by Tatiana Vila
And strangely enough, in that same heartbeat, all my surroundings started to blur, to smudge, as if everything was being rubbed in linear motions, distorting all the angular and circular shapes in the living room to a baffling hazy mixture. The only thing that remained unchanged was that tear-jerking image of the phantom in my mind, clear and vivid as a flesh and bone image. The reality of it was striking, hypnotizing.
Like some bizarre dream, I felt a vaporous tunnel forming in the back of my head, pulling me to its unfathomable depth as if with a mysterious magnetic force. Though my eyes weren’t closed, I was suddenly in the darkness behind them, its intensity deepening every second. In some corner of my mind, I knew this wasn’t normal, that my eyelids needed to be pressed together to find this black veil. Even some ghosts of light should’ve been dancing across this puzzling night. But I didn’t have enough time to ponder it. Misty twines, filmy and soft as a whisper, floated from behind and coiled around my arms and legs, infusing their touch with a spellbinding melody through my pores, singing to my heart a melancholic call. I realized it was the same lullaby of the music box, only it had a gentle-as-a-breeze symphony of voices echoing in the background.
If angels could sing, that would’ve been their anthem.
Gradually, I let myself be drawn back in a trance by those whispery twines. I was about to reach the gates of the vaporous tunnel, the moisture in the air getting denser, when I remembered the tears tickling and cooling my cheeks. Somehow, I knew that my skin was far away, that it wasn’t part of me in that moment—a wrapping that I couldn’t feel anymore, dwelling in another existence. I felt light. And that’s when understanding fell on me as heavy and thick as an elephant.
I'm literally in the back of my head, I realized.
Suup. A strange force suddenly sucked me as if with a vacuum, back again into the living room. The same image of the cymbal-clapping monkey and the phantom staring at it showed on the TV. I blinked once. Twice. My eyelashes sticky with tears. The image changed and the movie kept rolling. I felt a pucker forming between my eyebrows. Hadn’t time kept going while I was on that odd daze? It looked as if the movie had frozen—or was I imagining everything? Maybe it was still part of this reverie I’d seemed to fall into.
No. It wasn’t. I could feel my body, my skin, the heaviness of my being in this shadowy room where random bursts of light coming from the television touched our faces. I was here, not far away. Then, why? Had I experienced a short trip to space, travelling to a parallel dimension where time ran a lot slower than on Earth, say, an alien minute equaling a terrestrial microsecond? That vaporous tunnel could’ve been a wormhole leading to a remote galaxy.
Whoa, I frowned in disapproval, and I’d criticized that Star Wars bookworm out in school when I was a latent Star Trek freak.
I shook my head softly. It’d been only a daydream, a vision, a hallucination—or whatever it was called. The tunnel and the whispery twines had just…just, um…a reeling sensation stroked my head. What was I talking about? The pucker on the top of my nose deepened, as if trying to wriggle out the train of thought that had escaped my grasp in a blast. Oh, yeah, the tunnel and the…the…dammit, the reeling sensation worsened. What was I trying to remember? The images were slipping away, leaving the thread of my mind. If I could’ve only remembered what those sneaky images were. The trace of them, though faint, still lingered in the sea of my thoughts, but its outline was too weak, too badly sketched to figure it out.
My head hurt, throbbing at the temples from the exertion. I pinched the bridge of my nose. What was happening to me? Was I becoming mad, imagining things and words that hadn’t touched my lips? I bet Freud would’ve loved psychoanalyzing me, and I would’ve loved to see its result because until now everything pointed out to one thing: nutcase. Huge nutcase with Star Trek paranoia, though why Star Trek, I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.
I brushed my cheek with the back of my hand to wipe away the soggy trails of my tears and turned my head aside. Buffy was flying in Dreamland, deep into its unfathomable, beautiful territory. By the way she was smiling in her sleep, however, beautiful wasn’t the right way to put it. Her uptilted lips made it seem as if a halo of bliss surrounded her, and it made me wonder if it was because of the pristine fantasy her mind seemed to be indulging in, or if it was because of the strong arms that cuddled her sleeping body. Maybe it was a brew of both.
I pulled my eyes up and found Ian’s deep eyes. He was watching me, not the artistic images running one after another on the flat screen, or at Buffy’s peaceful damsel-face resting on his chest. His eyes were fixed on mine, and they had that studious air he always had whenever those emerald irises found me—usually while I wasn’t looking his way. But I was far from being unaware of his thoughtful stare. Every time he aimed it on me, even if I wasn’t watching him, it fell down on my body with bone-cracking strength, its weight as heavy and resonant as a grand piano. I hadn’t felt it this time because of the rainstorm of confusion that had been thundering inside my head before, but I was certainly seeing it and feeling it now. It was because of this sparkle of awareness shining in me that the sudden wave of kindness, thin as a single strand of hair, stroking his face didn’t escape my notice. I knew that tender feeling wasn’t supposed to be obvious, that it was meant to be buried deep down, but my eyes were hawk-sharp and didn’t lose anything in that moment.
Why tenderness, though? It looked as if he wanted to leave Buffy’s side and pull me into his arms, to stroke my hair like he’d been doing to her, only with more gentleness and care, as if being afraid of breaking me. But much more than a wish, it was a need. Suddenly it wasn’t as thin as before. It had thickened. Why? I wondered once more. He’d never shown anything more than contempt, indifference, or boredom when he’d been around me. Yes, there was the occasional banter and taunt spiking between us, which sometimes brought more lightness to the atmosphere and sometimes more tension (fully packed with hatred). Not to mention those studious looks of his were just a way of trying to decipher my psyche for his peace of mind—and ego. Once he could look through the walls enclosing my inner-self, affecting me would be easier, and that was his main goal with me. It was all about power and self-confidence.
Yet, that look of deep kindness seemed genuine. His will to hide it under that stiff analytical face told me so. And I couldn’t stop comparing it to that warm look Dad had given me when he’d found my eight-year-old self crying in the stairs after being grounded for eating a whole bucket of chocolate ice cream, or when Mom had eased herself next to me in our old porch swing after I’d broken up with my first boyfriend. Ian’s look had that same warmth. The only difference was that I wasn’t mourning or crying. Crying. The horror of the realization pounded in my head as with a hammer. He’d seen me crying!
As if someone had pulled a switch on inside of me, I turned and shoved back the leg rest with a loud snap, ending Buffy’s serene sleep. “What…” She jerked up her head in a daze as I stood up. “Where are you going?” she asked with a sleep-slurred voice, her eyes still at half-mast.
“Open your eyes sleeping princess, the movie ended.” I pointed my hand to the credits sliding up in the black background. “I'm free to go now.”
She looked confused at the screen. “Oh, well, I guess—no, wait! Why are you in such a hurry?” she asked before I would storm away. She eased herself up, stumbled a little when she crossed the room, and flipped the light on. “Is there something you’re not…” She trailed off and frowned.
“What?” I said after not getting any sign of follow-up from her part, my muscles itching to scram.
“Were you crying?”
Perfect. Just what I needed. More humiliation. “Puhlease, that was just yawning. The movie was…terrible.”
“Okay, I know for a fact that’s a lie,” Ian suddenly said next to Buffy.
Don’t let the guard down. “Do you?” I said, challenging him with my chin high.
He twitched up the corners of his mouth into a lazy s
mile, erasing all trace of tenderness from the edges of his face. He had a full smartass stand now. “The cymbal-clapping monkey tore you to pieces.”
“Oh, God, now I'm really mad I slept through the whole movie,” Buffy added with her shoulders down. “It’s my curse with musicals.”
“It did not,” I told Ian. “You know, I just remembered that article on schizophrenia I read last week on some blog. It said artists share several key traits with schizophrenics—and some other thing I definitely won’t tell,” I said, widening my eyes at the memory. Ian pulled up his eyebrows. “Anyway, I thought it was crazy because I’ve never had any kind of bizarre stuff, like hallucinations or delusions happening to me.” I inwardly paused at those words. Something bizarre had, indeed, happened to me, only I couldn’t remember exactly what. “You on the other hand,” I continued without hesitation, “have turned upside down my beliefs. You’re clearly having lame visions.”
“You mean…visions of you crying over a wretched phantom and a clapping monkey?” he said amused.
Had I said something funny? Was my statement supposed to be funny? Suddenly I wanted to erase that stupid smile from his lips with my knee up in his manhood. “No doubt you’re on the edges of sanity,” I said with a scowl that would’ve brought an entire army to its knees. But Ian’s grin only got wider. Bastard.
“First of all, I don’t think it’s lame. I think it’s cute.”
Cute? Ugh, it would’ve been better if he’d said I was Hitler, because that word screamed ‘weak’ all over it.
“And sorry to disappoint you, but my mind is just fine.”
“Which means,” Buffy continued, “that those weren’t crazy visions. Besides, who do you think I am, Dafne? You can't fool me. I'm, like, your other half.”
“Oh, I can fool you fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’ve done it so many times that it’s embarrassing.”
“Maybe,” she cocked her head. “But the red on your eyelids and nose just killed you. And let’s not talk about how bright the indigo in your eyes is. You cried, admit it.”
“I didn’t! Stop pushing.”
“Don’t her eyes look more surreal, like if she was wearing colored lenses?” she asked Ian, ignoring me.
He paused for a moment, losing some of the amusement on his face. “They always do,” he finally said, locking his eyes with mine.
I didn’t know if I wanted to shoot at him one of my killer scowls once more or…or something.
“Yeah, but they get even more surreal after she cries,” Buffy insisted.
I got the point. This wasn’t my win, better to let it go instead of sinking myself deeper into the humiliation well more than I’d already had. “This conversation is completely useless.” I sighed with a shake of my head, unlocking my eyes from Ian’s. “I’ll leave you two to your love nest. Just keep the R-rated stuff out of the house if you have some dignity—and in case you didn’t catch my telepathic message Ian, the ban goes straight to you. I’m out.” I spun and burst out from the living room before he would start with the smart-ass comments. One more second there and a new intense wordplay would’ve exploded.
I crossed the foyer and rushed up the stairs. Gran’s room was the only one not crowding the upper part of the Lady. She’d claimed she chose sleeping on its “belly”—meaning the ground floor—to keep a comfortable temperature in the room, because heat and humidity was something she simply couldn’t cope with. It was especially bad during summer when the roof soaked up the bright sunlight and squeezed it out into the house, transforming it into our own personal oven. She’d even wanted to migrate to the Lady’s feet—meaning the basement—and shape it into her own cool heaven, but the stairs were a pain in the ass and fixing them meant time and hassle.
She had thick skin, and a cold and fresh milieu to sleep in was her delight—German genes, I guessed.
I reached the end of the hall, pushed open the door of my room and stepped inside. Why she couldn’t use air conditioner to create that cool heaven of hers wherever she wanted, I didn’t know. A European thing, too, I guessed. I remembered the time we went to visit Gran’s hometown and decided to take a tour around Europe. Three of the five countries we’d seen—Spain, France and Italy—apparently rejected the whole notion of using an air cooling system while travelling in a car. Having the windows rolled down with natural air sliding past their faces was the standard thing to do, even if natural meant hot-choking air.
But being as caring as always, Gran had thought of her granddaughter's survival during hot summer days and had installed air conditioner units in our rooms. They’d been really helpful last summer. But since it was spring, the weather was still cool enough to avoid them—cooler than normal actually, but it wasn’t too much of a surprise. The weather here was bipolar. One day could be hot enough to cook an egg on the pavement, whereas the next day could be cold enough to lose one’s hand from frostbite. Lovely, really.
I flipped the light on and closed the door. The drawer of my dresser—the one I’d painted with multicolored curlicues, stars and random forms—was half open already. I plucked out the first flannel pants and Cami my hands found, peeled off my clothes, and pulled the others on to sleep. It was a blue-and-gray plaid pant and a white Cami, and I thought it was not too bad of a combination, until I stopped in front of the standing mirror and saw my reflection. I tossed the dirty clothes into the yellow “Toxic Fabric” hamper in the corner and meditated on whether putting on a bra again, or showing my two friends here to anyone who clasped eyes on me. Because the see-through cami wouldn’t hide them from the firefighters if the Lady suddenly decided to get angry and burst into flames, or if a tornado suddenly decided to show up to say hi and, God help me, leave my friends exposed to the whole neighborhood. One never knew what might happen. The world was, indeed, full of crazy possibilities.
After a moment of deep consideration, I opted to stay braless because the probabilities of a fire or tornado were, after all, pretty low. And there was nothing better than sleeping loose and comfortable.
I turned on the lamp on the nightstand and flipped the light off, veiling all the mini paintings in the four walls under a shadowy light. Some people said my room looked like a giant, four-dimensional doodle, and I just told them it was the result of lacking canvas. But truth to be told, I loved painting in walls. There was something definite about stamping my soul into a strong, permanent material, as if that peep of creativity could never disappear—a mark of one’s passing. The wall could be repainted over the years, but the painting would always remain there, hidden under layers and layers of colors. A canvas, however, was more breakable, weaker. It was a loose ground for the depiction of one’s mind, while a wall was steadier.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t like using canvas—or paper. I had several sketchpads piled up in boxes with drawings dating back even six years. My commitment to art had begun at an early stage. Times when I was supposed to play with Barbies and dolls had been spent with color pencils and crayons over loose pieces of paper. They’d been aimless shapes at first, but they’d soon transformed into beautiful, well-structured images. And when Mom had realized this, she’d decided to take it to the next level and bought me sketchpads. They’d been my diversion since then—and a source of liberation.
Yes, I did have a way to deal with the heavy oppression of sadness. Buffy had her books, and I had my sketchpads.
I bent forward and pulled it out from under the bed. In case someone busted into my room, the sketchpad wasn’t in plain sight, at least. Some sketches felt intimate in a way. They were glimpses of my soul, of my true-self (the one hiding inside those icy walls from the world), and the pencil seemed to be the gulp of air, the revitalizing blow that my core needed sometimes. Along with the short escapades, the sketchpad was the only palpable connection of the real Dafne to this reality. Without them, she would be lost, buried deep into the tangled blackness of my insides, with no imminent light to show her the way out, and I didn’t want that to ha
ppen.
One needed to be tough to stomach all the darkness and sadness and greediness in the world, but not for the high price of losing oneself. If being down in the dumps for opening my heart while drawing my thoughts onto paper was the price I had to pay to not do it, then I would definitely endure it. More now than ever when my essence seemed to evaporate a bit more each day.
I eased into bed and settled the sketchpad on my knees. I pushed out my hand to reach the glass of water on the middle of the nightstand and grasped…air? I turned to look. The glass wasn’t there. I sighed. I forgot to take it. Then my eyes narrowed. Because of stupid, chauvinistic Ian.
Usually, I never forgot to pour me down one for the night. It was almost an automatic thing, an essential, like brushing my teeth before sliding inside the-glow-in-the-dark starred comforter. Mom had made it a routine. She used to bring us up every night a glass of water to our rooms—a Bugs Bunny glass for me and a Tweety one for Buffy, which she’d decided to ditch after getting her first bra. I still used mine, though. Midnight water just didn’t taste the same without that smiley bunny on the other side of the glass.
With the chipped bowl and all, I guess I had a thing for tableware.
With Ian, however, the only thing I had was a colossal desire to punch him in the face, straight into his perfect nose and intense gem-like eyes—a shade of reddish purple under them would’ve brought out that maddening emerald. Maybe chop some of his annoying silky hair with Gran’s garden shears, too. And try that highly corrosive drain cleaner hidden in the storage room on his pianist hands to see its full effects would’ve been sweet as hell.
The guy needed some humbling. He was infuriating.
With a groan, I got to my feet and tiptoed down the stairs, careful enough to dodge the floorboards’ complaint. The toes in my naked feet curled up once they touched the cold foyer, recoiling in disapproval. My arms pebbled with tight goose bumps. It was freaking Antarctica down here!