Melancholius Lethale

All I could see was Mary’s legs. The water covering her feet entirely, revealing but an inch of the white socks with frills at the top. She was wearing her polka dot skirt and looked like a poisonous mushroom on two lanky stems.  I was thinking how expensive the shoes were, under the water now. Entirely. We’d only bought them for her what… three weeks ago? Jesus Christ, one buys shoes like that to last a year, two years if one’s lucky and the kid doesn’t grow much. Sometimes the kid grows but the feet stay as they were, possibly because they’re trapped in the damn shoes. Will the shoes survive the flood, I thought. The shoes?! We hadn’t even found the cat yet and when there were so many other things to worry about – the lack of insurance for one, I was thinking about the shoes. Shiny patent leather. Coffee brown. Prettiest shoes I’ve seen. I was jealous on my own behalf and that of the other girls when we got them.

Coughs and sneezes from across the room heralding an epidemic of pneumonia. Doing my head in.

But then we were all dead anyway. Me, Mary, her little brothers and sisters. Even the cat. In fact, I think we all got it from the cat in the first place. Melancholius Lethale.  The doctor gave us a month or so. Looks like it will be a race now: that or the pneumonia. Won’t be long now in either case.

What? Yes, you can get on the armchair, but don’t put your feet on it, do you hear me? Not the feet!! Do get them out of the water though. I know it’s not comfy, just…hang them over the armrest or something. No do what you want. Seriously. Won’t be long now anyway. I could do with some sleep.

Robert stands a chance. To live. But only, only if he is careful enough, only if he chooses to not come into contact with us. They’re my children, he says, they’re mine and you’re my wife and the cat is my cat too. It’s true, it’s his cat, he brought it home, I didn’t even want it. I want it now though. Now that he’s probably drowned, I want the cat. I’m laughing hysterically, hysterically! I mean what else is there to do.

I appreciate him saying all that sweet crap, but it is important he doesn’t come home at night, or day, or ever really. It's the matter of life and death. Death by the blues. Pathetic. 

Could do with him today of all days. He’d probably know what to do about the shoes, he’s good at things like that, he’d actually rescue the bloody shoes. Would know whether they should be dried off slowly or fast, whether to put them in the freezer or blow dry them or rub them with spirits or marmalade or make the cat wee on them. The cat…

God that would be helpful.

But today of all days he shouldn’t come home: the water, you see, is everywhere. And it’s contaminated. We don’t want him to become a melancholic. We’re not selfish like that. Why bring him down with us.

What would he do about the shoes, I wonder.

Avignon 2

Today I told Martin that what I had revealed to him about Avignon a year ago was not true. When he left, in a rather discourteous hurry, he left me a feeling he had not been quite so convinced by me. I' m not sure whether it's because I am now a lawful resident of an asylum or... He keeps telling me I shouldn't be here and that this is all one big misunderstanding. But whenever I tell him the same thing he comes up with millions and billions of reasons why this is absolutely necessary and for my own good. Or when he grows tired of coming up with those, he just says the truth - that now there's no way back anyway. I thought that denying everything would be sort of a way back. A very unlikely possibility, but you have to play with what you have. Or in my case - with what I pretend not to have - a criminal past. A very involuntary criminal past, but they don't seem to care here. I hate them all.
It's not always 'hate hate hate'. Sometimes I enjoy life here. I know I would enjoy life elsewhere more, but there's some things you can do here as well as anywhere else. I'm going to do a DIY tattoo. It's very simple, Lizzie told me all about  it, you just have to make little dots in your skin and fill them with ink, and just make sure the ink gets trapped under the skin before it heals again. It is impossible to get hold of a needle though, and it's driving me crazy. How on Earth am I going to make those dots then? I was thinking i could use my teeth but that's probably not the same. Janet says I could also get blood poisoning at some stage of that process but Lizzie has a few she's done herself and she's still alive. I know it because they actually told me that Lizzie is one of the people I see who are actually real, alive and ... official in every way and don't make me look like crazy when I speak with them. No, Lizzie's not a halucination, she threw up last week and nurse Irma slipped and fell over in Lizzie's vomit. Halucinations don't leave substantial vomit behind them like Lizzie does. Unless...

I know nurse Irma has a sewing kit somewhere in the desk, and I hereby announce my most important mission of the upcoming weeks - I'm going to get to that needle whatever it takes. I need to get it to make a tattoo that will say "Avignon prank", then I'll show it to Martin and I'll say that we were all just a group of young people carried away by our own conspiracy and mystification plan of making people believe we did all those things. But didn't actually do them. And it's so annoying and inconvenient that I have to come up with this plan B or C or whatever because we actually DIDN'T do it!!!!

Martin says the photographs don't look fake. That's why he won't believe me.

Water of Joy

I’m awake. Aware of my breathing, aware of the difference between the dream that is over and the reality that will reveal itself to me as I’ll open my eyes. There is nothing stopping me from opening them, apart from the slight resistance of the sticky substance that tends to glue one's eyelids together during a good night's sleep. But then there's this game I’ve been playing with myself for the last couple of months. The rules are simple – not to open my eyes until I’ve figured out the exact location of where I am. It has proved to be a rather challenging task due to being on the move so much.

I rub my eyes a bit, they’re quite itchy and wet. Have I been crying in my sleep? I sometimes utter a very strange hollow sound in my sleep, I know it because it wakes me up sometimes. It usually follows a dream where someone tries to destroy me. Not kill, but destroy. They look at me, their face exerting superiority and determination and I know that before I’m aware of another thing in this world  I will stop existing.

I don’t remember having such a dream last night. In fact I' m quite sure I had a pleasant dream with heated swimming pools involved. Perhaps the air is more humid where I’ve been staying this night? That would explain both the physical impulse for the pool dream, and the wetness of my eyes. Never dismiss a potential clue. Clue one – humidity. That does reduce the amount of geographical possibilities by some units of latitude and longitude.

Somewhere near the sea? On an island? In the South?

Clue two – the smell. There' s no smell of coffee and toast. Not at Martin’s then. Recently Martin's has been the most frequent answer to my little quiz. Unless Martin hasn’t woken up yet, but that is unlikely as even through my closed eyelids I can tell that it’s light outside, and the extreme case of insomniac that he is... no... It doesn’ t smell of Martin either. I stretch my left hand across the bed – no Martin, not enough space for him either as my palm hangs over the edge of the bed and catches the breeze from the window. The breeze and the wave of my arm have released a subtle cloud of perfume from my wrist. Acqua di Gioia. Armani. I have it in travel size. From the miniature sets that I end up buying against my own will whenever I get bored on the flights. Traveling?

Tactile clues...the sheets are starchy and of the kind of cotton that they have in the serene home design shops where one goes to daydream about their future home, their perfect ultimate temple of well-being and peace where the interior of their apartment will represent the interior of their soul and all other great stuff that dwells in the distant, and always constant, future.  I sometimes walk into those shops on Marylebone high street and say hello to the sales assistants in a careless manner like I’m the most careless person on Earth, lightheartedly considering to buy a large amount of all those super soft but firm 100 % organic fair trade  bed sheets woven by hand in accompaniment of ancient tribal songs underneath tropical sun, with an embroidery of a little crown which would compliment my palace-like house so well. One day such sheets will indeed compliment my palace-like houses very well, all four of them, not to forget the cottage. But that day belongs to the future and always will, which allows me to deduce that I' m not in in my current not-so-regal house. 

There’s a fly on my arm. Walking, up and down. Sometimes it stands still and then I cannot tell whether it’s there or not until it starts walking again. I’ve always loved the feeling of a fly walking on my skin. Unless it’s trying to make its way up the nostrils, that’s taking it a bit too far. But it’s definitely welcome to take a walk on my arm. Over the time I've learned though that I should never tell anyone about the joy this brings me as people tend to get disgusted by my confession of enjoying a micro-massage by a germ-spreading insect.  I quit my game, all I can focus on is following the trajectory of the fly on my arm. There’s another one now. Two flies. Do they think I’m a corpse? Flies feast on corpses don’t they? Now there's one on my face, walking from the corner of my eye down to the pillow, a hot fly leaving wet trace behind like a slug, which I realize is a tear before I realize I’m in a hotel because Martin wanted his funeral to be in this small southern town and because I don’t know anybody here. Which is good because nobody asked me any questions yesterday. Perhaps because they knew I would have no intention of answering them. Or perhaps because they knew the answers. Or perhaps they were actually kind people, which I refuse to believe...

There’s frankincense in Acqua di Gioia. Water of joy.  There was a lot of frankincense in the chapel yesterday too. A very calming scent, and there’s a lot of it even in the travel size bottle, and I don’t need to check out of my room yet, I can try to fall asleep again before even opening my eyes. In fact I don’t need to check out at all if I don’t want to.

I have some money now. I won. I didn’t even kill him. I did destroy him though. But to stop existing - that was entirely his own decision, although it seemed like some of the people yesterday still had doubts about it. But it is true. And it's all cleared too, officially. 

Now I have won again - in this game of guessing where I am. I’m in a hotel room in the South of France with my flies, with some perfume, some money, and some memories of a beautiful friendship.

"Love is not looking at each other, but looking together in the same direction”


/Antoine de Saint-Exupery/

Photo: Bath, 2012

Avignon

I told Martin what happened in Avignon, what we did four years ago. At least I started telling him. It wasn’t an easy thing to do but I did it, nevertheless, and for reasons inexplicable to myself I thought that, although he would find it atrocious and hard to accept, his respect for me would grow. I thought he would realize what it meant for me, what I had to deal with post factum, until very recently, and in some ways – until the end of my life.

Either that part wasn’t striking him yet or, possibly, the realization of it only contributed to the reflection of revolt on his face.

There were pictures on the coffee table, and a ferociously torn grey envelope next to them. Three pictures. There was nothing in them, tapes would have been a different matter. I almost said that there wasn't one tenth in those photographs of what had actually been going on, but the split second it took me to open my mouth allowed me to have second thoughts about my urge to utter anything of that sort.

I took a sip of my coke, to show how unimportant all this seemed to me now and how exaggerated I thought his reaction was. The can wasn’t opened properly and a stream of the treacly beverage was dripping down my chin and on my white polo neck. That was the last thing I needed, something so petty to contribute to the indignity of the situation. But Martin didn't see it.

He was crying, and I hated him for it. Perhaps he expected me to join in, but God knows I didn’t feel like crying. I felt sick just thinking about how easy it was for him to judge us.

He knew nothing about what had happened and why . And even if we had spent the rest of the week there discussing it, if he had given me a chance to enlighten him, he would still not understand, he just didn’t have the potential.

I found his ignorance immensely frustrating. His lack of empathy was beyond annoying, itching and angering.

Never before had I found it so easy – to think that I would have to kill him. Never before had I been so keen.

I miss him so much. So very, very painfully much. And it makes me angry. Never before has it been so easy: to think that I will have to kill myself.

I know that there is someone else out there who has been asked to do it for me. But what if they’re procrastinators, like me?

I still haven't made my mind up, I don’t know which way it will be, but looking on the bright side (there always is one) - I know it will clarify one thing for me: whether cowardice or impatience is my greatest weakness. I’ve never been able to figure it out. Which is why I’ve never been able to fight either.

Wings and Hearts

Once every Mars year (686 Earth days) all the winged living beings of the Solar System are invited for a free wing check-up and a SPA treatment. This complimentary indulgence is a generous gesture on behalf of the Central Interplanetary Wing Maintenance Committee.

This year the CIWMC had to be particularly careful with the invitations, having learned the lesson from the infamous misuderstanding last time when, by a clumsy bureaucratic mistake, five Boeing airplanes were invited to this medicinal and recreational gathering, four of which turned up, and were consequently sent away with a letter of official apology and an appendix (named ‘FYI’) specifying that the treatment in question strongly relies on the neural response of the patient, which is essential within the context of the method applied.

Quoting the 'FYI': 'It is unlikely that an inanimate object would gain much from such a procedure.'

This time the committee has committed to prevent any unpleasantness of the kind they caused and experienced last time, which is best illustrated by the three complaint letters from three of the four aircrafts who attended the event in vain.

All three claimed their three hearts had been broken thrice by 1) the fatal refusal, 2) the patronizing official apology letter following it, and 3) the appendix named ‘FYI’.

There was never a letter from the fourth plane. Its heart had stopped.

The fifth aircraft didn't have a heart. At all. Or it was never found anyway.Says the official statement from the CIWMC.

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