6 October 2012
Is the existence of this world ‘believed’?
“Do you remember back in Lornera? When a meal a day was nothing but a dream? Poverty. The word was more of a lifestyle then a label. For years I thought I’d be alone. Unity was nothing but a myth. I didn’t like to steal, but it was necessary to survive. At worst I even killed. Even within our pitiful scarce town, it was considered a sin - blasphemy even, to eat the meat of a fellow Lorneran to stay alive. It was considered inhumane - but I had already wrestled with that moral decision many years prior to that fateful day.
I remember your brother, who in his twenties, tried to restore order to our village on the brink of its destruction. He stood on that pedestal, above the five hundred or so villagers who had lost any sense of hope they had once held. The crowd hung on his every word as he told them of how things would get better.
I also remember when I killed him. I remember his faithful eyes dimming as he gargled on his own blood, as I strangled him with a stray length of barbed wire from the farm gates in the darkness of the night. Those optimistic eyes slowly filled with despair, as they stared back in my direction; my eyes belittling him, hosting a world of hate. I remember his last breath: bleated and unfulfilled. I remember pushing him underneath an old tattered fishing boat on the outskirts of the town, before pilfering anything I could find in his crimson soaked pockets. I remember panting, really wondering whether this world was real. How someone with so much hope could be disposed of with such ease. I remember waking that day, with the thought of wanting to kill something; anything. It was inconvenient to not have a God to pray to in times such as those…
Then everything changed. Then I met you. To me, the word ‘family’ was comparable to those such as ‘God’ or ‘Unity’; the concept was so far removed from reality, I could hardly imagine it. I stared into your innocent sleeping eyes, completely unaware of the sins I had committed. You're weeping soul found confidence in my firm grip, as you cried words of hate for your brother’s killer, who you held, unaware that he was closer then you thought. I remember when I held you that day we met, as you shed tears by the parched river. I didn’t know you, and I’d never touched anyone in a ‘nice’ way... but for some reason, I felt like it was just... right. What else could I do? Me, who had never had any positive interaction with anyone in the sixteen years I had lived, now held a goddess in my arms. You have no idea how your long, lush, luxurious, dark brown hair and your blue eyes as cool as winter’s breath affected me. There’s no way I could lose this girl-this companion, whose brother I had killed for a few measly coins - due to jealousy, with no knowledge of younger kin, in cold blood on that night when the moon hung low over the plains of Hayleil. So I kept quiet. I held you, and said nothing.
Years passed while I managed to ‘acquire’ enough money for us to get out of that hellhole. We had to make a decision. ‘Leave now, or we can die this way’. Those were the words I whispered behind your gazillion strands of hair, the night before we left. We moved north, with nothing but the clothes on our backs, and each other. Countless times robbed by bandits and rogue officers… but we got through it.
In our twenties now, the arguments came more frequently. We’d become closer in recent years, in more ways than one, but the magnificence your porcelain skin radiated never changed. Your hair still blew effortlessly in the gentle evening winds, as we sat and watched the strawberry coloured sunset from the back of our old beat up wagon, fingers interlaced with each others. You were still mine.
Who would have thought that we’d ever have an argument too many? My smoking was irritating you, but I just couldn’t give it up. I still remember writing that song for you. It told of how it was ’for the things I didn’t say enough as I waited for the days we touched’. Your lips were my eclipse of a lunar. It’s been all about you. It is all about you. Seconds feel like millennia when I’m without you. But you didn’t seem to realise that. You told me to get out, so I did.
Then one day, I came home from work at the docks, and didn’t find my usual ‘husband and wife’ scene. There was another pair of shoes by the door to boot. I slid open our bedroom door silently. You and my boss.
I never thought I’d find someone to be mine. Lord knows I was right, because you had just crossed the line. All you ever used to say is that you wanted me to be yours. I let you get away with it, and then it happened again. I kept quiet once more. I thought of you too highly to let you go so easily after the first time. Staying at home while I worked obviously didn’t work for you, but after all the years we’d spent together, was I just supposed to let it end right there? After all, those gutters didn’t change, but you changed the way I saw them. The blood thirst I’d suppressed for so many years returned.
I wanted him dead-I wanted you dead. My dearest; did you honestly believe I’d turn my back on you and leave you all alone in this cruel world? Where every single solitary day I did my best to secure a future for me and you? Madame, my dame, my girl. Sometimes those trips felt like they would last eternity, but they say absence makes the heart grow fonder. To stop my thirst for execution, I left. I had too. It was you or me, and I couldn’t bring myself to end your life whilst you slept peacefully in our defiled bed. So I packed my bag and left in the shadow of the black sun; leaving only a note saying it was the end.
A month of loneliness in those forgotten plains calmed my soul. I felt I could return a new man. Talk things through with you. Give you a chance to come clean about cheating, and allow me to finally confess for the murder of your brother. It seems a month was a day too many.
I opened that same old rusty handled door to the lovely vacant and dusty house; our home.
I looked forward and there on the floor you lay, crying your heart out, screaming my name. Beside you, all I could see was the blade. I put my hand on the wound, screamed help and prayed. You were scared. I told you everything would be okay, but deep down I knew it was just too late. All I could do was just stand there and wait. Called for the doctor and told you help was on the way. I finally saw some lights on a van. Your still opulent hair held tight in my hands. I provided you with as much help as I could. If only that night went as well as planned.
I sat down and the operation began. They resuscitated you as much as they could in order to bring my angel back. I talked to keep you intact. It was all my fault. I began to collapse. Your beautiful hair dropped out of my hand. I said ‘I love you babe, please come back’. And as I said that, the line went flat.
Do you remember? The day our unity crumbled? The day I questioned whether the existence of this world is truly believed? I stub my cigarette; the habit you begged me to cease. My sixth cigarette in six years. A cigarette for each anniversary.
I still remember. Do you remember?”
Simply Disappear • Opuss № I