Life in ruins

George had not realized how important his father's work was, until he met Marilou. Of course, there were hints before : the respectful nods of the habitués in the literary café, where he liked to frequent that were not justified by his own timid and unskilled early work ; the copyright money that came regularly from publishing houses all over the world, where the voluminous novels of his famous ancestor were still being sold ; last but not least, the thick pages in the school literature anthologies that made his life difficult in his student years, although they were the most innocent, the most easy to understand from his father’s thoughtful and gloomy universe.

Marilou, however, was the one who made him understand, talking to him about the initiated circle of her girlfriends. When we were students, she told him, we all five loved your father's work. We often went to the cemetery after class, sat on his grave, opened a bottle of red wine, toasted the dead and read aloud excerpts from his books. Moreover, we sometimes tried to embody his stories. I was always dressed in black, mourning the end of humanity, the destruction of nature and the extinction of all animal species, like Elena in "The end". And one summer we went on holiday to Rome and almost literally revived the story of "The great romance". Not to forget the way all five of us had sex, whenever we were given the opportunity, of course. We copied the pages of sodomy from "Lust for life", we pretended we were whores like the girls in "Dancing", we were lead to orgasmic frenzy like the maiden in "Rose cheeks'".

George had never been a diligent reader, let alone a fan of his father, and so he understood little of what Marilou told him. To him, the great writer was nothing more than a distant, rather distasteful male living in his house. A non-existent husband and an absent father, one day he declared he was going out to buy cigarettes and disappeared forever from the life of himself and his mother. They never found him, dead or alive. He left his last book incomplete, in the middle of a sentence, and this very endless novel became his absolute best-seller. His father was always a source of annoyance to him, a constant reminder of his own inadequacy, of his own lack of talent, a wound that did not seem to heal. Now he might finally find his father useful. Marilou was the ultimate male fantasy, an intelligent, lustful and beautiful woman. If his father was the passport to her body, mind and soul, George had no objection to using him.

And so, they started hanging out.

They went to a couple of bars, to a couple of expensive restaurants. They talked and talked and talked, then she told him all this was causing her boredom. She wanted to choose how they would spend their time together from now on. And she did. Marilou had an almost perverted mania for the ruined houses, always giving him an appointment outside a ruin she had discovered on her lonely walks and letting him entry first. It was not always easy, as many of these houses were well secured, with thick padlocks closing their worn gates, planks sealing their broken windows, beams hanging menacingly in the rooms and holes opening in the floors. After they both came in and George made sure they were safe and alone - once they were greeted by a whole family of refugees sleeping on the ground, another time they interrupted a junky while he was shooting heroin in his withered penis - Marilou lifted her long dress revealing her bear buttocks. As he dived, awefully, in her white flesh, she monologued, reciting entire verses from his father's books. She was kind of demon-possessed, as if a vicious and lustful spirit was guiding her.

He did not care at all that she was so crazy, so insane. In fact, he started enjoying it more and more, his body busting with longing for hers, his mind exploding full of ideas, he never seemed to find easily before. His writing was improving day by day. After each date with this mysterious woman, George sat in front of his computer and wrote for hours, with ease at last, as if his hand was guided by a magical force. Within a month of their acquaintance, an entire novel was almost born. A novel that, he believed, would be very different from his predecessors, a novel that would finally place him at the top of the world intellect. He only had a few pages left to finish it. And he had decided to do this in front of her, in front of his strange muse, to whom he would dedicate it when it was published.

Marilou arrived at his house dressed in her usual way, wearing one of her many long and black dresses. Wine was served and drunk, words of admiration and desire were said. The food was eaten, the music was heard. George asked her to sit in silence for a while, I want to finish this thing in front of you, he said, then slowly started writing the end he had imagined, but he felt he needed bad a cigarette for the big, shocking scene of the finale and his packet had just emptied, so he got up from his chair leaving the computer screen open, I will just run to buy a packet of cigarettes, he told her, she initially seemed to freeze and then tried to stop him by starting to kiss him full of madness and sudden longing, he pushed her softly at first, more violently afterwards, I honestly do not understand what the problem is, I will only need five minutes, so he went down the three floors on foot because the elevator was not operating again, and only when he was already on the road, when he had already crossed half the distance and could already see the 24hour open kiosk at the end of the boulevard, only then did he remember, only then did he realize that he would

Maria Tsoukana