short story: quiver part four (final part)

Speckles of raindrops fall from a moody grey sky onto a barren field. Dawn shivers and creates a frozen, dewy surface on the earth.

Henry wakes to Alena’s snoring. Her bare breast is exposed, and her head is tilted back, her mouth wide open. Henry’s nude body shivers at the thought of last night. He gets out of his bed and walks quietly to the living room, mindful not to wake Alena.

He stares at the dark man before him through the reflection of the sliding glass doors leading to the small balcony. Icy air rushes down his throat as he opens the doors. Henry leans his body over the railing. He can hear the laughter of children at the bottom, beckoning him to yield to his dreams of falling.

What separates life and death from one another when one feels dead while alive? Life is death, he thinks. Perhaps this means death is life, that it is filled with sun, with hope. Or perhaps death is just death, and life is death, and we merely pretend to live in 'life' and death is the time we can just let go and be. But why do flowers grow in spring, why are babies created if life is not really life? His hair and eyelashes have become dusted with sheer drops of rain. He closes his eyes. A sigh escapes his throat and Henry retreats from the railing.

He walks back to the bedroom, to his life.

He will live, whatever and wherever that is, and pretend he is happy, pretend that he does not dream of death, and mimic all that they do.

short story: quiver part three

Henry brings the crystal wine glass to his mouth and closes his eyes. He swallows the wine like water, hoping the bloody syrup will transport him back to the womb for rebirth, but when he opens his eyes all he sees is Alena’s face. He licks his index finger and slowly circles the lip of the glass. A shrill sound fills the room, over the restaurant’s classical music. The sound is so beautiful to Henry. It drowns out all the meaningless, dull voices. All the thoughts of how he will get up in the morning, have a shower, put on his suit, catch the train to work, sit in his office manipulating people, go on dates and have sex with mindless women, sleep but never really rest, and do it all over again every single say. He circles and circles the wine glass, transfixed by its singing.

‘Henry!’ Alena says staring at the menu. ‘Could you stop that irritating noise? We have to order.’

They place their orders and Alena starts again on money, about work, but Henry drifts off and thinks of when he was a child; he smiles remembering how easily his four-year-old-self made friends. Glances under eyelashes turned into smiles and innocent introductions. With a high voice he softly told his new friend how old he was, always remembering to count quarters and halves of course. His new friend would take him by the hand, girl or boy, and pull him into their imagination, living freely within a world of colours and smells and shapes and sizes. Never did they think of how one day they would grow up and their hearts would die.

Henry thinks about how he used to talk to his toys in the bathtub about things that would never have made sense to an observer but made the most sense to him. Grunts and squeals were music to him as he played in the water that always turned a bit yellow by the time it got cold, and he never worried about the moisture in his skin or whether or not he should shave his genital area.

His mother’s soft chest was the safest place to be. He remembers her heartbeat, and the way her voice sounded when he pressed his ear against her. He wishes he could still feel that warmth.

A child’s scream snaps Henry back to the present. Alena turns around to the wild child, flinging his arms in a tantrum.

‘That mother needs to control her son’, Alena snaps, shrivelling her face into a hideous expression.

Blood runs to the cheeks of the crying boy’s mother as the restaurant’s guests snicker. Henry smiles kindly as she tries to calm her unruly son.

Henry looks into Alena’s eyes. Black ice plagues his body. He dreams of the feeling of the sun gleaming through the bedroom window, warming his skin as it rises, pulling him to consciousness. His tired muscles give way, and Henry falls to the floor. He looks to the sparkling, white restaurant ceiling, closes his eyes, and opens his mouth wide. A cry escapes his lips. Henry’s arms flail and his body writhes on the ground. He cries for his loneliness and the hatred he feels for this city, this avaricious, monotonous life. Narrowed eyes stare at the adult man screaming on the floor. Henry pulls himself up, and yells into Alena’s mortified face.

‘I WILL NEVER LOVE YOU! Don’t you understand? I will never touch your skin with tenderness, or sleep happily next to you. It is people like you that make me quiver! You are everything I despise!’ Henry turns and runs through the still restaurant and out into the cold.

‘—Henry, more wine?’

Henry’s eyes blink away from his trance. Red wine trickles into his empty glass. 

short story: quiver part one

Dreams of falling endlessly prey on Henry’s mind. The sound of children’s laughter echoes around him as he plummets. They call for his existence, his warm blood. Henry wakes every night covered in his own sweat, his pillow wet with tears. He wonders if he should succumb to his subconscious and perish, for there is darkness in both worlds, un-living in both worlds.

The flickering light of the train illuminates the death in all their faces. Are these people really living? As the crowded train slithers through the dark underground, the constant thud of the train meeting the tracks feels like a heartbeat, quickening when it fastens, dying as it stops at each station to let out its passengers. Henry stands among the swarm, crushed by the human statues. He is a young man but the dark circles that pull at his eyes make him seem older.

The heart is beating fast now, to central, and all the people stare ahead with jaded eyes. Smudged red lipstick, 5 o’clock shadows, stale perfume, and reddened eyes fill the carriage. Henry’s eyes glisten as he stares at the strangers he wish would thaw and become warm and tell him this life is worth living.

People do not look into each others eyes; the tiny specks of colour in their irises never align, and when they do it is by accident and they quickly look away and try with all their strength left over from the day to resist the urge to look back.

Strangers bump knees in the bustle and cringe. A hundred sweaty palms cling to a grimy pole and form a beautiful vertical line of pale skin, dark skin, wrinkles, large fingers, small fingers. The hands are so close to holding, but their owners are careful not to overlap flesh. Henry sees the icy blood stream through their veins, the bitterness in their stiff faces. Warm blood still runs through his body, but his veins too are becoming arctic. Not long now.

Henry looks down the carriage and watches the shaky world through the scratched windows disconnecting the carriages as though looking into a mirror. That world is identical to this one. The same faces, the same jobs, the same lives. Henry even thinks he sees himself.

The heartbeat slows now, the screeching begins. The doors open and Henry watches the bodies flee, leaving him alone with the buzzing fluorescent lights.