by Tessi, Zoya
Shit!
The aspirin was starting to work, so the throbbing at the sides of my head was fading some, and more scenes from the night before were starting to rise to the surface of my mind.
Oh, please God no! Tell me that didn’t happen! Could I have been hallucinating from all the tequila! Surely I didn’t kiss him? It was a dream, wasn’t it?
“Beth, I’m not feeling so good. I guess I need to go back to bed,” I got up awkwardly from the chair, feeling my face turning scarlet.
“You just go, sweetie. I'm gonna make sure everything’s neat and tidy ‘fore I leave.”
“Leave?”
“Well I promised my folks I’d spend the weekend with them. But if you don’t feel good, I'll stay,” she looked genuinely concerned.
“It’s OK. I’m just hung over. You go.”
“Sure?”
I put on a brave face and reached a hand out to stroke her cheek. “You should go and enjoy the weekend with your family.”
“OK. But promise me you'll call if you don’t feel good.”
“I promise,” I called behind me and entered the bedroom.
I let myself drop down on the bed face first, turning slowly after a time to stare up at the ceiling.
I kissed him! I really kissed him! Someone must’ve put some serious narcotics in my drinks. Alcohol alone surely couldn’t account for a thing like that.
I very much wanted to stop thinking about Alex all together, so I picked a book up off the floor and tried to focus on ancient Greek sculpture and pottery, which was usually pretty interesting to me. Ten minutes passed before I realized that I was holding it upside down.
When Beth came to say goodbye a little later, I hugged her and went with her to the door, using the opportunity to step into the kitchen to fix something to eat since Alex didn’t seem to be around. My head was starting to throb again, and I really didn’t want to face him yet.
Taking a bite of the sandwich I’d made, I was only a few paces from my own door when a deep voice came from somewhere behind me:
“Getting trashed doesn’t sound like such a good idea now, does it?”
“ Mind your own business!”
“Well I am. And I have to say, I don’t like what I see. You look like crap.”
I turned and threw him a murderous look, in keeping with my mood.
“That’s really a compliment, Alex. Has anyone ever told you what a charming son of a bitch you are?”
“Many times.”
"Yeah, sure.”
There’d been many men I’d known who knew just how to make a girl smile and play with her hair. They’d crack jokes on cue and flatter you, knowing just the right hollow words to kill any empty silence. They spent hours in front a mirror making sure every hair was in place, and every rip in their jeans just right, and then they’d act like they’d just got out of bed. Unlike them, Alex really didn’t care about being liked; with him it seemed to be quite the opposite. He really wasn’t interested in what other people thought. Maybe that was what made him so appealing. Just by being so sure of himself, he could get any girl he wanted.
Frowning in his usual way, he stood in front of me in some loose and shapeless sweat pants, more suited to a boxing ring than a plush uptown apartment; and there was that awful skull t-shirt again. Nevertheless, put him up on any billboard and you’d have masses of people buying whatever brand he was promoting right the next day.
“I see you’re in fine spirits today,” he snorted.
“You would be too with an axe buried in your skull.”
“OK, but do you feel alright?”
I don’t know why, but the worried tone in his voice just made me angrier.
“Do I feel alright? You mean, considering I watched a psycho smash my ex’s nose to pieces last night? And that you carried me over your shoulder through the club like a sack of potatoes? What is your problem?”
Alex tightened his jaw and something like a red mist flashed across his eyes. Approaching me with slow but determined steps, he stopped when he got near and looked even madder up close.
“You going to wear black for that funeral?” he asked, looking down at the continent-sized bruise on my arm
“What are you talking about? Whose funeral?”
“That of your soon-to-be-deceased ex.”
“What!? Are you crazy?” I squeaked
“Well, I suppose black isn’t your color of choice, but people will talk if you go there dressed in shocking pink, you know...”
“ Stop that. You won’t kill anybody.”
“Won’t I?” he went right on playing dumb.
“Alex, please...” I took hold of his t-shirt and looked into his eyes, pleading, “You paid him back last night. Please don’t let it go any further.”
Fear of whether or not he might be serious must have been evident from my voice, and when he finally gave one serious nod, I sighed with relief.
“But if he so much as looks at you again...”
“He won’t, trust me,” I whispered, and then made an effort to reassert myself by tilting my face a little: “And knock it off with that macho attitude. It's starting to bug me.”
“Oh, really?” he raised one eyebrow to look condescending, apparently suppressing a grin.
I resisted the urge to back away and instead brought my face a little closer to his. For a few moments we locked horns in a kind of standoff, regarding each other silently and waiting to see who would look away first.
“In case you’re wondering, I’m not afraid of you… looking down on me from high up. That act cuts no ice with me at all,” I lied, but maintained the falsehood.
“You should be though, Princess. Very much afraid.”
He took his hands out of his pockets and laid both palms flat against the doorframe, cornering me. Something like déjà vu swept over me; I was again a deer caught in the glare of a predator, and this cat looked like he might play with his dinner before moving in for the kill. Yet again, the skull was in front of me, messing with my sense of reality.
Reaching one hand behind my back, I felt for the handle, turned it and made a very fast exit, making sure it closed with a bang, and that the key turned loudly as I locked it.
“I’ll kill you in your sleep!”
“I love you too, sweet angel,” a glimmer of amusement came from the other side of the door.
“ Oh... Get over yourself!”
I spent the rest of the day in my room, only opening the door again at around eleven o’clock, and then very gently. Carefully, I made my way to the bathroom, mindful of every sound. After brushing my teeth, taking care that the even light switch didn’t make a noise and that my footfalls were all but silent, I made my way back to my room and lay down grateful that sleep would take me away.
***
A dreadful clap of thunder woke me with a start.
Instantly alert, I turned to the window and looked out as a fierce storm raged outside, a cold sweat breaking out along the length of my body. Lightning forked brightly in the sky, sending an electric blue flash to the back of the room, quickly followed by a crack that reverberated in the pit of my stomach. It was like the sound of the earth breaking apart.
With one hand I gripped the blanket on the bed and pulled it up to my face, and with the other I fumbled around frantically for the switch to my bedside lamp. When my fingers finally recognized it, the familiar click was answered with nothing but darkness. I flicked the switch a couple more times, but still no light came. My hands shaking quite badly, I found my phone and went to ‘B’ for Bethany, but remembered straight away that she wasn’t there. Another bolt of lightning lit the sky as the phone fell clattering to the floor.
With my heart racing in my chest, I took sharp, shallow breaths and got out of bed to leave the room.
Shaking violently, I moved through the living room, forcing my eyes to steer clear of the windows as I made for the hallway, where I’d be furthest away from the flashing lights and the noise. Before I could make it, one
astonishingly bright light came and seemed to blind me, as a sonic boom came to split my mind in two. Horror-struck, I closed my eyes. That was a big mistake.
With my eyes screwed up tight, images from two years before drifted to the surface of my mind, like bodies rising to the surface of a lake. The storm was still raging, but now I found that all the angles of the room had changed – I was back again, in that fancy hotel in Paris.
Rain lashed against the windowpanes and flew in through the open balcony doors, their white curtains billowing in the wind. I moved forward to close them, but felt my foot knock against something hard. Dropping to my knees, I brought my hands down to feel for whatever had tripped me, the darkness of the room seeming to fill me and rise like bile in my throat.
“Mom?” I stammered, terrified.
My hands made contact with something soft and warm. A thick liquid was spreading around my palms and between my fingers. It felt like I’d dipped my hands in syrup. Raising them up to try to see, a cold blue light filled the room like a strobe, shining a blackish red against the silhouette of my hands. The thunder came then, and I started to scream.
Suddenly, someone’s hands came around my chest, locking me in place. Every effort I made to lash out was met with equal resistance, and all my kicking and screaming could not set me free.
“No… No!” I shrieked as loud as the thunder.
“Sasha!” the sound came to me as though from the end of an old, crackling telephone line.
I continued to lash out with my arms and legs, spittle flying from my mouth as I put my heart and soul into the violent struggle, never gaining so much as an inch of freedom. When I’d used up all my energy there was nothing left but to go limp like a rag doll, cold now and shaking madly.
“Sasha! Look at me!”
Thoroughly wild and beyond comprehending, I opened my eyes slowly, reality edging back to me in short, tentative steps.
Alex was sitting with his back to the wall of the hallway, holding me tightly from behind as I, clamped between his arms and legs, shivered against him in a tight ball. One small candle flickered nearby, from the shelf where we left our keys, but apart from that we might as well have been at the bottom of a well.
“Shh, it’s only the power. It went out,” I felt Alex's fingertips against my cheek, pulling free some wet strands of hair.
Lifting my head, I could see through the gloom that his eyes were worried.
It was horrific when this happened, but there seemed to be nothing I could do to escape these… episodes. Whether they were panic attacks or whatever, it seemed I’d have to keep on reliving the worst night of my life, over and over again. Two years had passed, and still I could do nothing to fight back when the flashbacks came on this intense. Having someone close made it easier to come out of it, but then I always felt embarrassed and ashamed. My raw nerve exposed for all to see was an awful thought, but imagining being alone at times like that was even worse. Alex might have been the last person I wanted to see, but I was glad he was there.
I wished my body would stop shaking, but that wasn’t happening any time soon, so it seemed best just to stay where I was, lying against Alex until some daylight came to replace the night.
“You'll catch a cold if we stay here.” he said few minutes later and started to get up off the floor, lifting me up in his arms.
He was starting to carry me through the living room when I caught sight of the large windows and the flashes of lightning beyond. They were further away now, but still I dug my nails into his arms and struggled against the awful sight.
“No!” I cried as the rumble of thunder passed through me again like a dentist’s drill.
Visibly confused, Alex he put me down on the floor, and as soon as the cold floorboards met my feet I rushed back into the hallway. I curled up on the floor next to the wall, bringing my hands up to cover my ears in an effort to block out the storm. Staring down, I started counting yellow floor tiles, but they seemed blurred somehow and I couldn’t decipher where one ended and other followed. I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, but still held my gaze glued to the fifth tile. Or maybe it was the fourth... I wasn’t sure.
Holding a thick white blanket, Alex sat next to me on the floor. Muttering something under his breath, he took me in his arms again, wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and hugged me protectively. My teeth were still chattering, but I didn’t know whether it was from cold or fear.
“It's OK, baby. We’ll stay here as long as you want, just please stop shaking,” he whispered softly in my ear.
The low tone of his voice set me strangely at ease. Little by little, a sense of calm descended. With one arm around my waist, he gently ran his fingers through my hair and for the first time in a very long time I felt safe, curled up in the arms of my nemesis.
Opening my eyes by degrees, the first things to come into focus were the muscles on the strong arm draped around my shoulders. The image under my nose at that moment showed a mythical beast, a sort of snarling dragon with flared nostrils snorting fire, and a slithering body coated in various shades of black scales. Its grotesque trunk narrowed into a tail, which circled the bicep twice before disappearing somewhere near the elbow. Processing the image and why it was under my nose wasn’t the best way to come out of my slumber.
We were still in the hallway, and from the light creeping through from the doorway to the living room it seemed that dawn had long since broken. Shocked to realize I’d spent the night huddled against Alex, my breaths became shallow as I wondered how I might get away without waking him.
“You seem comfortable there...” his hoarse voice came from beside me.
I slowly lifted my head up from his chest, pulled back a bit and looked at his face. His eyes were red around the edges and dark underneath and it was obvious that, unlike me, he hadn’t slept a wink.
“I'm sorry...” I started, but he stopped me in my tracks with a finger against my lips.
“You scared the shit out of me last night,” he took his finger away, picked the blanket up off the floor and wrapped it around my shoulders. “How do you feel?”
“Better,” I whispered, glad of the warm sensation on my skin where his hands had been.
Lightheaded, I continued to look at the lines of his face and the shadow of his one-day beard, aware of the knots forming in my stomach.
“I'm going to take a shower and get dressed,” I said quietly, got up out of his lap and hurried to the bathroom, leaving Alex sitting on the floor in the hall.
Clicking the door shut behind me, I pulled off my PJs frantically and got into the shower. The water felt magical as it washed over me, and I sensed my soul returning to my body, recovering from the trauma of the night before but also from the effect Alex was having on me. I could still sense his smell lingering on my body, so it felt like a relief to let everything just wash away.
Taking a cup of hot streaming coffee, I sat by the kitchen window and leaning my head against the glass, watched a fine drizzle falling from the gray sky outside. These panic attacks always left me drained, as though someone had wrung the life right out of me.
I can’t go on like this any more.
Knowledge of the fact that my problem was serious didn’t spur me to visit a doctor, or a shrink, probably because of the questions I’d have to answer. There’d be no choice but to lie, and that would surely make the whole effort pointless. The first thing they’d surely ask would be ‘when did the attacks begin?’ and I could never answer that honestly. Sometimes I imagined the face of a psychiatrist, as I put in a levelheaded voice :
“Well, two years ago I found my mother hacked to death in a hotel room. They killed her and sliced her up to show my father that he shouldn’t do business on their patch. He sells guns and other weapons to gangs and terrorists, you see.”
Hearing steps approach the kitchen, I looked up to see Alex enter, muttering something to himself. He did that a lot. Usually in Russian. Curses mostly. His vocabulary was hideous
most of the time, but when he spoke his mother tongue, well... he got really creative then. Other than that, I’ve never heard him speaking Russian. Except when he was fighting with Nikolai over the phone, of course.
While he was passing, on his was way to pour some coffee from the pot, I noticed that his movements were slower than usual and that it seemed to cause him pain to put his weight on his right leg. He brought his cup to the table and sat down in a chair across from mine, a pained expression catching his features for a second before they settled into a sort of sulk; that, at least, wasn’t unusual.
“Something wrong?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“What happened to your leg?”
“I have a cramp,” he barked and looked away. “And you? I hope you feel better than you look.”
This was wonderful. First thing in the morning and he’d already started showering me with compliments. I’d seen my face in the mirror and knew I looked washed out and upset, but no girl likes to have her suspicions confirmed. But, I had a feeling that he did that on purpose to change the subject.
“You’re intolerable, really.”
“Good to know.” he shrugged and continued to sip his coffee. “Do you want to talk about what happened last night?”
“No.”
“OK…”
“But thank you.”
“For what?”
“You know what… for staying with me up all night, on the floor. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Any time.”
I was really hoping, for the sake of my sanity, that there wouldn’t be a next time. I didn’t exactly like this feeling I had when he was that close to me. It was too plain unsettling being drawn to him so forcefully, when that was obviously such a dangerous road to travel.
When he’d finished his coffee, Alex went to the hallway and came back with two sets of keys in his hand.
“I'm going to crash for a few hours. When I wake up we can go wherever you want, but till then you have to stay here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I can’t do my job if I’m dog tired, and since I won’t risk you sneaking out, I’m taking these with me.”