Mistress

Chapter I: Encounter

I was never a party person. Drunk people were mainly irritating to me, and taking women home who were so drunk that they had no recollection of the previous night at best made me feel embarrassed. Being the 20-year-old idiot that I was, I still went along time and again. The fear of missing out was just greater than the constant feeling of having wasted numerous hours of my life again. Lonely together.

I can't say today why I was at the party where I met Claudia. Maybe it was the pressure from my friends or my wish to be lonely. Or perhaps it was an intuition that cannot be expressed with the language of rationality. For a long time, I did not want to admit to myself that such an event could actually just be a coincidence, one of many results of the universe throwing dices. Meaningless. Just as irrelevant as millions of other meetings at millions of other parties.

As soon as I was at the party, I looked for my usual secluded spot where the chance of having to talk to other people was minimal. It was a shared apartment party, so with a bit of luck, I could escape to one of the bedrooms if all other attempts at isolation should prove futile.

All of this went through my head as we entered the apartment, which was already filled with packs of drunken men trying to prove to each other with slurred speech that they were the "manliest" of all party attendees. Masculinity was of course defined by the capacity to consume nearly lethal amounts of alcohol, when it wasn't about letting out embarrassing and repetitive phrases meant to impress the opposite sex.

First, it was about analyzing the battlefield and finding a strategic retreat. If I had to endure losses in the form of conversations, that was a fair price for once again ignoring my plan to stay at home.

I know you, don’t I!

Maybe.

Come have a drink with us!

Sorry, got a condition, doctor said "no talking or drinking".

Five or six such conversations later, I finally found a room where I felt safe; it only remained to hope that the occupant of this room wouldn't seek the same refuge. Now came the best moment of every party: The noise was no longer part of my world, it became the dull sound of a world I was safe from, and with this safety, it almost sounded lovely. Even a few interesting books were to be found on the shelves. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a complete collection of Kafka's works and Thus Spoke Zarathustra - someone at this party seemed to think as pessimistically about the world as I did. Dystopian literature was our hallmark, even if people like me would never find the motivation to talk to each other, these symbols were a sign that one was not alone.

The peace did not last long; the actual occupant of my refuge came in after just a few minutes, perhaps she even saw how I nervously stumbled through the crowd and then nested in her room. According to the inscriptions on the books, her name was Lisa. How would Lisa react? To my surprise, she didn't seem angry to find me here. Instead of getting upset that I had invaded her retreat, she offered to introduce me to her companion. Even years later, I think about this coincidence. In the end, I calm down that it's so far back that it now represents a historical fact. So far back that an emotional connection is just as absurd as commemorating the fall of Rome with tears. The past is neither bad nor good, it just is. And even this primitive existence only exists as a tattoo on our soul and will perish with us.

Claudia was the name of her companion. Or maybe not, such banalities never seemed to matter. Her words seemed to fill a gap whose existence I had not been aware of all my life. How could I live for 20 years and not recognize the beauty around me? Millennia of human evolution have brought forth this unimaginably affluent civilization that enabled me everything I could dream of. And how wonderful the people around me turned out to be. I could talk to each of them for weeks and get to know all their facets.

Many hours later, I was still thinking about Claudia as I lay awake in bed. Should I ask Lisa for her number? Why was I thinking about her so much when I never wanted to be locked up in the prison of blind love again?

Chapter II: Entanglement

Lisa got a little worried about me meeting Claudia again, but in the end she made the error of trusting in my caution.

Claudia. What a wonderful name. The most beautiful name. The most beautiful woman. Every description defies the feeling that her presence evokes in me. Our meetings were one of the events that cannot be described by our primitive means of expression. Language originates from a time when people spent their time hunting and gathering berries. How could they ever describe the feeling that has been revealed to me? Even with other people, I seemed to communicate on a new level. I had been laconic all my life, but now I couldn't get enough of my voice. Every word had such a sweet sound that I no longer knew whether I was speaking to them or to myself. Or was I speaking for her? She didn't like me talking to other people too much, so I kept it to a minimum until I was ready to fully get rid of them.

It always happened in the evenings. Initially, I only met her at parties, which I started visiting more and more often just to find her, but now it was every evening. After a while I stopped going to parties, then I stopped going outside. Just us two. I preferred it that way; under no circumstances did I want to share her, and now I had as much time with her as I could afford. I couldn't tell if I felt happiness with her still, but I knew the terror without her.

She knocked on my door every night and asked for admission, as she could not enter my life without my consent, without a physical cooperation on my part. I told myself still I had control, but that didn't count for much when my mind told me that I couldn't live without her. Letting her in once again was like breathing. The chains around my mind were heavier than physical shackles could ever be, but while she was with me they felt light as feathers. She was gorgeous and of unparalleled elegance when she entered and sat down the first time. Never as beautiful as last time, but that did not reduce my craving. Never as tender as last time, but still more comfort than anything in the world outside. A world that turned uglier at the same pace as she did.

She slowly caresses my head.

You're beautiful.

Only with me.

So happy, when I can sacrifice myself for her. Scars on the body and the soul cut by her claws, but they were cuts of love.

And slowly I no longer had to question whether I let her in. I knew what happened when I resisted. How her tender knocking turned into a bone-chilling pounding from one moment to the next in time with my steadily accelerating heartbeat.

You do not exist without me.

You are nowhere. Nobody.

How I would lie awake in bed and her screeching and beating would set me into seemingly endless terror, giving me the feeling of being slowly dissolved into an unbearable void. I was too tired at that moment to move and too awake to rest. Feathers turned into needles, my life path looked like a crossroads at that moment, as long and unbearable. How beautiful, how much truer is love without choice. She did not try to make me feel good anymore, because she did not have to.

Laid on clouds, if only for one night. Just a little more time with her and maybe she will be gentle again. Weightlessness in free fall. As long as the abyss sinks deeper and deeper, the impact is delayed, and if I could only fall forever, I would beat the natural order that wants to tie consequences to my forbidden liaison. Silently and secretly I would leave the world as its greatest thief. Deadly love, lovely death.

Chapter III: Promise

So I let her in, let her sit on my sofa and whisper in my ear that everything was fine as it was, that I would never have to worry again as long as I was with her. I only had to give my life. Memories without her faded over time, they became a mere note in the file of my memory and the thin cord that linked them to my emotional life was irrevocably severed. Truth became an irrelevant unworthy. Ultimately, I couldn’t share with my surroundings what I didn’t even dare to realize myself. That she coiled around me, resembling more a snake than a woman. The most intimate embrace. That she bit pieces out of my soul piece by piece. The most intense kiss.

She kept one promise. I would never feel pain again if I surrendered to her. Decay - no pain. My physical functionality reduced, but there was no room for such vanities for a long time. After all, she loved my broken, stunted body, and everything else was irrelevant, as I had stopped dreaming long ago. Dreams were a burden of the past, stories of false promises. She is inseparably fused with the tissue of my heart, how should I remove her without disposing of my entire interior at the same time? Every day I look at my beautiful heart. Covered with delicate beautiful scars. It beats slower and slower forever, comes to rest. Finally, rest.

Alone but not lonely, no feelings, salvation in nothingness. Existence is pain, she was the remedy.