No Más que la Torre, Los Feliz

The chapel was not really a chapel, just a basement under a Los Feliz fourplex where the walls wept mildew and colored light leaked from stained glass scavenged from somewhere holier. Candles burned in bottles along the cracked floor, their wax puddling like melted bones. The air smelled of rosewater, cigarettes, and dust.

They called it the Tarot Mass. Once a month, the congregation drifted in from the city’s margins—artists who had stopped making art, lovers who had run out of people to love, addicts still sweating out their poisons, strays with motel keys hanging from their belts. They slipped into the pews in silence, waiting.

At the altar stood the priestess. Her eyes were painted like kohl rivers, her dress hung in tatters the way fabric does after too many nights of incense and fire. The deck in her hands was older than anyone claimed to be, its edges frayed to lace. People said it came from the desert, passed down from mystics who bled under Joshua Tree stars. The priestess never corrected them.

The ritual was simple. One by one, they approached. She shuffled the deck with fingers that seemed longer than human, cards whispering like feathers. She laid down three: past, present, future. Then she told them their next life, a map sketched in prophecy and smoke.

The first woman went forward trembling, bare feet blackened with asphalt dust. The priestess shuffled, pulled: The Lovers, reversed. The Devil. Death. The woman sobbed with gratitude, like someone had finally told her the truth she’d been starving for. She kissed the hem of the priestess’s dress before crawling back into her pew.

The second man swaggered up. He wore a sequined jacket, his chest bare, a cross tattooed over his sternum. His spread: The Magician. The Wheel. Justice. He laughed too loud, like he’d just won something at the carnival. The rest of the congregation only nodded, solemn, pretending to understand.

Ennis sat near the back, clutching her talisman, a motel key attached to a rusted chain, the number long faded. It pressed a dent into her palm, cool metal, too real against the candlelight’s fever. She told herself she wouldn’t go up when her turn came. But she knew she would. Everyone did.

The deck shuffled on, the priestess whispering, murmuring, letting prophecy bloom. Voices wavered. Bodies shook. Some wept, some smiled like they’d swallowed lightning.

And then the man in the leather jacket stepped forward. Grease-stained, hair slicked, a grin sharp as a knife. He slouched against the altar as if it were a bar counter.

The priestess shuffled. The deck resisted. Her fingers faltered. One card slid free, slapping the wood like a verdict.

The Tower.

The man’s grin twitched.

He spat a laugh.

“That all you got?”

The priestess did not smile.

She gathered the cards,

shuffled harder, cards

hissing in her palms. She

drew again.

The Tower.

A murmur swept through

the pews.

People shifted, candle

flames guttered, stained

glass trembled in its frame.

She shuffled again, fierce

now, lips moving like

prayer.

The Tower.

The man’s laughter cracked into something brittle. He stepped back as if the altar might swallow him. The priestess’s hands shook. For the first time, her voice failed her.

The congregation leaned forward, hungry and afraid, their faces gleaming in candlelight like masks that had been waiting for this moment all along. Ennis gripped the motel key until her skin split, a crescent wound blooming red. The Mass had been interrupted. And the interruption had only just begun.

The priestess tried again, her hands trembling. The deck bent, resisted, hissed against itself. The man in the leather jacket was still laughing, though the sound had soured—too sharp, too loud, like glass breaking on tile.

Ennis kept her eyes on the motel key in her palm, but she could feel the weight of it changing. The chain twitched, as if magnetized to something on the altar. When she looked down, the numbers that had been long faded were glowing faintly, seared into the brass as if someone had just pressed them with a brand.

The next woman approached, all bones and silk. She bowed her head, held out her shaking hands. The priestess shuffled. Ennis leaned forward despite herself, straining for one card, any card but—

The Tower.

The woman shrieked once, high and sharp, before clapping both hands over her mouth. She walked back to her pew without waiting for an interpretation, shoulders hunched, flame-colored hair catching the candlelight like a torch being carried away.

Then another. Then another. Each time, the shuffle dragged on too long, the deck spilling cards, the priestess whispering like a woman bargaining with her own shadow.

And each time: The Tower.

The congregation shifted. First murmurs. Then static. The words dissolved into a low drone, unplaceable in pitch or tongue. The stained glass rattled overhead, the Virgin’s face in the window cracking down the middle like porcelain. Ennis pressed the motel key into her palm until blood slicked her fingers. Her ribs hurt. It was as though every time the Tower struck the altar, something inside her chest shifted too, a shuffle of bone and muscle, searching for the same card.

They were next. Pale as milk, hair plaited like ropes down their backs. The Mirror Twins. They always came together, always sat in the same pew, always moved like two halves of one body. Tonight was no different. They stepped forward as one, knelt as one, held their hands out like children at communion. The priestess hesitated. She cut the deck once, twice—then drew.

The Tower.

Again. The Tower.

Again. The Tower.

The twins looked at each other. Slowly, the corners of their mouths curled, the same grin climbing both faces. Their lips parted and parted wider, impossibly wide, until they seemed to share the same grin across two bodies. The congregation hissed approval, or fear, or both. The twins walked back down the aisle, humming, teeth still bared. Ennis could hear the hum in her molars.

Then came the Painted Man. His face was tattooed into a skull, ink crawling down his throat and under his shirt. He swaggered forward, spit on the altar, dared the priestess to show him collapse.

She drew. The Tower.

The Painted Man snarled.

“Not me.”

He spat again, this time on

the card itself.

His spit steamed. The black ink on his skin began to peel upward, curling like ash. Flakes drifted from his cheeks, his jaw, leaving bare skin so pale it looked unfinished. By the time he turned back toward the pews, his skull-face was gone. Blank as a canvas someone had forgotten to touch.

Ennis gagged. Her motel key burned her palm. She couldn’t tell if she was shaking or if the pew beneath her was vibrating.

When the Child appeared, no one knew where she came from. Small, barefoot, curls damp as though she’d been pulled from water. She toddled to the altar, lifted her chin, and whispered something Ennis could not hear.

The priestess shook.

She shuffled.

She tried not to look.

The Tower.

The Child nodded, as if she had expected nothing else. She turned, walked three small steps, and then was gone. Not walked out—gone. The floor of the pew swallowed her whole, as easily as a coin into a slot.

The drone of the congregation rose. Ennis pressed her forehead to her knees, bile burning her throat. She thought she heard her father’s voice somewhere in the static, repeating her name—no, not her name, but the number on her motel key.

Her turn was next. She felt it before the priestess called her. The chain tugged, the brass key searing into her hand, dragging her upright. The static hiss of the congregation fell into silence, and all eyes turned.

“Ennis,” the priestess said.

Her voice cracked for the

first time that night.

“It is yours.”

The deck waited.

Ennis rose. Her legs moved without her, the key dangling from her fist like bait. The altar loomed closer, and she could see the deck shaking in the priestess’s hands, cards flaring at the edges like they might combust. Ennis stopped halfway down the aisle. Her body froze. Her chest felt hollow, like the Tower was already inside it, scraping against her ribs. She saw flashes—her mother crying into a cracked bathroom mirror, her first love on a motel bed with someone else, the moment she almost swallowed the pills.

The priestess extended the

deck.

“Your card. Your truth.”

Ennis shook her head. Her

throat cracked.

“No.”

It wasn’t loud, but it was enough. The refusal snapped through the chapel like a whip. The candles leaned toward her. Wax spilled sideways. The stained glass split, hairline fractures darting across the panes.

“No,” Ennis whispered again, clutching the motel key as the congregation surged to their feet, their mouths open in one vast O of hunger, of horror, of song.

The deck slipped from the

priestess’s hands.

Cards scattered across the

stone.

Every single one was The

Tower.

And the Mass was no longer

just interrupted.

It was collapsing.

The cards spread across the floor like spilled teeth, every one of them The Tower. Their spires glared upward, flames inked into stone, lightning forever caught mid-strike. The priestess shrieked, tried to tear one in half. The cardstock cut her instead, slicing through her palms as though it were made of glass. Blood streaked the Tower’s face, but the image didn’t blur. She tore at another. Another. The same result—her hands bled, but the Towers remained immaculate, multiplying as though her blood watered them.

The congregation bent low, crawling down the pews to snatch up cards. They pressed Towers to their foreheads, their chests, their tongues. Ennis watched one woman jam a card between her teeth until her gums split and salt spilled out instead of blood. Another man stapled his card to his arm with a nail he ripped from the altar.

The stained glass gave way at last, bursting inward. Shards rained down like colored hail, slicing the air. None of it touched the congregation. Instead, the shards hovered midair, catching candlelight and splintering it into prisms that painted the chapel in fractured rainbows. The Virgin’s shattered face still hovered whole for a moment, suspended, before falling into the pews like ice.

The wooden pews warped and twisted. Their arms elongated, curving into staircases that spiraled upward into nowhere, into ceilings that no longer existed. The chapel was becoming a Tower itself, stone erupting from stone, walls peeling back to reveal new walls, new altars, new ceilings that folded in on themselves like origami.

Ennis stumbled backward, clutching her motel key. The brass burned hot, humming with the rhythm of her pulse. She looked down—its number glowed brighter now, insistent, like it wanted to be read aloud. But her throat closed. The number was her name. The number was everything she had run from.

The priestess dropped to

her knees, hands dripping

red, screaming over the

static:

“The last card belongs to

you, Ennis!”

One Tower card fluttered

loose from the air and

landed in her lap.

It smoldered at the edges,

flames licking without

consuming.

She didn’t touch it, but it

pulsed, syncing with her

heartbeat.

The congregation began to chant again. No words—just a bass-line of static that rattled her bones. They pressed Towers over their faces until they became blank silhouettes, bodies blurred and flickering like old film reels. Some stretched taller, some shorter, some doubled in on themselves. Their mouths opened, and stained-glass light poured out, not sound.

Ennis stumbled down the aisle, drawn toward the altar. The Tower card clung to her lap like a magnet. The pews twisted toward her, wood arms curling, dragging her closer. Her motel key rattled so hard it broke free of its chain and clattered to the floor. The number still glowed, seared into her vision even when she closed her eyes.

The Tower card pulsed faster. The chapel tilted, leaning as though it were about to collapse sideways into the earth. People tumbled but never fell—gravity bent for them, folding and folding again.

Ennis picked up the key. She pressed it to the Tower card. For a moment, the two burned together, brass fusing with cardstock, glowing brighter than the candles.

The priestess reached

toward her, blood streaking

her arms, mouth wide as

though she could swallow

the whole prophecy.

“Place it on the altar, Ennis!

Finish it!”

Ennis froze.

The Tower hummed in her

chest, her throat, her teeth.

She could end it.

Or she could refuse.

Her lips parted.

She whispered, “No.”

The congregation convulsed. Their bodies flickered, blurred, and then began to dissolve—some into smoke, some into rainbow light, some into piles of ash that blew upward instead of down. The Tower cards lifted off the floor and spiraled into the air like a hurricane of prophecy, circling her head. The chapel groaned, beams snapping, stone splitting. Yet she stood still, motel key fused to the Tower card against her chest, heat sinking into bone.

The Tower was hers now.

And the Mass had become

nothing but collapse.

When the dust cleared, there was no chapel. No pews, no priestess, no congregation. Only shards of stained glass glittering across the floor like ice after a storm. They reflected a sky she didn’t recognize, a sky without stars, only a pale sheet of dawn stretched thin.

Ennis was still standing, though she could not feel her feet. The motel key and the Tower card had fused in her grip, melted into a single object that pulsed against her chest. Each throb echoed her heartbeat, or perhaps replaced it. She couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

She looked down at the floor. It was littered with cards. Not just the Tower now—though most still bore that broken spire, that lightning bolt frozen mid-strike. Some had blurred into other faces: the Lovers, Justice, Death, all warped through the Tower’s architecture as though the entire deck had been rebuilt in collapse.

The priestess was gone.

The congregation was

gone.

Their absence pressed

louder than their chanting

had, silence thick and

absolute.

Ennis walked to the altar. It was cracked down the middle, split like bone. She set the fused key-card against her sternum, feeling its heat seep into her ribs, her lungs, her marrow. She waited for the roof to fall, for the earth to open, for the ritual to claim her body like it had claimed theirs.

Nothing came. Only the slow, steady thrum of the Tower beating in her chest. She tilted her head back. Light slipped through the hole in the ceiling. She thought she saw fragments of glass drifting upward like lanterns, catching fire as they rose.

Her lips parted, dry.

The only words left inside

her:

“The Tower was not the

end. It was the only thing

left standing.”