Broken Mirror

The night comes quickly. A flood tide. Washing the daylight away and replacing it with a muddy ambiguity. I’ve always liked the night. There is comfort in it. Day time glares at me, asking too many questions. It’s where the drudgery of reality resides. The slavery of work takes over contaminating all else. Even the weekend isn’t immune. Snatched moments that cost too much in every possible way. A reminder of sold souls and miserable existence. At least when the lights go down, there’s the promise of respite and more. The prospect of magic in the midst of the fantasy of the obscurity of shadows.

What have I become? I ask myself as I skulk by a large metal bin awaiting answers I don’t think I will ever want to hear. This isn’t me. But then, this isn’t her either. I want to turn tail and merge with the alley. Allow the darkness to swallow me whole. But I am too late and I am ashamed. I’m shaking and nauseous. I tell myself that this isn’t fear that I’m feeling. That it’s something else entirely. We lie so readily to ourselves. And in this case, I’d rather lie to myself than face the truth of her lies. All the same, I stay where I am. My beleaguered body shutting down and freezing me to the spot as I see her once more.

There it is then. I was right. Why do we feel the need to be proven right even when the triumph of it is a death of sorts? I look on as she walks towards the bar. I’ve seen that walk before. I’ve seen her move with that purpose. There was a time when she only ever did that for me. There is a heady intent in that walk of hers and I desire her all the more for witnessing this provocative dance of hers. I want her with my very being. She is mine and I am hers, and yet here I am and there she is. Divided by a potholed street that has never seen better days. So close. A world apart. I watch my heart open the anonymous door and slip out of sight.

She wasn’t always like this. But isn’t that what they all say? I have stood knee deep in the river of our memories and panned for the gold. There was plenty of it and I pocketed it all. Some I swallowed for safe keeping. Making it a part of me, but never did it fill the insatiable hole she has created within me.

I can see now, that this was where it was always headed. She isn’t the same, and yet she always had all the makings of this. I recognise her still. I see her more clearly now than ever. I made of her something else whilst aiding and abetting this destiny. If she used me, then I was a willing participant in that use and if that is the case, then surely I used her.

I draw in a deep breath and stutter it back out. Leaning against the bin as I finish the exhalation. This grubby world shifts under my feet and I want to wet myself for dramatic effect. Somehow I manage not to give in to this attention seeking urge. Really I want to cry selfish tears. Mostly, I want her. I want her more now than I ever have.

My eyes remain open as I replay the sight of her. The heels and the skirt. The hypnotic movement of her arse as she walked towards the club. I drank in every square inch of her. I could almost smell her and my tastebuds danced at the memory of her taste. She seldom dressed like that, but when she did, it was for me. And for her. She enjoyed the theatre of it and the effect it had on me. Now she’s behind that closed door and I am here.

I love her. I always have. I was attracted to her from the very start. Attracted to everything about her. Every single thing. All of her. She reciprocated that love and we soon became inseparable. Never clinging to each other. Our love was that river. We flowed with an energy that cut through rocks.

Where did that go? My love still resides right here. Within me. I cannot bring myself to believe that her love has gone. Leaked through a fissure in the crust of the Earth and evaporated as it reached the core of the world.

I plunder my memories and hold them up to the amber streetlight whilst I wait. Examining artefacts from a different time and another life. Trying not to imagine her inside that club. Trying with a terrible fixation that provides me with myriad images of what she may be doing right now. My imagination tortures me even as I attempt to distract it. I suffer more than I deserve and know that I will always suffer. She will haunt me for the rest of my days, as do all those who you love and lose.

The future we lost is what hurts the most. I promised everything to her and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I’m a dried out leaf bobbing along on a tide of sorrow. My life isn’t my own anymore. I am hollowed out. Insubstantial. She was my purpose and my reason for being. I miss my heart. My love.

Yet my love endures, but now it is become a malevolent grief of a thing. A maelstrom of painful confusion. My head swims and a gravity of terrible sadness threatens to crush me with every breath of life I have the temerity to draw into a body that no longer has any worth or use. I am the walking dead. I just refuse to accept that I died when she walked out on me.

Once more, I want to abandon this foolhardy endeavour, but I don’t know the extent of either the endeavour or the abandonment. I consider a quiet place where I can curl up in a foetal ball, scrunch my eyes shut and wish for a rebirth. To start again. But there is no return to the womb. Not for the likes of I. I won’t be buried in the hope that I will sprout from the earth once more. I am for the fires of hell. I feel them warming my feet even now.

I eye the bin. We are fitting bedfellows. A one night stand arrangement. In the morning it will spew me out into the maw of the bin lorry and I will suffer another crushing disappointment of rejection.

An end. Always the fantasy of an end. A cessation of this dreary and pointless pain. My vain hope put to the sword. Hope is the catalyst for this awful existence of mine. However much I twist its neck and break its bones, it smiles up at me and promises me the happy ending that I so richly deserve. I am trapped by my hope. Hope is my refusal to die. I am a zombie infected with the stuff. And I am hungry for her flesh. I would laugh at the absurdity of my plight if my body had the motor memory to do so. Instead I shudder as the ghost of my laughter passes through me.

Then she is walking out of the club and back onto the street. The door doesn’t close directly behind her and I see she is leading a man out with her. They are both smiling knowing smiles. Their agendas writ large upon their faces. I stop breathing. This is where I get my answers. This is when I have to accept the change that has already occurred.

She glances across the street. It is a fleeting moment, but in that moment there is a wealth of knowledge that begs my understanding. I would that I could refuse it, but I can’t and I won’t. I close my eyes to the reality unfolding before me and when I open them I have successfully erased the entirety of the world save for this scene. The three of us are players and this is the final act. When the play is done, I have no care for where it is I am headed.

Pushing him playfully against the wall, she presses herself against him and they kiss the kiss of lovers. The kiss isn’t only a prelude, it is in itself an act of penetration and defilement. I want to hate her for it. Most of all, I want to be him. I remember the feeling of her body pressed against mine. The heat of our wanting. The way we lost ourselves in each other. I have never felt so at one with someone. She blew my mind, enslaved my body and then she stole my heart and broke it into a million pieces. Shattering it like a black mirror. Seven years of bad luck, then the devil awaits.

She moves against him as they kiss more and more passionately. I am transfixed. A pathetic voyeur who can no longer get it up. Reliving a time when he could. Sordid wish fulfilment as I cut myself to shreds with the rusty blade of what I cannot have.

The kiss goes on for an age. They are breathing each other in and drowning in an atmosphere that can only sustain them for a short while. It is he who comes up for air first. Pushing her back a little whilst he draws in the grubby night air. She taunts him, slipping a hand down to the site of his self-betrayal. He looks askance of her. There is confusion in that look of his. He is out of his depth, but he won’t admit it and that reluctance to admit defeat will be his downfall.

Almost too late I have the presence of mind to withdraw further into the shadows of the alley. They are already on the move and she is leading him towards me. Of course she is. That was always going to be the way of it. I step backwards, not wanting to take my eyes from her. Unable to look away. There is an awful detachment here. A dream like quality. She was my dream. Now she is my nightmare.

I stumble and almost cry out. Steadying myself, I am thankful that they have come to a halt opposite the bin. There is enough light to see them by and were they to look towards me I am sufficiently cloaked in the conspiratorial dark of the alley.

Resuming their embrace, she kisses him with deeper intent. Her body moves against his and there is no mistaking what she is about. She wants him and she won’t be denied. He is almost passive in this process. Barely believing his luck. This sort of thing never happens to him. It is a rare thing. He has been chosen and already he is losing himself to her passion.

Remembering himself he attempts to take some semblance of control. His aim is to turn the tables, but she is having none of it. She grabs his wrists and pins him firmly. Breaking off from their kiss to look deeply into his eyes. Using silence she communicates exactly what is expected of him. The confusion is there on his face again, subsiding into resignation. He grunts as she releases one of his wrists and returns her hand to where he is weakest. Deftly she frees him and now she has him pinned in a manner that takes all control from him. They kiss again and she dominates him with that kiss. He is hers now and gives himself over to the pleasure of it. When the third kiss ends, she smiles at him and still he doesn’t understand the truth of it. He is too far gone and she knows it. As she strokes him to his petite mort, she leans in and kisses his neck. He moans with pleasure and pulls her closer. She needs no further invitation. Her teeth penetrate him, he cries out and then he is shuddering in a heady mix of pleasure and pain. The pain quickly subsiding to afford him the most pleasurable of endings.

I watch it all and I cry silent tears for the loss of everything. There before me is my love and my betrayal. Now crouching over her victim, she continues to feed until she is fully sated. Taking everything from him in a symbolic act that mirrors the way it ended with us.

Only it never ended. It could never end. My love was real. Our love was real. Eternal. We are forever entwined. That is why I am here. I couldn’t stay away. A moth to the flame of her heat. Despite everything, I want her. I will do anything for her. Anything to make it right. Anything so we can be together again.

She rises and straightens up. My heart skips a beat as she turns and smiles at me. Her skin impossibly pale. Her lips red and alluring. As she walks towards me, I open my arms in an invitation of embrace and an act of submission. Her smile deepens and her eyes sparkle with a familiar mischief. I respond to her and the memory of everything we have shared. I will be whole again in our embrace. She is the missing piece of me that I have so yearned for.

I pull her into me as our bodies gently collide and I am transported to the heaven that I once holidayed in. I feel her relax against me in the most intimate of ways and I have a shock of doubt as her warmth seeps into a heart that has been absent for too long. I falter and my hope yet again disarms me, telling me soothingly that everything will be alright. I’ll never know whether she says those words or they reside only in my fevered mind. I am reeling and losing myself in her once more when I feel her teeth against my neck. Suddenly there is no warmth. She is cold stone and I am trapped.

She wasn’t always like this. We were married once and blissfully happy. I loved her then, and I love her now. We were made for each other and we tasted bliss and wanted it to last forever. Nothing lasts forever though. Not even this creature made of stone. I feel her teeth go deeper and then she is lapping and sucking at me and I can’t help but respond. I want this. I want her. This is all I have ever wanted. To lose myself entirely in her. Entirely to her.

There is a part of me that wants more though. Wants what was. Wants to make things right. This is how it is meant to be. This is what we planned. I flick the lid of the small bottle open and I pour half of it over her head. The other half is for me. I feel the cool liquid wetting my hair and I await my end. Our end.

At first, nothing happens and I drift dreamily in a single disjointed sigh of a word oh! I think to myself that I must’ve made a slight miscalculation. Still, this isn’t a bad way to go. The last thing I will remember is her and the approximation of the loving embraces we once shared. I catch myself in a lie in my final moments and quite frankly, I don’t care. It’s a good lie and I will take it. There is worse. Far worse.

Her screams and cries aren’t in the world. They are inside of me. Her wide eyes form a question, why!? How could you!? I loved you!

I watch as she comprehends her end, and I smile because we are in this together. We have always been in this together. We will be reunited again now. I begin to form the words I need to say to her in answer. The words that will make it all make sense. But she isn’t listening. She cannot listen. Not anymore. She’s collapsing in on herself and the sight of it is terrible. There is nothing inside her. The holy water is deconstructing a husk where once there was my love. She is empty inside and it’s all going so wrong. This isn’t happening. This isn’t what I wanted.

I cannot tell her I love her. That moment is gone. And then the reality of my situation comes crashing in. There is no burning. There is no end for me. My fingers find my neck and come back bloodied, so why then is the holy water having no effect upon me? Why is she gone and I am still here?

Why does it still hurt so much?

Why am I alone in this world? Left to suffer pain of the greatest of losses. The grief of an endless end.

My fingers return to my neck and I swoon as I realise what this wound means for me. With her final kiss, she has bestowed upon me life eternal. I recall the look in her eyes, and now I see the hurt in them and behind the hurt. Love. She loved me to the bitter end, and she wanted me to be with her forever.

I have destroyed the woman I loved. I have destroyed our love. In the thrall of that dire realisation I feel my heart cool and turn to stone. I die inside and I become something truly monstrous.

The night shrinks away from me. I am darkness itself. The darkness that we are born fearing. The darkness that resides within but is tempered by the light of love.

That light blinks out as my heart beats its last.