[a.k.a. Celestial Lessons 002, a stand-alone narrative]

Another morning. Another day. I have to face it. Face her.

As I walk slowly towards the bedroom – her bedroom – I curse myself silently, at my accelerating heartbeat. It was actually louder than my footsteps. She might’ve woken up already, because of that, if not for the smell of her favourite morning coffee, bacon and eggs in the air.

Maybe it was the coffee. Have to stop taking coffee before seeing her.

OFF LIMITS. Read the sign on her door. A warning to me, I feel. Every morning. Do I heed it?

I don’t even bother to knock anymore. She couldn’t care less anyway. College life does that to you, I guess. I turn the knob and enter into a mess of a world, her world, clothes and bags, all over the floor, books and bras…

And there she lay. On the bed. Made for a queen. Tangled up in a heap of pink blankets, sprawled like a lazy cat, thick blonde hair covering her face, bare long legs dangling off the edge…

Curses.

At least she could’ve worn some clothes.

“No…” she groans, groggily, through the golden mane hiding her beautiful face, muffling her soft, husky voice. “Please tell me it’s not time already.”

“I can’t lie to you,” I lie, “you’ve got a seminar presentation this morning.”

“You’d make a terrible roommate, Kieran,” she replies, slowly getting up, folding her lithe catlike body into a sitting position, hair magically parting, emerald green eyes shining through, right through me like a laser beam – I have a thing for piercing green peepers – blanket strategically covering all that was needed to be revealed.

It was just pure torture. Just watching her. Skin the colour of peach glistening in the sliver of the morning sun rays sneaking through the curtains. Such a celestial body. Even the sun wants to take a peek at her, to wake her up, to touch her. What more a lowly being like me?

“I wouldn’t be your roommate even if you begged me to,” I lie again.

She smiles ever so lightly. Another laser beam shot right through me. I think she knew.

“I would’ve stayed at my dorm, if everyone there wasn’t trying to brutally murder me,” she explains, in that groggy intoxicating half-whisper, threatening to rip me apart, and those bedroom eyes, threatening to incinerate me with their laser power.

More excuses. The things I have to put up with.

Calm down now. Breathe. Keep your distance. Stay detached.

“Once more, your breakfast is made ready by yours truly…” I say as she flashes another smile, a brilliant one this time, more brilliant than the sun. It was only gratitude. And I just lose the words, whatever it is I was saying just now.

Stop this. Now.

One last look – I always keep vowing to never look at her this way again – and keep breaking that vow, every morning – I turn my eyes away from her beautiful face, as I say, “Mom’s gone like a ghost again. To work, I think. I’m gonna have to rush off, too. Got a killer Physics exam.”

Turning, walking away from her door, I hear her soft voice fading off, “Good luck, brother…”

I wish she could just stop calling me that.

[Also see: Celestial Lessons 001]

He lies there. Flat on his back. A mere white sheet covering for his modesty. She runs her fingers through his hair. Then traces his manly jawline. Ever so lightly. Admiring his obviously Eurasian features.

She smiles. A serene, satisfied smile. Her natural pink lipgloss glistens as her lips stretch, revealing a row of pearly white teeth, as white as the shirt on her body, and the sheet on his.

She leans in, whispering to his right ear, “Oh, Takeshi… you are the epitome of perfection.”

He does not respond to her enticements. He doesn’t even reply. Just lies there quietly, eyes staring out coldly to the ceiling above them.

“Cold. Too cold,” she continues, feinting disappointment. “But at least you let me touch you.”

She straightens herself up, fingers now running down his bare chest. The smile lingers. He lets her take control, still unresponsive, still staring above into the nothingness.

She sighs, “Such a perfect body…”

The door behind opens. Michael walks in.

“Diana, what the Hell are you doing?” he demands. His eyes fall to the naked Eurasian lying on the table. “That’s Takeshi, isn’t it?!”

Diana quickly removes her gloved hands from the Eurasian’s bare chest, and grabs the scalpel.

“Alright then,” she says to the naked body, tone suddenly changed from seductive to innocently merry, “Let’s find out the cause of your death.”

All there on a beach we sang,

Danced and so did the dark spaces on the sand.

Moving with me, finely cut out under the sun,

They had no qualms as I, liked the run.

Queer animals I drew on the wall,

That flew and barked till lighted was the hall.

Laughing them off, I turned to another curtain,

That had a fine outline of a lady who did refrain.

Tangible circles and slender fingers set her hair

That fell cascading, would have been for a fare.

Walked, I in a moonlit night.

Stretched from my feet till my sight,

A shaded patch, until I marked my jacket latch.

Me, spread on the street, but my eyes didn’t match.

All obscure, thankfully my tears n grins didn’t matter.

But the silhouette kept following for the better.

Back sometime in bright sunlight as I looked;

Funny shaped ovals ran through my book.

And funnily I gazed at my ruffled hair,

Earphones oddly fixed into my ear.

Later, three orbited to my left on the street;

Sharpening in turns, converging at my feet.

Shadows, thanks to each passing bulb dangling,

Darkened, to fade out with a step, past future and the lingering.

Past, future and the lingering I thought,

Stared and looked at what my gait brought.

The play of the lamps in line and my pace,

Paced, as three needles of a clock, at equal space.

A barking dog distracted me,

And lost I, my shaded trinity

“You’re a waste of breath. Nothing more then a piss poor embarrassment. I’ve wasted more then enough time on you, and won’t rest till you’re choking on your last drop of blood. You’re going to find out how bad I actually am. A parasite, the nameless leech that I will now refer to you as. You have taken almost nine years of my life. From then till now you have controlled me, Controlled every aspect of my life. I find it amusing that you think that I would be overtaken by the swarm of perturbation anymore. You are nothing more then a disorder, an infection….A parasite. I loathe what you have made me and I loathe what will become of me if I let you rule my life any further.”

“Did you really think that I would allow you to survive any longer? Parasites don’t live forever. I simper at the thought of your flesh burning away. Each layer of muscle will deteriorate, and the bone will turn to ash.

I am free, I am no longer a victim of you anymore. Say you’re last breath, enjoy you’re last gasp of air. When you’re lungs collapse and fill with blood, I’ll enjoy you asphyxiating on it.” So I pulled the trigger, and the man I had fought for the past nine years was dead. With a grin on my face I placed the lustrous metal gun to my head.

“I’ll never be controlled again” I pulled the trigger, Then blackness. I’m constrained. Tied down. Where am I?

This room. It’s white, neat and precise. There’s no padding so I’m not in a psych ward. It’s just white. The light was coruscating. I didn’t think I could feel pain after what I had done. I never was “Normal” as they put it. I never though of myself at different though. Is this what death is? We sit in a white room for eternity? Am I in purgatory.  Perhaps this is my personal hell where I’m destined to reflect on the hatred that has consumed for for so long. I want to get out of here. I want to leave this place, where ever this place is. My life is a complete lie. If you could call what I had a life. I feel like I’m dreaming. I could do anything, The floor is hard but strangely mailable. I can touch it. Caress it. I can feel it’s story, See it’s past. I am a parasite. I am a parasite. I see through objects and people and they never have a clue what I am. Good and Evil never existed in my head, Just them. They are what keeps me awake. They are what put me to sleep. They are everything and nothing to me. They give me advice and they punish me when I am “Wrong” or what is deemed wrong. They are long gone now. They will be forever. So will I. They will never understand why or how. They will never understand what has happened to me. Why it’s happened and why it has to keep happening. I am dead, I feel dead. If there was a mirror there would be nothing on the other side. I’ve tried reflecting but nothing comes back just darkness, Empty cold darkness. They never say me either I was completely invisible before They went away forever. Gone. They vanished in cold plain sight just as quickly as my reflection.

Parasite. The word rang in my head louder than any bell that had ever tolled.  All that had stuck with me through all this was a poem I had once read. “With god forsaken I am mistaken as nothing more than worthless. I am a man without a plan, yet a damaged one at that. I have no direction or any affection to an infection such as you.” The reason that I hung onto these words like I had nothing is because I did have nothing.

Mike Callaghan was bored of his work. With almost no vacation for ages and rather pain causing nature of his job (not to himself, though), he was left with no option but to consider resignation. But his employer won’t let him go. After all he was their best man on the field.

Mike missed all of his kids, who were now grown up enough to play with neutron guns. His lovely wife, whom he had promised a hundred more, would be waiting for him to plant his seed in her. The forthcoming trip to Somalia was the last thing on his mind.

Working with the merchant navy ensured his globetrotting under guise. But Mike wasn’t happy. This was going to be his last assignment. Mike had decided to put his foot down and demand a transfer at the least. Upon reaching the shore, Mike headed straight to the daily flea market of the town and opened a vial full of a gooey green goop that vapourised as soon as it came in contact with damp air. Soon the people Bossaso would be inflicted by a disease never known to man, only to spread it across the Dark Continent.

Not a tough job, but Mike had been doing this for aeons. Mike sat down on his desk and relayed a message across to his boss:

Agent Nebula: Project Africa Immunity Drain successfully deployed. Effects will be seen over a period of 22 years. 1.7 billion Humans targeted to be affected.

P.S.: I need a vacation.

Nebula unzipped the human skin-like polymer on his body and stretched his tentacles. Travel was tiring. Soon the slimy creature went to sleep to dream about his family. And that an inter galactic ship would soon come to take him home.

It was unreal. Control. She controls. She was unreal. Celeste.

He felt her eyes on him. Burning through. Controlling him. His every move, his every action, his every word, or lack of it. Almost like she had him on remote control. Was she really doing this to him? Why? Was she making him do this? Like the way he would stay up late at night, alone in his room, dark, silent, staring at the ceiling, doing things boys his age shouldn’t be doing anymore. The guilt. The shame. Pathetic. Was it all because of her?

He looked upon her like his elder sister. But that would just be wrong. He always did feel strangely protective over her, even though she didn’t really need anyone’s protection, like he did with his sister. But no, not like a sister. She was much more than that. Beyond that. No, ‘sister’ was just wrong.

Her lips moved. The Universe moved with them. With her. Around her. Around him as well. With him sucked in. Like a black hole. Inescapable gravity.

And as her words flowed around him, and the others whose presence, or rather, existence he never noticed anymore, her casually brief glances would feel like intensely burning hair-thin lines of invisible deadly laser beams searing right through his body, his skull, his soul, his ribcage. Yes, that’s just how it felt. To be under her ‘surveillance’. Like an escaped convict running from the blinding spotlights that seemed to be chasing him one moment, then pass by without a care, until the next beam intercepted him.

But he didn’t really want to run from the deadly beautiful laser beams or confounding spotlights of those emerald green eyes.

So why couldn’t he face them? Her.

“Kieran?”

Oh, the softness of her voice. The sound of his name on her lips. The resonance of the vibrating sound waves, too soft to move quarks, but powerful enough to move galaxies, even send them crashing into each other. But so lacking in any real emotion. Like the winter breeze. Cool, deadly beautiful, and sending chills down his spine. How that felt, good or bad, he wasn’t sure. Just unreal.

She called my name? he blinked. She called my name!

She moved towards him. Like a comet. A shooting star. Shining brightly against the darkness of this cold, empty Universe.

Celeste.

Oh no.

She moved closer. Towards him. Or just his general direction, he suddenly hoped.

And with that bleak half-hearted hope, space-time seemed to suddenly distort. Seconds dilated into aeons. The far edges of the Universe around them seemed to come to a standstill. Sounds became as loud as a vacuum, and it didn’t make sense since sounds don’t exist in vacuums. Yet she still moved.

The comet Celeste still hovered towards him at her steady pace. Her long brown hair slightly lagging in the space-time vortex behind her. And then the comet came to an impossible stop. Right before him.

Towering high above him like a beautiful Angel of Death, she asked him, softly, “Are you all right?”

“Um…” he struggled to find the words, “y-yes, Cel– …Miss Samson.”

“Really?” she asked again, so soft almost mocking, so casual almost teasing, “Have you been following everything I said?”

There it was again. Control.

The shining star was now the overwhelming black hole crushing him to the tiniest worthless particle with its infinite mass. Again.

Kieran only nodded helplessly.

Celeste smiled. Like a beautiful predator. Again that subtle mocking. That which only he could perceive. “Good then. Kieran Pittman, define Planck’s constant to the rest of the class, please.”

Now he was seriously doomed.

Let me see.  I have the croissants.  Nice and buttery, just how she likes them.

Such care has been taken.  How could she not forgive me?   It is the perfect setting for a reunion.

The tea is steeping.  Hmm, still a bit weak; perhaps another three or four minutes on that.  Sugar and cream.  Wait. I can’t remember if she takes sugar and cream.  It has been so long.  Better safe than sorry.  I’ll leave them out.

Oh yes…the final touch.  I must add plum blossoms.  Their fragrant aroma that filled the air at our first meeting, it will be a lovely touch.

Surely she will remember that day.  How lovely she looked.  Out walking, carefree, holding a blossom in her hand…so innocent.   I watched her from a distance.

Standing on tiptoe as she reached her slender arm into the trees, her dainty fingers dancing around the blossoms until she found the perfect bloom to pluck.

Perfect bloom in hand raising it to her nose to gently breathe in the wondrous scent.

Perfect blossom, perfect girl.  I knew I had to have her in my life.  No matter what.

Yes, a perfect plum blossom is just what this reunion needs.  This will remind her of all the joy.  How could she not forgive me?

****                     ****                     ****                     ****                     ****                     ****                     ****
I heard him come in this morning.  At first I thought it was to watch me sleep.  He often does that. Watching me sleep peacefully makes him calm, somehow reassures him that all he has done is right.

Soon I heard the flap of fabric. The tablecloth. Then the clinking of saucers and cups.  Then the delightful smell of fresh croissants.

My stomach is churning from hunger.  How delightful it would be toss back the covers and enjoy a wonderful buttery croissant.

No, I keep my back to the preparations and feign sleep a bit longer.  I do not want to give him the satisfaction of leaping from bed and praising all this work.

I hear him fussing over the proper arrangement of the table.  Let him fuss.

I drift back to memories of how life used to be.  One of my favorite pastimes:  walking through the park in early spring.  Blossoms budding on trees, fresh fragrant smells drift through the air, the promise of newness dancing throughout the park.

It is beautiful.

It is peaceful.

I wanted to take some of the newness with me.  I found the perfect plum blossom to carry with me.  After breathing in the marvelous scent I looked up to see him watching me.

Handsome.

Intense.    A bit of chit chat and smiles and then…well, here I am, months later.  Not what I had planned on.  I loathe the plum blossom that I picked that day because it brought him into my life.

My memories end.  I notice there is no movement on the other side of the room.  I slowly roll and peek to see if he is watching or if I am alone.  Thank goodness, alone.

I hear him in the garden.  Picking a damn blossom I am sure.

Oh, the sight of the croissants is too much.  I must eat.  I slowly move from bed, don’t want him to know I am awake yet.  I reach, but it is of no use.  My chained ankle holds me back.  Bastard.

How could I ever forgive him?

The apron strings wrap around with an inch less extra. Jesse didn’t sleep at home last night. Again. How many weeks does that make? His pillow still smells of the laundry, smooth, crisp and shocking against the threadbare sheets. When he sold his bicycle, he brought home new pillowcases instead of the groceries he promised.

“Colette! You have a table waiting. Chip-chop, hurry up.”

Giuseppe owns the cafe.  He’s not a bad sort, but he runs a business, not a charity and has no time for stories. He rules the kitchen. His wife Ariane sets the tables with bright tablecloths and flowers. Today is sticks covered in tiny pink flowers. She also picked out the flatware, a vague sort of industrial Wedgewood, blue over white. Ariane works the counter, filling coffe cups, smiling, gossiping. Her eyes follow me to my first table.

“My name is Colette, what can I get you for breakfast?”

The girl is me, wearing new clothes, new shoes, but five years younger. The hair is longer, the makeup sparse. But we are one. Our eyes are shining. Our lips are smiling. Our hand is heavy with a slender band of gold. The boy orders.

“Coffee, two cups. And a croissant.”

“I don’t think I could eat a thing. I’m too excited.”

“Coming right up.”

The boy’s hands move in the air between them, confident, aggressive, folding the world to fit their dreams, folding the girl to fit his hunger.

“Coffee, two. Croissant,” I call at the pass-through window. He is going to steal her into a cheap apartment and build walls layered with shame and love and guilt and blood so she can never leave. He can though. He can leave a garish pillow virginal on their mattress. He can leave the stone of the fruit.

“Take care of it,” he said. I refused. He walked out.

“Colette. Coffee.”

I take the empty cups and saucers and spoons to the table where heads are bowed, barely touching, whispering, lying.

“Coffee.”

I set the cups down hard, shaking water from the bowl of flowering branches. The boy and girl startle. Ariane stares. I pour the coffee, smiling. The croissant is on the counter, fresh, steaming. I walk back to it.

Ariane rests her hand on my arm as I reach for the plate.

“He is not Jesse. Let them be happy.”

Hot tears hit my eyes and everything softens and melds like a Cezanne. The little blossoms run together and dance upward along the branches, miniature bushes ablaze with pale fire. He is not Jesse.

I turn to wipe my eyes. Giuseppe is at the window, watching. Ariane is at my side. When I turn back, the table is empty, the coffee untouched, spoons crossed. Under the boy’s cup, a tip large enough for a week’s groceries.