Friday, 10 October 2008

• Ghosts

  "The dusk is calm, your eyes are cold. . ."

  Her mouth is wide and leering, curling into something that vaguely resembles a smile. She’s crouching on the large wall along the sidewalk, eyes glittering in that way they always did, the way that makes him think of tears and confetti valentines. Clad in black on black, a darkly gloved hand extending towards him.

  He pays her no mind, walking forward, pacing his steps, forcing himself not to close his eyes and drown in her laughter or maybe his fear. Panic setting in, cold seeping through his skin, his fingers dipping into his pockets, brushing the pen and the half-sheet of paper. But it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t have a name. Just a word she used to be called by. Words interspersed in laughter, "The ferns grow full in curling fronds. . ."

  He thinks that’s what she’s saying. But it might just be what she wants him to hear. Playing with his head. Mind games. Newspapers flashing through his eyes, black and white, bold letters. Missing. He blocks her out as she stands up, walking along behind him. He can hear her boots on the stone, but it seems muffled and strange like she’s walking on velvet.

  "The path is straight, the trees are dense. . ."

  Step step step. This isn’t getting him anywhere. Try not to run. Walking in ice water. Proclaimed Dead. Missing missing missing. "Your faeries touch the damp-edged ponds."

  There’s something in the way she says it. Likes she knows something. His feet stop. He doesn’t know why. He can’t feel his hands. She stops beside him, voice dipping and rising and dipping in sing-song.

  "The moon is full and stars are bright. . ."

  He turns, stepping back, to the curb, looking up at her, as she smiles like a small child, the little girl down the street covered in bruises with an opened box of cookies under her shirt. Sweets have never tasted quite the same. Chocolate chips reminded him of broken hearts. Her singing, "You’ve found here what it always takes. . ."

  She’s sitting down, here feet dangling, tap tap tap against a grid of lace and vines. Her shoelaces glitter and gleam like they’re woven through with crystal and metal and frost, and he finds himself staring at them, looking anywhere but her face. Reflections under water. Missing. Presumed dead. "The grass is soft, the air is sweet."

  Finger’s uncurling just out of his view, an extra joint, dirty nails. She’d been wearing gloves, hadn’t she? His hand moving automatically. Skin against skin.

  "Your faeries swim in lucid lakes."

  Fingers entwined. Pressed together, the lone spark of warmth passing back and forth between them. Hair twines together. Glittering shoelaces catch what remains of the light. She’s still singing, a bright merry tune, humming under her breath when there aren’t any words, "The night pulls on in blighted dreams. . ."

  Pictures on paper, black and white, charcoal dots on gray. Empty eyes, muck and mud encasing her neck, covering the bruises and scratches and fingerprints over the skin, hiding the pain from children’s eyes. Hands found bare and bitten by fishes of ice. Winter. It was a cold winter.

  "You find you have no other choice."

  He was at his aunt’s in Kyoto when it happened. Eating cookies and candy and everything else they would gorge on. He’d sneak into the kitchen after bedtime and nick sugary treats, determined that for once he would be breaking the snacks to the fantasy picnics with people who didn’t exist and who were very very secret. Humming, "Your mind sinks deep in follied fear."

  Childish names. A hedge hog with spines of over large thorns, wrapped in vegetation and flowers. A man of pebbles and gravel with fingers coated in a salty red crust. A woman who never talks, with horns on the tips of her ears.

  "Your faeries sing in unsure voice."

  He’s kissing her now, pressing his lips to hers, over her jawline, down her throat. One of her hands is tangled in his hair and the other slips along the vertebrae of his back. She nips at his ear as he presses her into the wall, but the wall isn’t really there and they tumble through along the grass. He’s straddling her waist and she’s laughing, "The pre-dawn light is grim and veiled. . ."

  His hands slip up her shirt, fumbling with the clasp of her bra, ripping through the fabric when it doesn’t yield to his will. One of her hands is on his hip and her pants are loose and hanging around her like a shroud.

  "In seething hate and frozen blood."

  They’re shivering, in a river of ice water. His hands feel numb, rubbing against her skin for something more than warmth that he just can’t seem to find. She’s still laughing, like it won’t stop, like there’s something in the words that she finds uproariously funny but can’t quite explain. She draws him down, whispering like she’s just trying to get out them out of the way, "The clouds are harsh and bringing rain."

  Her hands trace on his bare chest and he wonders when he took off his shirt before it doesn’t matter, nothing matters but the feel of her around him, of being inside of her. The wind takes her song, carrying it on as she moans, fingers digging into his skin.

  "Your faeries sink into the mud."

  His eyes open and his body is tense, wound up like a spring. He feels sunlight crawling over his skin, seeking to burn her away, the very memory of her. He sits up, drawing one of the blankets around him to keep it at bay, trembling, sensitive, hard. Misa groans, curled beside the disappearing hollow he leaves behind. He feels cold, which of itself is nothing new, but there’s something inside the cold, a crystal bell dropped on a stairway in his memory, calling him to open his drawer and take out the dark glove he found in his hand the morning after her death. It smells like salt and rotting vegetation and he doesn’t really know why he keeps it. He can feel what’s inside through the fabric, but he opens it anyway. A coin, tinted a dark red, a small thorn, a square of lined paper, folded up neatly. Unfolded, he can see that the words are written in a scrawl of cursive. English. A language he couldn’t understand then. He’d forgotten about the note by the time he reached middle school, so he smooths down the paper, which feels like silk or fur, and says the words in a whisper, like they can conjure memories of cookies and stomach aches and a girl who had too many butterfly bruises over her arms.

  "The sun is rising, the sparrows squawk,
  Echoeing words of mindless fools,
  You sink into a dark cocoon."

  "Your faeries drown in stagnant pools."

  "Your Faeries" © Astrid Sonia Tieholz

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