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axieta · 11 months

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Hungry eyes

Henry Winter x reader

Warnings: suggested auto-aggression, abuse and medicine abuse, thoughts of violence, breakdown (dni if you fell like any of the warnings mentioned, even described in a very roundabout way, may impact you negatively, please and thank you)

Chapter 9

Two points of view

Chapter 9

Hours passed. Days. Weeks. The snow fell, perched on my shoulders, on top of my head, in my hands, like a particularly annoying case of dandruff. Years, decades. I was sure that the white powder that made my skin turn pale and then red, that chased shivers all around my body should have already been gone after such a long time. Or maybe it was not snow, truly, but dandruff indeed. After all I had been standing there, in the dodgy parking lot outside of the Cherry flavour, that it might have been as well. Centuries. Lifetimes. All that I had witnessed on that evening and all of it before, the calm before the storm and its sorrowful, unnerving resolution, it all had flashed before me, in my mind’s eye. It all came and went so suddenly, so abruptly, that the screaming memories of the past appeared almost violent to me. Like a crazed stranger running your way along the pavement, screaming, tearing at his hair, tossing, and stumbling, zigzagging along his path, and then passing you and disappearing in the crowd, somewhere behind you, as you shiver once, push your eyelids together in the ultimate expression of horror and disgust.

God, please don’t let him touch me; you think. God don’t let him see me; you pray.

And then the stranger passes, his torn, dirty clothes, a marksman of a homeless bum, disappear from your field of vision, and the only thing that stays with you, the testament to his sorry existence, is that sweetly nauseating smell he leaves behind.

Millennia. Eons. It all passed me in a blink of an eye, or they had not passed at all, and I had just been imagining things. But my body hurt, my arms felt taunt, packed with an unmeasurable tension and my gums swirled with restless swarms of worms. An unwanted, painful reminder of what had been and what turned into ashes in matters of mere seconds.

Standing there, a few meters behind Henry it donned on me how terribly cold it was outside. Only garbed in the delicate, summer shirt I used to wear only at the inaugurations of school year, I started to shake uncontrollably. A full-body convulsion overtook me and a chirp chatter of my teeth, ones hitting the others, filled my ears. My body submitted to the rising wind and the falling temperatures, but I could not feel the cold at all. To the contrary, the pain that shook me so, was birthed directly by the iron-hot waves of heat washing all over my intestines, my skin, pulling over my brows in pearly droplets of sweat.

Henry’s cigarette hit the ground, then the heel of his impeccable, shiny Oxford smothered the last glimpse of flame still flickering with orange hope at the very end of the butt. Merciless stomp, half wet splash in the melting snow on the pavement. And that was it. His hands were shaking, but his face stilled in a terrifying grip of ever frost.

A few weeks later and nothing changed. Not really. We all acted normal, or at least appeared to act normal. Bunny was his usual cheery self, Camilla and Charles kept on with their Sunday dinners, of which we had two before the winter break came tearing us apart and throwing all around the world and Henry maintained his stoic, cold disposition. Nothing shook him no more. He froze in one moment and his face kept that taunt, expressionless grimace I saw right before the bar. His eyes turned sharp, strangely calm. He seemed both very aware of his surroundings and completely detached from them at the same time. In the matter of days, he regressed into the Henry I knew from my first encounter with him – chill, full of distaste and afloat, above all the filth of this world. Even Francis seemed unbothered, or worse, completely oblivious to what has happened in the Cherry flavour. To my deepest surprise, even she herself, wasn’t overly bothered. She talked, she smiled, even joked around. Some of her jokes landed punches against Bunny, but there was nothing aggressive in them, just her characteristically sarcastic remarks mixed with her usual witty climaxes. It was truly, as if nothing had happened. As if I, myself had thought out this elaborate drama in one of my drunken fantastic apparitions and convinced myself of its authenticity. But there was something more to this frozen normalcy of our group. Not only had they brushed the incident, like it was nothing, they had reset themselves to a state of complete neutrality, the one in which I had met them. All the characteristics of the group I came to know and adjusted myself to suddenly vanished leaving behind a bunch of empty, hollowed vessels, of which I knew nothing and whose lives had once again become a complete mystery to me. They changed the sitting places in Julian’s class once again. No longer was Henry besides her. What’s more, I don’t think I saw him anywhere near her since the night at the bar. Long forgotten were the brushes of hands, the solemn and longing stares thrown across tables. No one raced in the gathering snow anymore, nor did anyone read Argonautica Orphica, crammed into some dark corner of the library. No one mused in hushed tones to some other twin soul the passages of Greek dramas.

With time, even her jokes and laughs simmered down to an untaxing hum, and one day, I could not say which, but the paste of the change seemed so alarming I had to note that in my memory, they stopped all together.

I asked Francis about the bar once, mostly because after Henry’s silent resignation from his previous seat, the ginger boy seemed to be the closest to her.

‘Say,’ I had asked him one day, when we were all leaving class, and her coat had long vanished from my field of vision ‘What are you going to do with the whole Bunny situation?’

He threw me a look, a dumbfounded, confused look, one would expect from a pupil being called to the board and not a grown man asked a simple question, such as himself.

‘Whatever do you mean, Richard?’

I shrugged my shoulders forward and wagged my head from side to side with disappointment. Resigned, I had never asked him about that again.

It was as if the past few weeks had not happened at all. Well, I guess there was no more need for all that, because she herself seemed to be more and more absent from our private, antic world. She became quite unresponsive during the lessons, although she kept her marks up and if only asked, she responded with the same vigour and fervour as usual, there was a special air of vacancy around her, whenever her lips sealed into that thin, pensive line I adored so. Her interactions with us became more and more scarce and suddenly, right before the break had begun, I realised that for a few days now she had been coming into class, nodding in greeting, and then staying silent for as long as she possibly could. That one nod, sometimes two, if she remembered to draft it before leaving class, was the only remnant of her usual sunny and loud greetings. I could not remember how did her voice sound before, but I knew that slight rasp and a gravel undertone weren’t always there. But now, whenever she spoke those qualities seemed ubiquitous and synonymous with her. A dark smudge on the crystal timbre of her vocal cords.

I noticed that she had not decided on changing her shoes. The dark-shining vices gripped her feet at all times, mercilessly and gave her steps a slight rhythm akin to that of a lame. I could not understand why was she still insisting on torturing herself with this terrible choice of footwear, but seeing as she would not talk to anyone, not even Henry, I did not feel especially invited to starting a conversation with her about that. Especially when all I could focus on was the dubious existence of that fateful evening I witnessed. If I could not trust myself with remembering a night such as this correctly, what else must’ve my mind gotten wrong?

The pages of my sketchbook suddenly filled with frantic notes of recollection and quick, messy drafts of those boots. From side, front, back, upside, dark, atmospheric, and linear. Shiny noses, black shoelaces, bits of mud on the soles and slight blemishes of salt on the delicate leather. I saw them every day, and every day I committed them to paper, slowly perfecting the ovoid shape. And all the while my pen hit the yellowed, stylized pages, all my ears registered was the unrhythmic clack of her heels on the frozen pavement. I tried to remember every clack and every click. Every broken shade and glimmer of artificial light that reflected off that polished leather as they laid beneath the table in Cherry flavour. And the longer I thought of them, those two black holes consuming my every waking thought, the longer that sick obsession with the shoes’ glimmering noses unravelled into a twisted spiral over the pages of my notebook and transformed them into some sort of mythical regalia of martyrdom, the more I started to think that I might’ve been in fact overexaggerating a bit. After all, it was not the first time I would completely submerge myself into an obsession that would ultimately prove pointless and redundant.

Only, no! I had eyes, I could see, I was not a blind man, nor was I marginally stupid. It did not take a genius to mark the pain in her stride, to see, how her laugh and her smile did not bear any water, how they died on her cheeks, never reaching her eyes. How, when she finally stopped the charade and alongside it, stopped talking altogether, those shine-less eyes, those once magnificent pools of sheer starlight became empty and dark. How she shrivelled and thinned in the matter of weeks – days! – and how her hair matted over with a thin layer of patina. Like a beautiful, bronze statue, knocked down into the murky waters of a lake it once guarded, her whole being overgrew with pondweeds and widgeon grass. Something dimmed her, a duckweed casted deep shadows on the crystal-clear surface of her face, and yet I could not comprehend what could it be. Bunny choked her, that I got. But that… that silence, that burnout… it all seemed far too much. And then Henry. So cold, so angry… and then completely uninterested. It was all, at the same time too much and too little for what I had gathered from a few glances at them. I wasn’t close with neither of them, except for her. I could’ve asked her then, at the bar, but that ship has had already sailed by the time doubts gripped at my throat. I was just so sure that Henry was going to take care of things, weed the pond water, that I didn’t even think of doing anything myself. Even though I knew, I swear to gods, old and new, I knew she needed… something. Someone. And I knew they knew that as well.

But they kept quiet. Cheery even, submerged into the deep waters of the Red Sea, running alongside the mystical warriors, sons of gods, storming the beaches of Troy, focused solely on the past, they stayed blind to the unsteady march of their friend. Henry, most of them, seemed to be shockingly cut off from all that surrounded him. Once again, I saw him reading the Iliad, alone. Once again, I had heard his snarky comments cutting the air like knives swishing at warm butter. I glanced at his hasty, unnecessary translations of old books into even older languages. And in all of that he remained solitarily unified with what has been. He had not even so much as spared a glance towards her way since that night. Not even a discrete, throw-away look, or a passing stare. His eyes remained polarised, sharp, and empty, investigating the dark swirls of letters on the old papers. Amongst all the shine of the glory that once was he surrounded himself with, he appeared somehow ghostly. Pale skin turned almost grey, and as time went on, violet swirls of broken capillaries dusted it with random cracks, here and there. Deep shadows marked his face from the waterlines of his eyes, right to his immensely sharp cheekbones, as if he had not been getting enough sleep. And his hands, they shook. Constantly and perpetually, small temblors shook his palmar nerves, forcing him to close and open his fists. Pain painted on his face the most magnificent landscapes, even more frequently when she fell silent. Still, he kept on with his studies, unbothered, pinning his button, shark-like eyes onto the inanimate objects of his admiration.

Once, I even saw him picking Bunny up from some restaurant, dragging a bummed-out boy behind him. I knew the precedence. I recognised the apologetic scowl on his face, when he drove off with the boy crammed up in the passenger seat of his car and I wonder how such a heartless, blind person could ever be let behind a wheel. As his car glided over the dangerously slippery street, the glimmer of Bunny’s blonde head, turned in half-chirp caught my eyes. I gagged. I simply could not watch this flock surrounding Tiresias with a straight face. I might have not understood the situation at hand, might have even assessed it wrong, but what got me the worst was the collective dismissal of the state my Diogenes found herself in. the turning of a blind eye, the dismissal, it made my blood boil.

Getting more and more angry with the silence surrounding something I was absolutely sure of witnessing, I decided to go back to the bar. Looking for something, anything, even now I would not be able to describe what for exactly, I decided to snoop around there. And I would, I really would. If it wasn’t for the stomped-out butt that greeted me on the pavement right before the entrance. Pathetic and soaked it had already dissolved under the immense pressure of humidity and dirty water that had washed over it during the days of my absence. It was there, it was real. And it had red letters – Lucky Strikes – engraved on the white band dividing the ashy end from the orange body. It stared at me from the distance of approximately six feet. The same ciggy Henry had stomped out.

My knees popped when I squatted over that piece of evidence. I stared intently, with bated breath and hands covering my mouth, just not to somehow contaminate that butt. Like a careful investigator I examined the unexpected piece of evidence with utmost unction I looked and watched and glanced at it, considered all the ways it had creased, soaked in the dirty water. I wanted to notice something, somehow connect the dots, tie it all up with one swift revelation. Maybe notice a certain shape or conjure a poetic, dramatic metaphor that could somehow describe it, take that mystery to a higher plane on which I could finally achieve enlightenment and deeper understanding of the situation. I thought that staring at it would help me capture at least a bit of Henry’s essence, that clasping my hands at the phantom thread tied to his mind at the moment of him smoking it would allow me access to his mindset, explain what was going on inside of him, when he mulled over the Latin phrase. Desperately searching for the slightest trace of reason in it, or some kind of symbolism, like a pair of grey, ashy bunny ears or a cute, fluff tail poking out of the mangled cotton end of the ciggy which’s visual allegory would bring me any closer to an explanation. But nothing appeared. The butt was just a butt. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sudden anger gripped me by the throat, poked at my eyeballs from the inside of my pained skull and coloured the whole world before me in vivid splashes of red. For the simple fact of my ingenuousness, the unreasonable investigation that refused to bear any fruit at its infant stages, the way the others did not seemed to be bothered by the whole Cherry flavour situation, savage frenzy sprouted in me, took root in my brain, slithered around my muscles, and took all inhibition from the body that once had belonged to me. For a split moment I was not human. For a short second, in which I jumped to my feet and with a brutish yap escaping my mouth, felt my muscles convulse with unpredictable movement, I was not even an animal. The accumulated rage was not me, not my own, but a whole other entity, alive, smart, hungry, vicious. Akin to Ophiocordyceps unilateralis it wrapped its way round me and guided my whole body into a fit of purely obscure seizure. My brain, my mind, it was there, although set still and useless, as if numbed and enslaved by that foreign rage in a sort of gilded cage it revelled in. Oh, the golden splendour of my inhibition, the sudden servitude to my own emotions, it all left a deliciously sweet taste on my tongue. My foot, one I had not realised had been risen, hit the ground with a terrible wet splash, perfectly pinning the dreaded butt beneath itself. The scream that followed the spontaneous motion echoed uncomfortably against each and every building that surrounded me. Tearing my leg up once again I struck anew, well the fungal rage reigning my body did, with both viciousness and force doubled. After three more dealt kicks like that I was sure the butt was not only stomped out, but completely obliterated, and yet I could not stop myself. I could not stop the stabbing motion of my leg, nor could I muffle the thick, grating bays coming out of my throat at every hit I/it had dealt. Dirty thawed snow splashed miserably all around me and landed on my trousers, on the cars parked in the parking lot and the poles dividing pavement from the road.

It was not far. No fair at all.

Splash!

How were they treating her!

Smack!

How she looked!

Splat!

What Henry had said! What he promised! What he didn’t do!

Plop!

Henry, that bastard! Bastard-Henry! Henry-Bastard! Blind fool! King of fools!

Slam!

He and that insufferable brat Bunny! Bunny, Bunny, Bunny! Idiot! Moron!

Nothing coherent crossed my mind in that moment. Nothing of higher importance or sense. But I knew that what had, was the purest form of frustration, the truest vent for every single one of my doubts and problems that had snowballed during that year in Hampden. I knew that those frantic kicks, those incoherent bellows of mine, they were not just empty swings at an already burnt-out cigarette. No, each strike was a protest, a manifestation and a drub against the nature of every single person entangled in the pattern of neglect and disinterest surrounding my Diogenes. Angry stomps surrounded me whole and muffled all the other sounds with their hateful nosegay.

In my fevered state the butt became Henry’s head, his chest, his hands, and the dark hair sprouting above his white, aristocratic forehead morphed into the sunlit grains of Bunny’s coiffure. Images, imprints really, of his pastel, nauseating outfits inflamed my nostrils with a smoke-stained dragon breath. They sharpened my teeth, turned me further and equipped me with diamond-sharp claws, armoured me with thick scales. I was a mystical dragon of pure, liquid fury and I was ready to melt down mountains. What’s worse is that I always knew what I had felt towards Bunny. It was nothing new. Detestation, slight indifference, unease sneaking its way beneath my skin with terrible itch whenever he appeared somewhere near me – the purest form of unknowing discomfort. But the unadulterated, all-consuming hatred I felt towards Henry was. In all honesty I was willing to admit my distaste regarding the blonde quarterback, and yet to this day, I quiver before the thoughts that ghosted and rattled over my mind when the acrid taste of venomous loathing filled my mouth when I saw the dark eyes, the jet-black hair and the cynical grin of Henry Winter being stomped out by my own foot. Yet I did not falter in that moment, not one step back. I did not quelched my thirst for blood, stomping my foot around I did not stomp out the desire to melt those two until there was nothing left of them, and then further scorch them until even the memory of them, the last trace of it has been completely purified and forged anew. I was a monster willing to turn them into a breed of creatures of my sort. For a moment a violent fantasy, of me stepping up, cornering them, and tearing them apart in two-to-one combat, clouded my vision. Oh, what I could have given in that moment to possess any kind of skill in martial arts. Of even owning a knife with which I could threaten them with. A kidney, or a lung, or even a heart would not be equal to the bargain I was willing to make in order to suddenly become apt, athletic and strong. A whole world would not be a sacrifice big enough for my willingness to hurt nor was it enough to bring me the levels of courage and skill I needed to face and best those two. After all, I was but a boy. Not a dragon, not an investigator, and not an infection-ridden insect. Just an angry little scrawny boy, scared and confused stomping in the molten snow like a capricious brat. More than anything I was a pathetic child. My knees buckled beneath the weight of that realisation, and I collapsed into the disgusting greyish-brownish pulp. Wet matter soaked into my pants and despite the moderately mild weather I swear, I had never felt such seeping cold.

Once again time stopped and galloped around me with no rhyme or reason. I could not tell how long I was kneeling there, pinned to the ground by the sheer gravity of that tiny, obliterated butt. And I think I would stay there for far longer, until darkened sky came in the marvellous shade of indigo and frost coated the perimeter with spiky-white fur, until I’d had lost feeling in my toes and the overwhelming cold of the night steadily slowed and slowed my pulse to the point of a dangerously gentle halt if it wasn’t for the shy shadow creeping over my form.

Small and bleak shape of a person sliding carefully on the pavement, mixed with the strange fragrance of a muffled, warm scent, domestic in that slow creep, nice and soft with the cautious steps of its owner. I knew that scent, that shape, that rhythm, swayed slightly to the right, as if the person guiding it avoided putting their whole weight to the left. I knew it and I longed for it for so, so long. My head snapped back, eager, almost wanton, and my gaze was met with a slightly bent figure, big, hollowed eyes gazing right, no, trough, mine and tightly pressed pale lips. Her. The intensity of that sudden stare, despite its murky and diffused, or maybe precisely because of that thinly spread quality, forced goose-skin to come forth on my clothed arms. She was slimmer, so much so, that when her jaw clenched at the shock surfacing on my face, I could see and count the small bones of her skull sliding smoothly beneath her taunt skin. Paler and somehow yellow, like a thin, thin, thin papyrus left for too long on the scorching sun of a desert, the rosy fresh bloom of her skin, just an afterthought left in the broken capillaries of her eyes and the reddish rim of them. The hair that fell over her arm, when she leaned in some more into my private space, as if to sniff me or confirm that I was in fact me, slid over her shoulder with a quiet dry shuffle, akin to the jerk of wheat fields in the middle of July, forgotten or abandoned by their farmer. No more gilded halo, rather bone-dry empty stems. In that dimension she was not so far away from the ghostly grey shape her body casted over me, even more so, she herself seemed like a shadow of her former self. A vessel that would drag behind her a fortnight before. A shape that would break over silvery-white snow caps, hide and split under the influence of light seeping into the campus library. There was this newfound quality about her, an air I had no words to describe then. I just knew that she didn’t quite feel like herself, somehow hollow, unfilled, not really finished, just like she herself was not complete, not whole, like the part of herself that kept her whole being by the seams, suddenly vanished and her frame fell apart, spitting out that lively, sweet part of herself, the cottony filling that gives puppets their shape, and all that was left of her was that skin, those glossy eyes, gleaming like two polished buttons. All I could think of, while desperately trying to bear that bone-chilling stare of hers, was that she had cracked into two halves, and the one – the cold, silent, limping, and tight-lipped creature – was the only half that survived that tragic severance. The worse half.

Now, that I have assisted in an attempt on someone’s life, I know that she looked like what death feels like. Cold and un-personalised ghostly presence that hoovers over you, seeps into you and stays somewhere there, in your body, in the stems of your fingers, forever curved around an already non-existent neck, slots itself right between the globes of your brain, playing the imagine of body muddled in snow over and over again, sits in your ears, echoing the never-ending crack of neck, settles on your skin with sheer dust of dried blood, and holds you hostage in constant state of fear for the rest of your miserable life. Once you’ve tasted death, once you’ve looked into dead man’s eyes, it stays with you, just like that imagine of her stayed with me, imprinted forevermore in my being.

And I had said before, ever since that night in her apartment, when I laid on the couch, half-drunk and dumb with fascination, and she kissed Henry over that one-piece table, three deaths had been prescribed in her lifetime. What I was seeing then, in the dodgy parking lot of Cherry favour was a tell-tale sign of the first one.

‘What’s up, pup?’ Mors dicit. Or was it her? ‘A lovely weather we’re having, huh?’ She croaked my way, as she crouched next to me with a slight hiss.

The weather was nice indeed, not that I had noticed before she so gracefully pointed that out for me. Chilly, yes, and, courtesy of the lingering snow, covered in a thin tint of sepia, but overall nice. But none of that mattered. Not really, when she was there, so close that I could smell her, feel the faint warmth of her body leaving a shallow indentation on my arm.

‘Hey.’ My tongue darted to wet my horrid, chapped lips. She smelled naturally, of herself, like no other fragrance in this world, broken by slight notes of cigarette smoke and fresh coffee carried forth on her breath, although the smell was muffled, weathered and I had to breath unrealistically deeply to get a real sense of it. ‘Wasn’t expecting you here.’

Her brows furrowed, as if she had no idea of what I was talking about, and only when I pointed my finger up, to the neon sign, turned off for the time, had a sharp spark of comprehension light her eyes. For a second, she seemed suspended in time, when she considered and took in the sight of the establishment, and I thought she might break down crying, because her lower lip wobbled and the skin around her eyes tightened dangerously, but no, nothing like that happened. Instead, her white teeth peaked from beneath the pale barrier of her lips and a snarl, something I would take for a laugh if it wasn’t so primal, so angry, fell from between them.

‘Oh, that’s rich, that’s rich.’ She gurgled some more, before turning to me. Something in me, cowardly and slimy, suggested that I much preferred her giggling at the bar, and not looking at me. Truly, something in those washed-out, wandering eyes, did not feel quite… sane. ‘I was… out for a walk. Wanted to go to the post office. Guess I lost my way.’

I nodded, not knowing what else to say. And I wanted to say so many things. Maybe too many for any of them to come forth. Something in her face told me that she understood, and so I didn’t feel as restricted as before. Somehow, that one shift in the muscles on her face convinced me that she, the Diogenes I loved so much, the accomplice I adored with all my might, was still there.

‘What for?’

‘Oh, just… wanted to buy more letter writing paper. I’m writing a lot recently…’

I nodded and promptly decided I had to keep up the good karma of her talking, because with every word she uttered I heard that terrible rasp fading and fading away. I really wanted to hear that crystal-clear laugh of hers once more. Icy and fresh, like the coldest creaks flowing down from the highest of mountain tops. Although before I could ask her another question, she beat me to it, her ever perceptive gaze falling to my wet, dirtied knees. Something like a smile, real heartfelt smile and not a cynical crack of lips, flashed across her face and she cocked her chin towards that bizarre view.

‘You’re kneeling in the snow, Richard Papen, have you noticed?’

I nodded, again, and scoffed a little, noticing how strange that must’ve looked for someone who wasn’t privy to my melt-down, or anyone perfectly sane for that matter. Although, looking at her, I wasn’t sure I could apply the latter category to anything currently concerning her person.

‘Ya. I did. I just read somewhere that winter swims can work wonders for your nervous system. You know, I find it quite refreshing actually, the dirty water getting soaked in by my pants, I mean.’ I stomped my knees a few times, splashing the water around a bit, as if I was trying to paddle in real, deep water.

To my utter surprise, she giggled. And by gods, I’d be damned if I didn’t blush at that sweet, treacly laugh. My lips curved with hers, and widened even more, when she continued with her interrogation. Every second word she managed to utter was interrupted by a new wave of giggles.

‘No, really. Why are you… why are you kneeling like that? Come one, don’t give me that look, don’t look at me like you know something I don’t!’

She pulled me by my arms, her slim, tender fingers digging into my used and shabby overcoat with such surprising force I feared for the stitches that held it together. I grabbed her back, maybe out of that fear, or just simply because I missed the feel of her, her body somewhere near mine, the touch I could squeeze out of our short interactions, how her arms felt in the palms of my hand… I pulled her towards me, with the fullest intent of dragging her to the ground with me, but she was far stronger than I imagined. Now, the prospect of her catching Henry if he’d fall did not seem so abstract, when she somehow managed to maintain her equilibrium and slip from my grasp, jumping a few steps back, still, balancing perfectly of the balls of her feet. She flashed me a toothy grin, and I, the weak man that I was, tried again, just so I could see it again. I reached for her once more, but she was too agile for me, even with her limp, even in that state of suspended half-death, she jumped around me like an eager, young heifer, drafted circles as I wagged and dragged behind her.

‘Quick, Richard, you gotta be quick! Answer me, or you won’t catch me! Come on now, it’s not that hard, just tell me.’

After some more tittering coaxing, that went in a more-or-less similar tune to her first question, I finally gave in. Giddy myself with the marvellous melody of her happiness I could not help but tell her everything she wanted to know. Who was I to refuse her, after all? Before I started though, I waved my hand dismissively in order to lighten the impact of what I was going to say. I didn’t want her to take me for a hopeless case, but I figured that maybe the sheer ridiculousness of my behaviour might help in holding up that magnificent smile a while longer on her lips. I went for so long without seeing it, that now, that I finally got the chance to, I threw myself at it with abandon and hunger of a starving person.

‘I just had an epiphany. A pretty grim one.’ I admitted, pursing my lips, and nodding my head in a very pensive, over-the-top way. Her smile did not widen, but neither did it falter, so I took it for a small success. Her head tilted though, in that feline, interested burst of expression I had seen her making in classes before.

‘Grim? How come?’

Squaring my shoulders, I nodded. To be fair I did not really know if I wanted to tell her all about what just had gone through my head. The violence… the desperate need for it. But I figured that if I ever wanted her to open up to me, to keep on smiling, trusting me like she did a few weeks before, I had to give her something. So, like a coward, I went with the safest option, one that could give me the desired results.

‘Henry.’ I said, and her smile faltered until it faded completely. ‘He… he told me something, and I believed it, and now… well, now I know it not to be true. The epiphany, I guess, was about him.’ A dash of malevolence glimmered in her irises at the mention of his name. She craned her neck backwards, slowly, and very carefully like king cobra lazily hauling her body up and spreading the beige collar in the ultimate warning before dealing the lethal blow. Her hair electrified around her beautiful swan neck, seemingly willed by the sheer force of her ireful mind, and for a second, I thought I caught a glimpse of perilous white fangs, dripping with saliva down onto her tongue.

‘Guess you’re not the first one to be deceived.’ Venomous, was her comment. Stabbing and full of intent to kill. I nodded, half in understanding, half in agreement. ‘What has he said to you?’

I allowed myself a longer pause, just to swallow and gather my thoughts, although I already knew what I was going to say, the second his name left my lips.

‘Henry said he was going to help you. Deal with Bunny.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah, he said something like, an eye for an eye. You know, for choking you in the bar. I guess I thought he was going to scare him a bit, take him for a small tumble or…’

A spasm of fear run through my body when her face suddenly twisted and morphed, elongated by the purest iteration of despair. Her lips quivered and curved downwards, brows squeezing and releasing her high forehead in an iron grip of pain. Her eyes screwed up, until her face flooded in stramineous red and then popped back out, capillaries prominent, lashes fluttering, gathering unwanted wetness. She kind of choked, or gurgled, her throat waved and resonated with a snarl of an animal wounded and then a long, desperate whiz. Her hands, pale and thin, shot up, tangling her fingers into the already unruly coiffure. With another panicked exhale she pulled the tightly gripped strands over her face, strained them to their fullest length, and then some more, to the point where I saw the roots of her hair pulling the skin of her head up, and up. Her body convulsed, and then went completely taunt, her chest collapsing over her bent knees. Something in me broke, seeing her like that, something snapped. Not with the fiery, almost-too-cold rage of a mythical beast I felt before. Rather with soft, damp resignation that fills oneself when they find a dead mouse in the trap, they had set themselves the night before. I scooted closer, slowly, announcing my movement to her, so that she would not be scared with my presence, like a good hunter would do with a yet alive prey in need of a final blow. She nodded, still whimpering quietly as I shuffled across the wet pavement. I let my arms snake around her shoulders, tug her head to my chest, so that she would hear the steady beat of my heart, know that it was me, that I was real, and I was indeed there, by her side. She complied, fell forward into my embrace, as if longing for it. Her knees hit the ground, wet splash marked my lap, but none of us cared as I pressed my jaw to the crown of her head, as another wet splash hit my chest. Small, almost unnoticeable droplets slid from her eyes, from the bridge of her nose. The street was empty, just the two of us bundled to the side, shivering, pained and scared together. She could cry as much as she wanted, I shielded her from the rising wind.

‘Shhhhh, hey sweet thing. What’s happened? Come on. It’s all right. It’ll be all right.’ She sobbed into me, and I felt it, not in the physical when the waves of her voice went to crash over my body, but in a much more piercing way. My heart clenched at that. ‘I know, I know. Come one, let’s get up, you’ll catch a cold. See? your pants are already brown from the snow.’

Another froth of waves came crushing my chest, but I managed to haul her up. She nodded frantically over and over, clearly not knowing what to do. Embarrassed, or confused she begun to dry her face with quick, hard stokes, that left long red trails over her cheeks.

‘Yea, yea, you’re right Richard. It’s all so stupid, I’m so stupid, sorry… let me just… just… I’ll be fine in a second. Just. Can you stay a while longer?’ Her voice trembled and fluctuated between a nasal gags and whispery retches. Her head lunched forward and for a second, I thought she was vomiting, but she managed to straighten up. Iron heat rushed to my head, swirled in my stomach. ‘Just stay a bit longer, please. It’s stupid, it’ll pass.’

‘It’s not. You’re not. None of it is. You have every right…’ Red rimmed eyes shot to me, wet with all the things unsaid, undone, longing and hungry. The hunger of her soul reflected in those starry windows overwhelmed me, took my inhibitions, and threw them far, far away. Those were not the eyes of a human, of a mortal. Not with their sharp glints, soft edges, the magnificent colour, knowing glances. Older and wiser than any other eyes I’ve ever seen before. Kind but hardened by life. with the little lines at their corners, that stayed there as a testament to her laugh. But then, when she looked at me, when she mulled over my words and I saw her pupils retract, sag in helplessness and anticipation, to me those were the eyes of an immortal creature, burdened with ancient depth, the eyes of the magnificent daughter of Peneus. Sorrowful, forced to submit, yet unwilling. The eyes of a running Daphne. Then it clicked for me, and venom raised in furious fumes up my throat, bail-chased nausea spined me around, tightened my fists over her elbows, desperate to find a semblance of grounding, as the revelation, slipped the ground from beneath my feet. ‘Hey… you. Come, let’s get you home, how about that?’

One nod for her and I was already dragging her across the pavement, far, far away from the bar. I wanted to take her away, haul her to me and teleport to someplace safe. Salvage her from the dirt and gutter of the streets, from the gaze of people who might cross our way, from the words I, myself spoke. Her feet shuffled on the ground, disoriented and irregular. The shoe, I thought, the damned shoe. The limping leg, scratching the tumbling surface of pavement almost made my ears bleed.

‘I’m going to carry you now,’ I said, surprised at how deep my voice had come out.

Thankfully, she did not object to my statement, I don’t know what I would have done if she did. I took her into my arms, her legs hanging over one of my arms, head snug to my chest. Her arms snuck up and grabbed a hold of my shoulders, seemingly the straw that a drowning man is to clutch. I lunged forward then, my steps long, far apart, almost jumps. The streets passed me in a blur, the people, their wandering, bewildered stares. I did not care for them, for anything other than the slight flutter of her heart, beating slightly under my ribs, other than her warm body pressing into mine. She sobbed into my chest, and that gave me an edge, a mission to complete, a goal. Finally, I had something to do, some means to help. I had never walked as fast, stretched my legs as far apart, as I did when I devoured the steps of the stairwell of her apartment building, fort, sometimes five at a time. All the while I muttered to myself maybe more than to her, words of affirmation, calming phrases. And she was so small, holding onto me. God, so utterly small and shaky, I barely could feel her weight in my arms. I felt like sobbing myself. And my heels clacked along the pavement, and my breath bated, my heart clenched and aching, a steady drum of my steps, as I tore through the darkened bluish veil of night shine. She stayed cooped in my arms, small, sizzling out, yet still breathing. Her leg, the hurt one, marked with carnation-esque blemishes of copper blood, twitched over my bent elbow.

‘Hey, pretty thing, you hang in there, all right?’

I shook her body slightly in my grasp, just to make sure she heard what I said. Glancing down, I noticed that my breath had turned into a puff of grey mist, obscuring her silhouette a bit from me. But it didn’t matter, as long as I could feel the rise and fall of her chest, the small beat of her heart, so, so close to my own. She shrugged. The streets of Hampden appeared to be longer than I remembered. Stretched by a touch of an invisible hand. Darker, than I was used to. More cramped despite there being almost no sole in our field of vision. The unrelenting quiet of the eve, a sound box for my shaky tone. As I walked, the buildings before me appeared to be bending towards me, as if the same malicious hand pushed them with the force of gravity towards me, so that they could close over our heads, burry us in never ending piles of rubble. I would not complain if that was really the case. I would not mutter a word of defiance, only if she would speak to me, answer my question. But the silence between us stretched long and morbid, just like the distance I desperately tried to cover.

‘Are you okay?’

Her sad, big eyes gleamed at me through the canopy of our tangled breaths. Hers – short and shallow – mine – unsteady but deep.

‘No, Richard. I don’t think I am,’ she said, her voice snotty, clogged by the unrelenting stream of tears flooding her face. I had never heard her like that. The rasp, the croaking, all of that it seemed I could take. I could ignore it, or accept it even, purely because those screechy vowels, and high-pitched consonants, those sounds were hers. Formed a part of her, even if it was ugly, deterring. I still could see the beauty in them. Some sort of sardonic fascination, or grotesque appreciation for the abhorrent reality of her. But that mushed sob, she seemingly clawed out of her squeezed windpipes? That wasn’t her own, wasn’t of her making nor intention and so, as it wasn’t purely her, I could not bring myself to muffle the crump tearing my soul in two at the sound of it. I was sure, that if I only tried to respond in some kind of way, opened my mouth, the bone-chilling, banshee scream would fly out of it, scare her so utterly, that I would not be able to hold on to her squirming, scrambling form. And so, I stayed quiet, soaking the prolonged silence of stretched streets.

‘It’s opened,’ she murmured when we finally arrived at her door. By that time, she somehow managed to calm down, and now in her voice rung rather tiredness than the despair from before. ‘I left it open.’ Something in the way she said it, the numb undertone of resignation, when she announced it, chased shivers down my spine. I pushed; the door was indeed left open. Its hinges creaked slightly when they swung, revealing a whole other world to me. The ascetic landscape of her flat took me by surprise and made me stop in my tracks. Nothing, and I mean nothing was where it had been before. No plants, no coffee mugs or glasses, no ashtrays. The one-piece table had been pushed up to the window, while the couch with the glass coffee table stood, crocked and strangely in a line, in the middle of the space. Books, now stacked into neat piles had been gathered around the fireplace. Alarmingly – the Alexander the Great print was nowhere to be seen. Without it, the flat presented itself rather miserably. Like the Mona Lisa without her smile, or the Lady with an Ermine, with her companion scavenging for prey, somewhere outside the frame. I didn’t notice any plants either. Strange how a jungle-like kitchen turns to a complete replica of the Gobi Desert, in matter of mere days.

‘Where do you want me to…’

‘The couch. Please. Thank you.’

I let go of her, letting her body fall and submerge itself into the cushions of the meuble. As she laid back, the soft material of her dress slid over my arms, cold and silky, making me realise how hot, almost feverish, my skin had become. It was her, all her. Splayed in that mangled pose, her knees raised slightly up, hands thrown over the headrest, hair tangling everywhere, she looked most tragically. Most divine. Sudden hunger rumbled in my stomach, resonated along my spine and ribs, and I had to dip my head down, kneel before her in a mock attempt at loosening her shoelaces, in order to mask the scowl, it had produced on my face.

‘We should take off those shoes, you hear me. Matter of fact, we should burn them at once, or throw them into the river. See? How bloody your socks are? Completely soaked. No, you should never wear those again. Why didn’t you return them? They’re clearly too small for you.’

I tried to force every fibre of my body to bend into an apologetic, careful pose, one that would pose no threat to her. Not that I did, I just didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable, as I fiddled with the leather at her feet. I tried to be as small, as servile as possible. I wanted her to remember that moment, to rely on it in times of fear. Or then, right in that flat, squatted around the couch, I wanted her to see me as I was, Richard Papen, the most reliable, safe presence in her life. Better than Henry, than Bunny, than Charles or Camilla, or anyone else. Anyway, it did not matter what I did or did not do. She remained unresponsive to my every query. Only when, halfway through unlacing her second shoe, I proposed that I could maybe make some tea for the both of us, seeing as we were drenched in brownish-snowish pulp, head to toe, and our noses, resembled more a ripe set of cranberries in colour than a normal part of a human body, she murmured something, rather unbefitting of a lady, and I decided to take that as a ‘no’.

‘Aye, those are real torture devices, I really can’t understand why you keep wearing them.’

Her legs were daft, almost waxy as I gently slid off the shoes from her feet. It seemed as if I was catering to a giant doll, unable to bend her knees, or change positions. Like finest crockery her skin glistened with a sheer sheet of sweaty glaze, moon-kissed and pale, even at her lowest she rendered such a powerful aura around her, I, the sane and most certainly more empowered out of us two, felt like game. Game to the real hunter – my own desire.

‘Have you ever heard Richard… there is this thing those cool, riotous dads tell their children when they get slightly injured and raise inadequate ruckus. Something like… well, if your finger hurts, then hit your head, then the finger will stop hurting.’

I laughed, dryly, rather focused on the copper smudges soaked into the white cotton of her socks, than her. I knew that if I looked up, faced her beaming, pleading eyes, I would not be able to control myself. I would unravel before her, cry or wail or fall to the ground to roll in my gloom and ineptness, and that was the last thing she needed.

‘I don’t quite know what you mean. If I ever cried, my dad just told me to shut up and soak it up.’

‘That’s tough love for ya,’ Over my scoffing I heard her snort as well, although she had to snarl right afterwards and prevent snot from overflowing her nostrils. ‘But no, the bang your head method actually makes some sense, to me at least. If something hurts, like finger, and it hurts real bad, then maybe hurting your head more will, well not alleviate the pain from the finger, but focus your attention on the splitting headache you get next. A bait and bleed, but for pain.’

‘So, does your finger hurt?’

Her hands moved. One grabbed at the scarf woven around her neck, the other lifted the hem of her skirt, slowly bunching it upwards, cumulating the small creases into her fingers, one after the other. Agile and skilled like a tiny spider gathering its web. As the folds of her clothes compressed further, diminished, as they slid slowly against her body, the more and more of waxy-pale skin I saw. What I saw, at least up there, on her neck, I somehow anticipated. Black and blueish marks forming a faint shape of a hand, big and spread across her larynx, imprinted with conviction and goal – to muffle any sound that it might’ve produced. But down there, where her skit got hiked up to her hip, I could never prepare myself for what I saw there.

‘Finger. Fingers. Thighs. Neck, calves, wrists, ribs, ears, eyes, chest, lungs, stomach.’

Her monotone voice filled my ears with an oceanic roar. Purple stains, red scratches and spotty chafing jigged and bounced a pagan dance across her skin, I saw them and in a sort of semi-empiric sort of way I felt them stomp on my thighs, hurt, and twist my nerves in a hellish grip, dastardly burning through right to my bones like and acrid pools of venom. I could only suspect how much she was suffering. The muscle above my knee twitched and spasmed painfully, bringing me back, polarising on the here and now, as her daft fingers weaved through the silky waves of her skirt. And the bruises I saw there. Burgeoning, at the precipice of her thighs, in a bedlam of rioting, furious reds, nauseous greens and mournful purples. Vulgar motley splayed all the way from her bony knees to, as far as my eyes could reach, the slight peaks of her quadriceps. Brutish handprints grabbing at her with a phantom, everlasting grip, swallowed every paled inch of her skin, and looking at them I felt how they burned on me.

‘Everything hurts, Richard. The shoes though… they’re more physical.’

Then she looked away, into the void above my head, and it seemed she found some familiar comfort in that unfocused blank state.

‘We’ve all got good many things that pain us, I just never thought I would prefer the horrid burn of flesh over my ethereal torments.’

‘Lean back, sweet thing, all right?’ It was hard for me to take the skirts out of her fingers, but I managed to do so, even with the trembling of my stems, I pulled the material in most gentle manor and yet it staggered on her knee and stayed there. She didn’t mind. ‘You need anything else?’

For a second, I saw a shadow of focus march across her face. And then the stare came, the terrifyingly polarising, pulverising gaze that crossed universes and souls, crush them, crush me, the game to the hunter of her eyes. Contagious, like a mood that passes into you, a sound that creeps on the border of your mind a tune you repeat, on and on and on, and with time you begin to dread and hate it, until it loops, and you cannot hear naught, but that single melody. Her will, so strange and strong, shined amongst that onslaught of power stirring in her pupils like the tolling of a bell.

‘The pills. The ones in the cupboard. Right there.’

I followed the path her finger drafted in the air right to the kitchen. Clean, empty, eerily not her. I reached into the cupboard, surprisingly containing no cups, just a messy pile of packets and bottles with different kinds of medicine. Some of them green, others pink or purple or blue. Safe to say the cupboard seemed to be containing all the colour drained from the apartment. In the corner of the shelf, I thought I saw a greyish piece of cloth or canvas, like the one stretched over the hearth with Alexander on it, but I did not let myself linger on that.

‘Which ones do you want?’

I observed the back of her head from where I stood. She wasn’t moving and if she hadn’t responded to my question, I’d thought that the second I walked away, she transcended into the plain of death by the sheer power of her hollow stare.

‘Duragesic.’

‘Forte?’

‘Ye, ye. And water, please.’

‘I can bring you some in my hands, otherwise, I don’t see how.’

‘Oh, yeah, right. Then no water.’

She said that as if the marginal lack of any glasses or cups in her apartment was some cardinal truth, she just so happened to forget.

I brought the whole package to her, although I pondered a while if it would be safer to just squeeze a couple of the pills out and hand them to her like that. But I ultimately thought she wouldn’t like that. So, I just threw the silver leaflet her way, and like a starved animal she nearly tore her way to the pills through the plastic safety-packing. I watched in horror as she downed not one, not two and not three but four white, oval pills. And then she swallowed, without blinking an eye. She must’ve gathered some saliva in her mouth beforehand to help them go down, either way the bulge that painfully dragged down her throat went down uncomfortably slow, and I could see her face contorting at the unsavoury, bitter aftertaste. But then she moved, really moved, and smiled, like nothing I’ve seen her do on that day, or the weeks before. Her body loosened and lost a certain quality of strain as if some magical, invisible rope feel from it, releasing her consciousness into a more senile, easy state. Worry evaporated from me like dew on a hot, summer day, and I smiled back at her.

‘What now?’

‘Now, Richard dearest, I go to sleep. And you, you do what you want. Make it worthwhile. Be happy while you do it. Do not hurt.’

She started to shift clumsily on the sofa and so I came closer to lift her legs and help in making herself comfortable. Her head dragged along the pillows back and forth, heavily, filled with woolly haze of the medicine. Her eyelids fluttered in a drowsy rhythm, shoving away the waves of sleepiness as she stared at me and mouthed something, some kind of advice I could not read. I shuffled closer, bent my neck so that my ear could gather the soft nectar dripping from her lips.

‘Or take some pills, I’ve money for some more. And sleep. Sleep is the best solution for dwelling my dear. In sleep you don’t remember, you do not feel. It is just you and the dark void all around you.’

I jumped back at the slurring onslaught of her words, vicious and sad. In doing so I carelessly stepped on the tale of my coat and crumbled to the floor. Her laugh, deranged and dry followed me in my way down, resonated in my bones as I came into the contact with the cold, hard ground. Wind whistled in that cruel giggle as she quickly switched into a humming tune, mocking my fall. Any humour run away from me at the sound of that maddened croak, like liquids seeping out of a corpse. She was right, the physical pain of my backbone might’ve been grounding, comforting against the cruel tear I felt when she pointed at me and laughed.

‘Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous vîmes, mon âme, ce beau matin d'été si doux: au détour d'un sentier une charogne infâme sur un lit semé de Cailloux.’

Pointing an accusatory finger at me, as if I were the aforementioned carcass, she swayed to the rhythm of her words, wild smile stretching her face, pupils dilated and gleaming with a strange glow. Sweat came onto her forehead and her eyes bathed in a strange mist of pure delirium. I plucked my eyes away. It was like hand-picking them out of my skull.

‘Les jambes en l'air, comme une femme lubrique, come on, open your legs Richard, brûlante et suant les poisons, ouvrait d'une façon nonchalante et cynique son ventre plein d'exhalaisons.’

A strange lullaby, and so it was, but so was she. And she chanted like that for a second more, mesmerising me, pulling with the gravity of her flawless French and taunting words down, down the spiral with her, until her wrist limped, her hand slowly lowered, and her eyelids closed. Her breath steadied, deepened and soon I realized she fell asleep mid-sentence. I watched for a while, took a hold of her hand, and counted the pumps of her blood. Then her neck, as I studied the slow ticks on her face. She dreamed, I gathered, instead of sleeping, like she intended, but at least in that state she was left alone. Terrified of leaving her like that, in her solitude, to awake in an empty, cold apartment I stayed there for a while. But my body twitched and squirmed into action. As her breath came in, poisonous rage flowed into me, burning every inactive cell. The dragon-slaying knight in shining armour awakened inside of me once again and without thinking, I stumbled onto my feet, took off my coat to put something around her, so she would freeze, and staggered out of the flat. My gait strayed uneven, but my steps gained in audacity and purpose with every meter devoured. With bitter taste of upcoming glory, I directed myself towards Henry’s layer.

My head was light, soaring miles away from Earth, breaking through the cotton barriers of clouds, shoving stars out of my way, dispersing galaxies, I was hot and cold at the same time, waves of burning strain crashed within my muscles with every stretch and cramp, and the wind cooled my body, now bared to it, rid of the safe layer of a coat. Greatest discomfort resonated all the way from my feet to my knees, as the soles of my shoes slipped every now and again against the wet cobblestone of the streets. Every cant of every stone, every empty space left by a stray foundation of the pavement filled me with utter desperation and an emotion so strong, so indescribable, I nearly threw up. Everything was too tight on my body, too damp and too cold. My hands suddenly appeared to bony and fragile as I balled them into fists at my sides to stop the antsy ticks that dripped over the joint of my fingers. At the back of my skull formed a sort of pressure familiar to some, especially those suffering from strong migraines. I experienced pain like that before, mainly due to alcohol overuse or exhaustion, never like that though. I had never feared for my precious eyeballs so much, never dreaded and anticipated the moment the pressure would become too much, and they’d pop right out of my eye sockets. My cheeks hollowed out, pulled to the inside of my mouth and I nibbled at the soft tissue to distract myself from the growing dizziness radiating straight from my corneas. Iron floated to my tongue, brought out bitter taste of anger even more. Ire and pain fumed in me like twin forces spurring each other on, keeping their flames burning.

I don’t remember much of my journey, how I got to where I had to be, how I managed to not crush into anyone or anything or any particular details of the spaces I run through, just the angry swelling of the darkened sky, as the clouds gathered to bring forth a snowstorm. I prayed, all the way there, that Henry would be home. And if not, I was wholly ready to roam across different apartments, even the campus to find him and shove my fist as far back his throat, so that he could see the stars that currently jumped around my field of vision. Seething, manifesting I arrived at his door, and I don’t know if thanks to my stupid luck, or the power of divine beings listening in on my pleadings, he was. In a matter of seconds, he answered to my brazen knocking, his dark head poked through a crack of an opened door, gold, short chain of a lock resting slightly against his curls. And maybe it was the sheer existence of the chain, maybe the austere face beneath it, but my tongue suddenly stuck to the roof of my mouth, dry and stiff as a log. I had so many things I wanted to say, to do, so many scenarios I planned in my mind, a myriad of quips, of angry yaps and barks, and yet in the face of a real challenge, when he measured me with his cold, distant gaze, I found I had nothing to say to him. I took a breath and stopped. My lungs swelled, pushed my chest out, he stared, not even bothering to unlock the door, as if I was just some peddler, bothering him. I shifted, trying to gaze into the apartment, he moved with me, squaring his shoulders, and obscuring my view completely. Either way I would be able to see anything like that, the light inside was turned off.

‘Richard,’ he said finally, his voice empty and flat. ‘What brings you here?’

I wasn’t able to speak yet, not even force myself to breathe properly. So, through some strange, dreamy influence, I raised my hands to the sides of my head and wagged my fingers back and forth, like when little kids do, if they want to imitate a bunny, which gathered no reaction from him, so I lowered my make-believe ears and wrapped them around my throat. And when his brows soared across his forehead, clearly not understanding what I was trying to communicate, I started to toss my head around, squirm and convulse. Muffled gurgles escaped my throat as my fingers tightened and tightened, squeezing my larynx in a grip I would never suspect myself of being able to pull. This must’ve come as quite a shock to him, to see me choke myself right at his doorstep.

‘What the- Richard, Jesus Christ! What are you doing?’

In one swift motion he tore the chain out of its place and swinging the door open, pulled me in by the collar. The move was so unexpected and at once so strong that I staggered forward, struggling to find any footing and by the end of my tumble I swung in the grasp of his extended hand – the only thing that saved me from smashing my face against the floor. My shirt creaked and I think popped unexpectedly at the seam, right over my left scapula. I whined, baffled, loud enough for the two men sitting inside to turn towards me.

The room I found, or rather forced, myself into was dark. Not dark like the night, that snuck up on me, quiet like a thief, right outside the building. No, rather dark like lack of any light. The curtains were drawn and only the luminescent outer line of windows. The rest of the room got drowned out in a blue-black cold of darkness. The air inside was stuffy and reeked of alcohol mixed with sweaty fumes of tobacco, likely suspended in the small space of what I could only assume was a saloon, for long hours. To the sides, against the walls and between various shapes, most probably pieces of furniture, poked some strange, sharp, and fuzzy or delicate and swaying objects. Plants, I thought to myself as I saw that some of them stood proudly on lean wooden stems, and other chose to bend down and slither right into the murky embrace of dark sliding across the floor. Heavy mist of conspiracy wrapped itself around the whole space, tucked itself into every nook and cranny. What struck me the most about the apartment though, was the utterly perfect silence scattered across it, disturbed only periodically by the cars passing slowly by, down, down, down below. Against the backdrop of obscured rectangles of windows two man sat, lit from behind, their sharp features presented themselves disturbingly alien. Their hair, accumulated around their heads into thick manes of dark matter, lighter only at the ends, when the moon could tear through the sheerest layers and colour them in coronae of copper and gold. Long faces starved and caved in at the edges, bone-showing, dead-eyed, terrifying sculptures tasked me with unison judgment. The smaller, gilded boy nursed a glass against his abdomen, the other, red judge held up a smoking pipe. God, how I wished to be drunk in that moment.

‘Oh, Richard, fancy seeing you here.’

‘Do you really, Francis?’

Once Henry released me, I stumbled a bit forward then regained my balance. Somehow, I discovered it was much easier to regain my previous rebellious disposition when I didn’t have to face him. It was easier to be a dick towards Francis, than Henry. To spit all the venom the bile accumulated throughout the day, days, weeks. It was easier to speak the truth when the person I feared most telling it to wasn’t facing me. The boys in the chairs shuffled uncomfortably, Charles swirled the drink in his glass a couple of times. Dark liquid swirled into a small tornado and then fell back into its given shape. I bit the inside of my cheek.

‘Are you alone? Is it just the three of you?’

An uneven drag sounded somewhere behind me, most likely announcing that Henry chose to change positions or chose his sitting anew.

‘What’s it to you?’ He asked. ‘You come over unannounced, barge in, you don’t even answer our questions, and now you expect us to answer yours?’

Something in his voice, maybe the cold distance or the chilling indifference towards my exemplary rudeness, unnerved me. As if he wasn’t even bothered nor interested by it all, cut off completely from me, from the world, from its actions. Maybe it was his resignation that rendered him so inhuman, stirred him to ask and answer and act like a robot, inquiring on auto pilot, that took me to the hights of my ire.

‘I met her, I was at her apartment, she’s got the bruises still, she’s a mess. I’m here because you’re here. Sitting. Doing nothing, and she withers. I’m here because you don’t even know that, because you don’t even bother to check. So now, are you alone?’

A quick glance exchanged by the boys in the chairs told me they knew. Three steps and I was by them, starring daggers into the beautiful, alien aureoles of their heads. My hands gripped the headrests above them, ruffled them into my fists, successfully closing in on them, creating a circle of my arms so that they could not escape me.

‘She does not have water at her apartment, no lants, no books, nothing. It does not even look like her apartment no more. She lives there alone, sleeps on the couch, leaves the door open, and you won’t even talk to her, you talk to Bunny, miserable traitors.’

‘What traitors, Richard? We’re all friends here, she just focuses on her studies more right now, come on, why so angry?’

‘Oh, don’t give me that shit Francis. There is something terribly wrong going on inside of her, she faced and managed to get away from a terrible fate, we didn’t act in time and now you act like nothing happened?! You cut her off when she needed you, you let her disappear, you-‘

I spun on my heel, not carrying about the yaps of the boys raising from their chairs grabbing at me, when I already stepped away, decided on my new direction. I pointed an accusatory finger into the dark, where a lean dark shadow stood perched, no sign of shame seeded in its body. ‘You let her go you allowed to go away, you changed your school desks, you bastrad. You might as well be the reason for her being like this right now!’

Something hard and overwhelmingly heavy hit my back, settled between my shoulder blades. A sweet smell, floral and light hit my nostrils as I felt a sharp cheek bone digging into my jaw, bony hands sliding across it, trying to grip and close my mouth.

‘Stop screaming, stop fucking screaming, Richard, stop it, now I tell you!’

High-pitched squeals of Charles filled my ears as I dug my elbow into his ribs and shrugged his weight off my shoulders in an unbelievable fit of athletic prowess. Somewhere, in the corners of my eye I noticed that he stumbled a few steps back and knocked into Francis, who apparently was hot on my heels. I took the opportunity and lunged forward, tearing my throat out.

‘You shut up, you shut up, just shut up, and do something! You abandoned her, you-‘

I didn’t not expect the clash. Nor did I expect the arms, the bronze snarls, that wrapped around me, my nape, my head, auspiciously muffling my screams, tugging me into the grey mass that was my opponent. The tumble was unfair, predestined from the second I took my first step, I knew it, when Henry’s surprisingly hot breath fanned my ear. Funny, at this point I thought he would cough and wheezing with icy stilettos, instead he huffed pure fire. Matter of fact, his whole body fumed with ghastly feverish heat waves, unbalancing the air around us. I felt something rumbling in his chest, like a thunder, and then as his fingers comped through the locks at the back of my head and pulled it backwards, painfully far, strikingly ungentle, I saw his face clearly, for what I could gather, first time in weeks.

All fell silent when I met his gaze and the room, the boys, their animalistic pants, the plant, it all disappeared, and all that existed, all that lived, and breathed died and focused inside of those black, soulless shark eyes.

Scrupulously austere, locked into a heavy mask was his physiognomy. And yet, up close I could see the cracks. Harsh and deep in how his brows furrowed, how his lips turned down their corners, how a vein popped regularly on his forehead. His glasses cast no reflection, no shadows over his dark eyes as they filled with such torment, such ache I don’t think I would be ever able to gaze into them if he wasn’t holding me still, craning over me like a gargoyle swinging off a cathedral’s roof, judging the sinners, scaring off the unfaithful. In that bend he looked starved, famished and lonely for something. I though, in a brilliant second of sobriety, that, as I had noticed before, those eyes were a mirror image of hers. He too, surprisingly enough, had not took the severance too well. Maybe the half that she lost, and he so desperately searched for in my face, the filling they both lacked and without which they could not live, was one and the same.

I did not expect to see through his heart’s frosty discipline so easily, so abruptly and so it was not the grip truly, that had settled me into stillness, but that beggar’s stare. For a split moment we stood in silence, locked in a hug so uncomfortable, on both physical and metaphysical plane, I cringed. From the depths of me surged disgust, slimy and languid, and as his eyes flew over my form, I felt it crawling up my throat. Pathetic, I thought, he was pathetic gripping me like that, lazy for expecting me to hand him a dagger of words that could disembowel him. And yet between the irregular crack of his face, amongst the frosty spikes of hoar and rime I saw a soft spark of something strong, still not forged into completion, but nursed and thought over countless times. It was not ire, not anger, not pain. Calculated and mixed into a brew stronger than any combination of those emotions, he, probably yet not aware of the fact, has flung himself into a spiral of vicious madness, unrecognisable to those, who had not experienced misery. So, I spoke, handed him the tanto.

‘Where is your honour, Henry? What are you doing, pushing her away? Do you want to punish her, instead of him?’

With that, his guts spilled, the truth gushed out of his mouth. And his eyes, like the shark’s buttony orbs dilated at the smell of his own blood.

‘I’m not punishing her. I’m protecting her, keeping away from the just punishment I plan to deal.’

His voice sounded husky, gravely in my ear as he seeped venom into it. It burned, the temperature, the words, the slight tremble of his vocal cords as it all splashed against the shell and soaked into the eardrum.

‘I’m going to kill Bunny for what he had done to her, to us, to others, and she’ll have nothing to with this. With me.’

Stunned, I mulled over his words, I let the marinate inside my brain and I nibbled on every syllable like a capricious critic. I took them in, broke the pallet of tastes, analysed. Finally, after swallowing the context, after understanding the bitter flavour he has served me, slowly, I nodded.

‘But I will,’ not a question, a statement. ‘They will as well.’

Two shadows hummed in unison behind me, giving me an almost silent confirmation of what I’ve already figured out. A Cheshire, lucid grin cracked opened on Henry’s lips, as he too let out a pleased sound. His teeth, straight and white gleamed in the dark, two rows of beastly weapons.

‘I don’t think you have a choice, Richard, now you join us, or you join Bunny.’

Fear and trepidation scurried cross me as I realised, I had walked right into a murder council. Worse, elation washed over me with the realisation that the head of the jury, the demented predator, currently holding me in his grip, had no mercy to give to the swine I most desired to see dead.

#bunny corcoran #camilla macaulay #charles macaulay #francis abernathy #henry winter #henry winter x reader #richard papen #the secret history #afab reader #fanfic

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axieta · 1 year

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Hey! I hope you're doing great. Im just wondering when part 9 of "Hungry Eyes" will be released? No pressure or anything like that, its just such a good story and im hooked. :)

As per usual, I’m terribly sorry for the tardiness, and also incredibly grateful for all the sweet notes from all of you. Regarding the Hungry eyes chapter 9 - I should be able to release it rather soon, maybe by the 19th or so.

Once again, sorry and thank you.

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axieta · 1 year

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Hungry eyes

Chapter 8

Henry Winter x reader

|An eye for an eye|

I never got to know what real love feels like. Not in the empiric, soul-bonding way some of us do. I never fell in love, never threw myself into the emotion with hunger and abandon Shakespeare would want to describe, nor did I find my other half, and my appreciation of physical beauty had never developed into the admiration of a soul, not really. But I got to know what it looks like.

I watched it simmer like a small coal in the slowly dying fire, blazing like the wild fires of Mount Olympus, engulfing but at the same time strangely warming. Heating smiles and cheeks, glimmering in the throwaway glances. Or blooming slowly, spreading its soft, petals, blushing delightfully in the warm array of feelings that fertilised it.

I saw it in the pale hands conjoined, twisted, one inside of the other, when their proprietaries thought no one was looking. I saw it in the soft, quick pecks on lips, on cheeks, on foreheads, and in the rushed adjustment of crooked glasses by a hand too small and too slim to be their owner.

I heard it in the hushed giggles, soft and melodic like the thawing creaks of Parnassus, and the murmurous baritone going lazily through the passages of Argonautica Orphica.

I knew it was love, despite never experiencing it myself. How could I not? One look at those tangled hands, flushed cheeks, relaxed figures… one note of those soft laughs… one glance at the creatures of my interest, children of Helios, dreadful idols with lovely hair and human voices, and there was no denying it. No matter how deep down they pushed it, how well they thought they were covering their tracks. I was the hound thirsty for all that, feral for just the slightest morsel of that warmth, seeking them and constantly on the look-out.

And what I had discovered is that L-O-V-E is not an emotion in itself, rather it is a state one might find themselves in. A complicated arras of emotions, behaviours and interactions woven larger and tighter by those tangled in its threads. It is happiness, elation, impatient expectancy, worry, idyllic calm. And that is the good part of love. After all, all good cannot exist in its purest form alone. To every good notion, there is its bad counterpart. Even in love. Dialectical monism, some may call it. I call it life. So, soon enough, the other emotions – wrath, anger, despair, hurt – they all followed suit. After those, I discovered that love, this crystal pure tapestry I admired so, can get ugly, and that to love truly, and most ardently is to endure this engulfing darkness and stop your loved ones from crossing one too many lines. It is the worry for them that keeps the flame of love alive, that gives it the gas-stained, blue tint. To let the fire completely consume you and be wholly miserable afterwards. My two friends unfortunately taught me that. Their love soured, rotted, bitten and diminished by the things Henry had done to keep it alive. It was not my pain to hold, and yet the hurt that comes with the thought of that sorrowful affair, drabs me with tiresome regularity. It died, that love, the second Henry decided what to do with Bunny. But for some time, for those few blessed weeks I was content to watch and soak in the exuberant light of purest, most delicate kind of love.

In the weeks following our excursion to the beach I witnessed some secretive behaviour from both Henry and her. Suddenly, the two of them were too busy to do anything. Sunday dinners at Charles and Camilla’s? No can do. Studying together at the library? Sorry. Quick visit at Francis’? We’re preoccupied. And always that damned ‘We’. Never singular ‘I’ from those two, always plural and unified.

It had become so excessive that we, as the whole class, saw them only during the lessons with Julian. And even then, they seemed quizzically distant. They kept to themselves, going as far as to cunningly changing places, Forcing Francis out to the back of the class, and only working with each other. Inseparable, the two of them seemed even more unachievable, unapproachable for us than ever before. There was this unexplainable glow about them, as if their hair became lighter, their eyes brighter, minds clearer. As if for hundred generations they had been walking the world, drowsy and dull, idle and at their ease, until they stumbled upon that beach and suddenly, like in Symposium, they came to be one, humans before they became humans. Four arms, four legs, and no faces for us to see, for they always stayed turned towards the other.

One time, when I was walking to the class, I saw them. Two dark blurs against the backdrop of white. Rare, in those weeks, the sight of them. Like a pair of white ravens glimmering amongst trunks of a forest. So, I had to stop, take a look at them. Safe in the cover of arches of loggia I was strolling through, I hid myself amongst the shadows, an undetectable spectator.

The weather was harsh. The biting cold ready to freeze off any uncovered parts of human body. In my case, it was the nose that suffered the most. Red, furiously maroon, only after a couple of minutes on free air. Not even the sharp, white light of the winter sun offered any respite from all that cold. It seemed to be mocking all the people beneath it, it shined, brighter and stronger that in any other day. And the sky was clear, a sharp blue of a polished sapphire, not a cloud staining its Persian tile. In the parabolic curves of the outside corridor’s arches, it might’ve looked like a silky fabric spread flat between the darkened stones. The ground beneath it seemed to be moving, as the sun flexed in the white, waved surface, bejewelling the snow with a trembling spark of diamonds. The beauty of that landscape, the wonderful colours of regal jewels and the absolute, charming waviness of it all should indicate a temperature fitting for such a charming view, closer in its degrees to the feeling it evoked in the chest of an observer. But no. the cold bit with a ferociousness comparable to the ninth circle of hell.

But Henry and she, they did not seem to be bothered at all by all that. Neither the cold nor the ascetic landscape reigning over them could ever scare them away, discourage from doing whatever they were doing. Not when heat came off their bodies in heaps of white vapour, swirling around their bodies, their breaths mingling as one in the still air. The fume coming off her lit cigarette almost indistinguishable amongst the white haze of their delighted whispers.

They were hopping over ice ridges, swift and agile, cutting through the white plain of the field, kicking up the powdery snow. She led the two-man procession, dragging Henry behind her, black, thick scarf hanging from her extended hand. I could not see Henry’s face, but judging by his swooping, resilient walk, every fibre of his body was hell-bent on catching up to her. He shouted, out of breath in his pursuit after her. Oddly enough, I could not hear any trace of contempt or irritation that would usually accompany him. More than anything, the words that came out of his mouth flew in a clear tone of amusement.

‘Oh, you little minx! How stubborn can you be? Come, put it on this instant!’

‘Like hell you’ll force me to do that!’

Volatile as ever, she jumped out of his grasp and right into a frozen cap of snow. White powder flew up and glimmered in the noon sun like thousands of tiny diamonds, though I could swear on my life, that her feet had never touched the ground. It must’ve amused her, because she carried on through the knee-high, white barrier, kicking her feet high, high to her chest, giggling deliriously while doing so. Soon enough, the floating snow settled onto her, clung to her loose hair and the dark wool of her coat, and if anyone cared to look her way in that moment, they would probably think that a small yeti somehow got onto the perimeters of Hampden and the tall, limping fellow chasing after it was some kind of crazed scientist, persistent to drag the creature to his laboratory.

And far from crazed Henry wasn’t. Covered in a thin sheet of snow as well, he tore through the infinite white after her with a mad grin on his lips. His teeth shined dangerously as he screamed after her in Spanish, profanities, even I do not feel comfortable sharing. Finally, he caught up to her, after all it was not as if she really tried her hardest to get away from him, and with a ferocious, triumphal yelp he threw himself at her, tackling her to the plush hills of snow. The tackle was in every bit of it, professional. Not like I would see on the small field stretched before my old high school, no. It carried impact, stile, technique. The way he tensed before the jump, and then loosened when hitting her body with his, not to hurt her too much. Or the way his arm wrapped skilfully around her waist, and then the other, just around her neck, the palm of his hand cautiously protecting her cranium, as if he had done that move a hundred times before. Oh, and the fall! How he landed not on her, but rather chose to lighten the fall with his knees, ending the whole sequence hovering over her. It all screamed effortless beauty. Well, it would, if moments after, she wouldn’t manage to tilt him over, and onto his back. Now she howled in victory, saddling his chest like an experienced jockey. Henry huffed and leaned back into the snow, resigned, as she waved the scarf, still in her hand, before him, its fringes teasing his nose.

‘Never gonna win with me! Never gonna win! Never, ever!’ She laughed in a sing-song voice. Henry only rolled his eyes, like one might roll their eyes at a petulant child, and with no effort he sprung up, sending her once again to the ground. ‘Oh, come on, you brute!’

And then, with a terribly delighted shriek, she disappeared underneath the dark folds of Henry’s coat. He covered her with his whole body, engulfing her shrill form into himself as if to introduce her into his system. Henry made sure that she didn’t lay in snow for too long, wrapping the flaps of his coat around her, cocooning her further. Laughter shook this newfound dual species of man, as her legs kicked the tail of his coat up in a miserably unspectacular show of defiance. Only her hand managed to slip out of that smothering mass of Henry and like the last wave that a man drowning throws into the air, she swung the wool scarf far away from them. It swayed in the air and then plopped on the snow, not even disturbing its white, parabolic surface. But that only made him laugh even harder. Sliding down the twisted spiral of giggles, his arms snaked around her torso and with one hard push he sent them both sliding up, and forward. His nimble hand swiped it right out of the reach of her outstretched fingers. Quick and precise like the hand that deals with cards he wrapped one end around his wrist and then proceeded to swirl it around her neck. She never left the safe confines of the cocoon, nor did a singular snowflake fall on her, that’s how he was careful with her.

‘Listen here to me! I’ve just heard that someone died in the city! A student! Frozen to death during the night! If you’re not careful you might end up just like him!’

One, two, three loops around her neck he spun, until the scarf covered completely and tightly all off her neck and a part of her mouth, so her screams of protest came out inaudible and muffled.

‘No! No! It scratches!’

She tossed and turned as if possessed, and to be honest, they made a brilliant match in that department, because he as well, giggled like a madman.

‘Better to be scratched a bit than to freeze to death, now don’t be stupid and keep it on! Or do you want Khione to bite your ears off?’

She struggled then some more but with no certain conviction.

‘No, no. Stop, ahhh, you scooped in snow with it.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

His nose, mindlessly circling her cheek and temple, drafting small arches over her brow seemed to make her docile, good. Frost kissed their faces and glossed them, over with shimmering, rosy colours.

‘I, personally, like you better alive.’ His boyish, thin lips lingered for a while on her brow. ‘And warm.’ Then on her nose. The motion of that mouth was languid, decelerated, sure of possessing all the time in the world, not even bothered to purse and grace her skin with a full-fledged kiss, just with slow feline nudges. ‘And healthy.’ His arms travelled up to her head. They encased her from above and successfully shielded her face as he, and I was sure of it, dipped down to capture her mouth with his. ‘With ears.’ She giggled slightly into the kiss, as did he, their lips smoothing over each other, gazes bore into the depth of the other.

I stared at them from my agreeable distance. My mind completely numb, soaking in that dreamy imaginary. I studied their bodies, their hands, the subtle play of light and shadows breaking over Henry’s coat. The giggle that his fingers elicited from her when he rubbed her earlobes between index and the thumb was like the purest symphony to me. Carmen of all laughs.

But I was too scared, or maybe too timid to come even an inch closer. That was an intimate, although a public moment, and watching it like that, from deep within the shadows gave me a strange, unnerving feeling. It settled on my nape like dew and dripped from my pits, down my arms in cold streaks of sweat. I backed away, one step after the other, very slowly, not to make any noise. I found out, more than a week before, that stealth was my biggest asset and greatest friend. I managed to escape without a hitch, blended back into my solitary, murky reality, to my arches and cold stone. But as soon as I averted my gaze I instantly longed for their light. For the warmth they shared between each other, and the smiles dedicated only to the other, impossible to see for an outsider. So even though I felt ashamed of snooping on them like that, spying even, for nothing more than my own pleasure, there was this pathological need, burrowed deep inside of me to continue my, as she called it many times before, Tom-peeping, or peep-tomming, I forget. I just needed to… I don’t know… see them, I guess.

From that moment on the thoughts of them plagued me day and night like an infection, inflamed, festering wounds in my soul they kept me up, sweaty, with my brows furrowed as I laid tangled in my bedding. It physically hurt to long for them so, even when they did not long for me at all.

There was no remedy for my strange illness. No antidote, but them.

Them, them, them. That plural, inseparable pronoun rattled about my skull all the time. And I couldn’t help myself. I started following them.

Once I had spent close to forty minutes lurking outside of her lecture halls, hunched over, tucked into myself on one of the benches like a hen perched in her coop, anxious with the anticipation of my foxy executor. Not once in the span of those forty minutes did I question my actions, not once had the thought occurred to me that what I was doing bordered on insane or stalkish. In all truth, I hadn’t thought at all. Without them, without their proximity, their stark image together, I was non-existent, vacuous in my whole demeanour. Suspension overtook me in detail and overview. And only when she emerged from the building, a gemstone in the grey, muddy mass of other, rather dim-looking students, and he, right behind her, a shadow, I let out a breath I had no apparent idea I was holding in. I sunk into the darkness of the eve, as they passed me by and then followed their careful steps with a longing stare. Sunken into the shadows I was invisible to them.

Contrary to that snowy morning, on which I spotted them in the commons, the evening was gloomy and dark, covered with an ashen layer of drizzle. The day before was quite warm, at least in the general perception of winter, and some of the snow happened to melt. In the night the temperatures dropped drastically, and the thaw froze over the cobble-stoned paths of Hampden. The thick, misty shell of ice held on strong throughout the day and when the drizzle came, the already slippery surface turned murderous. I had already seen a few people trip and fall on the section of the pavement. I had heard many shrieks of pain and unflattering nosegays of curses already, but it never occurred to me that one of them could ever succumb to the fate similar to our peers. After all, in my mind, the both of them, at all times glided at least half an inch over the surface of the earth. All that conviction crumbled to the ground with a singular slip of her feet. Suddenly, the air broke with a miserable squint of her soles on the ice. With face frozen in utter surprise and a scream half-dead on her tongue she swung back, her body bending as if boneless. Horror befell me, but before I could do anything, anything at all, Henry stepped in. The unmovable force that he was, he caught her elbow half-swing and yanked her up, into a standing position. He didn’t even look in her direction, as if what he did just then was but a non-emphatic activity, a slip of a mind. A natural, almost tired gesture. She slid towards him with the forced of his pull and stopped just at his side. His hand fell from her elbow to tether into hers.

‘Videte,’ I heard him huffing a small laugh. She just shook her head at that, but I could see the relief slowly blooming on her features. The whole affair, short and in that shortness, terrifyingly dangerous, seemed to have no effect on them whatsoever, as if the act – of her slipping, falling to the ground, and him catching her without a hitch – was a simple regularity in their lives. That made me think, her limpness when she fell stood as a testament of her sure helplessness in that situation, or rather pure sureness that no matter what happened, he was there to catch her. Maybe it was not something practiced between them, but a natural reaction in the closeness they shared. The trust that they build and felt allowed her to fall like that, unpreoccupied and carefree, as well as it forced him to react. I was sure, if he was the one to slip, she would sure as hell try and uphold his towering figure.

‘It’s those new shoes. God damn it, I need to finally break them in.’

Henry did not let go of her hand as they went on, clearly unsure of his footing as well now, he opted on anchoring himself on her, as she did on him, and supporting one another like that they carried on forward with tiny, penguin steps. Their hands joined together pulsed slowly one in the other, swayed to the rhythm of their steps like a little, pale heart.

There is this painting – Nighthawks – if I remember correctly. Edward Hopper was the painter’s name, I think. I don’t remember much from the modern art class I took in high school. Truth be told, I only attended that particular lecture, simply for the fact that, as I had heard from someone, the professor handed out credits as if they were fresh buns. And that was true. All you had to do, was attend the class, and bam! – a credit. I never paid much attention to the classes having no deeper interest in contemporary art as presented, I usually took the extra hour as an opportunity to do my overdue homework, or study for upcoming quizzes. But during one of those dull lectures, the professor showed us that painting. Nighthawks. I remember raising my head then, disoriented and compelled to do so by some foreign, unknown force, and zeroing in on the old, yellow wall, on which he was projecting his presentation. Dark mass of bottle green and copper red stared back at me, illuminated with a strange, fluorescent beam of light coming from the presented diner. The light in that painting was sharp, man-made, but did nothing to swallow the overwhelming darkness swarming in the corners of the canvas. The diner stood out from that obscure scenery like the last stand of hope amongst the waves of anguish. Four people sat inside: two men, a woman in red and a waiter. I think one of the men, the one sat beside the woman was barely stroking her hand. The woman might’ve been smoking or talking to the bent-over waiter. the latter man sat alone, surrounded by empty bottles and glasses. The painting was so utterly gloomy and strangely lonesome, yet I could not bring myself to tear my eyes off it. Beaconed to it, like a seafarer seduced by a siren, I stared and stared completely disconnected from whatever facts and history was the professor gracing the class with. All I could focus on were those four figures. How together, and yet, strangely lonesome they seemed. The maybe’s and perhaps’s that my brain created while looking at them – ‘they might be holding hands’, ‘maybe they know each other, maybe not’, ‘they might leave the diner together, and never speak to each other again’. The series of near misses and suppositions got me so hypnotised, that it was only after a good chunk of the lectured passed by, and I noticed that the oil diner had no way of entry… and I thought how strange it was how we, the viewer, were left alone, in the dark, wholly cut off from the saving grace of the diner, with no way to enter. How we could only observe, never interact. I remember walking out of that class numb and disoriented, a foreign craving forming somewhere deep inside of me, right next to the pancreas. I had forgotten about that lonesome, swallowing feeling, right up to that point. But when I saw the two of them – tall and lithe, surprisingly standing out against the background of the grey mass of our peers, them, the only two figures reached by the warm light of campus lanterns I felt that craving nudging at me anew.

I waited a bit before getting up. I figured it would be best not to bump into them on my way to the dorm. I much preferred the solitary designation of an observer, to a distasteful intruder. But the air was getting colder, and my nose more and more red. Finally, I had no other choice but to get up and go, especially because a few other students started to throw concerned looks my way. I thought I had perfected the art of invisibility, but no. I think there must’ve been something in my face, in my eyes that alerted them so of my existence, a certain wetness. But it felt uncomfortable to be like that, seen, judged, so I scrammed.

On my way down to the dorms I walked past by a particularly pretty blonde. She walked with a furious verve, a warrior’s glint in her eyes. I think it was Camilla, but I couldn’t say for sure. It was dark out, and the girl’s face was so scrunched up with anger, it could’ve been anyone. In the distance swayed two figures, hand still together, despite the fact they reached the more frequently used, iceless path.

I tried dabbling into sketching. Something I had never done before, seeing as I possessed no artistic spark, nor presented any inclinations of a hidden talent in that department. But I found it hard to force words out of myself and onto the paper, as I did many a time before, and I had to find some kind of an outlet, otherwise I felt I would combust. The then ever-present memory of the Nighthawks sparked an idea in me, one I could not forget or ignore. The subject of the dreaded ‘them’ pushed at my guts terribly now with every breath that I took. Where before words flooded my notebooks, now an array of hasty, shaky scratches appeared. Black little blurbs, primitive depictions of trees and little silhouettes pacing underneath them and blank surfaces imitating snow appeared, as did crooked walls of library and miniature books with random titles squeezed into their outlines. And as a centrepiece of every sketch – two people. A woman, sometimes with curly, other times with straight or frizzy hair, and a man, never changing, constantly clad in a dark, long coat. Drawing Henry was quite simple, elementary even. But with her I always struggled. It was improper in my mind to capture her likeness, so no matter how many times I tried, and what I intended to draw, she always appeared as a faceless woman, back turned to the frame of the sketch. I found my drawings cathartic.

Still, I sometimes gave them titles, or scribbled something on the margin, there was no method to it. But I had never sketched alone. Never, ever. Only when I could see them, under no other circumstances. Otherwise, the drawings would come out soulless, boring and ugly.

One day I followed them into the campus library. As they sat in the window niche and pulled out their books and notes, I situated myself strategically almost opposite to them, slightly to the right. Crammed between the bookshelves I stalked them through the gaps left by rented books and with the greatest abandon I scratched with a rough image of them. First, the window, large, arched and a bit yellowed with age. Its shape on my paper was simple, angular, and so was the concrete frame of it. Then the shelves on both sides of it. Dark oak appeared as nervous jagged strokes of black, and the books were just a bunch of vertical rectangles, although their edges appeared so wobbly, I doubt anyone would have the courage of calling them that. The checked floor and a few lamps witch glossy-green domes, the light coming from them accentuated as, again, mostly straight rays, like the ones presented in imagines of sun oh so often seen in kids’ drawings. And then, enter them. Sat on the windowsill, books in their hands, ancient scripts threatening to fall apart and turn into dust at any given moment. Henry sat with his back against the wall of the niche, one leg outstretched on the windowsill, the other hanging freely from it, slightly bent at the knee. His pant leg hitched a bit and I could see the impeccably white sock peaking slightly above his Oxfords. His chin resting idly on her head as he gazed to the side, where he held his book with one hand. Dark ring shimmered on his middle finger. His face, sharp, and stern as always lost its marble hardness, when her silky hair framed it in a gilded halo. Lost in thought, then, even more than in any other situation, he looked strangely alive. That was easy to draw. One straight line here, the other there. The perspective might’ve been a little bit off, but it didn’t bother me much, as I knew I was no skilled artesian. Problems came about when I moved on to her. Lodged between his legs, I could not tell where she began, and he ended. Her dress bunched somewhere around her raised knees and fell over his thighs. His hand resting on her stomach brought to my mind a faint memory of a smell – a delicate, sweet fragrance that spun around my skull, something like home, or even more domestic. And yet there was something so inherently lewd, so breathtaking in her pose that I found my breath coming short and all the blood in my body flowing to my head with a constant, roaring contentment.

Lightheaded I studied the curve of her nose, the dome of her forehead and the attentive glare she tasked the book resting on her knees. She held the pages with her thumbs, while the rest of her palms supported the cover from the back and her head angled slightly downwards to gaze into the contents of the book. Her slender hands so white against the crimson cover. Every fold of her dress was like discovering a new world to me. Subtle greys and blues, the tones hidden in its delicate white seemed like folds, pocket dimensions to the blurry outline of her legs when the sun shined through them. In my picture it appeared much cruder. While drafting those long, doe legs I pressed my pen a bit lighter to the paper, keen on giving them that ghostly pseudo-presence. But nothing could compare to the original. It was then, when my gaze fell onto her face, soft, thoughtful, and cloudy between her pulled brows, that I realised I could never be an artist. Breath escaped me as I tasked the slight curve of her nose, the round edge of her rose cheek, and even though she was not looking my way, even though I was the one who first had cast my gaze, I was struck dumb, like deer in headlights I fell victim of those swirling irises. Like the first time she looked my way, I found myself unable to tear myself from them, skimming quickly from left to right along the text. Seeping, indirect light hypnotised me and I fell deaf to my surroundings. Next few seconds, or minutes, or even a century passed me unnoticed, because what little sunlight peaked into the niche seemed to cross her eye directly, encasing it in pure, liquid silver.

I was so completely immersed into her, that I did not even hear the swooping, murmurous steps progressing behind me. A new, sharp, manly smell replaced that sweet fragrance I had been smelling, and I haven’t noticed that either. She turned to henry, intentionally tracing her nose against his neck. A pale smile graced his lips when she whispered something into his ear. He shook his head, as if disappointed, but reluctantly pushed off the precipice of the windowsill and jumped to the floor with her still in his arms. Red with withheld laughter they stumbled forward and then broke apart. She reached into one of his pockets, Henry did not protest, despite his slightly gloomy expression. There must’ve been something saddening in the way she dug up some tabaco from a white-green bag with her nimble fingers and sprinkled it onto a rectangular piece of paper. Or in how quickly had she rolled it – three steps and the ciggy was rolled and done. What saddened me most, was the loose of my subjects, for my drawing had not yet come into completion. I intended on following them outside, and maybe finishing my sketch based on what I saw there, or starting a new one, but then, a slim hand surrounded with that masculine, strong smell caught my shoulder and held me in place with an unexpected force. That newfound, seemingly immovable force made me quiver in my steps, filled my throat with a blood-chilling scream, that died out once the copper main swung over my field of vision. Soft lips pressed onto mine swallowing what was left of my panic. Stunned I froze. That was a kiss. Filled with a smell of a man, grace with soft frills of white cuffs on my cheeks. ‘Francis,’ I mustered. The redhead laughed with his whole chest, unconcerned with the general rules of the library. I cringed towards the bookcase, to check if that fit of laughter attracted the attention of my subjects, but to my relief, the were already gone. The only evidence of their presence – the abandoned bags and books abandoned on the windowsill. relief washed over me, immediately chased with venomous irritation. ‘Francis! What are you… You can’t just go around kissing people!’ Francis, still holding onto me with a desperate grip, lunged into another fit. Through his giggles he managed to cough up a simple ‘You’re not supposed to go around stalking people…’ another giggle and then a final stab ‘And yet you do.’ I shrugged his hand off, infuriated with that accurate observation, as I had nothing to say in my defence. I just stared at him, offensively happy in his fits, with my hand pressed protectively to my lips, as if scared that he might try and kiss me again. And he did, that crazy ginger bastard leaned in again, clutching onto my shoulders and pulled me closer, terrible grin still gracing his pales lips. I wretched myself out of his confines and jumped away as quickly and as far as possible, which gained me another salve of laughter from him.

‘Oh, come one Richard,’ he’d said once he managed to push through the unimaginable barrier of amusement. ‘Richard, darling, come on, don’t walk away! You’re packing already? I thought you had a sketch to finish! They’re going to be back any minute, you don’t want to pass that opportunity!’

I pushed my notebook close to my chest, suddenly very anxious and protective of its contents. I did not bother to wonder how did he know what I was doing, just scared he might pull it out of my grasp and start going through each and every pathetic excuse for a drawing, studying them and finally, arriving at the terrifying conclusion of the scope of my mania. Red-faced, with my gaze pinned onto the creaking floor I pushed right through him, bumping my shoulder into his. Francis, however, did not seem to be bothered by my ostentatious show of disrespect in the least bit. Eagerly he followed my footsteps, meandering through an endless labyrinth of bookshelves and racks. Never had I imagined the library to be so endless and hard to get out of.

‘Why are you following me, Francis?’

Finally, I had reached the point of irritation that was too much to bear for my jittering body. A crease of annoyance scared my forehead as I spat at him over my shoulder.

‘I’m not following you at all, Richard Papen, dearest.’

That made me stop right in my tracks. Francis, as agile and graceful as ever, didn’t even stutter in his steps, lightly passing me by and spinning around so that he could face me, a foxy grin plastered onto his pinkish lips. His arms swayed around his waist as if weightless and completely independent from the rest of his body when he spun.

The sight of my raised brown, as high up as possible, mixed with the grimace of discomfort must’ve amused him to no end, because he gave up the rest of the information without his usual mockings and jests.

‘I was actually looking for them, you know. Henry and that devil-woman. But then I saw you, creeping around the corner, and I could not help myself! You know? Had to scare you a little!’

I scoffed, irritated more than ever.

‘And? You had already found them. Go, get them. And leave me alone.’

‘So you could creep some more one innocent bystanders?’

‘Exactly. Go, now.’

There was something so utterly amused in his foxy face, that even in my state of highest vexation, I could not help but crack a little smile. My voice came out squished and bubbly, not sharp and authoritative, as I meant it.

‘Don’t you at least want to know, why I was looking for them?’

I rolled my eyes at his relaxed stance, the easy flex of is arms, when he bound them behind his back, surely bending his palm backwards in the other hand.

‘Come on. Shoot,’ I mused.

‘I was to ask them for an outing. A small gathering of all of us, you know. In that bar, what’s it called, Cherry, or something like that. The winter break is coming in and I thought it would be fun to just let loose for a bit. You should come as well. Actually, you should definitely come. Be there at nine. Sharp.’

And then, with another swirl and a short giggle, he was off, running, skipping, along the bookcases, his pale, long fingers skimming along those backs of the books. I was once again left alone, just as I wished, and suddenly, the grave trench opened in me at the sight of the Nighthawks so many years ago felt so, so much deeper than ever before.

I went to that bar. Cherry flavour was the name, but I found it, no problem. It was not the murky directions that Francis had given me a few hours before that had led me to be there half an hour late, but my desperate need not to seem… well, desperate. In all truth, I shouldn’t have even bothered, because as is crossed the threshold, the sorry imagine of only Francis and Bunny staring silently at their pints greeted me in full swing of sadness. I walked towards their table, every step ringing in my head loud and clear like a church bell. The air there was muffled, silvery with smoke, just like in her apartment, although the space felt solemnly impassive, even with the music booming from the jukebox, and the chatter of the many patrons. Without her, there was no point in squinting my eyes and flaring my nostrils at the unpleasant smell, fore there was no one in my surrounding who would even notice my ministrations. No one to point them out and poke fun at me for them.

Through the thick veil of it I could see how Bunny nursed, with utmost carefulness and greed, the piss-coloured pint, and the orange-red curve of Francis’ cigarette, as he explained something to the other boy, swinging his arms around with a gusto. They did not notice me however in all that awful racket, and I was lucky enough to her a snippet from their conversation, or rather, Francis’ monologue. His voice soared over the idle chatter of crowd mixed with music and the clang of glass hitting glass, somewhere in the background, as a group of rather young fellows raised a toast to something one of their friends just did.

‘You see, it is not the matter of whether you’re prepared for it, or not my friend, it’s just that the things of this kind of nature always come biting you in the arse. It’s just the way it is. You bet on a wrong horse, now it’s time to choose another. Like that Shelly girl from my French poetry class, you know the one…’

His cigarette soared up to his temple, very carelessly, and some of his short coppery hair sizzled away from the butt.

The floor boards squeaked beneath my feet, and I bit my lip, anxious not to make too much noise. My ears twitched eagerly, to hear the rest of the conversation uninterrupted. While strutting through the bar I tasked it with a more detailed glance now that I was closer to it’s centre than in the first minutes of my entry. My eyes slid over the faces of the patrons, some of which I knew from Hampden, some completely new. There were old and young people alike, all of them swarming around the bar squeezed into the back of the locum, old and kind of dirty looking with a single bar tender flexing and running behind the counter, swaying back and forth, confused as to what he was supposed to put his hands into first. Copper handles and crystal glasses shimmered in the dim light of the bar. The many bottles filled my vision with an array of colours and blur before my eyes into a kaleidoscopic mirage. They turned and swirled in the unsteady grip of the bartender, sweating profusely when the hot air breathed from the many a gorge of the patrons settled on their cool surface. Carlsberg, Heineken, Budweiser, and a few other, oval icons sat perched on the edge of the counter beaconing me to them with their moist and cool glint. I sensed that my mouth was going dry but the sight of the swirling perpetually forming and curving queue successfully deterred me from the bar.

‘I’ve already introduced the two of you, I’m sure of that. She’s the sappy one, she likes Sapho.’ Francis laughed at his own words, gaining no response from his partner.

Bunny stared at him blankly, no thought behind his glossy eyes. His hands wandered up and down the glass filled with, what I could only assume, was beer, his mouth agape, mind clearly someplace else, as if it was not a glass, his hands had been exploring, but completely something else. It was clear, that nothing more was going to come out of that one-sided exchange, as Francis dipped his head down, into his glass and rested his cheeks on the rim, exhaling a pathetic sigh, as if it was not the first time he has been ignored by Bunny like that. I cleared my throat, just to be polite and warn them of my presence and put on a slight smile.

‘I see how it is gentlemen. But correct me of I’m wrong, Bunny already has his dark horse, doesn’t he? Marion is the name?’

The boys jumped as if poked with white-hot rake.

‘Jesus Christ, you scared the crap outta me!’ Were the first words that Bunny has spoken to me, and judging by the offended look Francis threw him, first words of the evening. His voice was raspy, slurred with the kind of drunken tune you hear at dodgy gas stations in the middle of the night, when you should be safe and sound asleep in your bead, but instead you’re desperately trying to convince the acne-riddled clerk that yes, you are indeed twenty-one, and yes, those two six packs of beer are indeed, just for you and no one else.

‘Not Jesus, just Richard,’ I pulled my lips into a thin, awkward line, as Francis’ laugh roared over the vocals of some sorry fellow whining from the jukebox. A few patrons of the bar turned to us, that’s how loud he laughed, but quickly they averted their gaze, maybe because of Bunny, who stared daggers back at them. That night, he seemed more in a mood for brawl than any other, his usual sunny disposition gone completely and replaced with something more spiky, unpleasant. Strangely gloomy and dark, with his back hunched and a grimace plastered on his face he looked almost serious, almost adult, and almost dangerous. Almost. And I recognized that frown on his face. Deformed, softer and lacking, but if expressed by someone else, let’s say a bit taller, more stoic and with a frame of hair and eyes a few tones darker than his, the look would be deadly. And then a realisation came through my mind, the scope of which made my hair stand on end and blood to run cold. Bunny was mimicking Henry.

‘Oh, you see Richard Papen, the thing with our dear Edmund is that he always seems to want whatever he cannot have.’

The blonde’s head snapped back to him, face twisted in a parody of what Henry sometimes threw his way, when he thought that Bunny deserved a reprimand.

‘Will you ever shut up; you ginger cu- ‘

But before he could finish, Francis interrupted his in a very timely fashion. With a holler he jumped out of the booth the boys had been sitting in and waved his arms like a madman. I could hear a sharp exhale coming from my right, where the frustrated blonde sat. I could not be bothered to check, what kind of expression did he make this time, because, as I heard a small, honeydew voice resounding right behind my back, I was completely torn from reality. It was the voice of Charles that came to me first, but something in the back of my mind, something very slimy and cunning told me that right where that melodic, soft voice appeared, another, a bit more nasal and deeper, but still a twin to it would follow. I spined around just to see Charles draft a deep bow.

‘The scum of the earth, I believe?’

And Francis responded with the same curtsy, his fox-like face widened and elongated by a sly smirk.

‘The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?’

Somewhere behind Charles a melodic snort announced the arrival of my soft-lipped goddess. Her hair was like always combed thoroughly and kept from her high, white forehead with a black bow. Her eyes squinted most magnificently in the dim light of the bar, and I could see something like crow’s feet forming right at the line of her cheekbones, something like the thin veins running on the surface of otherwise impeccably milky marble. Her clothes were neat, although a bit too big for her, the shirt she was wearing clearly had seen better days and I thought that it was an item she either snugged from her brother or was gifted it by him. But no matter what she was wearing, she looked heavenly to me. Her cheeks bore a slight tint of pink, as if she was walking for a while in the snow, and automatically, like a chameleon, my own cheeks tried replicating that shade on my skin, only slightly more furious, and burning.

‘You two are so unserious…’ she said it like it was a reprimand, but the crack of her lips betrayed her amusement. Her lashes fluttered gracefully, like the wings of a butterfly, when she rolled her eyes deep into her skull.

‘I’m here to serve, my queen.’

Francis huffed a laugh at her and leaned in to give her a quick peck on the lips.

‘Hi Richard,’ she greeted me, although with slightly less enthusiasm she had with the redhead. Her brother just nodded my way and then squeezed right past me to sit down in the booth with the boys. I followed him and Camilla, too embarrassed to excuse myself, and to enticed by the small lady’s beauty to even speak.

‘By the way…’ Francis lit another cigarette, I didn’t even see when he rolled it, I guess on that, that is chain smoking, he agreed with my Diogenes wholeheartedly. ‘Have you seen the two hell spawns on your way here?’

Charles snorted, clearly entertained by that nickname, Camilla just scrunched her nose and let her head fall a bit forward. Her smile was now strained, as if she was trying to swallow something, a bone stuck in her throat, as she was speaking.

‘Yeah, we saw them. Right outside the bar. They run into a bit of a scuffle, but they should be here any second.’

It was as if with those words Bunny suddenly came back to life.

‘Scuffle? What scuffle?’ Charles waved his hand dismissively.

‘Nothing really, just a bit of a shoe problem.’

The white, almost translucent brows soared high on Bunny’s forehead. The ex-jock opened his mouth, likely to question the poor twins further on the matter that interested him the most, but right then, as if on que, the door opened, and Henry stepped through. His dark hair flopped around his face, partially covering his wet, fogged-up spectacles. Snow fell from it, as well as his shoulders with every crooked, wobbly step he took. His cheeks were red with effort, and his pale slender hands kept and unnatural shade of almost cold mauve. But there would not be anything different or weird in that dishevelled look. In all honesty, sometimes I would encounter him in the campus library, hunched over some old book looking a thousand times worse than that. What made his entry stand out was the girl he was carrying in his arms. Small, in comparison to him, red-faced as well, with her feet, clad only in white socks, dangling right from the crook of his arm – her. She was grinning wildly, sparks coming from her eyes like little flexes of stars, and a pair of dark leathery boots had been dangling from her stretched out hand leaking onto the floor before them generously with residues of snow, marking, where Henry’s next step was going to fall. It seemed as if he was whispering something to her, something soothing, or humorous judging, by the slow movement of his index hinger on her arm. Like he was calming her down or indulging her slightly. I had never though Henry to be a person with an exceptional sense of humour, but in her case, it seemed to be working. Her eyes, big like saucers kept digging into his jaw, the only thig in her field of vision, as he squeezed her hard into his chest, sparkled and glimmered with a feeling I could not read properly. All I knew is that the way she looked at him, in that moment, when he crossed the squeaky floor in his swooping steps, clogged my airways and crushed my chest with a force of thousand suns.

‘What are they doing, what’s happened?’ Bunny’s face turned equally red at the sight of the two of them, locked in an embrace. For the first time this evening he had risen his head fully, right to the point of strain in his neck, and suddenly I saw that his eyes were sunken, circled with dark shadows and rimmed with a wet, red frame. He must’ve fought with Maron over some stupid little thing again, so no wonder that the sight of Henry and her, snarking amiably at each other, aggravated him to no end.

‘Beats me.’ Camilla scoffed, rather impassive that impressive entry. It seemed to me, like the temperature in the bar had dropped drastically, while the two of them exchanged those little remarks. Goosebumps climbed up my spine and my stomach swirled in an uneasy feeling, that forebode that nothing positive could come out of that evening.

But they came up to the table unbothered and giddy, as if there was nothing strange or enigmatic in their arrival, and the knot that has tied itself in the pit of my stomach suddenly loosened by the magic glint of her sharp teeth. Their presence, their proximity hit me like the fanfares in the 94. Symphonia G-dur. Soft steps crept up on me like the slight tugs of strings at the beginning of the piece. Isolated and slow, deep with their lightness, beautiful on their own, even if those were just steps, just the rhythm, just the beginning of a symphony. But then the clarinettist came, high-pitched, joyous in how she dangled her feet in the air, how she tilted her head up to gaze into his eyes. Him – steady and slow, careful with the type of tune he carried, and her – rather sprinkled across his melodic line, but oh so needed to bring the stave out of a standstill. My whole body buzzed in anticipation, not yet sure for what and why but my feet, hidden under the table, tapped unconsciously to the melody of pure steps and the hum of clothing. The composition overtook me. I didn’t even notice the key changing and getting slightly louder. Only when they came closer, when I could smell the warm, domestic scent that filled my heart with longing and pain, when I felt the tail of a dark coat brushing against my knee, I felt the music explode in me, slash me across the face with an abrupt bang! of every instrument suddenly coming into a synchronized crescendo.

‘What on the sweet feet of baby Jesus happened to you? Have you lost the feeling in your legs?’

As soon as they reached the table, the shoes she was holding dropped to the floor with a miserable smack, and, as if to complete their misery, got kicked away, under the table, by the exceptionally vigorous feet clad in black Oxfords. The air absolutely knocked out of my lungs, I stared at them in what I could only assume, was the most wide-eyed, incredulous expression of awe.

She poked her tongue at Francis, as Henry carefully set her on the edge of the couch. His pulled brows, the true, unfabricated grimace, so, so different from which Bunny tried to pull, bared an alarming dose of worry, despite the slight curve of his lips, as if he was trying to mask a heavy, foggy block of anxiousness resting on his shoulders with a bit of humour. He kneeled, not without a struggle to inspect the, what I now could see clearly were, blood spots on her socks. They climbed up her heals and came blossoming down on the side of her feet where the big toe started, giving the socks an artistic, flattering look of a freshly sprouted carnation. While he was hunched over, ducking under the table she tried to lighten the atmosphere with a lough and a cheeky response to Francis.

‘You wish, red. Nothing of the sort, it’s just those damn shoes! I can’t seem to break them in, and now they had chaffed me to the bone it seems.’

Charles ducked under the table with an interested whine but could see nothing beyond Henry’s hands. He covered the object of Charles’ interest as soon as the twin announced his fascination to us with a delighted squeal. The blonde boy hissed in disappointment, but Henry ignored him, his eyes steady on her legs, studying the red rim of blood. His slim fingers run carefully over the fabric, pealed it off, just to throw a glance, at the skin beneath it, and then exhaled a breath through his teeth. What he saw must not have been as bad as he let on in the first place, because his only response was a grim huff of laugh.

‘Don’t be so dramatic. It’s just a minor graze nothing more. If you had listened to me and bought a bigger size, nothing like that would have happened.’

Her eyes skipped around landing on each and every of our faces, seeking refuge in any of us from the stern, disappointed tone of Henry, but no one was brave enough to stand up to the stormy cloud of a human that he had turned into. Finally, after some strained small talk, Henry emerged from beneath the table, his face slightly looser.

Somehow I felt the pair of pale blue eyes staring at me, no at them, from across the table. I looked around to seek the source of the discomfort poking at my neck. I did not have to deal long, for it was obvious, who the proprietary of the biting stare was. Bunny wasn’t discreet, I don’t think he minded if anyone saw how he clean he’d his teeth so hard that a small vein popped out on the side of his jaw, or how he could not tear his eyes, his hateful, red rimmed eyes, from the ethereal mirage that was the two people hanging on the edge of couch right beside me.

‘It should be fine, the blood stopped running. It should be fine now, okay?’ He smoothed her hair with a quick swipe of his hand and then scooted over on the edge of couch. Everyone moved to the side in a synchronised clockwise move, not even thinking about mentioning all the space that had been left vacant on the opposite side of the table. Francis chose to ignore all the swooning over her that henry seemed to be revelling in and came smoothly to recommending what types of beer we should pick for the night.

‘I think that we should start with beer. Me and Bunny are already ahead of you, so, we’re going to skip the first round. But after that I think we should go more into tonics. Oh, and don’t order any sorts of fancy cocktails here!’ He threw accusatory look towards Camilla. ‘They’re awfully pricy and don’t taste half as good as you’d expect them to.’

What seemed like useful information to me, was obviously something redundant and boring to Henry. We all knew, what he was going to order, whiskey, most certainly not whisky, on the rocks, and there was no coaxing him out of that decision, so it hasn’t surprised me much to see him lean over to her and start whispering in her ear. I was the closest one to them, her sitting on my right, and him squeezed into her, the length of her body being our only border, so I did not have to struggle much to hear what he was mumbling into her ear. I focused my eyes on whatever seemed most natural and listened in, thirsty for information like never before. I watched Bunny’s fingers running up and down his pint, smearing the swat of the glass all over his palms. His fingers run taunt, almost mechanic, as if pulled by great pain or fury. In the corner of my eye swayed the real object of my interest.

‘Are you cold? Are your feet cold?’ His voice returned to the stoic preoccupation I had heard some time ago, when they were leaving the lecture hall. He swayed forward, as if to embrace her, or better yet, scoop her into his arms and run out of the bar as soon, as he manages to hoist her up, but he stopped himself midway and just stared at her with deep thoughtfulness.

‘No, Henry it’s really all right. Thank you though.’

Henry, despite her clearly cutting the subject short, simply shook his head and continued with his hushed monologue.

‘Your feet are cold. We sit here long enough, and you’re going to catch something.’ And then, before she could react in any sort of way, he kicked his boots off.

‘Henry what are you doing?’

My eyes jumped, just for a second, beneath the table, to be greeted with the sight of his slightly less deft fingers, now rose with the heat of the bar, tying neat little bows with the shoelaces of his own shoes, now on her feet. The dark leathery Oxfords were fat too big for her, and so he had to tie them really hard, so they would not fall onto the floor the second he pulled out his knee from beneath her heal, that now served her as some kind of purchase.

‘They might be too big for you, but at least, your feet won’t freeze off. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Now, straighten that face.’

‘What is it with you and frostbites?’

She scoffed and folded her arms on her chest, but did not oppose further, when He once again ducked beneath the table and slipped his shoes onto her feet. His voice came from down below, a splash of humour resounding in it, filling her cheeks with the brightest shade of pink.

‘It’s not just frostbites. I’m simply worried about you, in general. I should not have let you walk around in those ill-fitting shoes in the first place, I feel responsible.’

I could swear, that at the sound of those words, she melted into the back of the cough and kicked her feet, making the all-too-big shoes flap around her ankles. And in turn, I can swear I saw him cracking a smile at that, when he took back his seat right next to her.

Personally, squished between Camilla and her I felt like I was going to suffocate. Disoriented and scared to the bone I stared into my palms placed neatly on my thighs, not knowing whose warmth to absorb, who’s smell to inhale and who’s heartbeat to sync to. I was dazed, speechless, overstimulated.

‘And how is your leg, Henry? Does it hurt?’ I think he shrugged, but I couldn’t tell, because at that point I tore my eyes from the wet drops sliding down Bunny’s glass and onto Camilla’s side profile. She was chatting with Charles, I could see her mouth move, but all I could think of were those few strands of hair that slipped from beneath her ribbon and curled neatly on her forehead. All I wanted to do was to push them back, tuck them behind her ear.

‘Nothing that I can’t handle, so don’t preoccupy yourself with that, little dove.’

Every move they made, every little shrug, or laugh they huffed soared through me with the untamed power of lightning. I jumped every time one of them breathed. And I must’ve been so consumed by that dual anguish of my position, that I had tuned out the conversation that had barely started, even the little, intimate conversation playing on my right. A nudge of an elbow to my ribs woke me up from my stupor.

‘Richard Papen! Hello! Earth to Richard!’

‘Wha- I… what?’

‘What will you be drinking?’ Her bright eyes stared at me, so, so close, that I could feel her breath fanning my cheeks. With that proximity, an image flashed before my eyes, a sketch that I drew a few days before, the only one in which I did not use her as a live model, rather drafted her from my memory. A quick sketch of her bent over backwards over the table, eyes shut, mouth agape with a silent scream of pleasure frozen on her mouth. Blood rushed to my head with a steady but abrupt pump. Acutely aware of the still purple with cold hand resting on her shoulder I did not find the words right away, so they came out in a disarranged stutter. I blabbered some incoherent phrases, before finding my voice.

‘I’m not drinking tonight… I don’t have any money.’ She let out a pearly laugh.

‘Don’t be ridiculous Richard. It’s on Francis! He dragged us all out here, so he’s buying!’

‘That’s the first time I hear about it.’

She threw him one of her deadliest looks, as if saying – come one, don’t be a twat – and I heard no further protests from him. Encouraged and coaxed by all the people around the table, I finally decided on Guinness, the same as her. Francis got up with a resigned sigh, repeated everyone’s orders and then he disappeared for almost forty minutes. And when he came back, carrying two trays stocked with pints and meandering amongst the drunken crown with no problem, he was greeted with round of applause and whistles of approval. He distributed the beers equally and then sat with the look of absolute agony on his face.

‘Oh, I’m never going back out there, sorry but there is no way I can stand in that queue alone and pushed around by those twats for one more second.’

She giggled when he passed her the designated Guinness.

‘How much was it? I’m not planning on paying you back, just curious.’

Francis shrugged, rather not bothered by her blatant declaration.

‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not really good with money, so long I have it.’ He took a long pause to gulp down some of his old beer, truthful to his previous words, he had not bought himself a new one. ‘Matter of fact, I don’t get money at all.’

Charles cleared his throat, uneasy, as if that topic was one of a constant concern in their circle, Francis continued, nonetheless.

‘I simply cannot understand, what is so special about it. It’s just paper! It’s imaginary! If I wanted to, or if I needed, I could just get myself a machine and print out some more! Better yet, we all could. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.’

My eyes darted to the side to meet the same perplexed look in her eyes. Her jaw tilted to the side, but she kept silent, and so did I, taking it for a sign, that if we let Francis talk, soon he’d be out of his brilliant ideas, and we would be free from that topic. Well, Bunny clearly didn’t get the memo.

‘We can’t print more money, idiot, how many times do I have to tell you?’

Francis threw him a wounded look and pressed a fisted palm to his chest. But the sly smile on his lips betrayed that in all truth, he enjoyed that someone, especially Bunny, had indulged him.

‘Why not?’

Bunny’s so far hooded and glossy eyes, now popped out dangerously, coming to resemble in their shape and size a pair of saucers. His lips pulled downwards in an ugly, angry grimace.

‘That would cause and inflation, a hyperinflation, if you’d be really lucky, and soon you, mister Bretton Woods, would be able to buy matches, for the same price you would buy a home a few days earlier.’

‘Yeah, sure, inflation but why though?’

The twins did not bother to pay attention to that ridiculous exchange of words, surely because they had heard it already, in a myriad of variations, many a times before, nor did Henry, but she was surprisingly enticed by how exasperated Bunny got. She stared at him with utmost fascination, a thing, that did not escape him, and in turn seemed to spur him on further.

‘There is a certain amount of gold- ‘

‘Gold? Where from? What?’

‘It is stored in the treasury of every country… Don’t change the subject you ginger minx! We have the gold which value must cover the amount of money we distribute. If we don’t have the gold, and we start printing more money the total value of the gold would have to be divided amongst the amount of the money distributed equally, hence devaluating it.’

‘Okayy…’ Francis’ hand soared up to his lips pushing another roll-up into it, as he stared into the ceiling, as if he was processing Bunny’s words. Mindlessly, he passed another one to her, and she nodded her head in a quiet show of thanks. ‘Why gold?’

Bunny growled, a real-life growl, and smoothed his hand over his face. I noticed, that on my right, she had pushed her hand against her lips and now she was shaking uncontrollably at the performance taking place right before her. I cracked a smile as well.

‘Because it is a r a r e material.’

He’d said, the drunken, slurry undertone more prominent in his voice, now more than ever.

‘Uranium’s r a r e r.’

How beautiful did Francis pronounce that ‘rarer’. Every ‘r’ resounded sharply and rattly over his tongue. But his interlocutor did not seem to be impressed by his logopedic skills.

Bunny jumped suddenly onto his feet, slamming his palm into the table with a deafening bang, that made Camilla squeak in her seat. Bunny, making nothing of it pointed and accusatory finger at Francis.

‘I’ve got half a mind to beat you into a pulp right now.’

Bunny’s face turned bright red, and for the first time ever I could see his brows clearly drafted, like two clear, solid white arches, on his forehead. And for the first time, his fury bore water. I had never seen him so aggravated, so serious and straightforward with his announcements. Sure, he tackled me once or twice to the ground, and his threats were nothing new to us, especially after he had something to drink, but those were just harmless jests, stupid jokes we tied to weight to. However, in that bar, a new sheet of peril mixed with anger had wrapped himself around him, giving him, and his irrational outburst depth and dimension. His feverishly jumpy eyes added to the whole picture a deranged readiness to harm, and that scared me to no end. I looked to my right, past her and at Henry, the only person, concluding from the stories I heard about him, capable of restraining the ex-jock if the push came to shove. I expected Henry to come out as a hero, as always. Instead, I was greeted with the sharp glint of her malicious smile and his indifferent, passive frown.

‘Well, you’ve got half a mind, that would be about right.’

She snarled at him, empty glass tipping dangerously in her hand, ready for any sort of action. A deep chill run up my spine at the sight of the strained muscles of her neck, of the pulsing vein running in parallel to her larynx. What scared me more, was the calmly placed hand of Henry, her supposed protector, hanging on the backrest of the couch, not even bothered to assume a defensive stance. Maybe he knew that Bunny wasn’t half the man he portrayed himself to be. Or in that moment, he already knew that he would never harm her. In the conventional way, at least, Henry seemed so sure that no harm would be done to her, either by her own resourcefulness and skill, or Bunny’s incapability and unwillingness to damage her in any sort of way. Why he had believed that I couldn’t tell. In retrospect, that was the moment we all should have banded together against Bunny. Berate his pathetic attitude, his utterly senseless reasoning, rage against him, his nature, fall into a trans and reap him to shreds, limb by limb, no mercy, and when all would settle down, bash his head in, so it could not mutter another word. Maybe that would stop him from drafting the line that would soon cross out the 94. Symphony out of existence.

My eyes soared back to the emotional bundle of fury and helplessness that was Bunny in that moment. His eyes squinted in an expression of utter betrayal at her words. That was the look that should have uncovered it all to me, help me connect the dots scattered amongst the quiet conversations I listened in on, and finally see the bigger picture. But at that point, I was halfway down my pint, and my brain had already lost most of it’s sharpness.

‘Et tu Brute? You are defending… You are defending that deft son of a bitch? How can you? Does it not bother you how oblivious to the world he is? You out of all people should understand my frustration with him! He wouldn’t know the rational state of current things even if they hit him in the face!’

She shrugged, not seeming to be bothered at all, although she had not let go of the glass yet. The white ash at the end of her ciggy became longer than the factual cigarette.

‘So what? He doesn’t understand money. Big deal.’ Her hand drafted a neat circle in the air with the glass. ‘It’s not like you know everything Bunny. Bah, I don’t think I know everything. Nor does Henry. For gods’ sake, you heard him the other day, interrogating Richard about the moon landing and whatnot.’ Charles giggled at the reminder of our first dinner together, but quickly slotted his hand over his mouth, chastised by the scorning glare of his sister. ‘Matter of fact, you could not conjugate a simple verb two classes ago. Please, don’t frown like that. Audiverim instead of audivissem? I beg you pardon?’

The tips of Bunny’s ears turned a few shades darker, but he no longer looked furious. Under her never-missing, dry delivery of criticism, he shrunk slightly, hung his head down and tucked his chin, as if trying to hide his head between his shoulders.

‘Frankly, it wasn’t your best performance and yet I did not beat you into a pulp. What’s more, I’ve never threatened you, never, especially over something so small and insignificant.’

No one dared to interrupt the steady flow of her words. Not even Camilla had attempted to roll her eyes, simply mesmerised, just like the rest of us, with how unbothered, almost lazy and unwilling she seemed while delivering her soul-crushing, humbling truths to Bunny.

‘It is beneath us, to treat and speak to another person, a friend, like you just did. Now stop frowning and marding, just sit, have a drink, cool down.’

‘Yes, Bun, sit down. We’re not without a flaw, after all. It’s not a big deal.’

Camilla sent a warm smile across the table, not towards Bunny but his assailant. She responded with the same kind of grin, a warm, sunny stretch of mouth that would melt the strongest and coldest man.

‘Remember when Charles said that the French Revolution wasn’t that big a deal and she nearly lost her mind?’

Then she snorted, and my accomplice gasped in exasperated shock. A quick, playful smack on the hand of the blonde, little lady was dealt as she exclaimed ‘Cami! Now’s not the time to bring up past mistakes!’ The girl giggled, although her pearly laugh was overwhelmed by Francis’ snort.

‘Oh god! I remember that! I really though she was going to kill him! Jesus, I really believed that on that day we were going to say grace over the cold corpse of Charles Macnally.’ As the ginger boy wrapped his arms around his midriff, to somehow ease the sudden throws of unadulterated joy that shook his body, Bunny slid quietly into his previous seat, relief, that he was no longer the subject of the discussion painted on his face.

‘Come on guys! It was so long ago! I would never do anything like that now…’

She stirred in her place beside me, pouting like a displease child, which roused Francis even more. Camilla too, wasn’t immune to the giddy atmosphere.

‘Oh honey, I know you never wished any real harm onto Charlie. It’s just so funny to recall you screaming bloody murder at him…’ Camilla did not finish her thought, instead, overtaken by laughter, splayed herself across the table trying to catch the quickly regressing fingers of the other girl. Her arm brushed right past mine, but she didn’t notice that, totally absorbed with the vigorous battle at grabbing and tugging away of hands, she was conducting, and clearly loosing, due to the constant spasm of laughter that shook her body, tossing her unregularly across the wooden surface. Her opponent wasn’t much better, trying to disguise her laugh as furious puffs of hot air and scrunching her whole face up, not to let a single pressing smile pass. That frown she made, with much effort and a raised chin that help her in keeping the giggles deep in her stomach, gave her an uncanny likeness to non-other that Mussolini.

‘I don’t know… it felt real to me, when you chased me around the kitchen, swinging a knife around and screaming’ Charles began his sentence and paused dramatically, tilting his head up and spreading his arms over his head like a preacher in a cathedral, only to be joined by everyone at the table, spare for me and Bunny, in an unison, theatrical chant ‘How about I take away you privileges and basic human rights, let’s see, how unimportant the French Revolution was then!’

The whole table fell into laughter, a shimmering cascade of giggles and snorts, surprisingly, dominated by the baritone hum of Henry. My friend turned beetroot-red and, just like Bunny before her, strained her shoulders up to hopefully hide herself between them. First to break off was the violine-led light motif in the person of Henry.

‘Cut her some slack! It’s not like she almost killed a professor, whose name I shall not evoke, with her car and then proceeded to try and charm him out of suspending her with the, what was it, ah, yes! The hypnotic sway of her luscious hips.’

A unison protest of Charles and Camilla overtook whatever Henry intended on saying next, as they recoiled in mock horror. Camilla shielded herself with the coat of her brother as he latched onto her head, trying to close her ears to that slander.

‘Why must you all recall all of my most painful memories.’ Charles screamed over the roaring crowd of the bar. ‘It’s not like I did anything to you! You’re all monsters, monsters, I say, not people!’

Then Francis, dangerously maroon on his face chimed in, bringing forth another story, one of botched boeuf de Bourgogne and Julian, politely munching on it’s charred remains. Since that moment, it came down like and avalanche. Stories, insults, and ashamed protests along with some foreign profanities thrown in together begun swishing over our heads like heavy ammunition, all in a delightful halo of barked laughter and whistles. In the meanwhile, the poor bartender must’ve called in for help, because the crowd of patrons started to loosen around the bar area, and a new, visibly taunt and tired looking waiter became roaming the floor and picking up the orders from table to table. Strangely enough, he came around our space more than the others and soon enough pints and glasses, the martini, vine, red and white, gin and whiskey even the dreaded cocktail glasses piled over our table. Slowly but steady, once again the floor swooped from beneath my feet and my head turned heavy, sprouting with a thick sheet of wool. I did not realize I had been dangerously tilting to the right, arching my whole body to bend it into an almost horseshoe shape until I felt her arm slipping from underneath mine, and slowly smoothing over the wrinkles of my shirt. My world tilted alongside me and then straightened right after when hot breath fanned my ear, a tint of sun and hop carried with it.

‘You made my hand fall asleep.’

I jumped, because the voice tore through the featherbed of alcohol induced confusion, like hot knife cuts through butter.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, making a bubbly laughter erupt from her lips.

‘It’s no problem at all dummy, none at all. But you need to let go off my wrist right now.’ I followed her gaze down to our laps, where I saw my hand wrapped just around her pulse, my fingers so, so unremarkable against her silky-smooth skin. Jumping once again I let go, a huge block of ice mixed with something utterly pathetic dropped into my stomach. A terrible stutter befell me and I struggled through a handful of rushed apologies, but she only swatted her asleep hand at me. ‘Told you already, it’s no problem! I just need to go.’ And then she leaned in and added, in a hushed conspiratorial tone, ‘To the ladies room.’

A dumb smile sprouted on my face as I watched her drunkenly unwrap herself from Henrys half-limp embrace and then clumsily step off the booth couch and onto the packed middle ground of the bar. Stunning, it was, to watch her manoeuvre between a bunch of people so much drunker and less coordinated than her. Her steps, although wobbly and off her usual light rhythm, coveted a lightness of a ballerina, as she ducked and avoided all the swishing hands and swirling bodies.

Henry watched her go as well, his eyes deep and dark like two black holes, hungrily swallowing the small sway of her steps. They slid down, right to the base of the column of her spine, her thighs, calves, and then a tiny, almost satisfied smile cracked his rigid lips, the eyes, mine and his, took in the stupidly cute way she raised her feet a little too high, placed them on the ground a bit too far apart, like a little duck to accommodate the comically big Oxfords. And Henry seemed almost proud of that. I wanted to open my mouth, speak to him, comment somehow on the sparks circling his irises, but my train of thought was interrupted by Bunny’s ostentatious grunt.

The blonde boy looked absolutely horrible, with red spots and blemishes blooming on his cheeks from the excess of alcohol and his eyes, puffy, even more swollen than when we started drinking. He still bore that ridiculous frown, which by that point gave into more damage, got watered down with every gulp of beer he had forced into himself, only to become a reduced cadaver of gloom floating in his murky, blue eyes.

‘Excuse me ladies, imma get me some beer,’ He slurred.

Camilla pouted, extending her arms towards him simultaneously closing and opening her palms, as if to rope him into hugging her and then anchoring him to stay at the table. Something in the way he stood up, I don’t know, maybe a stray button of his shirt that reflected the light in the wrong way, or the horizontal blue-and-white straps on his blazer, now waving hypnotically around his bulky form, made my gut churn and all that I drank and ate during the day came up my throat in waves of nausea. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back and inhaled deeply. Once, twice, three times.

‘Come on Bun, the waiter is going to be here any minute, why go to the bar, all the way there. Sit, come, just sit.’

Another grunt and then a series of clumsily misguided moves echoed my brain. On the camera obscura of my eyelids my imagination showed a pretty hilarious picture of Bunny struggling to get out of the booth over the wasted, folded body of Francis.

‘No can do. I feel like I have the Sahara Desert in my mouth. I ain’t waiting for no waiter.’

However humorous the remark, his voice resounded strangely gloomy and hollow, but I could not care for that much at that point. Too busy counting from hundred to zero, I used all the mindpower I had left not to bend over and puke right onto the table. On my right Henry swayed softly and hummed alongside the tune somehow still getting through him all the way from de jukebox.

I must’ve gotten around to negative seven hundred fifty, when it finally dawned on me that something was wrong. Our area of the table suddenly got quiet, too quiet and I couldn’t shake the unpleasant, fuzzy feeling creeping up my spine. With no small fit of effort, I managed to glue open one of my eyes, then the other.

Hellish landscape of decadence greeted me with a sharp toothy smile. Francis laid passed out face first on the table, Camilla leaned over him with the full weight of her body, swishing a glass of gin in her hand, the liquid swirling in it like a miniature whirlwind, and Charles, always the one to get utterly pissed, perched himself on the couch, and with an absent stare, followed the infinity signs drafted in the air by his sister’s glass. Every now and the he’d add a small ‘swoooosh’, when she took a particularly sharp turn in the trajectory of the drink. I tore myself from that image, my head rolled over to the right, guided by the wooden, polished headrest. Henry was there. Slightly decomposed, but holding up better than the rest of us, nursing a small, steaming cup – tea? No, coffee. Black and sugarless.

‘Hey, Henry?’ My mouth burned as I opened it, chapped, dried up skin tore at that unusual activity and if I were any bit more sober, I would wince at the pain it had brought me to speak. He turned halfway towards me and raised one brow in a silent question. I stayed silent for a second, trying to accumulate all the ideas swirling around my disoriented head, arrange and put them into words, to somehow explain my sudden uneasiness to him. ‘Where do you think they went? They’d been gone for quite a while, don’t you think?’ A slight frown, then a look across the table, and finally a bright spark of understanding sparked across his face. ‘Bunny and…’ However anxious I felt, I think it was nothing, compared to the chill expression of pure horror that slid over his taunt features. Henry lunged himself up before I could even finish my slowly processed concern, and sprung forth, towards the bar, towards the toilets cramped right next to it, as he was, barefoot, limping and thoroughly terrified. I raced right after him, all of a sudden, sober as if not a drop of alcohol had entered my blood stream during that night. His fright climbing and latching onto me like a parasite, sucking all the air from my lungs, urging my blood to flow faster, stronger in order to keep my brain alive. I did not know, I could not comprehend what made him so… stressed, so pressed, but the look on his face, the half of it I saw while struggling to equal oust pastes, forebode nothing pleasant. And that image, of Henry totally panicked, mixed with my previous remark on her…

Getting through the crowd of the drunken, screaming people was no easy fit and I wonder how she had made it look so effortless. And Henry, he as well got through the thicket with no problem, although not thanks for his natural grace, but rather the utter disrespect and disregard of anyone that stepped in his way. He pushed through people, stepped on their feet, swatted away their arms, not even looking back when they screamed after him, and I followed his trail to that warzone, squeezing through the narrow he had cut up for himself. Henry kept himself composed through all of that, not a single scream, not even a word or a twitch. He was cold, a stalker, a wolf bound on the hunt for his prey. The scared frown on his face reforged into something more sharp and determined. And I was hot, fuming, the heatwave of alcohol mixed with anxiety rushed to my head heating me up like a furnace. I felt my pulse quickening, heart straining in a hopeless effort to keep me up. Yet, I put all of my effort into keeping up with him, as he seemed to have had connected the dots I did not have the skill, or correct disposition to connect, and he did not seem to notice me. Not even at all. It looked like, in that moment there was only one thought going through his mind, preoccupying him, mandating him his actions and goals. Only one thought that willed his heart into a steady beat – finding her. Finally, we got out of the worst cluster of now whining and crying out in pain students, when the door to the woman’s bathroom burst open and Bunny emerged from the forbidden depths. He was slightly crouching, as he paced with small, careful, but overall, quite rushed steps onward, pressing a hand to his face. But nothing, not even his big hand of a seasoned quarterback, could cover the red imprint cutting across his face, likely a result of something, or someone, hitting him in the face with full force. His eyes darted across the room, scattered and skittish. When they came to task us with their gaze, Bunny squealed and rushed right past us, drafting a big, round arch, only to push against the exit with the full force of his body and run into the cold night outside. He did not even take his coat with him. He just run away.

I stopped, partially to the shock I just had experienced due to that bizarre occurrence, but mostly because of Henry’s sudden indecision. If it were up to me, I would carry on straight forward, where my legs desired to bring me, until I’d have had reached the unpassable barrier of the door dividing the room and the women’s restroom. But he was not as drunk, or as disoriented as I was, because for a second, he halted, leaned to the direction of the exit, as if eager to chase down the runaway bunny, then swayed back, as if torn apart by some inner dilemma I was not privy to. Thankfully, he had not have to choose, for from the bathroom emerged another person. She was similarly to Bunny red on her face, although when his red seemed to root itself in a valiant assault, hers was a deep shade of effort and distress. Now, the direction was clear to Henry, he rushed towards her, opening his arms as if to gather her into them, but no, to my biggest surprised she jumped to the side and slid right past him, only to mix into the crowd. She threw him a rather strained ‘I’m leaving.’ And then dove into the swarm of bodies. Henry wasted no time and lunged back into the already irritated with him people. Only this time, he seemed to care about them even less, and seeing that they stopped screaming at him, and just opened themselves before him, like the red sea. But he was screaming, beaconing, calling her name, only for it to hit and bounce off her turned back. She was fast, even in those too-big shoes, Henry had trouble keeping up with her, least to say I, who out of us three, was probably the drunkest and the least athletic. After that quick cavalcade through the terrified flock, we arrived at our starting point, the table. In the far looser space, Henry caught up to her and yanked her small body towards him. She was feisty and full of fire, but in an open struggle, not in a play-pretend, she had no chance against him. The sheer force of his arms pulled her forward, as if she was but a rag doll. Her whole body shook, but not with the impact of his body engulfing hers, or shock that came with the sudden contact, but something far more pressing, something she tried to, with all her might, to push down and keep inside of herself. But her lower lip wobbled. A sorrowful display of utter helplessness, that little wobble, paired with the tears evoked the memory of the ‘Nighthawks’ in me. I balled my fists by my sides, now not only overtaken by sadness and the feel of disunity, but also fear. Gut-wrenching, blood-chilling, hair-standing fear. Because, when Henry pulled her in and caged her between his arm, when he brought her to him despite the slight resistance of her trembling arms against his chest, I saw her neck, craning upwards. And the four furious smudges running horizontally on her throat, pinkish imprint of fingers coming together into a palm just about where here larynx should start. That’s going to become a bruise, give it a few hours, I thought. Her jaw unclenched and, as Henry submerged her into himself, I saw her stutter something out. Her voice too small for me to hear over the booming of the bar, but I did not have to, least to say, the murderous tilt of Henry’s head confirmed to me what I already had suspected. He did not move, but I saw his reflection in the window placed right above out booth. The lines around his mouth deep like scars, appeared to deform his face, elongate like sabre teeth when he spoke to me, commanded.

‘Richard, go outside, find Edmund.’

Without thinking or sparing a single more glance I rushed to the exit, spurred on by the sharpness of his tone. All of my, my being, my soul, by body, they screamed in furious agony, in rage and in guilt. I let him go, I heard, I felt that something was off when Bunny stepped away from the booth and yet I let him go, too intoxicated to do anything. But what tore at me the worst was the fact, that when I run out, the last image that flashed before me were her eyes, those usually bright, intelligent orbs, now dusted with silver moist, dimmed, and lifeless.

The night air hit me in the face the second I stepped out of the bar, sudden realisation of how stuffy and hot the interior was coming onto me in a sobering wave. Everything before me, the neon signboards of other dodgy bars, the lanterns, the cars parked in the driveway, blurred before me and I had to cross my eyes to focus. My feet stumbled across the uneven pavement as I searched the perimeter like a starved coyote, teeth bared looking for the slightest hint of blonde hair swishing in the dark. But I saw nothing, no one. The street was quiet and desolate, blinking at me in utter bewilderment with her yellow lanterns. The spins came back to me with a doubled force, I had to support myself against one of the cars. The air was filled with a strange kind of glow, a tension that I could not explain, and when I looked up, I saw a full moon, hanging directly above the curve of the street.

Behind me, the door to the bar opened, swung, and then opened again, only to shut behind the exiting people with a thundering smack. Two pairs of feet crunched on the virgin snow, one pasted light and quick, like the crescendo of flutes, the other, long and deep, similar to the drag of a bow against the string of a violin.

‘Come on, baby, come back inside, I’ll take care of this, please, it’s so cold out, you’ll catch a cold.’

Henry begged as he desperately tried to hold onto her hand. Once again I observed how they mixed together, two dark spots against the backdrop of the luminescent snow, from the side-lines. But she broke off, shook her head, as if unable to muster any words. Her face shined in the natural light of the night, but not as I was used to, not with the internal, sweet, warm, internal glow, but the reflected light of the surroundings. Her face was wet, pulled and cold.

‘Don’t. Just don’t. Stop it Henry, I need to go. I need to go alone.’ Her voice was shaky, packed with emotions I could not untangle and determine. ‘Stop it, don’t touch me right now.’

She pulled her arm from his embrace, pushed at him to stay in place and strode off. His fingers floated in the space she had occupied just seconds before, mindlessly grabbing at the phantom threads of material. The coat she had on, flapped as she strode away, quicker, and quicker, swooshing in the cold air with no particular rhythm like the broken wings of a bird, so desperate to take into the skies. He stopped, obedient to her wishes, but I could see the worry painted in his face.

‘At least change back into my shoes, those will hurt you!’

She waved at him, her back steadily turned towards him, head hung low, but she gave no response.

As she walked away, up the street, her silhouette came against the gargantuan moon and suddenly I had this feeling of solemn loneliness gripping at my heart, convincing me that she was not walking, but floating up, alone far away and straight up the silver strands of moonlight into the unknown Space. Henry stood there, leaning forward as if fighting with his thoughts, his urges, until she was too small and too far away for him to see.

We styed there for a second longer, in silence, until he pulled out a red pack of cigarettes out of his coat and lit one. His eyes bore mindlessly into the ground and the lighter he held illuminated his ghostly, foreign face with an orange glow.

‘Don’t worry Richard. He’s going to show up sooner or later.’ Hoarse screech was all that came out of his mouth, vicious, venomous, sure. ‘And then, we’re going to deal with that swine accordingly.’

His eyes darted to me, and a shiver run down my spine, for I hand never seen such cold and biting rage frozen into a steady, calm face like that. Fear crossed me, when he inhaled the smoke from his cigarette and not a single muscle on his face moved.

‘Oculum pro oculo.’

#bunny corcoran #camilla macaulay #charles macaulay #francis abernathy #henry winter #henry winter x reader #richard papen #the secret history #afab reader

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axieta · 1 year

Note

No rush but when will hungry eyes be updated? ❤️

Once again, so sorry to keep you waiting like that! The rough draft of the new chapter is currently sitting and waiting politely in my notes. As soon as I’m finished with all of my exams this week I’m going to proofread it and hopefully post it before Friday.

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axieta · 1 year

Text

On the state of poetry and its contemporary form

The strange thing about poetry is that when we talk about it, our minds more often times than not venture into the territory of popular, well-renowned, dusted-up men like Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire or Shakespeare. Those figures are what our schools acquaint us with. In fact, the string of literary figures that we are obliged to learn about for our compulsory education ends just about XX century, giving us no opportunity to familiarize ourselves with more contemporary writers other than exploring the subject on our own. And don’t get me wrong, I find the old, classical poetry as enticing and fascinating as any other sane person. It is beautiful, grand and sublime for the most part, quizzical and light for the rest, and educating young minds on that matter is more than fine by me, essential even. It is extremely important to introduce young people to the common legacy and culture of the world, the beauty and intricacies of language. But with the way it is done in our schools comes an insufferable notion that poetry – true poetry! – may only come from those dried-up, long-dead men. A notion, which I consider to be borderline ludicrous. For me the candid charm of poetry lies in its constant fluidness, progression, as well as mercurial and an almost aching need of change. The fact that it lies in the nature in both, the poet and poetry, to invent new forms, to oppose the old ones, and to break the rules, or rather, bend them to one’s will. And for that I consider the contemporary poetry, as neglected and disregarded as it is, to be as crucial to our culture as the works of the old rhymesters. To be completely honest, I for one, find the unfamiliar, murky waters of the new, contemporary poetry far more alluring than the already ventured, known by heart lyrics of Romantics or Beat Generation. I don’t know why, but I must admit there is something far more relatable in the modern poetry, something that if only written and read properly can cut to the bone, infect one’s soul with the problems and desires that are much closer to them than let’s say the conquest of Granada or the complicated stories from Camelot. Of course, we could break our heads over the sorry excuse for writing that Lord Byron decided to curse us all with, but what for if we could just simply contemplate ourselves, our lives and our problems while supplemented by the subtle and moving works of Stephen Crane or Laura Gilpin, whose poems are by far more coherent and thought provoking than whatever Byron managed to ever produce, with the greatest strain and effort I imagine. To be honest, for that reason I find the constant neglect of contemporary poetry in our society quite unfair.

And so, considering all that, I admit to being the most eager enthusiast of contemporary poetry. My favourite poems are In the desert and Two-headed calf, both true, soul-gripping masterpieces. But one piece of art that has, and for ever will have my undisturbed sympathy, is an anonymously written poem by the name of Icarus. Like in the two aforementioned pieces, it is the subversion of expectations that grips my heart most in the poem. In Two-headed calf and In the desert, the surprise comes from the conclusion the authors plainly present us with – that the beauty and content may be found even in the darkest, most gruesome and grotesque scenarios. And while Icarus does quite the same thing, what surprises the readers most, what first comes into the view and leaves them in awe is the way the whole affair surrounding Icarus himself is presented. It is not a story that we’re used to, the cautionary tale of recklessness and arrogance, but rather an ode to the dreamers. Moreover, dreamers who fail in their endeavours. When Icarus falls, in the traditional telling he is punished for exactly that, for trying, for wishing and for dreaming. His death is gruesome, tragic, unnoticed. In Bruegel’s interpretation, no one is looking at our protagonist. The people in the foreground (and even in the background!) are going on about their day, their eyes digging deep into the soil before them, into the nets, the cows they must take care of to make ends meet. No one pays attention to the solemn, pale leg sticking miserably from the barely disturbed sea. And I suppose, if it wasn’t for the title of the painting – Landscape with the fall of Icarus – we, the viewers probably wouldn’t even know who the leg belongs to as well. In Bruegel’s piece, anonymity is the punishment for Icarus. In the original myth it is the death itself. But not in my poem. In Icarus, he laughs in his fall. He finds beauty in the tragic situation, delight in the burn of melted wax scorching his skin, strange allure in the light of sun. We know, as readers that he should be soaring, and yet he falls. Laughing all the way down. I don’t think that for this Icarus death is the punishment. I think it is the crescendo, a beautiful end to a dream he could never fulfil. It is unclear in this poem if our Icarus knew that he was destined to fail, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter. He tried, he made the effort and that is what truly counts. The result is just that, a result, and his failure is his own – an achievement in itself.

That kind of forking in the way of living, fulfilling one’s duties and the values one cherishes the most could be seen as far back as in the times of Homer, namely in his most known piece – The Iliad. In that absolute masterpiece, a blueprint of true fiction and chanson de geste if one would indulge, we can see the two brothers, Parys and Hector, facing the siege of their city. Hector, the prince, the older brother, thinks in the old, more acceptable, honourable way. He’s trying to convince his brother to duel for his honour and the fate of their town. Hector values thomos and wants for his brother to think in the same, valiant way. But Parys is not like that. He’s not a prince like his brother, he's not a warrior, but a recently recovered, royal son, a shepherd whose upbringing differs dramatically from the one of his brother’s, and so his way of thinking is different as well. Parys, the gentle, unprepared soul prefers the path of kholos – the contemplative wallowing. So, one might ask, at the end of the day, what is the correct way of thinking? The path of thomos or kholos? Well, I say it does not matter at all. Ultimately, both Parys and Hector die. But we all die, don’t we? One way or the other, our lives end and there is not second chance, no replay button. What matters is the fact that both princes had a certain view of the life, their own interpretation, and lived their lives accordingly. Just like in the case of Icarus, their decisions and actions were their own, as well as the results.

That is what one might conclude when thinking of the Icarus in the frame of old, Greek stories. But it is a modern poem, so I think I would not be too far off while saying that, yes there are some elements from antiquity that inspired the piece, but what I think truly inspires it to be what it ultimately is, would be the XX century absurdism, specially that of Camus.

Should I kill myself or drink a cup of coffee? Are the most famous words of Albert Camus. What they represent is the critical, almost nihilist way of thinking about life. If there is no origin of life, and what comes with it, no purpose to it, then what is there to our activities? If they are of no meaning, leave no trace in the grand scheme of things, then why do we do them at all? In that kind of world, having a cup of coffee, or killing oneself bare the same meaning, hold the same weight. You did something. That’s it. There is no cosmic consequence. While reading Icarus and having that thought in mind, all the thomos, kholos, punishment and unachieved endeavour, go out the window.Mayhaps, Icarus laughs not because he is content with what he did, maybe he does not see that beauty in the fall, but the pure absurd that is the fear that comes before it. Maybe he does not fear it and is able to admire the golden rays of sun, because whether he dies or not is of no consequence to him, because in life there is nothing truly of consequence. One might say that it is a very bleak and unpleasant way of looking at life. I, however, say that it is quite freeing. After all, if there are no repercussions, no hell, no final, divine punishment, then what is there to fear? Absolutely nothing. So, we might as well live our lives to their fullest, fall, if we must, face Achilles, drown. But laugh while doing this, because we know that at least we tried, and the failure or victory do not matter at all.

As I’ve said already, the contemporary poetry is, in my humble opinion, terribly neglected, and simultaneously, utterly brilliant. But it is not only for its fresh, new-wave style or contrarian nature. I think it is so brilliant precisely because it is so deeply rooted in the past all the while being close to us, and their authors have the opportunity, the resources to reference the old. Sometimes the poetry might subvert our expectations, surprise us. Other times it might solidify our perception of the world. Or in some cases, do the first, while presenting us with the second and vice versa. What I want to say, is that there is no correct way of interpretating poetry, like there is no correct way in choosing thomos and kholos, the old or the new one. But if we venture into the uncovered realm of contemporary poetry, we might gain a clearer insight into the past, as well the present. And that is precisely why I enjoy this poem, Icarus, so much. It is a contemporary, anonymous work, and so by its existence it rebels against the admiration for the old, all the while catering to in, in the themes it uses.

As I said before, the old poetry is grand, sublime, it is in one word, a classic, and that in itself makes it so valuable to our society. One thing about it is that, even though it is so important to us it does not do anything our modern poetry isn’t. That is why I think the contemporary poetry so important.

#poetry #contemporary poetry #i could write a whole essay on this #oryginal

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axieta · 1 year

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I apologise for all the delays, there’s really nothing I can do about it. I’m sincerely sorry, and as a reconciliation I offer you a snippet of what I’ve been working on recently. As always, hope you like it, chapter 8 of Hungry eyes coming soon.

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axieta · 1 year

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Hungry eyes masterlist

Since some people asked for a masterlist, here you go. Also, I wanted to let you know that there are going to be ten chapters to Hungry eyes, and I will update the list accordingly.

All my love.

@mestiza003

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axieta · 1 year

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Hungry eyes

Henry Winter x reader

Chapter 7

|Eyes, that do not tell lies|

Waves came and went crashing to the shore with a slight, delightful splash. The water was brown, cold, unwelcoming, more like a puddle than any proper sea. And the shore was flat, pebbled, dun, and tawny, yesterday’s snow long gone from its surface. In the distance, a sharp, pencil-like monument shot up into the sky with an ambition to cut into the cluster of clouds above and gut them for all the rain they’ve got. So far, however all that it got from them was a suspended, wet mist. A few meters from the thin strip of land stretched grey, damp pavement leading straight to the heart of evenly as cold and damp conurbation. Unremarkable buildings with rooftops green and brown from the moss gathered over them grew there, like mushrooms after rain, small, crumpled and crooked. Soft, Scotch mist grazed over their forlorn, dim windows, as if inviting their invisible residents to come out and bathe in the gloomy atmosphere, and above all that reigned, undivided, a yellow-brown cathedral, strangely proud and tall. That’s Largs for you. Not really a town, not really a resort, not really anything. Rather a luminal space, full of empty rooms, abandoned cars, desolate streets, forlorn cafes. And nothing but us, and the seagulls in sight. The six of us were already there, struggling to enjoy the freezing sea breeze, our warm coats and scarfs tossed to the winds, cheeks red, noses frozen off.

White vapour escaping our mouths in long, phantom streaks.

I went there with them, on their invitation. What they had in mind was a relaxing Monday afternoon spent by the beach, watching the snow that had fallen in the morning. Unfortunately, nothing came of it, as witnessed by us around forty minutes into our car ride, as it seemed that only Hampden has been clogged by snows. In the seaside, you could still smell the faint fragrance of rotten leaves and pumpkins gazing at you mischievously from the window stalls in the air. Oh, and the salt. The pleasant, although quite harsh mell of salt and algae and fish. I don’t know if Largs ever was or is a fisherman cottage, but it certainly smelled so on that afternoon when I sauntered about its gravel beach. Camilla had opted not to descend into the nightmarishly dirty surface, least to say, after her previous experience with stones and water and a cut foot, she not as much as did not desire but almost rejected the thought of ever coming closer to the sea than the paved-in concrete lane allowed. Charles stayed with her, very patient and understanding, slowly stroking her hair as he mumbled something into her ear. She giggled from time to time, likely just to be court and not discourage her brother from talking, because, as I saw it, he posed a perfect cover for her cloudy stare. As long as he talked, the stubborn dug of her irises, a dug of a most persistent and durable nature, could be taken for a stare of thoughtful hesitation or meditation. So long you didn’t look at the direction she was gazing at, it all seemed natural, very effortless. But once you followed that unrelenting gaze and came to the dark, hunched over silhouette in a dark, slightly dishevelled coat that, even then bore a few iridescent pieces of glass woven into it, the stare lost on its neutrality and instead took in a quality rather obsessive and stubborn.

But who could ever blame poor Camilla for that intense, devoted stare? After all, clad in that coat stood Henry Winter. Pretentious, cold-hearted, dense, gorgeous. He was limping bare foot around the beach, with his trousers pulled up to his calves, constantly bending down to pick something up and hide it in the inner folds of his clothing. A seemingly ever-present scowl graced his face, and I couldn’t decipher if it was from all the walking on the cold, sharp stones of the beach or the thoughts that swarmed his mind. Because from the slight furrow of his brows, the angry purse of his lips, and a general absence of his mind on that day, especially during Julian’s class, anyone could tell that he has been thinking and thinking hard. I did not like that scowl. That confused grimace on his face, as if he was wondering what had he done wrong, what transgression had he made. As if he was still thinking of her. From time to time his hand soared to his hair, or his cheek or his neck, only to fall, limp, by his side as if overtaken by a sudden infirmity. As if the mere thought, or a glimpse at a memory of her sucked him dry of all his forces.

And I hated the worried but also quite angered grey gaze that followed his every bend and pull up. Somehow, I felt wrong watching Camilla, as she watched him, as he surely thought of that bright apparition from the night before. I wanted to step into the line of Camilla’s sight and cover that sorry excuse for a beau. I could not, however do that, for the nuisance that clung to me as soon as we got into Henry’s car. Bunny. I think that on that day, his blonde mope of hair was slightly lighter, almost gilded by the dimmed rays of sun, and that his smile was brighter, touch gentler, he himself, much nicer. He gripped my arm with both of his hands, clinging to me like a barnacle, chatting nonsense over my head as we perused along the quay.

‘And can you believe this fag, God, fuck that fucking prick, grabs me by the collar, can you believe this?! – me! By the collar?! And drags me out of the restaurant before I could even open my mouth. Sharon ran just behind him and heard all the things that fag had said… what a cock-up, I tell you.’

Sometimes I wondered what he was even doing in a classical course that focused on literature with that foul tongue of his and distasteful manners.

‘Like what?’

‘What?’ He commented dumbly, his thoughts absorbed by something else already.

‘What had the waiter said to you?’

A strange almost incredulous look twisted his sun-kissed face. It would be funny, the unbothered shrug of his shoulders and helpless rose of his palms, if I hadn’t known already why he had dragged the poor Sharon into that restaurant in the first place.

‘You know, the usual.’ His smile was as bright as a summer sun, although a bit sharper and more repulsive. ‘That I’m their best costumer, and they simply cannot wait to see me again.’

He elbowed me right in the ribs. As he said that, his ribald laugh carried across the silver tile of the sea. I cringed inwardly but feigned an unsure laugh as well.

‘I don’t think I will be ever able to come back there. Shame, Henry didn’t pick up, what a prick. Oh, well. You win some, you lose some. I must admit it to you, I was already growing weary of the food they serve in that kennel.’

‘Totally,’ I murmured as my eyes focused away from Bunny and onto the lithe and tall figure of Francis, blazing against the grey skies with his fiery hair, forlorn while on his look-out for her. His coat flayed on the wind, unbuttoned in that romantic, tragic way he had always treated all his clothes. White frill peaked from beneath it, not doing much to shelter him from the cold onslaught of the wind. Bunny must’ve followed my eyes because he snarled and nudged me once again.

‘How do you think she’s going to get here this time?’

His pale eyes shined strangely when he looked at me with that menacing grin of his. Strange, how similar he was to Henry. Well, not Henry per se, but the Henry from the night before, the starved, hungry little creature. A crocodile lurking from beneath the surface of water, waiting for the slightest jitter, to lunge forward and capture an unsuspecting prey. I felt that Bunny has been waiting for me to bring up the subject of her, and when I stayed mute about it, he somehow managed to weave her semi-naturally into the conversation.

‘Dunno,’ I shrugged.

‘Let’s pray that she does not intend on arriving here on foot. I’m not entirely keen on waiting ten hours for her to get here.’

I did not respond, suddenly not so keen on upholding a conversation with him. In response to my lack of response, Bunny breathed deeply, as if to swallow all the oxygen in the air around us and bent down to fish a rock that caught his eye. He broke for me and with a skilled, clearly practiced swing of a wrist he sent the rock bouncing off the strangely still sea. One, two, three, four times it bounced, sending a myriad of shaky circles across the brown water. I had to give it to him, he knew how to play ducks and drakes.

‘She looked most exquisite today, did she not?’

The muscles of his back strained and shrunk beneath the pale dustcoat he donned that afternoon, as he drew his arm back. A studious, thought-out gesture I believe it was. One he would practice with his brothers or cousins or friends from previous schools. Did he chat with those friends about girls and restaurant trips that backfired, like he did with me? Or was he more open with those people? Less stand-offish. Maybe Bunny wasn’t always a prick but got turned into one by some terribly tragic turn of events? I imagined Bunny, one or maybe two years younger than as he was on that beach, sitting on a rock, near some lake, surrounded by tall, green trees, smoking a roll-up, shag all over him. I tried to think and imagine him, how he would be in that scenario. Would he laugh, like he did now, or would his temper be a little bit numbed? If so, how would he smile? Would that fiendish spark in his eyes diminish gradually or start to pulse, brighter and brighter until there was nothing left of his pupils? I wondered, as I thought of much younger, a bit more muscular Bunny if Henry could excel at skipping stones as much as his blonde friend did.

‘Who…?’

‘Who? Who? What are you, an owl? Come on, Richard!’

He threw one of the rocks in his hand at me and although he did it rather lightly, even let the rock bounce on the uneven surface of the beach a few times, it still hurt terribly, when the small, brown pebble hit my tibia. I gathered my hurting leg up to my chest to embrace it and maybe massage the pain a little bit out of my system, while his bellowing laugh waltzed over the tranquil sea once again.

‘Oh, yeah, right. Stunning.’

Massaging did not help. Nor did his laughter which he did not mask, pretentious, and full of self-delight.

‘Although… I must admit she looked quite tired…’ now a deep frown of thoughtfulness cut straight through his bright forehead, smile long forgotten. With a slight tilt to his head, his finger slowly rose, still kind of wet and dusted with minuscule specs of sand that managed to not get washed up from the beach, and pressed them to him lower lip, caressing it, no, pushing it forcefully back and worth, as if bullying his own lips could help him formulate thoughts into words. ‘As if she had a huge fight the night before. You must’ve seen it. She was rather on the edge today. The way she refused to engage in the lecture… Completely out of character, if you ask me.’

He returned to picking and skipping stones for a while and so he did not catch the displeased grimace on my face when I hummed at him, seemingly in agreement.

‘And the…’ His hand graced slowly, almost seductively over his collar bones, indicating what already had known was the unfortunate sign of her and Henry’s ministrations. I had nothing to say to him on that matter. To spill something like that, gossip about her and Henry behind their back, and to him… I don’t think I could think of a blemish more non-launderable than that. After a while of standing in silence, after all it would be rude of me to just simply leave him there, he snapped his fingers at me, not even turning to look back, and spoke once again. And once again his mind and voice and overall, his whole being seemed coldly attached to the distant silhouette of her. His constant fascination with the topic of her started to tire my patience out.

‘And the note Henry tossed her. Did you see that? I thought she was going to read it. She always reads my notes.’ There was a sense of pride in those words. As if reading one’s chitty determined its remarkable quality or the quality of the sender. ‘Wonder, what Henry did to piss her off like that. To crumble the paper from him and not even read it! Brutal! He must’ve fucked up real bad!’

For that I did not have an answer as well, so I simply feigned a slightly amused laugh and pushed my hands into my pockets, just like she did this morning, the small difference being, mine were empty. Hers, on the other hand, fisted around the damned chit.

‘Say, Richard, I had heard that you’ve spent a whole week at her apartment.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Never mind. So, did you?’

Something bubbled in me at that dismissive tone of his. Sudden urge to stab at him, to be better choked me from within.

‘Ya, I did. What of it?’

‘Nothing,’ He shrugged. ‘Nothing, really, don’t look at me like that.’

He buried his chin deep into the flange of his coat, bit around his fiercely green scarf. And he skipped stones some more. I stood beside him, waiting. Because I knew he was going to ask. And I wanted him to. His blue eyes darted to me from time to time as I feigned thoughtfulness, gazing into the horizon. Dark clouds mingled right before me, just at the edge of the skyline.

‘So… what did you two do? While you were there.’

I had to fight the shit-eating grin that threatened to stretch my cheeks.

‘Nothing much.’

‘I’m serious, Richard. What did you do? You can tell me.’

‘I’ve already told you. Nothing much.’

There was a strange delight being pulled from his frustration with me. Bunny could have his schemes and his secrets, that he hid from me. He could have made a fool out of me and Sharon and many other, different people before I even appeared on his horizon. But then, on that pitiful, rocky beach, I was the one with power, the knowledge for which we thirsted. So as pushy as he was, when he came closer to me with that nauseating, sweet smile and asked me the same question a several more times, I did not grow tired or less satisfied with giving him the same answer.

‘You are not a very good friend, you know that, Richard Papen?’

I noticed that recently all of them started to call me by my full name, just like she always did. However strange it was, it also gave me a sense of belonging. Now there was a patch on me, left by her, that they identified me by. It wasn’t a nickname that would showcase their attachment or affection towards me, but still, somehow it was something that distinguished me from the crowd of other, bland first and last names of other pupils at Hampden.

‘Oh, come on! Don’t make me beg you!’

I backed away from him, letting the grin to bloom on my face. I shrugged, mimicking his signature, disinterested gesture. He snapped his fingers at me, a knowing look shining in his eyes.

‘Aha! So you did something! I see it in your face, tell me! Tell me now!’

Very clever of him, I thought as I spun on my heel, to see through me, only when I allowed him to. I pushed off the rocky shore and darted forward, giggling away, like a silly little schoolgirl. I don’t know, there was something utterly exhilarating about being in the centre of his attention, the object of his desire, no matter that I was being only used as a vessel for what he truly desired to know. Funny, how much one can grow, hidden in the brilliant shade of another.

‘Even if so, I’m never going to tell you!’

I did not expect Bunny to jump after me, but he did. With all his athletic built and clearly a natural talent and prowess for sports I stood no chance. And yet I gave it my all. Not like in PE in high school, when I would do anything not to participate in the exercises. I pushed my feet into the ground, rhythmically, with focus and strain, hell-bent on gaining an upper hand over that blond-haired bruiser. My breaths caught in my throat, my muscles burned as jumped into the shallow water and circled the boats at bay. Brown, dirty-looking water splashed around me as I forced my knees up to my chest to jump over the water more efficiently. Bunny lunged into the water right after me, cursing and slurring offensive terms on top of his lungs. The stunningly light mop of hair bounced up and down his forehead with every jump he took to get closer to me. He was slowly gaining on me, as my weak puny lungs started to betray me, and ragged breath clogged my airways with every froggy leap around the boats.

‘Richard, you maggot, it’s freezing-fucking-cold!’

I laughed dumbly, and swirled just past him, making a dash back to the shore. As I run, I looked back over my shoulder to see him tumbling behind me. My tongue darted out to mock him. A mistake. Because as I was focused on my childish antics, one of my feet slipped disastrously over some particularly moist rocks. And as in one second, I was faster than Mercury himself, swiftly manoeuvring almost above of the uneven plain of the beach, in the next I was lunging at it, hands first, pebbles digging into my skin, ripping it to shreds. Behind me, Bunny howled a triumphant roar. As if the pain of hitting a rocky, sharp shore wasn’t enough, seconds after I did so, another, much heavier body pushed me further down. White-hot pain soared up my spine and crawled into my lungs and two strong arms snaked around my shoulders and throat, forcing my head up.

‘Now, you’ll sing everything to me, nice and easy, won’t you, Richard?’

His hot breath fanning my ear, rocks digging into my chest and thighs, the weight of his body growing more and more precarious, the longer he pushed into me. I could feel on my back how the muscles of his torso strained, and between my legs, how his own brushed down on them, hiking my trousers up, as I writhed helplessly in his ironclad grip. And for a second, just for the tiniest morsel of time, a scene flashed before my eyes. Two different bodies, one astral, white, the other terribly nocturnal, crumpled together, gripping at each other’s bodies in a way that was eerily similar to the twist of Bunny’s fists. Something, like a slime or oil slid from the back of my throat and plopped into my stomach.

‘How’s it gonna be, huh? Will you sing?’

Blood rushed into my head, filling it with a low, systematic buzz. Somehow, I did not find the courage to writhe and struggle against his hold, the quick flash of memory burning on my corneas. I fear, as the oxygen started to alleviate from my lungs, and my neck started to strain with acidic pain, craning unnaturally between Bunny’s strong arms, that only seconds divided me from screaming everything to him. Betraying her and just singing to him all that was there to be sung. Just so I could breathe again, just so I could drag myself from beneath his blazing-hot, bronze-tangled body. And when that moment finally approached, when my lips parted and a feint, but eager rasp for air filled the space between us two, a quiet drag of rocks put an end to all of it. Suddenly, Bunny’s hold on me weakened, his arms slid down to my shoulders and his weight seemed a little bit less forced. He did not roll off me, but his body relaxed and did not seem to be pushing at me anymore.

Two bare feet came into field of my vision. Pale, slim, very graceful, although dirtied with forlorn grains of sand and marine sort of flora. A cold, stern voice followed, and the breath I seemed to regain before, once again escaped me.

‘What are you two doing.’

Henry gazed at us, or rather, graced us with a distant glare from the altitude of his station. His face serious and pulled tight, even more so than usual, hair wet from the constant drizzle sticking to his face like seaweed or tentacles of a dead octopus. He run his fingers through that damp main of his and gathered the mist from the glasses, sightly crooked on his nose, with a shaky, reddened hand. We could only watch, too dumbstruck by his sudden appearance to think of any kind of response. I don’t know why Bunny stayed silent, I for one, felt shame mixed with an astral kind of fright gripping at my throat and twisting my stomach, rendering me unable to speak. I saw him… I saw him then, in those positions… the daft, wet body before me was the same of that nocturnal, divine from the night before. The small shards of glass lodged in the wool of his coat, the same glass that from which I drank. The shallow cuts on his fingers and the deep one in the middle of his palm, covered by a long and very white Band-Aid, the same ones I saw bleed not so many hours before.

‘I asked you a question. What are you two imbeciles doing?’

Bunny was the first one to budge. With a sweet, almost infantile voice, in which I could plainly hear that dumb grin stretching his features wide into a smiling moon.

‘Nothing dearest, just having a friendly chat, isn’t that right, Richard?’ His elbow dug into my ribs, and I nodded without much conviction. “See? Now, why don’t you go count some rocks, so we could continue?’

If stares could kill, Bunny would be lying on me dead. And if they could incinerate, he would be not weighting on me at all, for his body would be pure dust.

‘Why won’t you go and do that for me?’

Bunny shifted on my back, somehow unsettled with Henry’s tone. Strangely, on any other day that kind of exchange would go unnoticed between those two, their frisky and stern attitudes playing off each other, today though, was much different. Henry’s aura screaming not disinterest, but quietly fuming with cold anger. The dark frown on his otherwise impeccable forehead, forcing me to draw a conclusion that he had overheard our little chat and after concluding whatever he had to conclude from it, he came to us to straighten things out. Quick contractions of his fists mirroring that of a beating heart. For a second, when he leaned forward, and a deep shadow crossed his face, I thought that their final grip might close on that green scarf of Bunny’s, but no. a sharp scream cut through the air from behind us. Something between a screech of a seagull and scared whine of a feline.

‘Ma belle!’

Another scream followed in a loud, but much more melodic response. And that feminine, honeydew voice seemed to have shaken the whole firmament.

‘Mon chat! Mon Nero fougueux!’

Like a thunder it cracked between me, Henry and Bunny and in the matter of seconds Bunny was scrambling off me and standing straight up, hauling my disoriented, limp body from the ground right with him. Forcing me onto my own two feet, he dragged me with purpose and decision towards the source of our disruption. My coat shrieked, stretched by his dragging hand, me seemingly following the material, silently praying for it not to tear.

There wasn’t a faster casual walker than Edmund in that moment, when he yanked me up every three seconds so that I wouldn’t fall face first to the ground once again. Maybe Henry, but I could not be the judge of that, because when I looked back at him, to check his expression, he was gone, his black coat nowhere to be see on the rocky plain of the beach.

What I could see thought, when I returned to facing forward, was a volatile little silhouette surrounded with a pale swirl of a dress tugged mercilessly by the air currents, conjoined with a large tippet, similarly mistreated as it danced the dangerous line of being tugged of her neck at any minute and a long coat that whirred on the wind constantly catching at the spokes of the silver collapsible, she was riding. One hand, safely covered by a glove, raised to the air, waving desperately, as if to catch our attention. No need. She could’ve rolled on the beach without a word and all our eyes would be pinned on her regardless.

With a grace of a ballerina, she jumped off the bike, tossing it promptly onto the pavement and run, giggling, straight into the outstretched arms of Francis, who just in two jumps found himself at her side. They fell into an encompassing embrace and screamed something at each other, although I could not understand a word of it, for all the cut-away snarls. It was as if they had not seen each other for ages, although, in fact, they had, just that morning. Only singular words could be entangled from that onslaught of nonsense, such as triathlon, gold-medal, Olympic sportswoman, and something that bordered on ducking fire or fucking tired. Even from where I stood, I could see her reddened cheeks like the ripest of apples and sweet nose that seemed to be running, because she constantly nudged it with the back of her hand.

‘So, bike, huh?’ I almost forgot about Bunny, but with that remark his importunate existence came once again into the plain of my consciousness. I gazed at him, sideways, tasked the hand that he had tossed around my shoulders and came to a surprising conclusion, that all of a sudden, he seemed to have shrunk. And his hair wasn’t as luminescent as I thought before. Rather, a dirty shade of gold. And his muscles did not seem as rippling as they did, when he had laid on me.

‘So it would seem,’ I said, picking his arm off myself, pinching the cuff of his coat in-between two fingers. With a swift motion I stepped away from him and forward, beaconed to do so, by those pearly sounds elicited before me.

‘Where are you going, hey?!’

‘To count some rocks.’

And I was off, almost soaring towards her. Despite being away from her only for about two hours, I already longed for her, for all that she had to offer. That laugh, those stares, the cynicism, sarcasm, the know-it-all tone. We walked together to Hampden that morning. Conquered every hill and valley the snow had forged and heroically crawled up to the school premises, whining in the process like wounded animals. She did not seem to be moved at all by the events of the previous evening. What’s more, she did not seem to acknowledge that what I saw happened at all, and after chatting with her for a while I started to question the legitimacy of my own recounting. But her face and body betrayed her in every way. She walked slowly, somehow crooked, as if she was walking off a big soar, her lips shined sweetly like fresh cherries, slightly swollen and her hands, twins to Henry’s bore the markings of shattered glass. She however did not cover them, as he did, rather wore them with silent, challenging pride. And when we reached Julian’s class, and she sat down, unwrapped herself from the coat and the shoal, from beneath the soft curve of her cleavage peaked a reddened halo of teeth, like an obscure broach it mocked at anyone who dared to stare. And oh, did they stare. Most of all Bunny, who during the lecture seemed to be absolutely hypnotised by that jagged mark. Francis smirked at the sight of it, even commented on it, as his ling, bony fingers grazed over her skin, pushing her to shiver at his cold touch.

‘Quelle belle broche tu as. Ou avez-vous faufile des framboises sur vous-même?’

She shot him that look, the cold, unimpressed, unamused look she, oh so often, reserved for Bunny and his antics. Francis only laughed, and run his finger over her chest, withstanding the blazing glare like a champ.

Camilla and Charles seemed indifferent to it, but their eyes darted from time to time to it, as if to check if that blatant expression of lewdest abandon and distaste was still there. They tried their utmost to look unbothered, but I could see that vicious, judgmental spark in both their eyes. And no matter how beautiful or alluring Camilla appeared to be with that slight frown and purse of her delicate, rosy lips, I could not help but to feel somehow offended at the way she glared at my accomplice. There was no way for me to stop the churning of my stomach even when her eyes darted upwards and hid slightly beneath the soft arches of her brows. I had always thought that beauty trumps everything; age, knowledge, experience, honour and all that is sacred. I thought that something so feeble yet breath-taking should always be regarded as the most valuable asset of a person, precisely for the volatile, fickle nature of the quality. And in that aspect Camilla reigned over her tenfold. There was no denying it, with her rose cheeks, short, golden locks, and those beautiful, soft lips not many people could point to themselves and say that their beauty surpassed her. I’m thinking, actually, that only Aphrodite herself could do it, and only for the inborn tendency for vanity of the Devine. And yet, with all that knowledge, and emotions roaring a tempest inside my chest, when I saw Camilla regarding my Diogenes with that slightly mocking, steel-grey stare, I had to press my lips into a painfully thin line to prevent myself from barking at her. It was a vile, unwelcomed and strangely foreign emotion, to be so defensive over a person like her. Overwhelmed with the intensity of my need to protect her, to stick to her side like a faithful companion, to protect her neck from the sharp canines of judgment, I trained my eyes on the other side of the class, to the real object of my ire.

Henry was the only one truly uninterested with the whole raspberry business. Or at least he seemed not to be, majorly, because the whole plane of reality did not bother him at all as well. Absentmindedly, he just scratched the surface of his pulpit with one finger, closely observing the smallest trace of the destruction he was bringing onto the seasoned oak. Like a catatonic or a shadow of himself he did just that, and nothing else. His darkened eyes bore into the poor desktop with such intensity and fervour I truly started to fear for the varnished wood. Only once did he manage to tear himself from the tedious task of vandalism, somewhere between the mention of Thucydides’ trap and Bunny’s remark on how America is the modern-day Athens. As if shaken out of trance, he jolted and scoffed, almost simultaneously with her. Their eyes crossed and in an instant the air in the class seemed to drain. His head fell to his chest in a shameful gesture of a kid that broke their mother’s favourite vase. If Julian hadn’t spoke to him then, he might’ve broken down, or at least that’s what it looked like to me. I knew I saw a small, wet drop hit the inside of his glasses when he hung his head down.

‘Why are you scoffing, Henry? Do you not think America to be the greatest military power, naval power, of our time?’

That seemed to rouse him a little bit, although not enough to ignite the fire that alighted him every time topics like that came to play in our classes. Maybe because she turned sideways to face Bunny, rather than him. When he spoke, his tone was flat, drained of anything. Not even his usual snarky attitude shined through the thick cover of numbness present in his very posture, his face, his miserable, reddened waterlines. His words, void of his signature attitude sounded utterly unconvincing, as if he was forced to spew them out loud.

‘Oh, no. I am sure, that America, more than any other country deserves to be called a Hegemon, or even, the hegemon of our civilisation. But is It rational to compare it to ancient Athens?’

‘What do you mean?’

Julian seemed intrigued, while Bunny only rolled his eyes at that, as if he had already heard that argument repeated on end before. His eyes darted to her, and mine did as well, surprised to find her almost beat-red and with lips pressed so tight they appeared as a white, ghostly blemish on her face. She fisted her dress at her knees with a passion of a person undergoing a herculean effort.

Intrigued I glanced back to the shadowy figure that remained in the corner of my eye. To my surprise, Henry was still digging at the desktop, now with newfound ferociousness, his eyes digging stubbornly into her hunched back, hurrying with an explanation, as if his words were the only thing that could get to her, a girl sitting only two sits away from him.

‘Don’t you think it a tad bit ridiculous to compare that dirty slum, that parody of a country, a colossus whose clumsy steps smother its citizens, whose greedy hands grasp and tear at anything in its proximity – more oil, more gold, more power, more influence – to the cradle of democracy and free-thinking? Is it not ludicrous to compare that semi-liberal, fundamentally flawed gendarme to the beautiful muse of culture and military art? How can we call a cheap copy of one thing its new form?’

Something in the monotony of his voice resounded with such eerie, gloomy feel and sacred conviction, there was no other way but to read them as pure spite. I could not figure though, at whom that venom was directed. Usually, when a snake spits its venom out, the target is clear, big, obvious. Not this time. Bunny was the instigator of the discussion – he mentioned the comparison. But he was not the one at whom Henry’s eye were digging at so feverishly. He was not the one Henry’s words were directed at. Up to the point when she gritted her teeth and exhaled through her nose, with an exasperated impatience, I could not understand what his motive was.

‘America is a republic,’ she’d said, patient, although clearly balancing on a thin line between angry whisper and a shout. ‘The design of the founding fathers, no matter what we think about them and their legacy, accounted for the flaws and inborn malice of the humankind. They prepared the ground for a great, strong, and yes, militarized nation to rise and be a power like no other. To control the seas, and be the source of new, liberal thoughts, just like Athens were. So no, I don’t think it ridiculous, actually.’ With a sharp inhale, she interrupted whatever though Henry might’ve had, as she continued, her words suddenly rapid and furious. It was strange, so strange to see her, shaking her head, gripping at her knees, as if restraining herself, cheeks red and clearly hot, eyes dug deep into the pale, disoriented orbs of Bunny, while Henry clawed more and more viciously at the desk, virtually begging her back with his eyes to turn. Like a chase in which she was the prey, he chased her, but contrary to the conventional understanding of a hunt, she was with the power there. He might’ve provoked her, how, don’t ask me, I suppose that the topic of America came before in one of their debates and left a particularly sour taste in her mouth, but she was the one who would decide if she ever wanted to have a real dialogue with him. She was the one to decide, if he was going to receive, what he so desperately tried to squeeze from her. ‘Whatever Enlightenment dictated them, stemmed from antiquity, so what you deem a cheap copy, is in all truth, its upgraded, modernized version.’

Henry scoffed again, only his face did not shift one bit, giving him a strange look of an animatronic.

‘Upgraded? How does one upgrade perfection? How does one change the unchangeable?’

As always, the two of them locked themselves inside their own world and did not let any of us in. not even Julian, who was now hoovering close to his cathedra, wringing his hands in a helpless gesture. Normally, he would be a moderator in that kind of discussion, not today though. Not on the day the emotions of the two disputants were at their zenith. Julian opened his mouth a few times, but neither Henry, nor she let him squeeze even the slightest whine in. so he just stood before us, tightening and loosening up his jaw, like a fish fresh out of water.

‘And what is so unchangeable in Ancient Greece, so remarkable and unquestionably unique it simply cannot be replicated?’

‘Simple – the way of living. The culture. War. You seldom see genius strategists making their names on the battle fields, brilliant formations forming for the first time in the history, new plans appearing and ensuring a sure end to the grey mass of opponents. No, you no longer see things like that, there is no finesse left in this world. All they know is mindless destruction.’ His voice stayed levelled, calm, void. If someone were simply to listen to that exchange, they would surely take Henry for the rational, normal side of the exchange, and her, for the crazed, manic and irrational. Watching them though, added another interesting depth to the conversation. The way they looked gave it all away. Mainly Henry.

‘Ugh!’ We all jumped up when she slammed her fists right into her thighs, a loud slap filling the whole room. ‘Do you not understand? That is precisely the point! The nature of a human, the nature of war remains ever unchanging, what changes however is its character. And that’s what America is doing now with the legacy of antiquity. They take ands modernize it. The concepts – hard and soft power, hegemony, the balance of power – those are terms that had already been existing for thousands of years already and America merely adapted them. That’s why they’re called the Athens of the modern world. Because of their massive potential and the modernization of old laws.’

‘Frankly, I don’t see the correlation. The barbaric state will always be it. Barbaric. Nothing to compare to Athens.’

Her head snapped back at him, finally, fury mixed with utter betrayal, as if they had been talking about it previously, and now, he had behaved in the most disloyal manner possible.

‘Take a book in hand why don’t you, before spewing nonsense like that.’

‘I don’t see why should I. Comparing America to Athens is like comparing, I don’t know… Moscow to Rome. Are you trying to tell me, you see Moscow as the third Rome?’

His eyes shined with unkept triumph, as she finally, in a moment of particular agitation turned to him. I saw a battle won, and not in her favour, she did as well. It was not a battle of wits, nor was it a battle for who had been in the right.

‘I suppose, with a certain influx of money every savage could manage to become, what did you say, a power? Yes, power, to a certain degree. It is the finesse that America lacks in, and what Athens had an abundance of, that makes the two so different, and in turn, incomparable.’

Awful anger flashed in her eyes, when those words had left his lips, but nothing more than that managed to get through her impeccable defences. Something like a cool drizzle sprinkled onto her face when their eyes crossed, and suddenly no battle mattered, she as not interested in prolonging that skirmish.

‘Mayhaps. Pardon me, please.’

She then rose to her feet, hurt and disappointment painted across her stern face, excused herself from the lecture and disappeared from the room, only to return fifteen minutes later, her hands shaky and wet, snow on her collar, pieces of ice, like the broken glass from the night before, in her hair. A chitty, one passed first through Francis, and then through me, laid already on her desk, facing down, so no one but her could read what Henry had scribed on it. To his biggest dismay, she but crumbled the paper and pushed it deep into the pocket of her coat, dismay written all over her face.

The rift between them was palpable, so much so, even Bunny managed to pick up on it. After Julian ended the class, a bit earlier than he usually would, the blond boy run up to her, frisk air in his hair, rosy blush on his cheeks. I walked with her, but he did not seem to notice me, only her.

‘Look at the snow, huh?’

His hands grasped at her elbow, exuding a shiver, almost like a visceral, whole-body reaction from her, that he must’ve taken as a sign of good fortune, for the dumb smile on his lips only widened at that.

He offered to take her to see the sea, in order to relax a bit, because, as he mentioned, she seemed rather tense. He also offered birdwatching and playing in the snow in the least court or alluring way possible, pointing out amongst many things, that white would look marvellous on her face. Henry overheard it, and in two sweeping steps he was next to Bunny, glaring daggers into his skull.

‘May you repeat?’

His pale, cut-up hand dug into Bunny’s duster, wrinkling it beneath its iron hold. The boy hissed through his teeth and jerked his shoulder forth, successfully freeing it. He however did not manage to free himself of Henry, as his massive, lean form came into the other’s space, knocking him further from her.

‘Nothing, really nothing. I was just asking our girlie here to go and see the sea.’

‘Splendid,’ Henry’s pursed lips indicated that this idea was anything but splendid to him. His feet dragged along the frozen ground with a bone-chilling shriek. ‘Shall we all go then?’ While his lips almost brushed the shell of Bunny’s ear, his eyes darted impatiently to her, still standing amongst us with a sour look on her face. Henry’s eyes catching that and challenging for more. ‘I can only suppose the snow has already covered the shore; one would be most unfortunate to miss that view.’

I thought she intended on refusing him, but no, she just nodded her head and with a slight gesture of a hand she summoned Francis to her side.

‘Mon coeur, be a deary and call Charles and Camilla over here. We’re going to the beach.’

And so we went, the six of us by car, she on her collapsible bike.

As I went up to her, leaving Bunny in the dust, alone and clearly disturbed with my response I felt somehow lighter on my feet, more daring, courageous. She and Francis had been quarrelling over something in that slightly joking, bordering on rude manner they both used in each other’s proximity. Francis was now jumping around, with one hand raised to the sky, fist high and whitened from the effort, as his other hand was trying to push down her tightly wrapped arms from around his waist.

‘Heya,’ I’d said, not really bothered by their little spar, as in the case of those two, fooleries like that were commonplace. Francis grinned at me, his eyes winking from behind his spectacles. First one eye, then the other and then both at the same time.

‘Richard! Thank heavens you’re here! Listen I need you to hold on to that…’

He leaned over to me, mocking a gesture that would suggest a handing-over of some sorts, but as soon as she darted towards his soaring hand, it had once again shot up to hights she was not able to reach. With that new imbalance to her posture, he somehow managed to wriggle himself out of her hold and jump onto a nearby bench.

‘Aaah, bad doggy! Richard, hold her!’ and he straightened out a piece of crumbled paper from his fist, unravelling it over his head with a frown of deepest thoughtfulness, as if presenting a sacred script. Green ink shimmered briefly amongst the many creases he was trying to iron between his pressed palms. Without thinking I jumped forward and gathered her into my hold, pressing her hard, slithering body into mine.

‘Richard, you traitor! Et tu Brute contra me?!’ there was no true sense of betrayal in her voice, so I did not loosen my arms, just stumbed backwards a bit from the effort it took me to hold up straight with her kicking at me, even with playful fervour.

‘Good, Richard, good! At lest we know at whose side your loyalties lay!’

The great priest Francis flaunted his hands about in a substantial expression of praise. I scoffed, although laughter climbed upwards my throat right after the snarl.

‘At my own side, that is. Now, read the damned chitty, or I let her loose.’ And as if to confirm my words, I mockingly tossed her to the side, never unwrapping my arms from her midsection, but making it look as if I intended to do so. She giggled uncontrollably, when her feet dangled in the air for a second, and Francis rose his hands in a defensive gesture.

‘Fine, fine. Just don’t let go of her.’

‘Scared, are we?’

‘Most definitely. Now shut up, I’m reading.’ He cleared his throat, straightened his back, and took upon the most serious of expressions, just like she did, when she recited poems. I wonder which one stole this pompous tactic of reciting from whom.

Her efforts to wriggle her way out of my hold subsided. She had not read yet, to my understanding, the note passed onto her from Henry, and now her curiosity took a hold over any other emotion she might’ve felt.

‘My dearest, oh that’s sweet, he calls you dearest… Don’t look at me like that, I’m reading, am I not? Anyways, my dearest, I am not writing this note to remind you of my sentiments, which are still the source of my greatest agony and joy, and which you decided to disregard with as little though as possible, but to offer a truce. Come with me to Largs today, as soon as the class ends, and let us talk, like the two rational, intelligent adults I’m sure we are. Signed – Henry.’

Her palms wrapped around mu forearms, as if looking for some kind of support. I gladly granted it to her by pulling her even closer, letting her back rest against my chest. In my embrace, when her face was hidden from my gaze by the tempest of her frizzed hair, she felt surprisingly small, no matter the bronze weaves of her muscles and the impossible, palpable power that slept in them.

‘Fucker…’ She muttered and Francis snorted, expression of pure amusement written all over his face.

‘Who? Henry? And you make that discovery only now?’

She waved her hand dismissively, completely disregarding what he had said.

‘No, not Henry. Bunny. That fucker must’ve read the chit when you passed it to me. That’s why he asked me to come to the beach.’

I shrugged, still holding her, because she made no effort to loosen my hold.

‘And what of it? It’s not like he had a real chance at succeeding at seducing you either way.’

I could feel her deep sigh right in my chest. When her back expanded and pressed against my sternum, it was as if warm honey dripped right against the bridge of my chest and settled delightfully in my stomach.

‘Oh, Richard… It is not the matter of whether he read it or not, or if he had a chance with me or not. It is the fact that he tried to use something… dear to me and Henry.’

The sweet honey froze into an uncomfortable block of ice in my stomach. I cleared my throat, flabbergasted.

‘The beach is dear… to you and…?’

Francis scoffed again, although now he seemed irritated, more than anything. His long, pale fingers gripped around the chitty, as if it was the source of all evil in this world.

There were some things, the beach, the Athens-America debate, the coffee, the plants. So many things that I noticed but never seemed to grasp at the deeper matter of them. Like the sea, they talked about, it was all murky and dark for me, but no matter how dense and blind I was at that time, I could see that both she and him, Henry, they were woven into the fabric of their lives. Francis knew that as well, and he did not seem to like it, no matter how tragically romantic it had seemed to me.

‘Bullshit!’

‘Fran, dear…’

‘No, mon framboise, I call bullshit. And you wanna know why? Because there is nothing dear, I say nothing, that might be connected to him. That… that reversed Midas… he ruins things. Most importantly, he ruins you.’

Francis tossed his head around in an exhibition of utter frustration and anger. His hair flew around his head in a brilliant, fiery halo and if he did not look the way he looked, angular, gaunt and flamboyant in that pretty, feminine way I would think that Nero himself had come to us with a cithara in his hand to torture us with his singing. She in turn, averted her gaze from that display.

‘You know what? Look, this is how much I care, and by the way, how much you should care about your Artemisium and any other beaches in this world, if the thought of them comes with the thought of him.’

Francis pulled something out of the pocket of his coat, a small package in the shade of bottle green with an indigenous man in full head of plums and a big, red letters right next to his floating head – RED MAN.

‘You lot wanna see a magic trick? I had learned it recently, it is the most entertaining party stunt, or so I hear.’

He gathered some of the brownish shavings from the back and with an expertly trained hand, he sprinkled it onto the paper folded slightly between the index finger and thumb, then rolled it all into a neat tube, pressing some sort of small, white sponge into the folds. Then, the green bag got switched in his hand to a lighter, and before any of us could react in any sort of way, he lit it all. Blaze of fire lit his face and a tall pole of light shot into the air. A strained shriek escaped her mouth, as she jolted forward, straining my arms, not agile enough though to break their hold. I just tilted forwards and staggered ahead a few steps.

‘Now, bear witness, Nero fiddles while Rome burns!’

The flaming roll-up looked like a cigarette, and Francis inhaled it from the other end like a cigarette, but it most certainly did not burn like one. The tall flame fed off the parchment paper, so different from the usual rolling one, rose higher and higher as it run across the length of the provisory cigarette. She fell limp against me, as the flames reached the halfway point of the paper, and the flames kissed softly the twin, red strands of Francis’ hair with an angry hiss.

‘Oh, you are a monster! A monster I tell you! Put it out and give it back to me this instant!’

With a deep inhale he let a puff of dark, fuming smoke out of his nostrils.

‘Quamvis nunc tuum consilium sit et votum celeriter reverti me… yada, yada, yada.’

The blaze of the cigarette reached his knuckles, and he threw the butt to the ground with eager distaste.

Dusted piece of ashy paper, no longer than three millimetres, that’s what was left from the note Henry had sent her. It sizzled miserably on the wet rocks for a bit more, until the last slither of life escaped it and floated up, to dissolve into the mist surrounding us.

‘Some party trick it was, Fran,’ I said, eyebrows raised. ‘You just smoked a fag, that’s all.’

‘And that’s where you are mistaken, Richard Papen dearest, I just made the note disappear. Hence, I really did present you with a trick – a disappearing trick!’

I breathed a laugh, although brief, because in the corner of my eye I saw a dark silhouette moving about, stalking closer to us, as it moved up and down, across the beach. I let go of her. She turned to me, cheeks red, nose almost purple from the cold and tasked me with a questioning look.

‘Well, you do not look much bothered by the arson we just witnessed.’

The mischievous twist of her rosy lips gave me an idea of a playful sprite giggling at me.

‘He’d already read it, so it is no difference to me. Chitty or no chitty, its contents are safely stored here.’

She knocked on her temple. Francis turned on his hills and jumped down to level with us.

‘Ya, run off you mouth all you want Moneta, there’s no way you memorised all that after just one reading.’

‘Oh-hooh, I bet you real life moolah, I did.’

In the corner of my eye, the dark silhouette moved closer, now digging through its pockets, emptying them with a fervour, small, big, shiny and matte rocks falling around his limping feet, until he found a rock that suited his tastes and closed it in the palm of his hand.

To my right, the two of them did not seem to notice. Shaking their heads at each other, widening their eyes with silly smiles plastered on their faces, they mocked each other.

‘Real money, you say. How much?’

‘How much you’ve got on your person, smarty.’

‘Four hundred and fifty. Are you prepared to pay such a salty price?’

‘I won’t need to pay a broken penny, since everything. Is. In. my head. Engraved.’

‘Then cite away, the floor is yours. And my four hundred and fifty pounds. If you’ll manage to prove to me that what you’re saying is actually what has been written on that piece of paper.’

One punch from her sent him few jumps back, grasping at his forearm and wincing in discomfort. Her giggle got swiftly replaced with a deep inhale and the stiff stillness of her body. From the way her eyes twinkled I knew she was readying herself to recite. As Henry got now closer and closer in my field of vision, I clutched her elbow quickly, maybe too swiftly because she scrunched her nose.

‘Better not now.’

She looked at me, incredulously, but then her gaze fell somewhere over my shoulder and her eyes took in a look of cold understanding.

‘Thank you, Richard.’

Her soft hand patted me gently on the shoulder, then drifted down to my hand, her skin very cold and very stiff, like marble, the veins on the back of it strangely similar to the purple and gold streaks in many fancy, stone floors. Francis threw a glance our way, massaged his jaw as if it was sore and kicking a rock, he sulked away, eyes full of mist.

Rocks grated beneath a new set of feet, bare, and I did not have to turn to know, that behind me hoovered the ghostly pale and twisted by torment of Henry Winter. The smell betrayed him. A strong, kind of earthy king of fragrance that made you think of money and men with frozen hearts. My shoulder now took its turn to be held into his grasp, his palm bigger and colder than hers. Shivers run up and down my spine, my stomach turned and swirled, the cold from his body seeping deep into me, into my soul, freezing it worse than the ninth circle of heel could. I felt the air retract from my nape as he took in a dep breath, surely to speak. I acted, before he had the chance to do so, out of fear I must admit it. A fear of being pulled into yet another of their strange, complicated tapestries.

‘Oh, Henry, wonderful to see you. Again. Well, if you excuse me,’ I waved my hands about, slowly stepping away from him, shrugging his hand from my shoulder. ‘I must catch Francis. We have… a big thing… with the, well, Greek. You get it.’

I throttled quickly away, not waiting for him to even respond. I knew I was not the one he came over to talk to. I was not the one he intended to give the small, round and beautifully opal he was turning between his slightly trembling fingers, to. I was not the one he wished to waste his spit on, so I happily spared him the inconvenience.

As I walked away and towards Francis idly, although not very smiley, rolling a cigarette, I took one last look over my shoulder.

Amongst the heavy whitened mists of the beach, two figures stood, once again distant and unsurprisingly divine. Dark and light, inches away with his hand stretched between them, like a dark, shiny with broken glass, woolly bridge, a tiny green stone at the very end of it. His lips moved, although I could not hear nor decipher what he was saying. Her arms were folded over her chest, closed to him, although it was plane and prominent in the slight tilt of her body, she was willing to open. Her eyes begging him for something. His brows feel and then rose multiple times on his forehead, bruising it with deep, long frowns. He spoke slowly, although one could read a strange urgency, from the way his muscles twitched, and his hair swirled about with the sharp moves of his head. He spoke, I could see it even from the distance, with preciseness and devotion I had not seen him throw himself into, even when speaking of Homer. His hand still extended, he continued for quite a long time, with his spectacles sliding off his nose and eyes big like saucers, possessed by an emotion I could not read, but most of all, and most surprisingly, genuine and clearly pure in their intent.

The sea moved in slight, gentle waves behind them, as they lips moved, as their hair swayed in the wind. Camilla and Charles were sitting far behind, but even with those two in the distance, Henry and she seemed strangely isolated. No birds, no sounds, no people, not really in their vicinity, their space. Now it was her turn to speak. From the slight curve of her lips, from the tilt of her head I could tell she was joking, but the joke was soft and sweet, because Henry smiled as well. It wasn’t a thaw that could break the permafrost of Winter, but maybe a small, defrosted creak.

The sound of lighter clicking to life jolted me from my snooping.

‘It’s not nice to spy on others, Richard Papen, is it now?’

Francis’s tone was chirpy and upbeat, his face however remained stone-cold, the laugh in his tone not reaching his eyes at all. I shrugged, ruffled my hair, not quite knowing what to say.

‘A cigarette? I can roll you a real nice one.’

I shook my head, no. In all truth, all I wanted to do was to turn again, to dig my eyes greedily into the two figures, whose proximity I just abandoned. There was a strange, dangerous pull about them. A gravitation that made you sick and disoriented when near, but beaconing you, luring from afar. Like a drug. Francis hummed. From the slight squint of his eyes, I read that he knew, or rather, thought he knew, something that escaped my keen eyes.

‘Well, nonetheless, no snooping around anymore. They’re moving someplace else.’

His lips pursed into a tight, almost apologetic line, as he pointed his cigarette behind me, towards them. And truly, when I turned, I saw them walking away, arm to arm, with a distance between them, that would be considered appropriate, if not the turned head of Henry Winter. Unchangingly enchanted by something in her profile, something I could not see. His nose was sharp in the grey light of the day, his hair shined, not absorbed it, for the first time I saw him, he seemed to be emanating the glow she so often did in his presence.

They stopped at the line where the water met the rocky shore, the waves lazily washing over their feet – his, bare, pale, and hers, clad in some tall, leather shoes. They spoke of something, smiling like good friends… well no. Not friends. They liked each other, but in the grand scheme of things, those two divine creatures, my private little gods, were just… two people in love. Ever since I got to know them, maybe even long before that, and long after. They hid behind their books, their tricks, silly reasons. They thought up those elaborate, frustrating obstacles, and till the end they could not find a way to tear them down. But on that day, on that beach, and for some time after that, till the snow bund the whole of Vermont, and then let it go of its frightful, biting hold, they were happy, and free to love. And they did, they gained some time thanks to that talk they had in Largs, and they clawed at it, tore like a feral cat tears at a curtain, so just to gain a second longer. They had weeks, which is far longer than any other tragic couple from the old texts they both loved so much had. But in my mind, this particular advantage they had, I revel in. Because even with their nonsensical squabbles, and hermetic obsessions, only the other of the two could understand, they were superior to all those whiny aficionados. because they took the step and they talked.

I never got to know what he had told her on that beach. And I never had the pleasure of hearing the joke she told him in response. All I knew and will ever know is that whatever it was, it somehow fitted right in their tapestry, somewhere between the sea, Athens and coffee.

I watched them for the rest of the afternoon with Francis. He smoked a roll-up after roll-up, and I just stood there, my frozen hands deep in my pockets, eyes deep into them. We did not talk much, for we knew why and who we were standing there for.

They had not moved until the sky started to turn from grey to the unpleasant colour of a fresh bruise, and Charles’ whines of cold and discomfort forced us back into the cars, and her, onto her bike. As she waved me off, I saw something glint in her hand. The opal.

#bunny corcoran #charles macaulay #camilla macaulay #francis abernathy #henry winter #henry winter x reader #richard papen #the secret history #afab reader

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axieta · 1 year

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when are you updating hungry eyes roughly? 💗

I’m thinking Friday this time. I’m really sorry for the massive delays but the life of a university student is literally the bolder I must roll up the hill for all eternity

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axieta · 1 year

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Hungry eyes

Henry Winter x reader

Chapter 6

| The voyeur |

I had always thought that we all lead one life that ends with one, singular death. No matter its circumstances, timing and place it has always been clear to me. Its undeniability, certainty. One life for one death. And then I got to Hampden and realised there are many ways a man can die, many different types, not all terminal but certainly equally hurtful. A death of a soul, terrifying and overwhelming, never alone for in its footsteps the morbidly physical death follows and vice versa.

I thought that after Bunny’s death, that with his physical demise all of our souls followed suit. That all of us had two deaths written out in our lifetimes. And I sure as hell felt those clammy hands of my metaphorical death on my neck as I walked amongst the ferns on that night. I understood that some of us possessed the not-so-amiable privilege of dying twice. But now as I look back on those few murky months, maybe a bit more knowledgeable, with many more years weighting down on my back and with the perspective of time, adulthood, and gained experience that she, my beloved Diogenes shan’t die twice, like the rest of us, but trice. As I lived with her, dined with her, watched the light slowly go out in her once brilliant eyes. I saw the terrible decay eat at her and I saw her change, reverse paradoxically in her development. And I did nothing. Now I know that as long as I live I will always have only two deaths written down for me. She has three.

One- natural, geriatric, gentle death that should hopefully greet her kindly, at an old age.

Two- the slow decay of soul that started with Bunny’s death. One that pushed her off the precipice and swallowed the light in her brilliant eyes.

And three- one that happened right before my eyes, slipped beneath my radar and smouldered her most cruelly on that fateful eve, when Henry Winter came knocking on her door. A death like no other, a unique, quiet, long-term killer. But I guess those are the consequences of reaping your own tender heart out and handing it no another, to careless to be mindful of it.

Letting go of the reins of her love for him shall forever be the third omen of death in her astral calendar.

‘I came here to talk.’

Henry had said, his voice low and somehow slurry as I laid there, frozen on the couch.

‘There is no Hiob you could lay out your case to in here, nor a soul that would hear you out.’

She stood there in the doorway, a black misshapen blurb with straight unrelenting back. Like a wall she obscured the darken corridor before her.

‘I do not come here as an adversary of the devil tonight. Nor any other divine power.’

A pause and then a small sway over her shoulder. Glimpse of spectacles above her head that came closer and then bounced back as if their proprietary was balancing on the balls of his feet. Murmur of his coat, rustle of crumpled material sounded deafening in the silence of the flat. In her silence. I could not see her face, make out what was going through her mind, but the soft, almost dying light from the fireplace reached as far as the opened doors and the fist that was almost white with the force with which she squeezed the knob.

‘I come here as Hysminias. Suffering a threefold servitude. Through Eros, slave to you, Hysmine, through my eyes to your beauty, and through fate I am slave to your soul.’

‘I’m not… ¡Párate!’

She jumped back with a shriek from the door as he bursted into the space. Dark hair in disarray, spectacles crooked on his nose, coat crumpled, snow on his shoulders. I did not realise it before, but apparently throughout the day, the soft drizzle had turned into a snowfall.

The flickering orange light fell onto him, alighting his chin, his cheeks, his forehead, bathing him in a sudden halo that gave off a vibe so threatening so malicious when combined with his tight-pressed lips I felt shivers running up and down my spine.

There was something in his eyes, darting above the edges of his glasses I could not fathom with my drunken mind, an emotion I can now only describe as feverish famine.

His eyes were hungry, abyssal, threatening to swallow the small ethereal being backing away from them, bumbing into the table.

He halted in his steps once fully in the flat and she did as well. But now she was not the wall from just seconds before. Now she was prey in desperate need of some sort of partition.

Their voices were hushed as they spoke, conspiratory. As if whatever they intended to treat upon was a matter of greatest delicacy and they couldn’t afford anyone overhearing it. Well, too bad I was in the room.

‘I come here begging…’

��You do not look like you’re begging.’

His brows furrowed with distaste.

‘I am.’

But he was not, for all that is sacred he was not. Standing tall, although a little swayed to the left, he towered over her, dark, all dark and murky, with a face of a hunter cornering his quarry.

She wrung her hands before her abdomen in a gesture I interpreted as sheer nervousness. I didn’t move. I simply could not. I watched as he came closer and rose his hands to her face, as if to cup them in a strangely gentle, loving manner, as she turned away abruptly and quickly swirled around the table. I closed my eyes when she threw a glance my way, face stern, cautious.

‘Richard está aquí.’

Black over my eyelids. Black all around me. And all I could feel were those two burning sets of eyes scorching my skin, itching, digging and clawing at it with blazing hot, phantasmagorical tentacles.

‘Está durmiendo.’

‘No podemos estar ciertos…’

‘Richard!’

Henry’s voice called out to me. But I didn’t flinch. Didn’t even tense for I was already rigid all over, my muscles strained with the imposible effort of inertness.

I heard some rustling, maybe struggling and her muffled whine. I guess she was trying to stop his shouting. But Henry was a tall, strong young man. She stood no chance against him.

‘Ya, basta, es suficiente.’

Then through the woolly vail of darkness I heard a shriek and a chair scraping along the floor, someone plopping on it unceremoniously.

A clap of a hand hitting another followed by another exclamation of my name. Nothing. Not a reaction. Not a fibre of my body moved.

‘¿Lo ves? Durmiendo, cómo un bebé.’

Cold washed over me as I felt those gazes avert from me, retreating like waves on a shore.

‘Siéntate. Ahora, siéntate y cállate.’

I opened my eyes and was greeted with the sight of two creatures seating across from each other, their eyes like nails pinned to the face of the other.

‘Ya. Estoy sentado, callado. Ahora que.’

‘Ahora quedas callado y hablo yo.’

Two creatures, gods be my witness, not humans! One terribly fragile and small when compared to the other. Clad in a white, shrill dress. Muslin I think, but in the incandescent glow of the fireplace it could as well be weaved from the sheer matter of dreams. Underneath the material, the dark aerial shape of the creature’s body teased with its shape and form. It’s hands folded neatly on the table, slim and slender, the hands of a poet, a pianist, with pronounced bony phalanxes. They laid still, but I was sure that in that moment when the glow of the fire bathed them so brilliantly in orange and gold, if they only moved they would squeeze the most magnificent melody out of the thin air, pulling at the strings of air. The unmoving, rigid silhouette of that shrill musician radiated with a strange, soft glow. A white contra point in the sea of darkness.

And on the other side of the table sat the other creature, a complete and utter opposition to the white nymph. Submerged in darkness, hidden, no!, a part of the shadows in long, black coat and alabaster skin that seemed to absorb and smother every bit of light that came it’s way. Posture relaxed, laid back with one hand splayed on it’s spread knees, the other tossed over the headrest of the chair it was sitting on. But no matter how relaxed the creature tried to look, no matter how it had sat and how nonchalant its coat fell over the seat and onto the floor, nothing could hide the hungry scowl on its face. The glasses slotted onto its devilishly handsome nose reflecting the other creature’s glow, now a liquid pools of fire, twin to the dark eyes hidden behind them. Famine and anger mixed on the Adonis’ face in an expression full of tension.

A tension extended towards the space before it like a wall of conflagration ready to burst and swallow the two beings measuring each other with the stares that could incinerate a mere mortal.

I felt it on my skin, in the roots of my hair, base of my nails. I knew I was witnessing something I shouldn’t have but at the same time I was a stone, hypnotized with the intricate dance of swirling shadows and blazing light.

‘¿Por qué la cara larga, huh, mi cielo?’

The broad-shouldered creature spoke, troubled cynicism prominent in its voice.

‘¿No me harás nada para comer? ¿Beber? Quizás café sería bueno.’

‘Tú café te está esperándote. Tomas lo o nada.’

The old, coffee stained cup stood proudly on the table, as pointed out by her svelte finger. Unmoved, constant. Like a challenge, a condition which had to be fulfilled to continue the negotiations. The male creature uptook it. Reached for it with a steady hand and rose the cup to its perfect, pale lips and grimaced as the cold liquid hit them. It was probably bitter and full of settlings.

With the melodic voice of the feminine creature as it spoke with the same intonation and depth I had been listening to this whole week, but different because packed with emotions I could never harbor the hope to hear directed at me, I felt a strange desire setting into my underbelly. A cruel thing to say, considering the contents of the sentence she vocalized.

‘Me has maldecido. Mutilado.’

The voice trembled and fluttered on the cold air of the flat like the flames in the fireplace. Conflagration. All of it, the air, them, the light and the shadows was a part of the antsy fire swallowing the whole scene.

Henry slid his palm over the table, slowly inching towards her own two folded hands but she shook her head, no, and rushed to hide her finger into the folds of her dress.

Something like agony painted his face with pale, miserable colors, but the shadow came and went and he directed his hand towards the cup once again, but never rose it to his lips.

‘Dándome este título, este título más absurdo- Hysmine! Con tus ojos diabólicos, mirada profunda y esta lengua tuya, me has convertido en una cosa lisiada, inútil para otros, que no hace una cosa más que pensar en ti.’

Henry smiled. Soft, slow and malicious. I could see the satisfaction at that confession painted plainly on his face. Despite that, all this spiteful, bitter energy he exuded I could see what hid beneath his mask. Beneath the cold, indifferent exterior. Because as she spoke, his eyes never diverted from them. His head swayed with the sway of her own, and those dark orbs of liquid magma followed eagerly after the quick purses of her mouth. Mindlessly, and seemingly on a leash, they darted to gape at the soft, pink flesh as if through image they could hear her words. Outside he was an unmovable stone, heartless and stiff. Inside he was but a sorry sailor, thirsty for the honeyed voice of a siren. I felt more than saw that longing in him and couldn’t help but pity him. Pity his ineptitude to convey what he was experiencing, pity the slight hunch forward as if he was ready to lean into her and capture her mouth with his, silencing her, pity him, because he didn’t, and the venomous onslaught from her continued.

I also hated him. Because I knew that she a well was wearing a mask. Different from his, hot and angry, nonetheless, a mask. Only a vail that did not hide well the love she tried to cover.

‘¿Está algo divertido pa’ ti, no? Viendo, oyéndome así. Rota, suplicando por alto el fuego.’

He bore his teeth, hot air seethed through them like smoke escaping a dragon’s mouth. His fists clenched but the rest of him stayed relaxed, just as it was before.

‘Y yo sé porque. Porque estás tan encantado con mi tormento. Todo lo de que consistes lo indica. Estás un hombre cruel. Un hombre lleno de alegría si pueda herir alguien. Te deleitas de herirme.’

A fist slammed into the table, rattling the many bottles that had been set on it.

‘¡¿Y tú?! ¡Que crees que tu me hagas a mi! Pequeña araña astuta. ¡Tejiendo tu red de decepciones y mentiras!’

The soft, white creature jumped at that abrupt shout, sending her chair to the ground, now the eternal flame that blazed in his glasses beaming straight from her face. With brows furrowed she looked as if ready to spill blood.

‘¿Que red? ¿Que mentiras?’

And the dark creature, that dark unrelenting tiger of famine stood up as well, although more gently.

I did not exist in that moment. Some mystic black hole swallowed my whole being, suspended me in the luminal space of their quarrel. Only sound and image came to me and I gave nothing back. I broke from them and then I broke from myself. I’ve never felt so broken like in that moment, when those two fiery sets of eyes tasked each other with gazes full of fury and desire. It was grotesque, pure, pure grotesque. A ritual or a dance of gods i really should not have been witnessing. That thought rattled around my brain, suffocated me as I watched still. The fire coming off of them clogging my airways, pushing on my chest and larynx. Those were two titans exuding a godly glow of passionate wrath I was not equipped to withstand.

I could see the strain of their muscles with a frightening detail. The vein pulsing on the dark creature’s neck, the sweat pooling over the brows of the other.

They both hurt, ached for each other but first they had to dance. Scream their inner hurt in the face of the other. They had to empty themselves, to become the dish in which the other could spill their essence.

I felt it. To me, it was inevitable, coming their way in swooping, stomping steps, like death, but much more menacing and dangerous.

‘Oh, no te hagas la tonta. No bromees conmigo. No me digas, que Richard queda aquí, durmiendo sobre la sofa tuya, comiendo la comida tuya y bebiendo las bebidas que le ofreces por pura coincidencia. No me digas, que has permitido a Francis a entrar a tu piso y ver a Richard sólo porque no sabías nada mejor.’

Now she was breathing pure fire, staring daggers at him as she leaned over the table and pointed an accusatory finger at his chest.

‘Come on baby, you’re too smart for a slip-up like that.’

‘Richard queda aquí porque esto es lo que había deseado. Porque me has abandonado. Porque tenía hablar con alguien.’

‘¡Por dios! ¿Hablar? ¿Con Richard? ¿De que? ¿Que? ¿Tú Diogenes? ¿Le dijiste las todas ideas tuyas, como las habías dicho a mi? ¿Esta libertad que anhelas tanto? ¿Amor? ¿Le dijiste todo esto?’

As he spoke he leaned over the table as well, his built much threatening than hers.

‘Estás celoso.’

Her voice came out weak. He nodded his head eagerly. Almost too eagerly. And then I realized he was cackling, mocking her.

‘Por supuesto.’

‘Estas borracho.’

Another nod.

‘¿Y tú?’

He craned his neck over her, pulling himself over her and standing on his tiptoes to cast a grand shadow over her. His eyes searched her face for something. All he found were those beautiful half-lidded eyes, full of some animalistic satisfaction. And a promiscuous challenge, so different from the long-forgotten cup.

‘You piss me off so much. You think you’re so smart don’t you? Oh, so, so smart. My Henry and his books. His rules. His honor.’

Her lips were a thin, furious line and her teeth stayed clenched throughout this whole little speech and she looked as if she was practicing ventriloquism.

On the other side of the table, supporting himself on two, wide-spread fists he stood, bearing the same tight-lipped grimace.

And oh god, only then did I realize that everything they did, everything they were was a mirror image of the other. Sometimes distorted, reversed, upside-down or discolored but still, the same. Like the two parts of one whole they mimicked each other, seeped and bleed through one another like a grotesque cocktail of souls.

‘Oh, poor Camilla, she loves me so! Oh, my dear friend Bunny, whom I can’t stand, who is so, so tactless, such a sorry fellow! And I, Henry am obviously responsible for them! Because if I’m not in control then who am I?’

‘Shut up! You know that it’s more than that! That it’s the matter of more than just honor, that this is about order, about doing what’s right!’

‘Oh, you and your fucking order can go to hell! I’ve had enough already! If I could I would send you there right here and now! I wish I could kill you, maybe then I would rid myself of this disease that cripples me so.’

Something stirred in the dark boy at the table. I saw it in the clench of his jaw, his fists.

When I was still a young kid, my mother took me to the local zoo. There were baboons there, zebras, turtles and elephants. But most importantly - tigers were there as well. I saw them from afar, orange, black-stripped, dirty and famished. I think they were most agitated by the crowds that gathered in the zoo on that day. Or it was too hot for them in the glass enclosure. I don’t know. What I do know is that I watched them, I watched as the two fully grown males lunged at each other, clawed and bit to draw blood. I saw their muscles straining when they broke from each other and prepared themselves for yet another jump and continuation of the battle. Most barbaric primal example of rage. Most pure, unadulterated, carnal.

I was small, very young when I saw those tiger clash, but I know for a fact that I would never be able to erase it from my memory.

I know that, because as soon as I saw the dark creature’s muscle tense and soon as I saw him putting his back up, the image of fighting tigers popped into my head and I knew something terrible was going to happen. Something violent.

And I wasn’t wrong because the next thing that occurred was as gruesome and vile as those two enclosed animals.

The male creature shot forward with a lightning-speed movement and grabbed one of the bottles displayed before him. With a force fueled by anger he smashed the green glass over the corner of the table, simultaneously grabbing the ethereal, white being’s hand forcing it to stay in place. Next thing I knew he was pushing the broken neck of the bottle into her hand and pulling it dangerously close to his arteries.

‘Then kill me. I beg you kill me and free me from this torment that you burden me with by your mere existence.’

Crazed malice swirled in his overblown pupils.

‘You kill me either way. Every day. Your hair, your eyes, your voice. They are like poison, slowly dissolving me into nothingness. You think you’re crippled by me? Cursed? You’re so selfish to think that I do not hurt! That I do not ache for you! That I do not pull my hair at the thought that I’m throwing my chance with you away just because of Bunny! Fuck Bunny! Fuck Camilla! Fuck the whole lot of them! Kill me! Burn me! Throw me into the annals of time, forget me and let me be forgotten! But be swift because if you’re not mine, then I cannot do this any longer. Come on! What are you doing, stop resisting! Push the goddamn glass into my neck!’

She squirmed and pulled against his hold. I saw her struggle in panic as she tried to wretch her wrist from him, to pry his fingers open, but he was a strong man. Far too ambitious opponent for her when it came to physical prowess.

‘You fucker let go! Let go I tell you!’

Now neither of them concerned themselves with keeping quiet. She tossed and screamed while he urged her to lounge the neck of the bottle through him.

‘Kill me, come on! Be a strong, free woman! Break the taboo, kill me and break your chains!’

It was too quick, too chaotic, too familiar. They swayed in a mush of colors and frantic screams and frankly I was to stunned by this sudden outburst to do anything. Suddenly the atmosphere of intimate, hushed, illicit affair vanished and a new, gruesome scene of horror took its place.

‘Kill me because I burn every day with a conflagration, a thirst I cannot quench, I cannot comprehend and it’s too grand, too big for me to live with! Kill my physical form the same way you murder my soul!’

‘No! You…!’

In a last-ditch effort she threw herself onto the table and grabbed the discarded mug with coffee still splashing inside of it. With a ratchet scream she twisted like a spring and for a second I thought she was going to bash his head in with the mug. I closed my eyes. But then I heard the splash. And a silent curse, coming from him. And the sound of glass dropping to the floor, followed by a low, animalistic exhale more akin to the last breath of a dying animal that anything.

It was her breath. Once again the image of bloodied tigers flashed over the surface of my eyelids.

Silence.

I opened my eyes, reluctantly, afraid of what I might see next. But it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. It did not resemble the blood bath that I had witnessed at the zoo.

It was just her, with her hair tangled in a terrible disarray, with chest heaving, back hunched and cheeks stained with deep blush of effort. But nothing more. No blood. No scratches. Just the furrow of her face. And the terrifying glint of her canines.

And him. In one piece as well, although less dignified than a minute before. More… wet.

The coffee from the mug she was still holding in her trembling hand, now on him. Dripping from his hair, smudged over his glasses, prominently brown on his white dress shirt.

Finally she managed to open the fingers of his hand and pull away. Her lips trembled with unrestrained anger when she spoke.

‘Fuck you.’

And a terrible, stretched silence fell over the timeline of this event. Longer than a century, deeper than the Marian Trench. And then all hell broke loose. A true calamity befell that flat in the split second, longer than a lifetime, from when she spoke those words, to when the both of them lunged forward, to meet each other in an ironclad grip.

It was like a snap of a twig, like a sudden explosion.

Suddenly those two ethereal beings donned the robes of mortal flesh, and crushed to the earth as they crumbled over the table, smashing their bodies together, clashing their mouths, clasping their hands over each other. They jumped right into the flames, let themselves be indulged by the fire and breached the final frontier separating them and they caught ablaze in an instant, blinding me.

Without a warning, I was watching two animals clawing at each other again, although in a different far mor terrifying for me manner. I was used to the violence, the spur of a moment appetite for destruction. But not this. Not that fevered, blazing desire that belched from their bodies the moment they caught contact. The dark tiger grasping at the luminescent, white hips and pulling the dreamy light figure onto the table and jumping over her seconds after.

Alabaster hand shooting up, knocking over the many bottles to gain more space and push it’s prey higher. Her groaning at the deafening smash and her attempt to look my way, but fruitless, because of the same hand that caused the mess of the broken glass and alcohol dripping all over the table and floor grabbed her face and forcing her to look at its proprietary.

It all happened before me, unraveled with an unimaginable speed that rendered me rigid and taunt. It was like watching a building crumble down to the ground in a mushroom of dust and explosives. Grand, sublime, unstoppable, full of force and violent destruction.

‘You’re mine. Look at me. Not him.’

‘He might’ve woken up. He might see.’

‘Let him see. Let him see what true freedom looks like, my Diogenes.’

I inhaled an unhealthy amount of air tinged with spiritus and fire. My lungs burned.

He fell over her, completely covering her shrill form. His coat bunched and draped over them like a cape, Aegis. His hands shot up to her head, to her arms, gathering her beneath him in a greedy, selfish gesture as if to hide her from the rest of the world. To capture her amongst his shadows and never let anyone glance at her luminescent brilliance ever again.

His hand wandered into the skirt of her dress, swiped slowly to the apex of her tights. He did something with the palm of his hand, I think he pressed it to her, I wouldn’t know, but she must’ve thought it an absolutely divine experience, for her body tensed as she jumped up in his hold and then fell, completely slack onto the table. Her mouth agape in a silent scream.

Henry’s dark hair fell over her forehead as he dipped his head to kiss her neck. She moaned, the most beautiful, soul capturing sound I have ever heard. Coffee dripped in a brown drizzle from his hair onto her.

He continued his ministrations with his hand and she appeared to be utterly helpless against his skilled fingers, only able to pant and moan, to blush and sweat as she ground her hips against it.

Their lips almost touched as he hovered over her, inches away, brushing the tender, pink skin against each other, agape and wet. They breathed each other in, let the other inhale the air, the strained moans the one was eliciting from the other.

And then he hummed and an electric bolt surged through me because I realized that she had laced her fingers with that dark main of his, pulling at it, gripping it like a rosary.

My eyes followed the slight bounce of her breasts with an intent and slightly hypnotised awe.

For a second he stopped, halting her upcoming rise to the summit, which was greeted with a displeased grunt from her.

‘Let him see, and let yourself feel how I ache for you.’

And he reached that hand, that soaked, glistening hand to his head, to untangle her fingers from his hair and to guide it down, to the dark folds of his clothing.

She let out a surprised gasp, and he breathed a satisfied laugh.

‘I know sweetness, I know.’

Now her hand was moving slightly, far away from my prying gaze, but there was no denying, no sugarcoating what she was doing. It was all written in his blissed out expression, in the tilt of his head, movement of his Adam’s apple, that struggled immensely to swallow the overflow of saliva.

‘Oh my sweet girl. My skilled little treat.’

His lips fell onto her temple, showering it with quick, fiery kisses.

‘You are doing so well sweetness.’

Gradually, the kisses became longer, lingering lower on her face till they reached her red-hot ear. With a lick of his tongue he squared up and whispered something into it, too low for me to hear, also, too obvious not to guess. She nodded, without a word, she gave him the permission. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier man.

Only then did Henry push slightly off her and slipped his pants down, not too low, only enough to free himself from their tight confines. Finally free, he came back to the warmth of her body, his eyes searching her face, hers, full of longing and pleading. Something like a string of understanding shot through then and from that point on there was no stoping Henry, no stoping her.

He lunged forward, sending her a few inches across the table. They both screamed.

Two parts of a whole, finally one. They had to halt themselves to revel in that sudden unity. But no matter how stubborn and vicious Henry was, she towered over him with impatience. Her hips buckled up.

‘Move.’

‘Your wish is my command, princess.’

And yes, he gave in. He moved.

God, I watched them writhe together, two of them clasped as one. His lips danced over her skin, her cheeks, her nose, her neck, god her beautiful, swan neck, her collarbones, leaving wet, loud smooches in the air. That was a melody, a wild dance of abandon, of decadence. The way she grasped onto his coat as if for her dear life, the way he smushed her into the table, pushed her closer to him, roamed his slender hands over her body and bunched her white dress around her waist. Their every move was full of reverence, a strange carefulness enchanted into every gesture as if the other was made of porcelain. And yet they gripped and tugged and scratched. It was a clash of light with darkness. Battle between gentleness and brutish force. The table rattled beneath them as her long, doe legs shot up to wrap around his midsection. His pelvis smashed into hers and they both screamed with delight.

‘Oh…! You’re mine.’

I have never heard Henry so out of control, so pathetic. I have never seen him in that total disarray that had suddenly overtook him as he ground into her.

‘Mine to have and to hold.’

God, I could see his reddened face, strained with effort, disfigured by the throws of passion. His arms twisted around her like the lithe twigs of ivy. His massive form obscured her from me, like the vine obscures the walls, the windows, the doors of old buildings.

‘Fuck you.’

Their shadows casted by the flinching light of the fireplace loomed over them on the walls. In a scale at least three times bigger than themselves, the shadows danced, mirrored their every move forming a dark-figure painting over the walls of the apartment.

His glasses feel from his nose onto her chest and she grabbed at them with a quick, pale flash of her hand. She pulled them over her own nose.

‘Am I yours?’

A particularly sharp jerk of his hips shook the table and knocked over the rest of the bottles that salvaged themselves from the previous massacre.

‘What do you think?’

Her tongue, pink and sweet, lolled out as she sent him the most salacious of smiles.

‘Am I, Hysmine?’

A thrust and then another.

The waves of her hair crushed in the air with every move filling my ears with the oceanic roar of my heart. Her head rushed forward falling over the edge of the table, pushed by the force at which Henry was abusing the apex of her tighs. Her neck stretched and strained under the force of gravity and the bluish veins popped impossibly vivid under her skin.

‘My Hysmine, tell me.’

Her eyes were half-lidded, too heavy to lift them, too blissed out to control the rapid flutter of them. Her face flushed, contorted in an utterly beautiful, bordering on painful, grimace.

And he… gods he was demolished, completely starstruck, drunk on pleasure, on her. She opened her mouth, probably trying to squeeze some coherent answer from the depths of her throat, but it seemed that he no longer cared for any response as he longed his tongue between her parted lips in a loud, salacious kiss.

‘God, you’re devine.’

Her name slipped from his lips like a prayer as he lunged into a litany of strained breaths and quiet ‘oh gods’.

He reveled in her touch, in the feel of her naked skin against his.

‘Tell me you’re mine.’

Triumph bloomed across his face when she reached for his face, cupped it with utter devotion and thoughtfulness. He was a conqueror, glorious champion marching under the triumphal arch of her thighs, accompanied with the procession of her moans.

‘I… I am…,’ she trailed off, her head lolling to the side and eyes rolling into her skull.

‘I am…’ She wasn’t able to finish.

One of her legs rose slowly, scraping the sole of her feet over the surface of the table. Her knee bent and stuck to his ribs, as if searching for some form of support and the other leg feel from Henry’s waist, right next to his thigh. Only then did I see the slight tremble of it. The uncertain shake, that should not be there, for its painful almost, poisoning nature. His leg was giving out, and with it, the whole pace of his movements crumbled, became erratic and stained with ache. A spasm shook his muscles and he groaned, but not with pleasure, like he did before, but with a gut-wrenching hurt. Chills shook my own body at hearing this screech, like an animal getting butchered, a bird struck in the middle of its flight. Henry has been soaring through the skies, yes, but with a broken wing, a hurting leg, there was no other option for him that quilt, nosedive into a disappointing finish for the both of them. He could hold himself up, keep the pace no longer. I could see that in the furrow of his brows, the tilted backwards, pained face. And I could not feel happier. Satisfaction bubbled up in my stomach, came up to my throat tickling it, forcing a malicious cackle to come out. But I knew I could not laugh yet. Not when I saw what she was doing.

She was a clever girl, observant, even when engulfed by the flames of passion. Her smart eyes, still covered with mist of lust, darted over Henry, analyzed his every move, every little strain of his muscles, every small furrow and twitch of his lips. She knew his limits, she knew him better than anyone else. And although I felt disappointed to see the marvel shining in her eyes at all of that, I could not help but also admire her for what she did next. Her body twisted like a corpus of snake, with precision and calculated grace. Her knee, the one that she had supported against Henry’s hips soared up, fitted right into the pit of his arm and pushed, while the other, placed at his thigh swiped it from beneath him. Her slender hands pushed at his shoulders and in this one swift second their bodies switched places as they fell to the side, slipped from the surface of the table and to the ground. Henry’s back hit the floor with a terrifying impact that shook his whole body, engulfed it with spasms as the crunch of smashed glass filled my ears. Still conjoined they screamed as her hips smashed into his. Pain mixed with utmost pleasure.

The white dress now bunched around her curled up knees, falling over Henry’s figure just like his coat fell over hers before, although, as it was with every similarity or contrast between those two, her way of doing things stayed more subtle, far less offensive than his. She wasn’t an ivy obscuring and covering everything in its wake. She wasn’t selfish, brutish or possessive. Rather, as I watched her back straighten and peal off him, as her hands bunched the stained, previously white, dress shirt into her slim, long fingers, all I could read from her was an absolute and unquestionable control and certainty of the power she held. Contrary to Henry she was gently sure of all the intentions flaring in the room. Her clothes not an importunate shadow but the soft petals of a flower. She herself, not a tiger but a white lily. And Henry lied helplessly beneath that miracle of nature with arms splayed on both of his sides like Yeshua in his last moments, a martyr of carnal pleasure.

His slim fingers curled around anything, just to ease the pain of the impact, unfortunately all they found was the shattered glass. Blood trickled from beneath his clenched fists as he grit his teeth with fury.

‘Move…’

Now he was the desperate, jittery, needy one.

‘No.’

And a sly, poisonous grin bloomed on her face, the same grin I saw earlier painting his physiognomy, when she was pleading her case to him.

‘Not until you ask me nicely.’

‘Pretty girl, don’t make me…’

Her fists slammed into him, still holding the browned material of his shirt with such a breathtaking force I had to bite the soft flesh inside my cheek not to whine alongside Henry. I heard an uncomfortable sound of linen reaping, followed by a porcelain stutter of buttons hitting the ground, joining the shattered glass and pools of spilled alcohol.

‘I am not your pretty girl.’

She said, with the air of unforced superiority around her whole being. Without even trying, without even modulating her voice she sounded so demanding and so authoritative that I doubt that anyone would dare to oppose that statement. Least to say Henry, who at the sound of those words appeared to shrink and scorn in shame.

‘I am your god. And I deserve to be treated as such.’

Her hands let go of the shirt and started to roam over his exposed chest. I saw how his pale, alabaster skin covered with goosebumps at that touch, how he arched his back to press himself some more against her. But she was to smart to let him revel in that moment, and so she leaned back, prying herself from him, denying him the touch he so much craved and let the only point of their bodies to stay together be their hips. Unmoving, tortuously still.

‘So now plead. Beg your goddess, Henry.’

Her teeth shined viciously in the dim light. How wrong I was to ever think her a flower. No, that was a predator far scarier, ferocious than whatever tiger Henry could’ve ever wished for to be. This was Bellona, Venus, Durga. She did not fear the tiger. She mounted it.

‘You snooze, you loose, sweetness.’

There was this mocking, cruel note to her now that twisted something in me, twitched in my fingers, blazed in my stomach. Something that also spoke to the sorry fellow splayed under her, as his eyes burned with a shameless famine.

Power soared through her veins, resounded in her voice, slept in her stillness. Henry saw that. I guess he always knew, or at least suspected that before. Maybe that’s why he kept coming back to her. That’s why he felt so strongly compelled to be near her, smell her, see her all around him. Maybe that’s why he bugged her so at her apartment, why he cornered her on that day at Francis’, why he came over now. But he was as stubborn as she was. His fiery, unbent, unbroken soul twin to hers. And when fire meets fire, nothing good comes out of it.

And that’s why, when I heard her rules for the continuation of the eve, when he pressed his lips into a thin line, for a second I thought this was the end. That he was too proud to surrender. Too stock-up, far too stubborn to give in. But then he sighed, a pity-inducing, agonised sigh, and with visible effort he spoke. Weak, that’s how he sounded. Weak and terribly submissive, nothing like Henry I knew. To be fair though I had never put an ultimatum like she did forward to him.

‘Please…’

‘What? I cannot hear you.’

‘I beg you… sweet girl, please…’

‘Please what?’

‘Please, ride me, Thalestris.’

Her knees scraped the glass-littered floor when she finally shifted. Some blood spilled in magnificent, ruby beads and trickled down to mix with the dirty maroon of the blood coming off of Henry’s maimed hands.

Her head fell back and a pearly, beautiful laugh bounced off the walls of the flat.

‘Your wish is my command, Alexander.’

And then she moved, for real this time. One, two, three thrusts. First, he bit into his cheek, hard, and another streak of blood joined the pool on the floor, that one coming from the corner of his mouth. But he could not hold his voice nor his hips in check for long. Just like hers, his head fell backward and his chest expanded with a raptured whine.

‘Yes, my goddess, yes, please, please, please.. ahhh!’

His hips buckled upwards into her, sending her body up into the air, straining it. When she fell back down I discovered that now they were working together, moving in perfect harmony as if they’d done that a thousand times before, knowledgable in the pleasure of the other. Each of them pushed at each other, swayed to the melodic sound of their delight and rushed to the precipice, completely swallowed by the ambition to propel the other off the edge.

Henry’s pleas filled my ears like a mantra and soon I’m not sure if I recognised or even knew any other words than those of that desperate mendicancy.

Their race continued as Henry’s hands floated up her bouncing figure, squeezed her hips, even guided the for a while, eliciting the most beautiful sounds from her, floating higher, to her chest, leaving rust-coloured stains on her impecable, white dress, pulling at the material to finally free her from it. To my greatest disappointment I did not manage to see much from that perfect display of beauty, as Henry shot up almost immediately to cup her breasts into his bloodied hands, to latch onto her pebbled nipples.

In response, she clasped her palms around his nape in a protective gesture you could only witness in nature.

My eyes dug into the wide shoulders of Henry. I tried counting the many glass shards clinging onto the dark wool of his coat. But all I could hear, all I could focus on was that obscene sound of his tongue on her.

‘Oh Henry, just like that. Your doing so well. Such a good, pious devotee.’

He mumbled something into her chest, intangible and without any sense of superior touch to his words. But she laughed, truly happy chortle escaped her mouth as he slid his arms to her back, cradling her spine, her neck into him. He clung to her form, desperate, almost scared to loosen up his hold as if his arms were the only thing grounding her in him. As if any minute she was ready, destined to evaporate, disappear like camphor.

‘Yes. I am yours. Your goddess, yours and only yours. To worship. To pray to. To please.’

With every sentence she sped up her pace, bounced in his lap. Until tremors shook her body, until she whined and pulled him impossibly close to her, until he as well reached the crest of his pleasure and in unison they climbed and lunged into the climax.

Never did he let go of her, of her clothes, tore his cheek from her chest. Half-sitting, desperately jolting his hips, it seemed he lost himself in that brilliant, white apparition. His world narrowed only to her and when he finally arrived at the end of their ride, I could only see a fogged-up, almost love struck expression gracing his features. Nothing else.

And then she screamed for the final time, contorted in a strange cramp that overtook her whole body and crushed down straight into him. His back gave out and they both smashed once again to the floor.

I fisted the blanket covering me. I gritted my teeth.

Sweaty and a mess, they finally separated. She rolled off his chest, onto the ground, onto her back. Her blank stare seemed to be searching the ceiling. Analysing every tentacle of shadow that caressed the soft, white paint. And he looked at her, twisted his soar neck and measured her half-naked form with utter acclaim and pride.

Slowly, their breaths evened. Even slower, she started to rearrange her clothing, smoothing her hair out, standing up.

He still laid there, spent and satisfied, he watched as she put the chairs into their places, picked the shattered bottles up. After a while he stood up as well, buttoned his pants, shoved the battered shirt into them. And as he came closer to her, embraced her from the back, as she was coming back from the sink and for more glass to collect, he fitted his face into the crook of her neck, nuzzled into her hair.

‘Oh, what is that smell? I know, I know. This is the smell of love my little songbird.’

And he chuckled into those sweated-up curls, inhaled her some more, just purely delighted that he was able to do that.

‘The smell of me on my beloved…’

She stiffened and then, with the greatest triumph and glee I realised that this was the moment I have been waiting for. The sudden explosion, the claw in artery, jaws of a wild cat clasping around the neck of the other.

She turned on the hills of her feet in his grasp to face him. And he must’ve read that as an invitation to talk some more, because he cupped her cheeks into his hands and rested his forehead on hers. Delicate, he was so surprisingly, so surreally gentle with her.

‘I love you,’ he breathed. And she said nothing. Just took his hands off her face, stepped back and looked at him with those big, watery eyes of hers. Never narrowed when she looked at him, always bright and somehow melancholic. Sadness swelled in them as she put some more distance between herself and Henry.

‘I think you should go now.’

Henry did not understand. Quickly he devoured the meter of dirty, slippery floor that devided them and once again he latched onto her, pulling her arms.

‘Sweetness, did you… did you not hear? I told you I loved you.’

‘I heard you very clearly, dearest. And I told you to leave.’

‘But…’

‘Leave.’

A pause and a strained breath came from her, as if what she was going to say next hurt her even more than it could ever hurt him.

‘You do not love me. If you did, we would not be here, Richard would not be here, we would not look and feel like we do right now. So don’t lie like that to me. Don’t lie poorly.’

I think those words were sharper, harder than any knife known to mankind. And when pushed right into the soft, exposed chest of a man confessing his love, they stabbed at him with morbidly perfect aim.

‘Leave.’

I thought I saw her lip tremble. I thought I saw his eyes go from hungry, to stunned, so wet. But I could not be sure. All I know is that in the next minute, all of that fire, that warmth that not so long ago raged in the room, vanished.

With trembling hands he reached towards her, this time however, not for her, but for the glasses that still sat on her nose. With the way she leaned towards him, with her pursed lips I knew that she did not mean what she had said. That she only raused Henry up, gave him an opportunity. Paradoxically, an opportunity to fight and to stay. To prove himself and linger with her in the pleasant heat forever.

I knew that because I was a liar. She knew that because it was her lie. But Henry was not naturally disposed to conquer the game of half-truths as we were. He did not pick up or did not want to pick up on what she was quite plainly putting down before him.

‘Very well then. Good night to you.’

He bowed, shallow and quick goodbye and he was off, walking through the door, he himself disappearing in the greyish aura of the morn.

She stood unmoved where he had left her, arms hugging her tight midsection, chin snug to her chest.

Her fingers wandered mindlessly over the red smudges on her dress. And when the hills that clicked irregularly against the steps of the staircase, and then outside of the apartment, against the pavement seated their rhythm. When the steps of a strained legs ceased, only then did she move.

A red circuirla shape started to appear above her left breast, just where her heart would be. With its jagged edges sharply imprinted dips in her skin I could only suspect it to be a bite mark.

Quick like wind she rushed towards the door, pulled at it with a hurry so desperate, so agonising, my heart sang for her she too dashed from the apartment.

The moment the darkness of the corridor swallowed her I jumped off the couch. I felt tired, stiff and all too clumsy to do anything and yet I run up to the window. Cold air enwrapped me, clarity suddenly seeping into my mind.

The world outside did not look like I remembered it.

White caps of snow covered everything and anything that might’ve been there before. The sky was sharp, crispy, despite its obscure colouring. The smell of cold yet unstained with fumes and smoke filled my nose. No birds in sight. No living soul. It was as if during the night the whole world transformed into a barren wasteland. As if they themselves, Henry and her, brought a calamity of hoarfrost upon the globe. Mountains and peaks of shimmery white gobbled up the whole landscape leaving in its wake only one set of steps leading away from the apartment.

And the singular living being, a shrill, small girl clad in white. No longer a goddess or a nymph or a feral animal. Just a girl. Kneeling in the snow, throwing herself into it desperately, wrestling with it loose consistency, clawing at it.

Through the warm comfort of the flat I watched her jerking in the snow like a fish fresh out of water, gasping for air.

I think she was screaming, although I tried to tone this out. No matter how much I hated Henry right then, I much preferred the screams he elicited from her than those pained, tormented wails.

A catharsis fell over her in that snow, I thought, as I watched her toss and turn, throw her hands up furiously into the air, sending a copious amount of white into it. She was kicking and biting at the only thing she could hurt, leave her angry mark of her broken heart. She did not leave one on Henry, like he did on her, but she sure as hell could leave one on the innocent, insentient snow.

Her face turned to me for a second and I saw wet trails slipping from the reddened cheeks. The thrown-up snow gathered in her hair, upon her shoulders, her back and as it came in contact with her heated skin it melted almost instantaneously. But those wet marks on her face, those silver trails as illuminated by the rays of rising sun were no traces of melting snow. Those were tears.

I stood there a little bit longer, to make sure she was all right, but as I saw her gather herself up from her knees and back into the staircase of the building I rushed back onto the couch.

#bunny corcoran #camilla macaulay #charles macaulay #francis abernathy #henry winter #henry winter x reader #richard papen #the secret history #afab reader

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axieta · 1 year

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Dear readers,

I am well aware that this blog does not gain a lot of traction, still I would like to direct a small request at the lot of You, who read whatever I scribble on here with the greatest misery and effort.

Namely, I’ve been faced with a dilema of the most delicate matter and I would like to know Your opinion on it. As You already might suspect, I intend on writing a rather tumultuous scene to play out between Her and Henry in the next chapter of Hungry Eyes and I planned on variegating it a bit with a quite intimate climax. I am rather excited to write it, although I am also aware that this is not what most might search for in a The secret history fan fiction.

And so, I would be most grateful and indebted to You all if I could get some feed back from You.

Sincerely,

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axieta · 1 year

Text

Hungry eyes

Henry Winter x reader

Chapter 5

| What had passed in a blink of an eye |

That week I had spent at her place.

‘You’re quick’

She had said as soon as I knocked on the door of her apartment on that first day, a cloudy Tuesday.

‘I’m sick.’

I joked terribly mimicking a clogged nose, and she snorted.

Her flat wasn’t very lofty, cramped rather, but it wasn’t a quality with which it was built. Rather, the lack of space came from all the trinkets, books, cups and mugs, clothes, makeshift cigarette trays (I tell you, all those mugs, plates, cake stands and fruit bowls, were covered in cigarette ash and millions of tiny, orange butts) and many a plants scattered all over it. There was a convergence of all the kinds of alcohol bottles intermingling with piles of books and papers sticking out their flimsy, disheveled carcasses in each and every corner. Some of the bottles empty, some of them full, waiting for an opportunity to be opened. The moment I entered the crowded space I knew that I was walking into a smoker’s home, not only for the ash and the butts but also the sheer vail of silvery cigarette smoke blurring the contours of the space before me. In the morning light its tendrils curled up and untangled, white-rimmed swirls created fantastical shapes in the air, as if it was a living, breathing creature with a strange, artistic mind of its own. Ever present, the smoke followed her and her slowly burning cigarette like an importunate roommate. Everywhere she went, it appeared instantaneously, as she seemed to be smoking even more now, that she was confined to her flat. To be fair, I had not seen her light a single cigarette during that week and I wondered wether or not she had a special, everlasting ciggy on her hands. Truly what a mystical and magical trinket would that be. Once my eyes adjusted enough to those foggy conditions, I could see the flat in its full glory. And it was a really nice flat. Right opposite the entry, a huge floor-length window gaped at me from a frame of golden setting of ornaments. Like the mouth of Leviathan, sharp with sculpted leaves and vines it opened the flat to the grey world outside, sill damp with the morning mist. Before it sat a black, leather armchair with its feet resting put up and a small table on one leg, obviously holding a dangerously heavy looking stack of books and an ashtray. This time a full-fledged crystal cigarette holder and not any cheap substitute. In the middle of the room stood a hefty one-piece table, dividing the space. To its left opened the kitchen annex, strangely populated with plants, and without any kitchenware in sight. Everywhere where I looked, and so on the shelves, the counter, floor and even the sink, plants unraveled their green leaves, bowed their heads and climbed upwards, towards the ceiling, to hug the small iron chandelier with their veiny arms. I wondered how did she even managed to meander amongst this miniature jungle, but I figured that if anyone could do it, it would be her. And to the right, a big fireplace took the better part of the space left, disproportionally big to the size of the flat. Over it, supported on a stone shelf a giant reproduction of Philoxenus’ mosaic stood, framed in much tamer, silver mount. From it, the fierce Alexander on Bucephalus chased after Darius and his chariot. That classical accent felt somehow out of place, even more so when my gaze fell down onto the art deco set consisting of two slick, leather chairs, a couch and a glass coffee table, per usual littered with papers and other trinkets. Next to the fireplace loomed a dark, oak door, shut closed, concealing what I could only assume was a bedroom. I had never seen the door open, nor did I catch a glimpse of what hid behind it. Never had the chance to get close enough to her. For a second, months after that week I thought she might open herself to me completely, seal the deal of our forged friendship. And maybe she too was considering it, but then the whole Bunny affair took place and any trace of connection any of us might’ve had with her dissolved to a minimum. After that she became a whole different person, terribly distant from the girl I got to know in that smoked-up room. Overall, however disorderly, the flat felt somehow cozy. Homely, very her.

As I went in, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I had no present for her ( I heard that it is only polite to bring a present when you pay someone a call for the first time, but I was so stressed with the visit it had completely evaporated from my mind) and so I just swirled my empty hands around, looking for something to say. Because what was there to say? I went there to maybe gain some insight on the tragic drama that was apparently at play between her and Henry, but it felt rather tone death to jump into that right off the bat. So I stayed, as I was in her hallway, a bit dismayed and disoriented. She, always the empath, must’ve felt my discomfort or maybe she just read the clear apprehension from my daft body language and so, to lift my spirits a little, she sent me a warm, reassuring smile.

‘Why don’t you sit down, huh Richard my dear? Have you eaten yet?’

‘No, no I haven’t I’m afraid.’

I said, truthfully. As I had already mentioned, the visit cost me so much stress that I couldn’t think of anything of substance, least to say breakfast.

‘Then would you like me to cook you up something? Scrambled eggs? Please don’t say no, I already promised I would whip up something for you.’

I nodded, thankful for her light tone and the slight, crooked smile that she kept on her lips. Weirdly, in that apartment she seemed drastically different from the ‘her’ from the outside. Somehow more delicate, less wild and more… well warm. The spark in her eye had not diminished, but rather turned into something more inviting, cosy. Maybe it was the effect her letter had on me, even so, it seemed as if she had shed the tough exterior she wore while in Hampden and revealed her soft belly to me. Truly surreal to think that, I know, but what else could I think while faced with a completely new version of her?

Her aura, usually a raging fire, sparkling with terrifying orange, screaming with fearsome yellow had simmered down to idle warm tones of embers gleaming with shy and affectionate red.

Sitting at the cluttered table I swiped some of the crumbs off of it and watched as she put on an apron and swiftly zigzagged around the kitchen. A pan here, a cutlery set there. She opened and closed cupboards faster then the speed of light. I could not keep up with her, even though I was simply spying her with my eyes and she was doing all the work. She moved with an effortless grace, because of course she did, and hummed softly, the same melody she did that night at Francis’s summer house. There was something familiar and light in the way she roamed about the kitchen. Not in that tacky, trite way some of the people try to show off their skills in kitchen, flaunting around what they had learned in curses and what-not’s, but in true, pure, kind manner. Everything she did seemed not like a performance but rather like a favor to a friend or an unexpected gift. It was a pleasant experience, seeing her in such a motherly light. Because that was her aura at that moment. Bright, soft and motherly. All that laid encapsules in those precise, rapid movements, from the way she lit the gas stove, to the way she twirled her hair around her finger as she tossed around the egg yolks on the frying pan reminded me of Vesta, goddess of domestic and civic hearth. With her own, gas-lit fire serving as her sacred attribute.

‘So what do you do for fun around here? Expect for reading and not cleaning your flat of course?’

She giggled, breaking another egg on the edge of a pan.

‘Not much I’m afraid. How hard do you want them fried?’

‘Not at all. And egg soup is what I fancy the most.’

Another laugh.

‘Coffee?’

‘Hmmm.’

Not so long after that quick exchange, she set a plate with the eggs, tomatoes and a slice of bread as well as a glass coffee pot and a mug before me.

‘My god, you really made a soup out of it, didn’t you!’

‘You want a soup, you get a soup.’

I huffed a laugh and she puffed at her cigarette. For a second it was quiet, the silence only disrupted by my fork scraping the ceramic plate.

My eyes wandered onto her hand squeezing her own cup with the dark beverage in it and I wondered if she was not going to eat herself.

‘Cigarettes and coffee, remember?’ God damn it, she must’ve been an oracle of some sort, seeing as easily she guessed what was going through my mind all the time. She shook her hand as if to illustrate her point. ‘I don’t need nothing else.’

‘Then what about that one? Are you going to drink it?’

I pointed at a mug that had my attention since I crossed the threshold as, and I already knew that from the letter, it bore a particular connection to a special someone I simply itched to know about some more.

‘Oh that ol’ thing? Well it’s waiting for its proprietary.’

Suddenly the wild grin was back on her lips and the mischievous spark shined in her eye. Her face elongated with poisonous fiendish intention. A true vixen if I’ve ever seen one.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I’m going to throw it right in his face, next time he comes around.’

‘No you won’t.’

She slammed her hand on the table and the towers of books around us shook in their foundations as she let out a nasal laugh. It was pure and loud and contagious.

‘No I won’t!’

And we both spiraled into a fit of laughter. There was something nice, fulfilling about a slight mockery like that. I don’t know at whom we were laughing at so hard, at her, or at Henry, but either way it felt good to let loose a little. Usually, when I was with them, the whole pack of the classical course, I felt terribly on edge. As if I as much as sneezed in their presence, it would be seen as a horrible faux pas, a terrible transgression. But with her? With that newfound aura of delightful familiarity she brought in with her brilliant smile and those bright eyes, for the first time in months I felt like bird in flight. Like I would soar high into the skies on the winds of her pearly laughter.

‘Oh you’re in so deep, my Diogenes!’

She threw head back, snorting once more and I could feel the air coming into my lungs.

‘Eat up Richard, quick, quick! I have something to show you!’

When I finished I wanted to put the plate in the sink, clean it a little, but she just waved me off and tugged at my sleeve to follow her. She took me to one of the stacks of books and crouching beside it, she forced me to as well. Her sharp, neat fingernail slid across the many torn backs of the books, leaving a quiet tr-tr-tr sound behind, like a chirping of a beaver gnawing on a piece of wood, until she stopped at an uncharacteristically tidy, blue and silver, hard cover.

‘Do you know what that might be, my Crates?’

I shook my head, no, wide smirk spreading across my face at the new nickname. Now I was her apprentice.

‘Erotic poems, Rhetorical pleasure.’

Oh! What a devil woman! The smirk she gave me- the toothy, sunny smile full of that wonderful deviltry. How pleased with herself did she look! How beautiful did she seem in that prurient happiness of hers!

We were crouching so close to each other that our arms brushed and breaths mixed. I could smell that dreamy scent of hers and feel the unruly strands off hair she had now in a tight curl washing over my shoulder. She had a very disobedient type of hair, a few strands fell over her forehead giving her a disheveled look of a romantic poet, think Byron or Shelly. I wanted to push those strands from her face, behind her ear, but I didn’t find the courage in myself to do so.

‘Well, come on, don’t just flaunt that before my face, recite something for goodness sake!’

With a swift tug, she pulled the book from beneath all the others, sending the magnificent tower to the ground. A terrible, deafening rumble resounded in the quiet space, akin to a dragon’s roar and I jumped surprised, falling onto my arse. It hurt like hell, I must’ve hit my backbone, but my hurt did not last long, as she jumped over me with a fiendish yelp and onto the armchair. With one leg tossed over the headrest, and the other supporting her stance on the wobbly piece of furniture she smacked the book open on a random page.

‘Cana Fides et Vesta, Remo cum fratre Quirinus jura dabunt; dire ferro et compagibus artis claudentur Belli portae; Furor impius intus saeva sedens super arma et centum vinctus anis post tergum nodis fremet horridus ore cruento.’

Her voice was strong, deep and loud, perfect for recitation. Fire filled it with each and every word as she screamed the chant of foretold justice into the air above me. And as I watched her squinted eyes and pursed lips I thought the cigarette fumes started to get to me, because in my head she was glowing. Shining with unalloyed, heavenly smoulder that beamed from her eyes and came off her skin in waves. Sweet with the melody of her chant, illuminated with the grey light beaming from the window behind her she presented herself as a frightfully enchanting creature of light and mist. With her head tossed back, hair swaying softly as she nodded to the rhythm, teeth bare and r’s prominent on her tongue, a true Roman goddess emerged from deep within her, manifesting in that blinding, fascinating glow.

She was heaving, her chest coming up and down in utter and total perdition, her gaze directed upwards as if sending the residuals of her voice up, into heavens. A priestess of Forum Romanum.

I clapped, as she finished her verse and in turn got rewarded with yet another toothy grin.

‘One more?’

‘Yes please!’

One more turned into two, then three, four and five and before I realised it I was pulling out a cork out of the third vine bottle of the evening, swaying off the headrest of the art deco coach, screaming on top of my lungs, trying to shout over her.

‘No! It’s not salutam but salutem! Have you learned nothing in those classes you take?’

‘Oh I much prefer to recite in my mother language than in those dead tongues, you can cut me some slack!’

She slurred now, having far more to drink than I did, and I myself wasn’t feeling so sure about my clear mind.

‘Then say something in English.’

She frowned, suddenly offended.

‘Why would you, in all that is holly, assume that English is my native language?’

She pulled off the couch and stood before me in all her disheveled, alcoholic glory. Mars gracing her reddened face.

‘Is it not?’ I asked fearfully, my own voice trembling slightly.

Suddenly a bright smile appeared on her lips lighting up that cloudy expression she bore just seconds before and she snorted. Once again I have fallen victim to yet another of her silly pranks.

‘Now, get ready for I shan’t repeat myself.’

Her tone turned strict and demanding all of a sudden, still I could see a glimpse of humor in her eyes. God, how expressive and lively those eye were. I could bet my own left arm, that even after her death they would gleam at anyone brave enough to look into them, living a life of their own.

‘I’m all ears.’

She cleared her throat, straightened her back and lifted her head up, clearly preparing herself for a great epic. The air stilled around her, silence broken only by the crashing of the logs happily burning in the fire place. Even the silver cigarette smoke around us halted in its fantastical swirls as if to stop and listen to whatever great verse she had prepared.

And in that sublime atmosphere, those words fell onto my ears:

‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’

And then my roar followed. I could not help myself, by all that is holy, I couldn’t! The air came out straight out of my lungs, pushed out by an invisible weight and stroke my vocal cords in my throat. A strained wheeze of my laugh scratched my very being.

‘Is this funny to you, Richard Papen?!’

If it was anyone else screaming at me like that I would scram in fright, but it was her. Screaming with a slight note of amusement quaking in the back of her throat, she did not sound threatening at all, so I just snorted away.

‘No, no how could it? By all means continue!’

‘Fine. Fine!- but now listen! This is my favorite lyric of all time.’

‘Go on. The floor is yours.’

Once again, she positioned herself properly, seeing as that particular pose- stiff and serious was the only one in which she could recite Larkin.

‘From the top! They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn by fools in old-style hats and coats, who half the time were soppy-stern and half at one another’s throats.’

Suddenly all the color drained from her face and her eyes turned cold, motionless, unseeing. Ghostly shadow covered her whole form and as the words left her mouth she pulled further and further away. Her voice turned scary, gravel and not so motherly.

‘Man hands on misery to man.’ Her teeth shined between her reddened lips, the only splash of color in her otherwise insipid face. ‘It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.’

This time I did not clap. Nor did I laugh. Looking at her I felt an unpleasant dryness overtaking my throat.

‘Do you… do you believe that?’

Her sharp gaze took my whole frame in. Suddenly I felt awfully small.

‘Do I? I suppose yes.’

I swallowed, hard.

‘And did your parents…?’

‘Immensely.’

The temperature dropped drastically in the room. I could feel the cold needles of hoarfrost freezing inside my lungs despite the fire raging in the hearth mere inches from me.

‘And you never wish to have kids?’

She must’ve felt the cold as well, she had to, because as soon as that sentence had left my mouth she tossed her head back and rushed to the raging heath, placing her hands on the shelf above, her back turned to me, put up and rigid.

‘Never ever.’

‘Even with Henry.’

Dry snort resonated off the dark stone of the fireplace, so different from her delightful giggle I got so accustomed in span of a few hours.

‘Sooner the sky will meet the earth and the sun will set in the west than I will ever have the gruesome though of bearing his kids grace my mind.’

‘Are you so sure about that?’

‘Positively. You cannot turn vinegar into jam. And you most certainly cannot consume it on its own.’

And before I could react, she looked at me over her shoulder, the orange beaming from the fireplace framing her face with gold, trembling light. And I think if I had not set eyes on her before she eyed me, I should have been struck dumb.

‘That’s a great analogy. He’s sour like vinegar, don’t you think?’

I shook my head yes, mute, speechless, despite winning the wolf eye agility contest as her sharp teeth glistened in yet another bone-chilling smile.

And that was our first day.

On the second day, I must admit I felt a little bit guilty about not presenting her with anything the previous day, so I troubled myself with dragging my portable record player as well as a few of my favorite records along with me, to make her up for that. I kind of feared her reaction, after all the record player was one of the, as she called them, devilish modernities of a man. But, no! She surprised me once again. I watched her watch the machine witch child-like glee and big eyes, following intently the rapid spin of the record and gazing incredulously at the knob with which I regulated the volume.

‘It is a positively wonderful thing, this record player of yours.’

She liked all the records, but most of all the Speak and Spell recording. What a strange thing it was to see a creature of light such as herself crouching over that crappy record player, nodding and bouncing on the balls of her feet, squealing with delight at every electronic note coming off the machine. She must’ve rewinded that particular record at least a dozen times, and at the end of that psychedelic session I was sure that every lyrics from every song written on it was engraved into my mind. So much so, that I felt positive that if someone came to me in the middle of the night and put a gun to my head demanding me to sing, let’s say New life, I would be, by god, I would be able to do it.

In the span of that night her lips curved up many times more than I had ever seen them. And they shined like freshly picked July cherries. We had not spoken about Henry at all that night and I suppose that was why she seemed so carefree and cheerful. It has come to my attention then that the slighted mention of his person could sour her mood like no other thing, in no time.

At the very end, when the sky behind the window started to turn from black to indigo and then to light grey, and I felt I had to go home, to at least wash myself off and sober up a little bit (she was handing me generous, copious amounts of vodka on that eve, clearly extremely pleased with the novelty I presented her with) she asked me to leave the record player behind, along with the Depeche Mode record. One look into those big eyes of hers and I knew I could not refuse. However, as I was leaving, I decided to not give up so easily.

‘I shall leave the record along with the player in your capable hands my Diogenes. On one condition.’

‘And what that might be, my Crates?’

‘We will clean tomorrow, first thing in the morning. I cannot stand seeing you vegetating in all that filth.’

She only snorted and waved me off.

‘Whatever you say.’

I had gone to my room in Hampden, washed off and laid down. But I could not stay put for long as my mind was being plagued by the images of her, deeply burned inside of my mind. When I closed my eyes, there she was, shining on the inner surface of my eyelids, and when I opened them, her face loomed over me, as if painted on my ceiling. She awakened something in me during those two mellow eves. Even though we did not do much, only jested and wasted our time on reading and listening to music, I found myself longing for her presence. For the mess that diminished the size of her flat, the dusty books she pulled out from their piles just to read a passage for me and toss them on other pile without much thought, for the reproduction of the mosaic hanging idly above the hearth. I was simply incapable to lead my life as I lead it up to that point, I was not able to sleep or rest properly for she, probably without even the intent to do so, had turned my whole life on its head. It scared me profoundly, because what if I was just like one of her books? Surely, for now entertaining to her, maybe even fascinating to some degree. But what if she got bored with me and tossed me aside just like she did to all the other volumes at her place? I don’t think I could stand that state of suspension. The dust covering my back, emptiness left in my soul by the absence of her laugh and the indentation in the shape of her watchful gaze. I rose from my bed, not getting much sleep, and rushed right to her doorstep. I could not bear the thought of being discarded by her and felt I had to squeeze dry every moment we had to share. This time I had brought paper and a fountain pen with me. I don’t know why.

I had not expected her to open the doors the way she did. Her impecable, slender hands clad in yellow rubber gloves, apron covering her midsection and a bandana securing her hair on her forehead. Domesticity taking root in her as she waved a duster at me, inviting me in, and smiled widely. She was cleaning… I did not expect her to take my throw-away comment from the night before seriously, rather I anticipated to see her that morning sipping on her coffee, with a cigarette in her mouth and a book in hand not bothered by it at all. And yet, there she was. It made my heart swell with pride at that clear indication that my words meant something to her.

‘You’ve got mail.’

‘I know. It’s from Francis. Leave it in the box.’

I stepped into the flat, fully, and noticed, not without a trace of solemn nostalgia, that the Leviathan window was wide-open, and the air around me was clear. No trace of the silvery tendrils of smoke I’ve gotten so used to.

‘Don’t you want to know what he has to say to you?’

The room before me was the same and yet completely different. Now the stacks of books and papers were neatly towering against the wall adjacent to me. No plates or bowls in sight and as far as I could see into the jungle kitchen, all of the dishes rested idly on the dryer, shining with polish. The make-shift ashtrays disappeared as well, and now the only sign that a smoker lived in this space was the crystal one resting in the middle of the one-piece table, right next to a number of bottles, clearly organised by hight, from biggest to smallest. I took the room in like a shock to my system. It was brighter, loftier and somehow colder. To be honest I kind of regretted my decision about suggesting the clean-up to her, as now her flat seemed a little bit expressionless, as if the havoc and disorder that ruled it up to this point contained a piece of her in it. But I concealed my disappointment and set my papers on the table.

‘Oh, I already know. He’s probably asking me if I want company.’

‘And do you not?’

‘Nah, I’ve got plenty.’

She waved her hand, scooping some dust from one of the sink plants and I giggled, warm feeling spreading across my chest.

‘You need help with anything?’

I liked to watch her like that. Unbothered by my presence, content with it even, as she went on about her things, chatting to me above her shoulder, as if my presence was just as normal and natural as the sky was blue.

‘Richard you wouldn’t have a clue where to put all of my dirty stuff even if you wanted to. Let me do my own thing.’

‘Then what should I do? I wouldn’t want to disturb you in any way.’

She laughed as if I just told a joke.

‘Why don’t you entertain me, huh?’

‘How?’

She filled a green watering can and slowly started to tip it over various plants. Some of them got more, some less water and I couldn’t figure out what was the system to her method.

‘Tell me a story.’

‘A story?’

‘Hmmm. Think of something. Fun. Sad. Grotesque. I would like to hear what you can come up with.’

I laughed, nervously. As I said before, she was a great writer, telling and scribing stories came to her naturally, even on spot, in forms of her little white lies. But me? I was sure I couldn’t muster anything up, especially under the pressure of needing to satisfy her.

‘I’m afraid that won’t fly. I’m not a great story teller.’

‘Sure you are. You’re a great observer. I constantly see you lurking around judging people. A watcher that’s what you are. I’m sure you can forge some of your peeping Tom experiences into something entertaining.’

‘I don’t lurk. And I don’t peep.’

‘Oh yes, and a magnificent liar. That too.’

I felt blood rush into my head as she said that. Deafening roar of my pulse in my ears made me sick to my stomach and hot with panic. Her gaze landed on me, sharp, intelligent, all-seeing.

‘Don’t think for a second Richard Papen that I haven’t seen through you.’

Sweat pulled under my collar as she pointed at my with her rubber-clad hand.

‘You’ve worn this shirt three times last week. With this exact sweater. And it’s not very neat. Faded and with a abrasion on you right sleeve. And threads are coming off your coat as we speak.’

I hid my hand under the table, numb with fear of her discovery. Fool. I was a fool for thinking I could carry on with my rich kid charade, especially right under her nose. How could I even think someone as sharp as her could ever let that slide?

‘No rich kid would ever allow themselves to roam about in clothes that are this fatigued. Sorry, but that’s true. Your not stock up enough, too swagger-less to deceive me, mister.’

I felt dizzy with nerves that pooled in the pit of my stomach. And she continued, with her back to me, carefully tending to her plants.

‘Don’t get me wrong, Richard….Why are you so pale? What is… Oh, god! I’m not going to tell anyone if that’s what you fear!’

I almost jumped at her sudden light tone.

‘You’re not?’

‘No! If that’s what you care about then no. You should already know that there is nothing that I admire more than a skilled liar. And there is no doubt to it. Not only are you a skilled liar but also daring. What a combination! Truly what a combination!’

I felt as if a stone was lifted off my chest as she laughed softly and came my way, light on her feet, as always and with a somewhat prideful grin on her face.

‘You posses the qualities of a great liar. And what goes with it- a great story teller. No tale is true back to back. Every writer knows to exaggerate a bit to make their stories more interesting. Lies are the same, except they lighten not your story, but your life.’

She patted my face in a reassuring gesture. I thought my heart had skipped a bit when she nodded with conviction as she stared right into my eyes.

‘I admire you, Richard. Ab imo pectore.’

She reassured me once again.

I could not tear myself away from her image. Intimidating in the situation of my exposure but also enthralling in the light of the praise she showered me with.

‘You’re a great liar.’

She repeated.

‘Takes one to know one.’

She giggled at my shy attempt at compliment and caressed my hair with her hand, like a mother does to her kids after comforting them. Her motherly side came back and suddenly I felt lighter than a feather, as no burden was now weighting me down. I was now bare before her. My soul and my lies, the complicated maze I’ve woven myself into seemed like a straight road, with no forkings or crossroads. And as it all fell from my shoulders and the knowledge that she already knew who I was and accepted it without a question, admired it even, seeped into me I started to feel somehow full and content. I relaxed my shoulders and sat further in my chair.

‘Come on Richard, don’t keep me waiting like that. Stop slumping around and tell me a story!’

Somehow, despite my identity already being out in the open, I wanted her to know more about me. To seize that comfort of being, of truly living as who I was and as I was and tell her all bout the things that rattled about my chest. So as she slowly came back into the kitchen and started putting all the dishes in their destined cupboards I opened my mouth and words fell from them in an unstoppable cascade. I told her about my childhood. About California and my dad’s gas station. About the TV I used to watch in my living room and my high school. I told her all about the med school and my distaste of it and then how I found about Hampden, through a pamphlet. How I was charmed by the photos in it, the atmosphere of mystery enchanted into paper and my longing for beauty. I told her about what I have been writing down in my journals, every fear, every insecurity or a splash of triumph, every dot of color that had fallen in my memory, she heard about. And she silently soaked in my words like a dry sponge thrown into water. She did not comment on any of it, not judged, only listened, commuting to her own rules of confessions she had laid before in her letter to me. Only when I got to telling her all about how I tricked dr. Roland into signing me a check for two hundred bucks, she sat next to me, face serious, lines around her mouth deep and eyes murky.

‘Those are not lies Richard, are they?’

I shook my head, no, suddenly insecure and filled with dread at her reaction. Had I said something inappropriate? Unbefitting? But she did not scorn me, or show any signs of disgust with my tiny, slimy self. She just took my hand in between her own palms, now bare and soft like silk. As she hung her head I saw something profoundly forlorn shining in her eyes, like an abysmal dark swirl of sadness.

‘Even though, it is a beautiful story. Moving.’

Her voice was small, almost too small to hear. But I did, and so I supported my head on hers, and for a second we rested like that, sinking in our silence, freezing off in the golden rays of sun outside.

‘I don’t know why I tell all those lies.’

I finally said. She looked up at me and I found nothing but understanding in her eyes.

‘Neither do I. But I must admit that I find a strange delight in doing so, can’t you say the same?’

‘Positively.’

‘And we are not hurting anyone with those lies, I think, for they only concern our reality, not anyone else’s.’

‘So it would seem.’

‘More than anything, by weaving those lies, we protect ourselves in the most basic way of all.’

My brows furrowed at that statement slightly, not understanding what she had on her mind. And once again that clever Pythia read my mind expertly, answering, before I could even utter ‘how so?’.

‘In words of Plato - A man can guard expertly whatever he can thieve expertly. Hence, if a man is expert in lying, he is also expert in detecting lies. By fabricating our truths we guard ourselves from being deceived by others.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Have you not seen how quickly I saw through you?’

‘Maybe. Maybe you’re right.’

I was struck dumb at her strange way of interpreting Republic, but at the same time I felt somehow reassured in my own ways by what she had said. Her soul, strangely akin to mine, sought any kind of justification for her compulsive behaviour as well. But that was the difference between me and her. While I sweated and trebled at the thought of being discovered, she had found what we both were looking for. And being a liar far more exquisite than myself, she also managed to convince herself of her own righteousness and in addiction, me. I liked her way of thinking. Her way with words. That slithery, cutthroat tongue of hers. And so everything that seeped through her mouth fell onto my very eager ears and I gorged it all up, avid for more.

‘I think I’m done with the cleaning for now. I hope you’re happy, now that you made me strip my flat of any trace of character.’

I laughed at her mocking tone. That as well I valued in her most highly. The ability to switch moods, like mask in ancient theatre.

‘I must say I’m quite content with this vapid state. At least I don’t faint from lack of oxygen the moment I step in here, so I think you did well enough. You may stop in your endeavours.’

She giggled, sending me a toothy smile.

‘How magnanimous of you.’

She looked up into the ceiling as if searching for the god or goddess she was chanting to before, now in clear search for patience and strength.

‘Although I can’t help but wonder… what are you going to with this one?’

Pulling myself from her grasp I pointed at the still untouched, half-empty mug with dark, murky coffee in it. Dark circle had already set above the liquid’s surface on the well, indicating the prolonged stay of the mug on the table.

‘You should clean it as well, or otherwise it’ll turn moldy.’

I reached for it with an intent to get rid of it for her, but her hand shot up, quicker than lightning and caught my wrist half way up to the dish.

‘No.’

Her voice was firm, packed with undeniable tension.

‘The cup stays.’

Unbreakable resolve shined in her eyes, fervent and terrifying. Terrifying not because of its intensity but because of the weight her words carried. Only then have I realised with how high regard did she consider Henry. Angry at him or not, he was her priority. No matter what did she say or thought about him, he should have always stayed in the forefront of her mind. Like the craters on the moon that shed their shadows onto its otherwise unsullied, white surface, he was there to stay, always on the pedestal, unmoved like the cup on the table. I thought that no matter how much value my words carried for her, his person alone, his existence, would outweigh it. And I wondered. Seeing how resisten to her charm did Henry seem, cold and uninterested in what she had been giving him on a silver platter, what I would jump at and gobble up at the first occasion if anyone was willing to offer it to me, was her own heart similar in any way to the moon? Reflective and pure in its silver glow, ready to bounce back any source of light, of warmth to guide throughout the darkest of nights, but at the same time solemn and forlorn. Suspended alone in the cold, dark space, always willing to give and to give back but never to take. Without any protection, silently accepting the damage Henry’s asteroids imprinted on it.

It was a sad, dark thought. One that in no capacity could ever fit her. But I saw it. In the low sway of her head, the furtive glance of hers and the uneasy flutter of her lashes. I saw it to be true. And I wanted it to go away. Most desperately, ardently I wanted the expression gone, exorcised from her catalogue of facial expressions for all the eternity. How could Henry stomach it? How could he be so cruel?

I turned my wrist in her grasp, most delicately and took her hands into mine, slowly and with caution as if I was gathering not flesh but water, careful not to spill them from my hold.

‘Why don’t we do something different then, huh, my Diogenes?’

I was never the one to comfort others. Never the one to be kind and open, to give advice. I preferred to stick to myself, hidden in the shadows, peeping, as she described it. I enjoyed being the watcher. But with her I found that the words and actions of comfort came naturally to me.

‘Brandy?’

‘This is Francis’.’

‘Well nothing tastes better that what’s not yours, don’t you agree? Finders, keepers.’

She puffed a laugh, still too strained for my liking so I continued.

‘Annexation of brandy! What do you say? Coup d’état! Brandy Anschluss!’

And then she laughed at my clownish antics fully, with her whole chest, mouth agape and one hand covering it. A breath of spring amongst all the gloomy talks of Winter.

‘Fine, Richard, fine! You had me at annexation!’

I eagerly pulled at the cork sealing the brandy and chugged directly from the bottle.

‘This is dangerously close to alcoholism, you know.’

Sha said as she tore the bottle from my hands and down a few generous gulps.

‘Not if we arrange to do something alongside the drinking.’

‘And what would you suggest?’

My gaze fell onto the stack of papers I had dragged with me.

‘Writing?’

‘Writing? While drunk?’

‘Write drunk, edit sober.’

‘Hemingway.’

She looked at the fountain pen, took it into her hands, as if weighting it, as she slowly went through the idea in her mind.

‘Come on. We can lie our wrists away till they won’t be able to move any longer. It’ll be fun.’

‘All right. But only in Latin!’

I sighed deeply, theatrically. I knew that she was going to say that, but what can one do in a situation like this? I nodded my head, yes.

And so we got into it. She scribing hastily, with rushed, generous gestures, me more conservatively, tightly with less expression and verve.

‘Put on the music.’

‘Depeche Mode?’

‘Sure.’

And with that, the sound of electronic music accompanying Dave Gahan’s deep, hypnotic voice and the scraping of pens on paper, hours passed. When the hour got late and the sun set it’s head behind the horizon, we started to time each other, who could write more, or a better limerick. She won of course, but I had no problem with that.

‘Nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem, qui illius culpa cecidit velut prati ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam tactus aratro est.’

‘Cheat! Cheat! That’s not yours!’

‘Whatever Papen, the only thing that counts is that I could memorise it and you couldn’t!’

‘That’s no fair!’

‘Life’s not fair.’

But other than that one instant of tried treachery, she composed her own poems, beautiful, crescendoed with thunder and rain. I don’t think I had so much fun in many weeks, even if I did not excel at writing my own verses.

We got quite drunk, not only downing the whole bottle of Francis’s brandy, but also a bottle of scotch and three shots of vodka each. I never was a lightweight, but I must admit that when I got up from my chair after we finished with our literary game, my world swirled around me and blurred into a heavy shoal of colourful ink blots. Words jumped up from the many pages resting on the table and down onto the floor before my eyes, woven from green smoke and moonlight. Oh how beautiful the moonlight was that night! Mysterious, soft. The moon was full and when I looked up at it, through the wide-open Leviathan window I saw the craters on its surface. Tears welled up in my eyes as I felt her hands grabbing me by the collar and pulling up from the slithery floor. I did not even notice when I or how I had lost my balance, but I was very grateful for her assistance.

She asked me to stay the night, and I agreed. She gave me a blanket and took some of the pillows off her art deco couch, so I could lay comfortably.

That night I didn’t go back to Hampden, and she didn’t go to her room neither. She stayed with me, humouring my teary testimony about the poor moon. What a poor astral being, I said constantly, shaking my head, sure she understood my analogy without me even having to explain it to her. And she nodded her head, hummed as if she really did understand what I was trying to say. But I don’t think she did. Liars are like that, they see the lies and truths of all the people around them, but those concerning them. But I had no more energy to lay it all down before her, the hurt and sympathy I felt for her. How I saw her in the dark, cold embrace of Henry’s grasp on her and how it made me feel, ache for her. So I just stopped at incoherent sobbing about the satellite.

When I woke up next morning, to the slight chill shaking my back and the smell of pancakes teasing my nose I felt awful and spent.

‘Oh, thank gods, you’re up! I though you were dead!’

‘And you left me either way to rot on the couch?’

‘You know how I detest cleaning.’

I snorted while rubbing eye boggers from my face. Yes she seemed like a person who would let a body rot in her apartment, just so she wouldn’t inconvenience herself with calling an ambulance or cleaning it herself.

‘Want a pancake?’

‘Why do you even ask?’

For the next two days we mostly ate, drank copious amounts of alcohol that with which she was so generous, I started suspecting wasn’t hers (as I later got to know, most of it indeed belonged to Francis) and writing. Writing, writing, writing. Words, words, words. I truly found myself writing more, and more zealously than I ever had before. Maybe because it was light, not binding, not obliging. Just lies on paper. With her it all was like that, even the hangovers. Light, chased away by the mouth-watering smell of her cooking. She truly was a culinary genius and by the time she offered me lunch I stopped wondering why would Henry ever come over to her place. Even a stoic cold man such as himself must’ve enjoyed the atmosphere of idyll that reigned in that flat of hers.

On our last day together, Sunday, right after we finished eating lunch - Greek salad with vine (she couldn’t stop giggling about it! ‘What an absurd name! You really think they ate something like that? What an absurd!’) - somebody knocked on her door. Her eyes shot up to me, incredulous and somewhat weary. My heart pounded in my chest, jumped to my throat suffocating me. Was that the moment? The moment when Henry finally appeared? But as she came to the door and tilted them slightly ajar, a fiery main poked through the crack.

‘Hier kommt die Sonne!’

She must’ve been taken aback as much as I was, because as soon as Francis shouted those words, she jumped up, and then slid back, her whole body recoiling as if reading itself for an attack.

‘What? You’re not going to greet me properly mon bijou? I brought you my notes! Come one, give your darling a kiss.’

‘I’m sick, Francis.’

‘Yeah, sure you are!’

Francis squeezed himself unceremoniously into the flat, shaking himself off the rain water like a dog.

‘Come one, greet me like the good friend you are! I did bring you notes, after all. You know how much I hate making those!’

In one jump he got to her and sliding his arms around her waist, pinning her to his person. Papers he was holding, soaked dry from the rain swished loudly in the air as he did so.

‘Oh, stop it, you brute!’

And she hit him playfully, right in his chest. I shuffled uncomfortably in my chair, as for I did not know what to do with myself. I think that slight, hesitant movement was what got Francis’ attention onto me. His body grew taunt and his arms fell from her waist. His face froze in an expression of incredulous awe and dread mixed into a dismayed grimace.

‘Richard?’

‘Hi…’

A moment of silence.

‘You’re with Richard.’

His voice was flat, void of any emotion as he stared his eyes into my soul. His spectacles shined with a ghostly glow, reflecting the sun from behind my back.

‘Yes. Did I not tell you?’

Her voice, on the other hand was dripping with forced sweetness.

‘No. I didn’t get any response to my letter.’

‘Well, I am, so… notes?’

He handed her the tortured, mangled pieces of paper he was holding, fisting, absentmindedly, never tearing his gaze from me.

‘Drink?’

‘No, thanks I’m..’ He swallowed, hard. ‘I’ve got a date.’

And then he turned on his heel and rushed to the exit. He disappeared as quick as he came. The door shut loudly behind him.

‘Asshole…’

Silence filled the flat.

Despite its newfound tidiness, it once again turned excruciatingly small, almost to the point of suffocation.

‘Maybe I should go as well.’

‘No. Stay.’

‘I have a bad feeling about this.’

‘So do I.’

I watched as she stared blankly at the space Francis had occupied just seconds before and I couldn’t help the hurt feeling clawing at my heart.

‘Sure. We ought to finish the bottle either way.’

But the unnerving feeling of impending doom stayed, setting me with sweat.

Only around midnight, when nothing else really happened I finally stared relaxing. I convinced myself that Francis’ visit was strange, abrupt, but only because he himself was a strange person, and it hadn’t bore any traces of animosity. Vine helped in coming to that conclusion. Once again, when I could no longer sit straight or even talk I let her tuck me in on the couch. I revelled in the quiet cracking of the logs burning on the fireplace, the heath that came off of it. I watched her sit across from me, with a deep frown gracing her face as she read some old book, too heavy and big for her form and so covering it almost entirely from my greedy gaze. My eyelids felt heavy, so I closed them, only leaving a slight clearance, so I could spy the intricate dance of golden light on her skin. A delightful creature, she was. Half of her mingling with shadows that swirled in the flat, the other part of the flames coming off the hearth. She did not seem as careless as me, but I scored it to her focusing on the contents of the book. In all reality however, if I wasn’t as drunk as I was, I think I could see that her eyes were not moving, but staring blankly into one spot on a page that her fingers had not turned for quite some time.

‘Richard?’

I did not respond, my tongue deft, and eyes sore, dry. I felt as if I opened my mouth then, another monologue relative to the moon would slip out of me and in all my empathy I thought that this wasn’t what she needed then.

‘Are you asleep?’

Still, I kept silent. She nodded her head and closed the book. Somehow content with the silence, as she supported her head on the palm of her hand and stared into the flames.

‘Good.’

She sighed, deeply, mournfully and repeated.

‘Good.’

And when the silence became prominent, when it stretched impossibly around us and started eating at the flames I though I heard something. Faint and uncertain, but it was like branches knocking at a window moved by a soft breeze. One, two, three times. Then a pause, and silence. For a second I thought I only imagined the sound, but after a while I heard it again, this time louder, more confident. I didn’t move, paralizad by comfort and heath, but after the third knock like that she did. I thought that she had fallen asleep long before that, but the sharp snatch of her head, and her quick, precise movements as she got up from her sit pointed otherwise.

‘Who… they are going to wake him up.’

I heard her snark under her breath and I couldn’t help but smirk slightly. But that content grin faded from my face as she opened the door.

‘What are you doing here?’

She was wearing that furious frown of a warrior on her face, pure Mars, I could tell without even having to see her. It was all written down in her strained back, in the coldness of her words.

‘I came here to talk.’

And then I froze as well, because at the doorstep, hidden from me in the dark swayed the dry voice of Henry Winter.

#bunny corcoran #camilla macaulay #charles macaulay #francis abernathy #henry winter #henry winter x reader #richard papen #the secret history #afab reader

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axieta · 1 year

Note

Hey, sorry to bother, I just wanted to say that I love the series you made about Henry Winter and I was wondering if you could tell me when will be the next chapter posted?

No worries it’s no bother at all. I usually try to post on Sundays but seeing as I’ve got a huge colloquium coming this Thursday the next chapter might be postponed a couple of days.

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axieta · 1 year

Text

Hungry eyes

Henry Winter x reader

Chapter 4

|Eyeing the letter|

Throughout the years of our kept friendship and green-inked letters, the true nature of my freedom advocating accomplice remained elusive to me. Even more so her identity. For example, till this day I don’t quite know where she was from. When I asked her that, she replied simply- Europe. No specifics added. And her letters, even after Hampden weren’t much of an indicator, for the addresses she send them from were never the same. Sometimes they repeated, like Paris or Madrid, Vienna and Prague, but I’ve never gained a clear insight on how and why she managed to roam about the continent so freely. And the little lies, here and there she loved telling so much complicated her case even more. Like her hair. Once I asked her to go to a party with me. And when I arrived at her flat to pick her up, her hair was all frizzy and twisted. It was a new thing for me, so I complimented her on it, to which she just waved her hand dismissively and said that it’s like that only because she had no time to straighten it. However, as we got to the party and some girl graced her with the same compliment I did, she laughed and jokingly complained about how long it took her to curl it. Since that day I saw her with curled and straightened, wavy and twisted hair so many times and in so many different configurations that I don’t even know which hairstyle was her natural one.

One thing I know about her for sure though is that she was a marvelous writer. I had the pleasure of reading some of her scribbles, mostly illegible to me because of her horrid, minuscule handwriting, but from what I could gather, it was a nice piece of work. Not like any artisan bullshit you sometimes see on the shelves in bookstores. It was as romantic and spirited as she was. She wrote deep from her heart, scribed every word marking it with a sigil of her soul.

It is a beautiful thing when a writer manages to put a piece of themselves in their work. But such freedom and insistence on staying true to their convictions can also be their greatest curse. She was no exception to that rule I’m afraid, as her style of writing and mindset could not bare the down-to-earth assignments given at our college. She wasn’t as terrible at writing essays as Bunny was, but either way you could see the gargantuan breach between her free form writing and her assigned tasks. At least she stuck to the subject, but there was no soul in her papers, just straight facts, as if written off some text book. It was as if she actively worked against herself while writing those, reluctant, almost repulsed, by the sheer thought of devoting her time to something she was not interested in even a little bit. It was spite-writing. Dry and clearly furious, written in an even more scruffy handwriting that she usually used. I think it was to make it even harder on the professors. A kind of revenge for assigning her such dull and unimportant tasks. Yes, she was a spiteful being. A hobgoblin and bane of every scholar at Hampden, and as I’m sure, at each and every one of her previous schools. Either way, whatever you say about her academic writing, her other works remained, and always will remain (at least in my mind) matchless. Like the fore mentioned letters for example. The first letter I got from her I will always remember fondly and with a spark of melancholy in my heart. Mostly because the letter itself presents a kind of positive turn in our acquaintance, a first glimpse at vulnerability I got from her. Before it I always thought about her as the heartless Maenad from Dionysus’ procession. Cold and beautiful like an ancient marble - pleasant to look at and drink in it’s grave allure but also dangerously motionless. Her eyes dead, frozen in the distrustful, vigil glare. To me she wasn’t human, even after our talk. I considered her rather a mystic being from another time or galaxy, so different in her ways that my mind wasn’t even able to comprehend her whole esse. But along with my receiving of the letter, my eyes started to open to her, I started to understand and comprehend. While my eyes scanned every little, green letter, her image transformed inside of my head, alive and not at all in the standstill I thought it was. As I finished I realized that she no longer was the cold marble shackled in the handcuffs of time and lack of understanding. She was no stone figure, but a full fledged, living and breathing Galatea of flesh and blood. Like the first glance she threw me, her first letter left a permanent scar on my soul. Beautiful and haunting mark of comprehension. It was right after our walk. The next day I discovered a thick envelope stuck under my door, addressee- Richard Papen, sender- her. I had to go to class that morning. But the weight of the envelope, the thickness of it was so tempting, so prominent and undeniably beaconing in my hands that I felt I had no other option but to open it and see for myself what secrets would flood out from its contents. It read:

My dearest Richard,

It might come as a surprise to you to receive a letter from me not so long after our severance. But you must simply understand that right now, as I’m writing this letter, and it is 2am that I’m seeing currently on my clock, I’m deep in my emotions, emotions I just cannot contain. I need an outlet and you’ve found yourself, as a fresh, inexperienced head in our little group, as the recipient of my rage. There is no one I trust more in being an impartial spectator than you, seeing as you’ve not been in Hampden for long and there is much nuance you would be willing (or forced by circumstance) not to take into consideration and the story I’m about to tell you, shall forever stay just that - a story. I do not ask you for any reflections or a judgment. I only wish for you to read, what I have to say to you and maybe understand. That’s all, nothing more.

But, on with the tale. Yesterday Henry came over. He must’ve been on the lookout for us, because as soon as you crossed the corner, he spawned right at my door, banging at it. It startled me, the ferocity with which he abused my doors. And the yelp of my name he exclaimed, rugged and brutish as if he was vexed to no end. I thought he might’ve gotten drunk but no. He never does, so I don’t even know why would I think that. But there was something strange about him, an unnerving kind of a shadow obscuring his face, more snuffy than usual. I let him in, not making much out of his sudden, and I might add unusually blaring, appearance. He tends to come over sometimes. I think it normal, the quiet brooding presence when he sulks into my space, glances with disdain at my withered plants and sits in my armchair to sink into his reading. I usually join him in the perusal or if I’m not feeling in the mood I taunt him, just with some harmless, cheeky allusions that he pretends are not amusing at all (it is so funny when he scrunches up his nose trying not to snarl with laughter!), or make something to eat. Henry cannot cook to save his life. I think it is some kind of compensation from nature. She located the Library of Alexandria in his head, so she had to maintain the equilibrium by making him an absolute disaster in the kitchen. Or he just refuses to cook out of principle. After all - plenus venter non studet libenter. And you know how he is, if he could he would not eat at all. But he eats with me, when I make something so that’s for a plus at least. I like it when he comes over. He’s usually not much of a talker, he doesn’t stir the pot, he’s not dramatic or flashy, he doesn’t preoccupy much space. He’s quiet with his book in his hand, a cup of coffee and a cigarette tray fuming next to his elbow. And I like it. I like it how he sits, with one leg tossed over the other and how straight his back gets after a while. I usually do at least, like it when he comes over I mean. Yesterday was not one of those nice instances of a quiet evening with a book on one’s hand no matter how much I wanted it to be (I felt exhausted from our little walk if I have to be honest I had to relax, but he appeared and ruined all of my plans). I should’ve known he was in a mood for a brawl the moment he stepped through the threshold. There were signs, the grimace on his face when I saw him on the staircase should’ve been an indicator enough, the way he looked, hunched over and tense with something that felt almost like anxiety, or the strain in his stride (he gets insufferable when his leg starts to hurt) or even the white-knuckle grip on his book (Herodotus). But I’ve ignored it, I let him in. I shouldn’t have. I closed the door behind him and he stared at me, quietly. No sign of the previous yelp in his presence, as if it was something I imagined. And maybe I did, but I am certain that it was his furious, raspy voice calling me from the other side of the door.

There was something strange, crazed and almost manic lurking from the bottom of his eyes. Like spirals they swirled round and round with hatred I don’t know at whom or what directed, but the stare was venomous, lethal. I have never seen such dark, sinister eyes. It was not at all like him, Henry rather seemed like a man possessed with qualities normally foreign to him in his day to day life. He was breathing heavily, with strain and a dose of pain. Paler than usual but with a burning blush gracing his frozen cheeks- he must’ve walked.

His face was cold. Not as in temperature, but in expression. Indifferent as always, but then somehow sharper, with thick shadows framing his face with a menacing depth. His lips were a thin, vicious line.

Overall he looked, felt, furious. And if you find yourself incapable of imagining a furious Henry, then I don’t blame you. A stoic character like him does not seem capable of a vile emotion like that, in fact any emotions to be true, and yet. Henry is full of surprises, you’ve seen it two days ago. His a human after all, he feels, just like the rest of us. He’s just far more cunning then the lot of us, and with it, much more skilful at hiding them. But as in any other case of rather quiet persons, when they finally snap and let their emotions show, it is far worse that any other outburst one would see in their entire life. Henry is no different. And with all of him, his clothes, his stern face and that magnificent built of his, the rage he feels and exudes intoxicates and intimidates its recipient tenfold.

Imagine a tiger, enclosed in a cage, starved for three days. That’s an angry Henry.

I felt shivers running up my spine, but what could I do. I shrugged off the uneasy feeling and moved on to the kitchen to brew him a cup of coffee. He drinks it black. He didn’t stop me but he also didn’t say anything and when I came back he was still standing where I left him, coat on, chest heaving, eyes crazed. He was gawping at me from under his brows like a hawk gawps at his prey. Like he would dive at me and gather me into his talons in one sweep movement. And when he spoke dark stains danced before my eyes and cold sweat washed over me, for his voice was raspy, low and terrifyingly flat. ‘What took you so long? It’s dark out.’ He’d asked me. In my dim room his tall, lithe figure loomed over me like a grim, ghostly presence. Half of his face hidden in the shadows and half illuminated by the street light seeping into my apartment from the window. His eyes gleaming like two embers, shining from behind his spectacles. And I wish I could tell you that it frightened me. Because every other sane person would squeal at the sight of an Iblis to whom he bore a striking resemblance at the moment. But the dryness in my throat and a suddenly weight of my tongue in my mouth did not come from fright but rather from… well something far more primal and animalistic, because he looked beautiful. His sharp, curved nose was still red from the chill weather outside and I felt so enticed by the tiny bump in the middle of it, on which he supports his glasses, that I found myself speechless and did not give him any response. To my defence, he has a very pretty nose, don’t you think? Kind of hawkish. It makes you think of a bird of prey, doesn’t it? But I guess my lack of response irked him somehow because his brows furrowed even further and a deep frown pulled his hairline down. Now Mars was looking at me in all of his military glory. ‘Was Richard with you? Was he here?’ You see, I thought he liked you but there was this venom dripping from his words when he mentioned your name. I kept quiet and just shook my head ‘No’ for it was true. You were not at my flat, you know that.

Henry stepped closer to me, his whole body intimidating, strong, almost thrilling. I gripped the mug I was still holding. Offered it to him, but he just tasked my outstretched hand with a look of pure disgust, as if it was filled with hemlock and pushed it away, stepping closer, right into my space. I could feel the cold coming off of him in waves. ‘What did the two of you talk about during your little walk, huh?’ And I told him, all of it except from the last part, Julian and him and all that, as you might suspect, for it would only infuriate him further and I did not wish to bare myself before him like that. But to my greatest surprised he looked rather sour at what I had told him. ‘So now you talk on those matters with Richard as well’ he contested, and in turn that made me mad. After all it’s not like what we talked about is some forbidden knowledge. And that’s what I told him, threw in a small ‘don’t be a child’ at the end and slammed the mug on the table, some of the coffee spilled but it didn’t bother me much. I was ready to walk away, considering the conversation for finished, but I guess Henry didn’t.

He smacked the copy of Herodotus next to the mug, right into the puddle of the already spilled coffee. It splashed around, sprinkled me as well as him in a soft drizzle of warm, dark liquid. ‘You know as well as me that it is not by the topic of the conversation I am bothered but its existence at all!’ And he didn’t even give me the chance to respond, he just continued, possessed with sudden need to speak and to speak in full, hateful sentences. What a treat, don’t you think Richard, that Henry usually does not have much to say but in that moment, when I had to speak my mind he seemed more compelled to listen to his own voice than mine. Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur, you know. And in that moment he sounded like the king of fools. ‘And for you to speak with Richard, and reject me with all your disdain, right before all of them, and to drag Camilla into this whole thing! Now that seems childish, not my reaction to it. And why would you do all of that? What for? I tell you what for- to spite me! Yes, don’t look at me like that! I know you wanted to make me jealous!’ And he gave me that look. You know which one. The all-knowing, cynical and triumphant look that makes my gut turn. That makes me hate him so. It’s a disgusting look. And it vexes me. He knows that, I assure you, he knows! ‘Not everything revolves around you, my Narcissus. Be careful with assumptions like that or one day you might drown yourself.’ I was glad of what I had said. It was rather cheeky, confident. ‘Don’t worry about me, sweet thing. If I were you I would rather worry about myself. Resorting to such lowly tactics just to get my attention. Ulysses would not be very proud, would he?’ Heat that rose in my chest choked me, the smoke coming off it scratched at my throat, sneaked higher into my eyes. ‘You pride yourself with being such a free soul, yet look at you! You are bound to me! All you do, is to vex me, to torture me!’ I felt tears pooling over my waterlines. My cheeks felt all too hot as well, I don’t think I could breath properly, hearing what he was saying. I think a few tears might’ve dropped from my eyes at his blatant rudeness. Please don’t think me a weak woman, for those tears were not a result of this singular throw-away comment, but rather an icing on the cake of our weeks-long dispute I will now not acquaint you with. All that you need to know is that his comment was a malignant one and that it hurt me very much. And to that, he just smiled. A vicious man that he is, he smiled, do you understand? ‘And in all of your wisdom you cannot see that by torturing me, you torture yourself as well.’

I hate him. I hate him so much. I do nothing for him, I don’t care, do you understand Richard? Nothing I ever did was for or against him. And yet there he was, standing in my flat, tall and proud as always, so angry at the things I never did. I hate him. And I hate the black coffee he drinks, it’s disgusting at best, bitter and dark like him. And I hate his profile, so prominent in yesterday’s light. How can someone so beautiful be so cruel, please tell me because I simply cannot fathom it. Maybe he grew so fiendish because of it? Because of his beauty? I don’t know. But that charm of his, all of him, his lean arms, tall figure, soft, thin lips, and those dark, sweet big eyes, they petrify me. I told you that I wasn’t scared earlier, but the truth is that in his presence I always am, and so it just feels normal to me. My gut tangles in knots when I look at him, my heart pounds as if I just ran a marathon and my palms become odiously sweaty. I hate his presence, and yet I seek it. Time and time again. Because when he is gone, the pounding, the sweat and the uneasy feeling disappear any then… I just feel empty. And so, even though in that moment all I should’ve done was to make him leave, I looked deep into his eyes. Tears almost spilling from mine. ‘Why are you here Henry?’ I almost couldn’t recognise my voice. And at this point I also couldn’t see very clearly. All that was before me turned into a wet, distorted mess. I felt his hand, big and cold on my shoulder, his breath fanning my hot face. God, he was so cold, almost soothing. ‘I came here to beg you…’

‘Beg me? For what?’ He cupped my face with both of his hands and supported his forehead on mine. Another deep sigh, ragged and pained came from him and suddenly I was once again standing before that damned fireplace at Francis’ summer house begging for his love. I could not hold it any longer, my tears spilled in cascades on my face along with a dragged, pained wail. Whispering my name, desperately he gathered me into his arms, pulled into a tight hug, pressing me right into his chest. I remember he smelled of old books, cigarette smoke and a kind of smell you simply can’t replicate, the smell of Henry.

But as he shushed me, and softly combed his fingers through my hair I already knew what he was going to say. Because it is always like that. He comes, taunts me, accuses me of doing so myself and disappears. But you see, here is the problem. After all that Henry comes back to his books. He burries himself up in old texts, reads until his eyes hurt and forgets all about our little talks. But I cannot function like that. I cannot simply shrug it all off. It drags behind me, weighs me down, hurts. And yet I still allow him to come to me, continue this tragic play. His indecision is no hemlock, it is no poison no daggers no cross and I am no Socrates or Brutus or Yeshua and yet it kills me oh so slowly. And it is the worst of all those deaths because it is slow and sheathed in velvet. ‘I… I don’t know’ he said, his hands sliding up and down my arms, leaving burning smudges of touch in their wake. ‘I don’t know. I beg you to love me. I beg you to leave me alone. I beg you to die.’ I knew this tone. ‘For my sake, and if not for mine then for yours. Bunny’s, Camilla’s. Please…’ The pained voice of a martyr I’ve herd countless times and even without looking I knew that behind his closed eyelids burned two embers soaked in agony. ‘Si vis amari, ama.’ That’s all I could say. That’s all I knew. Latin. The only tongue he would accept, allow to get to him. But he chuckled. Dry, flat, humourless. ‘Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur.’ ‘You are no god, Henry.’ ‘Exactly.’ And then he stepped away. One step, then another. A few more and I heard a slow, hesitant click of the door. He left. And I was alone. Unfathomable cold seeped into me from the places he was touching not even a minute ago and I felt a sudden overwhelming feeling sinking into me. He left Herodotus on my table. Miserable, soaked in his untouched coffee. I hate Herodotus.

But I whipped it with my sweater and put it on my radiator to dry it off. You see I could not stand the thought of Henry’s book dissolving away under the destructive influence of a liquid. I love him, you know. I don’t like him, not one bit. He’s stock up, conceited and vicious. Sapient, pert, proud, stubborn. He thinks too much of what others might think and he adores Julian, which puts my back up. He vexes me, every opportunity he gets. And hurts me all the same. I don’t like him. But I do love him. Most ardently. With my body and soul and they are his for all eternity. I do not do anything for or against him, but I wish I could. Either smother him with kisses, drown him in hugs and all the love I could lay on him, or just suffocate him with my bare hands, hurt him like he hurts me. I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s because of his laughter. I don’t think you’ve ever heard him laugh, he does not do that a lot, not really, but it’s the purest, most arresting sound you could think of. Clear in its tone, charming in its depth. Or maybe it is because of the dimple in his cheek. Or the way he parts his hair. Or the way he rubs his hands when it’s cold and runs them through the pages of old books. With reverence and focus you could never expect from a big guy like him. Maybe it is his profile that charmed me so, with that sharp hawk-like nose, perhaps his strut, how he stretched his long legs in every step as if to devour the distance he has to cover. Or maybe it is all of those things combined. I don’t know and I couldn’t tell you if you’d ask me. But it kills me every time I look at him and know that he does not love me the same way I do him. I know he doesn’t, because if he did, if he truly loved me, I would not be sitting here alone, writing my letter to you, but in his arms, analysing Herodotus in my armchair. I told you yesterday that we choose our own confinements. I think that this is mine. Those are my shackles, my love for him. Because with or without it I can never be free of this hurt he causes me. My heart is a jigsaw puzzle of every emotion I have ever, or will ever feel. And he comes in, like an insolent child, and knocks it off my table. The pieces fly in all directions, the puzzle falls apart, my head spins and he chuckles. With that dry, flat laughter and goes away. He always leaves me like that. Never even bothers to help me pick up the pieces. I feel lost in the maze of his contradictions, it exhausts me. I think I’ve told you before that I like it when he comes over, but I’m not really sure if that’s true. It is as if Indonesians liked the arrival of tsunamis. What a sick joy would that be, no? I think I need a break from all this. I’ll take a sick leave for this week, so if anyone asks you what’s happened to me, although I don’t think anyone will, tell them I’ve got the flu. And if you’d have the time and will, please come over. I don’t like to sit alone in my flat, it’s always better to open up one’s mouth in times of need like this to a friendly soul. I could cook you up something and we could talk, like we did yesterday. It was nice, wasn’t it? Anyways, think about it and let me know.

Yours truly.

P.S.

Hope it wasn’t too much for a first letter, but I really had to tell someone about it. I couldn’t keep it in any longer.

On the margin of the letter was scribbled an address, with a post code and all. No phone number of course.

I stared at the letter in shock. In awe. Because for the first time I saw Henry with someone else’s eyes. In different light, with different mindset. And I’m not sure I liked what I’ve seen. Also for the first time the vail of mystery has been lifted off of that elusive figure of hers and with that, that Greek goddess, that menacing Menead with eyes bearing galaxies inside of them turned into something much smaller, powerless. And with a sharp inhale I realised that after all, she was just a girl. A normal, thinking and feeling girl. She was no force of nature, no devine being. And for it she became so much closer to my heart than any other student of my class. Her authenticity awakened a feeling of shy curiosity and a slight shadow of compassion in me. I did not want her to rot away in her apartment for the rest of the week, all alone and sulking. She did not deserve that. After all, she wished me to be happy, how could I not wish the same upon her?

I walked over to my desk, put out a small piece of paper and a pen and quickly scribbled on it.

Will be there tomorrow. Cook something simple, I’m not a picky eater, I’m no Julian.

Then, on another piece of paper, in a stylised, messy handwriting I scribed a note, a sick leave of my own, signed by a surname of a physician I once went to back in California.

I was free for the week.

————————————————————————

You guys I’m so terribly sorry for the delay It’s all been just a whirlwind this past week and I had no time to write. Hope you like this chapter though.

#bunny corcoran #camilla macaulay #charles macaulay #francis abernathy #henry winter #henry winter x reader #richard papen #the secret history #afab reader

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axieta · 2 years

Text

Sandman/Morpheus x reader

Warnings: self-harm, self-deprecating thoughts, loneliness, heavy angst, hurt and comfort, a bit of smut if you squint, canon divergence

Pt. 1/2

Once more to see you

You’re alone. Have been for quite sometime, which is surprisingly painful.

You weren’t created to feel like this, to be with someone. To feel their presence, get used to it, familiar with it. To know their body, their soul, every capillary, every vein, hill and valley, every inch of pale white, smooth skin, every speck of cosmic dust that creates it.

You weren’t supposed to fall in love, like some mere mortal. As an angel, wonderful, powerful almost omnipotent being you didn’t think you were even capable of such lowly, primal act. Feelings. Feeling feelings.

But you did love. You did fall. It was short lived, tempestuous, hurried and oh God so fulfilling. And now, almost a century afterwards you still remembered that fondly.

The feverish touches, whispers, stolen glances. His dark gaze on your back, slender fingers on your calves, knees, tights, between them and then on your stomach, your arms, neck and cheeks. His touch all over you leaving burning hot phantasmal smudges. The high that came with him, when the both of you finished entangled in sheets, sweaty, gasping for air, tired but unfathomably happy in his chambers.

His sweet smile, and his weight on you.

You remember every little shudder that shook his body when you kissed his neck. And every excited twist of stomach when he kissed yours.

You remember the furrow of his brows, and the soft silk of his hair under your palm.

And you remember how his bony fingers flipped pages of old books, carefully with reverence as if those were living breathing things. And then on your nape and back to your spine, with the same carefulness and adoration. You remember how he would read to you next to a burning heath.

You liked it. You liked him, with his dark, unruly hair and abyssal irises. His slender figure and the fact that sometimes, when he thought no one was watching, he’d hunch a bit forward, easing his almost perpetually straight back.

You liked his deep voice when he whispered sweet nothings into your ear, as the two of you would seat in his study. He would work, and you’d sit in his lap. Sometimes you would look over his shoulder to see what he was creating, a dream, or perhaps a nightmare? Sometimes you would trace his prominent cheekbones, other times the bridge of his nose. Or you would just sit there, quietly humming, content to just be near him, surrounded with the comfort of his arms, to breath in his heavy, rich scent.

That, you thought, was love. Those little stares, touches, gestures. The feverish highs, and calm, long evenings.

You had never experienced something so purely good, morally debauched as love. And if someone asked you what love actually was, you don’t think you would be able to describe it despite your nigh omnipotence.

You try to describe it to yourself now, as you dip your toes into black sand, your wrists already buried deep in it.

Love is like a summer rain coming on the hottest day of the year, a breath after being underwater for too long, wind in your hair, between you feathers when you fly under a cloudless sky, soft rays of sun on your face. Intoxicating while you had it but also inspiring fear at a mear thought of loosing it. Something that if left alone, untrained and uncontrolled for too long could turn into a nightmarish, grotesque caricature of itself.

With love there came joy, unbridled happiness, contentment, sense of safety. You discovered that with the waking of one feeling a whole plethora of others flooded you like water after breaking the damn.

Sometimes you’d get mad at him. Sometimes, he’d make you sad. But that was also good. It was good to feel something after centuries of feeling nothing. Besides, after your every quarrel, he would seek you out and transform those bad feelings into some much more welcomed ones. So, love what is it, really? It’s everything one could ever feel. A rainbow spectrum of emotions merged into one steady beam of light. Soft touch in the dark abyss of numbness. And more. To you it is so much more.

He was The Lord of Dreams. You called him Morpheus, just because you thought it funny. He thought it funny too.

He created dreams, sometimes nightmares. He was immortal, ubiquitous, powerful. He was gentle, but also cruel at times. He gave hope and then he took it away. He was the darkest hour of the night. Scary, impenetrable but also soothing and comforting. He was just. And creative.

Yes, you liked the creativity most out of all of his numerous and at times contradicting qualities.

Because when he made things, you could see a little spark in his eyes, like a childish delight or a flick of a candle, so small, so feeble that one could almost overlook it. But not you. Just because you’ve spent hours studying his features, his face dusted with a grimace of concentration, his lips pulled to the side, drops of sweat forming on his forehead, when he tried too hard for too long to make something new, his prominent cheekbones, jutted out chin, just to see the glimmer of passion mixed with delight, when his project came to completion. You saw that youthful spark every time it appeared and with time you started to adore it. You started to love it. To love him.

You two met some time after Lucifer Morningstar’s rebellion. You had some business to take care of in the Dreaming Realm, now you couldn’t even remember what the inquiry was because all of your thoughts remained transfixed on and occupied by the lord of this realm.

Even now.

Back then he was already a powerful, knowledgeable being. He could do things you could never dream of. But he remained humble and dutiful. And nice, and sweet and carrying.

Looking back you couldn’t blame yourself for falling for him.

For as many centuries as you could count the two of you remained together. Arm to arm, the embodiment of all dreams and nightmares, the nightwalker and his glorious, shimmering angel, soldier of the light, walking the path of your never ending lives together. Inseparable lovers, you could see the both of you entangled with each other for eternity.

It only made sense. The balance you maintained between each other, the love you had for him, it only seemed natural for you to keep being the light to his darkness, the complimentary part of his very being and vice versa.

But then he disappeared.

Without a word, he vanished like a raindrop vanishes into sea. No one knew what had happened to him. Some assumed he just grew weary of his duties. Some waited for his return, until they got bored with waiting and went their separate ways into the waking world or someplace else. You didn’t care.

Lucienne was the only one left, and you couldn’t be more thankful. At least one of his companions shared your faith in him.

She didn’t say much, which was far more than you managed to muster. At first, after the first two decades of Morpheus’ absence, when you came outside of the sandstone gate, to sit and wait for him, she checked out on you. She asked you questions, told you about the changes in the realm, shared her concerns with you. But as you continued silent, transfixed on the horizon, submerged in your anticipation, her visits became to occur less frequent and more far between until she stopped coming altogether.

Obviously you were too enraptured in staying on a look out of his tall figure to notice that.

Motionless, in a sea of black sand you became more a keen to the reliefs behind you rather than a living being, so you couldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk to a breathing statue.

You just knew you had to wait. Morpheus had left you alone in his realm before. Sometimes for days, weeks, maybe a month or two. He always advised you about his excursions, but he was the Dream of The Endless, so it was nothing binding, rather a court gesture from him to you. Maybe he thought that whatever he had to deal with would be much simpler than it had turned out to be, and he had to take some extra time to complete his tasks. Nevertheless, you were sure, he was coming back. You had to be, because he wouldn’t just disappear like that, abandon you. He loved you so, as much as you loved him. That’s what he had told you. And you chose to believe him, because what is love if not the faith we’re able to put into others?

And so you waited. And waited. And waited until his realm started to turn sour, decay. Until his palace crumbled brick by brick, and his gardens dried up. Until the rivers run dry, books turned to dust and you were left alone in a barren wasteland.

Decades went by. And you came to the realization that Morpheus wasn’t coming back. The harsh truth hit you like a tsunami.

You never thought that loosing the one you loved so much would hurt equally as intense. The pain of your loss, fervent and spicy at first, now dissolved into something much more tame yet at the same time durable and constant. You grew familiar with it, as if you’d developed some sort of sick attachment to it and now you weren’t sure you’d be able to let it all go. It was as if the Pain became your new companion and filled the void Morpheus had left behind. It’s presence reminded you of him, of how he was. It appeared, no, awakened within you with every breath you took and settled in your chest, it’s weight almost palpable, almost welcomed, almost warm, like the weight of a domesticated feline.

You tried not to think about it.

The all-consuming, gaping hole in your chest.

But it is an undeniable fact that you are alone.

And he is gone. Well not gone, gone.

Ludicrous, to thing of something like that happening.

It’s not like he can die. It’s just physically, spiritually, empirically impossible.

So if he’s not dead, it can only mean that he is somewhere out there. Roaming the endless realms of universe. Just not this one. This one he had abandoned, seemingly without a second thought, and you along with it.

Morpheus is gone as in out of your life.

The thought sits heavy in your bones. Fills you up and swells painfully, spreads across your body like a tumor.

It’s too hard to even move. Your head feels as is someone was constantly hitting it with a hammer from the inside, trying to split your skull. And your limbs are heavier than led. You don’t mind the numbness, it’s not much different from what you experienced whilst living beside your brothers and sisters in Heaven. Ugh, but the headache is making your time here completely unbearable.

You met Zeus once. You met his daughter, Athena. A stoic grey-eyed beauty. You liked her. Not because she was anything special, you met countless gods like her before, but because of her family. Athena formed a part of a bizarre mosaic that was the Pantheon. One of the most debauched, incestuous and overall animalistic ensemble of gods you have ever seen. And she fitted there like a sour thumb. Swore virgin amongst serial sex-maniacs, a lighthouse of knowledge amongst the sea of ignorance. An outsider in her own family. And she wore it like a medal.

Yes, they were something else, a strange bunch for sure, those Olympians. But they could tell one hell of a story, if they were in a mood to do so, of course. And Athena was always in the mood. Once she’d told you about how she was born. How her father swallowed his previous wife, Metis, while pregnant with the little goddess, and how she, Athena, crawled her way out from her mothers cold body, and up her fathers spine all the way to his head. How she banged and screamed at his thick skull until he could take it no more and asked the god Hephaestus to split his head open. Then she took the opportunity and jumped out, fully clothed, with a warrior’s armor on and claimed her rightful title of the goddess of war and wisdom. Back then you laughed at the tale, that’s how bizarre it felt to you. But now, with the constant hammering inside your skull you begin to wonder if it really was that improbable to give birth out of your brain.

What would happen if you’d split you skull open right here and now? Would a tiny master of dreams jump out of you? Or would you just fall to the sand, cold and limp? Which would be best for you?

Your whole body trembles, but not because of the cold. You cannot feel it.

At this point, going back to the realm of your God should sound more appealing then laying here, half-buried in the black sand, with the humongous gate at your back, and yet you somehow find more excuses to stay. It’s not like anyone will notice you being absent. They haven’t so far, and, honestly? No wonder. You’re not anyone special out there. Your not powerful, or specially unique. You’re just you.

In here, the Dreaming Realm, you were once special. You were his one and only, his little light, his dove, his love. Now it’s only the sign of the times, the remnant in your memories, nothing more. Yet, you sink your nails into those crumbs of feelings you have left and try to raise something, anything out of them.

All you get is a hoarse, reedy scream and a trail of bitter tears.

Maybe if you could die, this whole thing, the solitary existence void of his warmth could be slightly more bearable. You would welcome the sweet release of death with pleasure. Once, she came knocking on the doors of the Dreaming Realm, you thought maybe summoned by your desperate thoughts, but no, she was only looking for her brother. When you stared at her, silently pleading with your eyes she looked at you, considered your figure. You knew what she saw. A pathetic shell of an angel. A sandstone statue of a broken lover. You saw the pity in her obsidian, timeless eyes, maybe something more. You didn’t read much into that. And for a minute you had thought she might fulfill your wish, end your suffering, out of respect for her brother, or maybe out of sympathy for you. But she just shook her head, a little bit apologetic, a little bit sorrowful.

‘Your time hasn’t come yet.’ She’d told you, and she vanished. You were alone once again, wallowing at the wind. It was the first voice you have heard in years. It had brought you no solace.

But the pain dulls down with time. Your screams become fewer and further apart. You no longer cry. There is nothing left inside you.

Laying under the gray, unchanging sky you revert back to the emotionless angel you were centuries ago. It should feel god, right. Instead it’s just awful and frighteningly empty.

If you could go to sleep, you would. Maybe then, in the realm of fantasies, dreams and will-o’-the-wisps he would come to you. Clad in black, tall, silver-eyed. Maybe that would ease your suffering, even if just by a fraction, even if just for a moment that would slip away from your grasp and vanish in eons of your existence like the grains of sand in your palms moved by the wind. But you couldn’t. You never did.

So you just lay in the sand, let it’s grains roll over you, pile around your body, burry you in their black folds. You feel them between your fingers, your toes, they settle on your wings with a delightful coarseness, burning like thousands of acidic droplets on your sensitive feathers.

You’re useless like that. Perhaps, that pathetic uselessness, that weakness and powerlessness was what drove Morpheus away from you? After all, his existence had a purpose, he had a purpose. The King of Dreams, that was a title that held much weight to it. And not without reason. If it wasn’t for him, for his dreams and nightmares, the mortal realm would fall into perdition. Not only it, the whole universe could combust, after all, humans weren’t the only ones who needed sleep. Whilst you, well you, just existed, vegetated. Before him you did nothing that noteworthy. And after him, now, you fell even more from your grace. Only during your time together your gray life took in some colors. He was the one that gave your life purpose. With him, you finally started living, seeing other worlds, reading ancient texts, designing dreams with him, meeting other entities, different from angels on so many wonderful levels. God damnit, he was the one who introduced you to the Olympians! But maybe that was the case? Maybe someone so wonderful, so knowledgeable, so powerful and over all above you, eons of light years ahead of you in every aspect that matters, grew weary of entertaining someone as shallow and inconsequential as you?

Morpheus is everything. The Dream of Endless, the power that compels every living being to sleep and to dream. He’s the tidal wave that forces them to think that pushes them forward. He is the architect of every hidden desire, the maker of needs. He moves the worlds forward and could stop them on a whim, with one thought. He can destroy and build. Create and turn to dust. He’s the deepest, most silent, darkest hour of the night. He’s the stars in the sky and everything hidden in the shadows beneath them. He is the heat born in the underbelly of a dying star. A cold scream of it’s disappearance. He is the beginning and the end, the shining beacon of your existence, and the existence of millions of others. He is the one maintaining status quo, the one upholding the right order of things. Morpheus is beautiful, powerful. With galaxies trapped in his eyes, he sees and he knows. Morpheus is a god. And you are just nothing. A spec of dust in the grand scheme of things. The emptiness that is left behind you. The lift of your chest when you breath, the breath you draw while you live, and nothing else. You’re the empty dried plain of beach left during outflow. A scorched desert on which nothing will ever grow. You don’t create, you don’t destroy. You don’t see. You just watch. There is no one relying on you, counting on your success because it has no impact on anyone, least to say the millions he manages to influence. He shines with the light of a thousand stars, while you bask in his glory. Well, you basked in his glory, while you could. Now there is no one to guide you through life, make it have a purpose, like he did. So you’re not only the shadow that follows his magnificent figure, you’re a shadow of your former self. A whimsy caricature of an angel – a pathetic, winged human.

That trail of thoughts, always present in the back of your mind, tired you the most out of all the derogatory ideas you mustered across the decades. Surely because this one was the closest to the truth.

You have so much time to spend alone with your thoughts, they too begin to feel real. Unlike your sweet, furry companion – Pain – they are relentless, sleepless, cut-throat butchers.

You all sit together, only one visible to the naked eye, in the sand, and there is a static, constant chatter surrounding you. The Pain warms your chest, purrs delightfully, the Thoughts jab at you with Their poisonous tongues. They feed on your flesh, hungry for more despair.

After years and years of torment you think you’ve finally lost your mind. A century of perpetually fueled despair would do that, even to an almost perfect mind. You no longer scream, only mutter to yourself, pretending you’re talking to him. You imagine his slim figure beside you and you tell him all the things you could if he was. With time, it’s no longer a play-pretend, a role you put on to ease your mind but a need. You know he’s not there, you can’t see him neither can you hear him but you hope that your quiet monologues might compel Morpheus to reappear. You’re so alone you wish that Lucienne would break her consistent stride of silence and come down to you. You don’t know if you would speak to her then, but you’re sure you would appreciate it more than at the beginning.

It appears to you that what you thought you accomplished before, the blessed state of emotionless-ness was just a ruse. A lie you created to block the awry of sentiments tearing at your soul. You soon start to understand what Death had meant when she said it wasn’t your time yet, why she looked so sorrowful saying that. The anticipation, pressure of your corrupted passion is slowly but surely killing you. Truly, you are going to die the most painful death. Of a heartbreak.

And when it all begins to feel like too much, all the loneliness, the pain, anxiousness, tiredness, despair, all of it bubbles up in you and erupts from deep within you, the only way it can. You throat burns, scarred with the acidic taste of your laugh. It’s lava, it’s liquid ice, it’s pure delirium. You head snaps abruptly as you throw it back to look straight into the gray sky. Your first movement in decades sounds warily like twigs snapping under one’s shoes. The action sends thousands of icy needles of pain down your spine. You laugh on, despite the crushing pain in your chest, your back, your limbs. At the top of you turned out eyes you can make out the faint shape of the gate. The reliefs glance at you with their dead eyes. They look so small now.

Dark sand erupts around you, scatters to the wind, runs away from you as if it was scared of what you might do next. But it has nothing to worry about. You’re quite rusty after a century of perfectly maintained stealth. All you can do at first is to flap you wings around and topple to the ground, down on your face. Finally after decades and decades of laying down you free yourself of your sandy, self-proclaimed prison and you roll down the dune. You laugh all the way down, maniacal, out of your mind. And for a second, you’re nothing more that a tangled mess of arms hitting blind, legs kicking and wings flapping. You scream, you laugh, you toss around like a fish fresh out of water, and it’s the most you’ve ever mustered out of yourself in ages. Never before have you felt this unbridled rage, this unhinged fervent hate. Your fists hit the sand and it erupts once more. And then again and again, all while tearing at your throat. The hits land powerful, your strong, that is one redeeming quality in your possession. If you’d only wanted you could crush those soulless, sandstone reliefs behind you. Scratch whit your nails along the furrows of stylus and erase them from existence. You could tear at the wall with your bare hands, break off piece by piece, and you wouldn’t even break a sweat. But there is nothing under your fisted palms but the damned, black sand. And it’s more than capable of taking on your anger than the bright wall, much closer than it.

So you hit it, bite at it, snarl with your nostrils flared and it gets everywhere, under your clothes, those wide-opened nostrils, blood-shut eyes and mouth, opened agape when a wheezy hyena-like sniggers come out of it.

The giggles have a metallic aftertaste, they feel like sandpaper scraping the soft insides of your throat, yet you cannot, will not seize them. The laughter goes on. It’s yours. Forever will be. No one can hear you in this dried wasteland. The Pain and the Thoughts, they don’t care. For once they’re all silent, for one glorious moment your mind is your own. Everything here, every breath of wind, every grain of sand, every throaty wheeze you muster is now yours. You are the master of this black desert.

Morpheus isn’t coming back and you hate him for it. You hate yourself for hating him. You hate this newfound kingdom.

You burn with unseen light, a hellish fire that swallows your insides. But you know that for an average viewer, if only one could appear, you’re just a tormented woman pulling at her hair. There’s nothing special about this breakdown, mortals face much worse. Yet for you it is special, it’s beautiful in it’s tragedy. Your hurt finally audible to the world, not in whispers and hushed words, but in screamed, intangible yaps, like a war cry of a wounded beast.

Tears roll down your face in a salty cascade as your mouth widens and widens in a strange, grotesque grin. And with every torsion, with every forced spasm of your midriff you feel lighter and lighter. It is as if with your laugh-scream all the bad emotions, all the toxic thoughts and doubts are expelled from your system, till there is nothing left in you and your feverishly hot forehead hits the sand. You burry you face in it, seeking refuge in its cold embrace.

The grains climb up you nose and fill your mouth. They smell like him. Everything in this realm smells like him. You don’t hate it. Now you’re too tired to do so. You just lay, face down breathing in the faint smell of a rainy summer night.

And then it hits you. This newborn creature, not an angel or winged human, but you-you, the one in the sand. You are a beast. An animalistic creature hell-bent on clinging to the past, to what you’ve lost. But it doesn’t bother you either, the realization, as well as the scent, is welcomed with relief. Because with it comes a discovery of something you thought you would never witness in your entire life again. A light feeling, small, but warm and bright spec of dust, deep inside of your gut. It doesn’t scorch you like the flame of rage before did, it’s delicate, feeble. It seems that the smallest breath of air could smother it, but no. You know better than to suspect something foolish like that. After all, it’s love, and not just any love. It’s the adoration, the stolen glances, times passed together, soft touches you shared with your one and only. Morpheus. Your love for him managed to survive. It’s a different type of love, the wild, savage unkept love that you once feared. The one that blooms into monstrosity when left alone. But up-close, when you finally witness it, you conclude that it’s not grotesque at all. Rather, powerful, smelted from faculty much durable and unrelenting that your usual beam of light. It’s the prism that splits the spectrum.

Maybe it’s foolish to cling to this, but somehow, knowing that your still capable of nurturing that feeling, that love, makes you feel more like you. Like all of those decades you spent half buried in sand, weren’t for nothing. The love you feel proves to you that you stood, still stand, for something, that you’re defending your beliefs. Against the universe, Death, the Pain and Thoughts, the reliefs, some other, greater power, perhaps even Morpheus himself. It doesn’t matter, because you realize you still have a purpose. Waiting for him, as you intended at the very beginning. And if achieving that, seeing him once again before you perish alongside this universe, means standing in the sand for a whole eternity, so be it. The love that runs through you, warms your body, flows in your veins, pumps air into your lungs, is worth it.

It’s not killing you. It’s keeping you alive.

Inflow comes, water covers the desert and you’re once more welcomed with sea in your mind’s eye. Soft air surrounds you, and you feel peaceful once more. The atmosphere somehow vibrates with a sense of safety. With that, your whole body relaxes, it’s like a warm embrace from a lover, the feeling of your emotions coming back. The anger you witnessed picking up inside of you a moment ago fades, as if the waves of the pliant sea of tranquility washed it off.

But it’s just a calm before the real storm.

First, you feel his presence. Nothing more than a slight tingle at a back of your spine, more of a primal precaution of your body alerting you of a bigger, stronger predator at presence.

You know this feeling and the excitement that comes with it all too well. You understand what’s happening even before the wind currents change their ways, before his feet struck the earth and the sand on which he stands pours over with a melodic murmur, before the rich fragrance of a rainy, summer night hits your receptors.

You longed for this for so many years. Everything in you has been waiting for this moment. You imagined it countless times. And yet, when all of it is happening in real time and not in the theatre of your consciousness, when a big, cold hand is being softly pressed between your shoulder blades and when a shadow creeps over you, to announce the whisper that follows, hushed in that low, hypnotic voice, some kind of barrier thaws in you.

You don’t hear the whisper, it’s overrun by your heavy breathing. What is this feeling? A new one for sure, but what in the seven rings of hell… Can you move? No, surely not. Perhaps… You manage to whip your head around. And your faced with him.

His pale face, marked with clear signs of exhaustion appears inches from yours. Your gaze considers it, timeless, eternal, unchanged. A beautiful sculpture carved in ivory. You see those navy, mischievous eyes, now warm and glistening with something… relief? Thankfulness? You see those galaxies trapped underneath that human-like exterior, those eons of accumulated memories, knowledge, the sheer power that sleeps in him. But what takes you is this wet softness of this powerful gaze. He’s not looking at you like he should, from a high horse, as an Endless, the ruler of the desert you had the guts, the aspiration, to claim as yours. Instead there is this flicker in his eyes, and no it’s not a lone star, it’s the little flame you remember from the evenings spent in the castle’s study.

Then you consider the thin, long bridge of his nose, as you already know, slightly curled to the side, and after that you’re compelled to swipe your eyes over his perfect, pearly-white skin; blue and red capillaries hidden beneath it, but invisible to the naked eye, down to his lips. Those are the lips you had been wishing you could kiss, so close to you, still moving forward, set on a crash course with yours.

His dark hair flops in the wind. Were they always so dark? Like coal. No, darker than that. Like a moonless, starless night. Gods, he’s beautiful.

His eyes are a little bigger that what you remember, contrary to his lips that seem to be smaller(or is he just pressing them into a thin line?) less full than before he had left. But by gods, if he isn’t the most perfect being you had ever seen. Even now, with dark circles under his eyes, tears in them, he shines with an internal starlight.

His lips open once again and you finally hear it. That sweet honeyed voice, one you would follow down into the fiery pits of Hell if he only wished you to do so. It rumbles through you, shakes your body with a long-forgotten pleasure.

‘Angel. My sweet angel. My love.’

His hands are on your arms now, they twist you until your sitting up, facing him. Those same arms wrap themselves around you, his head dips into you hair, his breath fans the crook of your neck. You feel him everywhere. His presence hits you like a tidal wave. Crushes you, forcefully pushes you off the shore, right into a rocky lagoon. Suddenly you’re forced to admit that the sea in your mind, is nothing but a small pond compared to the grandiose ocean of Morpheus’ existence. It drowns you now. His scent clogs your airways, his cold body makes you shiver, or again, is it really from cold? His lean arms, snug but not harsh against you smother you. It’s just too much, too soon.

‘You waited for me, my love. My, I’ve missed you so. You cannot even imagine the torment…’

Now his slender fingers comb through your hair. You’re drowning. It’s the thaw, the goddamn broken dam in your mind.

‘A century in that prison, without you. Death would be a better faith than that.’

He’s so close to you. You can no longer breath through you nose and so labored breaths are starting to come out of your slotted mouth.

He must have sensed that something is not quite right, because he pulls back a little, not as much as to loose any physical contact with you, but enough to crane his neck and look you in the eyes. The dark, abyssal blue shines with millions of stars, thousands of constellations you thought you’d never see again. There is a soft, but slightly concerned smile stretching his lips.

Fates, how beautiful one can be?

‘My love?’

You still cannot believe it. Your senses must be deceiving you because there is no reason for which Morpheus should be here. He’s gone, can’t they remember? You know it, why won’t they accept it? Is this just another desperate attempt of your slipping mind at easing you in your delirium? Creating a consoling scenario in which Dream comes back to your rescue?

Surely it can’t be. You hear him (his voice is delicate like soft velvet agains your skin and strong like a heartbeat of a church bell ), you can feel him ( his hand now pressed to your cheek, cupping one side of your face, thumb drafting circles against your skin), you can smell him (that god forsaken fragrance you adore so much, a little damp but full of life). All of it indicates that, yes, this is real. Morpheus is real and reunited with you.

And suddenly you know what the feeling is.

Fear.

You don’t fear him, gods no. Neither do you fear anything that surrounds his presence. You could never. It’s something deeper, more profound, not even concerning the external forces at game. It’s within you. It is you. That is what you fear. Your insanity, now on full display, consuming you like a worm eats at an apple. In your loneliness you’ve finally reached the state in which your delirium has taken full control over your mind and there is no way to tell what is real and what is fake. You need help, alone you cannot face this final and fatal flaw in the design.

Is Morpheus real? Or did you just made him up for yourself?

After all you’ve concluded beforehand, the second option is much more probable.

He would never come back to a lowly worm such as yourself.

So a hallucination it is.

You claw first and then push at the figment of your imagination. His impeccable black coat feels dangerously real under your palms. The sheer matter of dreams. You should not be scared of it, but the reality of it’s touch forces a nightmarish howl out of your throat.

‘No! Leave me alone, you demon!’

Once again you fall to the hoarse sand, it’s familiarity almost soothing. But you scram forward, clawing at the space before you, slithering far away from the torment that is the illusion of your lover.

The ground falls underneath your weight, rolls over you and buries your body in it’s infinite folds. Kicking at it desperately you manage to crawl a few meters before a strong pair of hands catches you and pulls you up. They’re trembling when they pull you towards a rapidly rising chest and force you to nuzzle into the dark, summer-drenched-in-rain smelling material. You’ve never felt him tremble.

He talks to you, tries to calm your never ending protests with his soft, almost pleading voice, but it’s for nothing. You’re still strong, and with a mighty strain of your arms you manage to free yourself once more, shrieking a painful ‘no’. Landing on your arse you’re faced with Morpheus’ twisted physiognomy. His face, usually motionless as if it was carved in marble, now shadowed with an overwhelmed, disoriented expression. His frame towers over you, and suddenly he appears to be sixty feet tall.

‘Dove, please… It’s me.’

His voice rattles in your skull, deep and melodic like the song of the night. Oh, how you love it’s rhythm, the timbre, the quiet, hushed words that roll of his tongue.

How good is your mind to recreate that perfect, soothing tone.

You cannot listen to it, out of fear you might fall for your own ruse, and so you raise your hands up to your ears and dig in with nails, just to silence the apparition’s soft murmurs.

‘Go away!’

Opening his mouth once again, it appears that he’s going to try and say something to you, but words fail him, which gives you a small window to yap again. But not at him, there is no use to yell at a figment of your imagination. You scream the only name, the only thing that comes to your mind. The only phrase that can save you, pull you by your bootstraps out of this hellish hallucination. The only other person present in this wasteland.

‘Lucienne!’

The bellow is so powerful, it sets the apparition back a few steps and resonates along the air around you. Sand shakes underneath you. The make-belief Morpheus staggers in his stand. He looks hurt, as if the word had physically cut him. As if your screams, directed not at him, but someone completely different, had got to him more than any other phrase you’ve mustered. Not moving an inch forward he extends a shaky hand towards you.

His pale fingers are long, his wrist slender and even while shaking uncontrollably they maintain a mystic, timeless grace in them. That is a beautiful, skillful hand of an artist.

All forces in heaven and earth, they cannot stop your heart from beating faster at this gorgeous sight.

You feel sick, your stomach dropping and bile rising up to your throat. You stare at this stunning mirage in terror.

‘Sweetheart’ He pleads, which scares you even more. Morpheus never pleads.

And with yet another bellow of protest, you’re on your hoarse way back to the gates, screaming the only thing that has proven to be effective in the battle against this nightmare come true.

The fear swallows you whole until there is nothing left of you by that hollow cry for help.

‘Lucienne!’

The name takes root in you.

‘Lucienne!’

It’s stalks climb up your throat, like Athena making her way to her father’s skull.

‘Lucienne!’

Sharp thorns of pain dig into the soft tissue of your esophagus.

You don’t birth a goddess. There is no miraculous conception, no preternatural act of creation. The only thing clawing it’s way out of you is the horrified scream.

You feel the monstrosity’s gaze burning into your back as you crawl away. Strangely familiar, weirdly reassuring, as if you’d known this stare for a while.

Morpheus used to gaze at you like that from time to time. And he would know when you noticed. Then he’d remark on something, anything actually, just to make you think he wasn’t gaping at you. This always managed to raise a giggle out of you. Make you feel this pleasant warmth in your underbelly. But this Morpheus stays silent, the quiet almost painful in it’s presence.

Your arms burn, strained with a physical challenge they hadn’t had to face in almost a century, your legs gave out some time ago, now they drag behind you, useless, only weighting you down. Your wings are numb, unable to lift themselves, least to say you. They also drag, leaving deep bruises in the sand, but the motion is much more painful than that with your legs. But most of all, the pain gathered in your chest, the one your own, physically unharmed heart is responsible for, is the greatest ache of them all. It’s as if someone had pierced you with a white-hot prong. There is nothing in this world you’d like to do more than to turn around and let yourself embrace the apparition begging you. Loose yourself in the insanity and ease the pain. To feel him once more, even if that would urge your mind to make the final step towards the spiral of insanity you’ve been slowly crawling towards. But you can’t. Like you couldn’t sleep before. You know that you cannot let yourself completely let go of the reins. Somehow, you’re convinced that finally loosing your mind would be the ultimate humiliation, slander cast upon you, blemish to your name. You’re too proud for that. The agony you’re facing is unbearable. Truly, death by a broken heart is the most cruel of them all.

And so all you want right now is to get away from all this. To finally find some peace and calm. But you haven’t moved a muscle in almost a century, your body isn’t used to such effort and soon all your strength is starting to leave you.

You fall, now completely drained, face down into the sand beneath you. With one hand trapped under your weight and the other clawing at the grains in a last ditch effort to take you away, your vision starts to blur. Dark mist appears in the corner of your eye and before you can do anything, scream or babble something that would save you, it overtakes you.

Now darkness is all that surrounds you.

You wake up in a darken room. With heavy curtains drawn over high windows. Rays of gray light are still shining through the cracks and you hear the wind howling outside. But you feel warm, tucked under a soft but still thick fabrics.

That’s what you see when you crack one eye open. When you do the same with the other one, you’re faced with a faded canopy, once maybe beautiful and rich, now dusted and bearing the signs of times passed. There are holes in the impeccable embroidery. Golden threads coming out of the material. Once vibrant silhouettes of gods and nymphs animals and all that is between those kinds circling a man with dark main and silvery shining eyes, all but him dancing, upholding enormous garlands of flowers, now faded on the bulged, loosely held cloth.

You can’t help but feel those two shiny orbs glaring at you, staring right through your physical shell, right into your soul.

It’s unnerving, sweat-provoking and so you avert your own gaze to the side, knowing that it’s only just embroidery despite the chill creeping up your spine.

Your eyes fall to the side, not far away from where you were looking seconds ago and through a sheer mist of sleep still covering your eyes you see a blurred out room.

Door, made out of dark wood, slightly off their hinges.

Marble floor covered in small pieces of debris and scratches as if someone tried to remove the bigger chunks.

A vanity table with it’s mirror so dirty it cannot reflect anything that is behind you. You can faintly make out your own silhouette however in it’s dark surface. And right in it’s upper corner you see a spider tangling it’s web around a broken ornament.

Then there are the pillars, one each on the four corner of the bed, dangerously bowing down on you like disproportionate twigs of a weeping willow.

Everything around you feels somehow crooked, old and rusty, not quite right. Although you seem to know this room it is somehow different. Old and dusted, bitten by the tooth of time.

You can’t help but wonder if you too are covered in the dust, faded and shredded like the canopy over you.

You must be, because although you seem to be quite familiar with this room, you’ve been here before, you do not remember how you got here.

What’s more you can feel the tiredness burrowed deep in your muscles, sleep lingering heavy on your eyelids, the smoaky mist of rest laying down on you like a weighted blanket. It is as if you have just been awoken from a deep century-long sleep. And there is this throbbing, exhausting pain right in the center of your skull.

You must’ve slept for too long. But why did no one wake you up? Yes. That seems to be a good question. Where is everybody?

You turn over, eager to see the rest of the room. But you discover that you’re unable to do so, because your hand, the one on the side where the window is, seems to be locked into an embrace. A dark, hunched over figure seems to be clasping at it, with the both of its lean arms and hugging it close, almost desperately to it’s chest. Unable to turn to the side, you crane your neck, a little bit curious, a little bit scared, because you have no idea whose steady breath could be warming your palm. It’s kind of enticing to feel the figure’s rise and fall of chest, because there is something familiar, calming in that motion. There is also this soft, a bit ticklish sensation of something warm and wet softly sliding down your skin, cooling it a little it it’s path.

Slowly spreading fingers that seemed to be plastered over that chest, you’re able to feel a steady quiet heartbeat. And you know the rhythm, you’ve listened to it, tried feeling it through skin and through cloth numerous times before.

And before you tare your gaze away from your own palm trapped between the dark folds of the silhouette, before you look up, and before your eyes and just to the dim light of the room, you know.

And suddenly it all comes back to you. The memories of sand and the Pain and the Thoughts. Of your long time friends. They flood you instantaneously. Rage like a tidal wave from deep within you and swallow the peace you seemed to have gained through your sleep. The heavy roaring forces a surprised gasp out of your lungs and you feel yourself rising on the bed.

The panic that engulfs you is monumental, larger than anything you’ve felt so far.

Because the hands holding yours feel real. Their softness and roughness, slenderness of their fingers. And it takes almost a Herculean effort to force your hand out of them. Even more so when the darkened silhouette before you raises it’s head and you see those marvelous shining eyes you’ve seen before on the tapestry. The eyes you’ve seen a hundred times before. When you’re finally faced with the darker-than-night hair framing the pale face of his. When you see it’s wet with tears.

You look down, at the hand you managed to free, now idly resting against the covers and see that the weird, warm, ticklish feeling from before were those tears slowly dripping down your wrist.

Then your gaze rises up to that gorgeous face once again. It’s sad. Like nothing you’ve ever seen before, haunted with some dark shadow that you cannot see past, but know it’s there.

He doesn’t make a move. He just stares at you, frozen in the position you had left him in, only his eyes flickering all over your face looking for something. Needy and eager to find that… that recognition you so desperately want to feel.

And the stare is longing; full of deep desire, one you could describe as, if only under other circumstances, loving. But all it does for you is fill you with more dread.

Panic rises like bile in your throat.

Is he really there? Your love, is he really the one sitting beside this bed, looking at you with eyes filled with hurt, or is it just another trick of your mind? You cannot tell and it’s the greatest torture you can think of. Because there is nothing in this world you could ever want more than to leap over the bed and lean on his strong figure. But if he’s not real then what is all of this?

Your eyes well up with the frustration you’ve been feeling. You start to shake, raise your hands up to your face in a futile attempt to hide yourself from him, and then there it is, his first move. As if conjured back to his senses, by the wetness that’s steadily overflowing from you, he leans over and gathers you in his arms.

And they are warm. And strong. And oversaturated with that blessed smell. And oh gods you want to believe it. You want to believe it’s him.

Inhaling that sweet smell, nuzzling into the itchy cover of his coat you let out a sob. It’s soft and pathetic, but lord knows how tired you are, lord knows how you need that respite.

And so you let go. Seemingly for the final time, you let yourself loose. And you lose your way in the labor y the of doubts, of pains and worries. And you cry, but not like you have ever cried before. Because those tears coming from you aren’t helpless, pleading for death or for the end. They are the last ditch effort at hope. A cry for the truth and a signal of your surrender.

Lost in your own cry you feel one of his hands slowly peeling off your arms and softly resting on the top of your head. His touch is most gentle when he slides his palm down your hair, picks it up and then again and again. Even though his slender fingers snarl in the unruly mess of your hair littered with tangles, it never feels unpleasant or painful. He’s patient with untangling them and coming back to his task. It’s languid and slow, something you’ve missed very much in the past years. And even though you’re still not so sure about legitimacy of this whole affair, now your much calmer, and much more willing to believe.

Because you too can sense him tremble. You too can feel the tears, twins to your own, still falling down his face. Can hear his small voice muttering something you can’t really make out but understand its sorrowful, almost apologetic tone.

And you know that this is something your mind could never forge, even if it had fell into the abyss for a thousands of years. Because in your mind, he could never break down beside you like this. Embrace you like this and cry alongside you. He is the strongest, most benevolent force of nature in the universe. You’ve never seen him cry. And yet, there he is. Curled around you, kneeling on the covers, sobbing with his face snug to your neck, arms embracing your shaking form, he himself shaking as well.

And this is what you needed. His closeness. His vulnerability and softness.

With his embrace you fell something you’ve never felt in your play-pretends. It’s a notion of fullness, of a final piece falling into its place, completing you and restoring your broken self to its wholeness.

It’s a feeling like no other, unmistakable and unable to be forged. A feeling you could only feel in his presence.

As his hands caress you it seems like a small furnace appears in your chest and grows larger and larger until it’s warmth fills every corner of your body. Your fingers and toes and ears and nose. It comes as a surprise to you to discover how numb and cold-soaked they all were.

But not any longer. Because he is here. Close and real. Tangible beneath your fingers in his own sorrow-stricken composure.

And right there and then, all your doubts and fears fall off of you. You shed them away, like an elk that molts it’s fur for the spring.

Finally with that you’re able to breath once again. Your able to move. You welcome the rain soaked summer into your lungs, the warm hunched over frame into your arms and with a concluding shake of your lower lip, your ready to speak.

‘Morpheus?’

The voice that comes out of your mouth in no matter resemble the shreaky scream, or a groggy rumble you’ve heard yourself exclaiming so many times. It’s soft and small and delicate. Like snows thawing right at end of the season foretelling the prelude to spring. It’s a question, but also an affirmation. Without even thinking about it you’ve put your whole hope, anticipation into it and with that soft note it’s an undeniable declaration of love.

Poetic in its syllables, melodic in its tone.

This name rolls off your tongue so perfectly, so naturally that you cannot help the soft swell of your heart even at the sound of it.

And he shakes, even more so than before. And then, from the tangled of your hair you can hear a soft laugh. Or is it another wave of tears?

But then he presses a soft open-mouth kiss onto your neck. His soft lips tear through the courts in of your tangled sweat soaked hair and you feel their delicate, slightly wet touch. Then his breath fans over the quickly cooling patch of skin and it is not like the thaws of early spring in you but like the season in full swing. Like watching a garden suddenly bloom, cover itself with explosion of colors, birthing vibrant flower buds that unravel rapidly and unstoppably right before your own eyes.

Happiness prickles on your skin and you cannot help but crane your neck to give him more access.

He laughs softly to himself when he pushes his nose to the spot where he kissed you, his voice deep and rich in its sound like honey.

‘It is me, my sweet angel.’

Oh and that voice! You rejoice in its depth on the sweet dark resonance it was she’s you over with. You feel you could melt under the heat with which he pronounces your name. That is more than enough for you to bring forth an immense pleasure, just those six words and you see yourself in your mind’s eye soaring through the skies once more, higher and higher up to your own personal heaven. He is your heaven your undoing, the light in the darkness and when you embrace him, when the covers fall from your lower body and you press yourself to him, you reach a cosmic completion in calm. But it seems that it is not enough to sate his own hunger for you.

Proceeding to haul you up and onto his lap, he presses himself as close as he can to your body in the way that even with the both of you half-sitting your lens tangle with his, your robes drape over his dark dress up and he surrounds you with his magnanimous frame. He’s beneath you, looms over you, embraces you from the back and presses you to his front. The rise and fall of his chest dictates your own respiration and suddenly you don’t feel like just an angel, but a part of a much greater beast. But it doesn’t smother you like the small touch from him did before, in the desert. It is welcomed, needed. You’ve missed it, the sensation of belonging.

His moves are fluid and strong, similar to the currents of a mountain creek.

The cool your tired senses, wash off the unpleasantries of the century past.

His palms climb up the column of your spine and cup your neck with reverence. Fingers of one of his hands slither over the base of your skull and hold it gently taking the ordeal of upholding your head from your soar shoulders. You lean on him. Supporting yourself in his strong arms is a relief like no other. You could soak in that cozy silence for eternity but he feels strongly otherwise because dipping his head into your collarbones, he starts to murmur. His whisper is so different from the constant buzz of Pain and Thoughts. Much less vexing.

‘So long. Too long my angel. But I’m going to make it up for you my queen. My sweet, sweet creature.’

And every word is followed by a soft kiss, falling onto your heated skin, soothing it like aloe.

With his touch, with his words, with his smell, everything else disappears into a dark fold of your memories. There is no more sand weighting down on your wings. They are free to gently sway behind you as he threaders his fingers with the soft feathers. There is no more burden pressing down on your chest, now there are only his lips, leaving a burning trail across your bridge.

And with time, with every press of lips, he becomes more courageous, daring in his actions. What started as soft, almost pious kisses turns into hungry laps. His teeth graze your soft skin when he deviates from the straight path of your sternum to the soft insides of your breasts.

There is something needy in the way he touches you. Possessive in the way he how he kneads your feathers, grazes your skin, bites and nips at your still covered breasts. He’s like a traveler stuck in the desert finally finding oasis.

‘My Lord…’

‘Do not. You know what to call me, angel.’

‘M-Mor… Morpheus!’

‘Good. Yes.’

Sheer material of your robes dampens with every kitten lick of his tongue. You push your chest out, squeeze your upper arms to your sides, to allow him an easier access. Soon it seems there is nothing separating your pebbled nipples from his hungry mouth.

Delighted with that discovery you hum and mirror the moves of his hand with your own fingers. They comb through the dark mane, from his forehead, right up to the top of his head and when they reach their destination, you grab a handful of hair. The silky touch of his hair, however pleasant is nothing compared to the sound he makes at that.

A moan mixed with a whine. Sign of delight, sound of pure sin. And the sensation washes over you with rigor.

You guide your hand back, away from your chest, and he follows. Obedient. Good. So good for you.

His eyes rise and suddenly, even though you’re the one on top, shivers run down your spine because when his abyssal gaze falls on you feel as if he was the one looking down on you.

It is like a rapid switch between his demeanor from seconds before and without any notice his submission ends.

Hunger shines in his eyes, pupils blown wide, obscuring any trace of color his irises might have and he rises above you. But there is also something different, sharper in that stare. A glint of composure in those turbid, dark pools. His face freezes in an unreadable frown. He’s a predator, towering over his prey. You try to stand as well and try to chase his lips but he moves out of your reach. One gesture of his slender hand and you’re set in place. Is that a new play he concocted? If yes, then you don’t like it one bit.

‘You did not call my name before.’

Now it’s your turn to frown, seeing as you have no idea what he’s talking about.

‘Before the gates.’

He explains.

Instantly, you understand.

And there it is again. The sharp pain deep in the pit of your stomach. Shame fills you and you hang your head low, away from his piercing eyes, the judging stare he tasks you with. Because it is shameful to loose your composure like that before him. To disregard him like you did then and try to get away from him. And no matter how you think about it, hurtful for him. What he must’ve felt when you treated him like that? You could not imagine, out of fear that tears might once again resurface. With ice filling your veins, you try to respond, voice quieter than even you could expect, trembling with the emotions you try to hide. Your tongue defies you and there is nothing coming out of your patted lips. No excuse, no lie not truth you can muster. ‘I should punish you for that.’ His voice is thick. You cannot see his face, as your own gaze steers clear from looking up. Your eyes drill into your hands folded on your lap, desperate to find some sort of explanation for him, one that could clear the disappointment you’re sure to hear resonating in his words.

‘If a punishment is what might redeem me in your eyes, my lord, then so be it, I will gladly accept my…’

You start to say but he interrupts you by putting his hands on the both sides of your head. His palms cover your ears and for a second all you hear is your own blood pumping. Thenars of his hands softly push at your jaw and you have no choice but to lift your head up.

Your eyes meet his – big, dark, shining with the incandescent glow of Pleiades, blue like ocean during storm – and to your surprise you discover that there’s no disappointment or scold hidden in those magnificent irises. On the contrary. From the subtle pull of the lines around them and the slight rise of his brows and the red wetness in their waterline you can only deduct a deep sense of hopelessness, twin to your own. His lips quiver when he speaks. ‘I will not punish you. I have no desire, no need to… I just…’ The rest of the sentence seemingly clogs his throat and he gurgles unnaturally as if he truly was being suffocated. His face contorts in a strange mixture of desperation and despair.

Sighing heavily he once again dips his head into your hair, gathers you into a tight embrace, as if this gesture could somehow convey all the emotions that lingered in him. Despite his ineptitude in voicing his feelings, you understand. Truly, you do. Because you know and understand him. You’ve spent so much time with him that now, even after a century of severance, his emotions are your own, his feelings, the states of mind he witnesses, witch he goes through during the passing hours of a day, his moods, the swings there of. It all floats through you with a steady current of a raging river. One raise of a brow, one furrow, one smirk or grimace. It’s enough for you to read him. Like a sweet resonance of souls, you feel him, and from what you’ve gathered over the years you did spend with him, he feels you as well.

But there are some things that even this near psychic connection simply isn’t able to convey. And for now, this tension between, the situation you both found yourselves in, seems to be one such a case. It is simply impossible to just guess or let the other one assume what was the driving force between your actions. You need to talk. You, as well as he. And Morpheus seems to understand this too, seeing as he picks up the topic again, even before you can start to explain yourself to him. ‘I just want to know… why?’ He pushes his hands into your cheeks, craning his head and a swarm of unruly, dark hair falls over his forehead; in all your life you had never seen someone as maddeningly beautiful as he is at this moment. This desperate charm is what finally compelled you to speak. Your only hope is that he understands what comes next out of your mouth. ‘I feared, my lord, that you were not who I thought you to be.’ Hopeful eyes meet his, almost pleading the Dream lord for a moment of comprehension. He however, does not und we stand, because his immaculate brows pull together forming a deep, confused groove on his forehead. You have no other choice, but to continue. ‘I thought…’ your words tremble on your lips with a fearful shake. ‘I thought I was going mad with loneliness, and you, Morpheus, were just…’ you catch a breath, you have to, because those sounds your making choke you as you exclaim them. It’s such a painful, shameful, arduous task, the confrontation, that you start to think that it was better to sit in the sand, silent and unbothered by any consequences neither of your or his actions. ‘I though you were a mirage.’ For a moment there is nothing, just pure silence and the darkness seeping from your clenched eyelids. You shut them as soon as you uttered your last words, expecting mockery or cruelty from your lord, for finally he can see you for what you truly are – an useless, stupid angel, to weak to even survive on their own without suffering a mental strain. You know that now he’s going to dispose of you, not having any use for such a redundant creature. So yes, you pull away, and close your eyes shut, to stretch this moment, savor the quickly passing final moments in which you are together. But then he speaks, his deep, somnolent voice breaks the silence and it is as if someone had just cut the joke that’s been hindering your every move for the past century. ‘I see... I see now, that in my absence I have caused you more harm than I could ever inflict on you in presence. For that I am sorry, my sweet angel. I truly am. Please, stay assured, that I fully intend on recompensing you for your lost time.’ His slender hand combs through your hair. It’s a gentle movement that has a calming almost medicinal effect on you. Slowly opening your eyes, you see, yes you see his angular face, riddled with those familiar capillaries, with shadows framing his prominent cheekbones and the highlights of them. You see his face in full, alight with some sort of adoring look plastered to it. And the thin lips curved slightly upwards I that feline smile you love so much. His mane sways softly over his forehead, akin to a sovereign being and not a simple mop of hair. Once more you see him how he is and how he has been. Your lord. Your Morpheus. Your Dream. ‘I assure you, my love, you will not regret keeping your loyalty, for I have the sweetest of rewards for you.’ New wind pick up in you rings with your next breath and it is not the desert wind that tosses around the grains of sand outside the gates. It is a familiar soft breeze that fills the sails of your happiness, that makes you soar high in the sky. ‘Morpheus, my love.’ He laughs softly, quiet, summer rain prominent in the sound of his voice. And as he bends down, to offer a delicate kiss on your forehead, you laugh as well. Soft, and deep the laugh no longer hurts. It is like a balm that cools your scorched skin. You feel him softly pushing you down, back onto the bed, and as the two of you submerge yourselves into the sheets, you know. You are no longer alone.

#the sandman #morpheus #morpheus x reader #angel reader #Dream #luciene #dream of the endless #death of the endless

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axieta · 2 years

Text

Hungry eyes

|Henry Winter x reader|

Chapter 3

When her eyes become brighter

I think it’s about time I told you why I call her the agent of chaos. It is not by all means provoked by her frivolous disposition, although I have to admit that she had a knack for and was particularly prone to concocting practical jokes; some harmless like switching the refills of bullet pens blue to black, black to red, red to green, or nose flicks or lies so ridiculous and obvious they turned comic. And others rather not so much - I’m speaking here about switching the sugar in our class’ cabinet for salt (till this day, when I think about Aristotle, I can feel the salt at the edge of my tongue).

And yes all of that was chaotic in its almost innocuous manner, but that’s not the kind of bedlam I have in mind whilst thinking of her.

You see, she was, above all and first and foremost a free woman. Spirit made of wind, urged never to give way to others, never to stutter or waver in her actions.

As much as the idea of using technology repelled her, any attempt at forcing her to submit or respect any sort of authority, put her in the most vicious mood.

It is not to say than anyone had ever officially tried to put reins on her; but the longer I observed her I begun to notice how detested she seemed in public spaces, in libraries, bars, school- especially Julian’s classroom. For some unknown reason, while everyone was chatting and just soaking in the many ideas, themes, ideologies Julian threw our way, she always seemed to recoil into herself as if the sheer sound of the man’s voice made her cringe.

I think it was a problem of authority, or even just common, social rules, she had to obey in those spaces. And you know, there is nothing worse for a free spirit than limitation.

After lessons like this- conversatoriums- she almost always provoked Bunny in one way or another. Either by voicing a snarky comment, or just by physically tormenting him, tripping, pinching, punching. It was all fair game as no one really cared if anything happened to Bunny, or rather, no one believed she would really harm him. In all truth it was pretty funny to watch Edmund struggle against her, a girl almost half his size, jumping around him and shouting profanities in Greek and Latin.

I think it was her way of venting her frustrations that must’ve accumulated during conversatoriums.

She also argued with Bunny a lot. Conflict of interests I guess, her the ever unrelenting libertarian, and him, a stone cold I-don’t-even-know-but-sure-ass-hell-not-libertarian.

Bunny indulged her one more than one occasion, I don’t even know why. In their oral spars, she was always the one to come out victorious.

For every vicious word Bunny spoke, she had a tirade ready to push him back into the offense, or if we were lucky, to shut him up.

She was like that, unapologetically and almost aggressively liberal. An equalist who valued nothing higher than human life and freedom. It was only natural that she and Bunny would butt heads.

Back then I didn’t think much of her convictions, but now, looking back I think what happened to her, to all of us, was heartbreakingly tragic in the light of what she had tried to teach us.

The day after our delicious and balanced, coffee and cigarette based breakfast was Sunday. The day I dreaded most as it usually meant that we would all be leaving the summer house and moving back to Hampden for the most foreseeable future. Also, that particular weekend I travelled there with Henry and Bunny and I didn’t know if I felt completely comfortable driving with them, knowing what I knew, and witnessing what I had witnessed.

Thankfully, she came to the rescue.

‘Walk with me Richard Papen.’

She said, as we were closing the blinds, making sure that nobody would break in during our absence. We had to be very thorough with that, as the behemoth of a house surely was a tempting booty for burglars and thieves of all sorts.

‘Pardon? Where?’

I’m ashamed to admit that, but in our conversations I mostly asked incredulous, stupid questions like that.

‘To Hampden of course.’

And she said that as if it was the most obvious of truths in the universe.

My mouth fell agape. And then I laughed. I don’t think I laughed well enough during that year. But with her it was easy. Serious or not, all that she said was so abstract, so far away from me that I couldn’t help but to.

‘Surely you’re joking. It must be at least a three-hour walk.’

She looked at me, all serious with that sharp spark in her eyes.

‘Well for me it’s two, but with you it would be four. You’re not very athletic are you?’

Not even the jab she threw at me could wash away the dumb smirk from my face.

‘Sure. A four hour walk to Hampden. Why not?’

I don’t know why it was so easy for her to pull me into that arduous project. It just felt right. It had always been like that with her. After that weekend, no matter what she did, if she wanted me to do it as well, I would.

So yes, it felt right.

Autumn in full swing, hills and valleys of Hampden, sweat, strain and her. It all just fit together.

‘You’re going to Hampden with her?’

Camilla came into the room, Charles right behind her, heavy bag under his arm, its weight, curtesy of, as I could only assume, many a stolen books from the house’s library.

Camilla smiled gracefully, like no one could and I felt my knees buckling under the weight of her beauty. I think her hair was particularly shiny that morning.

‘Ya. Have you ever walked to school from here?’

‘Me? Please!’

Camilla scrunched her nose when she laughed, and once again, I think that no one in the whole wide world could invoke such a charming sound.

‘I wouldn’t be able to keep up with her, believe me I tried. But Francis did.’

‘I hear my name and hereby I come!’

Francis jumped through the door in an aggressive splash of pale blue, fiery red and frills.

‘What were you rascals on about? Were you talking behind my back?’

‘Oh, no Fran darling, we could never!’

Charles and Camilla laughed in unison at my accomplice’s dramatic tone.

‘Then tell me mon coeur what is the pressing matter of this gathering?’

He circled the room with his hand as he showcased what gathering he had in mind.

They both were so animatedly dramatic in their exchange - even more so when Francis jumped close to her and clasping her hands into his, pulled her close to his chest - that it was very hard to keep a straight face.

‘Nothing much, I’m just taking Richard for a walk.’

Francis’ owlish laugh filled the room as he rubbed his hands together in the most villainous gesture. Mischief bloomed on his face, twin to the half mad glee that shined on her’s.

‘Oh-hoho, my brother! You are in for a ride! Or rather, a walk I should say!’

‘I hear you’ve already tried your strength in this department?’

‘Sure did… Sure did. And then I couldn’t lift a finger for three days!’

We all joined in laughter at the pained expression he made, and the three fingers he had ironically raised, high into the ceiling, as if awaiting a roll of judgment or a reparation for his suffering from any higher power residing in the upstairs bedroom, right above us.

‘I’m telling you! This woman is a Dea-mon!’

‘Dulcis flava, you hurt me!’

She grabbed her chest, seemingly in great, overwhelming pain and collapsed with a yelp, free falling back right into my arms. I caught her with a little umph, although not soon enough and her butt hit the floor with an emphatic smack.

‘Cruci!’

Camilla covered her mouth with both her hands and although her eyes expressed nothing but pure horror, I could see her mouth curling upwards slightly.

I bet we would erupt into another fit of laughter if it wasn’t for the dark figure appearing in the doorway.

A grim reaper, Henry, stepped in, with his usual grimace, and it was as if air has gone out of the room.

‘What’s all this commotion?’

His raspy voice sounded unnatural, almost not present and for it all the more intimidating.

‘Weren’t you supposed to be cleaning up the house?’

Then his gaze fell on me, still hunched over and red with residues of laughter with her in my arms. I could only imagine how this- her splayed across me, and me seemingly blushing with affection, leaning over her, embracing her fainted figure- must’ve looked like for him. I saw it in his eyes, in the metallic glint of them and the horrible shadow that for a brief moment that seemed to be shorter than a second, completely twisted his face into a grotesque mask of pure hatred. It hadn’t last long, at least not long enough to register and mull it over properly, but I remember it. And every time it pops back up in my mind now, I feel shivers running up and down my spine for it was the single most petrifying experience in my whole life. If Henry had a gun, I’m sure. I would be dead on the floor in the same instance his eyes had laid on me.

‘Richard what are you doing?’

He walked towards us slowly, circling around the group like a caged animal, a feral tiger ready to sink his teeth into whoever dared to speak first. Cunning and lithe. Quiet and deadly.

Hunched over he looked as if he really was readying himself for pouncing on the most misfortunate one of us.

‘I’m taking Richard for a walk.’

She pushed herself up, away from my grasp, her touch suddenly hotter than a white metal rod, sharper than a diamond. I squirmed away. His eyes followed me around the room and I felt them all over my body, climbing up and down me like an importunate swarm of ants.

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes. We’re going to Hampden.’

‘To Hampden you say?’

‘Yes. Hampden.’

‘In that case I ought to walk with you.’

‘You can’t.’

Strained tension filled the room as she said those words. Everyone’s head turned to her in a silent expression of dread. No one told Henry what to do. Ever. Not in that tone, not in those words. And yet she did. With straight back, head held high and the kind of conviction painted on her face and etched into her words that would make any man crumble.

‘I can’t?’

He didn’t crumble.

‘You got here by car. It would be most inconvenient to leave it here.’

‘Bunny will be more than happy to take it for a spin.’

‘It’s a long walk.’

Her squinted eyes fell to his legs as she tasked his hunched figure with a vile smirk on her mouth.

‘I wouldn’t like you getting any more hurt, than you already are.’

The comment, however veiled with false, concerned tone, visibly stung Henry. He threw his head back, opened his mouth, like he wanted to bite back, but nothing came from him, and he was left there, silent, looking like a suffocating fish. It was a brilliant fléche, one he could in no way dodge or par.

Everyone in the room knew of his stiff walk and the reason for it. Nobody knew though she would dare to use it against him.

She snickered with cold satisfaction.

Camilla was the first to break the uncomfortable silence that fell between us. Something like disquietude painted across her soft features.

‘Henry, it is a long walk. It would be better if you took your car.’

His head snapped at her gustily and with a loud crack, as if he was just taken out of a trance. There was nothing soft in the look he threw her. Wild, dark eyes tasked her with pure venom and for a second I thought she would be the unfortunate one to take his wrath upon herself.

But to my relief, he pressed his mouth into a thin, displeased line, and just like the night before, silently went out of the room.

The moment his dark coat vanished behind the curve of the corridor, a unanimous, relieved sigh escaped the lungs of everyone at present.

‘Guess that’s taken care of.’

Her words, despite her victory over Henry, sounded bitter. Almost as if she wanted him to stay and argue with her some more, convince her to let him go with us.

Everyone slowly started to sneak out from the room. Their postures slightly hunched over, faces pulled with painful expressions, shoulders heavy with the weight of the exchange they just witnessed.

She stayed though. Still with unchanging straight back she stared her vicious eyes into the door frame as if beckoning with her sheer willpower for Henry to come back. To continue their debate.

But he didn’t come. And sure enough, after not so long time had passed we heard Bunny’s whiny voice outside and a roar of an engine.

Henry left. And she was left waiting.

It was a beautiful day. The kind of a day you see only if you’re very lucky and only at the beginning of Autumn. When sun shines high in the sky and it is warm when its rays fall onto your face, but also if you would dare to submerge yourself into shadows you’d feel an overwhelming chill.

The air was crispy, sky intensely blue, so sharp it stung my eyes when I tried to look directly up into it, and the trees were just at the start of their journey to baldness, barely kissed gold by Carpo, leaves not yet fallen.

Birds chirped over our heads in their triangular formations. Crows or ravens. I’m no ornithologist, so I wasn’t sure.

I breathed in the subtle smell of fall. Still young, unstained with decomposure.

‘It’s nice isn’t it?’

She spoke to me, throwing her arms out, as if to hug the picturesque landscape before us.

Her eyes were somehow lighter with the sun shining idly above them. They seemed bigger, more merciful when not entrapped inside the four walls I would usually see her in. It was like in that moment, in that particular spot, she was finally able to breath.

Cooled ground cracked underneath our feet.

‘The open space.’

I nodded me head.

‘It’s quite… grand.’

She hummed, clearly pleased with my response. Shuffling closer to me, she flung her arm over my neck and whispered into my ear, her words coming in quick feverish sentences.

‘Look there, see?’ Her free hand stretched to the spot where the green hills touched the sky, far away from us. ‘The horizon.’

A gust of bone-chilling wind came our way. In the distance, where she was pointing out to me, the grass ruffled and shook like hair on a woman’s head.

Her scent surrounded me as the wind embraced our hugged forms. She smelled like dreams.

‘If you close your eyes, come on Richard, close your eyes!’ I closed my eyes. ‘If you close your eyes and think of it hard enough, are you thinking? If you do, you can imagine it stretching endlessly into nothingness. Wild and quiet and full of things neither you nor I could ever comprehend. And it goes on and on, develops and unfolds into something unfathomable and uncharted. You can imagine nothing and anything, but you will never truly know what the horizon hides. You will never reach it.’

With my eyes closed and her words flowing directly into my ear I discovered, to my greatest astonishment, that I could indeed feel the ground stretching and forming under my feet.

‘Do you hear it? That’s life. The circle of time, always going forward but repeating itself on end. That’s death.’ I could hear the grass growing and slowly fading in the distance, the leaves in the treetops turning red. Creeks drying out, animals running in the distance. It was pure horror, the decay coming my way. Unrelenting, timeless, incorruptible. I knew that once it was done with shredding through the horizon, it was going to come directly for me. My eyes snapped open to the image of her delighted face right before me. There was something truly animalistic in the tilt of her head.

‘Bravo. You’ve got some imagination.’ In all honesty, I think it was more her words than anything that put me in that agog state. ‘Look at you. You’re all sweaty.’

Her hand swiped something off my forehead and then fell down my arm (I think she wiped it on my coat) and reached for my hand.

With an reassuring squeeze she tugged me forward.

‘Come on. Let’s touch the horizon.’

And she lunged forward.

I hand no choice but follow but I felt somehow inept running behind her, like a newly born calf trying to keep up with its mother.

She was fast. With long, beautiful limbs that stretched in her every step. Her hair tangled in the wind, glowed in the sun like millions of diamonds strung together in an intricate multi-strand collar. Head thrown back and reddened cheeks made her look otherworldly.

‘Wait! What are you- You can’t touch the horizon!’

Her laugh resounded all around me. It bounced off the tree trunks, swam in the sea of grass underneath my feet, flew with the birds over my head.

Despite many rocks and an uneaven terrain, she never faltered or lost her balance. Not even once had she to stop in her tracks. Contrary to me, who almost lost his life due to slippery pebbles running from beneath my feet more times than I could count on fingers of the both of my hands. It was as if she wasn’t even touching the ground, but barely grazing it, dancing on the air above.

By the time we reached the peak of the hill, she’s been dragging me behind her, no more air in my lungs to be spared, blood thumping painfully underneath my face. She on the other hand looked refreshed, as if running up the hill wasn’t at all tiring for her.

‘Did we- ahh, did we touch the damn horizon already?’

I had to support my hands on my knees and hang my head between them, otherwise I was sure I’d puke.

‘What? Of course not dummy. You cannot reach the horizon.’

My head snapped up at her with the intent of throwing her a murderous glance but I suddenly felt sick, so it fell once again between my legs.

‘Then why did we, in the name of all that is holly, run up that hill?!’

My voice was strained with the lack of air and the bile that started to come up my throat.

‘Because I felt like it.’

The straightforwardness of her words struck me as something characteristically her, yet incredibly cruel.

‘Why did you feel like it? I didn’t.’

I pointed at my red, clearly unwell face and she snorted a short laugh. She cross-sat right before me which made me a little bit uncomfortable because now I not only had to worry about puking from exhaustion but also puking at her.

Her big eyes looked up at me.

‘Richard, do you know who the happiest man in the history of the world was?’

‘What? What does it have to do-‘

‘Do you?’

‘Dunno’ I chugged. ‘Alexander?’

She laughed once again and somehow in that moment even I couldn’t deny her beauty.

‘As much as I wish it was true, I’m afraid you’re wrong. Good guess though. A close one. I will remember that.’

‘Then who?’

She looked over her shoulder, into the distance, mulling something over.

‘Diogenes.’

I raised my brows at that. She never seemed to be a philosophical type of a girl. More of a historian than a deep thinker.

‘Didn’t he…?’

‘Live in a barrel? Yes.’

‘And that’s why he is the happiest man in the history? Because he slept in a barrel?’

Another snort from her compelled me to kneel down and take in her face. There was nothing malicious about it in that moment.

‘Sometimes you’re such a simple man, Richard Papen. It intrigues me.’

‘I will take it as a compliment.’

‘As you should.’

I laid back in the grass. The ground underneath me was a bit frozen and uncomfortable, but I felt my breaths coming in easier, less hurriedly and that was enough.

‘Thanks. So tell me, how does living in a barrel make you happy?’

I closed my eyes and felt the grass give away somewhere to my right. Guess she lied down as well.

‘It is not just living in a barrel, Richard. If it was that simple, there would be no infrastructure, no homes, no estates.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘You see Diogenes thought up an idea, a way of life, so ridiculous, so outside everything that the men of Ancient Greece knew, that no one could even tell him to abandon it. He ate when where and what he wanted, did what he desired to do and slept when and where he chose. By it he became so independent, so free, that his own existence, and it alone was a statement.’

I looked at her while she was talking. The way her eyes jumped from point to point on the horizon, her mouth shaped every word and her hands drafted unidentifiable shapes in the air. It all made her look a tad bit crazed, manic even. The speed at which she spoke cemented that impression, but I couldn’t help but listen to her. And nod along with her every word. She was like a vortex, enchanting, hypnotizing, beaconing.

‘Even my Alexander saw him for who he was. If I wasn’t Alexander I would like to be Diogenes.’

I laughed at that. It was very on par for her to steer right into the territory of the great Macedonian.

‘So freedom. That’s what made him the happiest man in the world?’

‘Precisely. I do what I want, when I want. Just like he did. And it makes me happy.’

A long silence fell between us. As I collected myself I watched as she picked at and tore out small patches of grass. She had very slander, nymph hands. If I didn’t know any better, and if they weren’t perpetually stained with green ink, I would take her for one.

‘Do you feel any better?’

She asked me quietly, almost gently.

‘I think I need to lie a bit longer.’

‘It’s alright. Take your time. We’re in no rush.’

It was nice. To lay down with her like that. Feel her presence. Listen to her mumble about Alexander some more.

‘Do you think everyone should be free? Like Diogenes? Does everyone deserve it?’

‘I think that everyone deserves to be happy. So, if for me, freedom is synonymous with happiness, then I guess, yes. I think everyone should be free.’

‘Let me guess, in your ideal world, we’re all sleeping in barrels, aren’t we?’

I snorted at my own joke, but her face stayed serious. I’ve never seen her so focused as in that moment.

‘No, oh god no! If we all did the same thing, it would not make us anymore free than we already are. It would only give us a new set of rules and therefore rob us out of our freedom. No. Freedom is personal. You have to find it by yourself. Plus, do you even imagine, let’s say, Camilla sleeping in a barrel?’

I, in fact, couldn’t. Somehow in my mind, a marble princess like her didn’t even fit in a landscape of people sleeping like that. For me there was only one place she would fit in- The Parthenon.

‘And what if I don’t want to be free? What if I like to be told what to do by others?’

‘Then that is your choice. No one can take it from you, because the sheer act of making that decision proves your free will. These are your shackles, but they are yours and because of that no one can touch them.’

‘There is no escaping your freedom, huh?’

‘In my perfect world there isn’t. You choose your own confinement the same way you choose your escape. For me it’s running up the hills, chasing the horizon. Do you know what it is for you?’

Listening to her had a therapeutic, almost medicinal affect on me. Usually I could listen to her melodic, deep voice for hours on end. And that day was no exception. She pulled words from my mouth and I didn’t even realize I was speaking. With her I was somehow more daring, more straightforward. It was as if she sprayed some sort of encouraging chemical in the air, and I couldn’t, for the love of my live, I couldn’t shut up.

‘Why are you asking me this? Do you think me not a free person?’

Her smart eyes pierced me. They appeared to be looking through me, right into my soul.

‘I think you a sad one, Richard Papen.’

‘And you want me to be happy?’

She nodded. Her shiny hair cascaded over her shoulder, ink-stained hands run through the mane of grass that surrounded them. Some of the un-wilted flowers got in between her fingers.

I eyed her somnolent figure.

With her hair splayed around her head and fistfuls of flowers and grass I couldn’t help but think that Ophelia herself had laid right next to me.

‘Why?’

It was a very normal question for me to ask. After all, I don’t think anyone ever wished another person to be happy. Usually we revel in other’s misery. In the fact that we are better or have better lives than them, than the dreaded third body. I myself caught myself wishing the most disgusting, gruesome futures on others on multiple occasions, many of them my friends. So the idea of someone genuinely wishing me to be happy, free, content with my life was so abstract, so grotesque I couldn’t fathom it.

And yet there wasn’t a note of false in her voice. Not a trace of a lie in her eyes. So I had to ask.

‘Le seul moyen d'affronter un monde sans liberté est de devenir si absolument libre qu'on fasse de sa propre existence un acte de revolté.’

She spoke French beautifully. The s’, r’s and f’s slithered their way out of her mouth like poetry incarnate. Every syllable chanted like a part of a prayer with a distinct rhythmic flow. It was the most beauty speech I’ve ever heard. So much so, I almost missed the core meaning of it. I felt hypnotized by her mouth.

‘Who said that Richard?’

She stood up. Tall and etheric, in all her glory, unapologetically her.

‘Who said it? I don’t know.’

‘It was Camus.’

‘Camus?’

‘Yes Richard, Camus!’

She stretched the last syllable of the philosopher’s name and howled into the sky like a wolf. I laughed, god how I laughed at her, and then, without a second thought I joined her yelp.

That was freedom, the bark of a feral animal that’s been crumpled up inside of me for too long. Completely opposite of the dread I felt while imagining the stretching horizon. To scream like that, and scream with her, knowing there was someone beside me felt good. We yelled until there was nothing of the surname. No familiar syllable, no known consonant and the renowned name Camus rang across the hills with no coherence or meaning.

I though I started to feel happiness bloom inside of my chest.

And then we howled some more, until my throat started to hurt.

We climbed down the mountain right when the sun started to come down from it’s zenith.

She gave me her scarf, so the fumes of dreams wreathed me with a light shoal of calmness. For the first time in a while I didn’t mind the silence that fell between the two of us.

————————————————————————

‘You like freedom.’

She jumped through a fence and gave me her hand so I could do the same. It was getting dark, very fast, so I appreciated the help. I was glad I could already see the lights of Hampden looming in the distance.

‘I do.’

I liked how the orange and bright yellow bulbs danced in the distance, seemingly suspended in the air. Their light came to my eyes distorted with a quiet shine to them. They weren’t flickering like the feeble candlelight at Francis’, but I still felt compelled to place them in the same mystic, ethereal category.

‘Hmm.’

‘Hmm?’

‘You like Henry.’

‘Hmm…’

‘But you don’t like Julian.’

‘What makes you say that?’

I shrugged, not knowing how to describe it to her. The way that I saw her behave around the teacher might’ve not been all to conscious. And I didn’t really feel confortable explaining it all to her.

‘Well, you know. You just don’t look like you love him. And everybody loves him, so I just wanted to ask.’

She laughed, but it was nothing like the snorts I heard all day. It was dry, almost ironic and cruel. I saw the dangerous glint in her eye. I recognized it from the night before.

‘You mean all the seven people he teaches? The only students he happens to have?’

I felt shivers running down my spine and it wasn’t for the quickly dropping temperature.

‘What are you getting at?’

‘How many people are you close with in Hampden? How many teachers talk to you, know your name? With how many of them do you dine?’

‘I guess it would only be with you guys.’

‘Hmmm. Us and Julian. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice him yesterday at the table.’

Now we entered the small city that laid half an hour away from Hampden and with the appearance of the pedestrians, the lamps and buildings I could see how her features set and froze over. Her eyes shrunk over again and she grew more agitated with every person that passed by.

‘Don’t be like that. I saw Julian. I wasn’t that drunk. But he accepts like, every third invitation.’

‘He’s our teacher. He shouldn’t accept any.’

Her words came out dry, matter-of-factly.

‘Wow’ I shook my head so harshly I lost balance and almost bumped into some guy. She grabbed me by my forearm and pulled closer to her. Out of habit, I hooked my arm with hers. ‘You really must hate him.’

‘No. It’s not that I hate him…’

‘I really think you do.’

I pointed my finger right at the middle of her chest in the most accusatory gesture I could muster. She let out a strained laugh and slapped it away.

‘No I don’t! I don’t care about him. He’s just another old man. I just think that as a teacher he is… kind of, well, you know… dangerous.’

I must’ve looked really dumbfounded by this revelation because she rolled her eyes and continued with a deep dolorous sigh.

‘Don’t you see how much authority he has over us? No matter what Henry does, he goes to Julian for his advice. Henry never needs anyone’s reassurance, except for the times he does and by some fucking miracle it’s always Julian he’s seeking.’

She was now hissing from behind her clenched teeth, her every word drawled so low I could barely hear her. And there was something else hidden behind her words. Something like frustration or… jealousy.

‘And the dinners. Oh, the dinners. Francis and Camilla almost loose their minds every time he says he’s coming. Richard, they prepare two meals in case he doesn’t like the first one.’ She grew more and more furious, with every word she would shake her head and her hair swirled around her like little snakes. In that moment, when I looked at her she was pure venom, with bonfires lit ablaze in her eyes and teeth bared as if she was talking about a man who murdered her family and not a profesor with whom she had most of her classes. ‘Wake up and smell the fucking coffee. He has so much influence over them it’s ridiculous. I don’t think they can even do as much as think before checking if it’s okay with his philosophies. It’s like they are addicted to him. He has them wrapped around his finger, and they can’t even see that he is not opening their eyes with his backwards gibberish mumbling, but isolating them from the world.’

I felt her arm squeeze me with a force I could only expect from her. I whined and she looked at me with shock.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Richard. I guess I got carried away a bit.’

I offered her a strained smile.

‘It’s alright I don’t mind.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She smoothed the sleeve of my coat with her hand.

After that we didn’t talk much. She looked quite debilitated with her rant and I couldn’t get my thoughts together after what I had heard from her.

I walked her home, she rented a small flat not so far away from my dorm, so I didn’t have to walk too long to get to where I needed to be.

My bed. God how tired I was.

I didn’t even take my clothes off, despite all the mud and dirt and grass stuck to it I couldn’t muster the energy to do so. Guess the exhaustion from the walk that turned out to be much longer than four hours was getting to me.

I lied in my unmade bed, aghast with all that I had heard that day. From Henry’s surrender, the idea of freedom and to the unpleasant opinion she had about Julian. It all swarmed in my head, murmurous with the buzz of a thousand thoughts per hour.

That night I didn’t get much sleep, because every time I closed my eyes I saw her enchanting face, set aflame with vexation, eyes digging into my soul.

She was etched into my mind, just like she was a few hours before, illuminated with city lights, neck bare, long, swan-like and her legs, deft, stepping on air, she was the spitting image of Themis.

I couldn’t sleep, so I got out of my bed and wrote all in green ink:

Today I saw a lighthouse in the middle of an enraged sea. She was a woman with eyes so bright, she guided ships to their harbors. She was free and she was alone. But that was fine with her, for that freedom is synonymous with happiness. What a woman, I think I’ve never seen someone so terrifyingly absorbing.

As I scribbled that, a thought came into my mind.

I wanted to be free. More than anything in this life, I wanted to be free, in my own, enslaved manner.

#bunny corcoran #charles macaulay #camilla macaulay #henry winter #francis abernathy #henry winter x reader #the secret history #richard papen #afab reader

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