MEMORIES OF VIOLET

Violet died.

It wasn't a hard death, at least not physically.

When it was discovered that she had uterine cancer, it had spread throughout her body, so nothing could be done and there was no time. She died six months after she threw me out on the street. I remember the last thing she said to me was: "Don't ever come back. I don't want to see you again."

She got what she wished for.

My name is Elim.

I live in a place you've never heard of, and I probably wouldn't even know it existed if, ironically, I didn't live there. Nothing special can be said about that city except that people there love masks. They like to use masks in everything they do; masks are their way of life. When they talk to you, they wear a mask; when they go to work, they wear a mask. You never get a chance to get to know the person under the mask.

Violet was an expert in masks, a collector would be the right word for her.

She had a mask for every occasion, sometimes several variants of one mask. In my eyes, I classified her as a "control freak," a person who always had to have everything under control. From her appearance, how she pronounced sentences, and all the way to the extreme.

Someone might say that it is not nice to talk badly about the deceased. I don't care what anyone thinks about it. I lived with that woman for seventeen years and have every right to speak about her as I wish. I didn't have a nice word to say about her while she was alive, why should I change that now? I hope she suffers wherever she is as much as she has caused me. Sounds ugly, doesn't it? When you read something like that and think what a terrible person I am. But you do not know anything about me, do you? You make an opinion about me based on two or three sentences that I wrote in an ugly way. You have no idea who I am and who Violet is.

People in this town are superstitious — they will say they are wise. How is it possible that we have so different opinions about the same thing? Probably because they believe in the supernatural. I am not talking about believing in "heaven" and "hell," but in those incredible myths that grandmothers used to scare their children when they were "naughty." You know what I mean. Witches, werewolves, and the other monsters.

In this city, they believe that the dead return when there is a solar eclipse in the sky.

The first time I heard about that myth, I laughed for a half hour while wiping my tears, and holding my stomach as it hurt from the convulsions.

I mean, really? Solar eclipse brings back the dead?

“Come on, you can do better than that,” I told them, grinning from ear to ear.

They explained to me that the dead don't come back, but the memories of them, and haunt you all day without leaving you alone.

It's not that solar eclipses happen every year, but today it appeared. I can attend that seemingly mysterious event for the first time in my life. Supposedly, the next eclipse will be again in twenty years.

I'll admit, my skepticism quickly subsided when I realized I'd been thinking about Violet since I got up. I even believe that I dreamed about her last night. And now a part of me is starting to believe in the myth that memories of her have come back to haunt me. Damn solar eclipse. As if she didn't haunt me enough while she was alive.

Again, someone could misunderstand that I hate Violet. Wrong again. For me to hate her, it means that I would have to have at least some feeling for her, and she sucked that out of me a long time ago, even while she was alive. Because that is what emotional vampires do. They drain your emotions and energy until you are an empty shell. I almost became that, an empty shell of a man.

Fortunately, mine, of course, I managed to bring her to the highest stage of her anger, so she drove me away. She saved my life with that. Of course, it wasn't her intention, she simply lost control and her mask fell from her face, revealing the monster she was from the start.

Who can take a two-year-old child under his care and never tell him that he loves him, is proud of him, and calls him son? All that matters to her is the money she receives for him every month. Is that a mother? I do not know, I've never met her or had her.

At the age of sixteen, I believed that I would become a serial killer, only because all the women in my life failed and left me. I never had murderous thoughts or hatred towards women, in fact, I worshipped them more every time I was hurt. Sadism, maybe? I would not know. I believe that psychologists would have a hundred words about it.

Violet appeared just as the people said she would. She came to haunt me, at least for one day. It doesn't matter that that eclipse in the sky lasts barely five minutes; it will stay in my mind for the whole day if not longer.

Violet didn't like doctors, that's not an understatement, she hated them. Regardless, she had no reason to. But she was like that. She hated me too, although she had no reason to. Never.

For her, doctors were predators who were just waiting for her to show up to them so they could "open" and "cut" her. She shuddered at the thought of going to the doctor for an examination. Her justification was always the same: "As soon as you go to the doctor, they will find something is wrong with you." However, it turned out that she was right. When she finally went to one of them, they found cancer. Irony is a bitch, isn't it?

I never understood where all this hatred towards me came from. Seventeen years of hatred poisons your mind and body. Is that a reason she got cancer? It crossed my mind a hundred times, and I promised myself at the same time that I would never hate anyone. And I stick to it.

Even now that the devil's solar eclipse darkens the sun and Violet haunts my thoughts, I don't hate her. I'm just angry that I can't get answers from her, but only memories that I would rather hide in the dark basement of my subconscious where I left them the day I attended her funeral.

Are you surprised?

Huh, you did not expect me to be at her funeral, did you?

But I was.

I stayed in her house for the next year, taking care of her husband and her son, who also pushed me away a year later, blaming me for her death. Some things don't change whether she's alive or not. The poison she left behind eventually affects everyone nearby.

It comforts me that I will never be like you, Violet, that I am nothing like you. And I am grateful for showing me how great a person I really am and not a damaged being that no one wants or loves like you reminded me for seventeen years. My only misfortune was that I grew up surrounded by the wrong people. Or you were the right person for me from the start. I do not know, time will tell.

This solar eclipse will disappear and these memories that I am reliving will disappear, but if we meet again in twenty years, I hope I can write something similar to this again. To show you that I am still a better person than you ever were.

Find your peace, Violet.