Jev told me not to go today. I can still feel her touch and hear her cheerful voice as she proudly tells me which team she beat. I may not be a sports fan, but I share her joy and Jev appreciates that. It’s interesting that she still doesn’t ask me about Talia, even though she often crosses my mind. She probably thinks she’ll meet the same fate as the others targets soon. As a matter of fact, so am I.
I check the time. I hope Talia won’t be late today and I won’t have to explain to the other librarians why my lunch break took so long.
As if on cue, she’s already turning the corner. She doesn’t have her friend with her this time, and although her aura is still tense, it’s nowhere near to what it was yesterday. She’s wearing a pretty beige sweater again, but at least she didn’t bother with make-up.
“Hi!” Her embarrassed smile is accompanied by a shy wave, and I return it, not forcing a handshake.
I turn towards the café, but she pauses and looks confused at the customers drinking on the other side of the glass door. What did I expect? After yesterday’s scene, she may never dare to come in here again.
“We can take a walk if you like, or sit somewhere else” I say, looking up at the gathering clouds. They’re even darker than yesterday.
“A walk sounds good,” She states. “I’ve got an umbrella if…” She blushes. “Of course, we can also sit somewhere if it starts raining.”
“Whatever happens, happens”, I smile.
We set off on the yellow paving stones between the carefully trimmed hedges and trees, leaving my bike behind. I make sure to take small steps and keep just enough distance from Talia to be intimate but not intrusive. Her nervous energy radiates from her in waves. Her belly is not out, yet she keeps pulling her top down. Although we often perform unnecessary actions in the company of someone we want to please, I get the impression that she’s fidgeting in this dress. She’s getting on my nerves.
“Please forgive me for mentioning it… You look good in this top, but you seemed to feel better in that loose sweater the other day.”
I immediately regret saying that out loud, and I’m almost certain she’ll get embarrassed and change the subject.
“While David, my brother, lived with us, he defended me many times when Mum and Dad were fighting. I miss him a lot, but we see each other less and less since he got married and moved away…” She puts her arm around herself. “It may sound childish, but his clothes make me feel like he’s with me and I have nothing to fear.”
And now she’s thrown away that protection. Because of me.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You don’t have to force yourself to be something you’re not for the sake of others.” I want to leave it at that. But the words come out of my mouth anyway. “You know, I don’t wear black because it looks good or because it’s fashionable. I lost a lot of people when I was a child.” I killed them. “I felt guilty that I was alive and they weren’t. Black gives me a sense of security. Over time, I learned to accept what had happened. However, I had grown so attached to it that I knew if I parted with it, I would be tearing a piece of myself away. The past is part of us, it cannot be shed. So don’t. Wear it with pride, it’s what made you who you are now.”
“A pile of misery that brings shame on the family’s reputation? Mum says I do that every time I wear David’s clothes.”
“I can only say what I said yesterday; just because she thinks so doesn’t make it true.”
Her face is a shade of pink, her aura is fluttering. Perhaps I’ve gone too far and embarrassed her with my personal affairs. I haven’t spoken to anyone about this for years. Not since Lili. Why now?
The dead keep secrets.
“Actually, about yesterday…” She begins, her eyes searching the toe of her sneakers, “I’m really sorry I freaked out.”
I’m relieved it was her behaviour, not what I said, that upset her. I want to open up to her even more. She responds to honesty with honesty, and the sooner she trusts me, the easier it will be to push her out of her comfort zone…
“Don’t worry about it. I know what it’s like to grow up without a supportive family. My father died before I was born, I was taken away from my mother, so I didn’t know her either, and my foster carer only saw me as a problem.”
After all, his life depended on mine. He kept me on a short leash, because he knew someone might try to take his life through me. He carried me like a severed head at first, and then he cut off my wings and sewed them in place, sealing them with a seal of Light Power so that I could not regenerate, escape or fly away. The green glow in my consciousness intensifies. We may have moved away, but he lives in me. With no way to cut him out…
“…and he hates me to this day. It makes no difference what I do.”
“I often feel the same way. It seems we’re alike.”
You’ve no idea how much. – I snarl at her nose, but quickly averting my gaze before my disgust arises.
“I would do anything to live up to the expectations,” She continues. “But… I want to live my own life, not the one my parents dreamed for me. My dream is to work with books; to be a printer, or a librarian, or even a bookseller. The pinnacle would be blogger or literary critic, but I don’t dare to think about that. Especially when my mother wants to send me to law school. That’s if I make the cutoff. Sometimes I feel like it’s better that my grades are bad; at least I don’t have to keep studying something I hate.”
“I’m also meant for a different career,” I put my arm behind my back where the Alliance’s Warden Seal is sewed on my skin, beneath my clothes. Though since my Power have waned, I’ve been demoted to Eliminator. “But I am just not good enough for that.”
“You’re good enough for me.” She blurts out. It’s spontaneous, like the compliment about the blonde bad boys; she puts her hand over her mouth in the same way, but it has a completely different effect on me now. Her words continue to stretch the cracks in the walls I’ve built over the years to keep the pain at bay.
Yet it hurts now.
She’s just a stranger who doesn’t know what she’s saying.
What if she would?
A heavy blade strikes the vertebrae of my neck. The momentum is hesitant, trembling. With rage, with hate. It cuts across my skin, slices through a few tendons, but doesn’t cut my head off.
The memory brings a bitter smile to my face. I miss you, Lili…
“So, what would you do if you could? Do you have dreams?” Talia’s voice brings me back to the present. She may have misunderstood my reaction and is trying to paddle into calmer waters, unaware that she is only stirring up the sea of the past.
Dreams, desires, goals. Six years of emptiness have suckes me in, and it takes me a few moments to force the answer to surface.
“I think I’d become a waiter or a chef, maybe open a restaurant. From a young age, I’ve taken pleasure in watching others eat.” Considering I can’t. “Then I realised that it feels even better when the food I prepared brings them joy. ”
“Brings them joy? You mean they enjoy it?” She raises an eyebrow. She attempts to appear serious, but is evidently delighted to find fault with my choice of words.
“Exactly. If you’re eating good food, you’re enjoying it. Some more, some less. It depends on many factors, such as mood, individual preferences and previous experiences.”
“You know a lot about people.”
Not as much as I would if I were a human too, but I do try.
“Maybe. Still, I often feel like an outsider amongst them. Somehow I never fit in. Maybe that’s why I’d be happy to work with animals.” Or plants… Right, Lili? “Honestly, they seem closer to me.”
She raises her eyebrows, as if she knows the true depth of my words and is terrified. But the moment passes quickly.
“I think I understand you. I’ve never fit in anywhere either, and I don’t have a lot of friends. I often feel awkward around others.”
Maybe because you’re not human either?
“I used to want a dog,” she continues, “but my parents said it would end up like my goldfish, which I forgot to feed for three weeks. I can’t say I agree with them hundred percent, but I wouldn’t dare to deny it. I’m not very good at taking care of others. I’d be stressed out all the time, overwhelmed with responsibility.”
“I feel the same.” Warm blood on my hands, the stench of rotting intestines in my nose. “That’s one of the reasons I don’t have a pet.” No wife, no friends. “But I often visit the local shelter to bring food for the cats.”
“Really?” She smiles broadly.
My cheeks flush with the rush of blood to my cheeks. What’s so special about two predators swapping prey?
She blushes when she sees me choking on the word, catching her gaze.
“So why the cats? They’re wild and capricious.”
“Maybe that’s why,” I shrug, then look at her a moment later: “We have a lot in common,” I add, deliberately ambiguous.
Her face is scarlet red, her pink hurricane is tearing my aura. I’m tempted to step out onto the edge of the paved sidewalk, through the grass and cross the road to the neighboring street. Instead, I just scratch my temples and keep going in the same direction and distance.
“So, you like cooking, you love animals, and yet you work as a librarian…”
“I haven’t always been one. Before this, I traveled a lot, searching for my place.” …and my victims. “But I like this job, and I like books. They keep me better company than most people.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
We walked around the square at a slow pace. In the distance, I could see the black outline of my motorbike looming in front of me beside the hedge. I looked at the clock on the church tower.
“I’m sorry to leave so early, but my break is over.”
The hurricane dies down to a breeze, and her smile fades.
“I guess you don’t have the day off today. Right; how’s your friend?”
At first I blink, puzzled, then it occurs to me that I mentioned Jev in passing yesterday.
“Better, much better,” I flicker. “Perhaps you’re free tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is Friday… which is a typical girl’s day with Mandy. She wants to hook up with an IT guy and is counting on my help, sorry but I don’t want to let her down. But I’m free on Saturday if you are.
“I work on weekends. But I’m on till noon on Monday, so I can see you. I’m in a hurry, so I hope you’ll forgive me for not dropping you home.”
“I’ve managed with public transport so far,” she smiles, but I can see the disappointment in her aura.
I squeeze her shoulder as goodbye and also to maybe cheer her up.
“I’m looking forward to Monday.”