Paradise Lost

- Paradise Lost-

« My Thoughts….they feel like little worms trying to crawl out my head...that’s why I write.... to trap them somewhere”

He looked at me uninterestedly with two pale blue eyes then sucked over his cigarette and continued puffing out smoke as he spoke:

“You know... like a little vivarium, a place for them to grow , live and reproduce”

I imagined the little  brown creatures with their thin, ringed bodies slithering out his ears and mouth and him swallowing them back to keep them inside.

There was a curious air about him. 

His skin was fair like milk and so clear, as if he’d just crawled out the womb of his mother.

And while his unkept auburn beard was grazing  the base of his neck, making his face seem like it caught fire by accident, his head was a deserted land, not growing as much as one hair.

He kept speaking and puffing out smoke like a chimney till his face disappeared behind a thick cloud:

“I have to warn you, though, I am a little cursed”

He crushed the dead tip of his cigarette on the little metal tray on the table. Little sparkling particles of ash rose in the small breeze like miniature fireworks and soon died.

“cursed?”

He nodded his head and the dying light of the day played little tricks on his shining scalp.

“I think there is a devil inside of me. I think he is poisoning my thoughts.”

We sat at the Bella Vita Café overlooking the Bizerte port where forgotten skeletons of boats floated on stinking stagnant waters. I didn’t understand the way ports were supposed to work nor why people found them in any way interesting. It was basically a graveyard for ship-wreck and decomposing fish. Ports are the humanity’s failed attempt to tame ocean waters.

He sipped over a strawberry milkshake producing unpleasant noises with the straw when he was neither puffing his cigarette nor speaking.

“ Isn’t there a devil inside all of us?” I told him.

“No...Not that sort of devils. Mine is different. I know that because when I write down my thoughts, ink comes out my pen the color of blood.”

“How’s that ?”

He blinked his eyes at me, as if I was missing an obvious point.  The hairs in his eyelashes were so fair, they were almost transparent. He looked like a ghost. Like something that would melt under touch.

“The pen started to spit dark ink” He answered after a long uncomfortable pause. “Like tar. Like something that would come out the mouth of a dying person”

“isn’t blood red?”

He chuckled at my words and crushed ruthlessly his unfinished cigarette into the silver tray in front of him then drew another from his pocket and proceeded to light it.

As he fumbled with his lighter, I stared down at my face reflected on the untroubled surface of my black coffee. It was curious how my features seemed as if melting down under the pull of gravity, like wax. I sank a spoon into the drink and frizzled its surface but it only distorted my face further.

“ I thought you sharper than that. Let me tell you” He said at last like some prophet on the verge of o coming up with a new prophecy

 “ Don’t let them fool you. The true color of blood is black. Oxygen makes it red. When a person dies it regains its true color. Black.

Now, Are you certain you will publish my book?”

He pushed slightly a thick pile of paper across the table in my direction and let it hang at mid distance between us.

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t”

My publishing agency, on those days, was walking on thin ice, drawing its last breathes.

 He must’ve heard whispers of it. Yet, he never brought up the subject.

After the few last works turning up to be big disappointments, the morning papers had the blast of their lives, leaping up on the opportunity like leopards and dancing on the wreck of my sinking ship.

The headlines were always painful to read.

“The writers’ curse”

“The graveyard of books”..

I didn’t tell him, of course that, the pile of paper resting between us was indeed the last straw I was clinging to, the last hope to cleanse my name and the name of my company.

I needed something that would get me back on track. Something powerful. Something that would shake the entire writing industry.

“I am sure you have heard about what happened to my previous publisher. Haven’t you?”

His icy blue eyes were on the window, staring uninterestedly at the cadavers of the ships.

“ I heard he got into a misfortunate accident”

“Well...if you want to call it that...” He sighed heavily and fixed his eyes on me. An intense look sparkled in them as if the light blue held a certain voltage.

He continued:

“I don’t think pushing a muzzle down one’s throat and firing the trigger is considered  an accident.

They say the bullet tore skin and bone into his throat. He didn’t even have vocal cords left to scream with”

His hand hovered few millimeters above the pile of papers without ever touching it as if he was casting a sort of a spell.

A tattoo crept from under his long sleeved white shirt and crawled on the back of his hand to the birth of his fingers. It took me a long minute to make out the shape of it.

At first glance, I thought it a whip but as I looked closer it seemed like the sharp tongue of a venomous creature slithering and bending at its end where it split in two.

 I pondered for a second on the meaning behind it.

The dark surface of the coffee threw my distorted face back at me again. My right eye was running down like the yolk of an egg.

I tried to ignore it and focus on the vibration in his words and the dangerous sways of the viper on his arm.

“I don’t think it had anything to do with you. People commit suicide for various reasons.” I told him.

He sank bitterly into his seat and let out another sigh mixed with tobacco smoke as if he couldn’t get rid of me any sooner.

I thought about the venomous tongue of the creature crawling on his arm and whether he made the tattoo because he really believed his writing was poisoned.

“ I thought you, among all people would understand..but you ‘re just like the rest of them” He spat another cloud of smoke and disappeared behind it.

“You’re all alike.... like the same dull, cheap samples of the same product.” He kept breathing smoke like an infuriated dragon and disappearing behind it.

Just when he was making to leave, my right eye glided on my face like a teardrop and fell into the mug of coffee in a silent splash. 

Little droplets of the beverage climbed up onto the pile of paper between us.

In his fury, he didn’t seem to notice , nor mind the empty cavity left in my face.

“What does the tattoo mean” I asked him

“What are you saying?”

“The tattoo on the back of your hand , does it have any meaning?”

He examined his pale skin as if seeing it for the first time then his clear glittering eyes were on me again.

“What tattoo? I am against the whole concept of tattoos”

My eye was blinking at me from the far bottom of the mug. 

“You don’t have to go ....I am sure we still can come to an agreement.”

He made a silent guttural noise with his throat and sat back, massing his beard and staring at the ship wreck impatiently.

“Why don’t you drink your coffee” He turned back to face me.

I ignored his comment and stared silently at the glaring eye into the mug. It seemed to absorb the dark liquid and grow bigger and angrier by the minute.

“Your book...what is it about?”

He scratched his bald scalp lightly with three fingers.

“it’s about Adam and Eve and the their  paradise lost” He announced.

“Paradise lost....aren’t there enough books about that already?”

“Yeah...but this one is written in the devil’s perspective...I think you will find it interesting.”

“Umm”

“Eve didn’t lure Adam to bite the forbidden apple.” He started explaining before I got the chance to ask. “Adam and Eve both took that decision. And, unlike what the original story might give away, that decision that would later change the entire fate of humanity, wasn’t the child of desire, whatever that means- It was driven by the opposite of desire, indeed.”

“And what is the opposite of desire?”

“Dullness.” He clarified. “Emptiness. You can call it whatever you want. You can also call it the devil.

The devil doesn’t whisper words of desire in the ears of humanity. It sucks the desire out.

“Now you see, Adam and Eve dwelled in paradise for so long, they’ve already lost their paradise before even thinking of biting the forbidden apple.

I think, something inside them was rubbed dull. Let’s say.... the flame of life inside them flickered off.

And when days turned into replicas of each other, ceasing to have any name or order, there...in that very moment the devil was born. That moment too, was the moment paradise was lost.

 They both wanted to feel something...they wanted to know what it is like to suffer...so they dug their teeth into the juicy flesh of the fruit.”

“You’re saying that they were bored in paradise, that’s why they bit the apple?”

“All I’m saying is that a flawless world isn’t meant for flawed creatures.”

 He concluded, rubbing his beard and squashing another unfinished cigarette into the tray.

“I don’t think people can be bored in paradise..that’s nonsense.”

He chuckled.

“You know it’s in the human nature, to never be satisfied. Adam and Eve had enough of paradise.

They never wanted the apple. They simply wanted the thing that followed biting into it.

 They chose Hell. And Hell was what they got. What we all got.”

He took a long drag over his newly lit cigarette and as he did a fine thread of smoke climbed up to the skies.

I kept staring  at the glaring eye into the mug. By now it had absorbed all the liquid around it.

Like a beating black hole feeding on the universe, the pupil kept dilating and growing larger.

I glanced at my reflection on it. My pale face was surrounded by a dark circle.

“ Now why aren’t you drinking your coffee?”

He touched me with his right hand. When his skin collided with mine, a sharp sting awakened in me as if I’ve been struck by thunder.

I drew away my hand instantly and stared at it. The skin was red and swollen centered by two dots, like marks of a snake bite oozing with blood. The blood was dark. Like tar.

“ So suffering is the answer? To chase away dullness ? To conquer the devil?”

He remained silent. The promise of a smile played on his lips.

Poison coursed in my veins setting my body aflame. I felt the drops of sweat beading on my forehead and gliding on my spine.

But he didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he did, but decided not to care.

“I am going to the bathroom”

I pushed back the chair with two trembling hands. I felt his intense gaze burning into my skin like laser as I ran for the bathroom.

There, the merciless mirror threw my pale face back at me. It was missing an eye. The hole was dark and felt like there was no bottom to it.  I inspected it closer. It was so dark, I thought for a moment it was going to suck the rest of the world in it.

Dark blood rushed out the two little holes on my hand and the one that once hugged my eye.

The picture was horrifying. Like something only the devil could make you see.

 My fist smashed into the mirror and my face broke into a million little faces. All as horrific and nauseous.

I sweated from every pore in my skin and trembled with every muscle in my body.

The poison of his devil was spreading inside me like ink. I leaned on the wall and let my body slide down slowly to the tiled floor.

With the little energy I had left, I closed my trembling hand around a little shard of the mirror and pushed it deep into my right wrist. Tearing muscle and vein and smashing into bone. Blood and poison coursed out of me forming muddy black pools on the ground.

He would come in a few minutes. He would calmly inspect my unmoving cadaver with icy cold eyes. He would get a hint of how much I’d suffered. How his poison had eaten away at my flesh like burning acid.

He would rub his beard slowly then close the door and walk away.

As he passes by the forgotten skeletons of the dead ships buried in the port waters, a hint of a smile would play on his thin lips.

“She’d found it at last. Her paradise lost.”