In Love & Death

I'm sitting here staring. Watching people pass by like clouds. Some fast, some slow. They're all a blur. I hear my phone ring. I don't know the caller. They tell me you're dead. You died in a bus crash. You were killed in a home invasion. Your plane went down. I imagine how I'd feel. I imagine what I'd tell my friends and my family. Not everyone knows about you yet. Some know your name but not much else. Why would I imagine such things? Why am I sitting here thinking about you being dead? I know why, but I don't want to admit it. Not even to myself in the confines of my own head. You're dead because you hit the wall. You're dead because I love you. I killed you off in a dream accident as the perfect way out. It's poetic, it absolves me, I'm free. I know, because I've fantasized about this before, the last time I was in love. She died too, many, many times, but she kept showing up. And eventually she became my girlfriend. I stopped dreaming up ways to be free and safe. I stopped doing a lot of things. I was a boyfriend. I handed over the keys to my life and eventually, she changed the locks. You can't go to the police if you give a thief your keys, you crawl home and start rebuilding your legs. Then I met you. Now I'm here again, with the same thoughts. And I'm terrified. It found me again. Love found me hiding in the darkest places. I can't do this again. How many times can the soul be tormented by love, and loss? I guess there's only one thing left to do. You'll have to stop loving me. You have to make me fall out of love with you. You'll have to die for real.

Death is so much easier than love.

I recited the 'sudden flu' monologue and left work early. I wasn't much good to anyone there, just staring out into the mall dreaming up imaginary phone calls or visits from bereaved family members. The first thing I saw when I opened the door of my apartment was her cardigan. She'd left it here from last night. I just stood there in the doorway looking at the colour and the fabric. I shudder, and slam the door. I walk over to the end of the couch and pick it up. I know for certain that I'm in trouble now. You don't have these feelings for cardigans. It once covered her shoulders and back. It kept her warm. I loved this cardigan, because I loved her. It's faded grey colour. The small coffee stain at the bottom. A little hole near one of the buttons. Then the flashes come. If I left it out on the balcony, maybe she'd slip and fall when she went to retrieve it? I'm sick, thinking of the cardigan as a weapon. The most innocent and beautiful things can sometimes be the scariest, depending on where your head's at. Love is a powerful weapon. It kills, mames and immobilizes but also has the power to save. Not in my personal experience, but I've heard it to be true. In my experience; love is a cruel magic rug with a mind of it's own. Sometimes you're sailing over the skies, untouched and invincible, and then it's pulled out from under you and you fall to your deepest depths. The evil rug flies off laughing to find it's next victims.

I hear the door open and shut. She's home. I hear a muffled call of my name, and something else I can't quite make out. I contemplate hiding. That's ridiculous. She walks in and smiles. She looks beautiful. I wish I'd hid. She comes over and kisses my cheek. She didn't fall on the way over and hit her neck on the corner of the kitchen table severing her spinal cord. She smells incredible. Then the questions come. How was my day? My throat cracks and sputters something half intelligible. I don't want to admit to myself the things I've thought about today. I'm weeks, maybe even years away from verbalizing it. Am I ok? I just nod this time. Would I like a cup of tea? I continue my nod from the first nod. I must look a spectator at a pogo competition. Drinking the tea will give me a reason for silence. I'll keep hiding inside. At least for the time being. She can't know that I want her dead. I mean...that I love her. Same thing. I better leave the room in case the fridge falls on her.

Walking down the road to the shops, she grabs my hand and entwines her fingers with mine. My heart moves in two directions. A fluttering lift, and a gripping seize. None of the oncoming cars loose control, mount the kerb and leave me holding a severed hand. I take my eyes off the road and return her gaze. She's still beautiful. Stupid heart. We stop by the bank to take out some money. The ATM's broken so we walk inside. I wait by the entrance while she lines up behind an old lady. She looks back at me and winks. Today she's wearing a sexy, yet innocent skirt and a white singlet. She doesn't look threatening, but then again...this is how the devil would dress to lower your suspicions. Under these nice clothes, silky skin and loving smile lays an organ eating demon. Dormant, but hungry. But then again, it could also be the shell of an angel sent to lift me out of my previous misery and save me from the other heart breaking demon wenches out there. Better to be safe than sorry though. I look toward the door. No masked robbers come racing through with their shotguns up. All done, she says, as she arrives at my side again. Where do I want to go for lunch, she asks? God she's so thoughtful. Where are you most likely to get salmonella poisoning?

Salmonella poisoning is so much easier than love.

It's understandable how I came to have this deadly fear of love. I sure as hell wasn't born with it. I loved my family as a child, and I still do now, even if I don't talk to them much anymore. My dad left when I was around nine and left me with my mum and sister. So instead of getting to watch action movies like all the other boys at school did, I was stuck watching terrible romantic comedies. I'd sit there and make choking sounds whenever it got all mushy but subconsciously I think I soaked it all in and grew up thinking that's what my love life would be like. As soon as it stopped making me want to vomit of course. First there were the high school romances, after that I dated girls, after that I had serious relationships. Now, there's probably hundreds of sub stories in there that would all lead to this particular phobia, but I can think of three definitive ones:
The first one would be my high school girlfriend Mel, we went out for a few years during school and for a little while after we'd graduated. I thought she was my future wife and the bearer of my children. That is, until she told me she was getting married to her boyfriend of five years. I scratched my head for a while on that one but I eventually found out she was only going out with me to keep her parents happy and distracted from her REAL boyfriend. Tom fucking Cordall. A real brick of a human being in both the physical and emotional sense. The drunk guy in the bar who informed me didn't know that the 'loser fake boyfriend' was in fact, me.
After I recovered from my second bout of alcohol poisoning I fell straight into the arms of my second example: Lauren May.
She was kind and sweet and gently nurtured me back to health. And it was only a matter of time before I checked myself back into that Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks suite in hell . We were together almost two years and our relationship was great, but bad things were happening all around me. My car was always getting its windows smashed in, and my house was burgled three times. I just thought I was incredibly unlucky, until I came home early one day and found my bi-polar girlfriend destroying my house for the fourth time. She'd kept her diagnosed illness from me the whole time we dated, and now the piece of paper I got from court keeps her away from me permanently.
The third encounter was just old fashioned bad luck; I got my head punched in. Nightmare number three's boyfriend came home early one day to find me naked on top of his girl. In my defence, she never mentioned him, but she never really said much at all. She just threw me in the back of a taxi one night outside of a pub. I never loved her, and I actually can't remember her name, but the memory of being beaten up while you're wearing your birthday suit will find it's way out of your head every chance it gets!
I stayed away from girls for a long time after that, but when I grew curious again I ventured back into the dating world. I ran away a lot, I changed my number a hell of a lot, and sometimes I would forget which fake name I was using and that led me back to running away a lot.

Running away is definitely easier than love.

We go to the movies, and for the first time this week my thoughts loose their sadistic nature. Maybe it's just hard to conjure up ways to die in a movie theatre. Maybe it's because I love going to the movies. The big dark room, with big dark seats, big screen, and bigger sound. Eating a big bucket of popcorn until you're all salted out, drinking coke until you're all sugared out. And repeat. She leans across and puts her head on my shoulder and grabs a fist full of popcorn from the bucket in my lap. This isn't so bad. There's nothing scary about this. How can this perfectly innocent moment lead to death and destruction. Right on cue: The flashes start. The arguing. The screaming. The crying. The smashing of anniversary gifts. The weeks on the couch. The flat lifeless being. The awkward conversations that follow. The fear of leaving the house. And repeat. My eyes expand til I feel the air drying them out and my throat closes. I can't do this again!

I wonder if you can choke to death on popcorn?

She stares straight past the flower arrangement, through the flicker of the candle light and right into my soul. When you have something to hide, locking eyes with someone is worse than waking up naked in a dream. My eyes send spies back across the table to retrieve information. They must've been killed in action because they never returned. They were caught behind enemy lines and tortured. Matchsticks were stuck repeatedly under their fingernails, and they were left for hours in the dark, tied to their beds with a single drop of water dripping onto their forehead until the single mililitre of water felt like an anvil crashing down on their skulls. Even wondering what she's thinking leads me to violent flashes. I'm smitten. She asks me what I'm thinking. Cunning. Using my own tricks against me. I say I'm just wondering what she's thinking. Cheap deflection, but it works. She finally breaks her stare and looks down at her uneaten meal and tells me she thinks she loves me. My heart tears in two again. One half sinks and swells with love blood and the other half explodes and clenches my fist into a ball. I want this revolving restaurant to come off it's hinge and plunge down into the bay killing us all. I take a deep breath and tell her I think I love her too. The moment freezes us. Our breath hides in our throats and the flame stops dancing. The ovens in the kitchen don't explode in a fiery gas ball turning our bodies into dust. I look to the kitchen, waiting, but nothing happens. We're stuck here in this wonderfully terrifying moment together.

I'm back at her place after dinner. The steering column didn't snap on the way over putting us in the path of an oncoming truck. Neither did that overpass collapse over our heads. We made it safely to her front door without armed robbery or abduction. We sit on the couch for a while talking about her friend Maria, her husband just died in a tragic car accident. His car was following a plumbing van that collided with a water tanker. Some of the pipes on top of the van's roof came free and shot through the windscreen into his chest and throat. He was dead before the other drivers even got out of their cars. In the midst of this terribly romantic conversation the phone rings. She answers the phone curiously, says 'hello' very happily, then asks 'what happened' looking extremely concerned. Her wide eyes turn to me then back to oblivion. She says she'll be right over and hangs up the phone. It was her neighbour, she's very upset, she has to go over and comfort her. I ask if she wants me to come with her, but she doesn't think that's a good idea. She says for me to go upstairs and get into bed, she'll be back in a little while. She leans over and locks her lips into mine. It was more than just a 'I'm heading next door for a few minutes' kind of kiss. When she pulled away she just stared for a second, then smiled and said, she'll be back in a minute. I didn't move from the couch, I watched her walk out the front door.
I felt something new and strange sweep through my body. Concern. I knew she was only going next door but I didn't want anything to happen to her. I wanted her to come back to me unharmed. I didn't want that big tree out front to fall down and crush her, just as I didn't want her neighbour to mistake her for a home intruder and shoot her dead. I didn't want any harm to come to her. Am I cured? I love her and I'm ok with that. I don't want out. I don't want the magic carpet to buck us off and fly away laughing. I want it to settle down in front of the open fire and stay put. I want to nail it down to our floorboards and let it fade with old age.

I take my time heading to her room. Everything is more interesting. All of her subtle decorations sum up the person she is, and I'm not scared of letting them in anymore. I feel like a thief, empty inside, filling the void with her life. In the bedroom I follow the pictures on the wall. The air in here smells damp. I've never noticed that before either. On her dresser amongst the scattered make-up containers and little ornaments I pick up a picture of us taken at the beach only a week after we'd met. I forgot all about this picture. I don't look scared in this snapshot. I look happy. She looks slightly blank, but still beautiful. As I put it down I notice her top drawer slightly open. Something shines at me from inside. I pull it open a fraction more and see a leather bound book with a gold seal. The seal isn't locked and I open it up to find journal entries. I'll feel bad for reading them but not bad enough not to. I take it to her bed and sit up against her pillows. The first pages are dated from last year so I skip ahead.

Saturday
I had another great day with pub guy. I have to call him 'pub guy' because I'm not sure if it'll be serious or not yet. So, I'm not telling my friends his real name. If I'm still seeing him next week I might write his name here. Maybe. But either way it was a fun night. He took me bowling. There weren't any awkward silences, and he was fun. Kind of silly, dancing around after a strike. But I liked that. Very different from the last one who's name I promised I'd never write in here again. And on that note...Goodnight.

Sunday
Nothing much to report today. Watched movies in my pyjama’s most of the day and had coffee with a girlfriend. But Pub guy called me, we're going to the beach this week. Hopefully that'll be a more exciting entry than this one.

Wednesday
What a perfect day! The weather was amazing, we built a terrible, terrible sandcastle. But we still loved it like our own bastard child. He packed a nice lunch for us, and he was nice enough and sweet enough that I might have to see him again. But a weird thing happened before we left. He swam out one last time and I stayed on the beach, and I had this sudden vivid image of a fin swimming towards him. His hand went up in the air, and he screamed. There was thrashing and the water turned red. But that didn't happen, he swam into shore and came up to our spot on the sand. Dried himself off and kissed me for the first time. Then he took a photo. I was really happy, but a bit freaked out. Maybe it's nothing...

She's the same as me. We're perfect for each other. This last guy who she won't write about must've hurt her pretty bad, and she's terrified of love too. It couldn't be more perfect. We can both feel scared enough to keep each other safe from each other, and more importantly, ourselves. I should put this back before she comes home, but it's too good. I have to read on.

Saturday
It happened again, he died at lunch today. Choked on a piece of steak. Not very heroic, or entertaining. If I'm going to kill him, it has to be a better story than choking on meat. Something out of this world, but nothing like aliens or anything. Something that you just think wouldn't happen, ever. Like a TV antennae falling off a roof and turning him into a hot dog on a stick. He deserves something like that, after all, I do love him. Which reminds me, It's time to let you know his name, I did promise it after all. It will be the first and last time I write it though, so I only have to tear one page out of my diary when he falls victim to a tragic accident. Here goes...

A drop of water fell from the roof and landed on top of my name. The letters melted into blue tears and ruined sentences all the way to the bottom of the page. I looked up as another drop fell onto my forehead. Above me on the roof there was a patch of brown as big as the bed, it pulsed and dripped water from the middle. More and more drops fell onto the pages. I was half sitting up to get up off the bed when the roof collapsed. The hot water heater burst through the soggy particle board and knocked me to the floor, pinning me underneath. The unit split on impact and scolding hot water exploded over me and the bedroom. The unit was bigger than me and covered most of my body. The release valve had made a new home in my side, just below my ribcage and I couldn't see or feel any more of my lower half. My skin turned bright pink. I looked at my hand still clutching her diary. The ink was running off the wet pages and dripping blue down onto the rising water. A red mist started to appear under the water, swirling up to meet it at the surface. The water looked bruised. I didn't feel any pain, I was happy for her. She was saved. She won't have to worry about me breaking her heart, changing her locks or treating her badly. And what a story she can tell. If I had a pen I'd write the last page in her diary:

A falling hot water heater crushing and boiling your boyfriend alive is easier than staying in love.