stare, offering more of a buzz than communion wine ever could. His eyes that I longed to drink in gave me no mind, stuck on his page of handwritten notes as his fork flicked through a heap of greens. He never ate any of it, though, because that would be entirely too human. He just sat and read and bit the end of his match, the wood sliding against his teeth and setting my insides on fire. 
            “Since when?” James asked with an unnecessary amount of outrage.
            “Since I decided I was done ingesting a vat of grease with every meal,” Adam responded with little enthusiasm.
            “Whatever, man, but if you eat fruit and salad for every meal, people are going to assume you’re a fruit salad.” James erupted into his trademark laughter, assumed by his own cleverness.
            “The human body is the only machine for which there are no spare parts,” Adam recited, shifting to the next stage of the line of lunch bars, disregarding the greasy pizza and mounds of hamburgers. James grabbed one of each, shaking his head in disbelief.
          “Tell that to modern science. Geez, one day you’ll come to this age with the rest of us. Or you can go and discuss fruit salad and literature with Roman.”
            “Shut up.”
            James’s comment hit him in a way he didn’t quite expect. He felt the very sudden urge to knock the pizza out of his hands, or some other laymen display of irritation. Adam disregarded the notion, though, following James to sit at their usual table.
            “What’s the deal with that kid, anyway?” Adam asked as discreetly as he could, sitting his tray upon the plastic table. James pulled a chair from the neighboring table, turning it so he could rest his chin on the back and hopefully feel much cooler than he looked.
           “Don’t know, he’s in the Lit class before my history lesson, and the teacher always brags on hi-“
           “-He has Lit at 10:00, he can’t be in that class-,” Adam interrupted, but stopped himself once he realized what he had said. James didn’t seem to think much of his comment.
            “Whatever. Look man, I know you did that huge bullying awareness thing for senior project, but dude, I wasn’t serious. Roman’s cool,” James managed to reply in between bites of pizza. Adam shook himself, realizing it would be weird to discuss Roman any more, and launched into a discussion on what he should write for his bonus essay.
         
                                                                                                                                     ***
           The night air clung to my skin like a blanket of frost on the flowers when autumn encased the campus. It didn’t bother me, though, because the sweat that blanketed me when I woke that night set me on fire, and that fire like the chaos it created filled me with a purpose more insane. Did he know what that purpose was? Could he sense me in the way that I sensed him, a trail of my very being leading back to where he laid asleep in his bed? Would he awake in the morning to follow my thread and know within a moment that I existed?
            There wasn’t any particular kind of security on the campus, but Adam had his guard up nevertheless. There was something nerve-wracking about the possibility of being caught on campus in the middle of the night in his pajamas. There was something even more nerve-wracking about the cold metal door handle he now clutched. His heartbeat thumped in his ears as he pulled, but with some stroke of luck, the lock clicked and the door opened. With a quick glance around, he opened the door and threw himself in with haste, closing the door behind him. He sat for a moment, the sweat glistening on his face, his eyes locked on the stack of paper in his hand.
            “It’s not finished...but he needs to know. It’s not like he’s in your class, so if you want to remain anonymous, he’ll never find out it’s you,” Adam pep-talked himself, taking a moment to just sit back and breathe in the interior of the car. He ran one hand along the steering wheel, picking at the worn leather. With one last sigh, he stuck the stack of paper in the passenger’s seat then pushed himself out of the car, carefully closing the door. He took a moment to admire the leather nametag hanging around the rearview mirror that spelled out “Roman” in elaborate lettering. He peeked back into the passenger’s side window and looked resolutely at the stack of paper, one corner poking out to reveal a line of text. With that last look, he made his way silently back up to the school.
                I might never have lost my sanity had that cathedral not been so damn cold-
                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                    ***
            The bell rang through the classroom, bringing all of the attention back to where Adam’s eyes had never left. Roman stood leaning against the chalkboard, completely out of place in the senior literature class. He chewed on his match with his teeth, his eyes flickering around the room. Professor Morgan cleared his throat to bring the rest of the class in.
            “Good morning, my bright students! I have a special treat for you today. One of my more promises students has agreed to share a piece of his work with us to kick off your choosing of topics for our finals! As you all know, we are focusing on creative writing this term, so I want you all to really explore your minds and dig deep for something that will impress me. So, without further lecture…Roman, if you will.”
            When Roman spoke, it was without any of the shyness or seclusion he usually lived in. His voice flowed like honey, even without a paper for reference.
            “Did anyone else notice how much I registered her existence? Did anyone see the way she consumed my every thought; the way I drank in her very presence? Did she feel herself empty with every moment I stole from her? If there was a difference between consumption and love, I didn’t know what it was because no one had ever struck me in the way she did. A passing glance never exchanged between the two of us, but she didn’t have to acknowledge me to feel the way I slipped like water and evaporated in the glow of her aura.”
            Adam stopped paying attention somewhere around that point, feeling his stomach turning. He didn’t bother raising his hand before dashing out of the room, never stopping to hear the protests of Pro. Morgan. He bee-lined straight to the bathroom and stopped running only to slide against the door, pressing his head to the cold stone of the wall. When he finally allowed himself to breathe, he felt a smile inch its way across his face. He sat in the cold silence for several minutes, focusing on the way his heart beat, threatening to erupt from his chest.
               In that moment, he felt alive.
                                                                                                                                  ***
             How do you approach eternity? At what point do we forgive social graces and act upon the passion that consumes us? If he was a fire, then I must have been a crumbling paper. I couldn’t add to his blaze, only watch as it consumed me.
His eyes scanned the page one last time, pausing on the first line. He picked up his pen to scratch out the more obvious phrases, but fell short as a thunder of footsteps echoed down the hall. He laid his pen aside and crossed the few steps to the door, pilling the faded bronze know open into chaos.
            He was immediately greeted by James's half-excited, half-scared face. Before he could speak, his friend pulled at his arm, yanking him into the herd of students.
              "Adam, we're evacuating! The cathedral, a fire-"
            "-what," Adam yelled over the noise, joining the mass of students making their hurried, excited way down to the front lawn. As they excited the front hall of the dorms, a shriek of sirens joined the chime of the church bells. The clutter and yells in all direction of students frantically trying to get to the cause of the mayhem drowned out still by the roar of the scene in front of them. All eyes locked on the cathedral, where an inferno raged inside.
            Any ominous mystery the church once held in its high, stone walls spiraled away in the cloud of black smoke, the blaze of red lighting the stained glass windows, several of which had already burst, sending shards sprawling onto the scorched lawn. There was grand in the destruction, though.
Walking into that building at 7 am every morning used to be dull, an uninviting, cold tomb where any hope I had to be happy died with every thou shalt not and confession of the darkest parts of my mind. Until he wavered in like a candle and set fire to the wood, enveloping my world in an inferno of lights like a stain glass window. If hell was made of fire and brimstone, then maybe it'd be warmer than those cold, stone walls. That church might have been a house of worship, but my idol was never the crucifixion.
            "-what the hell happened?" James's voice pierced through the sirens and yelling, right by Adam's ear. Adam didn't take his eyes off the fire, which had grown so large that the trucks and their water hoses were shadowed in defeat.
             "Old church!" Adam yelled back.
             "-Do you think someone did it?!"
             Adam's stomach dropped as ice pierced him to push out any warm feeling the fire gave him. His eyes traveled over to where he could feel someone watching him. Roman stood in stoic admiration of the destruction like most of the students. In that moment, he appeared increasingly human, another student with no idea what would happen in the morning. Adam was struck once more with the first line of his paper.
              He had an affinity for matches.
            As he stood, his brandy-wine eyes drinking in the golden, smoky flames, his painted cherry lips were looked in a tight line. His head turned slightly, seeming to notice his admirer. His eyes searched Adam out, and a smile cracked over his stoic mask. Without breaking his gaze, he slipped a battered matchbox out of his pocket, removed a single stick of wood, and perched it between his lips. His gaze finally dropped as he turned his attention back to the cathedral, and Adam's mind slipped back into his drunken gravity.

Bio: Christa McDaniel is a Creative Writing major in a very uneventful town in Arkansas, so she must invent her own little curiosities. She does so with her writing.

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