Eye witness

The man is staring in horrified dumbness, his hands clutched on the steering wheel, his whole body a petrified mass of shock. He’s looking straight through me, and I can see the reflection of my seemingly sleeping best friend into his murderous eyes.

“Go, you dumb skull!” She slaps him over his head, twitching his arm. “Get off, you filthy beast” she shrieks at me, hovering her little fancy purse over the convertible’s windscreen. “Get ooooooff!”

The impact with the vuitton skin wrests a yelp out of my grin and throws me on the sidewalk. I run back next to Sophie, placing my fierce snarl between her frozen smile and the metal slayer. Young blood dripping from her candy lips burns down my nostrils and sharpens my creepers.

“Move, you stupid idiot moron! THAT ain’t ever gonna testify against you in a court of law!”

Shooting session

“You’re late!” the man groans between his teeth, throwing the cigarette and smashing it with his foot onto the muddy ground.

I lock the car and head towards him. “You’re earl…” I try uttering, but his hand grabs my elbow and drags me on the narrow path, away from the street. “Sorry! I’m late, alright! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I try jerking away from his grip, but he just stops and I find myself face smashed onto his chest. “Will you keep that dirty mouth of yours shut until I explicitly specify otherwise?” he says raising my chin with not one of his most gentle gestures.

I’d nod for confirmation, hadn’t he pinned my eyes with his scowl and my under-jaw with his fingers. I blink. He gets it and releases me.

I watch and wait in silence as he grabs his backpack and lights on another cigar. To my disappointing expectation, he leads us on the muddy path, away from civilization. He leads me, so to say. He’s more like twitching my elbow and dragging me like a slave on a leash, at a pace I am finding great difficulties keeping, given my silvery stiletto shoes. Why on Earth, I’m asking my other self while the path gets narrower and muddier, why on Earth did he ask me to dress up elegantly and then set the meeting location to - I quote - that old dried well on the northern edge of the city? The self is quiet, as quiet as it was in the first place by not having given a single thought about this. Before accepting it. Before ecstatically accepting it on the first blink.

As I - along with all my selves - become more and more aware of the temperature and texture of the native ground underneath my feet, it also gets more and more clear to my shivering brains that it’s quite unlikely he’s taking me to a many-starred hotel where we’d be having dinner in bed followed by a hot bubble bath before falling asleep into each other’s arms…

Had I thought of counting steps, it might be now the fiftieth or so. But I didn’t, so I might as well be at fifty or five hundred steps away from the road when he stops again - I believe he does that deliberately - turning around and bumping his chest into my face. He looks past me. I follow his gaze.

“We’re safe now” he grins to himself.

Definitely. I couldn’t agree more. There’s no horizon line promising to show up in the near future, nor the recent past. There are plenty of trees to smash your head against to choose from, though. Yeah, you definitely lost me in here. Good thing I trust him, or I’d say I’m fucked in this dirty middle of nowhere. Bad thing I trust him…

He puts down his backpack and starts ransacking through its items. I’m hoping for a jacket at least as warm as his looks like, but I could do with just a sweater on top of my black silk dress. Apparently, I could do with less - much less - he decides. Being led like a slave on a leash, that was a metaphor, you know? That WAS a metaphor…

You stupid fuck! There’s no way you’re tying my hands - or whatever - with that shit and drag me around like a pet on a leash! Panic flashes into my eyes while I mutely follow the unwelcome accessory, briefly begging for a word or gesture of reassurance. The scorned item leaves my sight while the twisting of my wrists and the rough fabric scratching my skin give me the undoubtedly clue that I’m being shackled, arms behind my back. He does his magic back there and whispers into my ear, startling me one step forward: “Move!”

“Wait!” I hear him as soon as I start try to unglue my foot from the mud. He comes in front of me and kneels - what the fuck???. “Take’em off.”

Now this is getting nice and interesting. Have a woman dress up like for an elegant party, bring her into the middle of nowhere-land-forest, tie her hands to the back and make her walk bare-feet onto a muddy filthy chilly sort-of-path, that’s so tremendously close to my idea of the perfect romantic date.

“Move!”

After approximately forever, just a couple of minutes before freezing to death or just collapsing into the arms of my new friend the mud, I feel him stopping at the end of the rope. As if to predict his words, cold drops find their way between leaves and branches and come covering me in sweet shivering moist.

“Perfect”, he mumbles and starts unpacking dozens of undefined… uhmm… objects. They’re either all waterproof, or it’s just only raining down on me. I’d go for the first option…

My make-up is all rained on my face. My wet hair gives me the best warmth I could ask for. My expensive dress is all muddy and ruined. My shoulders are shaking like cold vanilla pudding. If only I could have my hands to hold and embrace myself, I’d ask for nothing else.

I fall to my knees. No more cold little drops pouring from the merciless sky now - or no more live senses left to perceive them, just irregular metallic-like squeezes pinching me and sticking into my skin. Once a few seconds, loud lightnings, mostly miles behind me with a few disturbingly close, bring to awareness the closeness of the ground. The trunk of some tree scratches my palms - Who untied me? - and I lean against it like it is my long waited for savior and lover.

And so he is, for it helps me lean on its branches, tearing my dress in the process, into dozens of strings from below my hips. I know trees don’t talk - not in my life-time, at least - but the howling wind encourages sweet whispers from its leaves and its cold rustle is the first comforting word I’ve heard ever since entering this damned forest “Shushh, my love, it’s ok now. You’ll be just ok.”

It’d be a good time to look for my man and ask for some help, for some strong hands holding me and some cold lips reassuring me that I am NOT being spoken to and comforted by a tree. I’m left to the fun of the trees, it seems. Luckily they’re tied to the ground, or they’d start chasing me. Well, except this one that’s dragging me through the filthy mud “Come love me, child. Come cuddle, just let me see the eyes. The lightnings are your friends, baby-doll. Look up at me and let those tears find their way to your lips… Yess! Like that! Juuust great! Don’t move now for a second baby…..”

I’m tired. I think I’m tired.

“Baby? I… I think we should go back… I think we’re lost and I even think I heard the trees talking to me, which is totally silly, you would agree. So… it’s either I’m the only one actually lost, in which case you’d better show up quickly ‘cos I’m about to get fucking scared, or we’re both lost and the trees hold you prisoner, in which case I’m fucked! Now… I can’t tell for sure which is the case, for I swear I feel I’m on the ground with some big heavy weight crushing me and I’m as sure as hell frightened to death by this something moving spasmodically between my thighs… And there’s this… some-one-thing else holding my arms above my head and… yuck!, some wet cold snake-like creature… umm… twisting inside my… umm… let me!… aaaamm… mouth…”

Sunday Cherry Cake

In times when everybody - or at least every-female-body - looked at him and saw but a blooded hunk of meat, hot inebriating vapours liquefying into lust down their lungs, he used to be my Sunday cherry cake. In times when he would take a lot, give less and none to me, I used to live on smiles and breathe once a few hours, weekdays only.

I, for one, am more into sour cherries and could go on living a life on an exclusively sour cherries diet. Had it not been for Sundays and my father taking me to the sweet-shop. A 7 years old’s eyes gaze in obvious and innocent expectation to the tempting shelves and mine always fixed on the whitish cubes with the breath-taking mouth-watering red drops.

For two surreal years I breathed a few of his cigars and built a couple of new worlds each day. We met in breaks, occasionally, and I was far too young to speak out louder than my eyes could scream. Not young enough to call it illicit, had it happened…

Grandma’s kittens wouldn’t always sit and wait for me to hung them by the tail next to the drying laundry. Nor would they always feel as excited as myself about taking a soapy foamy scented bath. And marmalade, I learned, was not a good hair-gel replacement. And pencils were for writing on the notebooks whose sheets were not for wrapping one week young ducklings. As well as many enough nails had been stuck into the appropriate places on the walls, none more required - nor endured - by the house resistance structure. No Sunday cherry cake to follow…

Not to expect, not to ask. Not to reproach. Yes to dream. Yes to let the dreams fly to only a clearly specified realm. If I would please do. No stepping out of line of unspoken rules. Finding the door lights off - groping in shyness or head smashing on all four sides of its frame - anything would do. Remembering the coordinates - no second chances. None needed. Afternoons drowned in pain and close souls to hide it from. Learning it the hard way and loving every single blooded tear.

Kittens and ducklings didn’t get to outlive the experiments more than 20 years. The restructured sweet-shop sells not as good as expensive dried laundry. There’s dozens of recipes and I am old enough to build my own cherry cake. Some Sundays.

this time my grandma’ was escorted out of the field

Part 1

“Martha dear, are those jelly pancakes ready yet? The girls want to hear the story about grandma’ Dory” the old lady whispered to the woman next to her.

“Yes, Mother…” the young woman replied in a slightly annoyed, yet subdued voice. “Just, please… we’re having lupini beans stew and baked sun flower kernels for dinner, try not to have them ruin their appetite.” she tried adding, but the old lady had already grabbed the cookies tray and was now heading for the front terrace.

Two little girls sitting on the covered wooden swing jumped as one and ran to hug their favorite story teller granny. The blond one reached out for the pancakes and picked one with each hand. She then proudly handed one of them to her friend “Here! My mom makes the most delicious pancakes in the whole wide hive! Have one.” beaming all over with pride.

The lady hid a bursting laugh behind a more sober, serious-grandmothers-like smile and a gentle stroke of Zoey’s head, fuddling herself with the happiness in the child’s eyes. One hand playing with her niece’s ruffled ringlets, she winked to the shy and freckled girl offering her the tempting plate “Here Maya, have as many as you wish. There’s lots more where these came from.”

The grandma, the two girls and the pancakes on their oval tray, all took a comfortable seat on the swing and braced themselves for what was about to come. The old lady patiently and carefully picked a cake, hovering her hand over the savoury pile of sweetness for a few excruciatingly long seconds, until finally choosing one and taking a slow bite of it. She felt the prick of four I-want-to-hear-it-all eye pieces stinging on her lips, waiting for them to move and produce the irreplaceable vibes of granny’s stories. She then composed a serious mime, cleared her throat and began her early October afternoon story.

“Many years ago, I witnessed a sad and cruel abuse of power” This is way too complicated for the girls’ young minds and way too sad for their souls if they were to fully understand it, she thought, but by the time they’ll grow old enough to understand the implications of this, I will have had the concepts deeply ingrained in their fertile brains.

“My grandmother, Dorothea, was one of the most respected bees all around the wide wild field, being the first to have inhabited this very burrow we now shelter in. Bees from distant fields and foreign hives knew about her and even came to visit our hive just to meet, or at least see, the courageous bee who once saw a living winged fellow of her same race. She published articles and held speeches, she even spoke up in broadcasted shows, but none to much avail. The officials at that time were either too narrow minded, she was saying, or too fixed and concerned on preserving what would have become the biggest national secret - and lie - she was thinking.”

Zoey was conscientiously carrying pancakes from the tray to her mouth and down her throat, three bites each, while Maya’s mouth remained wide open ever since the word ‘winged’ tickled her ears, the corners of her lips and her chin full of little sweet crumbs. Most of the words were a bit too difficult for her to comprehend, but she knew the old lady made no difference when talking about serious issues whether she was addressing adults or children. This sprang confidence and the self-esteem into the younger members of the audience, and Maya wasn’t willing to miss a single buzz from granny’s tale.

“When the things I’m about to tell you about happened, I was only a little child, no more than your age right now. The struggle that grandma Dory had been facing for years was then starting to turn into psychic tiredness and she was behaving more and more like an old senile lady, whom fewer and fewer folks payed attention to or took seriously. She had been listened to, applauded, requested for public conferences, then, as times went on and the present outdistanced her memories, people started ignoring her. Once in a while she gathered up a group of old friends and told them over and over again about the wingedbee she saw at the Circus, until they excused herself and left for their own burrows, overwhelmed by the same old boredom of the same old tale.”

She sighed. The girls sighed along.

“But this time my grandma’ was escorted out of the field. She had found the most beautiful petunia in the whole field and, despite her age, managed to climb right to the very top of it. She was addressing to her now imaginary crowd, indulging them into spicy details about the bars of the cage that imprisoned the wingedbee, along with revolutionary and totally nonconformist theories about bees and the so-believed impossibility of flying. To her old and tired mind, I think, the auditorium was cheering and hailing… Down below on the grass, a skinny ant whispered something to her friend and the latter hurried up west to the river. Only minutes later, a fat moustached nasty looking bumble bee from the local militia showed up with a studded ladder, he leaned it onto the stem and two other bumbles helped his round bottom up on the first tread. I was too far to hear their voices, but I thought grandma’ must have known the fat guy cos’ I could see her gesticulate at him wildly and she didn’t seem at all impressed by his green striped uniform. Whenever the man climbed a step, she threatened to fling herself from the petunia, but I knew she wouldn’t do it because she was only trying to deceive the officers. I still feared for her though, and wondered how she managed to climb on top of the flower on the first place, given that she had always been afraid of heights and she wasn’t in her first - nor her second - youth anymore. But there she was. My beloved granny, high on the top of the most beautiful flower in the whole field, shouting it out loud to the world willing to hear that bees used to - and should again be able to - fly.”

“Yes, fly! I told you Maya that my grandma knows about flying! I told you!” Zoey was all smiling and shining, so happy she would have flown herself that very instant had it not been the dozens of cookies deep down inside her belly.

“The nasty moustache got on top and grabbed my grandma by the arm. Oh! How I wanted to aim my sling right to his round jelly bottom! I was just too far away from the scene and for no reason in the field I would have risked to hit and hurt my nanny… He grabbed her and took her down… They all grabbed her and took her away… After that… I think that was the last time I saw my grandma talking about her life-shattering event - the encounter with the winged bee. My mom started taking better care of her, as in… she was being held under constant surveillance and we started bringing food to her room and taking her on short walks late in the evening. Late… when dim sun rays no longer made her dream of tasting the skies…”

Backstage

The door to the small and messy cabin opened suddenly. The woman busted in and slammed it with all the force her sheer anger could produce. She had mascara tears flowing on her chicks and the whole make-up was now a mess - a previous work of art she would probably have to redo. One red stiletto heel flew across the room and thrust itself into the mirror. The other one hit the table in front of the mirror, turning down and scattering on the floor make-up stuff, jewelry and cheap magazines. The woman sat on the chair, looking disgusted at the disgustingly looking back at her figure from behind the broken mirror. “Now you look more like yourself, dear Katia” she said to the reflected puzzled image, and resigned into a deep and long sigh.

The crisis over, she started picking up her things from the floor, and concluded that it hadn’t been a very inspired option to throw her shoes around and end up destroying her personal assets. It was her make-up items that made her job possible, after all. Her very existence depended on them, for that matter. “But not for long now. Not for long…”

She sat back on the chair and began removing her stage costume, piece by piece. Big round golden-like earrings came off first and she had a few seconds of hesitation whether to throw them into the waste paper basket, next to the dozens editions of “Glamour & Shine” and “Lady Mystique”, or throw them back into the jewelry box. “Two more weeks of crap like this, and then I’ll buy myself a pair of nice ones, little silver drop like earrings”. The scorned items fell next to their siblings. Three similar bracelets had the same fate.

She got her bag from the peg and produced a hand mirror from its insides. With almost automate gestures, she took a face cloth and started wiping off her makeup. Her true figure was slowly coming out into the neon lights of the broken mirror. She wasn’t ourageously beautiful underneath the layers of chemicals, rough features like a couple of deep stripes on her forehead unveiling a life of daily torments. She unbuttoned her nearly transparent top and cupped her breasts. The figure from behind the mirror threw a satisfied smile back at her, showing off two lines of imaculate white teeth. “One whole year of hormons therapy. Now that’s money well spent, girl!” she grinned at herself bouncing the nice round breats.

Two sudden knocks on the door ripped her off from her day-dream. The man from behind the door didn’t bother waiting for an answer and busted in. “Kevin, get dressed and get your sorry black ass back on the stage. You’ve got your favorite clients waiting, you fucking faggot!” he shouted at her, grabbing her by the arm.

“Always such a gentleman, Roy darling. Yeah, go tell the freaks I’ll be there in a minute. I’m just making myself pretty for them” she said ironically to the fat full of sweated man, wresting herself from his grip. After he left, she put her clothes on, randomly picked a pair of rubbish earrings from the jewelry box and began redoing the piece of art on her eyelids.

As she headed for the door, she took one more look at the girl from the mirror and sent her a kiss, humming serenely on Neil Diamond’s “Girl, you’ll be a woman, soon”

Because i’d like that all the time

My friend Sonia calls me up last night, soon after I had managed to finish counting the chickens. I… don’t count ships for falling asleep. I find them too heavy to lift them over the fence, and it usually takes me up to about 500 or so individuals and, well… chickens do fly by themselves. Anyways… She calls me up to update me with a very interesting and extremely important piece of information.

“Mowning, Glooowy”, I can almost see her sharpening her little red lips into - she knows too well - the successful attempt of calling me by the name that always makes me melt. Of course it’s not morning, but Sonia has just checked in at the luxurious hotel room in Moscow that her newly acquired disgustingly rich boyfriend had booked up for her. And sometimes she loves me just too much to take into account timezones and details like that. My friend Sonia likes to travel. It’s like her job, you know? She does that for a living. I mean, once a few months she finds herself some rich or annoyingly rich man, always a good looking one, whose only usefulness is to take her to all sorts of places. In exchange for a small amount of uhmm… attention… and the above mentioned little red lips.

So now she calls me in the middle of the night - which, of course, she does not acknowledge of being actually truly authentic night since it’s obviously something around 9 a.m. in Moscow - to tell me what a wonderful jacuzzi they have there in that room!

“It gives you a massage, Glowy!” she rejoices over the phone.

“Alright, Sonia, it gives you a massage. That’s… well… what most jacuzzis do. Or all, I am not so well acquainted with them, you should know better. Can I go back to bed now?”

“But GLowy, baby! This one gives you a rrrreal massage!” she giggles. Then she moans. Then she giggles some more and I can hear splashes of water. And more moaning. Wonder if her sponsor knows about the hand massage jacuzzi…

“Yeah, I can hear that now. Thanks for too much information you’re throwing at me… Is your disgustingly rich boyfriend the massaging hand we’re talking about here?”

“Well, guess what? My wonderful lover has just complimented me with these two young gorgeous african males that happen to have, each one of them, a diploma in body massage. And he’s having a wonderful time right now, enjoying the sight of me enjoying his gifts…” and the she giggles some more.

Somehow between some more splashes, giggles and moans I thing I hear her asking me to come over. Something like her man will pay for the flight and everything. It’s not like I would not enjoy a little vacation, and I would definitely enjoy Sonia as well as I did it lots of times before, it’s just that…

“Oh, c’mon girl! I thought that man of yours wanted you to have as much fun as you wish. And it’s not like you’re officially together. And never will be, pardon my sincerity! Why won’t you come?”

“No, thank you. Have fun, Sonia. Talk later”

I hang up on her. I don’t do that often, only when she gets to very sensitive spots inside me. The indistinguishable mass of meat next to me starts to fumble under the blankets. You only got to 523 chickens this evening, I say to myself while stretching an idiot smile between my ears and gazing at the tanned piece of male skin… He mumbles something like “What did she want this time?” I say “She wanted me to go over and have some four-fun. Or multiple-fun, dunno for sure”. “aha… so go. You know you can do that, baby” the meat yawns and rolls on the other side.”Yeah, I know…”

Yeah, I know. But I’d rather cuddle back, start the counting all over. Swallow a sigh and try not to think of the countdown.

The male meat breathes deeply…

A page of history

In the early days of the AfterBurn mankind was struggling to regain the level of shape stability once happily experienced. The process of sun coalescing had had numerous and unpredicted effects. Although great scientists as well as visionary philosophers had predicted a somewhat significant change regarding the form, texture and consistency of all known living or inanimate entities, it had totally slipped their minds that liquefied air would do more than just “alter” the normal functions of the universe. In and off itself it was a slow and long time taking process, thus even more disastrous given its initial disguise into warmer climates all around the earth. Yes, Darrel?

“When and how did they actually figured that something was… well, wrong?”

They, as in our non-metamorphosable ancestors, gained awareness of the “wrongness” of things when younger generations became visibly more and more less similar to the elders. And less consistent to their own selves, by that matter. Recorded testimonies exist of grand-parents confessing that more and more often they found themselves in great difficulty of recognizing their own grand-children. When similar so-called medical issues came from younger individuals as well, and then even members of the new generation came filling psychiatric clinics with such complains, the confederacy decided it was becoming a global issue. They called it at first “catatonic memory loss disorder”, as to somehow give the crowds an explanation towards the sudden and unpredictable changes to the mental state and social aggressiveness that individuals in advanced ages of the “disease” manifested towards otherwise well known siblings. Just a second, Maude. To the younger generations it was not such an obvious issue as it was to the elders, since it only came as a natural ability and more so, a fashionable one, to change up to a recognizable state the appearance of oneself. Recognizable, indeed, was subjective and proved to be the flaw that let the disaster come. Yes, you were saying?

“I… nothing. It wasn’t a question. I was just thinking that it must have been devastating for parents to be unable to distinguish their own children…”

Indeed. The more devastating  as they had to rely on high-tech and very expensive gadgets to help them identify “who is who”. Not that high-tech as to justify the expense required, but as all normal societies do, mankind also possessed highly influent individuals with more or less - or more than less - socially good intentions. Nowadays, treaties have been signed and standards have been defined, in order to maintain a constant transition between facial and corporeal states, so as all mankind can identify “who is who” by the simple dna database mandatory implanted and mandatory yearly updated. Something like the fingerprints they used to have before the burn. Even more, as you all know, there is now a beta version of the “liveless identities database” that anyone can request to have implanted and thus to achieve a “what is what” identification as well. At their own risks for the moment, since it’s still going through testing and most probably more development will follow. The two product combined, when available, will allow mankind once again to clearly - though not totally - distinguish individuals as well as inanimate entities.

For Wednesday I want you all to think why, after the coalescing process was over, clouds, out of other “entities” in the universe remained into - and could not be implemented otherwise - unstable shapes.

More so when you’re in a train

“Yes, I’ve always said it is so!” the young man said with self-convincing tone. He stood up and leaned over the opened window. Some distant spot must have caught his whole attention for minutes, most probably some strange shaped cloud, as he was breathing in and out at a very calm and barely perceptible pace. Then, as abruptly as he had raised, he turned around and sat next to his absent minded interlocutor.

“And believe me, Mr. Daubstair, I have actually constructed a whole theory about this, with all required hypotheses well documented and the like, but the Confederacy rejected it. Twice, if you can believe it! The reason was, they said, that ‘the proper environmental conditions required by the experiment were too hard to reproduce’, less to say about the ‘expected phantasmagorical result’ that, due to the lack of ‘reliable evidences regarding the authenticity of the testimonies’ could only lead to ‘unpredictable outcomes’.”

The man sighed deeply and went back to the window looking for his dinosaur-like cloud. He must have been in his early thirties, carefully dressed and recently shaved. Deep frowns stretched on his forehead and a thin bluish vein pulsated wildly on his left temple… “It’s not like I’m mad at this because I’ve spent the past 5 years of my youth studying the metrodynamics and the unpredictability of soap bubbles’ flight! It’s just… it’s just that it really pisses me off to be treated like I’m some kind of naive teenager that’s just heard about flight decompression and now’s got the impression that he’s owning the holy Grail of stereophysics! Unbelievable the brass, unbelievable I tell you!”

Long tense silence followed as the man indulged into his new celestial hobby. It seemed like a whole kindergarten of cloudy baby dinosaurs gathered up to witness the young man’s torment.

“It’s the unpredictability that we’re all trying to prove here! And I gave them the scientific means for it! The second time - like I was telling you, they rejected my theory twice, if you can believe this! - the second time they said my calculations were wrong. Could you believe that? I mean, right! The first time the evidences were not good enough and two years later, the same evidences do seem to be good enough and reliable, but it’s all in the computation of the ethereal frequency of air molecules from inside the bubble that bounce on the curvature of the walls, heating the thin transparent membrane. And lifting it! It’s the computation, they say, if you can believe the indolence, Mr. Daubstairs….”

He would have carried on for hours, jumping to the window and back, harassing the quiet man with his abundance of complains, if the former hadn’t had the unfortunate idea of politely excusing himself with the intent of using the men’s room.

“Wonderful idea, Mr. Daubstairs! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before! I will give you a simple, yet relevant, demonstration about the principles in my theory. Especially since we’re on a moving carriage right now, the effects shall be easy to observe for the air friction is somewhat relatively endorsed by the - still somewhat relative - constancy of speed. Therefore the chromatics are less likely to maintain a stable state and allow ourselves to indulge into one of nature’s most mystical phenomena - still mystical until I get my theory officially accepted! I will have it accepted, do believe this! Come now, Mr. Daubstaris. We’re nearly at the end of our journey and once the train stops moving there’s little chance of a flight!”

He rushed enthusiastically to the end of the carriage, followed by a perplexed, bored but still very polite, and more so, a happy-that-it’s-all-ending-soon Mr. Daubstairs.

Morning Glory

So I woke up the other day at 5:45 hearing myself thinking “Hell, this looks like a really nice day! I’d better get myself ready for the kick in the butt life’s gonna gracefully give me!” What? You don’t wake up at 5:45 in the morning? To… you know… spread you wings and taste the dawns? No?… You know, like the song says it “They call us crazy early birds/Too early never hurts”? No?… Oh, nevermind.

Anyways, while I was stretching my arms and yawning disgustingly inside the cosy enclosure of my messy room, I see the door knob twisting and my significant other busting in. One of these days I’ll have to go through the effort of reminding myself why on earth - and when exactly, while I’m at it - have I come to the brilliant conclusion that giving him a key to my apartment was a good idea! I must have been pretty dosed!

“ Woman! Put some clothes on, we don’t have time for this!”

Could you believe the brass? I mean, sure he’s got these wonderful gorgeous arms that my eyes get glued to each times he gets in sight, but it’s not like he can just invade in and start giving me orders. With all his burning green eyes and perfect body, no sir, no! Orders is what I am allergic to. So I went all grumpy and crossed my arms, struggling to stretch an affected frown over the way-too-obvious grin.

“Yo, dude! Chill down! You put some clothes on me, if you care. It’s not like I was expecting you or anything!”

Then all of sudden he went all berserk on me, wrested me from underneath the blankets with one hand and a couple of clothes of undefined nature and usability from the closet with the other. So he’s life’s today’s-kick delivery boy, I thought and headed to the bathroom for a quick clean-up and nearly had my arm broken in the process. It just… got stuck… clutched somehow into some fingers…

“Don’t shower, you’ll have to do it again when we come back from the shooting”

I’ll have to? That sounded like… dunno what. I never got the fractions of seconds to think of it. I had to throw on the first of the undefined pieces of clothing that came to my reach and run to the door, while his voice was already fading down the hallway

“Gloria, you don’t want to make me wait with the engine running…”

To have and to hold

- Hey kitty, sorry I’m late. Traffic sucks at this hour. More than it does the rest of the day, I mean. In this bloody city the traffic always sucks!
- Hey, baby. It’s ok, I’ve only been waiting for… dunno… half an hour, maybe? I’m glad you’re here. Have a sit, catch your breath, I’m not leaving anywhere. Anymore.
- Not leaving anymore, huh? You’ve just decided that or actually given any thought about it?
- I gave it lots of thoughts. Not leaving you anymore. Ever again. Yes, I did it last year and regretted it the day after……..
- Well, you were very much in-love at that point, as far as I recall. It’s ok. It’s not like my life depends or you - or anyone else by that matter - sticking close to me, I would have been long wasted if it were so. But it’s nice and comforting to know there’ll be someone there, if I shall ever need to scream for help. Which will, most probably, not happen.
- You the same invulnerable, unbreakable and untamable bitch, aren’t you? Hell, it’s what I loved you in the first place for, isn’t it?
- Yeah, I’m glad I’m here too, baby……..
- Anyways, I was saying… I’m not leaving anymore. I missed you way too much while you were away and he… well… he’s been here, but not for me. So I wouldn’t choose him again over you.
- Love… if you’ll please but pardon my lack of enthusiasm… I guess I’ll believe this when I’ll see it coming true.
- Not a problem. I love you and I’ve learned from you how to wait. As well as zillions of other things.
- You love me?……… These words rarely reach my ears, little one. Why do you? Or, rather, what made you love me?
- The things you taught me, the patience you had, the passion in you. The hunger.
- My hunger, baby? Let’s not talk about one’s hunger, please. Such a subject can easily drive a woman’s weary minds into insanity.
- The hunger you had for life. You’re madly alive my angel……….

- Tell me angel, is this, ours, something real?
- Gee, dunno kitty… Would you care to wake up and check?