Reprieve (please stay here with me)

I had an interview on the second day there. It had to be a cleaning job, or some kind of solitary job. The night before we put bin bags over the windows, the same as always. We set a mattress in the corner, and I covered her eyes with a thick bandage. The nights are when she hurts the most.

The interview was a formality, but as ever, I had to maintain as much distance as possible.

*

'You understand this is only a part-time position. The pay isn't great, to be honest.'

He was a stocky man with a rigid crew-cut. I held his eyes, but I tried - internally - not to pass any of myself into him. I have to keep some pieces just for myself. People try to press and impose themselves into your life with their words and movements. They try to forge links in intricate ways. They are sneaky and they are creative in their sneakiness. We are all creative; conversation is creative, and people try to own bits of you with it. They try to spoil your balance.

'I understand.'

He eyed the flimsy scraps of paper on the table, wedged the fingers of each separate hand together and planted the load down, leaning forward.

'You seem to have moved around a lot?'

'Certainly in the past few years. We enjoy seeing new places... my girlfriend and I.'

'I see.' He looked bored now and I felt the taut thread sever. The clock ticked past half nine, forcing time and continuity into the dirty white office-limbo. 'Well, be here for seven Monday morning. Wednesday and Thursday after that.'

The hands detached and a meaty slab reached across the table.

'Thanks,' I pushed, feeling his horrible dry skin press into my own.

*

It felt like it took forever for her to stomach three bites of toast, and she was white and shaking when she lowered herself onto the mattress. Darkness had settled into the flat and a soft orange pressed against and fringed the bin-bagged windows. I stroked her hair whilst I wrapped the bandage round her eyes. These were the times I loved the most, and the tremble of vital, soft skin under my fingers reset everything and made us good to go again. 

It slipped over her nose and she moaned.

'Please, don't be like that. It's lovely to be in a new place. Isn't it lovely?'

Bunched fingers snatched at the bandage, unfurling it into a flimsy scarf.

'Claire!'

She dipped her head and already I could see red flowering within her eyes. The orange buzz seeped further into the room and illuminated her hunched figure as she rocked back and forth.

'Please, don't keep this going,' she whispered.

I was appalled. I dreaded these phrases more than anything. I hated the grind of their dispersion and that she would think it possible for there to be any other way. My jaw set and I tried to project restraint, but I felt my hand slapping the mattress.

'Don't say that. Please don't say that. You always say that when you're tired. You always say that after you can't eat! Why don't you try and be grateful? Why don't you try and support me...us?'

'You're just talking at me,' she muttered, and I cottoned the blush of red in her beautiful vision and knew I must be more level.

'I'm not, I'm trying to make you remember - and I know how hard it is, I know that this isn't - I'm trying to make you see - '

'You're still just talking at me. You can't just keep talking until your thoughts are in my head. It doesn't - please just stop talking.'

I was wired to spill, but I flumped back into the pillow and watched her fumbling with the bandages and felt useless and cut and I wished she would see how lucky we were. How we were the lucky ones, how we had continued. The most beautiful of things rebuild and replenish and it was always an act of creation. This was at the heart of our change and things can't always be as they were and we... she should be more grateful.  

She twisted the bandage tight and already a spot of red nudged at the criss-crossed edge, swelled, and dribbled down her cheek. I sprang to wipe it; wipe away the reminder and kiss the pale, soft skin (oh, that I was still able to) whose textures and pillowed push I knew so well - to be close to it again for another moment and to remember. But she shrugged me off and collapsed onto the mattress, pulling the duvet over her head.

I sat hunched in the orange-dark, watching the crisp pull of the bin bags, paralysed by the weight of years.

*

I awoke fuzz-eyed in the night and that fool of a man - interview-man - was there. I knew he would be. That he should have pressed his hand into my own! The fool, the snivelling fool. Why could he not carry himself through his own life? Why did he need to press himself into others, invade space, touch when touch was not needed, speak when there was no need?

He lay in a skewered recovery position by the far wall, one arm above his shoulder, groping towards the window wall. His stupid fat body looked like a spilt bag of coal in the washed dark, and his eyes were bleeding, predictably. 

'What is this?' He coughed, flapping his fat hands at the carpet. 'What is this? What's going on?' He scrabbled into a kneeling position, staring wide-eyed at our mattress in his stupid suit. Then he caught the trail of red and pressed his fingers into the wet hollow above his cheeks.

'What is this?' He bellowed.

I realised Claire was sitting up too, holding the duvet like a protective cloak and nodding her bandaged head. I leapt up and stomped across the floor, aiming a sharp kick at the stupid fat man's head.

'Stop it!' Screamed Claire. She was squeezing folds of duvet and I caught myself as I raised my foot again. I closed my eyes and breathed. I savoured the rush and the release and I tried to dredge up the change and to remember to be grateful and forgive these causal slips and interjections.

The fat man was slavering near the carpet, his face a mess of red streaks. But his link with me was not strong, however hard he had pressed his slab of hand into my own, and I could see him fading. The whites of his eyes rolled and he was caught between two places. He was caught between two places as we all were, only his twist came at a more unusual moment.

'The pay isn't great, to be honest,' he choked quietly, and I knew these were old words. There were no new words from him here now, and he would be leaving soon.

His thick outline dissipated from the carpet and I rushed over to hold Claire. She was shaking and her own eyes bled, they bled because of the dent that stupid man had caused in our balance.

'Claire, Claire, it's okay. It's okay, we can move again. We can be out of here tomorrow.'

She tore at the duvet, crying into handfuls of it. I felt her chest rising under my grip.

'There's nowhere far enough! Please, stop this, please. Please, you have to give me a way out.'

*

In two days' time we were safe at the top of a hill. The wind hit oppressive swoops and we sat near our tent and I relished the rolls of green and thatches of heather and wondered if this was a final, wonderful shift that we should have made a long time ago, or a place to go for the end.

I despised that needling thought and the rush which accompanied it with every thread of my being. Claire played with her hair and she looked beautiful beyond belief without her bandage. There was a freshness, a crisp glow about her skin, and this was a freshness brought about by the lack of people we had met or encountered on our passage here. There was no-one to interrupt and there was no-one to interrupt us. The threads and coils of life could continue without us, and... oh, if only we could stay here forever. If only we could stay here forever and live off grass and dew and never have people press into our lives; press their thoughts and actions into our world.

I watched her in the strong breeze, watched her flicking hair and the eyes absorbing the great spread of fields far below and I thought how far we had come since she died. And she had only been gone minutes, that horrible night. She had buckled with the needle in her arm - and we were always using, then - but we are all dying in little installments. We are all losing life, and we are all losing parts of ourselves that we can never recover. But we are also capable of change and I am capable of affecting change more than most. I willed her to be well, I willed her to stay with me because I loved her more than my body could contain; I would never love anyone else and I knew it hadn't worked.

I knew it hadn't worked because real life goes on through everything. Life had not continued in the way it should because I had brought her back when I should not have.

She was never well. Her eyes bled when there was too much contact in our lives, because such contact should not be happening. We hurt other people in this way. We hurt other people with our life which we should not have, with the ruts and tangles we threw up merely by persisting to exist, and we moved - we kept moving, always moving. But we could not stop hurting other people, and I could not stop hurting her with my will to continue.

In a soft break in the wind she turned to me and the hill and the soft grass unfurled around her and the cliff stayed its descent and held with us and it felt like this was everything we would ever have in the world praying silent and still for us. Her face was warm and the red flowered in her cheeks, not her eyes, and I adored her. I adored her and I would never give anyone else my heart. There is no real time, there is only our time, this time, and if I could just... have...

one

more

day -

'You have to let me go now,' she said, and it was quiet and definitive. She pushed two warm fingertips into my cheek as sharp snaps wired and heated behind my forehead. I felt a horrible clutch above my stomach and I wanted to tear at and claw the moment back several seconds and take in her red cheeks and bright eyes again.

'Why did you die?' I said, and everything and nothing collided and I felt utterly, utterly hopeless and utterly selfish and I didn't want to be without her. I couldn't bear the empty spread of years and I didn't want to be that terribly alone.

'Because that's what happened,' she said, and she was straight and certain again and she smiled the brightest smile.

Then she said 'I love you'. She folded a small hand into mine and kissed my cheek and I closed my eyes and pulled back, back, back until it ached and ruined me and I accepted it. I felt the change and the little digits fade; felt the little warm knuckles wither under the tips of my fingers and leave.

*

When I looked up again darkness had stalked out. Far in the distance, swimming below amongst green fields, city lights fuzzed on; initially one by one, then in bright waves across the spread of buildings. In the closing night they looked like things that might happen; little white pin-prick changes sparking out.