The tearsmith, p.37
The Tearsmith, page 37
They let out a loud whoop and charged madly towards the house. I thrashed about and begged him to let me go, but it was useless. He was holding me so tightly I was sure his hands would leave marks on my legs.
It was only once we’d got inside that they both checked their madness and looked around, confused.
‘Err, there’s no pool here…’ one of them stammered.
I seized the opportunity to wriggle free and run away before he could catch me again.
It was hell inside. People were shouting, dancing, making out. A guy was draining a keg of beer through a tube, cheered on by a small crowd. Another was waving his cap about and moving jerkily as if he was riding a bucking bronco, which, when I looked closer, I realised was Lionel’s red lawnmower.
Dismayed, I looked for the door, but I was too short to see over all those heads.
I slipped through the crowd, looking for the exit, but suddenly someone whammed into me and I almost crashed to the floor.
‘Sorry!’ a girl said, trying to pull her friend to her feet.
Why had they all gone crazy?
‘Forgive her, she’s drunk too much…’
‘He was stunning!’ The other girl screeched, as if she had seen an extra-terrestrial. ‘He was hot as hell, fuck, but you don’t believe me! You don’t believe me!’
I tried to help her to her feet and she clung on to me.
‘He was the most beautiful guy I’ve ever seen!’ she wailed at me, her breath stinking of alcohol.
‘Yeah, yeah, okay…’ her friend muttered. ‘Otherworldly, tall, gorgeous, with eyes “darker than night”, sure…’
‘It was enough to give you a heart attack!’ the girl howled. ‘It’s not safe for someone that hot to be out in public! I had to try and touch him, you know? His skin was so white it didn’t seem real…’
I froze. Petrified, I surprised myself by gripping her arm with more force than was necessary.
‘The boy you saw…did he have dark hair?’
Her face lit up hopefully.
‘You saw him too! I knew I wasn’t dreaming!’
‘Where did you meet him? Was he…here?’
‘No,’ she whined, pointing to her right. ‘I saw him outside…One moment he was there, walking along, and I tried to get near him…God…then the next moment he was gone…’
I turned round and barged towards the door. My heart was pounding.
It was him. I felt it in every single atom of my body.
But fate was against me. I was almost at the exit when suddenly, someone grabbed my wrist. I spun around and was confronted with the only face I absolutely didn’t want to see.
‘Nica?’
Lionel was looking at me as if I wasn’t real.
‘Y…you’re here,’ he stammered, stepping closer. ‘I didn’t think I’d see you…I thought…I thought you wouldn’t come…but…’
‘Lionel,’ I muttered, mortified. ‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go…’
‘I’m so happy you came,’ he slurred close to my face, making me flinch away. His breath reeked of alcohol and I couldn’t really hear him over the noise.
‘I…I’ve got to go.’
The music was too loud. He took my hand and gestured for me to follow him.
He led me towards the kitchen, where we found two people rummaging in the fridge for beer. When they left, laughing, Lionel closed the door so we could talk.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch…’ I said sincerely. ‘I should have said something. But, Lionel…I wasn’t sure I was going to come and now I…’
‘It’s enough that you’re here,’ he murmured, slurring his words.
He gave me a clear, distant smile and filled a red plastic cup with punch and held it out to me.
‘Here.’
‘Oh…No, thanks…’
‘Try it,’ he insisted, beaming, before taking a big gulp in my stead. ‘Come on, just a sip.’
I decided to indulge him. I was about to head home, what did it matter? I tried the drink and screwed my eyes up. I curled my lips and he seemed satisfied.
‘Good, right?’
I forced a cough. I realised that the drink must have been swimming in alcohol.
‘I really thought I wouldn’t see you,’ I heard him say. I looked up and realised he was dangerously close. ‘I thought you wouldn’t come…’
I felt the need to be honest, to look him in the eyes and tell him I couldn’t stay.
‘Lionel, I want to explain…’
‘No need, I understand completely,’ he interrupted, almost falling over onto me.
I let go of the cup and held him up, teetering on my heels.
‘Are you all right?’
He snickered. ‘I’ve just…drank a bit…’
‘Seems a bit more than a bit,’ I murmured.
‘I didn’t see you arrive…I thought you’d stood me up…’
I expected him to snicker again, but he didn’t. Instead, there was a long, lingering silence.
The next moment, I felt his hand sliding along the kitchen counter next to me. I met his eyes and he swallowed, his face tilted down towards me.
‘But you’re here now…’
‘Lionel,’ I whispered, and felt his hand sliding onto my wrist.
‘You’re here and you’re…more beautiful than ever…’
I tried to step backwards but my back was against the counter. I pushed against his chest with one hand. The other, unfortunately, was trapped in his grip. I stared at him, alarmed.
‘You said we should talk…’ I started, but his body sidled up against my dress.
‘Talk?’ he whispered, pressing himself against me. ‘There’s no need to talk…’
I turned my head, trying to hide my face against my shoulder, but it was no use. His lips found mine all the same, his wet mouth completely covering mine. He kissed me against the kitchen counter. The taste of alcohol mixed with my breath. I was almost suffocated, and my attempts to make him stop were to no avail.
‘No…Lionel!’
I pushed against his chest, struggling to squirm free, but his hand came up to my face so he could kiss me more deeply. His fingers wormed their way into my hair to hold me still. I couldn’t move.
‘Please…’
He didn’t listen. He did the one thing that could break me. He seized both of my wrists. And gripped.
Reality crashed around me.
A shock ran down my spine, a deep-rooted, visceral terror made my heart thump against my ribs. I wheezed.
Constriction, panic, belts on my wrists, my arms trapped. The dark cellar. My body contracted; my soul rose up.
There was a loud crunch when Lionel let me go. He was drenched in an orange liquid. The plastic cup was rolling on the floor, cracked in a few places. I had torn one hand free and lunged for the closest thing and thrown it in his face.
I stared at him, wide-eyed and distraught, before running away.
I fled the kitchen and barged through the crowd to get away from that house, away from that terror that had stuck to my bones. My heartbeat was deafening. I felt frozen, clammy and slippery.
Reality was throbbing around me, anxiety closed my throat, poisoning me with familiar feelings.
I felt like I was suffocating with all those bodies pressing against me. Suddenly, a startling scream tore me from myself.
I turned around, along with everyone else. I froze.
A dark shadow was flitting about the room.
A little bat had got in through the open window and was now darting over everyone’s heads, blinded by the light and noise. Some of the girls were screaming, terrified; others covered their hair with their hands.
I stared at the bat, my heart racing. He flew into a lampshade, dazed, trying to find a way out. A cup tore through the air and hit him full on, sending him to the wall.
Someone laughed. Voices were raised.
Another cup flew through the air, and when it crashed against the wall there was more laughter. Their fear soon turned to fun.
Suddenly, everything started flying: aluminium foil balls, cigarette butts, bottle caps and pieces of plastic. A deluge of trash rained upon the bat, tearing my heart to shreds.
‘No!’ I shouted. ‘No! Stop it!’
He fell in a bowl of punch, his wings getting doused in alcohol. The laughter intensified and I grabbed the arms of the people nearest me.
‘Enough! Stop!’
But no one was listening to me. They kept urging each other on, shouting, entertained. It was unbearable.
The truest part of me took over. I barged my way through the crowd until I had got through the throng of bodies. I saw him crouching against the wall, and all I could do was throw myself on him and cup him in my hands.
Balls of paper were raining down. Someone threw a cigarette at me.
I clutched the bat to my chest, trying to protect him, and felt him desperately clinging to me, his little claws scraping my skin. I looked around, terrified, and felt again that shudder inside of me, that terror that cut my breath into gasps.
I saw arms raising all at once – and the matron raising her voice, raising her hands, clenching and pushing and cracking ribs – and my panic screamed louder still.
I pushed back through the throng, not caring who I knocked over.
I finally found the exit, tumbled out onto the sidewalk and tore like a maniac away from that hell. I almost stumbled in my heels, but I didn’t stop. I ran, muscles aching, until the noise faded behind me, until I got home.
I only calmed down when I glimpsed the picket fence in front of me. I caught my breath and glanced anxiously over my shoulder. Then I looked down at the warm body that was tickling my neck. The bat was still there, clinging to me and trembling. I tilted my cheek towards his little head, gently nuzzling the small, misunderstood creature.
‘It’ll be okay….’ I whispered.
He looked up, and I met his bewildered gaze. Two black eyes, like shiny little marbles, pierced my heart.
There was nothing in the world that reminded me of Rigel more than that little creature of the night, all claws and fear, held tight in my arms. I wanted to go back, to hold him, to stay with him. To tell him he had left me everything. That inside I was full of him, his disasters and his shivers.
I didn’t know how to live without him any more.
I swallowed and opened my hands to let the bat fly away. He clumsily scratched my skin before managing to take flight.
I lingered, watching him for a moment, but then heard footsteps behind me. Just as I glimpsed the bat disappearing into the darkness, a hand grabbed my shoulder and turned me around.
I met a pair of distressed eyes and jumped.
‘Nica?’ Lionel was panting in my face. ‘What…what are you doing?’
‘Let me go,’ I muttered, trying to shrug him off. The feeling of his hand on my skin alarmed me, immediately awakening unpleasant sensations.
‘Why did you leave like that?’
I stepped back, freeing myself from his grip, but he grabbed me again. I knew he wasn’t being himself, I knew that Lionel wasn’t like this, but I was still frightened.
‘What does this all mean? First you come, but then you go like that?’
‘You’re hurting me.’ My voice sounded higher. Fear and a sense of powerlessness ballooned inside me. I tried to push him away but he wasn’t having it: he grabbed me by the shoulders, frustrated, and shook me angrily.
‘Fuck, stop this and look at me!’
All of a sudden, Lionel’s hands flew off me.
He staggered backwards and his body crashed to the ground so forcefully that all the breath left his lungs.
The only thing I could make out through my tears was a tall, fearsome silhouette slipping into the space between me and him. The clenched fists at his sides were burning with a motionless, dangerous calm.
Rigel stared down at him with that cruel, dark, devilish beauty, the veins in his wrist bulging.
‘Don’t you…touch her,’ he hissed slowly, his eyes glinting with a terrifying, icy fury.
‘You!’ Lionel spat with a blind hatred, crawling forward on his elbows.
Rigel raised an arched eyebrow.
‘Me,’ he agreed derisively, before stamping forcefully on Lionel’s hair, pinning his head to the asphalt. He writhed on the ground, wheezing.
I wasn’t breathing. Rigel’s eyes shone with that ruthless violence that consumed any glimmer of light.
He turned to look at me over his shoulder, his gaze piercing my soul.
‘Go inside.’
I opened the gate with trembling hands, a lump in my throat. I thought he would have unleashed all of his fury, but he very, very slowly let Lionel go. He threw him an intimidating glare then made to follow me. But Lionel groaned and grabbed him by the hem of his jeans. He dug his fingernails in, trying to hurt him any way he could.
‘You think you’re a hero, do you?’ he screamed, beside himself. ‘Is that what you think? You think you’re the good guy?’
Rigel froze.
‘The good guy?’ It was a low, sinister whisper. ‘Me…the good guy?’
In the darkness, his pale lips curled upwards.
He was smiling. It was that dark, monstrous sneer that had so often made me quake.
Rigel crushed the hand that had grabbed him under his shoe. At his feet, Lionel writhed in pain. Rigel stamped brutally on his hand until each of his fingers had become swollen.
‘Do you want to see inside me? You’d piss yourself before you could take a look,’ he hissed icily. I thought he’d break his wrist. ‘Oh, no, I’ve never been the good guy. You want to see how bad I can be?’
He stamped again, so hard I heard bones snapping.
A little sob burst out of me. Rigel clenched his jaw and his deep, narrow eyes flashed towards me. He seemed to have only just remembered that I was watching.
He stared at me in a way I couldn’t interpret, clenched his fists, and abruptly set Lionel free. He jerked his hand away, moaning and rocking back and forth in the street. Rigel turned his back on him, once and for all, and walked like a terrible angel towards me.
The sound of the front door opening broke the silence.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Slowly, the outline of Rigel appeared. He was leaning against the door, his dark hair covering his face, and his jaw in the darkness looked sharp like a sickle.
I shuddered, hearing him breathing. That intimacy reignited everything I had desperately tried to suppress. I was a statue of flesh and desire that was struggling not to fall to pieces. For the first time, I wondered if there would ever be a way for us to live together without hurting. Would there ever come a day when we would stop wounding each other?
‘You’re right. I’m…deluding myself.’
I looked down, no longer able to lie to myself.
‘I’ve always wanted a happy ending…I’ve looked for it, every single moment of my life, hoping that one day it would come to me. I’ve wanted it ever since She…the matron…how she treated us meant all I could do was hope for a better future. But the truth…’
I pressed my lips together, defeated, surrendering completely.
‘The truth is that you, Rigel…you’re part of the fairy tale.’
Tears blurred my vision.
‘Maybe you always have been. But I’ve never had the courage to see it because I was scared of losing everything.’
He stood still, enveloped in silence. I looked to one side, trying to control the emotions that would give me no peace. My heart exploded, I was on the verge of breaking into tears.
I saw the piano, gleaming in the faint light. I stared at it for a moment before my legs carried me towards it.
I brushed my fingers over the white keys as if I could still feel his hands there. I felt sad about what he had said to Lionel.
‘It’s not true that you’re bad. I know what you’re like, inside…and there’s nothing bad, or scary. You’re not like that,’ I whispered. ‘I see in you…all the goodness that you can’t see.’
‘That’s what you’re like,’ he said after a while, behind me. ‘You always look for the light in everything, like a moth.’
He was standing in the doorway. The shadows made his face painfully beautiful, but his gaze was dull and lifeless.
‘You look for it even where it doesn’t exist,’ he said slowly. ‘Even where it’s never been.’
I looked at him with defenceless, yielding eyes and shook my head.
‘We all have some light, Rigel…inside us. I’ve always looked for goodness. And I found it in you. It doesn’t matter what the truth is, because the only light I see now is you. Wherever I look, at any moment, I only see you.’
I saw his eyes shining in the darkness. I would never forget his gaze.
I saw his heart in his eyes.
I saw how much he was crumpled, wrecked and bleeding.
But also radiant, alive and desperate.
We were something impossible, and we both knew it.
‘There are no fairy tales, Nica. Not for people like me.’
There we were. The final reckoning.
There were no more pages that would continue our story of silences and tremors. Our souls had chased after each other for our entire lives, and now we’d reached the end of the line.
We didn’t fit in with other people, because we were different. We spoke in a language that no other could understand.
A language of the heart.
‘I don’t want anything without you in it,’ I found the strength to admit, once and for all, out loud.
I had just whispered the unspeakable, but it didn’t matter, because it was the truth.
‘You were right. We’re broken…We’re not like other people. But maybe, Rigel, we’re shattered, in pieces, but we can put ourselves back together again, better this time.’
