Toori's Blog

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[2names4lava]

December 19th

The howling welled up in patterns that night, high pitched singing, screeching, a while of silence, twice more high pitched singing, deep rumble followed by low humming. Repeat. Sleep was not coming while it was silent. She cursed it. The following high pitched singing began.

The train tracks next to her shelter had never disrupted her before. Who cared about the recurring loudness of tracks in a ghost town? But she started to regret it when the singing began. The first train she encountered weeks ago, maybe three or four, she wasn't too sure anymore. What she did remember to a fact, however, was the way the train tracks started to vibrate, the way the rumbling grew to a reverbrating in her stomach.

A cargo train full of containers passed her by. If she hadn't known what a train was in the first place that would have been a tragic end. Her heart raced from the adrenaline the sheer proximity of the train rushing past her caused. Even after it was gone, she still was breathing too hard, staring at the back of the train.

A few days later at the same time at the same place she encountered it again. This time she was aware and took a few more steps back away from the tracks and into the sands. There, she heard it for the first time, the low humming of the tracks after the train passed.

The trains became more frequent after that. She would notice because she needed the tracks to travel faster through the town. Every other speck of outside ground had become covered in sand that was extremely exhausting to walk on. Only the train tracks still showed as glittering lines. Walking on the tracks, though, was becoming increaingly dangerous now. Other trains aside from the rumbling cargo trains started to appear. The newer trains she noticed were significantly more silent which made her notice them later. But their singing was more beautiful than the low humming of the cargo trains. The new trains were smaller, made for people transport with colourful faces of graffiti. They were cute, really.

She wondered how all of a sudden the trains had reappeared, why they rturned and who drove them. More and more questions came to her mind. For now she had to settle for what she had and start living with the trains. At least they were punctual and regular in their rushing and singing. She continued her tracks through the town, forage for food conserves and material to repair her shelter. Could she jump onto the trains? She wondered but did not dare try. Yet.

[2names4lava]

January 18th

She was completely disassociating again. In between the fit, she only had very few seconds of awareness, of being lucid in her body, before she was pulled back into her mind again.

Rubble. Weeds growing between broken concrete. In her mind's parlament all the clues pointed to that place again.

Don't go! She wanted to scream, to make her legs stop.

But the parlament didn't care enough and so they swept her away in a wave of memories. Pleasant ones of home, positive feelings that made her long for the place. The more it filled her mind, the more she wanted to reject all that was now. The new could never fill this hole, the new would never be good enough, she didn't want the new. She just wanted everything back to how it was. Back, back, back...

A sharp pain brought her back to lucidity. It was dark around. She tried to understand where she was. Still rubble, but the was lying on the ground. No. She must have fallen and that was the pain she felt. Where was the pain? It took her a second because she was still fighting just to stay lucid. Her ancle apparently. It was stuck between two wedges of concrete in a muddy cleft. She must be close already if there was this much mud. Carefully, she tried getting up. This pain-induced lucidity might be her only chance of going back. Her head whirled as soon as she was standing, tentatively, on her one leg. A clear sign that she had been under for very long and hadn't eaten or drunken anything. There was no real indicative for how long she had disassociated, only the fact that it was night and she wasn't fully in the swamp yet. She might have fallen a day ago and just been lying there since then. The thickness of her at leat made her sure that she must have fallen quite a while ago. She put the foot on the ground. Searing pain made her vision swim black. There was no way she could walk home like this. Panic was creeping up. She reached for her phone. Her breathing hitched. Contacts. Scroll. In her head everyone asked where she had gone and why she was taking so long. The panic made her chest feel hot and her arms feel numb.

What had she been doing? The parlament vied for her attention. It was warm there and not as painful as outside.

Too close to the swamp! But she was already putting her phone away.

Dangerous! But she was already gone again.

This time they showed her only the dark side, only what she desperately didn't want to see. It was mostly of him, everything about him was at the same time so sweetly melancholic and so deeply hurtful. They made her think that she could never let go, that never again could she-

Lound blaring pulled her into confused lucidity. Phone. She pulled it out.

"Are you free today?"

All traces of disassociation left. Friends.

"I'm-" she croaked. She was at the edge of the roof again. Under her, only swamp.

"Just stay in line, we're coming to get you"

[2names4lava]

Aspects of them

When she arrived, he hadn’t even been fully awake. She rang the bell twice until she heard him stumble out of bed. Through the glass pane of the front door she saw him come down the stairs. She chuckled. He was wearing her shirt and jeans. Given the fact that she was very tiny and the jeans very low cut, he was practically wearing a crop top and his boxers were more than just slightly visible. He opened the door and just wordlessly went towards the kitchen. She grinned, shouted a cheery “good morning” at his back and got inside. She found him in the kitchen, reading letters. He got out a plate and bread and started eating while flicking through advertising brochures. Then and again he exclaimed “whoa, cheese!” or even “did you know this was so expensive?!” And she fell for him again and again.

She was reading when he got to her. Motionless and completely focused on the book she sat there, crumbled up in a corner. Earlier he had rung the doorbell and had had to ring the doorbell of her grandma’s again because she wasn’t opening. So he sneaked inside, thinking her to be asleep in bed or on the couch like she sometimes was. He noticed that she was too involved in her book to neither hear him nor see him so he just went to her and sat in front of her. And watched her. Her face – in the moments she didn’t feel watched – was beautiful but also hard and sharp because the smile she usually kept wore off. Her eyes moved along the lines of the pages and he found her fluttering eyelids adorable. From time to time she’d frown or hold her breath and he assumed that it was a particularly dangerous or tense situation for the characters. Then again she would grin or even chuckle quietly and he saw the tips of her toes move up and down. This, he thought to himself, is such a fragile version of her. I could break this vision by speaking up or touching her so easily, it kind of scares me.

“I can do it” she promised to him “I promise I can do it” But her mind was already doubting her words, her hands reaching for a sharp edge, her skin longing for the pain. “And if you face it again, call me” he offered “I’ll always be there for you” Yeah, she thought, you can’t possibly always be there for me and even if you were, I wouldn’t always call you… Because the need for pain was not just about pain, it was a relief from emotions when they filled her up, it was a reminder that she didn’t have to write into a calendar. Something that she would never forget. Every day with him was a day she wanted carved into her skin so that she wouldn’t ever forget. Every day with him was a day she ended up staying clean because she had promised him to stop. She put away her scissors, her sharp edges, started searching for other things, read more, wrote more, kept away from negative thoughts or music or people, yes she searched for non-harming alternatives. She knew she couldn’t always make it. If he knew? She could only guess. Maybe he thought that his love and her promise would keep her from it but the pain was stronger than a promise. Her promise at that. One day she would be alone with her need for pain and he would be unreachable and then she would not be able to resist. Every day that it bubbled up inside of her and she was reaching for the scissors, she wondered whether the day had come. Whether she would then, right at that moment, break one of the most important promises she had ever made to him. A promise that she had made to other people so often already and that she had broken so often. Not today, she would decide then, not today. And then she would text him or call him and put the scissors away and do something a little less harmful instead. Like skipping dinner or drawing on her skin or drinking or walking barefoot in the cold.

Since her death, he had been driving around on his bike most of the time. He had stopped gaming and had almost no contact to anyone anymore. The outside, the landscape, hills and forests, everything reminded him of her. Only here he could feel as if she was still with him. Sometimes he even had to check his stomach and back to see that there were really not her small hands grasping onto him. He was always so sure that they were there, could really, physically heel her hands. But in the end it was only his imagination, his longing for her, his missing, that led him to hallucinate her fragile hands on his body. When he could not ride his bike, he would be reading. Something he had never done his entire life. But she had so often persisted on reading together with him, swapping voices after each chapter, that even the simple act of holding a book in hands would bring her memory closer to him. While reading, the voice in his head was never his own. It was always hers, sometimes softly whispering, sometimes firmly exclaiming or even angrily shouting and he loved it because he had never known any voice better than hers. He knew every tone and every facet of it so the colours and images it created in his head were marvellous. At times it took him an effort to stay. In moments when he so desperately missed her, he often wished to join her in her far away land. But she would never let him. Just when he hit rock bottom someone or something came to cheer him up. Knowing her, he was sure she sent it to him.

[2names4lava]

July 20th

Again she is sitting next to her crush. It happens too often lately, too casually. She's got a strange anticipation about this. 

Last month he missed the first day of classes so he was assigned a seat on the second day, the seat next to her. He still sits there even though he is free to move to another place now. 

Last week the seat next to her was the only free one on the whole bus. The situation hasn't changed since that day and even though there are always a lot of people standing, he stays. 

Today all year 9 students have to attend a meeting to inform them about their near future in school and after school. She is the first to arrive so she sits down in the middle of the room waiting patiently for her fellow students. Only twenty minutes too early is a new record for the bus. Her crush comes in next and - all chairs are empty! - sits next to her. 

"Hi" she greets shyly because he seemingly isn't going to start a conversation by himself. "Yo" he says nodding his head. 

Silence.

"How come you're so early?" she wonders aloud "usually you arrive just in time..."  "...If not too late" he adds. They both have to laugh a bit. Then he answers: "Actually I wanted to talk to you" Her eyes grow wide in surprise. "Okay...? Tell me, what about?" 

"Umm...uh..." He stammers obviously not having found the right words yet. "What are you going to do next year?" he asks then and she can see from the look in his eyes that this wasn't what he wanted to tell her. "Well" she starts anyway going along with it "I'll stay in school and see if I pass the exams for science or mathematics. If I don't I'll drop out of school and start working at my uncle's place" 

"Good plan" he notes "I have no idea what to do with my future"

"Oh, then you better pay close attention today!" she advises. Still fifteen minutes left but there will be others coming in no time and she definitely wants to know what he really wanted to tell her. She stares as obviously as possible at her watch making him check the clock on the wall and swallow hard. He also noticed that they had not much time left alone together. 

"I've been meaning to tell you quite some time" he finally explains "since the start of this semester actually." 

"You had a lot of chances" she states. 

"True but it's not that easy to tell" he defends himself. 

"Yeah? I always thought you were some tough guy so just saying something shouldn't be a problem, should it?" She demands mockingly leaning closer to him. 

"You don't know a thing" he replies also leaning closer until their noses are only inches apart. "I bet" she admits ironically "now tell me" 

He stays silent for a moment making the tension almost unbearable for her. Then he lifts his hand to stroke a strand of her hair behind her ears and his fingers linger softly on her cheek. 

"I like you" he whispers. 

She chuckles and for a moment he looks hurt until she exclaims: "I like you, too!"

[2names4lava]

October 15th

The train station is a sad place because of two reasons: One, the people here are either depressed or depressing meaning there are a lot of loser-people and a lot of annoying people. Two, the station itself is quite shabby with all those chewing gums, burnt cigarettes and empty bottles lying around. 

He disliked standing there almost as much as standing in front of a really big audience. Because if you were standing at the train station everyone could look at you from a great distance. It was an island in between the streets and train tracks filled with a lonely dreadful atmosphere. 

Today he had missed the last bus home from school so he had had to run through the town to the train station, at least trying to get the next train to his village. Yeah, the trains were strange here as well, stopping in every damned village from this town to the next biggest city. It could have been worse he thought to himself: where he had lived at earlier there was only one track for the trains to go back and forth. It was definitely a lot better here. 

Half the way he noticed that it was already too late for him to catch the next train so he went on in a much slower pace shoving his hands in his pockets and cussing quietly to himself. If this teacher just hadn't persisted in explaining this last problem he would have gotten his bus and this all wouldn't be so annoying. He reached the train station now fifteen minutes too early for the next train meaning he had to stand and wait there at his feared place. 

To get to the platform he had to go underneath the train tracks through some kinda tunnel. Down the stairs on the right he saw a woman staring at the wall next to the lift not bothered by anyone passing by she didn't move at all. He shook his head, this woman was definitely labelled strange. Just then the lift doors opened with a ping making the woman flinch away from the doors but she still kept her back away from the people walking through the tunnel. Without meaning to he had stopped walking and was now staring at the woman from the opposite wall of the tunnel. She however stepped closer to the wall moving her hands in front of her body as if wanting to swat something away. A moment later the tunnel was empty and the two of them were the only ones left. He was finally able to rip his eyes away from the woman turning to the stairs to go up to the platform. Suddenly the woman started talking to the wall and all he did was run. 

Up on the platform he stood as far away from the stairs as possible plus he tried to hide in between a pillar and the bench so that he wasn't visible from the street. He didn't sit down although he could've. Still, his paranoia told him that he was standing out, that in the end they would find him, that they just waited for him to make a mistake so they could laugh at him again. He shuddered feeling looked at by cold eyes. 

Next to him a group of teens sat down on the bench. They lit a cigarette while one of them pulled out loudspeakers and his mobile. The girls sat on the boys' laps passing the cigarette around and chatting in the loud and ugly slang of those who possibly searched for a fight at every corner. Some people had already looked at them with arched eyebrows or deep frowns. He himself just stepped a bit away from them. When they turned on their music he was already spacing out to a better place far away from this train station. 

[2names4lava]

June 18th

It was best to go outside in the middle of the night, preferably between 1 and 5 o'clock am, and start conversations with random people on the street. At least that was Alice's opinion. She liked how it could be so calm and quiet, how the air had a totally other taste than it had during daytimes. Alice was a girl though so going alone was no option for her. At nights when she couldn't sleep she would call for a friend (or tap on the window of one) for company. Then they would wander aimlessly through the empty streets, straying like cats and sometimes even walking in the middle of the street while there were no cars. Depending on her company she would stop by and talk to religious groups, drunken people coming out of bars, those retuning from work or those moving towards it. Most people were in a hurry or didn't want to talk to them because they thought them to be homeless but some would participate in a nice talk. They would philosophise about this and that, mostly about God, nature's fall, big cities or how sad life can be. It happened that they met the same people twice or even more often until one could say that meeting on the street on a certain day at a certain time had become a ritual of mutual friendship. Those Thursday evenings Alice and her friend Chal would meet with a group of two homeless and three from the church. They ate sandwiches at three in the morning sitting on newspapers from the last few days and watching the stars shining so far above their heads. "It's a look in the past, every time you see the light of a star" Alice said "imagine how things that happened in our past somehow come across someone at the other end of the universe. And this person would see what happened while you're already moving on. I wonder, what would they be seeing of me right now?" Everyone thought about that in silence while chewing their sandwiches. "You couldn't really die" Chal suddenly stated "the information about your death would never reach the end of the universe - because there is none. So at some part of the galaxy you would still be living." "Like the stars" one of the homeless added wiping a tear from his eyes.