Lost Beyond the Cellar Door

[Note to the Reader:

First and foremost I would like to welcome and thank you for taking the time to read this collection of words and ideas that will, in time, become a story. And while I am of the sincerest hope that you will give the author the benefit of the doubt by continuing reading and - it is to be hoped - enjoying, there are a few things I should mention before you read any further.

This is a story about love, not sex. I understand that Nifty is an 'erotic archive', and that your reasons for visiting this page are most likely for such. However, I am of the opinion that while erotic writing in and of itself is - and should be - a celebrated art, the art of the erotic love story is something much more complex, beautiful, elusive, and above all, inspiring. So suffice it to say that you will not find hardcore, raunchy sex within these pages. There will be definite erotica in it, for it is a beautiful thing and integral to life, but it won't be quick and it won't be integral. So for those of you who wish to find something a little deeper, a little closer, I write these words for you.

This is a story about love and hate, light and dark, angels and demons. It is the telling of one person's unleashing into the glory of the world through the hands of an innocent, armed at the end only with the knowledge that beauty is everywhere, but most times it is far from pretty. For as the poet Samuel Colleridge once wrote:

If a man were to visit Paradise in a dream, And were handed a flower as token that his soul had truly been there, And he awoke to find that flower in his hand - Ay!- and what then?

Yes. What then? This is what I will endeavor to show you.

And with that, I leave you, and humbly hope that you bear with me in the telling. Comments and questions are always encouraged and hoped for, criticism the not least of these. Feel free to write: lucid_state@hotmail.com.

I hope you enjoy.]

She offered me a tremulous smile.

And that's when I knew I really could go on, that the tale I was telling was actually okay to relate. That the lessons he taught me were living, breathing things that could be given and received by anyone -- not just insane speculations born out of intellect higher, crazier, and so much more achingly beautiful than mine.

Just like he promised.

And it was true. Even to the end, he was right. Not that I ever believed he could lie, or that he could even believe an untruth. Perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that I just wasn't sure that the world could hold up to his perception of it; that the beauty he saw and so impossibly lived was in fact only his own. Nothing else in the world, no matter how high, no matter how divine, could ever come close to the light that reflected in his words and eyes.

But I was proven wrong, at the last, by her smile.

And in the tears that slipped from her face, the sparkle of the flourescent light above us became akin to his radiance, and I heard, far away and so breathtakingly free, his laughter. It glittered at me in one eternal second of intricacy, and I held it close as I gathered up the courage to speak again. Hearing the music of his voice, I couldn't reach forward to brush aside those tears. And she, gently, left her hands on her lap as she looked up at me, and I knew, with a understanding that made me want to break, that he was there to show me.

Just like he promised.

• • • • and in the sky a distant osprey is the closest we'll get to heaven today bearing all the weight of our imagining

"I'm sorry," I say, passing a weary hand over my eyes, shaking my head slightly in an attempt to clear it. "I forgot what I was saying."

She smiles at me in a nervous, concerned way, and pulls her blanket tighter about her knees as she draws them up to her chest. She looks like a child sitting there before me, all pale skin and dark eyes with shadowy hair that hangs about her face like spidersilk. Her arms, made of twigs and scars, cross over her legs and she hunches herself against the white pillow behind her slender back. She is beautiful in that tragic, painful way that some teenage girls have when they starve themselves crazy and believe that every sad song was sung for them. She looks the way I feel, I realize, and that too makes what I am about to do somehow easier.

"It was a cold morning, you said. You said it all started on a cold morning."

Her voice is a whispery confection of broken glass and winter rain, falling from lips cracked and torn. And it pulls me back, gives me direction, and my vision becomes clear. I seat myself in the rickety chair pulled up beside her bed, and lay my hands carefully on my lap. She watches them silently, and her eyes remain on them as I begin.

"Yes. It was a cold morning..." I murmur.

One of the coldest for that time of year. You know the type I'm talking about -- end of October crispness smothered over with a grey blanket of air, woodsmoke, and icy pellets of rain that fall sparingly but piercingly. The sky was already dark with the burgeoning promise of stormclouds and the world had that stark, vivid gloss of a photograph; everything seemed heightened and bordering on the surreal. Luckily, I was sitting in class, staring out of the window next to my desk, leaning my head on the sill. It was an early class, the only one of its kind on my schedule. At the time, I was taking four courses at the university, working my way towards an English major. It was not going well, to say the least, and my attendance was sparse, to say the best. I had been up the entire previous night and could only account for my presence in this class simply to insomnia. So the day had already started out strangely, and at the time was the only explanation I could give to myself for the situations that occurred throughout.

That October was a beautiful time. It had this strangely beautiful magic about it; a windswept, sort of elegant beauty that showed its countenance in the leaves that blew across the street and the raindrops that wound silver down sleek windows. The air was, to use a cliché term, invigorating. It had in it the whispering spice of winter, but it was gentle and only using the blunt side of its knife for now. That day, however, was the coldest yet. I had my coat wrapped tightly around me, even in the classroom, which was large and musty and had windows from the turn of the century covered in grime, and I retreated further into it as I stared listlessly out of the window. The seat beneath me was hard and unyielding, a wood and steel creation of immaculate discomfort, and I could almost hear the sounds of the students before me, their feelings of entrapment seeming to burn up out of the fissures in the wood and the dents in the steel. The room itself had a sleepy, dormant feel, but if I closed my eyes long enough and breathed deep enough, I could hear the sounds of the old library that used to be there; could feel the whispers of books on their shelves and the soft footfalls of quiet, introspective feet. Sometimes I even caught a whiff of candlewax-- the scent of the lights burning in the evening hours years ago.

The parking lot was full of cars, a mix of student and alumni. A lot of sedans and beat up rustics for the professors-- you could tell the student cars by the shining metal and sleek shapes. Most of the teachers didn't bother with the flash. The darkness of the sky was hypnotizing me in the way it reflected off of the cars, turning their dull earthen tones into deep intense shades of liquid colour. Puddles were pristine in their reflections, and I watched the turmoiling sky from their flat mithril faces until a shattering crack ripped through the air and a flash so white that it made the world turn purple tore through the sky. Everyone around me screamed, but I kept my eyes on the window as the rain plummeted from the sky and onto the ground. I could hear the other students nervous laughter as they recovered themselves; the girls giggling in embarrassment and several guys chorusing "holy shit!". Slumping down further into my seat, I watched as the silent puddles turned into churning pools and the trees bending their backs downwards against the onslaught.

It was then that I saw her. She came into view as a blurred reddish shape in the rain, and I furrowed my brows slightly as I tried to make out what it was. Then I realized it was a person, clad in some sort of dark red or brown trenchcoat, running between the cars towards the building. Her booted feet sent up glittering splashes of rainwater, and her hand was shielding her forehead as another lightning flash zigzagged above. The lightning threw her face into vivid relief for a half moment, and I stared at her uncomprehendingly as the light burned her image onto my eyes. Eyes downcast, I only saw a fringe of lashes and eyebrows leading to a slender, straight nose, and pale cream skin. Her lips were rosy, but not as red as her hair, which streamed out behind her in a glittering crimson veil. I saw this in the time it took for the lightning to strike, and by the time it was over, I could see nothing but the after-image burned on my retina. Blinking and shaking my head, I jumped as the sound of a door slamming open crashed through the room with a resonance that seemed louder than the thunder.

Looking over, I saw the professor walk into the auditorium, and dazed, I stared at him for a moment before snapping my head back to look out the window again. She was gone. Blinking again, and seeing the silhouette of her figure flashing yellow-green-black over my vision, I stared at it wonderingly. Something about her hair, I thought dazedly, as I remembered its redness and glowing length. It reminded me of autumn... of forests... of cedar and pine...

I blinked again, and realized with a jolt that the back of my chair was being kicked. Craning around in my seat, I looked questioningly over my shoulder only to see the guy behind me gesturing to the front of the class. I looked, and then saw the professor staring at me icily.

Whoops.

"Mr. Frost."

"Yeah?" I asked, unable to see him clearly because the girl's shadow was still superimposing everything I looked at.

"As tired as you may be, as assuredly the rest of us are also, it does not give you clearance to slouch like a corpse. Sit up." His voice was thin and reedy, yet carried the razor whip of one used to command, and its nasal quality put me in mind of a querulous old man. It flew across the room at me, and with it carried the stare of over fifty pairs of eyes who watched me mercilessly, an undercurrent of distaste on the air.

Suppressing the urge to flip my middle finger at him, I obediently raised myself up to a level which was not quite upright but not as horizontal; a compromise that was the extent of my willingness and reached for my pen. He stared at me for a moment longer, and then turned his gaze to the blackboard with a prim sigh that left no doubts of his opinion. Well, whatever, I thought. He knew as well as I did that he wasn't going to kick me out of his class. I was the only who did any work. The course was one that most people took as filler, or as a requirement for another program. So of course it ended up as being a catch basin for the alternately minded-- for who in their right mind wanted to take as an archaic outdated english course as English Literature?

The room surrounding me was testament to that statement. All around me sat people of varying interests, none of them English Lit. In the front row were the brainiacs, the ones who wanted to sit extra close to impress the prof, but only managed to infuriate him with their arrogant questions and assumptions. They were the ones with the extra slim glasses and shining laptops; majoring in computers of course. Behind them were the fashion majors who sat in one giant, melodramatic cluster, talking at the tops of their voices about everything under the sun and sure to dredge a headache up from even the most tolerant of minds. Here and there sat the occasional loner like me; the course was small and the room was large, allowing for large gaps in between desks. A few seats down from me sat a slender Asian girl, who had hair like ripped silk and always used it to hide her curiously expressionless face. Always bent to the papers on her desk, I wasn't actually sure if she was taking the course or just taking advantage of the empty seat to fall asleep in. I'd never heard her talk, never even seen her take the slightest interest, and the professor seemed to ignore her as she did him. At the far side of the room sat a couple of guys who sat alone and silently took notes. They looked strikingly similar in the way they sat, dressed, and ignored each other, and I could never remember which one was which if I happened to see one on the campus. They both wore non-descript sweaters and jeans, carried the same tacky McDonalds bags, and scored the same on tests. Behind me sat a music major, or at least what I assumed was a music major on account of the sharp staccato sounds of his pens rapping on the top of his desk at all times. Sometimes he would even keep time with the professor's lecture, and performed a resounding cymbal finish on the window pane whenever he would end a sentence.

"Alright, people," said the professor, whose name was Micha Richler but who refused to answer to anything but "Professor Richler". A lot of the professors would allow you to call them by their first names or if not that then at least attaching the formal "mister" or "missus" to their last name, but not him. No, he was a special case. "Last week you were assigned the first ten chapters of Hemmingway's 'For Whom The Bell Tolls'. I asked you to prepare a formal essay on the usage of hostility in the prose and how it compares to his other works, focussing especially on post-'Bell Tolls' pieces..."

And then, as was customary, I began to drown him out. Transferring my gaze to the window again, I stared out at the drenched parking lot and that reminded me again of the girl. Frowning slightly, I stared at the place I last saw her and tried to figure out the tiny but persistent nag in my mind as I thought of her face, and of her hair. It reminded me of something, I knew that.. but what? And why would it matter so much? She was imprinted on my mind like a photograph, and the clarity of the image unsettled me. The softness of her skin, the dagger-like sharpness of her hair. I knew her eyes were blue, under those lashes, but I couldn't tell you how. I could see everything lucidly, and something in me couldn't let it rest. It was like the feeling you get when you leave the house and know that you've left something behind that you're going to need but can't for the life of you remember what...

A lake now, water and sky... the smell of wood burning... starlight and whispers...

And then, again, the sound of the door snapped me out of my reverie. And every head, that time, turned towards the door. It seemed to me as though they moved in slow motion, and I moved along with them, to look at the door. A heavy thing, the door was made of some sort of unidentifiable piece of wood that had gotten black with age and creaked fearsomely every time someone tried to maneuver through it. It was tall, as was the rest of the dilapidated room, and so it made the one who stood in between it and the frame look somehow tiny. She stood there, a nervous smile on her lips, and I blinked as I saw that it was the same girl from the parking lot. A strange shiver ran down my arms and burned in my fingertips, and I felt, incredulously, goosebumps break out on my arms in a wave of intensity. Her face was pale beside the dark wood of the door, against the blazing red of her hair...

Professor Richler stopped talking to follow our gazes and the cessation of his voice made the moment seem even starker, her face even paler, her hair even redder. Everyone was silent as they stared as one at the girl. She stared back, and for one heartstopping moment, she lifted her gaze to the top row to find, and light upon, me. The ice blue of her eyes was a sword-steel burn, and it lanced across my core with a relentless severity. We locked gazes like this for mere seconds, but it seemed to last hours, and in the crystalline depths of her eyes I read a affirmation of reality that sent shudders down my back and trails of razorslash across my skin. I am here, her eyes seemed to scream, in a voice more resounding than any other I had ever heard. I am here, and this is Now, and I will make you burn. The light between us seemed to refract in her gaze, sending diamond shards and aquamarine brilliance to render me dumb. It's impossible, I could hear myself thinking in a distant and tinny voice. How could someone have eyes like this? How could someone possibly have eyes like this?

Silence... a sense of vastness too perfect to understand... deepest forests and deeper skies...

"May I help you?"

Professor Richler's voice barged into the air, and it made me jump. Her eyes snapped off of mine and looked to him, and as I sat there shaking, I noticed that her face, if possible, had become even more colorless. The air seemed tighter, sharper, and it felt slick and electric on my tongue as I reached for breath that wouldn't come. My fingers were cold and shaking, and I rammed them into my pockets desperately as I fought to control the overwhelming surge of emotion that threatened to incapacitate me.

"Um. Yes... I'm looking for English Literature... I was told it was in this lecture room?"

Her voice was soft, yet it carried clearly across the room. It was almost as though the air was made gentler by it as it moved, and my fingers began to feel a creeping warmth I was not quite sure wasn't there. The tones were distinctly different, and though their accent triggered in me a feeling of instant recognition, it took me several slow moments to think of the name.

Stones, now... ancient stone and windtorn silk on a twilight hill...

I blinked and shook my head as the sudden visions flashed across my mind's eye with a brilliance that bordered on the sensual. I was so close... I could almost breathe the air..

"Yes. It is. You are signed up for this course?"

"Yes... I was transferred from the University of Dublin last week, and arrived today."

Dublin! My eyes snapped open and I stared at her. Yes. Ireland. The beautiful lilt in her voice was Irish. But even as I stared at her, processing that information, a part of my soul in some hidden, deep place was saying no with all of its might... that it wasn't Irish I was hearing, but a sound much deeper and older... and the scent of incense and night air filled my senses.

"That is no excuse for being more than twenty minutes late for the commencement of class. Find a seat." His words were grating and ugly in the wake of her eerie voice, but I barely heard them.

Professor Richler, along with the rest of the class, watched her as she whispered her thanks and ran across the podium to climb the stairs to the seats. She was tall, I saw, but she moved with a confident grace that bordered on the athletic. Her shoulders were just a little too broad for her beauty, and the cast of her face was more handsome than beautiful. She had, I could see now, smooth and flawless features that were made from living alabaster. A straight nose that was just a little too long to compliment her strong, masculine jaw, and lips that were slender but full. I watched her climb the stairs towards me, and held my breath as she slipped past me to seat herself in a desk next to the Asian girl (who never looked up) and only two down from me.

Her coat rippled behind her as she passed, and I saw the shimmer of raindrops flashing off of the burgundy leather as she sat. I caught the smell of stormclouds and autumn leaves, and something subtler but sweeter that I couldn't readily identify. On her back was a heavy-looking backpack that was worn at the shoulder straps, and its black colour had faded to a sort of weary rust. She pulled it off her back, and I tried to look away as her back arched and her breasts made themselves known through the thick material of her coat.

She gives me a strange look, and I pause.

"What?" I ask, perplexed by the sudden cast of appraisal in her eyes.

She looks at me for a moment longer, a shrewd expression on her pinched face. Compulsively, she ducks her head as she sees me watching her, and I watch as she shakes her hair to form a curtain in front of her eyes, from which she speaks quietly. Her voice is a ghost whisper that dissolves on the air like mist, and I strain to catch it as I lean forward. Her hair is dark and black, and her skin is porcelain and translucent. She is charred wood upon snow, and the room is charged with her strange, fey magic.

"I thought you said he was your lover..."

I nod, watching her secrets swirl about her like funeral veils. A flicker of light behind the curtain of her hair betrays her eyes lifting to look at me again.

"Yes. He was," I say.

She hitches the blanket tighter around her legs.

"You talk about this girl like you loved her."

"I did. I do."

She reaches up to brush a stray hair out of her eyes, and the IV tubes attached to her hand slither on the blankets like snakes as she moves. She doesn't offer anything else and we sit like this for several minutes, until I understand the meaning behind her question.

"I only tell you all of this because it is necessary to understand. You need to know about him, and I am telling you. All stories start somewhere, and it started for me when I saw her in the parking lot that day. It was not attraction that I felt for her... I hope you understand that. Not in the sexual sense. It was more like recognition. Do you understand?"

She is quiet a moment longer, and then nods. "Please continue," she asks, hunching her chin onto her knees again and becoming still.

And she did understand. I could see that.

"I wanted to look away," I say, after a moment.

But I couldn't stop staring. She was having a hypnotic effect that I couldn't break away from. Her hair, as straight as shale and leaving auburn trails on the air, beckoned to me in star-silk whispers. My fingers twitched on my desk as the urge to run them through those blazing lengths made them feel as though the bones inside were slowly crumbling. Her bag was swung down to the floor beside her boots with a muted thunk, and the hands that propelled it left behind fragments of earthly grace that made me think of piano music and water flowing over rocks. She pulled open the zipper, and the contents of her bag were made known as she slipped her hands in. I caught a glimpse of a few multi coloured binders, two notebooks, a pencil case, and a camera case. The case grabbed my attention instantly, and I stared at it wonderingly as she flicked through the binders. It was black, and heavy looking -- the camera inside it must have been more than the casual point and shoot -- and was well loved. But the strap was the extraordinary thing, and I shivered unconsciously as I watched it. Looking to be handwoven, the thing was an intricate piece of Celtic knotwork that interlaced a brilliant array of deepest blues, turquoises and silver into a stunning, complex pattern. Again, I felt the world shift for one tiny moment.

That pattern... familiar because I'd seen many pieces of Celtic knotwork before... but yet... more than. Something about it was almost physically hurting me, and the pencil in my left hand snapped in two with a startling crack before I even noticed that I was gripping it.

Her hands stopped moving through her bag, and before I looked up at her face, I could feel her watching me. Agonized, I watched in dismay as one half of the pencil flew across the seats and landed squarely in her bag, rolling to a stop next to the camera. I slowly looked up into her face just in time to see her drop her gaze to the intrusive pencil. Staring at it for a half moment, she moved a hand to pick it up. I saw her fingers wrap around it, and that's when everything got truly strange.

As if in slow motion, I saw the pencil cradled in her hand as she lifted it to desk level. The jagged edge glittered savagely as it moved, and part of me wanted to jump up and snatch it out of her grasp before it maimed her flesh. But I stayed dormant as she displayed it between thumb and forefinger. Rolling it slightly, she leaned closer to it and seemed to look through it. I watched as her ice blue eyes narrowed and the pencil seemed to be bathed in a crystalline fire. Her face changed then, from half-amusement to something unfathomable. It was if time had stopped, as though I didn't even need to breathe. All I could do was watch as she stared at the pencil shard, her angular face registering an expression I had only ever seen in dreams. It was the look of someone understanding something impossible, I realized later. Deeper acceptance than I had ever seen crashed into her eyes in waves of sapphire and light just then, and it was mixed with something else too. I couldn't place what that was, but it was magnetic in its namelessness and I battled to understand. Fear? Was it fear?

And then, slowly, she looked at me. And her gaze, when it came, was tenfold what I had seen directed at the piece of pencil. If the pencil was longer, I might have broken it twice. I fought the whimper that clawed like a crazed animal at my throat, and tried desperately to ignore the feeling of gravity falling to pieces all around me. I knew I was shaking, but I was powerless to stop it, and some distant part of my head was screaming 'THIS IS INSANE'...

Her eyelashes were muted red, identical fans of silk over eyes like chips of frozen crystal. They were wide as they watched, no, surveyed me. The feeling of total transparancy swept over me as she offered me that solitary gaze, and I had the dreadful feeling that she was reading my thoughts... my emotions... my very being. Her eyes had the look of an ancientness I had only seen in statues, and I was frozen in the scorch of them. My heart was racing and I could feel sweat prickling its tiny, burning fingers into the skin of my back, making me shudder.

"Are you alright?" Her voice was incredible. It sounded like verse, somehow. I had heard of the Irish accent being described as melodic, but I had never took it to be a literal observation...

I blinked.

"...are you okay?"

She was looking at me with a half-concerned smile on her lips, and I blinked again. Had I imagined what I had just seen? Her expression didn't seem to register anything out of the ordinary.

"Uh..." I managed.

Her smile widened slightly, and she gestured downwards with her eyes. Locked onto them, I couldn't lift my gaze off of them to see what she was looking at.

Stupidly, "Huh?"

My voice sounded drugged and depraved. In comparison with her gentle words, they made me wince. Great...

"Your hand. It's shaking," she elaborated, and I swiftly looked down.

The hand gripping the other half of the pencil was indeed shaking, trembling on the desk. The knuckles were white and strained, and for a moment seemed like they weren't going to let go of the pencil. But after a second the pencil dropped and rolled a little across the desk before coming to a stop. I slowly looked back up at her.

So blue. But not blue enough. They weren't the right colour, I realized dazedly. They needed to be deeper... so much deeper. The last light before night deeper.. the first blue of darkest morning deeper... the fire of trees and earth glittering in silvertine flecks...

"Um... yeah. Thanks. Sorry... about that," I stammered, dropping my gaze quickly and reaching out to take the piece from her hand. She reached across her desk to hand it to me -- I could hear the soft whisper of her leather trenchcoat as it grazed the desk, and the edges of her hair slipping off the corners -- and then we are gazing again and no, it wasn't my imagination because there it is again, and her eyes are so much brighter, so much more intent, and I want to cry out before she lashes me to my core...

'Who are you?' I wanted to scream, but then her fingers were brushing mine as she placed the pencil into my hand and it was only by sheer luck that I managed to hold onto it as I received it, for her touch was fire burning and the earth raising to lift me off my feet...

"It's alright," she whispered to me, and her piercing eyes seemed to pulse for an impossible moment. And suddenly I felt alive. For one breathtaking, perfect second, I felt Life in all of its entirety pour down on me and the feeling in my heart was so encompassing, so clean that it seemed too much to bear, surely I would shatter...

"Do you need another pencil?"

I swallowed the huge lump in my throat and fought back the surprising, shocking sting of tears from my eyes as I shook my head no. Dropping my eyes from hers, I leaned back in my chair, and dropped a quivering hand into my coat pocket.

"No," I heard myself say in a voice that almost sounded calm. "I have another one. Thanks, though."

Without watching, I could feel her nod at me after submitting me to another quiet look. I sat there, staring down at the platform without seeing or hearing, trying to understand the rage of emotions swirling through me in tsunami annihilation. I could still feel the stinging prick of tears in my eyes, and this more than anything frightened me. Since when did anyone create such a disturbance in me? My breathing was ragged and I struggled to contain it as the lesson wore on. The time passed in a blur as I sat there painfully attuned to everything the girl beside me was doing. Who was she? Why was she creating this reaction? I had never seen her before, I was sure of that much. So why did she make my pulse feel like it was going to wrench my heart in two? Why did she make the air feel tight, and the world too small? And why couldn't I get rid of the lingering scent of pine trees and cedar on the air? I felt alien, as though dangerously high, but how could anything have a side effect like that? It was time to lay off a long while ago, yes, but... this was lunatic. It was like I could hear whispers on the horizon of hearing when I looked into her eyes... and a certainty, so sharp in its promise that it terrified me... that I would one day understand them.

• • • • come away, o human child, to the waters and the wild with fairy hand in hand for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

"Evan."

I blinked, and then the world came swirling back into focus. Looking over, I saw a slender, fair-haired face staring at me worriedly. I was standing in front of the dormitories on the North campus after my English Lit class, having the rest of the day free of classes. The day was still cold and rain-filled; the puddles were larger than before and mirroring rushing clouds of silver and shale. I could smell earth on the air, and the smell was keen and grounding, slowly pushing the fog out of my brain. Idly wondering how I managed to get all the way back to my dorm without remembering the trip there, I stared blankly back into the concerned eyes that sought my own.

"Evan?"

"Hmm?" I murmured as the world slipped out of focus again and an image of her came back, all resplendent in red and harrowing blue. Unconscious of my teeth chattering, I heard the sound of her voice in memory's whisper... 'you will burn'... a million echoes like bells in halls of crystal...

"Jesus!"

And then a punch slammed into my shoulder, sending white shocks of pain scraping down my arm. Snapping to attention, I yelped and jumped back, raising a hand to the infliction and snarling.

"What the hell?!" I yelled, rubbing the now numb part of my bicep as I stared angrily at the intruder who backed up a bit and offered me a pointed, anxious stare. Suddenly the face and my brain came together, and I sighed.

"John. Man. I'm sorry," I said ruefully after a moment, and clenched my shoulder gingerly.

John, a slender waif of a guy and who only came up to my chin, shrugged a little and combed me with a calculating glance from behind steel-rimmed glasses two sizes too big for him. It gave him the appearance of a child, and the watery blueness of his eyes didn't help the fact that he could easily be mistaken for twelve. He was birdlike in his slenderness, and habitually wore a battered brown leather jacket that shrouded his painfully thin frame with as much effect as a plastic bag. But as small as he was, his musician's hands packed a surprising force, and I wasn't too sure I wanted to try moving my arm just yet. The pain radiated out in growing circles of alternating numbness and twitching fire, and I whistled through my teeth. I wasn't a big person by any means, standing at just under six feet, but I wasn't untoned either. My shoulders were broad enough to get me through football games as a kid, and I lifted weights every day. So I certainly wasn't going to admit how painful his punch actually was.

"Did you have to do that?" I asked, already aware of the answer.

"No," he said predictably. "You could have answered me. You're always doing that. It freaks me out."

His voice matched his stature, and it had added to it a faint, solemn squeakiness that always made me think that it was almost as though the air going through his vocal cords had to squeeze extra tight to get through for some reason. It sounded as though his throat was being permanently throttled.

"If I'm always doing it, then maybe it's safe to assume that it's nothing to get freaked out about," I offered philosophically, and stepped around him to open the door to the dormitories. Holding it open for him, I followed behind as he went inside. His thin, tawny hair bobbed as he walked, and I quelled the desire to pat its flyaway ends down. Even when it was raining, he had the kind of hair that seemed to spring up no matter what he did to it. It was almost endearing, in a weird, John-like way.

"Hah," he said, and I knew without looking that the twinkling look of triumph was glinting in those myopic eyes, and the familiar trace of a sardonic half-smile was crooking his peeling lips. "You just don't like getting punched."

"No-one does," I said lamely back, and the little snort of derision coming from his end was followed by a sharp chuckle. I decided to ignore it this time, and we walked in silence down the gloomy hallway. Made of tile and lima green walls, the dormitory halls were scattered with cigarette butts, lecture notices, and leaves. Every few feet a door loomed gray, usually covered in posters or bulletin boards in an attempt to liven up the 60's finishing school ambiance. Each section of the halls had its own distinctive smell, generally of cooking, weed, incense, and mould.

Rounding a corner and coming to a stop in front of a door devoid of any decoration, I pulled out a key from the depths of my pocket and slipped it into the dully-gleaming lock. Turning it and hearing the bolt thump creakily back, I kicked open the door and we went inside. John closed the door behind him, and I went straight to the kitchen, on the left side of the front door. Throwing my bag across the tiny living room, it landed on the collapsed couch, I turned to the fridge. Wrenching it open, I reached in for the bottle of orange juice and popped off the lid. Placing the mouth to my lips, I closed my eyes as the startling jolt of orange tartness and liquid cold poured into my mouth.

"Ever think of using a glass?" His voice was soft and amused in spite of the words, and I grinned.

"Not usually."

Sighing, he sat down with a creak on the couch. I finished my drink and slid it back into fridge after screwing the lid back on. Closing the door, I crossed the room and crashed on the other side of the couch, the springs groaning rustily as I did so. We sat in silence for a while, and I stared around the room. The walls were painted black in an unusual concession by John to my tastes. Different posters adorned the black, ranging from Tool (mine) to piano scales (his). Various items of heavily used furniture filled the cramped space, and the carpet was a worn gray with several unidentifiable stains rubbed deep into the material by countless feet over the years. In the centre of the room was an empty travelling trunk that doubled as a coffee table; John swore he never brought it and I couldn't remember owning anything like it. So we just used it for a table in the meantime with the vague hope that someone might come and claim it someday. There were two rooms in the dorm next to the living room and washroom. The one on the left was John's, and the one on the right was mine. Both were in varying stages of disrepair.

"How's English Literature going?"

I closed my eyes and leaned back, folding my hands under my head. Smiling to myself, I shrugged. That was John. No abbreviations of any kind. He seemed to regard them as some sort of abomination against God because if I ever uttered one in his presence, his shoulders would hunch slightly and his whole diminutive frame would radiate a kind of prim rigidness and his continuing conversation would become monosyllabic. It took several years before I caught on, and several more after that to stop using it as a taunt to fuel teenage juvenility.

"You know." I said helpfully. "Shitty."

The room goes quiet again, but this time it was the kind of quiet that has a hollowness of expectation, and I opened my eyes. Looking over, I saw John regarding me with another one of his careful, discerning stares, and inwardly I groaned. Watching him for a bit, I started to grow uncomfortable, and finding myself wilting under that distorted unwavering gaze. Uneasily, I shifted a little in my seat and tried to close my eyes again.

Then:

"What."

The word is a statement, not a question, and I utter it reluctantly. Anyone else staring at me like that would have gotten them a punch in the face, but not with John. Time and his unfaltering and highly irritating loyalty turned him into the only real friend I had as a child. I didn't keep him around because of his strange ways or kindness in cruel places at first. It was simply because he just wouldn't go away. There was nothing I could do; no amount of cold aloofness or downright dismissal seemed to faze the tiny, razorsharp guy. As skinny as a pile of chicken bones and surviving on pretty much that, he and I were an unlikely pair at school. I was raised in a well off household and the only limitations I knew on my lifestyle were of my own creation. But he saw through the rich boy exterior as the other kids didn't, and realized that my so-called snobbery was just an unconditional hatred of everything and everyone. How that endeared me to him I'll never know, but it was that and that alone that tempered my violent tendencies into a kind of grudging tolerance.

"What happened to you today?"

I sighed inaudibly and laid my head back on the couch. Shrugging slightly with a torpid lift of one shoulder, I opened one eye in a tiny crack and watched him watching me.

"Nothing. Why?"

He continued to watch me unblinkingly, and it forced me to elaborate. God, how I hated that.

"Nothing, I swear. You know I trance out like that sometimes."

His eyes narrowed slightly, and giving up, I closed my eyes completely as my muscles started to twitch with agitated nervousness. I couldn't stand questioning of any kind, but especially not about this. The last thing I wanted to think about was the girl.

"I know you've been doing it a lot more lately. I know you haven't been sleeping, and you hardly eat."

Fuck. Groaning silently, I sat up quickly and racked my brain desperately for something to say, anything to say to get him off this topic. It was a long time coming, and I was almost sure I'd gotten away with it, but I was wrong as usual. Feeling my palms beginning to sweat, I rubbed them on the front of my jeans as I looked at him guardedly.

"I've been having insomnia," I lied, a bitter taste rising in my mouth as I uttered the words. Lying to anyone and everyone else wasn't a problem, but to John... well, it was almost like I pissed on the Cross or something. It felt that weird. And I hated doing it.

He looked at me for a moment, and the silence hanging in the air between us was heavy with his unspoken skepticism. But blessedly, he decided not to press the issue, and instead only delivered me a scorching look that spoke of disappointment and, horribly, acceptance. God, he knew how to make me feel wretched.

"Well, then what happened just now?"

His child's voice was calm and serene, and I was careful not to look at him as I replied.

"Someone freaked me out. In Lit class," I said after a moment, wanting more than anything to get the hell off the couch.

He blinked as I spoke the word 'Lit', but that was the only recognition he gave to the abbreviation. It was time to leave, I thought.

"Who did?"

Suppressing the urge to roll my eyes and go into my room while slamming the door behind me, I force myself to answer.

"A new student."

Her face. Strange radiance and supernatural eyes. Irish folklore come to life as a modern day Boudica...

And I was lost again. Thousands of visions assailed my senses in a disorienting half-moment, and I reeled in the face of them. The couch below me became empty and weightless, and the walls disappeared. All I could see was long red hair, redder even than the strands surrounding her face, and again the impression crashed over me that it wasn't her that I was seeing, but the ghost of someone else... someone almost like her but different in so many ways. Deep and impossible ways that I couldn't even come close to, let alone explain...

"Guy or girl?"

Eyes like sapphire on a winter morning. But they too were wrong...

"Girl," I murmured, still dazed, not seeing John as he got up to go to the fridge.

"What'd she do?"

"Nothing," I replied after a moment. That was just it. Nothing. She had done absolutely nothing, and in so doing, had done everything.

"Then why did she freak you out?"

Whispers again. Was I going insane? Because now I was actually hearing voices.

"I don't know," I said evasively. "I feel like I know her from somewhere." And though that initially came out as a lie, I realized with a shock that it was true. Standing up, I began to head towards my bedroom, trying to ignore the waves of sweat beading up on my forehead under his watchful stare.

"Evan..."

I stopped as I got into the doorway of my room and turned to look at him. He was leaning against the sink with a glass in his hand. As I looked at him, he looked suddenly fragile, and the slenderness of his frame seemed painful as he looked at me worriedly. I found myself wondering at how the glass managed to stay aloft in his spiderthin fingers, for they all of a sudden looked too brittle and incorporeal. The soft, concerned light pooled in his eyes made me twitch, and I needed more than anything to go into the room and close the door and cut it off. I didn't deserve one iota of his empathy, but there was nothing in me that could make me explain all the things he wanted, and deserved, to know. Some things were just better left unsaid, and I didn't think I could stand to see his eyes fill with any more disappointment and fear than they were now.

"Look," I said more sincerely than I felt, feeling my hands start to shake and the floor begin to heave. "It's okay. Sometimes I can't sleep. I'll keep trying. Don't worry, okay?"

He stood there as if frozen, and I could feel a hundred knives ripping into my heart.

Utter silence that made my skin crawl, and then:

"I know you're failing your classes."

My hand tightened on the doorknob and my eyes closed for a brief, terrible second as I bowed my head and tried to keep walking into the room. I know you know, I wanted to scream. How could you not? Ever since the beginning I knew I couldn't keep anything from you, nothing that counted anyway. And that's why I have to keep this so far away from you that I'll even make you think I hate you instead of facing that possible outcome from you. I wanted to cross the room and take that glass from his too thin fingers, wipe the dark pain from his eyes and tell him all the rotten secrets of my soul. So instead I just looked over my shoulder at him and smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring manner but I knew probably looked worse than his expression of total betrayal.

"Don't worry," I said in a hoarse whisper, and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind me. Leaning against it, I listened to the echoing sound of it shutting for what felt like hours until I eventually heard him move away from the sink. Closing my eyes and sinking to the floor, I listened as he walked with his light, almost soundless gait to his bedroom door and closed it with a quiet snick.

"Fuck," I whispered hollowly, as I leaned against the door, my legs feeling like iron weights on the floor. Staring into the total darkness of the room, I fought the urge to cry as the slow, insidious sting of saltwater burned across my eyes. I had been stupid to think that he was going to avoid the subject forever, and just how he knew I was failing most of my classes was something I didn't have the spine to figure out. I knew it was hard on him, I saw it everyday when I left extra early in the morning so that we wouldn't have to walk together, but it was for the best and I sung that to myself like a mantra each lonely, hated walk.

It may have been hours that I sat there, musing on those things, my hands lying motionless on the floor and my back slumped against the wooden door. The whole time I had my hearing tuned desperately for any sound of movement from John's room, but nothing came. It occurred to me that he was probably sitting just the way I was now, and it was that which propelled me onto my feet to cross the room to the bed. Sitting on the rumpled mess of sheets, I leaned over to reach blindly in the dark for the little lamp residing beside the bed, and after fumbling around and knocking a few things into each other, I found the switch and turned it on.

The room flooded with a soft, tiny glow of light, casting all the furniture around me into half-lit caricatures of shadow. Sitting there silently, I looked around unseeingly, my fingernails pressing painfully into my palms, trying not to think. Across from me was the door, painted black like the rest of the room, the only bare thing to be seen. The walls stretched around me slowly, and upon them were several posters and paintings that had come into my possession over the years. On the wall beside the door there was a Pink Floyd poster the size of a subway mural, depicting a scene from The Wall were Pink is situated in a barren, lifeless landscape with only a chair, lamp, and television set to keep him company. I had found the screenshot beautiful once upon a time, but now it only served to remind me bitterly of my own estranged existence so I barely looked at it though I hadn't the heart to throw it away. It had been a gift from my brother Jacob, and it was the last thing he had given me before he went away to university, unknowing of how perfectly it would come to resemble me after he'd gone, taking our relationship with him.

Next to the poster was a rickety writing desk, covered all over with paper, notebooks and novels that I hadn't touched in weeks. The chair was draped with various items of clothing, most of them black and all of them unwashed. The next wall had the window in it, which I kept covered at all times. The curtains swaying over it were made of dark purple cotton and silk, the last remnant of my mother's things that remained in my possession. They were beautiful, and the only thing of gentleness in the room. They would waft and ripple at the slightest breeze, and only the brightest of sunshine could permeate the room with the soft purple dark that reminded me of magic and starlight, toys strewn on the floor, and a smile made of gold and quiet tenderness.

The headboard of my bed was some feet away from the window, and it was a simple thing of black-stained wood that ran flush with the wall. The bed itself was a double mattress, and the sheets and pillows were a muted emerald green. The duvet was never made, and the pillows were strewn about the surface. Beside the bed was a closet which remained open at all times, showing empty hangars and old textbooks pilled teeteringly at the bottom. Sighing, I closed my eyes and leaned back, bringing my legs up onto the bed slowly. The lamp was beginning to flicker once and a while, a sign that I would have to get a new one, and I opened my eyes to stare at it. It reclined on the bedside table, cluttered in with a few books with tattered covers, candles, razor scars, random change and a picture frame. Through the blinking light show of the lamp, I watched the picture inside the frame silently, unable to look away but driving the nails deeper into my palms with every second.

It was John, Jacob and I, back when we were kids, probably around grade seven. My hair was shorter then, when my mother still had some semblance of control over my doings, and it stuck up in raven cowlicks all over my head. I had on a terrible jean jacket, and underneath it a Batman shirt that was handed down to me by Jacob which I still own to this day. It must have been someone's birthday, John's I think, because we were eating cake which I had just smeared all over John's face. John, who looked the same in the picture as he did now excepting perhaps that his glasses were a little thicker now, was grinning hugely with wide eyes as we all looked into the camera. His hair was sticking up at all ends, and my face was pressed against his; a mingling of spun gold and obsidian black. My eyes were closed, but I was grinning fit to match his, and our arms hung over each other's shoulders. Jacob stood a little aside, looking at us with a sheepish mixture of expressions, his teenage self looking gawky and awkward. He was the beauty of the shot, and I loved the picture because even though it was supposed to be about John and I, there Jacob was, standing unobtrusively, watching us with the quiet angelic grace through which he executed all his actions. His hair was as long as mine was now, but he had it swept back over one shoulder in a gesture that was bordering on the feminine and gave grace to the aristocratic perfection of his features. We could have been twins, he and I, the only thing stopping us being the fact that I was five years his younger. His jawline was straight and slender, his skin as smooth as pale caramel, and his nose made perfect without any flaw. His eyes were the only thing different from my own, for mine were bright emerald green, and his were a pale jade that he got from our father. Whereas our father's eyes were cold and clear, Jacob's were yielding and magnetic, a telling testament to their differing natures. His eyebrows were dark, slender and curved, creating two sensual lines that accentuated his eyes with startling beauty. Feminine, yes, but the masculinity was found in the strong jaw and gentle lips, and for many years it was him that I thought of when I thought of beauty.

Flicking my eyes back to John and I, I stared at the picture for a while longer, feeling a tightness in my chest begin to grow. A snapshot of peace, and a rare one because I hated cameras and never allowed myself to be caught in one. Perhaps that is why John made doubles of it and persuaded me to keep it when he gave it to me in its frame for my birthday a few years ago. He had the exact same one in his room, and I was aware that he kept it a lot more dust free than I did. Wanting to reach out a finger to do the same, I instead turned my eyes away and dropped them to the drawer in the table.

It was a very long time before I worked up the courage - or lack thereof - to open it. It may have been minutes, it may have been hours, but it surely wasn't enough seconds after I realized my fingers were hooked on the handle and pulling it open that the bag was in my palm. The beads of sweat on my forehead burned hot and cold, and the bag nestled there in powder soft dead weight, deceptively beautiful in its snow and glitter perfection. Like powdered diamonds it looked; hungrily devouring all the light around it like diamonds are wont to do, and like diamonds giving nothing back except terrible mirrors of the demon that always laughs but never smiles.

Tied ungloriously with an olive green twist tie, it sat immaculate in my palm as I hefted it to eye level. Lighter than a handful of earth, it was heavier than stone and my hand shook as I held it aloft, my eyes turning to liquid mercury as they tried to look away but never quite managed it. I could already feel the raw pulp burn inside my nose and down my throat, but my fingers were twitching and my breaths were coming in ragged and torn. My eyes felt dilated as I stared, and almost without effort I could feel the doors beginning to close behind them and the terrible maelstrom of nothingness beginning to recede into the shadows of almost epiphytic unreality.

It had started after she had died, and in so doing created another death which if was possible burned even deeper than the one before and left me stricken and beyond caring. He was the only one I couldn't hide from, no matter how hard I tried, and then he left and with him took the last grace and normalcy I would ever feel. Jacob could shred my `go-fuck-yourself' persona to tattered pieces, but somehow managed to do it with the simplest of gestures or a lingering glance of his otherworldly eyes. I was powerless where he was concerned, and that was why he left. University was just the means of it happening -- he would of left anyway, I was sure.

When he found out about the cocaine, it was a night of smouldering, blazing eyes and screamed words of oath making that never seemed to end. It was the first time he ever laid a hand on me, and it was also the last time he ever said `I love you'. And he did them in earth-shattering synch as he held me up against the wall of my bedroom, punching me in the face again and again, almost falling apart with tears as he did it, his voice barely above a whisper as he sobbed those words over and over. And I just hung there and let him do it, let his fist wipe away the tears that overflowed from my cracked heart to the floor. Blood fell too, that night, so much of it that it stained the carpet where my bed now lay. My blood and his, because I think he had to bleed too, he had to share some of the pain I was feeling. He still couldn't let me do it on my own; no matter how much I deserved it. And I think that's why he punched the wall until his knuckles ripped open, and that is why he caressed me so gently after he was done, the back of his hand trailing brokenly down my swollen cheek. His jade eyes looked cracked and bruised, and as the tears dripped out of them and agonized sobs shook his slender frame, I knew the extent of his goodness. It became a blazing light I burned to ashes in. I never loved him more than in that perfect, terrible moment, and it was only fitting - in some dreadful, ironic way - that he never loved me less. And I, for my part, have never looked back.

"I'm sorry," I think I whispered, but to who I wasn't sure, and the bag was open on the bed. Fumbling in the still open drawer, I pulled out a ragged, dust-covered ten-dollar bill which had been rolled up sometime ago to resemble a short, but treacherously useful, straw. And I didn't even bother to line it up that night as the lamp flickered wildly before me, the sound of static in my ears and the taste of euphoria on my tongue as I fell back onto the awaiting bed, arms spread and unbidden phantom tears trailing down my cheeks. The sheets accepted me like a lover, and I lay there all night cradled in their faceless embrace as visions of starlight and autumn fire poured through my veins. John's face, too, was there, floating ghost-like and pale, but I was too blinded by the reddest of red hair and the deepest of blue eyes to care. It wasn't even her, The Girl, that night, and I knew then with a dizzying clarity that she was only a prototype for something else, someone else. There was no room for confusion in the face of those eyes, and I wept like a child for ages beyond counting. Fear swept through me like liquid nitrogen, turning all my thoughts into visions of indescribable strangeness. And above it all, superimposing the rest like the angel in a churchyard photograph that you only see by taking a step back, was an image that ran as deep as darkest water and that I had a name for but couldn't remember...

A cross...

Caught within a circle.