Lost In An Open Cage
I was standing outside being bored, and I wished I smoked, so I would have had something to do. Give myself an attitude. I was annoyed with myself that I had only put on a thin top that morning, although it clearly wasn’t spring yet. I had stopped giving a thought to the fact that I was walking barefoot. I didn’t feel them any more anyway.
I climbed on the stone wall behind me, and cut my arm on a sharp broken edge. Enjoying the intense feeling of life, I closed my eyes. He walked by.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
I felt a drop of blood gliding down my arm, and I followed it in my mind: a red track ending in a puddle on the street. In it, I saw his face reflected: he was standing still in front of me, but I only saw him in the blood. From the open door, I heard unrecognizable, distorted music. In a whim, I got up on the wall and started to dance. I closed my eyes and felt the stones underneath my feet change into grass. While the street disappeared, I saw him kneel down by the puddle of blood, and I almost lost my balance and stumbled from the wall. Fortunately, he didn’t appear to notice, and soon there was nothing but the grass and me. It started to snow and I danced on my bare feet without feeling the cold.
Now I’m lying here.
Fallen from a wall that wasn’t there, on tarmac that wasn’t there.
Pushed by his gaze, in which I wanted to see a world full of life.
I see myself dancing in his eye, caught in his eye. A drop of blood falls from my arm and wells up in his eye as a red tear.
He seems to be crying tears of blood because of me.
I’m lying paralysed while the tear frees itself from his face and falls down. I follow the drop with my eyes, and see it fall on white feathers.
He gave me wings but didn’t let me fly.
He lifts me up and carries me inside. Nothing is inside, except for the cold bare stones surrounding the nothing.
“I want to live.”
He lays me down on the ground without saying a word, and with an effort, I work myself up until I can lean my back to the wall. The wings are in my way.
“I want to feel that I live.”
He sits down on his knees in front of me and talks. “There is still time.”
“There is never enough time.” But I’m already starting to forget what I needed time for.
He’s got a knife. He plays with it; lets it go through his fingers, and I follow it with my eyes.
“I don’t want to kill you, I want to make you live more.”
Frankly, I’m curious. Anxious, but curious.
Slowly, the knife approaches me, and I can’t think of anything to stop it.
In his eyes I see life, and I keep watching him to hold on to that.
Slowly, I realize he can really kill me. And at the same time I see this is not the worst thing he can do. A shiver runs down my spine, and this time not because I’m not wearing enough clothes.
“No, go on.”
Doubtful, he looks at me, but he still puts the point of the knife back on my side. He draws a thin red line, and I arch my toes to counter my body’s reflex to move away from the knife.
In his eyes, I see the street reflected; a street over which a sea is streaming. Old trees grow from the tarmac. Only a few leaves are still hanging from their branches. For a moment he looks at me, and the leaves chase his head. Then his look swings back to the red line on my side. One of the leaves whirls to the ground.
He continues to cut: next to the first red line, a second one appears, and the adrenaline makes me feel lightheaded.
I turn in some sort of twist until I can look into his eyes, upside down, without disturbing him.
“Do we still have time?”
He looks at me as an answer.
This time I see myself waiting next to the door. Someone walks outside, and steps into a world of snow and grass. The knife slips so my wings fade, and for a moment, I wonder why I let him cut me; then his hand softly glides over my feathers, gives them back their shape under his fingers, and I feel special again.
Somewhere someone tries to forget with even more beer that he just stepped through a door into dreams. I’m starting to forget “somewhere”, and everything it requires is those two eyes and a knife.
“Here is your time.”
He pushes me so hard on my back that some feathers snap, and draws a circle with his knife between my breasts with a red line from the middle straight upwards.
He lies down next to me on the ground and follows the circle a few times with his index finger. After every round he licks the blood from his finger and he goes on until no blood reappears.
He turns to his side and watches me.
He lets his gaze slide up and down and back.
He lets his gaze cut like the knife but no blood appears; the pain does.
His heart beats like a clock, and with every beat the time I so desperately need disappears. I have to go. I turn around against him and let the clock on my chest burn into his, and I feel the two clocks accelerate against each other in a contest with the time at stake.
I don’t even remember what I was waiting for.
He looks at me without blinking, and keeps his eyes open when I bend closer to him and softly slide my tongue over his eye. I taste the salt of the sea. I feel myself sinking deeper in the water, and enjoy the piercing pain in my wounds. He is sitting under one of the trees carving decorations into his legs with his knife. He has written only half sentences, and as soon as I’ve reached him, I take the knife from him to finish them. His blood drips into the sand on the tarmac and colours it from silver to red. The hungry sand crawls upwards to taste more; the grains climb to my chest and dive into my side. There, they sink their teeth deeper into my flesh while I finish the sentences on his legs. Before I’m done, the water starts to disappear.
In the light of the sand, I see the last bits of sea disappear through a grill in the gutter, only a small drip remains hanging from a crumbled tin.
I let him stroke my wings, straightening or removing the feathers that were bent earlier.
Soon I cannot restrain myself and I turn around so I can look him in the eyes. I see myself staring outside.
Wounds that were not visible at first now flood with blood. A moment later, I feel the pain shoot right through me and I open my mouth to scream, but I kiss him instead.
I push my lips hard against his, and lick the seawater with its taste of tears from them. His tongue is sweet in contrast with his lips. He is everything I want but he does not leave me alone. He is an addiction.
He tastes of blood and I push him away.
I let go of him and slide back over the cold floor. He watches me. His eyes are eyes again. I stand up and walk past him to the window. I pick up the knife. It’s snowing outside and I stick my hand through the broken glass to catch the flakes.
I feel the pain as he falls, and see myself disappear with the light in his eyes.
I open my eyes.
I’m lying on my back on the cold stones staring at the moon with a cigarette between thumb and index finger. In my head, I’m looking for songs that suit this occasion, but I can’t find them. The only thing that springs to mind is the Sesame Street theme song, coincidentally the most unsuitable I can imagine for the moment he walks up to me. His shadow falls over me. He’s back.
He is the same but his eyes are different. In these eyes, there are no hidden worlds. They’re cold and empty and see only the present. He is real.
I ignore him and smoke my cigarette. He’s lost his power over me; lost with the part of me that fell down with him.
The only wound left is the scratch on my arm. The rest is healed by the time in his eyes.
He kneels over me and I have to force myself not to put the cigarette out on his leg.
He bends over and kisses me.
The kiss is the same.
By Charlotte Vellinga
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