Hourglass19

Note: without Ve, who I met on the bus recently, I couldn’t have written this. We had long winding conversations on human nature, and the nature of love, obsession etc. It really helped.

Daemon – originally meant guardian angel for the ancient Greeks. Also quoted Anais Nin again, a story called: Je suis le plus malade des surrealists.

Hourglass – nineteen.

Shinya watched Die clap his hands three times. It had to be something happy he was praying for, because Shinto was for happiness and Buddhist temples for death. He walked closer; Die bowed a few times and seemed to be praying. Silence; he watched, feeling a slight voyeurism in the act. Die smiled, eyes still closed and seemed to be mumbling something. Shinya strained to hear it.

“ . . . please . . . the Assembly of the Gods . . . please . . . . . . suffering . . . just let the two of them be . . . I ask . . . send someone . . . I don’t care . . . I’m dying here! Do you have any idea the pains all of us have to put up with? Sorry . . .”

Shinya frowned and opened the book to read (he was always prepared):

Assembly of the Gods:

In Japanese mythology, every year the gods assemble in the holy temple at Izumo where they hold council in order to predestine the love affairs of people. It is here that it is decided who will love whom, and whose love will be requited.

Kyo grabbed it off him, “Whatcha reading?”

Shinya shushed him. Kyo wrinkled his nose in disgust. Shinya ignored him. Kyo waved him hand in front of Shinya’s face. Shinya walked towards Die and stood next to him. He clapped his hands together a few times and bowed to pay his respects; he began to pray. Die glanced at him. Kyo stared at them both and read the extract, mumbling about the insanities of religious devotion.

“Gekka-o . . . I pray for . . .”

Kyo flipped through the little book madly, a little tired, annoyed and praying for his doona.

Gekka-o:

A god of matrimony and associated. He binds the feet of lovers with a thread made of red silk.

Kaoru woke up and tugged his foot. It was tied to something; the usual suspect – Toshiya’s doing. He leaned on his elbow and looked down. He couldn’t see anything will all the blankets. He kicked the blankets up and stuck his foot out in the morning light. A red thread tied Toshiya’s feet to his. Toshiya turned over and hugged his pillow. The thread did not break.

Back in the car, Kyo crossed his arms and glared at Die.

“You interrupted my beauty sleep to take me to a fucking temple to pray?”

“Yep, about sums it.”

“Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do but hey, why the hell does it have to intrude on my sleeping hours?!”

Die smirked, “Because it’s more fun that way. Hey, don’t say I’ve never helped you stay awake.”

Shinya smiled, “Yeah, we’ve done everything from water balloons to hot wax.”

Kyo opened his big mouth to retaliate, smiling to show his teeth. Shinya swivelled the car around a corner and Kyo got crushed to the window, words mushed into a yelp. Shinya smiled, watching Kyo’s flustered face from the rear view mirror. The car swivelled again as Die grabbed the steering wheel and pulled hard. Kyo tumbling everywhere.

I hopped on my left foot, “Fuck! Fuck! FUCK! FUCK!!!”

Kaoru looked up, “What’s wrong now?”

I sat on the kitchen table and thrust my right foot in his face, “I stubbed my toe! Here, look! It hurts like shit! I think I’ve done something really bad to it.”

He looked at it, “You need help Toshiya.”

“Is it that bad?” I winced; I didn’t want to know. “Should I call the hospital?”

“It’s just a bit red, Toshiya, it’s fine; trust me.”

“Just fine! Those were famous last words, Kaoru. Not internal bleeding? You don’t think . . .?”

He tapped my feet, “Toshiya, stop stressing; there’s a peg attached.”

“Oh . . . oh . . . well, well then that’s okay then.”

He took it off and smiled dryly. “Like I said Toshiya, you need help.”

“Oh, well stuff you too. It hurt, what was I suppose to think?”

“Nothing. You weren’t supposed to think, you were suppose to cry.”

I smiled at him. He smiled back. Maybe I have been wrong; maybe I did want people, and someone, and not anyone, but just him. Him and his cigarette, dry voice and chaste hands. Him and his composure, him and his dry low laughs. The smell of hazy warmth, like spring afternoon naps under your mother’s cashmere jumper. Like dew and Sunday morning.

I sat cross-legged on the table, my mouth open. “. . .”

He looked at me expectantly; his expression was earnest and waiting. The words wouldn’t make it past my lips. I choked on their unfamiliarity. Like stainless steel spoons in my mouth. He looked away, a little disappointed. I closed my mouth and didn’t try anymore. You didn’t need a voice box in this kind of relationship anyway; just your form was enough.

I stared at the page. It meant nothing to me.

I stared at the pen. It said nothing to me.

I stared at the guitar. It sang nothing to me.

I stared at the page. It meant nothing to me. I stared at the page. It meant nothing to me. I stared at the page. It meant something to me. I could read. I could not be separated from my books. I was losing myself behind my spectacles. She brought me a lamp with a high intensive light globe.

“You’re going to ruin your eyes if you read in the dark. You can read if you want to but at least have a good light source.”

I stared at the pen. It was silent. I stared at the pen. It spoke to me. I grasped it in my hands and it felt right, like it should be there. I pressed the nib to paper and began to make markings on the whiteness. The blankness is filled up by my scratching, which makes drawings and words possible. I liked to draw . . . but it’s his role to draw, not mine. My drawings lack . . .

I stared at the guitar. It said nothing. I stared at the guitar. It sang something. I heard a hundred different voice screaming at me. I wrote it all down, the emotions they contained. This was natural. This was me, except my hands were too small. I gritted my teeth and strained to reach the chords. I did, and I did it again and again and again.

Is that music I hear?

Music in my ears. But my world was still empty. When you love something, the first thing you want to do is share with someone else. It’s a human characteristic. I picked out someone like myself, and yet was completely different. When you love somebody, you never want to be away from them, you want to kidnap them – each thing they own becomes significant to you; a secret code. I found my guitar-deft fingers flicking through his books and papers.

He stared at the page. It meant nothing to him. He stared at the page. It meant nothing to him. He stared at the page. It meant everything to him. He read anything; he could not be separated from his books. His mother was concerned he would loose his looks behind the glasses he wore. He just kept reading. He already had a pencil in his hand; he was born that way. He was born smiling and thinking, reading manga books in his sleep.

He stared at a guitar. It meant nothing to him, it didn’t even attempt to sing. He placed his hand to it but it didn’t react. He turned the other way and picked up a bass. This sang to him, but his fingers were brittle. He tried his hardest; four was not a lucky number but it had to work. It did, and he did it again and again and again. Animated reality in his mind, rising higher and higher. Avid doodler, with coloured pens.

We shunned texts and cram schools. I played and drew, animated reality in my mind rising. We met each other in winter and again in autumn. It was never summer or spring, but we waited patiently. Well, I did. He smashed the window. He smiled at me and asked me to come with him. We were on the road in an hour. I tied him to the chair so he could not leave me. The city disappeared behind us.

The sun on the cars. Moving bugs that whiz past you, leaving your hair and scarf flapping with the currents of carbon dioxide. The law of friction subsided, heaving forwards in the world like some monster, part metal, full of colour and light. The train station, whose name I’ve forgotten. I know where I’m going and how to get there. That’s enough.

When you’re on a train, notice the way noise becomes inconsequential. Sounds of chatter, ring of cells, click-clack of shoes. The landscape in your eye passes unburnt into your retina; the sun’s divine shape is impressed on your cornea. Eyes, eyes that see. The sharp crisp nutty smell of burning acorns cannot be seen.

I sniffed; damp morning air. Air with the smell of someone’s breakfast, another’s coffee, someone’s tea and the morning trees standing there. Air of exhaust fumes, air of leather seats and Japanese wisteria in a pot. Air, to be sucked in, choked on, devoured. I didn’t like trains, but I can for him. He liked trains; his mind drifted from him, other images before his eye.

I stared at him. The form that he took in my mind, in the mirror, in the world, in this world. I could speak to him. I could say anything to him. I could admit everything; he was my priest, my priest, and my priest. My penance came from him. The Eucharistic blood that flowed from his mouth into mine. If I were to feel for him, I die.

“I hate you.” I said; my wrists hurt.

“I love you.” He said.

The words are old and worn; said a billion times before by rotten mouths and clean ones, along the timeline perhaps 6000 years. I hated the feeling of disquiet, stabbing my stomach and devesting it of it’s covering each time I heard it spoken to me. Enfettered emotion; emotions full of chains. You have to start caring. The responsibility to feel for, to respect and care for in sickness and in irritation, till death do you hate. It’s too much.

“You say them wrong, Kaoru. You make it all wrong. It’s not meant to be said like that.”

“How is it meant to be said?”

I held up a knife. “It’s meant to be expressed.”

“Why won’t you try? Can’t you just try for me?” He pleaded in the most wonderful ways, silently; this whole entire dialogue in half said in our minds.

“I have. I’m here, aren’t I? If you want the fruit, you have to climb the tree. If you want to keep it, you’re gonna need to pull and tug. If you want to eat it, you’re going to have to cut it. Well?”

“No . . . no way . . . I’m not doing that.”

“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.” I smiled, bland and emotionless.

“. . .”

I lit a cigarette and took a puff, “I’m waiting.”

I stared at the red string that tied our feet together. I recognised it. The sign of companionship. The sign of Kami. I untied the string and stared at it. The red thread of silky origins; there was something wrong with it. I turned over in my palms, my dry fingers measuring the texture. I noticed there was a knot in the middle.

And it wasn’t a single thread. It was a braid. The threats were uneven, spidery and strangely jagged. But it was strong, very strong. Unconventional silk; raw silk, unfiltered, untouched and unmade. The red silk thread of O-Gekka in his hand.

Kyo’s eyebrows joined together in the middle as he turned around. Air and Fire arguing over something again. Except Kaoru had a knife, the razor sealed in red plastic, ready to be flicked out at any given moment; Kaoru’s finger rested on the notch. Toshiya chasing after him. Pale like plague and bleached sheets.

“It wasn’t a fucking request!!! You are so fucking well going to go through with it!!!”

Toshiya picked up the nearest chair and threw it at Kaoru. Kaoru sidestepped and approach him. Toshiya stilled; black haired silent mannequin. The knife in front of him. He fingered his cell phone; better safe than sorry. Two mannequins staring each other in the eye; what secrets are there behind the plastic lips.

He wanted to use the sharp edge of that knife and unlace every single thread forming the cloth; modesty found in clothes. He wanted to rip right through; he wanted to hack away at the ice and extinguish the fire and evaporate the water and devour air. He picked up the edge and slashed the shoulder of his object’s clothing. Immodest being, so cunning of nature.

“It’s the only way . . . I’m not running away anymore; make me stay, make me. All my life, all this structure, all this primness and proper conduct and all this crap like it really matters! I don’t want that anymore! I want chaos! I want to be selfish!”

Unmake me. An object; an identity that ceased as the knife was pressed into his hands. He wondered what it was to become nothing, just something to be shifted. He wished it so; it occurred. Chesspieces on black and white checkers. Virtuous and villainous. I hold within me every human possibility – angelic monster; hands of black and heart of white.

“Checkmate.” Toshiya said. “Now hurt me or I’m leaving.”

Intermingling blood and bodily fluids. He couldn’t tell the difference anymore. Pulsating heat he screwed with each beat of the blood’s red rose. He poured it onto the belly. Inside and out, ripped up and wetted with rusting red. He found no secrets, but he tried. He did find a healing scar, 1 cm by 8 cm on the wrist. Mark. Checkmate.

“Do you like pomegranate?” I asked.

I held out the split fruit. He took it from me with a weak smile, and picked a silver spoon with a long and thin handle; desert spoon. He was always correct with the little things like that; I grabbed one at random and stopped to watch him pick away at the fruit. His method of eating was so neat. Structure, that I didn’t want, that I was use to.

He started from the outside and worked in. I stuck my spoon in and pried up the little bulbs of fruity flesh, rather like flowers, I thought; miniature flowers in the shape of round balls. The fruit itself resembled something between a speckled plum, a small tomato and an unkempt persimmon. His orderliness made up for my discord.

Pomegranate was only in season for about a few weeks each year, around the time of autumn. A few weeks and then the fruit has rotted on the branch, stiff from wind and weather. Short but sweet, don’t you think? In the same way the cherry blossoms only last a few days and gone. Kyo went crazy over the cherry blossoms in his city; it is beautiful though.

“I’m never doing that again.”

“ . . . I don’t expect you to.”

“It was all a test?”

I smiled, “That’s a secret.”

The bruise around wrists and ankles. The little cut at my throat. The tattered bed clothes, stained with pink. The nick on my lip. He sat on the floor and stared at me.

“What?”

“It’s like some twisted manga story. It’s like worse than some twisted manga story.”

I laughed, delightful, indulgent peals of open-mouthed delight. I stopped and smirked, poking my tongue out a bit just to tease, just to mock, and annoy. But I think he could see me, and my coldness, that slight reservation in the light of my sight.

“I hate you.” He said.

I smiled, “I know.”

“I really hate you.”

“See, you can learn to say it my way.”

“Practice, practice, practice, practice . . .” Kyo continued mumbling, flipping through a stack of music sheets with swift fingers.

He stopped and frowned, “Lookie, lookie . . . um, what’s this Kyo?”

A page of scribbles . . . almost unintelligible but he could tell it was a conversation; the writing was different. One was loopy and rounded, wild and bawdy; the other was strict in its lines and borders, the formation and belly of the characters colder, quieter and strangely elegant.

What’s the difference between love and infatuation?

I don’t know. I don’t think there is one.

I’m obsessed with you.

And I have nothing to say to you.

You have everything to say to me.

I know. It’s what I’m afraid of. Dependence is scary.

Don’t forget I’ve been dependent too. She left, remember.

I don’t want to be dependent. Do you know what I thought on the train that day, looking at you?

Tell me.

I thought to myself; if you get dependent on this one, you’re going to kill yourself. You’re not gonna be able to survive the downfall. It’s all or nothing. All or nothing.

I love you.

Somehow I find that funny. What happened to infatuation and obsession?

It’s over; I’m already infatuated and obsessed enough. I feel like I’m looking at myself, at a different myself. Talking to a different myself, all I want is a connection. All I want is to share my mind, my being. That’s all I want.

But it’s scary. How do we not become dependent? I know loneliness so well I could write a book on it. I can speak to you. It’s strange but I’m not afraid of you as much. I don’t know who I am, you know, and next to people who do – it just scares me. They scare me. I feel like I could disappear next to them, because they have direction and I don’t. So I stay alone.

You won’t be alone anymore.

I know.

I’m not afraid to say anything to you. You are not my critic.

Should I take that as a compliment?

Please. It’s a good feeling.

You are not going to walk out on me. I know that to be true.

The world is not as you see it, is it?

Not, it’s what you know it to be. All I want is to run away from everything. I want to be in a place where no one knows me, but now I want you to be there too.

I need to be here still. Responsibility screws the idea, but there is a place like that.

Is this place far away?

No, we’re standing on it. Well, sitting on it.

Here?

Yes. Exactly where we are. Never mind Die and the rest of them.

Eye of the storm?

Yes, like that. I can and want to say everything. You may not like it but you won’t think badly of me. Will you let me?

Put down the pencil and speak to me. The waiting between each word is driving me nuts. You either write faster or you talk.

“It sounds wrong.” He said, “It sounds wrong. It’s not supposed to be gross like this. I don’t like it. But this is the way it is. I really would die. I would. Emotionally anyway.”

“Don’t you want to escape?” Makiko leaned on her chin and smiled softly. “Wouldn’t you like to pick everything up and just leave? Go hide in a security apartment together?”

“I would . . . it’s so crazy.”

She laughed softly, full of music. “That’s good. Craziness is good. Better than nothingness.”

He stared up at the ceiling and touched the end of his cigarette to his lips, the stub end of it a bit rough, yet smooth. He couldn’t decide, but its texture was strange to the thin stretch of skin on his lips. He took a little puff; she didn’t like him smoking. He could respect that, and she was dead – can the Dead smell? Can the Dead die again?

“Why don’t you leave, Makiko?”

“Because I love you. Maybe not ‘in love-in love’ with you, but I love you. You can destroy memories all you want Toshiya, but they’re hard to forget.” Makiko winked, “Besides, I still haven’t finished my business yet.”

He smiled dryly, and flicked his cigarette ash into a trap. “The duty of the yurei, your purpose . . . just what is your purpose Makiko?”

She tapped her manicured fingers on the table and smiled lazily, “The complexities of everything, I guess. To be your personal mentor, to discuss things through with you, your internal dialogue out loud. Do you not find me comforting? I am your Greek daemon, watching over you.”

“It’s a reference, right? Classical or Hellenistic? Or is it none? I remember you teaching me this.”

“I’m your freaking guardian, that’s what matters; drop the analysis crap.” She looked at her watch, “Sorry, darling, but I have got to run now. Kami sama is waiting for us lost souls. I never had much for religion, but look at me now; jumping at the snap of the fingers.”

She stood and waved, disappearing. He was used to her by now. She visited him a lot, in the middle of the night, right before he woke up, in the bath, when he was brushing his teeth. Kaoru was asleep soundly for once; the house was silent. He wished that he was asleep too; the reality he did not touch was not real. To not feel lonely, meant a reality without loneliness.

“You look cold.” Shinya said.

“Huh? Cold? What?”

“You look cold. You look very cold. You’re not smiling.”

“One does not need to smile to feel content. I am happy to just be blank, thank you.”

“But you’re cold anyway.”

“Of course. Do you see me smile ever? No. Why? Because I don’t want to. There’s nothing to smile about, only to laugh about. Besides, I don’t want to smile. Smiling is this terrible reflex we have built into us. I don’t like it. All my life it was like, ‘smile, darling, it’s a sign of pleasure in your surrounds, if you don’t smile, there’s something wrong with you.’”

“You don’t smile, true. Not even in concerts, except maybe sometimes you laugh. You look calm and so in control most of the time. You look cold. You look calculating. You look almost evil.”

I knocked my head against the table, “I wish I was. Maybe then I can just stab him till he died and save myself for marriage or something equally benign.”

The masochist said, “Hurt me.”

The sadist said, “No.”

“Hurt me.”

The sadist shook his head, “No, hurt me.”

The masochist said, “Why? You’re the sadist.”

“Yes, because when I’m hurting, you’re the one missing all the fun.”

The masochist clenched his fists, “But you’re the sadist! You hurt me!”

The sadist grinned, “But you live for pain; it has become pleasure to you. I can’t let you feel good. I’m the sadist, remember? So come on, fuck me. Bring the knife.”

I promised myself once upon a time I’d never have a complicated relationship. I said, Kaoru, you are not going to fuck with anyone that you work with because hell, what is going to happen if it falls apart? Besides, you’ll get in trouble. People will breath down your neck, saying you’ve taken advantage of them or whatever shit their sensationalist minds can come up with.

But then, one day I found out my bassist is someone I once knew. It’s confusing, because he’s weird, really weird secretly anyway, and I like that. He’s . . . uh pretty? And even though he doesn’t want to read every textbook under the moon, he’s smart in his way. I thought to myself; yes, the perfect way to fuck your career up – go for it.

“You know, Kaoru, now that I think about it, I think you’ve been flirting for a long time.” Die sniffed and lit a cigarette. “All that fixing-collars, straightening-hair stuff was petting, you know.”

He smiled and pulled Toshiya back by the collar, ‘You really are a grub, you know that?’

Toshiya choked a bit and hopped backwards a few times; he’d been running when Kaoru snagged him. Kaoru picked at the collar, and fixed it till it was straighter. He liked neatness, and he hated it when the others turned up like they’d been mauled in the foyer. Of course, that’s not saying they weren’t mauled in the foyer but still, a little professionalism was appreciated. He buttoned up Toshiya’s shirt, the dry tips of his fingers brushing against the skin over the collar.

He combed his fingers through Toshiya’s hair. It felt nice; a certain brittleness, yet at the same time a sleek slippery moist feeling of washed hair. Toshiya smelt like mulberries; it was probably the conditioner he used. He snapped out a mirror and held it before Toshiya. He smiled at the image of him peeking over the bassist’s shoulder.

‘See, much better.’

Toshiya smirked, ‘Thanks mum. When I want to look like I’m dead, I’ll ask first, okay?’

Kyo had a sardonic grin as he showed the card, ‘Truth, Toshiya. You’re gonna have to tell us something and we’re not the fucking magazine people so ‘it’s a secret’ does not count.’

‘Get on with it. When you said it was a day for bonding, you never mentioned anything about wasting my time because you’re flapping that tongue of yours.’

‘Okay,’ Kyo stuck his tongue out, ‘Right, imagine this; of all possibilities, I mean insane ideas purely, in all this world, would you Toshiya tongue Kaoru in the street, broad daylight and all? Say there are like people there taking pictures or something and I dared ya!”

‘In all possibilities, and I REALLY mean insane ideas purely, in all this world; yeah, sure. Why the fuck not?’ Toshiya turned around and grinned, ‘Hey, Kaoru. Are you up to it? Come here, dear!’

He turned around and ran. Kyo muttered something about the bad influence of their explicit videos putting ideas in people’s heads. Shinya smacked Toshiya’s head with his drumstick, telling him to be less direct and more tact. Kaoru stopped Shinya from attacking Toshiya and Die all at once with his drumstick battalion when they declared a state of civil war with Kyo betting (illegally) with the staff on who was going down this round.

Shinya sat by the door and clicked his fingers on the armrest. He watched Kaoru talk to Toshiya. It was interesting, he decided; people did really strange sentimental things when others were sick. Like now; Toshiya wasn’t even awake, and Kaoru was still having a conversation with him. He couldn’t understand the point in that, but people seemed to like it; maybe it was an extended response of guilt.

He frowned; the strangest thing was Kaoru paused for Toshiya’s answers. He seemed to be answering unintelligible questions to the air, or rather, the unresponsive sack of blood and bone on the bed. He visibly leaned closer in an attempt to eavesdrop.

“You feel like that don’t you? Is that why you never called me? You were waiting for me to make up my mind, weren’t you?”

. . . yes . . . you have to sort out your own shit before you can sort through mine . . .

“Your bones, they’re splitting through your skin, especially around the wrist.”

Maybe . . . only when I put strain on it . . . don’t worry . . . my bones are fine . . . you hold your guitar strangely, you know that. Now that I think of it, you hold it very softly most of the time, like it’s made of cobwebs or something . . . and then sometimes you just grip it and run . . .

“I do not. You have very strong wrists you know, even if the bones and muscles connect finger and arm can be seen. I suppose in the end, you’re not in anyway breakable . . . you could always break me if you tried.”

You’re making me think Kyo now . . . and Cage . . . that’s where I am right now . . . wait for me . . .?

“. . . I thought you said where I am . . . where I put you is a cage . . .”

I need to understand bondage, being grounded . . . my life was structured up till now . . . and I was sick of it all . . . the conventional life . . . that’s why I’m in Dir en Grey . . . that why I wore dresses and make up and all of that . . . because I just didn’t want to do what was expected of me to do . . . I wasn’t going to live up to someone else’s, anyone else’s expectations of me . . .

Die handed Kaoru the book. “It’s Toshiya’s. It was in his car, but then his car’s getting fixed so I had to take it. He’s . . . not around so I thought I’d give it to you instead.”

Kaoru took it off him, “Thanks.”

Die nodded and lit a cigarette, “Don’t mention it. I suggest you read it though.”

“Huh? Why, what’s in it?”

“Toshiya’s reading material is definitely interesting, if not a bit twisted. You’re just gonna have to decide who’s who in the story though.”

“I’m . . . confused.”

Die smiled and waved to one of the studio staff, “You should be.”

Kaoru opened the book and flipped through randomly to a page. Highlighted sections throughout the entire book of short stories, alternating between blue and pink and green. On the border, there was a little bit of writing; a side commentary of sorts, and perhaps a bit of interpretation. He read.

‘ . . . In you the body and spirit are . . . bound together, but it is the spirit that must win. I feel in you a world of unborn feelings and I will be the exorcist to awaken them. You yourself are not aware of all of them. You are calling to be awakened with all your female senses which in you are also spirit. Being what you are, you must understand what a painful joy I feel at having discovered you. Destiny has granted me more than I ever dreamed of demanding. And like all things brought by destiny I came in a fatal way, without hesitation, so beautiful that it terrifies me. My own spirit and life are made up of illuminations and eclipses which play constantly inside of me and therefore around me and on everything that I love. For those who love me I will always be a source of deep sorrow. You already observed that at times I have intuitions . . . and at other times I am absolutely blind. The simplest thing eludes me then, and you will need all the subtle understand you have to accept this mixture of darkness and light.’

As I did not answer he added: ‘I love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essence, it is strangely alive silence . . .’

Kaoru looked up at Die, “What . . . is this? Is this . . .?”

Die snuffed out his cigarette, “You? I’d say so. Toshiya’s twisted, isn’t he? I never understood how you can put up with such a mind. Kyo cracked up when he saw it; said it was ‘Toshiya’s subtle way’. I think he was crying in frustration at the same time too . . . weird, that’s all I can say.”

“I . . . it’s . . . weird.”

“Yeah, well keep reading.”

‘I feel this moving silence of yours speaking to me and it makes me want to weep with joy. You inhabit a different domain than mine, you are my complement. If it is true that our imaginations love the same images, desire the same forms, physically and organically you are warmth whereas I am cold. You are supple, languorous, whereas I am unyielding. I am calcined . . . What I fear most is that I may lose you . . . What a divine joy it would be to possess a being like you who are so evanescent, so elusive.’

. . . I wanted to say, ‘you are confusing the nature of our love for each other.’

‘You will never follow me into destruction, into death.’

‘I will follow you anywhere.’

‘. . . I have struggled to reveal the workings of the soul behind life, it’s deaths . . . I am one who has felt most deeply the stutterings of the tongue in its relation to thought. I am the one who is best caught its slipperiness, the corners of the lost. I am the one who has reached states one never dares to name, states of soul of the damned. I have known . . . the awareness of the failures, the knowledge of the times when spirit falls into darkness . . . These have been the daily bread of my days, my constant obsessional quest for the irretrievable.’

‘I will follow you wherever you want. I love the pain in you. There are worlds deeper down, each time we sink and are destroyed, there are deeper worlds beneath which we only reach by dying.’

Kaoru frowned and looked up, “Die . . .”

Die was tearing through his cigarette packet smoking, “Just shut up and read Kaoru.”

. . . He did not touch me. His hands merely hovered over me, over my shoulder, heavy with magnetic weight . . . I have come dressed in black, red and steel, with a steel bracelet and necklace, dressed as a warrior not to be touched . . . I felt his desire oppressive, taunt, obsessive.

‘All the beauty I thought lost in the world is in you and around you. When I am near you I no longer feel my being contracting and shrivelling. This terrible fatigue which consumes me is lifted. This fatigue I feel when I am not with you is so . . . of the tongue seeking to utter impossible things until it twists itself into a knot and chokes me . . . the intensity of my hallucinations . . . I feel the horror of falling into abysms. But you and I would always fall together and I would not be afraid . . . I was always exhausted by my dreams, not because of the dreams, but because of the fear of not being able to return . . . I will find you everywhere . . . you will always know what I am saying even if I do not.’

“I need a smoke.”

Die smirked, “Yeah, you do.”

“Do you know what he means?”

Die shook his head, “Not really . . . Kyo gave me a few hints; fatigue is Toshiya’s fatalism . . . the part about the tongue has to do with his inability to express himself . . . and I guess you just have to work the rest out yourself – hey, don’t expect me to use my brain; he’s your nut case.”

Kaoru tapped his cigarette against the packet, “You know, Die, you shouldn’t really say that. I bet you that Kyo and Shinya, and probably you are screwed too.”

“Looks who’s talking.” Die grinned, “And you’re right, but read, eh? We’re focusing on one psychotic at a time; when we get to Shinya or Kyo, then I’ll start getting my brain geared up.”

. . . he was laying heavy hands on me.

‘You do not respond to my touch,’ he accused me. ‘You have become cold and distant. You are dangerous and I always knew it. I was deceived by . . . your vibrancy. You are the plumed serpent, snake and bird together . . . I thought you were warm and soft. You . . . walking over the earth and through the air at the same time, waving this tiny blue plume in the air, in the dream.’

. . . I said. ‘I have such a deep love for you, but do not touch me. I am not to be touched. You are the poet, you walk inside my dreams, I love the pain and the flame in you, but do not touch me.’

Arna