Forever After
The blistering hot day evaporated into a humid, sweaty evening. The April breeze that came as a respite during this time of the year was nowhere to be found, only an irritating stillness taking its place. Under the pellucid black sky, clouds in patches strolled leisurely, teasing the living soul with a false hope of a downpour.
Stuck inside a thick stream of cars which hardly moved, I was trying to counter my boredom by drawing patterns on the window-mist that the air conditioner running in full blast was creating.
It wasn’t working. Frustrated, I honked the car horn yet again. The driver of the car before me yelled something illegible, and between the closed glass and the cacophonies outside, it got lost in the process.
I won’t be able to reach there in an hour, I said to myself. This is nuts.
The lingering thought led me to a strand of faint aroma that hovered ever so slightly in the air. The closed windows protecting it, the fading scent reminded me of last night. A lovemaking so spectacular it had made me shiver with ecstasy I never felt before.
There was a grin in my face as I touched my neck and felt the spot. It hurt me like a bee-sting. It was still hurting.
“I have sharp fangs” I remembered her saying with a carnal hiss when she had neatly slipped out of her dress. In that room where light and darkness played hide and seek, I could only figure out the outlines of her body until it came atop me, thrusting me down on the floor with a thump. The rush of blood that ensued had blurred my sanity. Her legs wrapped around my waist like a grapevine, she had made me enter her, like a huntress luring her prey, enticing it, making it feel like it was the king of the jungle.
Both of us were panting for breath after it was over, trying to grasp some normalcy after that frenzy.
There was also something else amidst that – but before my memory could churn it out for me, I felt a jerk. The car behind mine had bumped into me. Infuriated, I leapt out of my car and went back to see how much damage was made. It wasn’t much, but my irritation wanted me to teach the culprit a lesson. There he was, a middle aged hag, with a smirk on his face, yelling at me to move the fuck forward, taunting me that he would hit harder the next time.
I dragged him out of his seat and smashed him on the road. He groaned, and tried to retaliate, only to get kicked in his gut. The cacophony around us continued, people watching and people scurrying to watch, people shouting at us to move, and people shouting at us to fight. No one could her him bleat.
“I will break your fucking neck if you dare do that again!” I whispered to him when I pulled him up, pushing him to the car seat and slamming the door close. Then I collected myself and went back into my car again and started the engine.
The air conditioner cooled me down and drew me back into reason. As I drove away from the main road clutters, gradually into the slender pathway which led to the riverside dock, I tried to remember the missing pieces.
The decaying portside was clear of any living soul, and except little sounds that the river wavelets made when they came ashore, and the distant noises of the city, the pleasantries that irked me were absent. It was still absurdly humid, as I went out of the car and held the rusty railing and stood there for a moment, but it felt much better. I took a deep breath and stood there for a moment, looking at the dark grey flowing water, and the city lights which did not blind me from this distance.
I checked my watch. I was twenty five minutes late.
From the boot of my car I tugged out the black bag and carried it to the jetty. The process was hardly de rigueur: the woods creaked under my feet as I carefully made my way to the place, where the structure ended. The planks were eaten bare, and in the faint light that a yellow halogen emanated from afar hardly helped.
I drooped down, slowly resting on my knees, unzipped the bag in one swift motion, and then put my hands, trying to feel whatever was inside. I didn’t have to dig much, for it was right beneath the plastic sheath, neatly tucked. I couldn’t see it clearly, but it felt firm and cold. I wasn’t carrying a torch, so I flicked open my phone to put some light into the biting darkness. Slowly, a shape started to form as the white glow slowly paved its way through the crevices. The pallid face, the bloodless alabaster skin, the wrinkled pomegranate lips, the stare devoid of emotions, the rigor mortis – there was a connection in all of these flashes that I saw, joined by a single strand to complete the picture. Yet it hardly baffled me. I now started to remember the missing pieces.
I looked at her face, the naked body. It was amusing how familiar it all felt, her and me, without any disturbances, spending time together. Only this time one of us was reciprocating.
Time was running out.
I pulled up my cellphone photos and looked at the latest one. A photograph of a couple corralled in a chalky frame that screamed cheesy, it had something written below it that was illegible to the normal eye. I zoomed in, and it read:
“What Rose wanted. Always”
I smiled. A sudden sense of accomplishment dawned on me as I leisurely ran my fingers through the lines of her face. I was going to make sure they stayed together like that. Always.
That night when I suggested this to her after we made love, she had a weird look on her face -like she didn’t believe it. She didn’t think I would find out.
I stood up. It was getting late. The city was slowly slipping into its late night fantasies.
After I threw the bag into the river, exactly where I had thrown his yesterday night, I broke out into a mad laughter as the steady current dragged it further into the water, before it drowned into the murky abyss.
While I was returning, Daft Punk’s “Game of Love” playing in my car stereo, I had a fantastic idea to spend the night.
Maybe I should visit the driver who hit my car, I said to myself. There was a wicked grin on my face.
