Lie To Me

I hold on to the moments after. I hold on to a lot of things, sometimes too much, and for too long. My hands are full.

Incubus

Friday, 7th October 1968

Like a scene right out of a medieval story, everything had a special intricacy to it. Like how the cracks on the bridge carved out a pattern, or how the waters gave off little shimmers of gold under the setting sun. The girl that stood by the bridge, the girl: she completed the scene. Her every feature – from the slight crookedness of her nose bridge to her perfect porcelain skin – complimented her surroundings. Her hair moved with the wind, and sounded like the soft rustling of leaves. She was reading a book, but the title of it fails me. All I could remember was the way she whispered the words, the quiet way her fingers moved across the page, and how much she respected the book – afraid to crease its pages or stain its cover. She didn’t even look my way once, but it was at that precise moment in time that I fell in love with Ivy.

Ivy. Even her name sent chills down my spine. Poison Ivy, my mother called her. No good would come from that girl, she said. But like all children, and like all people trapped in the clutches of love, I failed to listen. Ivy was my sun, and she was my moon. Without her, I would know no night or day. She had the power to reflect each person’s soul in her eyes, and it was in them that I lost myself, as did many others…

Monday, 10th October 1968

It takes 232 steps to reach her doorstep. I counted them as I left my apartment to get her flowers. The florist wrapped the lilies and made small talk. “They’re for your girl, sir?”, she asked. I replied yes, and she told me Ivy was a lucky girl. Merely smiling, I paid and left with the lilies, which smelled like morning. Of course Ivy was a fortunate girl. I was a man who had so much to offer. I’m not talking about just money, or other material possessions (of which I am wholly capable of giving). Those things were just the tip of the iceberg. For Ivy, I could offer my life.

As I placed the lilies on her doorstep, I noticed boxes, dozens of them, sitting by the lift. Maybe she was spring cleaning? I didn’t mull over it. Why think about boxes when I could think of Ivy’s smile as she opened the door to those lilies? Her sweet smile, her soft whispering lips…ah, I could kill for those lips on mine. I swear.

Wednesday, 12th October 1968

I’m sitting at my desk in my office. Each day here unravels itself the same way it did yesterday. This place is filled with incompetent morons. Utterly weak and insane imbeciles. They patter around like they have passion and love for life and what they do, but I see through all of them like glass. Tim has a wife he claims he loves every chance he gets, but I’ve seen him at the entrances of strip clubs. Wendy loves her job, loves her boyfriend, and loves her life. She loves me too apparently, as she confessed to me once when she came in to the office reeking of alcohol. She tried to come on to me, and when I slapped her away she screamed before she passed out from the force I exerted. “Why don’t you love me?!”

Like I said, weak and insane morons, every single one of them.

The only thing that keeps me going in this cesspool is the knowledge that she will be waiting by her living room, waiting for me to peer through her window while she’s channel-surfing. I know she knows I’m there. I’ve seen her glance by the window once or twice, but I never reveal myself. I know she likes it when I play hard to get. I know she wants me…only me.

Thursday, 13th October 1968

She wasn’t home last night, awaiting my quiet arrival. Not seeing her ignites a hunger in me. I lust for her; her hair which looks like nectar when the sun shines upon it, her sultry eyes like tunnels leading to…nothingness, or bliss. After realising she wasn’t going to appear, I squeezed my eyes shut, clenched my teeth, my breaths came in ragged gasps. My hands felt like terrible claws, wicked with hunger. The feeling of not seeing her, it stings. This hunger for a glimpse of her…it’s insatiable. It eats me up inside. Do you know this, Ivy?

Ivy. My eyes are always ready for you. They wish to grapple you and lay you down on white sheets. I would take you in my arms, protect you from your nightmares, soar with you in your dreams. The seeds of love have taken hold…and we shall burn together.

Friday, 14th October 1968

I haven’t seen her in over a week. I was supposed to drop by today, with a note, another tepid warning of desires in my heart. But my mother landed in the hospital from a careless fall in the shower, and the flowers that were supposed to be for Ivy ended up by her bedside in the hospital instead. That stupid woman. Her carelessness had cost me. As I sat by her bedside pretending to care while she complained about the horrendous hospital food, my propensity to yank out her IV and watch her bleed all over the sheets was so intense that I had to leave the room. My hands shook, won’t stop shaking. My soul has been spray painted carelessly with an infection – an incurable ailment – and it leaves my mind peeling with flecks of disorder and disarray. I am heartsick.

Ivy, you must think I have forgotten about you. Let me assure you, I have not. My heart burns with every image of you I conjure in my mind, and it etches a mark in me as deep as my love for you. Do not fret, you will see me soon. Till then, take my imaginary hands and place them around yourself. Assuage your fears with them, and know that soon there will be no more fear at all…nothing but us.

Saturday, 15th October 1968

She has vanished. Her apartment was stripped bare, vacant and empty, as is my heart. Where has she gone? Why has she left me, her chosen man, her only man?

This is not happening. Is it? Real, unreal, truth, lies, lies! She is still here, she is playing with my mind, she couldn’t possibly have left me! Lies…my mind is playing tricks on me. Vacant apartment? Of course not, I must have looked in the wrong window. Oh Jack Pryke! The insensibility of it all! Of course I looked in the wrong window! Third from left, no, fourth from left, or…?

Has she really left me?

Tuesday, 18th October the time does not matter because time is boundless like how I wait for you Ivy dear Ivy like the time I spend under covers exploring seeking always seeking but never finding why have you left me? each moment I spend searching for you feels like a year a lifetime an eternity infinite moments lining up infinite time I thought it would be us for eternity? hurts hurts hurts it burns oh my heart how it burns for you poison ivy it burns for you the seeds of love have taken hold and if you won’t burn with me I’ll burn alone

Thursday 20th October 1968

She’s gone. Third window from the left. Vacant apartment, with none of the regular fixtures of dark mahogany wood and flowing white curtains she never drew. It’s empty. She’s gone. So am I. I look at my reflection in the mirror and touch its cold rigid surface with my fingers, point at my eyes and say, “Vanish,” but it is the reflection that will stay; I am the one who is vanishing.

Sunday, 23rd October 1968

I picture her in the depths of my imagination, and she is wearing a yellow sundress and sitting barefoot in the grass. I picture her placid form lying on white sheets, and she is looking at me with those grey piercing eyes, which speak to me in the language of the wind – silent yet intense. I picture us in a dozen scenarios, and every moment in which I relish in, I know a little bit of me is lost, the little bit of sanity left in me will slip away like sand through our fingers. But I don’t try to hold on. If having her is tragic, then give me tragedy. Because I wouldn’t give her back for the world.

Her leaving me…it isn’t the end. With this last page, I will a keep a promise to find her. So once again, she will know that I, Jack Pryke, am more than worthy for her love, and that I shall be the only man she will ever hold.

I will find her.

Hate,

“She doesn’t yet realize that love unreturned eventually transforms into a fierce tangled mess, nerves and entrails exposed like split animal innards. She doesn’t understand that sometimes the unrequited must demand reparations, that love can be a mean and spiteful process, that sometimes one loses patience with love. So, when the nerves and guts have seemingly been packed away, sewn in and cleaned up so as not to make all the innocent bystanders uncomfortable, the carrier of this love becomes heavy with a toxic lump that grows, slowly and steadily, into a fierce ball of scarred tissue.

Located two ribs below the heart, it is called hate.”

-Skinny, Ibi Kaslik

Time will never be a factor. This is how it’s going to be. Everything is starting to feel far away; a copy of a copy of a copy. The distance of everything, I can’t touch anything and nothing can touch me. Two ribs below my heart, the emotion festers and morphs, it tortures. But I don’t try to assuage it. I don’t have anything to lose anymore.