Chasing my shadow.

Το κείμενο είναι γραμμένο κάπου 5 χρόνια πριν και είναι αφιερωμένο στον Γιάννη.

"Are you afraid of living?" she fired through her crimson lips. Holding me in a gaze of unveiled rudeness, she silently awaited my defeat. Not kind enough to even hold her breath while waiting, she simply yearned for my bloodloss through words. Are you afraid of living? And a smile devised as a razorblade ripping through my irises into the depths of a darkness none but she could understand. The perfume of her victory reached me with fingers that penetrated will and shelter. She was asking me a question against which, no answer could stand in decent opposition. She turned her back of ivory to me and walked with steps of sexual malice deeper in the room. I was nailed upon the bed, my head was chained upon the wall, my heart was beating in her palm of iron. Her fingers ran upon the desk, the glass was turning into water before her nails as razors and when she reached the end, where nothing but the void was left to torture, she turned around to face me. But she said nothing. She had already adorned my mind with thoughts of broken glass. All she would do -I knew- was to simply watch it bleed along my words. I closed my eyes praying I could break, praying I could have some subterfuge throughout my torment. But she knew not what mercy was, and she would only stop when tedium won her, or tears consumed me. But after that, she was of no need to me, I reigned my world with my misery, and that she would not permit.

So there I sat, the golden glass engraved inside my hand, the heavy sips like death's saliva, tearing down my thoughts, tearing down my feelings, tearing down my walls. I could not answer. How could I answer without lying? How could I tell her without juggling every word inside her mind? So there I sat, the glass in lust to empty faster than I would, the crystal begging me to break it before I would eventually do so myself.

She came to me, and held my face inside her palms that burned with frost. "Will you have me wait much longer?" What was it? Minutes? Hours? What could she know of eternity, what could the devil know of hell but to command it? It was for me to feel the pain of the hourglass; it was for me to taste her inferno.

I broke the glass. "Answer me."

I held a fragment in my hand.

"Answer me."

It echoed zillion times. Tears began to smash but I was feeling nothing.

She walked away her boots clicking on the floor, her body dancing on the rhythm of total flesh. But I was indifferent. I arose, tears and broken glass my trail, a trail I could not walk back without bleeding. I met her somewhere in the middle. Not very far ahead, and not an inch behind. "Are you afraid of dying?" I whispered with my lips against her own. My palm was bleeding by the fragment I still held, but I would not let go. I clenched my fist tighter to remind myself it was there. And for every memory, I bled. She was kissing me in silence, without tenderness, without that sensual disgust one can meet between crestfallen lovers. Without knowledge of love, and without hope for hate. I was kissing her back, biting whenever her tongue could be felt beneath my teeth, whenever apathy allowed her lip to be uncovered. Somewhere in the middle, not very far ahead and not an inch behind we were kissing. Each time her hand would press against my face, my own would bleed. A drop for every sight now gone. A drop for every dream now dead. A drop just to remind me.

We ended up curled in a carnal polarity, and I was cathode. I was to be conquered that day, my silence counting as an answer. But death was in my pocket, and life was frail enough. So maybe I could bear to fake a smile.

And when I was hers, and naked we would lie upon the sharp bed, when she was busy counting the wounds she had drawn as a painter on a canvas made of flesh and tears, I asked her again.

The tongue of raw sensuality retaliated:

"Death is inevitable, so fear is needless."

"And is not life inevitable?"

"Only for the brave."

"Only for the damned."

Then she kissed me. That meant one thing. Conversating with chaos was over. My fingers grew in tension. The glass was sharp as never before. The fragment of a glass once full. The only thing I owned. A fragment. Sharper than never before. Fury entered from inside. God was dying where my glance was falling.

Her smile would not fade as I drew the line across her neck. The voice she could no longer utter was drumming in my head; her eyes were filled with a blaze of eternal victory. She held my hand, blood running down her naked body covering the curves that flared no more than hate in me. She held my hand and whispered in a voice that refused to crack, she whispered "Just inevitable." And then she fell enrobed in such a shade of malevolent glory that I shuddered. There was no deviation from the path I lusted, from the path whose idea she had raped. I rested the fragment on my wrist in freezing silence. I swear I saw her smiling from beyond then. But madness came. I threw the piece away, the final piece of my belongings, I crouched above her as a dying raven rests above a carcass and I smiled in a way only vengeance can teach. The raven proved eclectic.

"I am not afraid."

Then I opened the door and walked out.

Out to chase my shadow.