CarameLove

Nothing in the world can be certain. Nothing. One day you have everything, then you see something you’d rather not see, and the next day you wake up and suddenly realize you have none of the things you wanted. And just yesterday, the sight of all the beautiful material goods you had accumulated filled you with pride. Objects, no matter how expensive or enviable, won’t drown out what’s inside a person, like a worm nestled in the soft cradle of the mind. Usually, it slept, curled up in a ball, letting itself be forgotten, but there were times when it woke up, straightening its multi-segmented, multi-legged body, and plunged the pincers crowning its abdomen into the very center of one’s being.

Everyone had their own worm, raised from a tiny larva, fed on memories and fears. Everyone, regardless of who they were: a homeless drunk from a littered alley, a twenty-year-old who was just getting married, or a forty-year-old celebrity for whom hundreds of chicks were ready to drop their panties.

“Fuck this.” He muttered, dragging himself out of bed.

He shuffled to the window, adjusting the boxers that were constricting his swollen penis along the way. He had to piss, he had to piss like a son of a bitch, but he decided to hold it in. Not because he was exercising willpower or trying to control the body’s natural, physiological urges, but to feel the discomfort. A small punishment for the dream that had haunted him... again, for years, repeating, differing from the previous one in a few details, but always ending the same way. A bloody reminder from centuries ago, from a time when he was a different man, from other places he had tried to forget for most of his life.

How long ago was it? Ten years? Fifteen? Twenty?

It didn’t matter. The past is the past, there’s no point in stirring up memories. Especially since, as the years passed, they became less clear, and in fact, he didn’t so much remember as imagine what had happened. And anyway, most of the time he was high back then, so...

The pain in his bladder began to become unbearable, forcing him to surrender and go to the bathroom.

With a slight spread, he relieved himself of the beer he had drunk before bed, glancing sideways at his reflection in the shower stall door.

His hair, disheveled after a restless night, stuck out in all directions like black wisps of straw. His face crumpled, tired. His eyes faded, washed out of their blue, today with an added bonus of dark circles around them.

And tiny, tiny wrinkles in their corners, still delicate as a spider web, but he saw them clearly, as if his sight had sharpened just so he could see them.

He could have sworn they weren’t there yesterday morning, and now they seemed as deep as the furrows carved by a peasant plowing a field.

`You’re going downhill now,’ he muttered to himself, kicking his boxers under the wall.

Yes. He was going downhill, and without brakes at that. He’d long had a feeling that forty was the peak for most guys. And he’d recently passed it, and was now starting the descent. At first slow, almost snail-like, but as the years went by, it would pick up speed, and eventually, at sixty, he’d notice everything around him blurring into an indistinct image, as if he were watching the world through the windshield of a speeding car. And then, BOOM, he’d crash at the very bottom, into a wall that had suddenly appeared in his path, spray-painted with the word ‘death’.

He was afraid of old age, not the early kind, in his fifties, when he still had enough strength to do what he liked, but the senile kind, marked by aching joints, memory lapses, and thinning, graying hair. He was afraid, but he kept his fear deep inside. Like many other things that no one knew about. He had two natures: one, smooth, shiny, like polished – for show. The other, the real one, he kept for moments like this, when he was alone and no one could see or hear him, expose what he didn’t want to reveal.

‘Fuck you,’ he squinted and stuck his tongue out at the mirror.

With a lazy movement, he turned on the water, stepped into the shower, and put his face under the strong, warm stream. Then he reached for the body wash and, humming something, began to wash himself.

The gloomy thoughts flowed off him with the suds, though, like insects, they tried to cling to his wet, slippery skin, hide in the hollows of his perfectly maintained body, weave into the black thicket of hair under his belly.

In a much better mood, a snow-white towel wrapped around his waist, he went downstairs to the kitchen. A bowl of cereal with soy milk, music playing in the background, a smartphone in his free hand… And everything was fine, as always.

He checked his messages: as usual, a lot of gibberish, texts from people he knew but didn’t remember, from those he remembered but would rather not know. A recording from his mother: she asked if he was okay and if he had reconciled with his latest ‘love’. No, he hadn’t reconciled, and he didn’t care at all. She was one of many, appearing at the right time, and like the others, she would disappear at the right time. They showed up in a few places, spent some time together, just enough to feed the media, get them used to the ‘relationship’. The girl had fulfilled her task, end of story. He didn’t want anyone for longer than necessary.

‘Will you never stop living like a kid?’

A delicate, melodic voice echoed in his head as clearly as if its owner were leaning right next to his ear. Despite the sweet sound, the question had a sharp, critical, resentful tone, one he remembered, though he fucking wanted to forget.

The hand holding the spoon trembled, and a few drops of milk fell onto the clean countertop. He wiped them off with sudden fury, then, quite mindlessly, threw the bowl with the rest of the cereal onto the floor.

‘Hey, have you lost it?’ He hadn’t noticed his brother, who had quietly appeared just in the path of the flying bowl and got hit in the shin. He stood completely naked, with a surprised look, decorated with drops of milk from his knee down.

‘I was chasing a fly,’ he waved his hand a few times, pretending to be busy with the imaginary insect.

‘Fuck, I just got out of the shower,’ he pointed down.

‘Be glad you didn’t get it in the balls. You’d look like you’d come.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Simon laughed, picked up the bowl, and put it in the sink. ‘Crazy as hell.’”

‘It runs in the family,’ Jayme put his phone on the table and stood up. ‘Listen, I was at the club last night and I saw…’ He was interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

‘What did you see?’ Simon wiped his leg with a cloth, looking questioningly.

‘No, nothing. I guess I was imagining things,’ Jayme glanced at the display: his girlfriend was calling. Ex-girlfriend. With a slight grimace, he pressed the call button. ‘Yeah, what’s up?’ He walked upstairs, phone to his ear.

He was sitting in the club again, though in reality he was lying in his bedroom, almost dozing off, his thoughts drifting into the place that bordered waking and sleeping. He could still hear the sounds coming from his surroundings, but he was already halfway into another world, full of strange situations and even stranger people.

Now, in his mind, he was sitting on a soft couch, bathed in the dim light coming from the club’s ceiling, watching a ghost.

It was so unreal that it couldn’t be true. The past couldn’t chase him for so long and catch him when he had almost everything in order. Not after so many years. And not like this, putting someone who should really be dead before his eyes. A ghost.

At first, he didn’t believe it could be her. He had left her far behind, in terms of both distance and time.

Ten years? Fifteen? Twenty? Hundreds of miles away?

The apparition sat with her back to him a few tables away, engaged in conversation with friends. Her long, night-black hair was loose, falling somewhere beyond the backrest, beyond his field of vision.

She always had long hair, as far as he could remember. And she always wore it loose whenever she could. Even now, he remembered its touch, how it tickled his stomach, his thighs, how it obscured everything its owner did with him. He liked to grab it by the handful and wrap it around his hand.

Funny, but at that moment he couldn’t remember her name. No, not funny, but pathetic. He had spent almost a year with her, and he couldn’t recall something as important as her name. But he could easily bring to mind the image of her body, as if only that had mattered most then.

Or maybe that was the case? Maybe, apart from a pair of tits, caramel-colored skin, and a hot pussy, she had nothing to offer? Or maybe he wasn’t interested in anything more?

He didn’t remember. He didn’t want to remember.

Sitting among his friends, he stopped hearing them, as if someone had mercifully muted their voices. He saw their mouths moving, but not a single word reached him.

He heard the ghost’s voice, though, cutting through the music playing in the club. It seemed as if she was speaking into a microphone, and he had headphones in his ears, receiving the sound.

The words, one by one, sounding sweet, car-a-mel sweet, filled him like water filling an empty jug. The sounds flowed into him, dripping single words or pouring out in a stream of pearly laughter, until he felt so full that he was about to burst.

He tried to look away, but at that moment, the ghost shook her head and turned sideways, reaching for something that was leaning against her chair.

He saw her profile, perfectly visible against the bright background of the wall, and he prayed she wouldn’t see him.

‘Don’t look here. Don’t look here. Don’t look here. Please.’

The apparition stood up, holding onto the back of the chair. Something flashed in her other hand, briefly lit up with the shimmer of crystal light, and went out. A cane of varnished wood, with an ornate, silver handle.

The apparition leaned on it and headed towards the door, with the grace of someone who has trouble moving. She limped. Not like Dr. House, not like a victim of polio, but her steps weren’t as even as they used to be.

He shrank in his seat as the girl turned to wave goodbye to her friends staying at the club.

‘Have fun,’ he heard her voice, as if her wish was also directed at him.

‘Thanks,’ he muttered, completely unaware of it. Wanting to finally break away from the apparition, he reached for his glass.

Something, whether a louder remark from someone at the table, or a flash of light in his drink, a reflected glare, caught the attention of the apparition standing in the open doorway. She shifted her gaze from one person to another, indifferently, as if looking at a store window as she passed by. Then her eyes widened, as black as her hair, so black that it was hard to see the boundary between her pupil and iris.

He had once looked into them up close, very close. That was… fifteen years ago?

She blinked, looked away from his face, and absentmindedly waved to her friends again. Maybe she hadn’t recognized him?

‘Good night,’ she almost shouted, with a slight hint of panic in her voice.

‘Good night, Vanya.’

A last glance in his direction, and the girl disappeared through the door.

Jayme jerked up in bed and sat up, staring ahead with a dazed, blank look. He had dreamed, or remembered last night, no difference. Either way, he knew the apparition had recognized him. He had seen it in her eyes. And he remembered her strange, Russian-sounding name.

‘Vanya.’”