The Myriad Slips
Salai G Prit

 

“...if the world fell over we could do coke off the walls!”

…the room’s thick air swelled up against my face, uncomfortable cold rushes fix themselves tightly into the spin, outside of all this I worried that I might not get out off the next few days alive. Everyone else in the flat was a sleep, the awkward fixation of waking in such states lay a cool glaze to the rooms familiar lines. I attempted to wake up Andy; I slapped him and pulled his arm. He rolled his eyes and told me too “fuck off”, he didn’t know he had said this but the subconscious slip edged off the dew of an uncomfortable sleep and sent me out into the kitchen. Fearful of something in this place that normally held such comfort I smoked a cigarette that made me feel sick. I drank two glasses of water and stood there shaking. There was nothing moving in the flat and the stillness began too unsettle me. I tamely edged towards the stairs and went to Russell’s door, I knocked the door and observed the blue-tacked photographs twitch and slip around in my vision, not thinking I opened the door and walked inside. No one was awake and as I slipped into the room someone held my elbow from beside me,

“You wana see sumthin?”

“What?...have you been to sleep yet?...you fucking Mexican. So you burnt off last night and fucked that girl...huh…Louise wasn’t it. Shit. She was beautiful”

“Fuck yeah nigga, come n have a look”.

I followed Chrisch out of the room and down the hall to the spare bedroom, I was still fucked and the colourless hall looked just carpet and wall, merged in the pale dawn and diffused in and through my watery morning eyes...wait ..

“What were u doing in Russell’s room?”

“There has been a difficulty for us; I’m just borrowing sum honey, you know”

“I don’t think he’d like that, he’ll probably throw you out”

“na he gonna be fine chile...behave, n come on, inside.”

He pushed through the door and inside the room the heavy scent of her hung like gloomy long thoughts across the bed, her perfect bones lay motionless-soft below the sinew of her face, watching the lines of her breast rise - defined by the rooms soft shadows, her picture etched so unnaturally against the scene. Chrisch left the room to find a spike. I leant across the bed and pressed my check against her throbbing stomach. Today we would die. She stirred, her limp arm raised-hand holding the nape of my neck, her fingers in my hair. “I love you”, her sleepy tongue whispered, she pressed her face back against the pillow- smiling as she curled her slow tired body around me... Chrisch was moving around behind me looking for a flame...he was no longer concerned with the girl, she’d wake up I a while and he’d be in the corner of the room dead to her, she didn’t make sense any more. “man u got a light?” “yeah..”I twisted away from her and handed Chrisch the light…I had to look back at her.. “she’s beautiful”, “huh, u fuck me up kid...u comin?” Christian moved his face slowly into a smile, pushing up he cheeks as much as they would let him. He held the bag up to his lips where it meet his hot damp breath, his eyes sunk away from me and he was gone... unless I said the magic word...I didn’t answer his question and once he’d fumbled around on the floor cooking up he shot the heroin into his crippling veins and slumped back into the shadows.
It’s not real though, think about it, everything we know is found in thoughts that are made up of words which are just things that some fucko decided to invent one day. They don’t actually mean anything. Think of something that doesn’t require words to explain it? Its a lot of stuff, but it all means nothing. There are the occasional slips, but they don’t get out so much...there in cages behind neon shop displays and weekends of allotted freedom...you cannot beget all the sins that you owe to the people of paradise magic, pretend to answer passion and form with foreign rationalisations.

I was In the kitchen when she woke up and came down stairs, I fell entranced to her as she slipped her thin body into the kitchen passed Andy (who was now awake) she stopped to gazed me up and down as she recognised the person in front of her, a smile crept up across her perfect lips, her eyes dropped away from mine and she held the smile as she brushed thin strands of hair from her eyes, she was wearing a pair of someone’s underpants, taken from the floor of Christian’ room, the soft material clung to her body as she moved around the kitchen trying to find a jar of coffee. Her thin smooth thighs brushed softly against one another as she walked and crouched around the kitchen. She was wearing a tattered T-shirt of Christian’s, the T-shirt fell as far as the bottom of her ribs as she stood still and straight. When she leaned tip-toed to reach the coffee from above a cupboard the T-shirt rose, showing the soft lines of the lower part of her breasts, a soft winged angel drenched under the kitchens pale white light. I turned my head downwards toward the table at which I sat, childishly we played at gazing up at each others eyes and smiled for only seconds at each others glance. She stopped in the center of the kitchen her legs slightly parted, moving her feet slowly around on the ground, “What did Santa bring you then little boy?” I stared at her, short blonde hair falling over one side of her face, her eyes lined in slightly smudged mascara. Every line of her perfect body lay softly against the material of her clothes, drawn by the shadows of the rooms soft light; her skin a sinew of smooth perfect flesh. “I’ve missed you” I said, cutting off the electric air I had been encompassed in/by for the last few minutes. She twitched nervously at the comment, as if staying would transform her moist hot skin into some sudden swelling sore that might break and weep its thick black cancer in my direction. She shrank away out of the kitchen and into the bathroom next door. I was still sat at the table when Andy stopped in the kitchen door, he was driving to his mothers house for Christmas dinner, he stared for a moment, twisted away from the door, and walked down the hall. As he shifted away along the hallway he shouted back; “Merry Christmas you Bastards,” and left down the stairs. Louise appeared in the doorway, she rolled her hips against the frame of the door, her chest heaving, rushing violently, her body charged beneath her clothes. She smiled at me, looking out from under her eyes. Her fringe pushed back-behind her ear, her pink wet lips curling slowly and sensuously across her face. “I’m hungry, wana get some breakfast with me?”

As we stepped out onto the stairs that lead down to the street she stopped and started to speak out in to the air, the cold morning catching her words in perfect thick wisps of curling-stretching breath. Her hot breath disturbing the cool glaze of winters paint.
“These structures have been here for years” she said,
 “Grafted together, their splitting façades patched a million times over the century.” She nibbled her bottom lip and eyed the people moving past us on the pavement. The twentieth century has come slowly, grafting itself onto these age old places. The power lines of modern electricity are rudimentary and practically stapled onto the outside of all the buildings - wires spliced and crisis-cross in every direction - up and through window sills into rooms, stretched taught across alleyways, great knotty clumps of wire all atop each other. She was still watching the flood of the street, as it heaved a swell of bodies, crushed, and then broke into wave that spilt in no exact direction. Everyone’s eyes seemed to be hiding wherever they looked. She settled comfortably into her timeless niche, mute, static, looking over her eternal little planet. She mumbled something like; “I’ll see you when you break free of this void,” and moved down the stairs onto the street.

We pushed out into the cool air, I could see her laughing at me, she looked happy, her skin was perfect...we were outside. It was cold and the low white sun hurt my eyes, her fingers slipped in and out of mine as we walked. I remember sitting down in a café bar at the market end of town, outside two kids screamed and argued at each other, we had seen them as we had walked in and could hear them through the cafés closed doors. I watched them through a small window opposite us. Your lip stick was dry and pushed out over the lines of your mouth, gouged mouthed and opium eyed you looked out into the street through a small window across from where we sat, there was no light in the room but the lines of your pale shoulders caught something in that low, damp afternoon, your skin made me feel sad. I guessed that your eyes were sick for something outside of this. I’ll try...please...
“It makes me wonder how girls ever grow into anything like women”
Still watching the adolescent pair I mumbled back across the table;
“Come again.”
“I think we assume that they've got it all laid out in front of them, and they don't. They don't perceive anything of sexuality.”
I looked back across the table where her face had sunken into melon collie poise. I told her that she reminded me of a porcelain doll, that her eyes were as sad as those doll eyes you fall upon as a child, burning with something, but trapped uselessly; her face lifted into a smile for a second and she carried on, looking down as she began to speak, her fingers entwined and fidgeting.
“It’s too dangerous. Those beautiful things just stimulated by superficial material. By what's out there?”
“What if it takes time to get past that, to think.”
“Someone should let them know”
“That’s bullshit; it’s not as simple as that. I bet those kids out there hurt more with love than we’ll ever remember how too; they haven’t learnt how to love yet, their still innocent.”
After we had eaten we moved back out into the long cold streets of the old town. The street lamps exhaled an orange mist that hung to the otherwise grey streets, and as we walked and moved in between them the light drizzle grew thicker under the heavy colour of each lamp. I was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on her. She was talking to my about a man she had slept with when she had stayed with her mother in France over the summer …I was nodding and smiling at her, watching the perfect symmetries of her visage motion slowly; her eyes burning into me, my stomach lifting some violent liquid into my lungs, so I couldn’t breath, exciting my senses the way death does in dreams, this wasn’t real. Her face looked a warm pink, the pinched corners of her lips drawing in as she lifted her face into a smile again, her eyes dilated, her cheeks forming perfectly and comfortably along the lines of her face as she smiled, her lips full moist and pink…fuck...my stomach collapses and subsides into some soft lost nowhere , I turned, stopping, she stopped and looked back, she looked so beautiful in the rain, a hat pulled over her hair, she was perfect, like some wild angel who had infracted the centuries of heaven, lighting it as she jumped from the last grains of its crippling walls, like sand its structure sinks, crashing violently into me as she hit the floor.
“You’re still as weird as when I knew you before.” “What do you mean?” “Why did you stop in the middle of the street to look at me?” “I don’t know, i…” “Would you like to stay with me for a while?” “Stay.” “Live with me.” “Look, I haven’t seen you for years, and I don’t know what you’re saying, really, I mean i…” “Stop, don’t say anything.”
She lifted her right hand to her face and gently pressed a finger into her closed lips, exhaling “shhh...”
She moved her finger away “I love you, I always have.”

She explained that, well, I’ll let her explain;
“I don’t think I feel scared of death the way I do when I’m with, not around anyone else. You make me feel like you did when we were sixteen and I like that. You make me scared of dying.”
“Why?”
“Because, I might have to leave you here.”

1 week past…

Over the week I had moved all my things into Louise’s house. We slept in the same bed but didn’t submit to sex for the first six days of my residence with her. We fell asleep in each others arms and woke up in each others arms. On the morning of the sixth day Louise had woken early and was tip-toeing around the bedroom naked when I opened my eyes. I lay there blinking, as if to capture in my mind some photograph of her at that moment. She nimbly stepped around the mess we had made on her bedroom floor. Her lips were damp and pushed out over the lines of her mouth, gouge mouthed with her hair falling over her eyes; she twisted and glided across the room. There was no light in the room but the lines of her pale shoulders caught something in that low, damp morning, her skin made me feel…“I can see you watching me”
I lifted the light sheets and slipped out of the bed, she had her back to me as I stepped across the room. As I reached her she turned; the muted winter morning hung somewhere behind the curtain and coloured the lines and torsions in her back as she twisted toward me. She slipped her hand gently in into my waist, taking another step, her slight breasts pressed softly into me. I could feel your pulse racing against me. I brought my hands into the lower of your back and pulled you up against me. You were breathing heavily into my neck, your skin was hot, a silk sinew stretched tightly across soft muscles. You kept smiling up at me and the room began to fall backwards.
If I close my eyes now I can see your face, it’s that smile you were smiling that morning, that’s the face I see.
We made wild love across the room and you were crying.
As we lay there locked in each other, a thought fell gently against my warm forehead, like the first cold snow flake of a storm that lands upon a space of flesh and melts against the heat. This thing that we were rapped in, which alluded words or any real grasp, it would at some point be taken away.
People die all the time.
I would have to live in a world were the only thing that had ever loved me didn’t exist anymore. Think about that, maybe it doesn’t seem like much, but for that moment it was clear in my head.
I only wished I could have made her more at ease by explaining how I understood, but I couldn’t form the words that choked in my throat. But then I suppose that is it; it only makes sense at that moment, in your head. The longer we were in love the harder it would be for the one who was left, it would be like the end of everything. I couldn’t let this happen to us.
I lifted my arm above her in an arch of taught strewn muscle, it burnt and twitched as she slept beneath me, her eyes closed and her perfect lips parted slightly admitting and exhaling tiny wisps of breath. I drove my fist down as hard as I could into her face. As my knuckles slammed into her little face her mouth exploded a crimson mess of teeth, her lips splitting against her gums, her eyes in flames.
I expected the first blow to knock her unconscious but it didn’t. My hand bleed from being slammed into her teeth, I could stop now. I wanted to but it was too late, it only took a few more punches until she fell unconscious. I watched her though my stinging crying eyes, her face a bloody mess of pulped flesh and broken teeth. An immense sadness tore through me, in every vein their burnt a liquid that crippled and dropped me to my knees. I fell to the floor and smashed my head against something on the way down. I could feel the uncomfortable sting of the gash in my neck, the blood pulsating gently from the wound and streamed its way down my back. I was disorientated by the whole affair and as my vision started to slip away, edging me toward unconsciousness, I watched her come around before my eyes, spluttering and gasping at what hung from her face. I imagine she passed out again shortly after as when I came around she was dead on the floor next to me. She had dragged her self across the bleeding floor and woven her thin tiny arm into my body.
She had lay there next to me and died. Life streaming from her face, into my shoulder, into my chest. We lay back in the broken blue-grey glass; her fingers pinched the stars under her hands and bleed them red. She must have confused her thoughts in all the violence and seen that we had been attacked by someone else, or maybe she understood what I had done.
I washed my stinging hands and face in the sink, and still drenched in blood pulled on a pair of jeans. I walked out of the building baffled by the brevity and seriousness of everything. I slide my hands into the pockets of my jeans and stepped out onto the ground.

 

 

Copyright © 2003 Salai G Prit
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"