Red Sky: Prologue
Love is ruthless. It seeks, it destroys, but the desire does not extinguish. It is nurtured in the darkest places and can survive the greatest of plagues. It does not stop even when someone is gone. It can be buried, but it doesn’t disappear. Love is eternal, not like in a fairytale, it is a disease with no cure, an affliction with no end.
*
“We’ll meet at the end of this pier,” she said as we sat on a bench on a cool Monday with very few people around. “We’ll meet by the ticket booth, then we can take one of the tourist hovers up to Marsden and leave from there.” The pier reminded me of Pierson's Dock from my childhood. The dock where I would sketch tourists and young couples. Both piers had the same type of souvenir shops that slept all fall and winter only to come alive during a few precious months in the summer. I had grown up on the other side of the continent and here I found myself on a dock once again, begging for my future.
“And Diana will have the passes?” I asked.
“She’ll have them.” Aya could see the doubt in my eyes.
“They won’t let you leave.”
“It’s only for a year. My family won’t stop me. It’s my decision. When we come back they’ll understand everything.”
I looked at her skeptically. She hadn’t convinced me even if she had convinced herself.
“A lot can happen in one week,” I said.
“She’ll have the passes,” Aya assured me again. “She will do it for me.”
“Will she?”
We left the thought suspended in the air, unfinished. The truth was neither of us really knew if she would help. Diana and Aya were close, I knew that, but that closeness cut two ways. That closeness could impede our future together as much as help it.
A soft mist developed. The lightly trafficked shops on the boardwalk were losing their few customers. We didn’t have an umbrella. I suggested we walk back to the Metro before the heavy rain started. Aya put her hair up, baring the back of her neck to me like she did the first night we were together. After she finished with the hair clip she saw the dopey smile on my face. “What?” she said. I just shook my head. “Nothing.” We got up from the bench.
“I’m cold,” Aya said as we started walking. I put my arm around her. Neither of us were wearing jackets. We hadn’t prepared for the cool weather. We had been too preoccupied with our escape plan to worry about such practical things. Huddled together, we walked along the boardwalk. Normally when we walked side by side I would be pulled towards her by a gravitational pull like a small satellite being drawn into the sun. She hated this because I would bump into her as I weaved back and forth, trying to find the right orbit. “Why can’t you ever walk in a straight line?” She would say slightly annoyed. But in the cold weather there was no need to worry about criss-crossing paths, we clung together for warmth, my arm around her back, her head tucked under my chin.
The temperature had dropped and I could see her breathe in the air. It reminded me of the feel of her breath on the back of my neck when she slept next to me. Sometimes, I would raise myself in bed looking down at her as she slept, watching as that warm breath tickled the hairs on my arm, gently blowing them back and forth like willows swaying in the wind. Because of the clandestine nature of our relationship such moments meant more to me than they should have. I couldn’t take them for granted like a normal lover could, sleeping side by side night after night until those cherished moments became familiar habits or even minor annoyances. I knew those moments could end as quickly as they started, disappearing for another lover or another life. I didn’t want our time to move forward like that. I wanted it to stand still, to remain frozen in amber and not just memory.
We turned a corner and Aya raised her head to say something, accidentally knocking the clip holding her hair to the ground. I told her not to worry about it. She stopped and made us turn back. “These are valuable,” she said, picking up the hair clip and looking for a pocket to put it in. The mist turned to rain and was now falling in large drops.
Aya stood with the clip in her hand. I looked at her, wet hair spilling down her shoulders, shirt soaking, showing skin underneath, water falling off her cheeks like she just emerged from the shower. Desire shook my body. I pulled her towards me knocking the clip to the ground again. Puddles formed around our feet as we splashed on the sidewalk. I kissed her strongly on the mouth. She kissed me back, surprised. We retreated under an awning outside of a shop that had dimmed its lights. I pulled her shirt up. Her eyes got wide. The street was vacant in the downpour. We fell further back, past the awning into an alleyway hidden from the street.
Her hair tangled in my fingers, my buttons tore in her hands, her pants dropped to her knees, I melted under her caress. There was that little exhalation of breath. We came together.
Aya and I made violent, passionate, messy love in that alleyway as the rain pounded down around us, my shirt draped over her bare breasts, our clothes a jumble of fabrics. We fell against the brick wall, wet and tired, breathing heavily. She looked up to me and I looked down at her. Words were not said.
It would be the last time we made love. Not with the love and tenderness of two partners, but with the carnal, animalistic desire of lust. Maybe this was her way of saying goodbye, a repeated attempt at the one-night stand from our first night together. She was playing back our entire relationship, erasing it with one last act of lovemaking, her way of exorcising her love by turning it into lust, by turning us into a brief romance, a momentary fling.
But those weren’t her thoughts. They were mine. In her optimism Aya believed we would meet on that pier in a week. She believed her sister would come through with those passes. My instincts told me something else. I was led by those instincts when I pulled her towards me, claiming her as mine, no different than an animal in a forest claiming his mate.
There was a gulf between us I feared could not be breached. Not because of who we were, but because of where we were in life. My insecurity against her security. Her inexperience against my experience. I doubted she would take the necessary risks for us to stay together. I had no choice but to take those risks. She had choices. Not just in lovers, but in futures. My future was already past and now all I could hope for was her.
“I love you,” I said instead of saying goodbye that night. “I love you, too,” she said with a hint of an automatic response. I wanted to reach out and grab her by the shoulders and say it again so she would understand. These weren’t mere words I was saying. I wanted to keep repeating it until she understood what I meant, until she could understand. But she couldn’t understand no matter how many times I said it. No one loves you like an orphan. But she wasn’t an orphan like me. She had security, a family, everything that I did not.
*
I stood on the pier. Alone. Waiting. I think of that night every day. I think of all the possibilities. All of the other actions I could have taken in the weeks, the months, the years preceding it.
How does one describe torment? The feeling of loss is a constant hole in my stomach, like an ulcer it bleeds without stop. Every day. Every night. If I could have convinced her to come away with me earlier, if I would have acted when I first had the impulse instead of waiting until the last moment when the day of her wedding was only a couple of months away.
The fog rolled off the bay. I watched lights in the distance, hovers and byjets skimming over the water as dusk turned into night. The shops and arcades closed. Because of the cold weather there were very few people out on the pier. I hunched in my jacket and wondered if we should have picked a less ominous place to meet.
“I never wanted to convince anybody to like me,” she said. “I’ve always thought the same thing,” I replied. “It’s not real if you have to convince someone.” This was only a few days after our first night together as we walked to lunch. I reflected on those words while I timed the minutes by the falling light. Maybe those words were a lack of conviction and there was nothing such as true feelings, only what we convince others to do.
Our planned meeting time passed. Minute by minute, hour by hour, the hole in my stomach ripped a little wider. Despite all of the things aligned against us: her engagement, his family’s power, her closeness with her family, the fact that leaving them wasn’t an escape for her but a type of confinement; I still hoped she would appear. When viewed from the vantage point of the red moon none of our plans made sense.
That hope turned to prayer. I started to pray that she would show up. That she would magically appear behind me. I closed my eyes to make this happen like a child making a wish before blowing out the candles on his birthday cake. But then I stopped myself. I realized I wasn’t praying to a god but a magic genie. It wasn’t a prayer I was saying, only a selfish wish I wanted to be granted like that little child.
My prayer changed. I began to pray for her happiness. For her to be happy with Him because that is what she decided. I had accepted her decision. I accepted her choice of a life with her family instead of a life with me on the run.
I stayed on that pier until it was the next day. It’s strange to know another person holds such power over you. Not the power that Hades and Goodwell have over my body, but a power over my entire life, over my mind and soul, my hopes and dreams. The power over my physical body is nothing compared to the power that Aya held over me.
It started to rain. I was living a cliché, waiting in the rain for someone who wasn’t going to show. I took the rain as a sign of God’s disapproval. It fit my emotional state. But it was autumn, it’s always raining at the pier in autumn. The rain had nothing to do with my internal state or God’s will, only normal weather patterns.
As I walked back to the Metro, suitcase in hand, a young bearded man stepped out of an apartment building. He was followed by an older man and woman, his parents. The young man lifted his hand in my direction and waved. I assumed he was waving to somebody behind me. I ignored him and kept walking. He kept staring at me. The older gentleman next to him took his arm and maneuvered him away from me, still he refused to remove his gaze.
For a brief moment, I felt a cold chill down my back and thought he would violently attack me. I sped up my walk and his father kept ahold of his arm. I turned the corner and they were gone. The bearded man’s look stayed with me on the walk back to my apartment. It felt like I was being watched the entire way. That at any moment he would jump out of a darkened alley. My guard stayed up. The entire world was against me.
I collapsed on the bed. I didn’t cry because there were too many feelings inside of me. In a way I was happy for her. I never wanted to take her out of her current life. I didn’t want to destroy her relationship with her family. She deserved a traditional wedding and a traditional life. In another, more selfish, way I thought it was unfair she would live her life with him because they met first not because she loved him more. Of course, fairness had nothing to do with anything.
There are other kinds of prisons. Loss is a prison as assuredly as the red moon is. I distinctly remember that feeling of loss more than anything else. That’s why I knew Max was right, because more than anything I remembered would it felt like to lose her. I lost her and I accepted that loss. I accepted that I would live imprisoned with a dull pain that would follow me for the rest of my life, an ache that would temper my happiest times, a rolling storm that would never subside. That’s why I know I didn’t kill her. Why would I harm someone I had already lost? Why would I harm someone that I loved? Why would I not remember the most memorable event in my life? The only logical conclusion is it didn’t happen. I wasn’t guilty of a crime I couldn’t remember. She didn’t show because he killed her and they needed someone to blame. Broke, without family, I was the perfect scapegoat. She loved me not him. She chose me over obligation. And that is why she is dead and I am a slave.