Susceptible To Tribulation at a Moment’s Notice
Part 2: The Crucible
- Be sure to read Part 1 The Crescendo before proceeding
- The crucible is a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures.
Her lips pressed against mine, a chemical change seemed to dissolve and recompose, my fingers navigating her hair as she crosses her arms around me. She’s warm and wet to the touch, and blood rushes to the hardness of me. It’s a mixture of perfume and saliva as I slide in, her pubes brush against me, sweat and heavy breaths under the blankets in her room.
You See? It’s already off beat for a story about how I depart this life. My telling of it is a loose adaptation of relatable notions of its events. What follows took place a year before today, I think.
This is an obscure location, that does not subsume the intricacies of the human condition. She happened to occupy a place on my contacts list. You only need ease of access and proximity to rationalize coitus.
Don’t forget to subtract morning breath.
This is how people make sense of it, the release of boiled up bodily fluids. You lose yourself in the short breaths, and gentle touches in the violent moment before you climax. This time opting for a chance to alleviate the fear of dying alone.
That’s how it started, I think. Before graduation, during a prolonged class, she got in late. I gave her a seat next to mine.
She wore what resembled a long blue coat, a stylish bag with a maker’s mark and brown boots. It was a cold autumn day, that got little bright with her presence.
She took the seat. “Thank you”, she said with a wide mouthed smile. She wore lip gloss. I introduced myself, possessed by the smell of her perfume. We greeted after that for a few days, but nothing more than just drawn out smirks and short glances.
It was a Friday, we had an extra class, and she sat next me. I tried to break the ice, but she seemed shy and somewhat hesitant, and even distant. I walked straight to where she was standing to introduce myself, and to ask for her phone number. The place was crowded enough that you couldn’t hear my heart imploding, almost bursting out of my chest. This feels like the infamous head against the tadpole.
Her big brown eyes glared at me, her mouth widens, a shiver passed through my spine, blood rose to her cheeks, and for an instant I could swim in the ocean of her blush.
She was surprised, as you can tell, she took my hand and scribbled it down.
While the end of this story is obvious, I still need you for a definitive closure. Where’s Delilah in all of this? Good question. We will get to that, eventually. I’m trapped between now and my final breath, before I black out of this pale floor and the stench of the gore and the inaudible sobbing.
We had spent an hour talking, from our favorite music to films. After a coffee break at a conference that Delilah had every reason not to attend, we ended in a coffee shop waiting for another drink. Low lights and a pop song in the background. She sat across of me, clinching both her hands. My folder on the left side and her bag on top. I hear her phone vibrating but she ignores it. I enjoyed every moment of that day, until we departed on our separate ways.
I took a kick between my legs and a slap, “I saw you” followed as flashes of light brightened the world out of my eyes. I crawled into the fetus position choking the air in, she wore military grade boots padded with cement for all I could care at that moment. A tear came down my face as my cheeks twisted to an expression I can’t describe.
“What is wrong with you!” I tried to shout while holding ice to it. “I hope it hurts,” she replied, her left eyebrow twitched, and her nose flared up. Delilah was mad.
A concoction of plans and plots brew as she slammed her lips silent, I would nurture my relationships with poetry of warm words. If you start making demands she can’t meet, she will resent herself for failing you. And you are to blame for that.
This is not to say that I have no intention of telling you the Girl in Blue Coat’s name, rather that I am hesitant. Yes, time is running out and all the blood escaping me is a constant reminder of my eventual fate.
I forgot to mention that I stared at a large stone wrapped in a shiny metal around her finger. The glare wasn’t enough for me to zone out, a hole should have pushed my stomach right below my pelvis. It’s the minute detail that had escaped me while hooked on her smile and the sound of her voice. That’s how it happens.
A big carbon-based rock wrapped in metal around human fingers. It’s called fashion, an expression of the self and the bank statement. And in my case, a testament to premade nuptials.
You will find out that plenty of people will come to the funeral. There was a lot to love about me, and more to hate. People will talk and think of me one last time before I fade away. There is no trip deep enough down their clogged memory lane that could ever bring me up again. Part of the trick to survive as a memory is to leave your genetic mark in the world.
An attempt to reaffirm indistinct existence, a chance to write a new story with someone else, with absent premade judgment based on shared history. An escape from Delilah and all the baggage that she carries with her. The strain of thoughts was blocked at the back of my head the moment I crossed eyes with her. Let’s call her Selma.
I used to take my toys apart to find out how they ticked. What followed was a familiar predicament of being berated for breaking my inexpensive new toy. It inspired in me the creation of something new with the broken pieces. To mend the fragments together forming a new gadget.
A design of my own with me trapped inside of it with my own volition.
In other words, I was stuck at the middle of a cold desert with no road back home. That’s how it feels when you are alone in your head. The sensation is magnified with each hour passing, isolated from everyone surrounding you. It’s a ruthless cycle that feeds off its monotonous nature. You feel like no one understands you, because no one does and no one can.
They could be pretending to like me because they sympathize with me, all alone and no stable job. That means to pension when old age kicks in. Delilah’s would have stuck with me long enough to forget the abysmal truth. That’s no reason to be upset though, others may have it worse. Which is almost like saying that you shouldn’t be happy because others have it better.
There are three sides to this story, first is my telling of it. There is the way it actually happened, and how you read it into existence. A small parade of people bringing me into the real world. I suggest you don’t use me to envisage someone you know. You should also consider that I’m not the hero in this one, just a villain of someone else’s story.
I failed to convince Delilah of the fake story I conjured up to explain what I thought she saw. Two people together in complete unison. Oblivious to the world around them. This madrigal with romantic undertones is part of a design, not actually what happened.
In the minds of people who know nothing of your condition, you are relieved from that burden. Its freedom offered by the isolating realization that you are released to roam with no expectations to meet, trapped within your own monochrome design of the world on the inside. That is until you meet an unassuming person to drag you into where the grass is actually green. She holds your hand, walks you out of your morose misanthropy, and into her own festive Eden.
The magic of the sensation is the immediate electric charge down your body, as she holds your hand through your first times together. Your blood warms up to her touch, a steady beat in your ears. You must be dreaming.
You can tell you’re not because you do remember the smell of her hair, her pupil dilates, the softness of her skin and the texture of her lips. Life as advertised on television, instead of collecting people to come to your wake.
You’re freezing the moment in her brown eyes as she laughs back at your jokes. You also salivate and defecate. A necessary mental image that you cannot ignore, while you are petrified of what comes out of your orifices.
That’s how you lose sense of the time you spend together; wrinkles form around her eyes and the sound of her soft chuckle. All while you are holding hands looking at the sky. We shared long walks afterwards, each time dropping the pace to extend the time before we had to depart into the real world.
I told you the truth of this tale is in the clichés we despise.
And as with everything, it should come to a close. It didn’t. Not this time. It’s no longer a loop of disappointments and cynicism. You don’t have to hide anymore. It’s not a mere false indulgence.
A taste of optimism fuels my veins as she thrusts her nails in my back. A moment frozen in time as my whole shakes in ecstasy. A heartbeat escapes and I’m out of breath. My face twists, and we both wallow in wet bed sheets. I lay next to her trying to catch my breath.
A delight from the sting of her nip, as she bites my upper lip. That’s not how it’s advertised on television. The first time she tried something new was confusing, strange and utterly festive. I was no longer jammed in a cut between decorative dichotomy.
I had no reason to question her intentions.
Our interactions never seemed to go beyond filling the present moment. Delilah had become sober in her ways, sensible in her choices, and tamed in her kisses.
She seemed to fade in the background. Our fights broke down like sharp pieces of glass. And she was hurt. A voice in the back of my head kept telling me that something is off. I ignored all of that. I’ll give you a moment to cast judgment. I didn’t even try to keep her company.
Selma’s affections are a mere conjecture leading to a cathartic ending. It doesn’t contain a logical conclusion to my demise, only a pseudosalvation of my own indifference towards Delilah. I’m only guilty by association. You might not realize this, but I did care. Selma’s lips move but I don’t hear it. The world around her fade to monochrome as the sound of a newborn cracks in.
The moment extends beyond my recollection of what happened afterwards. A stream of thoughts clogged my brain from processing what I heard. My mind was numb for the amount of noise a single sound brought in.
Was it causation or a mere correlation?
I’ve done the same mistake over again, red flags missing this time. You try to navigate without headlights, only to end up clashing with a tree off-road. The sign said it was a cliff.
What I’m doing here will certainly make sense one way or another. I was infatuated with Selma. I had to be. It was too late to fix my mistakes. I could make sense of hers. This tale is not a redemption story.
And with the triangle formed, in all the ways they won’t bend, are merely the temperament of my life. And whatever we do, our broken tendencies are not in conjunction to make it plausible.
I hope that you’ve made up your mind about my inadequate moral compass. If not, consider the following: you won’t hear the bullet that will do you in.
Delilah’s manner always seemed in retrospect a reaction to my own. A safety net that I always jerked around because of a tumescent down my pants. It was the warmth generated by self-urination. While the sight holds no significance, I would dare and call it love.
One way to tell that I wasn’t dreaming is that I remember the minutiae: the sour taste of her skin, incense of her sweat, her foul morning breath, and which breast is smaller than the other.
The rest is hanging around at the edge of my memory, unable to fully recollect her figure in my mind as I transmit out of this tale. The events are hanging on my mind like a shape shifting cloud, on the verge of hallucination.
Delilah might as well be a whimsical manifestation as a placeholder for lost memories. As I’m stuck here with you and her, and no one else to watch me pass away. And it smells of lavender. I’m only missing an indistinct sound of the infant.
I tried to make this brief. In case you were wondering, I don’t regret doing it, you osculate the cheek and lose yourself in the moment, not knowing it’s the worse choice to make at the time. It’s the kind that you go through in the spirit of that hole that awaits you.
I thought I should just call her and try to have the awkward conversation, again. I didn’t promise myself that I wouldn’t do it to her. I couldn’t sleep through this one. It’s not lost on me that I should have confined myself to the person that stood by my side through all of it. I only had this lifetime, nothing more.
It’s not the number of unfaithful gests, it’s the getting away part that will always do you in. It will take long enough for you to forget the first time. I was always on the edge of losing her. This time she slapped me and hugged and, if you can freeze the moment you would hear her heart beat. Until she distances herself, points a revolver my way and pulls the trigger.
I didn’t hear the first shot. The second bullet pierced my chest, a large red spot formed under my shirt. My legs couldn’t carry me anymore. I can taste iron and rust in my mouth. I hit the floor hard and I can no longer feel my breath. A tear came down her face before she pulled the trigger. Time slows down to a freeze, my memory goes backwards. And this tale begins.
“She gave birth to your child”
This feels like a second hand memory of an event I orchestrated. The world responded to my flights of fancy with a hole that bleeds me whole.
I can remember the tears and the joys we shared. The premade nuptials stood in the way of something mutually exalting. It only brought life to this world that someone else will be responsible for. We brought another human to the world we despised. A breath of hope for both of us. I’m broken with self-indulging tendencies, and she has picturesque smile with cheekbones that lasts for eternity.
Delilah was safe on the periphery, closely situated outside a limbo of my own devise. It’s not an unfaithful gest, it was an escape from the burden of familiarity. I annoyed, forgave and begged forgiveness. And, yet I have to pinch myself out of a dream I’m not having.
You eventually find out that inside us there’s just slime and calcium-based bone framework. A structure supporting soft muscles and fat, the secret of the desires we have. You romance those moments of need as your genes try to outlive you. That’s the incentive behind the endeavor I’m unwillingly on.
I don’t know what will happen in the future, soon enough the charade will fade. And my story will become a distant memory. A somber recollection of what might have happened, sweet and sour, cold and venomous down her veins. It’s weary sensation of the conversations we had. I’m only puking things that contain my own sense of displacement.
You will always want to go back to each other, thinking that you figured out what was wrong, with a premise of a formula strong enough to mend the broken glass.
Our incentive was the shared the sentiment, and never about dry affections. Delilah leaned on me, wrapped her hands around me as we hugged our last fight out. I suppose she tried to plant one last kiss. She pressed her lips against my cheek, and then fell back right before pulling the trigger.
You are on the outside looking in, through a cracked looking glass. And there is a stain of something that shouldn’t have happened. And very much like me, observing the world from the inside looking out. Except in my case, no breath remains to fog the glass and no sound to animate the scene.
A blurry vision of her next to me, inaudible sound of cries. I can still hear her, muffled sobbing as I bleed beside her on the cold floor. The sound of her voice slows down as the black fades in.
The End.
