Victor And Louise
Salai G Prit

 

“...if the world fell over we could take off across the walls! I remember now, that was the last thing she said to me before she fell asleep.”

25th December 2002…

…the room’s thick air swam against the lines of his neck into the plan surface where his chest and arms were laid pinched against the sheets, allowing gentle streams of air to press uncomfortable cold rushes into his skin, fixing them tightly into his waking disposition. Outside of all this Victor woke to the thought that he might not last any span exceeding one or two coming days.

You see, as a child Victor had been informed that God would perpetually know of his every move, He would wander daily through every thought that Victor would harbor. He was accountable for every push of every thought and every inch of every muscle, Victor could get away with nothing; God would know. This was of course for Victor the eventual downfall of the entire construct. He had with effort nearly broke himself trying to be worthy of being so known, trying to keep his thoughts from the things he could not bear to have known before such witness. In conclusion to this it was deemed a no-win situation by Victor. If God truly knew it all, he was condemned before he had started. There was no way God could know him so thoroughly and still love him, not view him with disgust and contempt, unconditional love or not. And that cruel and deliberate Catch 22 made Victor despise that "God."

He pulled his body upwards against the cushions of the sofa and looked around him; everyone else within the walls of the room breathed silently, their pliant features fallen against pillows and coats as they slept like soft children. Victor thought how comfortable they all looked, all dappled in lilies and silks, intoxicated under the rooms heavy perfume. The awkward fixation of waking in such states drenched in a cool glaze the room’s familiar lines. I attempted to wake up Andy; I slapped his face and shook his arm by the wrist. He rolled his eyes and told me too “fuck off”. His unconscious slip unsettled me, the collapse against uncomfortable sleep and his words sent me out into the kitchen. Nervous of some unseen apex in the things around me I smoked a cigarette that made me feel sick. I drank two glasses of water and stood there shaking in the damp light. There was nothing moving in the flat and the stillness began too unsettle me. I edged out timidly towards the stairs and went up to Russell’s bedroom door, I knocked observing coyly the blue-tacked photographs that twitched and slipped around in my vision, not thinking I opened the door and walked inside. No one was awake in the room and as I stepped inside someone held my elbow from beside me,

“What you doing going in there? What are you looking for in there Victor?”

“What?...have you even closed your eyes tonight?...you fucking Mexicans. So you burnt off last night with that girl...huh…Louise wasn’t it. Christian.”

“What Victor?”

“She was beautiful”

“Fuck she was ok, come and have a look for yourself, she’s asleep”.

I followed Chrisch out of the room and down the hall to the spare bedroom, I was still fucked and the colourless hall looked just carpet and wall, merged in a pale dawn arrest and diffused in watery morning eyes...wait ..

“What were u doing outside of Russell’s room?”

“There has been a difficulty for us” he sighed “I’m just borrowing sum honey, you know”

“I don’t think he’d like that, he’ll probably throw you out”

“No, he is going to be fine with it...behave yourself, come on, inside.”

He pushed through the door and inside the room the heavy scent of her hung like gloomy long thoughts across the bed, her perfect bones lay motionless-soft below the sinew of her face, watching the lines of her breast rise - defined by the rooms soft shadows, her picture etched so unnaturally against the scene. Chrisch left the room to find a spike. I leant across the bed and pressed my check against her throbbing stomach. Today we would die. She stirred, her limp arm raised-hand holding the nape of my neck, her fingers in my hair. “I love you”, her sleepy tongue whispered up at me, she pressed her face back against the pillow- smiling as she curled her slow tired body around me... Chrisch was moving around behind me looking for a flame...he was no longer concerned with the girl, she would wake up I a while and he’d be in the corner of the room dead to her, she didn’t make sense any more. “Man u got a light?” “yeah..”I twisted away from her and handed Christian the lighter…I looked over her again. “She’s beautiful”, “huh, u fuck me up kid...u comin?” Christian moved his face mechanically into a smile, pushing up his cheeks as much as they would arch. He held the bag up to his lips where it meet his hot breath, his eyes sunk away from me and he began to prepare for himself... unless I said the magic words...I didn’t answer his question and once he’d fumbled around on the floor cooking up he shot the heroin into his blue arms and slumped back into the shadows.
It’s not real though, think about it, everything we know is found in thoughts that are made up of words which are just things that some fucko decided to invent one day. They don’t actually mean anything. Think of something that doesn’t require words to explain it? It’s a lot of stuff, but it all means nothing. There are the occasional slips, but they don’t get out so much...remember, you cannot beget all the sins that you owe to the people of paradise magic, pretend to answer passion and form with foreign rationalisations.






I was In the kitchen when she woke up and came down the stairs, I fell entranced to her as she slipped her thin body into the kitchen passed Andy (who was now awake) she stopped and gazed me up and down as she recognised the person in front of her, a smile crept up across her perfect lips, her eyes dropped away from mine and she held the smile as she brushed thin strands of hair from her eyes, she was wearing a pair of someone’s underpants, taken from the floor of Christian’ room, the soft material clung to her body as she moved around the kitchen trying to find a jar of coffee. Her thin smooth thighs brushed softly against one another as she walked and crouched around the kitchen. She was wearing a torn T-shirt of Christian’s, the T-shirt fell as far as the bottom of her ribs as she stood straight and still. When she leaned tip-toed to reach the coffee from above a cupboard the T-shirt rose, showing the soft lines of the lower part of her breasts, a soft winged angel drenched under the kitchens pale white light.
I turned my head downwards toward the table at which I sat, childishly we played at gazing up at each others eyes and smiled for only seconds at each others glance(s). She stopped in the center of the kitchen her legs slightly parted, moving her feet slowly around on the ground, “What did Santa bring you then little boy?” I stared at her, short blonde hair falling over one side of her face, her eyes lined in slightly smudged mascara. Every line of her perfect body lay softly against the material of her clothes, drawn by the shadows of the rooms soft light; her skin a sinew of smooth perfect flesh. “I’ve missed you” I said, cutting off the electric air I had been taken in for the last few minutes. She twitched nervously at the comment, as if staying with it would transform her she shrank away out of the kitchen and into the bathroom next door. I was still sat at the table when Andy stopped in the kitchen door, he was driving to his mother’s house for Christmas dinner, he stared for a moment, twisted away from the door, and walked down the hall. As he shifted away along the hallway he shouted back; “Merry Christmas you Bastards,” and left down the stairs. Louise appeared in the doorway, she rolled her hips against the frame of the door, her chest heaving, rushing violently, her body charged beneath her clothes. She smiled at me, looking out from under her eyes. Her fringe pushed back-behind her ear, her pink wet lips curling slowly and sensuously across her face. “I’m hungry would you like to get some breakfast with me?” “Its 1:42pm.”




As we stepped out onto the stairs that lead down to the street she stopped and started to speak out in to the air, the cold morning catching her words in perfect thick wisps of curling-stretching breath. Her hot breath disturbing the cool glaze of winters paint.
“These structures have been here for years” she said,
 “Grafted together, their splitting façades patched a million times over the century.” She nibbled her bottom lip and eyed the people moving past us on the pavement. The twentieth century has come slowly, grafting itself onto these age old places. The power lines of modern electricity are rudimentary and practically stapled onto the outside of all the buildings - wires spliced and crisis-cross in every direction - up and through window sills into rooms, stretched taught across alleyways, great knotty clumps of wire all atop each other.
She was still watching the flood of the street, as it heaved a swell of bodies, crushed, and then broke into wave that spilt into no exact direction. Everyone’s eyes seemed to be hiding wherever they looked. She settled comfortably into her timeless niche, mute, static, looking over her eternal little planet. She mumbled something like; “I’ll see you when you break free of this void,” and moved down the stairs onto the street.

We pushed out into the cool air, I could see her laughing at me, she looked happy, her skin was perfect...we were outside. It was cold and the low white sun hurt my eyes, her fingers slipped in and out of mine as we walked. I remember sitting down in a café bar at the market end of town, outside two kids screamed and argued at each other, we had seen them as we had walked in and could hear them through the cafés closed doors. I watched them through a small window opposite us. Your lip stick was dry and pushed out over the lines of your mouth, gouged mouthed and opium eyed you looked out into the street through a small window across from where we sat, there was no light in the room but the lines of your pale shoulders caught something in that low, damp afternoon, your skin made me feel sad. I guessed that your eyes were sick for something outside of this. I’ll try...please...
“It makes me wonder how girls ever grow into anything like women”
Still watching the adolescent pair I mumbled back across the table;
“Come again.”
“I think we assume that they've got it all laid out in front of them, and they don't. They don't perceive anything of it.”
I looked back across the table where her face had rose into melon collie poise. I told her that she reminded me of a porcelain doll, that her eyes were as sad as those doll eyes you fall upon as a child, dragging out time, beneath it one could sense a frame, but never flesh, always useless; her face lifted into a smile for a second and she carried on, looking down as she began to speak, her fingers entwined and fidgeting.
“It’s too dangerous. Those beautiful things just stimulated by superficial material. By what's out there?”
“What if it takes time to get past that, to think.”
“Someone should let them know”
“That’s bullshit; it’s not as simple as that. I bet those kids out there hurt more with love than we’ll ever remember how too; they haven’t learnt how to love yet, their still innocent.”

After we had eaten we sat at the table consuming coffee and drinking of each others words as if life lay through us until the café closed. We moved back out into the long bitter streets of the old town. The street lamps exhaled an orange mist that hung to the otherwise grey streets, and as we walked and moved in between them the light drizzle grew thicker under the heavy colour of each lamp. I was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on her. She was talking to me about a man she had slept with when she had stayed with her mother in France over the summer …I was nodding and smiling at her, watching the perfect symmetries of her visage motion slowly; her eyes burning into me, my stomach lifting some violent liquid into my lungs, so that I couldn’t breath, exciting my senses the way death does in dreams, this wasn’t real. Her face looked a warm pink, the pinched corners of her lips drawing in as she lifted her face into a smile again, her eyes dilated, her cheeks forming perfectly and comfortably along the lines of her face as she smiled, her lips full moist and pink…fuck...my stomach collapses and subsides into some soft lost nowhere , I turned, stopping, she stopped and looked back, she looked so beautiful in the rain, a hat pulled over her hair, she was perfect, like some wild angel who had infracted the centuries of heaven, lighting it as she jumped from the last grains of its crippling walls, like sand its structures sink, crashing violently into me as she hit the floor.
“You’re still as weird as when I knew you before.” “What do you mean?” “Why did you stop in the middle of the street to look at me?” “I don’t know, i…” “Would you like to stay with me for a while?” “Stay.” “Live with me.” “Look, I haven’t seen you for years, and I don’t know what you’re saying, really, I mean i…” “Stop, don’t say anything.”
She lifted a hand to her face and gently pressed a finger against her pout lips, exhaling “shhh...”
She moved her finger away “I love you, I always have.”

She explained that, well, I’ll let her explain;
“I don’t think I feel scared of death the way I do when I’m with, not around anyone else. You make me feel like you did when we were sixteen and I like that. You make me scared of dying.”

“Why?”
  
“Because it makes me think I might have to be only here without you.”






Over the passing week I moved my things into Louise’s house. We had slept in the same bed but didn’t submit to sex for the first six days of my staying there. We tripped toward sleep wrapped in each others skins each night talking the other toward dreams. On the morning of the sixth day Louise had woken early and was tip-toeing around the bedroom naked when I opened my eyes. I lay there blinking, as if to capture in my mind some photograph of her at that moment. She nimbly stepped around the mess we had made on her bedroom floor. Her lips were damp and pushed out over the lines of her mouth, gouge mouthed with her hair falling over her eyes; she twisted and glided across the room. There was no light in the room but the lines of her pale shoulders caught something in that low, damp morning, her skin made me feel…“I can see you watching me”
I lifted the light sheets and slid out of the bed onto the cold wooden floor, she had her back to me as I stepped across the room. As I reached her she turned, the sad futile gesture of winters muted morning fell through the curtain and coloured the lines and torsions in her back as she twisted toward me. She slipped her soft thin hand gently in into my waist, taking another step, her slight breasts pressed softly into me. I could feel your pulse racing against me. I remember; I brought my hands into the lower of your back and pulled you up against me. You were breathing heavily into my neck, your skin was hot, a silk sinew stretched tightly across soft muscles. You kept smiling up at me and the room began to fall backwards.
If I close my eyes now I can see your face, it’s that smile you were smiling that morning, that’s the face I see.





“This bit you see, well, I just don’t know if this, this part that happens next, is what actual happened, or if…well, to be completely honest with you I don’t fucking know. Anyhow, where was I…”

“You were with the girl in her bedroom, go on you really have my ear young man”

“Ok, so, after what I’m not submitting to your ears took place between Louise and myself we lay on the bed, I was running my fingers above the skin of her back, with my hand outstretched.”

As we lay there locked in each other, a thought fell quietly against my warm forehead, like the first cold snow flake of a storm that lands upon a space of flesh and melts against the heat. This thing that we were rapped in, which alluded words or any real grasp, it could at some point be taken away. “You see, number one fact every body dies.”
People die all the time.
I only wished I could have made her more at ease by explaining how I understood, but I couldn’t form a word. But then I suppose that is it; it only makes sense at that moment, in your head. As I peered down across the perfect outline her face, huh. In that moment something forever metamorphosed in me. I felt transmuted, admitted through one ecstatic, transcendent state to another, as if that act were some spiritual truth. Through it, She made me irrevocably Hers. I never knew joy could be such a painful thing. The only part of this that I do not love is this private abyss, where she is not, and where I cannot find her arms to catch me. It is a place where I fall of my own accord, but into which I am not yet sure how I'm falling. And as I plummeted, I loved and felt loneliness more than I can accept. I replay it again and again in my head, and it is like drowning in ecstasy, too horrible, too wonderful to survive. Does she know me. Know what I am, where I go when I'm in my own head. If so, I was excavated, and it was beautiful. I lifted my arm above her in an arc of taught strewn muscle, it burnt and twitched as she slept beneath me, her eyes closed and her perfect lips parted slightly admitting and exhaling tiny wisps of breath. I drove my fist down as hard as I could into her face. As my knuckles slammed into her little face her mouth exploded a crimson mess of cracking teeth ripping through skin, her lips splitting against her gums, her eyes in flames.
I expected the first blow to knock her unconscious but it didn’t. My hand bleed from being slammed into her teeth, I could stop now. I wanted to but it was too late, it only took a few more punches until she fell unconscious. I tried to watch her but my eyes stung. An immense sadness tore through me, in every vein their burnt a liquid that sored and dropped me against the wall. I fell to the floor and smashed my head against something on the way down. I could feel the uncomfortable sting of the gash in my neck, the blood pulsating gently from the wound and streamed its way down my back. I was disorientated by the whole affair and as my vision started to slip away, edging me toward unconsciousness, I watched her come around before my eyes, spluttering and gasping at what hung from her face. I imagine she passed out again shortly after as when I came around she was dead on the floor next to me. She had dragged her self across the bleeding floor and woven her thin tiny arm into my body.
She had lay there next to me and died. Life streaming from her face, into my shoulder, into my chest. We lay back in the broken blue-grey glass; her fingers pinched the stars under her hands and bleed them red. She must have confused her thoughts in all the violence and seen that we had been attacked by someone else.
I washed my stinging hands and face in the sink, and still drenched in blood pulled on a pair of jeans. I walked out of the building baffled by the brevity and seriousness of everything. I slide my hands into the pockets of my jeans and stepped out onto the ground. “I walked for about ten minutes and came inside here. I still don’t know if it really happened. “If the world fell over we could take off across the walls! I remember, that was the last thing she said before she fell asleep.”




24th December 2002…

Louise was opaque; her dense incomprehensible features mirrored the perplexity with which she was flung toward people. She was at the same time blatantly unconcerned with softening her message. From the beginning, this insistence on difficulty for uncraven motives had annoyed anyone who preferred a stream of smoke which could be tracked to a simple flame. She viewed herself as soul of fantasticality, not to flatter or to escape, but because realistic lives for Louise dealt not with experiences of reality, they lay instead outside, in the fictional world in which she perceived most people to dwell. Realism for Louise had enforced supposedly well-understood identity categories within which a few in-depth ‘individual’ portraits could be carefully drawn. But these ‘individuals’ in Louise’s mind only existed in a mundane world of stereotypes and mal introspection.

A spokesperson for the survivors of childhood abuse? Well, she had survived childhood, true, and she spoke about her family; a past of things that got fuzzy as she thought of them - and, more embarrassingly, to those who really listened the fuzziness seems deliberate and unapologetic. Victor was one who had listened, she had thought perhaps that Victor might be the only one person who had fell through her words unscaved. Appearing beneath the window of her past, the roots and stars of her picture so innocently held by him, she liked that Victor could love her for the same reasons most others dislocated themselves from her. Victor was her favourite.

Victor had listened to her stories in his adolescence, they were friends in school, meeting everyday at the same time on the outskirts of the town to expel in each other all the pains of feeling in youth, until the day Louise’s appearance ceased. She had written to Victor a few months later;

“Mom and I have moved to get away from Dad, I’m sorry Victor,
I cannot tell you where I am. This isn’t just about me; I have to
think of my mother. I know you’ll understand my love, my Victor.”




As she stepped down from the coach she breathed in, closing her eyes and feeling the cool air brush against the scene of her return from exile, post the death of her father.

 

 

Copyright © 2003 Salai G Prit
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"