Covenant

It must have been around noon, when she realized how badly the snowstorm hit the city and fed all local media channels with war-like traffic reports: everything was covered in virtuous white. White shit falling happily down from a crazy-land, owned by some cryogenic gods. Frozen state for heartless times. Christmas was still a month away. Gift list forgotten in a Barbie-colored app. Bills lined up and ignored for weeks in her inbox. Whiskey bottle standing tall and courageous like a Viking warrior blinking twice and meaning yes. “Yes, take me! I want to be touched by your gentle hands”. And she did. She took the bottle with both hands, giving to it the desired firm grip of a skilled alcoholic. Sirens were blaring somewhere around, close by and far. The cacophony of car alarms, firefighter trucks and ambulances in the symphony of the first major storm of the season made her teeth clenched. Just to open them back up for the libation to splurge right into her spongy papillae. 

The noon drink is the best delayed gratification, she thought, without letting the bottle off of her grip: taste buds, invited to a day party. Mind, invited to a swirly walk down memory lane, with lost gravity and beginner sex. 30 years ago, buffered by just a blink of an old eye and wrinkled by long years of unsatisfied desire.  

It was a couple of weeks before her 17th birthday and it was freezing cold, even under the blanket. Rococo beige patterns spread over her body. It was terrifying to realize she was literally 3 thrusts away from losing her virginity. Sticky between her legs. It was another kind of stickiness than the regular one and it smelled like weird soap. 

The above-mentioned stickiness had been planned and discussed, analyzed and programmed for about 3 months. Like a family reunion. We invite uncle John and his second wife, his kids, and my two cousins from my mom's side. Just that this time the invitation was much shorter: bring your own dinky, I will bring my pussy, we meet in the middle, don’t be late. 

He sat up to reach the smokes on the nightstand table. His bare chest rolled so closely in front of her eyes that his skin needed a photoshop filter to be called “skin”. His hair brushed lightly on her forehead like she was being christened. He took a cigarette out with only two fingers. The smoke danced in philosophical circles out of his lips to travel across the room right into the murderous ceiling, where it died in an upside-down twirly splash. She was afraid to talk. He was afraid to move. The planet was afraid to keep on spinning. After long seconds of indecision, she did talk, he did move and the earth squeaked to the next time zone. But her words were crooked, like she was having a stroke and his limbs were uncoordinated like he was sprinting in a bathtub.  

The memories came in fragments, waiting for her to put them back in order. Any order. 

It was in the first years after the fall of the communist regime, out of a long dark time of fear, hunger, insecurity and political terror. First coca-cola bottle, first pair of jeans bought together, first perfume with unpronounceable French name, first bun rolled around an overcooked hotdog, first shy and shameful encounter of body juices, first promise, first lie, first denial. They spent hours reading and drawing each other in uncomfortable sitting positions on the National Theater stairs, with the sunlight changing their hair color. They got drunk, they smoked, they wrote poems and counted each other fingers, toes, hearts, orgasms. 

Time had stopped for them: young Fausts, closing their first deal. With the famous Mephisto. The pact that would cost them everything, especially heartbeats. Mephisto knew it, they didn’t. Once signed, the pact held their very own blood, shaken and stirred like James Bond’s martini. Clearly stated, with stars as witness and (Me)Phisto as torturer, the pact read: they cannot love anybody else like they do love each other right now. 

Delusionally thinking they were set for life and that nothing would disturb the peace of such love-you-forever pact, they started walking straight into their doomsday. Yet, a pact is a pact is a pact, as Mephisto is a jerk is a jerk... Perhaps, one day, in an unknown ditch of the Inferno, or in other punishing hell, they’ll face again the handler of their terrible destiny. What would she say? What would she do? It’d be too late, anyways. Right the second they said yes, happily and worryless, to the prospect of heart beating the same beat till death claims their last breaths, the scrawny lady in black spread a victorious smile over all her boney face. Her fingers clutched around a future door knob, waiting like a kid to get on the rollercoaster ride at the 6 flags park, would step in the room, walk to the death bed and take quickly what belongs to her: both their breaths. 

Holding in her fist their tarnished breaths and stuffing in her side pocket their miserable lives, the lady Death would check the names on the list, write a short report with date, time, exact location and maybe weather conditions. Then she would send out the details to higher-ups or higher-downs, depending on the narrative of such highers, and head off to the next mission. Nothing clear yet about the hierarchy of the underworld, not specified by Mephisto, not included in any Wikipedia entry. In fact, nobody knows for sure how this works, but there are plenty of made-up stories and tales. “When I saw death, I thought this and that, I said this and that, then she took me by the hand and we walked together towards a peaceful white light!” Up to this point, stories seem to follow similar patterns. Beyond that point, what happens after stepping into the milky light, stays obviously in the milky light. 

Milky light is for death what Las Vegas is for drunkenness.

She ferociously tried to push the memory of that night out of her mind. Yet, his blue eyes were tattooed in her head. And Mephisto’s voice was still lingering in her ears. The recollection was stubborn enough to stick around and interfere with the benefits of alcohol. They usually go well together - alcohol and down-memory-lane tango -, but this time they seem to despise each other and throw injectives left and right. “Let me enjoy the taste of my forever-lost youth”, said the memory, whereas the alcohol replied with a sultry voice “I was here first, even when you were not even around.” 

The words haven’t been said out loud. Not once. Not in each other's presence. Not with witnesses or awareness. Because words have a way of deceiving reality and then twisting it endlessly for the benefit of higher-ups or higher-downs. 

“Mom, you drank again. What the hell? You promised…”, Anna’s voice drilled a bleeding hole in her alcoholic dream. “Stop yelling at me like a battalion of harpies! I’m as good as sober! What’s this seventh ring of hell doing in my kitchen?”, she tried to be smart, hoping Anna would miss the reference and ask about the ring and the hell… Yet, she didn’t bite on it. Instead, she waved her hand in desperation and anger. “I know you are in pain, but you have to put yourself together. Booze won’t bring him back!”. “But being sober will?”, she snapped. “I don’t know, but you don’t stand a chance if you're drunk! Hold on!, and they both turned to each other, suddenly understanding the booze has nothing to do with anything. “Who are you talking about?”.

In that very moment, they both understood how parallel their dialogue vectors were. 

In fact, not sobriety or secrets, but silence and unsaid words were the main topic. The silence wrapped like an onion around a secret she buried at the bottom of each finished gin bottle: a trophy growing in value only with alcohol add-ons and years carved in the skin of her secret. But enough about secrets! Because all ruins end up being uncovered by a skilful mind and questioned with diligence under the light of an inquisitorial curiosity. Whose curiosity in her case? Anna’s? Will she start silently digging into the past or vocally trumpeting arguments? Eventually, everything that’s been kept locked up in the shame-chest comes out and blows in the face of any story. Who knows the truth might go to the grave with it, but some traces remain for sure above the grave, haunting the story behind the story behind the story. What scares her the most now, in the trenches of kitchen-turned-Infeno, is not Anna or her future discoveries, but the story willing to unfold itself like the eye of a storm in the middle of the ocean: the same story she hid with diligence in time wrinkles.