Nemesis

Lilith 

Rossetti and the Lady Lilith

 

She was a lovely little girl. Born on a soft summer night on the 6^th of June, this certain tiny baby breathed with its tiny lungs the stale air for the first time ever in a certain hospital room. A cry pierced the room and a certain young man with his certain tired wife and two not-so-certain nurses smiled with exhaustion, relief and pure bliss.

They named her Lilith. Her parents were an attractive couple who met 3 years ago when they were both 20 years old. They married when they turned 21. The relationship of those youngsters was a constant blur of the burning passion they had for each other, the electrifying attraction and fluids they shared and the intense screaming arguments that usually went down with flames. They loved each other so much that it was just a matter of time for them to create something out of this emotional mess. And that’s how Lilith was born: a beautiful disaster born from ashes of lust.

The young family of three started a new chapter of their life. To understand them a little better you should get to know them. Lilith’s father was studying for a doctor which automatically meant that he spent the majority of his time in the hospital or cramming for exams. His wife was taking care of Lilith when she wasn’t in the big company where she just began her job as an assistant. So it’s safe to say that although there was plenty of love in this certain family, there was little time for them to be together…or for that matter – to have another baby. Never was there enough money and Lilith’s father was worrying that he won’t be able to feed his baby girl or keep their rented flat. So the young parents had a chat and decided that for the next few years they won’t have another child. “I just need some time, darlin’” – he said to his wife one Tuesday night. That certain time never came.

Lilith was growing up fast. She had long curly golden almost red hair. Her face was covered with freckles and her big dark brown eyes changed from the colour of the warmest forest during fall to the deepest holes of Hell. She was an only child and as limited as her parents’ free time was she was the main receiver of their attention and love. Her parents felt very bad because they couldn’t spend a lot quality time with her so they needed to find a way to “make up” for the fact that their daughter is either alone or in the kindergarten. That’s when they started spoiling her with presents. Lovely treats for a lovely girl.

Little Lilith was a quiet child. She didn’t cry, she didn’t even speak much. She learned to read at a very young age and she spent most of her time reading. Soon she got tired of her children’s books and she started reading literally everything she could get her hands on. Luckily her parents both loved reading and they had a massive library holding every possible genre. Lilith was fascinated with Greek and Roman mythology and different religions. She spent cold winter days covered with blankets and marveling at Gods and beautiful Goddesses. She hoped one day to be a Goddess –  a wise and fair Goddess.

Her parents were working as hard as they could. Her father was taking extra shifts in the biggest hospital in town, he slept mostly there trying to earn his good name as a surgeon. As talented and dedicated as he was, he was competing against the older doctors who wouldn’t let him as easily become the greatest surgeon there. His wife was also making her way through the “foodchain” of a big corporative company. As we said she started there as an assistant to one of the partners but with her charm and intelligence she was quickly and swiftly getting a raise after raise, with a lot of hard work of course. They were two young people working for the future of their child.

And their child was working for her own future as well. At school Lilith was ambitious and smart and she was good at everything. She was taking up different courses for learning new skills and it looked like she excelled at anything. At the age of 16 she already learned Latin and Greek and she was reading manuscripts in those ancient language. She wanted to read words and understand thoughts that very few people could. She felt the burning desire to be different, to know more, to be more. That’s what she was, a young Narcissus in bloom.

Besides being overambitious there was something else that a person could find a little… odd about our girl. Lilith’s family as every other normal family had pets. First they had a dog, then a fish, a little turtle, kitties and so on. What tied these animals together was that they all had the same destiny. They all seemed to die in strange ways. Let’s go back in time a little. The first time it was their dog Kiki. They found her dead in front of their door. Kiki was a gorgeous 2 year-old golden retriever who went missing 3 days before they could smell her rotting body on the doormat. It looked like she had ran away and probably got hit by a car but she somehow managed to get to the 6^th floor and die in front of the door. The next one was the cat. They got her from an old aunt who died and no one else could take care of the animal. Bertha, as you can see from her name, was a very old fat white cat who spent her days laying down or eating. One day they found her not breathing with her face inside the food bowl. Apparently she choked on her food. They took it as a death from natural causes. The last pet they had were two small decorative turtles that lived a happy life on the family’s shelf. They didn’t do much; they were just cute to look at. Only 1 month after they took them into their home, they found one of the turtles without head and the other one just dead. It seemed like one of them beheaded the other one. Some sort of cannibalism or “pent-up pressure”, they thought? They weren’t sure.

Lilith wasn’t very fond of any of the family pets. She didn’t mourn or felt sad. That’s how it goes, she thought, that’s life. The only animal that Lilith obviously liked was the snake. When she moved out at 17 to go to university she got a snake for her dorm room. She named her Ira which meant wrath, the 5^th deadly sin. “She’s got to be tough”, Lilith said. Ira agreed.

Of course Lilith’s parents thought of the possibility of her killing her own animals. They tried to shake off this feeling because come on… what normal child would kill an innocent dog? But that’s the thing, you know… Lilith was neither normal, nor innocent. Her parents didn’t know that, in fact they never knew. They lived their whole lives with the uncertain feeling of the doubt. And these are the scariest, worst thoughts – when you don’t know if something’s true, you start doubting everything. That feeling never goes away. It dies with you.

Life goes on, birds are singing, sun is shining and of course Lilith killed the animals. You see, my fellow readers, Lilith was an extraordinary girl who soon become an even more extraordinary woman. She killed her first pet because the dog was barren, she couldn’t have puppies. Lilith found that unacceptable. This was one of the “sexual deaths” in the Bible. If you can’t have children to continue your biological heritage, you do not deserve to live, you cannot fulfill your destiny on Earth and you’re better off dead. Kiki didn’t run away from home like the parents thought. Lilith smashed Kiki’s neck and kept her under her bed for 2 days until she put her on the doormat for her father could find her. Next in line was the fat cat. Lilith’s reasons for killing this old ball of lard were actually justified (according to her, of course).

Being old was a problem to Lilith. She didn’t like old people, she couldn’t even stand being in the same room with her grandparents without feeling sick from their old people’s smell. Therefore, she didn’t like old animals. That’s why one Sunday morning Lilith woke up earlier than usual, filled up Bertha’s bowl with catfood, waited for her to drag her fat ass in the kitchen and then calmly but firmly pushed the cat’s face into the bowl until the animal stopped breathing. Last but not least of her number of meaningful murders was the one with the turtles. Lilith immediately hated them when her smiling mother brought them into the house. Who would like these ugly wrinkled things?! Why should you have the privilege of living when all you do is eat and sleep?! Doing nothing makes you unworthy of existing.  That’s why she waited as long as she could but that night Lilith couldn’t wait any longer. It was a piece of cake. She felt so strong and powerful in front of these fragile small creatures. It was over after just a few minutes. She pulled the head of one of the turtles and then just squeezed the other one. Just a mere moment and they were dead.

I bet you’ve just started hating Lilith. You shouldn’t. You should try to understand her. We hate things and people we could not quite get. Take a second to perceive exactly why a guy kills 5 in a subway or why a mother drowns her own baby. Never judge. Don’t lose your compassion. Lilith was cruel, violent and cold and I’ll tell you why. Killing animals was making her feel like a Goddess. One of the beautiful, majestic women from the books she read as a little girl. She needed the thrill, she needed to feel superior. She may have started by killing but she didn’t stop there.

Years flew by and Lilith’s parents finally didn’t have to worry about money. Her father was the best, most popular surgeon in the country and her mother was one of the bosses in the company she worked. They lived in a big expensive house near the beach, although they spent very little time there as they were both workaholics. Lilith was 27 and she hadn’t been living with her parents for the past 10 years. She visited them very rarely and had almost forgotten about them.

She lived in a beautiful flat full of black furniture in the heart of the city. She worked in the media and we’re a little blurry on the details what kind of company she worked for but it’s sure that there were 200 people beneath her who reported to her on a daily basis.

Lilith loved firing people. Some of the employees she let go were begging her to keep them, they started crying and screaming. This only made her more eager to get rid of them. It also made her feel more superior; she had the power to destroy their lives. That kind of deluded self-confidence turned her into the most dangerous predator out there.

Her lovelife consisted of short relationships with powerful men who wanted her for her beauty and she wanted them for their rich status in society. She slept with them and got tired. She was thinking like a man. In the opposite sex she saw a dick and a useful connection. When she received one or the other, she got bored. She didn’t need a man to make her feel good. She needed authority.

Things were different with her relationships with friends. She actually had a few friends she kept from high school not because they were particularly “beneficial” but because inescapably Lilith was partly a human being and she still had some sentimental feelings left in her. Sometimes she was cold, indeed, but often Lilith was doing favours, making gifts and trying to help her friends. It was her way of making them as supreme as her.

Her closest and oldest friend was a cheerful, smiling girl with a number of bad habits named Beata. She loved Lilith and Lilith had some warm feelings towards her. Beata was a charmer, one of those girls who no matter how much they fuck up, you still adore them. And Beata fucked up on a regular basis. She liked, no, she loved boys and slept around with a lot of fine looking men. She liked parties and meeting strangers which led to her waking up in strange places next to strange men without underwear. As close as the two girls were, Lilith was very rough in times with Beata. Lil, like Beata called her, couldn’t understand how she could randomly have sex with strangers who she’ll never meet again and more importantly - will never get something out of these relationships. For Lilith, Beata was the living personification of lust – pure old-fashioned, deadly sinful lust that turned you into a beast, the lowest basic creature of needs. And so every time Beata fucked up in a particular way, Lilith made her feel like shit. No matter if Beata came to her smiling or crying or feeling like a wreck, Lilith was standing next to her tall, proud, vicious and adamant. Not a sight of mercy in her. She started saying to the crying girl that she was disappointed with her, she didn’t expect such a behavior from her, she didn’t live up to her expectations. Lilith treated her friends like animals, some kind of servants that must be trained properly so that they can behave accordingly.  Beata ached and cried and felt like the lowest of the low but this couldn’t help. Lilith was like a wall of steel. And you can’t penetrate the wall of steel.

The iron girl was growing older. The passing years made her even more wicked and she isolated people harder and harder.  Lilith’s parents were already old, tired people wanting to rest. They wished to see Lilith more often, to enjoy her company and talk to her. Lilith used to accept the invitations to her folks’ old house but she started getting bored. They were turning into those old people she hated so much. They didn’t go to work anymore, they just sat on the porch looking at the ocean drinking tea. She was angry at them. Such dedicated people they were once and now they were just a couple of worn out grandparents.

It was Saturday and Lilith agreed to go and see them because her mother was calling her phone all the time. Lilith was sitting with a mug full of tea on her lap and was looking at her parents across her on the porch marveling at the ocean. She looked down at her cup and pouted, she hated tea and preferred coffee. She turned to the ocean and wondered what exactly did those two old idiots like in the water. “You should come here more often”, her mother said with a calm smile on her face, “It’s peaceful, you are too stressed”. “I like working, I like the stress and the whole game. You remember what it’s like, you used to be in charge of a whole division of men. You know the thrill.” Her mother rolled her eyes and said: “My sweet girl, you can’t lose your life because of a career. You forget to be happy and spend a lifetime on something that doesn’t matter. In the end this whole thing: working, gambling and taking risks means something only if you’ve got a person next to you. I’m lucky I met your father when I was very young and I hadn’t started in the firm yet. You need to find someone.” Lilith almost laughed. She stood up, grinned at her virtuous parents and said: “You can’t trust people. You can rely only on yourself. I wouldn’t be here right now if I had a husband, a baby or a teenage daughter to worry about. I am at my strongest when I’m alone. People make mistakes; they are unworthy of my time, my love, my dedication. I need to grow and another human being would just pull me under. People are sinners, they need the approval of other people to exist. I am the improved, innovated person. We should create only creatures that can survive in the toughest situations. The rest must be exterminated.”. Lilith was short of breath. Her parents couldn’t recognize her. She was punishing her own mother and father because of all the things that had happened in her life. She was that way because they made her that way. They didn’t give her a sibling and turned her into a spoilt vicious girl. They didn’t have time for her and only wanted to be with her now because they were old and they knew they were soon going to die. They needed to be punished. They were bad for making her a bad person, a proud selfish demon born from the ashes of lust. Pride that was going to kill her. It was just a matter of time.

In the end Beata was the last person left for Lilith. The only person who needed her, loved her, and was her friend. “Friends make you weak”, was saying Lilith standing next to the window while Beata was laying on the ground, crying, choking on her tears, “I don’t have time for you”, Lilith’s voice seemed like a beautiful distant whisper. The rest was silence.