“Hey, Kyle? Can you bring the matches over here?” Morgan asked from her kneeling position in front of the lacquered table that had been repurposed as an altar.

Kyle leaned out of the kitchen and appraised his girlfriend of two years. She was short – almost comically so. At 5’ 2”, she often struggled to reach things around the house, let alone at the grocery store. She was definitely on the curvier side, though. Kyle found himself grinning at the pleasant way she filled out the back of her blue jeans, with a peek of her bronze skin showing beneath the black t-shirt she wore. She turned to face him, her nearly-black wavy hair tumbling over her shoulders as she glared at him with her silvery-blue eyes.

“Could you please stop staring at my ass and bring the matches?” she reiterated, a mix of annoyance and satisfaction on her face.

“Yes, yes, anything for the High Priestess of the Household,” Kyle replied with a tone of levity. He turned back toward the kitchen, his tall scrawny frame looking for all the world like a child’s stickman drawing come to life. He didn’t dislike his appearance, but he had to acknowledge that with his pasty white skin and proportionally long limbs, he could easily win a Slenderman look-alike contest. He grinned at this mental assessment, drawing a somewhat perverse joy from the spooky and the macabre.

It was hard trying to force the smiles. A somber air hung heavy over the home and they were joking as much as they could to avoid crying. On Morgan’s altar rested a small black crescent moon urn with the name “Luna” engraved upon its base. Kyle’s beloved cat of eighteen years had passed away and they just brought her ashes home earlier that day.

Kyle handed the matches over to Morgan, who accepted them graciously. All joking aside, the fact that Morgan was doing this for Luna meant a lot to Kyle. Morgan was a Kemetic pagan, someone who followed the revived traditions of Egyptian mythology. Her patron deities of Sekhmet and Bastet were often thought to be different aspects of the same goddess - one presided over the sun and war, the other presided over the moon and the hearth, but both dealt with aspects of health. Both had the heads of felines – a lioness and a cat, respectively.

The altar had been adorned with red silk to portray the likeness of blood. Atop the altar stood two stone candleholders, both carved of alabaster, and each bearing a small gold candle, behind which stood a pair of statues. Sekhmet on the right and Bastet on the left. In the center of the altar lay an obsidian offering dish in which rested a cut of sweet bread and behind which sat a crystal chalice filled with dark red wine. Luna’s urn was just to the right with the forged athame to the left. It was a simple setup, but therein lay the beauty.

Morgan struck a match and lit the cone incense, gently wafting it toward the statues. She then struck a new match to light each of the candles. She blew out the match and put it with the other matchstick on the side of the offering plate. “Can you turn off the lights, sweetie?” she asked of Kyle.

Happy to oblige, Kyle flicked off the light switches, basking the entire apartment in darkness save the warm illumination of the pair of candles on the altar. He couldn’t make out the whispered prayer his girlfriend was intoning, but she was clearly very invested in it. Her eyes were closed and both hands rested flat on the top of the altar. 

Kyle didn’t know much about these pagan practices, only what he had gleaned from observation and discussion with his partner. Since they held the same core beliefs, he’d never seen any reason to interfere with Morgan’s spirituality, especially if it brought her comfort and happiness. For his part, Kyle was pretty open to the idea of whatever, as long as it didn’t involve forced religiosity and tithing. After all, gods don’t need cash.

Not wanting to disturb or interfere with the ritual, Kyle walked toward the window and peeked through the heavy curtains outside into the empty courtyard. The shadow of the new moon hung heavy overhead, the stars shining like a dazzling scattering of glitter in the night sky. It was a quiet night, the wind blowing gently through the early spring leaves created a soft chorus of whispers in response to Morgan’s prayers. 

He closed the curtains and turned his attention back toward his girlfriend when he noticed something that made him panic. The wick of one of the candles had not been trimmed properly before being lit and a piece of it had just broken off and fallen onto the silk. Morgan’s eyes were still closed and her hand moved automatically toward her athame as the silk burst into flame.

Kyle darted to the altar, pulling Morgan back by her shoulders, away from the flame. At the same time, he grabbed the chalice of wine and splashed it over the growing blaze, dousing it entirely and enveloping the room in blackness. “Are you okay, Mo?” he asked breathlessly.

“Yeah… Holy shit, I’m so sorry! I didn’t even notice!” Morgan replied.

In the dark, it was difficult to tell where everything was. Kyle had a rough idea of the altar, but he wasn’t sure if Morgan had moved or not. Still, he needed to get back to the light switch to assess the damage. As he tried to take a step backwards, his heel caught on something and he felt himself lurching to the side. His arms pinwheeled and his left hand caught the front of the altar, pulling on the tattered remains of the silk cloth. A very loud, “Oh, fuck!” later and he had fallen on top of his girlfriend. Except there was a sharp, stabbing pain in his ribs. Stabbing? That’s not right… Morgan is very soft, very cuddly…

Kyle coughed suddenly and felt something splatter out of his mouth. He pulled himself up so that Morgan could slide out from under him and fell over on his back. “Mo… Lights… something’s wrong…”

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god hold on!” Morgan blurted out anxiously as she scrambled back towards the light switch. 

She flicked on the standing lamp in the corner to reveal a grisly sight. Her athame, a large, heavy steel dagger, was embedded in Kyle’s ribcage, piercing his lung. Blood was pooling under him and dribbling from the side of his mouth in a crimson mockery of abstract art.

“Kyle!” Morgan shouted before tumbling toward him in a frantic crawl. “Oh shit, what do I do? I have to call an ambulance! I have to stop the bleeding!”

Kyle’s arm felt leaden and continued to pull on the silk covering the altar, dragging over the statues, the offering plate, and the urn. All of these items bounced off his chest until the urn, which fell flat upon him and spilled ashes upon the wound. Seeing his beloved pet’s ashes on his body made him want to vomit and he mustered what energy he could to salvage the urn before any more could be spilled.

Morgan, on the other hand, was scrambling for her phone. In her panic, she couldn’t remember where she had placed it and was beginning to hyperventilate, searching under the coffee table, on the couch, on the bookcase…

“Sweetie,” Kyle said weakly. “It’s on your nightstand… by the bed…”

Morgan nodded and sprinted to the bedroom, leaving Kyle alone in the living room for the moment. He was fighting to breathe. He could feel his rapid pulse, the fatigue – he was reasonably certain the lung had collapsed. But he also knew he didn’t dare remove the athame from his ribs lest he risk a hemorrhage. He let his head fall back against the floor and listened for the sound of Morgan’s returning steps. He could hear that she was on the phone, waiting for the emergency dispatcher.

“911, what’s your emergency?” came the tinny voice over the phone’s speaker. 

Then everything seemed to grind down, as if watching a movie in slow motion. Morgan was frozen in place in the hallway, one foot poised in the air to take another step. Kyle blinked in confusion, realizing at the same time that his ribs no longer hurt.

“Do you wish to live?”

It sounded like a woman’s voice, but in chorus. As if there were two voices overlapping each other, two people speaking in perfect unison.

For whatever reason, Kyle was able to speak without effort. “Of course I do!” he said, his voice sounding much stronger than before.

The harmonic woman’s voice came back. “Even if it means you can never go back to the life you had before?”

“As long as I can stay with Morgan, I don’t care about anything else,” Kyle replied earnestly. ‘What were they talking about?’ he wondered. ‘Will I be disabled or something?’

“Her prayers have been heard. She has our favor. Consume the offering.”

Kyle looked around, bewildered, until his eyes fell upon the sweet bread on the floor next to him. Some of the wine had been splashed on it when he doused the flames, and some of Luna’s ashes dusted the top of it. He felt his stomach turn. “I don’t think I can do it…” Kyle whined, tears in his eyes.

“Consume the offering. Your companion will be with you, always,” the dual woman’s voice replied.

He frowned, confused by the enigmatic statement, but with a herculean effort, Kyle took a large bite of the sweet bread and began chewing. Between the ashes and the wine, the texture was horrible and he felt himself fighting back a dry heave. Instead, he choked it down, swallowing forcefully before cramming the rest into his mouth to finish it off. His body began to feel incredibly hot.

“You have done well. Your trust shall be rewarded.”

There was a blinding flash of light then darkness. The power had been snuffed out.

“Hello? Hello?” Morgan cried urgently to her now-dead cell phone in the inky blackness of night. “Oh gods, no, not now! Kyle! Kyle, speak to me! Please? I can’t see you, sweetie, talk to me, okay?”

She had made her way back to the altar, but Kyle was no longer lying prone on the floor, based on her blind hand sweeps. Instead, her right hand collided with the box of matches. Hastily, she popped it open and struck one of the sticks against the side of the box. It took a couple tries, but she finally got a flame.

Using the matchstick as a tiny torch, Morgan moved her arm towards the couch to see if Kyle had dragged himself over there. That was when she saw the giant green cat eyes peering at her from across the room. Morgan yelped and dropped the match, which extinguished itself in the pool of blood on the floor, leaving the room in shadow once again.