She likes to wander about at night
She likes to wander about at night, to watch, to observe and to absorb as other pass by, unaware of her stare. As long as she could remember she’d known a calling that, like hunger, lied deep in her guts, something she chose to ignore but was still being fed, sucking nutrients of her darkest self. It was more than a calling, it was an instinct.
And so she wanders and wonders how she could open what it felt like her own Pandora’s box, to let out whatever it was and to tame it and keep it on a short leash.
She often thinks of bodies: her body, everyone else’s body, naked and covered in thousands of tiny hairs, first full of life and then just as dead matter. How could she find someone to be of service? How should she proceed? When would it be the right time? Where? Whose body would suffice?
She had never been able to answer those questions, too distracted by the highs of her fantasy. She would love to touch and feel it against her palms and fingers, against all of her skin, feverish, warm, cold and finally frozen. To embrace it completely, as the temperature descends.
The first time she saw a dead body she must have been around 5 years old. An elderly lady with heavy make-up plastered all over her face, wearing large golden earrings, lied peacefully inside of a glass coffin on top of what it seemed to be an altar. This memory is so vivid that she could still remember exactly the thoughts going through her head and how she was fascinated about that random person inert corpse being displayed for everybody to see. She didn’t want to look away and so she didn’t, too mesmerized to move. She didn’t think of death while staring at that scene, she couldn’t comprehend it yet, but even if she did it wouldn’t matter. Who that lady was, what happened before and what would happen afterwards to that stranger, it all sounded insignificant, even now.
She likes to wander about at night, to roam around in places she knew well but looked mysterious in the dark. She did it with no specific purpose other than enjoying herself watching the oblivious people that crossed her path, trying to collect the most details possible before they could get out of her sight, in the hopes of recognizing them with almost familiarity if they ever met again.
These encounters were brief and she rarely saw most of them after, and when she did there was no excitement, no yearning to extend the affair into actually engaging, an overall lackluster event.
She never planned to act on her instinct, not really. Those mandatory questions remained unanswered until the fortuitous night she met her first.
He came out of the pub having the last smoke of a pack carelessly thrown to the floor. She was a couple of meters to his left, pretending to wait for a taxi and counting down as the cigarette disappeared into little more than ash in the corner of her eye. Her heartbeat was pounding in her throat like a drum marking the pace of her breathing. She was starting to get restless when he squashed the butt in the floor and walked away, 15 seconds before she began the chase. His steps were slow but long and steady; her steps were shorter but even, so soft she could be floating. She walked close to the walls, to the buildings, to the railings she recognized just by her right hand’s touch. This went on for a couple of miles until he sat on a bus stop, which made her slow down as she approached from behind. She could already smell the whiskey and the cigarettes as his breath came out of his mouth in regular sighs. She was just one step away when he suddenly laid back and hanged his head on the back of the bench, startling her to halt her every move. He kept his eyes closed and his arms crossed and remained unaware of her presence.
She tilted her head to the right while examining her every option, and then stood straight, resolved. She welcomed a new truth with a rush of blood to the cheeks and an unconscious smirk on her face.
