After half an hour of waiting, she appears on the street corner, accompanied by her friend. The girl with the orange aura gives me a broad smile as soon as she sees me, which I return with a polite, though not over-enthusiastic smile. Talia doesn’t react, even when Mandy says goodbye, she approaches me with her eyes fixed on the ground.
I hardly recognize her. Not just because of her brooding, anguished energy field, which drags around her like the grey clouds above us, but because of her appearance. She’s replaced her baggy, slouchy top with a slim-fit sweater that I might even find attractive if she weren’t wearing my nose. Although her hair falling forward casts a shadow on her downcast face, I know it’s there and I’d like to rip it off. If all goes well today, I’ll end this in a few hours.
She stops in front of me, looks up at me. The familiar light tone of her face is covered with a consistent, skin-coloured glaze, her eyes are lined with black ink, her lips shines with lip gloss. The memory of Lili’s powder clinging to my lips like a grainy, sticky veil is vivid. Fortunately, her aura suggests that she prefers a handshake.
“Hi,” I extend my right to her. She squeezes it briefly, but with nowhere near her warm confidence of yesterday.
Did the motorbike ride affected her in such a negative way? No. Then she wouldn’t have dressed up like that.
I open the door of the café for her, we go in and sit down. Same place, same table, same noise. Yet everything is different. The tension is almost palpable.
“What’s wrong? Did she say something to you?” I ask in a low, kind voice.
She waves her head no.
“Did you get in trouble for being late yesterday?”
“No, not really…” She stares at me with lightless eyes.
This is going to be difficult. I can keep asking questions, or I can try to distract her. I’ll go with the latter.
“Anyway, I was very surprised by what you said yesterday about the relativity of good and evil. Not a subject most people would bring up on their first meeting. However, I have the same opinion. Understanding the motivations of different individuals, empathy is key, and not just in novels.”
“Yeah, sure…”
A waiter stops beside us, greets us politely and takes out his notebook to write down the order. He smiles, pretending not to see that Talia’s mind is somewhere else entirely.
“A hot chocolate with marzipan, please,” I say, breaking the awkward silence.
The man in the green apron walks away and I make another attempt to drag the girl in front of me back to life. Only to be the one to deprive her of it later.
“I know you’ve written it a long time ago, and perhaps you’re ashamed of it, but I’d love to read your writing about Draco.”
No reaction. It’s as if she can’t even hear me in that thick, suffocating bubble of energy. Almost bursting with bitterness, she keeps picking at her painted eyelashes. If it bothers her so much, why did she put on makeup? To look prettier because she’s unhappy with the way she looks? Or was it simply to impress me? For me, for whom it takes a lot of effort to maintain a scar without regeneration, it is imperfection that is the most attractive. Talia is no exception; she can put on any mask she likes, right now she is merely a faint shadow of the radiant, fierce girl of yesterday, who never thought of showing herself as anything other than what she is. She was just… happy.
“I can see something’s bothering you. If I’ve done or said anything to…”
“No, not at all.”
I remain silent. Sometimes silence speaks louder than words. I look out of the window to relieve the pressure of my attention, but at just the right angle so that she doesn’t feel left out or rejected. I glance over. She doesn’t return it, just stares down, tugging at the sleeve of her dress. This top must be unusual for her. But it suits her well; it accentuates her femininity while hiding the curves she’s ashamed of. But the way she’s squirming in it… On the other hand, yesterday, in that shabby suit, her direct honesty was… attractive. Far too attractive.
But that nose… It makes my hairs stand on end.
How did I not notice it the first time I saw her face?
A mug knocks on the table.
“Cheers!”
“Thank you,” I nod towards the waiter, and he smiles politely as he leaves.
I gently push the drink, decorated with whipped cream and chocolate pieces, to the middle of the table so that it falls into Talia’s line of sight, indicating that I’ve ordered for her, but she doesn’t reach for it, only bites her lip.
Tension builds inside me. Wherever I try to find my way to her, I meet closed doors. Complete, passive rejection. It’s as if she’s testing my patience on purpose, knowing that I’m having a hard time with compulsion. That’s why I get almost all my female victims to lie under me willingly, and although I no longer have similar plans for her, my task remains the same: to kill her. And to do this, she must get on my bike, preferably with foggy glasses.
What’s left that I haven’t tried? Reverse psychology.
“Of course, you don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to. However, as since we came in, I had to order something and I thought you might enjoy it. But don’t feel compelled. If you feel like you wanna be somewhere else, I understand. You don’t owe me an excuse either. If you want to go home…”
“No, that would be the last place…” The tension in her shoulders shows that her hands are clenched under the table. “Why would I want to go home? I would have to listen to my mother tell me again what a hopeless case I am. How I shame everyone with my appearance, my clothes, my bad grades, my very existence,” she shudders. “That I’m sloppy, lazy, do the dishes wrong, put the clothes on the dryer in the wrong order, fold the pants in the wrong way and have to vacuum my room three times before it’s spotless… That I ruin my eyes with primitive romance novels…, and that I’m a fat, unlovable pig who will die alone.”
Her aura rages as a new kind of tornado. It’s unusual to see so much repressed anger in such a young girl.
“I just can’t be like David, who can cut his way out of everything, who knows the solution to everything… Who could reason with Mom the way I never could… Even with Dad… Dad… At his funeral I tried to recall the good memories. Just to cry. But I couldn’t… ” A tear escapes from the corner of her eye, a dark streak runs down her white cheek. “Everything’s become worse since then. It was awful before, but now… I thought it would get better… But it didn’t. Mum has no Dad to blame, no Dad to fear, no Dad to fight. It’s just me now… Her fat, disgusting daughter…” Her voice is getting louder. “The one she never wanted. And she has to “make a sensible adult out of me”. I really try to get home on time, do my chores, study… But I can’t… I can’t measure up. Everything I do, nothing is good enough…” she grips the edge of the table with her hand, as if she wants to get up, but doesn’t.
She sobs.
Her voice, the sheer bitterness of her words, cracks something inside me, her pain seeps into me. Deeply, gradually, drop by drop; just as the black tears stream down her cheeks…
… on both sides of my nose…
“Everything I do…
nothing is good enough.”
Her face changes around her nose, her black tears turn red, her figure becomes smaller. The boy’s shoulder-length white hair clings to his bloody skin. He kneels on the ground with a saw in his hand and his severed wings in front of him. He is covered by the shadow of the dragon towering over him. With a single claw, they could crush him, but they do not. Though they would, they cannot. So they merely turn their sturdy heads away, so that at least they don’t have to see.
The boy trembles. Not from pain or fear of death.
But from the terror of being rejected. That even without wings, as a willing prisoner, he is not wanted by the one whose very soul lives inside him.
His shoulders shaking with silent sobs, his miserable sight silently crying “please love me!”
The dragon’s disgust, rage, helplessness, clashes with the boy’s aching loneliness and despair inside of me. That he would cut off his wings without hesitation for a few kind words from Alden, or a look that sees not the monster in him, but the fallen, helpless creature that lurks behind it.
Which one would I be? The dragon or the boy?
Perhaps both.
Before I realize, my hand settles on the girl’s trembling fist on the table.
“Just because someone doesn’t appreciate you, doesn’t mean you’re worthless,” I say, something no one has ever said to me, even though I’ve longed for it.
Her sobbing stops, as if her throat had been slit with a knife, the shaking of her clammy, cold hands ceases under my palm.
What am I doing?
Don’t cry! I killed your father and I will kill you too.
I’m not Alden, and Talia’s not me. We don’t share a soul to inflict our own suffering on one another. It is not my duty to comfort her.
I pull my hand away.
When did it get so quiet? A few people continue to talk, but I feel the returning glances of guests and staff, their grey aura flickering accusingly. They blame me for the girl’s upset. Ever since Dad died, everything’s worse… – They’re right, after all. And scenes like this are not accepted anywhere. I feel like I’m tipping more than I planned.
“Sorry, I… I don’t know what’s got into me. I just…” She takes off her glasses to wipe her eyes, resulting in a dark mass on the back of her hand. “Oh, my gosh, I am a lost cause…”
“You are prettier without it.”
She starts crying again, though this cry is different. Sad, yet relieved. I offer her a handkerchief, which she gratefully takes and buries. She sighs deeply, her pink field of energy like a soft breeze after a storm. She wipes her face, her is flushed, but there are still a few black smudges here and there, mixed with foundation.
Should I mention it?
I push the barely steaming mug towards her. She stares at the whipped cream melted into the chocolate with round eyes. It’s as if she’s just returned from that other dimension, in the depths of her soul, seething with horror and waiting for the moment to burst to the surface.
She sips it and doesn’t break away until the cup is empty. She looks at me from under her puffy eyelids with a glittering gratitude, as if I were some kind of god.
An oppressive sensation pounding in my temples. I really hate to play that role.
I glance at the white, stylized clock of the café above Talia’s head. I promised Jev I’d be earlier today.
Why do I make such promises?
“Thank you for your trust,” I say. “If there’s anything bothering you, I’m here to listen. However, a dear friend of mine is also suffering from a serious mental crisis, and I have made a promise to him. I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
Her face is suddenly drained of blood, her aura flailing desperately. If she’d know me, she’d know that I’m not so easily scared off.
But she doesn’t. If she had, she wouldn’t be here with me. She’d be running, fleeing.
“Tomorrow, same time, same place?”, I smile to let her know that she hasn’t made a bad impression.
“That would be awesome.”
“I’m heading in that direction, so I can give you a lift home if you like.”
“Okay. I’ve brought a case for my glasses today, so I’ll have somewhere to put them on the road. I was so scared yesterday that I couldn’t see anything because of the fog. I might not be able to see much anyway; my eyesight isn’t very good.”
Or who knows. Maybe it’s getting better, like her heart and stamina.
Damn. How am I going to kill her today?
Can’t. I’ll have to go with the original plan. The slower but certain one.
“I-Is there something on my nose?”
“Just a little makeup. Here,” I point to that spot on my nose, disguising the real reason.
“Oh, well… I’ll go to the bathroom and clean myself up.”
“All right, I’ll pay and wait for you outside.”
And I’ll try to look less at your nose. It has a bad effect on me.
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