@sunmad requested a spotify wrapped starter.
88 - Happy by Mitski.
Happy came to visit me, he bought cookies on the way
I poured him tea and he told me “It’ll all be okay”
Well I told him I’d do anything to have him stay with me
So he laid me down
And I felt happy come inside of me
He laid me down and I felt happy
He’s taken to bringing her treats, she’s noticed. Never full meals, nothing filling. When he leaves she usually finds herself wanting, hungry for more.
Miriam’s under the weather these days, staying at a flimsy motel with what little she can scrounge together from moonlighting at bars and other haphazard gigs. Too cold to sleep outside in Seattle this time of year. It’s a dingy place she’s found for herself, but not without a rustic charm that reminds her of home. It looks incongruous in the city, this motel, with its vintage wood panelings and dim farmhouse lights - an old place full of ghosts. Well, she’s a stranger here too, foreign, like a tumor on the concrete organs of it, parasite in its steel blood. Behind closed curtains that barely keep out the setting sun’s light, Miriam has taken to imagining all the people that have come and gone from this very room throughout the years; lone travelers, businessmen, pairs of gentle lovers. She snickered at the thought. This wasn’t a place for love, not free love anyway. This was a bed where you’d take a whore. Yes, it felt like home, and it was, for now.
He’d texted her when he got to the motel. The notification woke her from the half-sleep of fever. Miriam hurriedly turns on her phone camera, arranges her hair, puts on chapstick. She can’t bear her reflection in the bathroom mirror, years of reflected impurity seeming to bare the depth of her marred soul. She had cried in front of it, just the night before, turmoil brewing like a black sea in her mind, had covered it with a towel in fear she would glance upon it again. Her emotions felt sharp, too violent to handle. It was often like this. Illness had never relieved her of it.
Would he notice, she asked herself? Would he smell the sickness on her and turn back in disgust? Maybe he’d finally see her for what she is; sick freak and with sick needs, just like the girl in the mirror last night, sitting lonely with her sins. She cannont bear the thought of the good doctor seeing her like this. She wants to be perfect for him, for the role she plays in the strange theater of their relationship. She’s rummaging through her meager belongings, hands grabbing in the dark of her purse for a bottle of cheap perfume, when he knocks at the door.
She hesitates, a primal anxiousness welling in her gut. Another quiet knock. She crosses the room and opens the door meekly, as though expecting a stranger. It’s him. Of course, it’s him. There was a time where she would have been scared, standing before Oswald in the crack of the doorway like the maw of a beast, his strong presence, his woody scent; now an inexplicable relief hits her like drugs straight in the vein. Her sweet doctor, her lone savior. “ Um, come in. I’m sorry, it’s a bit of a mess, ” she says, a hint of embarassment coloring her cheeks. She feels hot, too close to the sky, to God.
Oswald’s steps are quiet on the carpet when he enters, sidling past her with a rustle of his woolen coat. She watches, turns to lock the door behind him more by habit than aught else. He places a small bag on the dusty table in the corner, produces a plastic takeout bowl from it as he looks around the room. She imagines disappointment in his eyes. “ You said you were feeling poorly, so I thought I’d bring you something, ” he says nonchalantly. “ I figured you must be in a right state to cancel your appointment. I do hope you’re feeling somewhat better? ” She isn’t. As a matter of fact, when he closes back in on her in a long stride, haloed in the dim light of the ceiling sconce light, she feels as though she might faint.
His brow furrows as he examines her, gaze worried as he peers over her reddened and tired features. With a small shake of his head he takes off a black glove and places the back of his palm on her forehead. “ Oh, dear. That simply won’t do, ” he half-whispers. It burns, the touch, though his hand is cold, like she has gently lowered her face into a soft bed of snow. Instinctively Miriam takes a step back. “ I didn’t know you’d taken to playing nursemaid, doctor, ” she chuckles weakly, tightening her jacket around her shoulders in a vain effort to hide the chill that’s overtaken her. Instinctively she thinks of escape, regrets locking the door. She can’t bear him this close. “ What did you bring? ” Miriam stutters, escaping his tall shadow to go peek at the food. The smell is warm and hearty over that of the plastic bag. “ Pho ga, ” he replies, the hand that had scorched her skin squeezing briefly into a fist before he turns to face her again. “ There’s chopsticks in the bag, but I got a fork, just in case. ”
She breathes in the delicious aroma, stomach rumbling despite her pitiful state.
“ You brought me chicken soup? ”
He laughs. The sound warms her, not like the fever or like his touch, not a burn but a light and homelike feeling. Her shaking hand drags across the transparent lid of the container, warm and supple with the steam. She blinks away the tears that well up in her eyes, rubbing at them with the hem of her sleeve. The ghost of his hand lingers on her face, cool and intense. Though she had spoken as if jeering, she finds herself truly moved by the gesture, by his tender care. The relief of his presence is too immense for words, but she finds herself blurting them out anyways, a thought she normally would have kept to herself crawling out of her small mouth like a moth:
“ I wish you would stay. Just a little while. ” Immediately she fears his derision. Shameless, greedy girl, to ask for more when already he does so much for her. But he only looks surprised for a moment before a smile graces his stern features. Always playful, the therapist acquiesces with a small flourish: “ Thy wish is my command. ”
“ You don’t have to do this, you know, ” she says, smiling nevertheless as he sits next to her on the bed. She settles in slowly, not with deliberation but with dizziness, shuffling awkwardly around his weight on the mattress. “ Of course not. But maybe I like playing nursemaid, ” Oswald’s lips purse into a smirk as he recalls her words from earlier, before early winter night had enveloped them in its comforting darkness. Light is dim now in the motel room, the bedside lamp casting an orange glow on the panelled walls, the brown and dusty carpet, on her rosy skin. Miriam’s mind is buzzing with a thousand thoughts like wasp stings, the inside of her skull burning with them. There’s an ache in her chest she can’t name, a flame she can neither fully attribute to rising fever nor to the proximity of her beloved doctor, his hand so close to hers, his gaze soft, so tender as to hurt.
“ I prayed that you would come, ” the confession fall from her parted lips like blood from a wound. “ It felt like I was on fire, and I shouldn’t have, but I prayed that you’d appear like you did that day…” Miriam is hushed, swallows a sob as he raises a hand to brush stray hair from her cheek in wordless reassurance. Curled knuckles graze her skin, fingers unfolding along her temple. His touch is like ice, like hail on her hot skin, the prickling of hundreds of needles. “ My dear, you’re burning up, ” he sighs. She yields under his hand, his gentle hand, as it lowers to her shoulder and ever so delicately guides her to lay down on the bed. Miriam’s heart rears into a gallop. He holds her briefly there, white hair falling on his shoulder like snow, looming over her like in a dance, or a deep kiss. Fear and worry vanish from her as though he exorcised them with the lightest touch. And he calls her mine, mine, mine. He can never know what it does to her when he says those things. It burns more than the fever, more than scorching hot metal, more than the sun. It burns like the gaze of angels.
She takes his hand in hers, entwines their fingers through her hair, voice choked. “ I prayed… ”
“ Shhh, Miriam. It’s okay. It’s okay, ” Oswald murmurs to her tenderly. His thumb caresses her cheek, wipes a tear welling through her dark eyelashes. “ Sleep, now. ”
Her lips tremble and she bites down on them. Oh, how magical it is to feel his touch. If only he would wrap his long fingers around her wrists, take from her as she has taken from him. Always her savior gives, never lets her give of her own. If he only dared to ask she would gift him everything she has, everything she is. Through the haze of her affliction she looks up to him, to his silver eyes filled with pity. She wants to fight against it, to turn his sympathy away and leave only the caring, the warm love between them, but she feels so terribly weak. Once he had appeared to her like a shining knight as she writhed under the cruel eye of God, and again she felt that desire to hide in the fortress of his arms, to feel them wrap around her tightly, without judgement. They were strangers, that time. How come it was alright then, for him to be so close, for his heart to beat calm and soothing right next to hers, and not now? Why was it he always the one to pull away, sad and regretful?
She doesn’t want sleep. She wants to turn her face and press his palm against her lips and taste his skin. She wants her burning heart to crawl its way into her mouth and to give it tenderly up to his own, wants him to feel the hot blood in her veins, dark and sick. She wants him like this forever, poised above her in this bed made for outcasts and lonely men and whores.
Only treats. Never filling. He leaves and she finds herself wanting, hungry for more.
And if you’re going, take the moon
Then maybe I will see you
In the night; I’ll see you
And when you go, take this heart
I’ll make no more use of it
When there’s no more you