Fiction post
Apr. 12th, 2007 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soltianAnother story for class. I really need to start just writing for myself, but I never post the stuff I do for that.
I watch the battered alarm clock tick, its glow-in-the-dark hands luminous in the motel room’s darkness. The clock isn’t the only thing battered; every piece of furniture in the room seems to be nicked or damaged in some way, and the entire building smells strongly of seaweed. Eleven o clock. We’ve been here for exactly eight hours. I’d decided that was as long as we should stay in any one place, in order to give the baby enough rest but keep us both ahead of Kira. I much more enjoy playing the cat than the mouse, but I certainly wasn’t going to slack off in my job as prey. I uncurl from my position under the window stiffly, working out a cramp in my knee. My white t-shirt and slacks reflect the orange light from the street lamp-flooded windowpanes and glance against the dusty mirror hung on the wall. I give my reflection a sour glance. It was obvious I wasn’t eating enough, and I was starting to grow stubble, white hair against chalky skin. I hate that. I draw my eyes away and walk forward to shake Yoni’s shoulder.
“Kid, wake up, it’s time to leave.” Small limbs stretch as the tiny boy turns onto his back. He makes me wonder what I’m looking at every time I see him. Wonder if this child could have been me – warm, healthy skin, eyes blue instead of muddy red.
“Mama…” his sleepy mouth yawns out, small hand pawing at my palm. I squeeze it lightly, my lips turning down at the reminder.
“Yeah, Mama’s coming. She’ll come get you.” She was coming, too. I could smell her on the salt air leaking in through the cracks in the orange window. I gather up the knapsack that had his things in it and bring it to the bed where he was sitting up, rubbing at his pale eyes in the darkness.
“Mama,” he says again, followed by one of those sounds that healthy babies make when they’re not getting enough sleep. I don’t respond this time, just unscrew a jar of apricot baby food, stirring it with a small plastic spoon until it was smooth, and hopefully warm enough.
“Open up, here…” Yoni’s mouth falls open, sleepy eyes widening as he seems to recognize the shape of the spoon.
“Here.” I find myself saying again, sinking into a sitting position next to him. This was useless. I don’t even have the energy to feed him while on the move anymore. I think about staying here, waiting for her in this suffocating little room, without trying to run anymore. Thankfully, though, I haven’t sunk that low yet. I’ve come too far in my sick little game to get caught in a roach trap like this. The beach at night, cool, soft, and open, will be a better place to meet her. She could follow my footprints down to the last grain of sand and I bet it’d give her more satisfaction in the end.
Yoni ate, and I put our jackets on, grubby and gray for him and smooth red for me. I’m accustomed to saving the best things for myself, even when I have nothing particularly good to share in the first place. We leave the motel and walk on the beach, the sand turned silver from the moon and the water an inky blue. Yoni starts to come more awake in the darkness, his face lighting up and his movements becoming more energetic. I guess he likes the ocean, like any kid would. He scurries ahead, clumsy stubby legs taking him as far as he can manage at a time. He barks out his pleasure and I hear his mother in his voice, her animalistic chord staining his shouts against the foggy air. I pick up a stone with the front of my sandal and kick my heel up, managing to flip it into my palm. Tossing it once in my hand, I flick it out across the surface of the water. The rock disappears into the fog before I see it sink. I could take someone’s eye out with that sort of power. I sigh, staring after it, feeling any sort of satisfaction slip away. I can smell her on the wind. That’s just stupid. Maybe I am going crazy. Maybe I’m imagining that she was so close behind us in the first place. Maybe she won’t catch up tonight. But I had already given up on escaping. It’s not like there was even any point in getting away with it.
I feel a tug at my pant leg and glance down to see Yoni trying to offer me another stone. His eyes are so big, the brat. They’re so wide and round and they almost make me forget that he’s mine, because I certainly never looked that innocent, never that curious.
“You want to learn how to throw this?” I ask, and he blinks at me, uncomprehending. Yeah. When I was two, I knew what it meant to throw a stone. Who am I kidding?
“Here.” I lean down and curl his small fingers around the sandy pebble one by one, my skin strangely luminescent against his in the moonlight. He watches my every move, drinking me in as if I were something special, or someone important. I lift him up once he has a good hold, and tell him to throw. He drops it harmlessly onto my foot.
“Da,” he apologizes, wriggling to reach it again from his impossible height, “Da,” he insists, and I let him down. He forgets about the stone before his feet even touch the ground, and instead starts chasing after some kind of insect in the sand. I’m eliminated from his world just like that. That’s one thing we have in common. It’s not as if I feel anyone else has the right to exist at this moment. I’m worn to the bone, having spent the last few weeks dodging from city to motel to forest to abandoned building, trying to keep one step ahead of his damn mother. I marvel at my own stupidity sometimes. I don’t know what possessed me to steal him and try to make a break for it on my own. It wasn’t going to work. I wouldn’t get to keep him. I’d stolen her most precious thing, and she was stronger than I was. Her arms were stronger, the grip of her fingers, her love, and her heat. It’s not like I can put up with staying with her, though. I’ve spent too much of my life independent to understand the idea of family. I want to be myself again. What I forgot to take into account was that I’m not my own anymore. She stole that from me. She had my goddamned kid and I just couldn’t bring myself to leave him behind.
He’s mine. A piece of meat made up of the same stuff I am, but he means something else, too. I feel sick, falling for this trap of normalcy and parental affection. But I do not love him; that much I let myself have. I only need him. Her scent is lilting on the breeze again. I turn my head in the direction of Yoni’s small blurry footsteps, and see nothing but fog.
“Yoni?” I’m holding my breath, listening for the soft rustling of sand or irregular splash of water that will tell me where he is. Nothing. She couldn’t be here already. I turned in all directions, suddenly furious. He couldn’t have just disappeared like that. I would have noticed. I take a step away from the water, searching for a sign, one of his stupid baby noises, a flicker of motion in the fog. Suddenly a high-pitched shriek sounds to my left, and my ears feel like they’re burning.
“Yoni!” the shout rips itself from my throat before I know what I’m doing, my sandals slipping in the damp sand as I rush towards the sound. Something comes up fast from behind me and there’s a sharp pain above my chest, a rough, warm body pressed against my back and bare arms wrapped tightly around my middle. Just her fists, like always. My vision goes fuzzy, the will to fight slipping from me as if it were pouring out of my slack fingertips. I don’t even want to be awake anymore, but my body protests getting knocked out from just one strike. I smell her skin and feel dizzy, almost intoxicated, as if I were meeting her for the first time all over again. I remember winning the fight that time, though. I hear Yoni’s voice nearby as I black out, crying out in joy that’s obvious this time.
“Mama!”
I wake up with my chest hurting and decide not to move. Whatever I’m sitting on is rumbling peacefully, so I must be in her car. My car, actually, I just didn’t have any use for it after I left. It would be a sad first step on a venture of independence to take a car that could be tracked by radar. I don’t open my eyes, and try not to change the pattern of my breathing. It feels strangely peaceful, as if nothing had happened in the first place and I’m just suffering from mild chest pain and headache. She hasn’t killed me yet, that’s a good sign, right? Maybe she’s going to run me off a cliff.
“I know you’re awake.” Her voice has a growl in it, but it’s not murderous. I open my eyes for her, glad to see it’s still dark, the lack of light soothing on my sensitive eyes. I don’t recognize the pines or farm fences lining the road, which must mean we’re still far from home. Her home.
“Good to see you’re as sharp as ever,” I say slowly, not making an excuse for feigning unconsciousness. “Tell me, where are we going, and why do I still have all my limbs?”
She gave me a cruel smirk for that, eyes glinting. I can’t help but smirk back. Yoni is safe, the villain is caught, and presumably about to be punished for his heinous crimes. But maybe she still likes me a little.
“We’re not going anywhere. And you’re messed up in your head, not your body. I should have smashed that in.”
“Whichever it is, I’m rather fond of the fact that you didn’t.” I sit up a bit straighter in my seat, letting the pain in my midsection pool out, sighing as quietly as I can manage. She really didn’t hit me that hard. I had expected a broken rib, at the very least. I’m free to move, too, but that’s probably because she doesn’t see me as much of a threat. Classy, Kira. I just don’t feel like fighting a violent bitch like you right now. “If we’re not going anywhere, you can stop the car.” She gives me a hard look, angular eyes flashing skepticism and, ah, there’s the disgust I was expecting. I tell myself to feel nonchalant about it, but I’m seeing Yoni in the curve of her lips, and my chest settles with quiet sadness, smirk melting off my face.
“I won’t run away.”
She looks away from me again, eyes focused on the road that’s turning from asphalt to gravel at the edges. I have time to study the curve of her neck, her wavy mess of a ponytail, the shapeless way the sleeveless shirt she’s wearing hangs on her skin. She didn’t dress very carefully today. Her teeth flash when she speaks, and I’m reminded of just why she’s so intoxicating. She’s too wild.
“You won’t, will you? Except that that’s exactly what you’ve always done, you piece of shit.” Her voice is light, which was chilling. She pauses to lick her lips, still focused viciously on the road. Apparently she wishes she wasn’t talking to me. “Yoni won’t stop asking for you.”
Why? I feel some kind of eruption in my stomach, face contorting slowly in unbidden anger. Was the kid that desperate for mommy and daddy? Did he need that much stability, was he that delicate? He wasn’t mine, he couldn’t be mine, not if he was that needy and pathetic. He was hers, only hers, only she was going to be the one to give him all that sweet and wholesome mother’s love he seemed to need so badly.
“Where is he?” I ask, mouth spilling out the opposite of what was on my mind. Nasty thing, talking. She steps on the brake, her body turning to the side as she starts to glare at me. The car screeches, sliding to the side of the road before coming to a halt, tires sighing amidst the dust they kick up, burnt rubber scorching the cool night air. She’s staring at me intently and I look away, bothered. I didn’t mean to say that and I don’t know what that look means.
“Go on,” she says, teeth scraping her lower lip as they curl to form the words, “Why do you care?”
I don’t care. I don’t care, I tell myself, and then I laugh, my voice sounding hollow in the enclosed cage of glass and leather.
“Of course I care,” I say, still laughing, my eyes slipping out of focus. “You…chased me down, for what, three, four weeks, wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace, caught me, took the kid away, tore me down, and now you’re asking me why I care. He’s mine, you understand, if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have taken him in the first place.” She’s angry. I’m making her mad. I don’t care. She’s crazy. That’s the way it is.
“This is how you show love for your son? By stealing him from his mother, from me? He’s much more mine than he ever will be yours.” Too true.
“No, no, you don’t understand love at all. You love Yoni, and that’s great for you. I don’t love him. I love you, at least I think I do, and that drives me crazy. I can’t stay with you in mutual fucking love and beauty for too long before I turn into something else, something soft and repulsive. I’m not delusional enough to think I can live without love, but I’ll choose when and how I take it.” She’s silent, seething. I think she expected to get the bulk of the words in. Well screw me for being so eloquent. My mind hurts from how true what I just said is. I’m starting to just hurt all over. I shut my eyes, blocking out the light from a nearby streetlamp that’s starting to assault them with its whitewash. That’s probably why I don’t realize Kira’s fingers are around my throat until it’s too late to throw her off.
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand love,” she says, her face coming rapidly back into focus and then swimming again as pain and panic seep into my ribs. I claw uselessly at her wrist with my fingers, skinny bone-white rejects. “Just my humble opinion, of course,” she continues, leaning her weight forward gracefully to force mine against the lumpy car door. I can’t breathe. “You don’t have to turn soft for love, Filip. I’m still myself. I can still crush your throat right here. If you wanted to stay alive, you’d figure that out ahead of time and get your fucking head on straight.” I can’t breathe. I’m not like you, I concentrate on saying, hearing nothing but a pathetic hacking sound coming out of my throat, body writhing as if in slow motion under her pressure. I can’t speak. She’s going to have her way again, I’m going to lose, she’s going to steal something from me I don’t want to give. It hurts. I can’t see right. It hurts.
Her grip slowly eases, and I breathe, lungs burning, bile and spit choking itself out of my throat. Once I can see straight I notice how close she is, and how hot my body is. I think of fire and feel sick.
“So tell me,” she says in my ear, “Master lone wolf. If you’re so obsessed with being on your own, what does my son have to do with it?” I don’t look at her, my skin prickling with the weight of her breath, fear and desire forming the irresistible rope only she can twine. I keep my mind clear, or try to. It’s supposed to be my strongest trait.
“He’s…me. I couldn’t leave a part of me behind.” My tongue is playing tricks on me again. He’s mine, he’s not me. He’s mine. She doesn’t move for a while, and my heart rate refuses to go down. She moves forward and I flinch before I have time to realize she’s kissing me, mouth warm and teeth rough, her body soft and hot against my chest. I can’t tell whether it’s love or hate that makes her do it.
“Get out of the car,” she says, sliding back into the driver’s seat and licking the corner of her mouth. Her tongue is a deep red, and there’s blood in my mouth that I slowly swallow. “You can find your own way back, if that’s what you want.”
I sit back up, almost numb, and then feel behind me for the door handle, grateful to be able to walk away. I don’t want to leave. I want to leave. I get out of the car because she said so, and feel sick for doing anything at all. She tosses something at me from the backseat, and I realize it’s the backpack I’d been carrying Yoni’s things in. It still smells like apricot.
“You did well looking after him while you were gone,” she says, and she’s not looking at me, occupied with shutting the car door and starting the engine. “You could make a good father.” She drives away from me, and I feel puzzlement running through me like a swarm of bees. Kira’s not one to speak to you indirectly, or be unsure with her words. Kira laughs in your face and gives up on people quickly and easily. Kira knows what she needs, and it isn’t you. Kira does not put faith in people lightly.
I wait until the car is out of sight to start walking, and when I do my feet decide to follow it. My footsteps are slow, and the mild impressions I make in the gravel make me think of much smaller feet stumbling in sand. I seem to be starting my long lonely pathetic trail after her, like some kind of sick pet. It’s a long walk, though. Maybe I’ll change my mind on the way.
--
Notes: First person stories are pretty much the bane of my existence. I'm sorry.
Any kind of feedback is greatly appreciated and way more than I deserve.
I watch the battered alarm clock tick, its glow-in-the-dark hands luminous in the motel room’s darkness. The clock isn’t the only thing battered; every piece of furniture in the room seems to be nicked or damaged in some way, and the entire building smells strongly of seaweed. Eleven o clock. We’ve been here for exactly eight hours. I’d decided that was as long as we should stay in any one place, in order to give the baby enough rest but keep us both ahead of Kira. I much more enjoy playing the cat than the mouse, but I certainly wasn’t going to slack off in my job as prey. I uncurl from my position under the window stiffly, working out a cramp in my knee. My white t-shirt and slacks reflect the orange light from the street lamp-flooded windowpanes and glance against the dusty mirror hung on the wall. I give my reflection a sour glance. It was obvious I wasn’t eating enough, and I was starting to grow stubble, white hair against chalky skin. I hate that. I draw my eyes away and walk forward to shake Yoni’s shoulder.
“Kid, wake up, it’s time to leave.” Small limbs stretch as the tiny boy turns onto his back. He makes me wonder what I’m looking at every time I see him. Wonder if this child could have been me – warm, healthy skin, eyes blue instead of muddy red.
“Mama…” his sleepy mouth yawns out, small hand pawing at my palm. I squeeze it lightly, my lips turning down at the reminder.
“Yeah, Mama’s coming. She’ll come get you.” She was coming, too. I could smell her on the salt air leaking in through the cracks in the orange window. I gather up the knapsack that had his things in it and bring it to the bed where he was sitting up, rubbing at his pale eyes in the darkness.
“Mama,” he says again, followed by one of those sounds that healthy babies make when they’re not getting enough sleep. I don’t respond this time, just unscrew a jar of apricot baby food, stirring it with a small plastic spoon until it was smooth, and hopefully warm enough.
“Open up, here…” Yoni’s mouth falls open, sleepy eyes widening as he seems to recognize the shape of the spoon.
“Here.” I find myself saying again, sinking into a sitting position next to him. This was useless. I don’t even have the energy to feed him while on the move anymore. I think about staying here, waiting for her in this suffocating little room, without trying to run anymore. Thankfully, though, I haven’t sunk that low yet. I’ve come too far in my sick little game to get caught in a roach trap like this. The beach at night, cool, soft, and open, will be a better place to meet her. She could follow my footprints down to the last grain of sand and I bet it’d give her more satisfaction in the end.
Yoni ate, and I put our jackets on, grubby and gray for him and smooth red for me. I’m accustomed to saving the best things for myself, even when I have nothing particularly good to share in the first place. We leave the motel and walk on the beach, the sand turned silver from the moon and the water an inky blue. Yoni starts to come more awake in the darkness, his face lighting up and his movements becoming more energetic. I guess he likes the ocean, like any kid would. He scurries ahead, clumsy stubby legs taking him as far as he can manage at a time. He barks out his pleasure and I hear his mother in his voice, her animalistic chord staining his shouts against the foggy air. I pick up a stone with the front of my sandal and kick my heel up, managing to flip it into my palm. Tossing it once in my hand, I flick it out across the surface of the water. The rock disappears into the fog before I see it sink. I could take someone’s eye out with that sort of power. I sigh, staring after it, feeling any sort of satisfaction slip away. I can smell her on the wind. That’s just stupid. Maybe I am going crazy. Maybe I’m imagining that she was so close behind us in the first place. Maybe she won’t catch up tonight. But I had already given up on escaping. It’s not like there was even any point in getting away with it.
I feel a tug at my pant leg and glance down to see Yoni trying to offer me another stone. His eyes are so big, the brat. They’re so wide and round and they almost make me forget that he’s mine, because I certainly never looked that innocent, never that curious.
“You want to learn how to throw this?” I ask, and he blinks at me, uncomprehending. Yeah. When I was two, I knew what it meant to throw a stone. Who am I kidding?
“Here.” I lean down and curl his small fingers around the sandy pebble one by one, my skin strangely luminescent against his in the moonlight. He watches my every move, drinking me in as if I were something special, or someone important. I lift him up once he has a good hold, and tell him to throw. He drops it harmlessly onto my foot.
“Da,” he apologizes, wriggling to reach it again from his impossible height, “Da,” he insists, and I let him down. He forgets about the stone before his feet even touch the ground, and instead starts chasing after some kind of insect in the sand. I’m eliminated from his world just like that. That’s one thing we have in common. It’s not as if I feel anyone else has the right to exist at this moment. I’m worn to the bone, having spent the last few weeks dodging from city to motel to forest to abandoned building, trying to keep one step ahead of his damn mother. I marvel at my own stupidity sometimes. I don’t know what possessed me to steal him and try to make a break for it on my own. It wasn’t going to work. I wouldn’t get to keep him. I’d stolen her most precious thing, and she was stronger than I was. Her arms were stronger, the grip of her fingers, her love, and her heat. It’s not like I can put up with staying with her, though. I’ve spent too much of my life independent to understand the idea of family. I want to be myself again. What I forgot to take into account was that I’m not my own anymore. She stole that from me. She had my goddamned kid and I just couldn’t bring myself to leave him behind.
He’s mine. A piece of meat made up of the same stuff I am, but he means something else, too. I feel sick, falling for this trap of normalcy and parental affection. But I do not love him; that much I let myself have. I only need him. Her scent is lilting on the breeze again. I turn my head in the direction of Yoni’s small blurry footsteps, and see nothing but fog.
“Yoni?” I’m holding my breath, listening for the soft rustling of sand or irregular splash of water that will tell me where he is. Nothing. She couldn’t be here already. I turned in all directions, suddenly furious. He couldn’t have just disappeared like that. I would have noticed. I take a step away from the water, searching for a sign, one of his stupid baby noises, a flicker of motion in the fog. Suddenly a high-pitched shriek sounds to my left, and my ears feel like they’re burning.
“Yoni!” the shout rips itself from my throat before I know what I’m doing, my sandals slipping in the damp sand as I rush towards the sound. Something comes up fast from behind me and there’s a sharp pain above my chest, a rough, warm body pressed against my back and bare arms wrapped tightly around my middle. Just her fists, like always. My vision goes fuzzy, the will to fight slipping from me as if it were pouring out of my slack fingertips. I don’t even want to be awake anymore, but my body protests getting knocked out from just one strike. I smell her skin and feel dizzy, almost intoxicated, as if I were meeting her for the first time all over again. I remember winning the fight that time, though. I hear Yoni’s voice nearby as I black out, crying out in joy that’s obvious this time.
“Mama!”
I wake up with my chest hurting and decide not to move. Whatever I’m sitting on is rumbling peacefully, so I must be in her car. My car, actually, I just didn’t have any use for it after I left. It would be a sad first step on a venture of independence to take a car that could be tracked by radar. I don’t open my eyes, and try not to change the pattern of my breathing. It feels strangely peaceful, as if nothing had happened in the first place and I’m just suffering from mild chest pain and headache. She hasn’t killed me yet, that’s a good sign, right? Maybe she’s going to run me off a cliff.
“I know you’re awake.” Her voice has a growl in it, but it’s not murderous. I open my eyes for her, glad to see it’s still dark, the lack of light soothing on my sensitive eyes. I don’t recognize the pines or farm fences lining the road, which must mean we’re still far from home. Her home.
“Good to see you’re as sharp as ever,” I say slowly, not making an excuse for feigning unconsciousness. “Tell me, where are we going, and why do I still have all my limbs?”
She gave me a cruel smirk for that, eyes glinting. I can’t help but smirk back. Yoni is safe, the villain is caught, and presumably about to be punished for his heinous crimes. But maybe she still likes me a little.
“We’re not going anywhere. And you’re messed up in your head, not your body. I should have smashed that in.”
“Whichever it is, I’m rather fond of the fact that you didn’t.” I sit up a bit straighter in my seat, letting the pain in my midsection pool out, sighing as quietly as I can manage. She really didn’t hit me that hard. I had expected a broken rib, at the very least. I’m free to move, too, but that’s probably because she doesn’t see me as much of a threat. Classy, Kira. I just don’t feel like fighting a violent bitch like you right now. “If we’re not going anywhere, you can stop the car.” She gives me a hard look, angular eyes flashing skepticism and, ah, there’s the disgust I was expecting. I tell myself to feel nonchalant about it, but I’m seeing Yoni in the curve of her lips, and my chest settles with quiet sadness, smirk melting off my face.
“I won’t run away.”
She looks away from me again, eyes focused on the road that’s turning from asphalt to gravel at the edges. I have time to study the curve of her neck, her wavy mess of a ponytail, the shapeless way the sleeveless shirt she’s wearing hangs on her skin. She didn’t dress very carefully today. Her teeth flash when she speaks, and I’m reminded of just why she’s so intoxicating. She’s too wild.
“You won’t, will you? Except that that’s exactly what you’ve always done, you piece of shit.” Her voice is light, which was chilling. She pauses to lick her lips, still focused viciously on the road. Apparently she wishes she wasn’t talking to me. “Yoni won’t stop asking for you.”
Why? I feel some kind of eruption in my stomach, face contorting slowly in unbidden anger. Was the kid that desperate for mommy and daddy? Did he need that much stability, was he that delicate? He wasn’t mine, he couldn’t be mine, not if he was that needy and pathetic. He was hers, only hers, only she was going to be the one to give him all that sweet and wholesome mother’s love he seemed to need so badly.
“Where is he?” I ask, mouth spilling out the opposite of what was on my mind. Nasty thing, talking. She steps on the brake, her body turning to the side as she starts to glare at me. The car screeches, sliding to the side of the road before coming to a halt, tires sighing amidst the dust they kick up, burnt rubber scorching the cool night air. She’s staring at me intently and I look away, bothered. I didn’t mean to say that and I don’t know what that look means.
“Go on,” she says, teeth scraping her lower lip as they curl to form the words, “Why do you care?”
I don’t care. I don’t care, I tell myself, and then I laugh, my voice sounding hollow in the enclosed cage of glass and leather.
“Of course I care,” I say, still laughing, my eyes slipping out of focus. “You…chased me down, for what, three, four weeks, wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace, caught me, took the kid away, tore me down, and now you’re asking me why I care. He’s mine, you understand, if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have taken him in the first place.” She’s angry. I’m making her mad. I don’t care. She’s crazy. That’s the way it is.
“This is how you show love for your son? By stealing him from his mother, from me? He’s much more mine than he ever will be yours.” Too true.
“No, no, you don’t understand love at all. You love Yoni, and that’s great for you. I don’t love him. I love you, at least I think I do, and that drives me crazy. I can’t stay with you in mutual fucking love and beauty for too long before I turn into something else, something soft and repulsive. I’m not delusional enough to think I can live without love, but I’ll choose when and how I take it.” She’s silent, seething. I think she expected to get the bulk of the words in. Well screw me for being so eloquent. My mind hurts from how true what I just said is. I’m starting to just hurt all over. I shut my eyes, blocking out the light from a nearby streetlamp that’s starting to assault them with its whitewash. That’s probably why I don’t realize Kira’s fingers are around my throat until it’s too late to throw her off.
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand love,” she says, her face coming rapidly back into focus and then swimming again as pain and panic seep into my ribs. I claw uselessly at her wrist with my fingers, skinny bone-white rejects. “Just my humble opinion, of course,” she continues, leaning her weight forward gracefully to force mine against the lumpy car door. I can’t breathe. “You don’t have to turn soft for love, Filip. I’m still myself. I can still crush your throat right here. If you wanted to stay alive, you’d figure that out ahead of time and get your fucking head on straight.” I can’t breathe. I’m not like you, I concentrate on saying, hearing nothing but a pathetic hacking sound coming out of my throat, body writhing as if in slow motion under her pressure. I can’t speak. She’s going to have her way again, I’m going to lose, she’s going to steal something from me I don’t want to give. It hurts. I can’t see right. It hurts.
Her grip slowly eases, and I breathe, lungs burning, bile and spit choking itself out of my throat. Once I can see straight I notice how close she is, and how hot my body is. I think of fire and feel sick.
“So tell me,” she says in my ear, “Master lone wolf. If you’re so obsessed with being on your own, what does my son have to do with it?” I don’t look at her, my skin prickling with the weight of her breath, fear and desire forming the irresistible rope only she can twine. I keep my mind clear, or try to. It’s supposed to be my strongest trait.
“He’s…me. I couldn’t leave a part of me behind.” My tongue is playing tricks on me again. He’s mine, he’s not me. He’s mine. She doesn’t move for a while, and my heart rate refuses to go down. She moves forward and I flinch before I have time to realize she’s kissing me, mouth warm and teeth rough, her body soft and hot against my chest. I can’t tell whether it’s love or hate that makes her do it.
“Get out of the car,” she says, sliding back into the driver’s seat and licking the corner of her mouth. Her tongue is a deep red, and there’s blood in my mouth that I slowly swallow. “You can find your own way back, if that’s what you want.”
I sit back up, almost numb, and then feel behind me for the door handle, grateful to be able to walk away. I don’t want to leave. I want to leave. I get out of the car because she said so, and feel sick for doing anything at all. She tosses something at me from the backseat, and I realize it’s the backpack I’d been carrying Yoni’s things in. It still smells like apricot.
“You did well looking after him while you were gone,” she says, and she’s not looking at me, occupied with shutting the car door and starting the engine. “You could make a good father.” She drives away from me, and I feel puzzlement running through me like a swarm of bees. Kira’s not one to speak to you indirectly, or be unsure with her words. Kira laughs in your face and gives up on people quickly and easily. Kira knows what she needs, and it isn’t you. Kira does not put faith in people lightly.
I wait until the car is out of sight to start walking, and when I do my feet decide to follow it. My footsteps are slow, and the mild impressions I make in the gravel make me think of much smaller feet stumbling in sand. I seem to be starting my long lonely pathetic trail after her, like some kind of sick pet. It’s a long walk, though. Maybe I’ll change my mind on the way.
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Notes: First person stories are pretty much the bane of my existence. I'm sorry.
Any kind of feedback is greatly appreciated and way more than I deserve.
