The woman silently entered in the room. I looked at her in awe. She was freshly-washed and bare-faced, pitch-purple hair still humid and so long it looked like waves of ink pooling around her. The room was completely silent and there was something between us, something that was a direct echo, a lingering feeling in my mouth like an after-taste, a wavering light in her eyes as if she knew something no one else did. No longer could I bear looking at her for more than a few seconds. This would continue after this first realisation. A strange dance ensued between us, intense eyes trying to hold mine and mine always looking away, because i was haunted by the presence of a dead woman living on, my past lover coming and going in unpredictable visits, disappearing for weeks and suddenly violently present, catching me off guard at work and dinner works. It made me want to throw a hand over my eyes, hide under my skin, call for help, make her leave. Then, an idea appeared before me: I wanted to betray the woman I loved since the dawn of time, the awfulness of being haunted by my own guilty mind completely made me go insane and I will soon be freed from the chains of my own madness.
Kafka’s presence bothered me irrationally, and I almost gave into the compulsion of shattering her clothes with my teeth. She carried a vanilla scent and she watched the sunlight knocks my cold doors, the way it cladded with jubilation. When I was about to undress myself, she went on the top of my bed and I could sense something in her eyes — something so intense, burning in sapphire eyes whose flame and passion struggled to be tamed. the gates of hell would shiver in comparaison. Her perfume — mingled with a hundred white lilies left a tender smell in the room. Kafka hovered over me.
”Don’t let other people see you like this.”
Oh, god. I would lie if I said this didn’t turn me on.
I slightly undressed myself more and replied ”Is this okay if I do this in front of you?”. The echo of silence resonated in the room and I could hear her eyes telling me ”Be careful in what you wish for”. My nipples were painfully. Hard. Pleasure begins to build in the pit of my stomach. I looked at her and nodded. Then everything went very quickly. She pulled my hair and whispered to my ear ”You’re paying for new sheets.”
What a way to ruin the mood.
The next day I was working, trying to repair my long-forgotten broken pieces. I was thinking about last night. The girl from my dream was a mystery; I liked to think that she was not from this world. Her soft, familiar features, born when a star fell and landed in our place, delicate. She moved elegantly, smoothly, as if she could predict the immediate future and so attuned to the world around her no sound went unnoticed; and no smell went ignored.
Serval looked up and accidentally touched some lady passing by.
Suddenly, a memory appeared before her. She felt like she couldn’t move her body. It felt familiar yet so distant to her. A gold-haired lady was standing in front of her in a fancy dress. It was the last time she saw Cocolia, she was playing her favorite song with her cherished piano. It was spring, a very cold spring, a season that no lover can completely ignore, and a strangely blooming one: the warmth was comforting. It felt like Cocolia.
This was the first spring I experienced with her, and I felt as if it was the last spring to ever touch the world.
“I’ve always disliked that song of yours.” Cocolia’s voice was as soft as the feather ornement in her hair itself, and yet it clutched my fingers and stopped their movement, hands floating over ivory keys, golden-white atop golden-white, an unfinished note lingering between us.
”You did?“ I slowly, muttered, like i was digesting every word, trying to not raise my eyes towards her. Trying to not look at the object of my desire, of my long-longing beloved. Very long-longing. My tears were slowly rolling down my face. Years of memories coming to my mind, hours of laughing and listening to tender songs. Did you always pretend to like them?
”You used to say that you loved this song,” I repeated, more to myself than to her, even more quietly now, like a silent prayer, like a spell yet to be casted, as if the rhythm of the words were entwined with lost magic.
“You said that this song was important to you. To us.” She paused a moment before looking right into my eyes and saying the most devastating thing she have ever said to me: ”I don’t recall any of that.” This time i didn’t have the courage to answer. My body felt numb. My voice felt weak. My eyes felt like it was deceiving me. I felt resentment in my own voice, I was so stunned with grief, still hearing Cocolia’s happy voice praising my songs, still hearing the sound of her voice echoing inside my ears and piercing the room. I went back to playing. I had always thought this song sounded like our first encounter— too immature and incomplete.
“Why do you dislike it?” I looked towards Cocolia without stopping my fingers as if it was a challenge against myself. She was picking up things off the floor, and then looked at me like I was asking her the most confusing thing in the world. I didn’t waver, I repeated my question.
”Why do you dislike my song?” She walked towards me. Her posture and movement were as such of a swan, delicate and flawless. I paid attention to the curves of her body, to her hips moving, distinctly graceful and even. “Hmm, let’s see,” she mused, and rested her head on the piano her gaze piercing right inside me. Again. I frowned, the proximity made my whole body shivers and shaking but she made no comment on it. ”It’s full of petty liveliness with adolescent illusions which makes it pretty infuriating to my ears.” The words seemed to me half-said by someone else inside her mouth. I gasped. And I said, quietly, with a voice so strange to my own ears ”It was our favourite.” it took me my last breath and i left the room. Freed from the hardness of this place.
Cocolia. I hadn’t realised how much she was necessary until she left, like a mellowness vanished as if the sun had hidden behind a cloud and stolen away the glow it lent us.
My mind was drifting away and suddenly someone called me. “Is everything okay?” It was the lady that accidentally pushed me. So this is what just a dream. “I’m sorry,” I say “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
“Something to do with someone you cherished?”
I looked at the lady once again. Full of attention, it was like she looked right through me: I could not disagree with her but what was worrying me these days was so vague and unexplainable, it was like the world turned slow around me.
It reminded me of Cocolia, she was always moving too fast around me, as if she were pulled along by a force outside of her body, or perhaps the opposite, it was her following this strange force. I wondered what happened for her to turn into this strange and odd person I once knew and no longer did. It was like a dream and I don’t mean it in a good way. Have you ever had a dream? Everything is distorted, upsetting and full of enormous things.