1218. Awake
THE OLD LIbrARY, ONCE filled with hazards Ova used to worry over, isn’t cleaned like the rest of the villa; concealed in the middle layer of the house, it’s always locked.
You don’t want anyone else coming in here, misplacing things, moving things around.
You are a very superstitious person, obsessed with order, with control.
You remind me of a garden spider. Every morning someone unmakes your web, and you just make it again the same way, in the same place, never learning anything. It can be very dull sometimes.
This morning’s arrival was another assortment of oddities.
A boom mic. Origami papers, which I actually think will fill quite a lot of my day.
There’s some leather cleaner in here, I think that was semiconscious.
I take it to the garage and carefully clean the interior of the old car before going to the library.
I am trying to be as arbitrary as possible so as not to arouse suspicion, earn another round of sedation.
Which is wonderfully straightforward because I never have a clear idea of what I normally do in this house, when you’re awake instead of me.
I have a strange sense of clarity since last night. Not about how I got my fingers bloody but before and after that, which is unusual. I don’t normally have befores and afters so close together. I think this is progress! Longer periods of awakes.
I’ve been thinking, you say amiably, which is usually not a good sign, though you feel quite subdued to me today.
Like you’re well-rested from a Greek holiday.
We’ve been getting along better lately, which is strange, because I tried so hard for so long to fight the twisted bond we’re both in thrall to.
But you were right, at least about one thing. The less I try to destroy myself, the more indulgent you seem to be.
My memories are tainted still, and not all of my time is mine, but lately I feel sharper, clearer, slightly less inclined to die. Maybe it’s me, I’m less defiant, I’ve seen the wisdom of compliance? You seem to think I can be trusted.
I wouldn’t call us friends or anything, but still. A backbone of alliance might not go awry.
Topically, you continue: I told you, it’s Anya. She’s what we’ve been missing.
I watch the motion of my own fist curling. “You only say that because you like her.”
You answer with a stab to my right temple.
“Ouch, what? It’s true.” From the haze of our collective memories, I feel the silken curvature of her throat. “I know you touched her.”
Don’t be ridiculous, I touch all sorts of things. I do a lot of exploring for my health. I have an obligation to the bloodline.
The bloodline. That reminds me. “Wasn’t I going to do something with that?”
A sudden desire to fold paper into sharp corners fills my mind.
Focus.
Right. “Bloodline,” I murmur to myself. “Bloodline, bloodline—”
I rifle through the books in the library, the genealogy ones that ironically you always encourage me to look through.
You seem to think that me taking an interest in our legacy is something worthwhile, some kind of shared hobby, I suppose.
I don’t know why, when we seem to have plenty of overlapping interests.
We both like cars and dislike rain. Why don’t we talk more about the weather?
As I’m poring over the family books, my mind wanders back to Anya. A swell of orchestral music fills my head as I envision her spread out like a snow angel on a picnic blanket. She’s wearing a gingham dress in candy-apple red, like a postcard from utopia.
I imagine lying down beside her. I remember the feel of her under my hands, the way I wanted to capture her heartbeat for a moment, commit it to memory, pay it homage in the score.
I felt it jackrabbit under my thumb, her aliveness.
But then she turns to me and I think she’s wearing lipstick and I think no, I can’t sleep yet, wake up.
You jab me behind the eyes, like a pincushion. This is new. It seems you don’t mind sharing control so long as our goals remain conveniently mutual. “Thank you.”
You’re welcome. You were saying?
I look down to glance over the book, the familiar names. The steady sprawl of immaculate cursive that stretches down beyond Killian to his offspring, the various fruits of his womb. The ones in the book and the ones that aren’t.
Below that, notations on the ritual. Less a matter of genealogy than alchemy, in the end.
The proper formula a delicate balance (beautiful; disposable).
Certain features more desirable. Each one like a treasure map, a route to something.
X marks the spot on a pair of pretty lips, a set of wide and trusting eyes.
The flash of a hundred faces illuminates like electrical failure behind my vision, tiny pieces of an unfinished portrait, composite fractions of a woman. A painted red smile, an open chest cavity, surveillance footage, the shadow of the word disappear. A premonition, a conviction.
Spore-like, rot populates up the walls. Hunger that gives way to consumption.
My vision is failing, darkness swallowing me whole. I’m breathing so hard I touch my finger to my own pulse, half expecting to find it gone.
I imagine Anya touching it. I imagine her pronouncing me alive. In my head I ask her to forgive me.
She says: Which of us is in any position to grant forgiveness?
Unimportantly, I whisper: Yours is a body I could love to the other side of rot.
She isn’t smiling but her eyes are dancing.
You’re saying nothing, perfectly content to watch.
At the end of the blackening walls is a light, it burns like a star, like a pyre.
Everything is lovely, picturesque. Resonance resolves in my periphery, rightness hovers just out of reach.
If I just stretched out my fingers, I could touch it.
The only bad part is that I don’t know what any of it means.