Air Purifier

I was her savior. I tore her apart.

The blue light on the air purifier was turned on. I kept flipping it off and on as she spoke, as though it would purify what I was about to do. But there was nothing pure about it.

I did it countless times — help someone find themselves, or save themselves. At least, that was what I wanted to believe.

“…, you know?” she said. She must have said something before this.

“Yeah,” I answered, doing my best to sound as if I knew what she was talking about. In truth I was just thinking about how a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would be great right about now. But I’d just run out of jelly. Damn.

We were sitting on the floor, and her fingers were running around next to her— tapping, gliding. She was a piano player, and so much more. Oh, the things her fingers could do.

She leaned forward to kiss me, then. I nodded. She leapt at me like a caged animal set into the wild for the first time.

Me? I was just a tool to appease curiosity. A tool that was not thinking of the consequences that weighed heavy upon sensual friction.

This tool threw her onto the bed. I always had to be in control of things in my life.

I just had to. It cannot be otherwise.

Moments passed. The air purifier kept buzzing. I kept shifting my mind to her moans, and then again to her stoic emotion. It was rather off-putting.

Her lips were red, as I supposed so were mine. We had been kissing for so long, after all. But no passion lingered behind them. I was hoping for love. All I could taste was lust. I was bored.

She wanted to talk.

I wanted to walk.

We went outside, over to the park nearby. She told me she loved to swing by herself, late at night. She’d always had this childish view upon the world.

And so she sat, and swung as high as she could as I drew innocent shapes in the sand with my toes. As I watched her swing I realized she was beginning awaken my childlike imagination again. Had I really been old for that long?

She started to speak again.

She told me every grueling detail of her past. Sad times. Happy times.

I had no idea where this was going. I didn’t really care. I was too busy drawing shapes in the sand with my toes.

A week had passed. The summer was dwindling, and she was all ready and packed to go to college. She stopped by my place before she left, even though she was already running late. When someone stops by your place even though she’s running late, you know it was getting serious.

We spoke each night on Skype and shared every detail of our days. One would call her my BFF. She would call herself my everything.

One night, she had a date with this guy she’d been talking to. They were headed to a concert. I went about my evening, then laid down on the bed. Sleep came over me much earlier than usual.

When I awoke at 2 in the morning, I noticed I had several missed calls from her. I didn’t waste a moment and dialed her number.

One ring. Two rings. Three —

“Hello?” she answered. Her voice was empty. Confused.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Silence. In the background, my air purifier was buzzing.

“What’s wrong?”

“I thought of you,” she said.

“What? What is it?” I asked. “Are you drinking? What’s going on?”

“When I kissed him, I was thinking of you. Only you.”

I froze. I knew I had to tell her right then and there that I did not feel the same way.

But, of course, I did not have the heart. I was afraid she would lose herself, after what I had been told about her past. I was a coward like that, you see.

Selfless acts were my weakness.

They were my cruelty.

When I awoke one morning I decided I would change my number and block her from all social media sites.

Was I a monster? I did create all this — the confusion, the heartbreak, the hysteria. And yet, like Dr. Frankenstein, I ran away from it all.

I hadn’t spoken to her for a week when she finally showed up at my doorstep. I had all my stuff packed — I was already moving away.

She was beyond furious.

In this maze of whatever it was that we were in, the love she thought I held for her was… What was it? I didn’t even know.

All I did know was that I couldn’t save her anymore. I was losing myself, day by day. How did I ever think I could save anyone?

I left in the middle of the night without saying goodbye.

The air purifier sits at my bedside. Buzzing. Failing miserably to purify my sins. Its artificial blue light was glowing in the darkness. Tinting everything blue in its monotonous buzz.

I crave for a PB&J. I start to get up in the blue-tinted darkness, but stop when I realize that I have nothing.

This has been a short story by Sam Marrese, edited by Bonni Rambatan. For more stories like this, please follow Pleasure & Pain, our Medium publication that explore the complex intricacies of love, sex, and relationships. To write for us, simply tweet the editor at @bonni07.

If you like discussions on storytelling, check out Narrative Design, a podcast on art, literature, and critical theory hosted by the editor of this collection.