Ephyra

By Jasmeet Dosanjh

Only last summer I began to dream. Shelled, jelly-brained, again I am a mechanism. An organelle in the grand scene. Functional and singing very quietly.

Face sieved through the fine webbish frame of the balustrade I am looking at the bougainvillaea walk, eighteen floors down, its starry lamps winking lustily up at

me trapped in a sky-box. I have not imagined anything since May. I have slept darkly, and woken only to consume and caress the smooth opaque forms of earth.

One black Rubicon is circling the only road, one long, endless stretch of oily night. Satellite of my tower. Moon in the gravel. It comes every night, when I am watching. On crescent nights, with apple-vodka smells chiming out of bachelors’ apartments and creating a velvety mixture in the post-rain air, the wagon comes pantherine, at the lightest hour before dawn. Even then it is black as black. 

It is a gibbous moon tonight. I am swollen with a dinner of boiled chicken rice and icy unripe mango chunks. I am not the little moth-light life of April. I am greasy and a tarry empty mist is around me, a buzz in my hair, a secretion in my cells. Grey, sexless, dreamless. Ephyra in the cosmopolitan sea. 

Scarf of yellow moths around my neck.

I decide to go for a walk.

As soon as I touch the earth, the Rubicon disappears. I trick myself.

I eat too little and sing very quietly. 

There is something quiet in the body, but we have buried it very deep. When the layers come off, and skin is pale and thin as butterpaper, the quiet thing awakens, charging us. Ionic lips yearn for a deathly, electric kiss. You go and meet that lover of yours, on days your body is peeling. Today you are a chameleon. A colour, a print, a nimble thing. You glide lucent, soaking the moon, cancelling your shadow. 

So strange to call him a lover. He is more like a tonic, a lifeline. A necessary watcher, to confirm that you are really here.

Not everyone is dead but they are so far away. 

You remember the Malaysian jellyfish with personal tenderness on your walk to the boy’s house. You had crawled on that beach, tropical notes on your naked, dimpled skin. A fluffy nine year old specimen tortured with wonder. One tender, sheer wrinkle of glass had washed up on the shore. Electric still, but only with the last bit of love left in it, when a little life is ending. I kissed her with sand in my mouth. A gurgle in the ocean, then, and a fatty school of dead slimes swallowed me up, and my little dying friend. She glowed, one last heartbeat against the fog. Not fully dead. Yet. 

His house is a small ecosystem of cinnamon-scented paper and cigarette butts, ears of cellophane like stars on the floor, and two pairs of lovers- a lizard named Gogo and her follower Rabies, and a pair of spiders- Cherry and Coco- swirling down the lovelane, in a curlicue of glowing web, from one corner of his bedroom to the opposite. 

He is not dirty as much as he is earthen. There is never food, or sticky unidentifiable stuff on his tiles and shelves. Only a film of life.

He has a tiny projector cushioned in the crack between headboard and mattress, on his poster bed, and for thirty minutes every meeting, we watch a National Geographic episode on his ceiling. 

I love the starry squid. Hunting at night with lit-up bacteria in his slender, multitudinous limbs. One glowy, shapeless thing. With a birthday-cap head. The moon cannot reach the sea-bed, he becomes the moon. And twinkling, the false god, catches a thoughtless fish, feeling the pulse and wriggle of life in his own rising currents of thready arms. 

Arya lights a superslim. Holds it up, his anthem, to the blue god hunting. I have glitter of cola on my lips, confirming my addiction, or my rebellion. He holds the filter against my lips. 

“I don’t like nicotine anymore.”

He doesn’t try to mould me. He lets me be. He kisses my cold lips, always with the same quantity of energy, the same rhythm. There is little eccentricity in his loving. He labels me as his symbol, and worships me monotonously.

After the cigarette, he presses the numb tube in a jar full of ash and cig-butts, with the mad serenity of a painter vomiting out his final colours.

“Dinner?”

I nod, smiling for him. That much is my duty, as midnight mistress.

He conjures a mango from the ice-box on his side-table. I get a glance into its glowing blue mouth- in the little space is jammed a forest of fruits, as bright and ripe as the last few hours on Earth.

He cuts off the top with his teeth, then squeezes the pulp into his mouth.

This ripeness he kisses into me. With the moon watching, and the starry squid twinkling above us. How slant he looks coiled into me. He is tall but has a slight body, every kind of loving he shows is an electric nudge on my heavy shape.

“I haven’t shaved,” I say mechanically. Between us, this is my pet dialogue, before we begin.

“I like it just this way.”

After we sit, mango-speckled, baby-lipped. We sit in the sticky air of our own molecules fermenting. A swirl is now above us, where there was a starry night.

The last few hours.

“What would you do for me. I mean, what is your limit?”

“There is no limit in loving,” he says, pissing me off.

“You don’t love me.”

“But I do, why would-”

“You don’t love me. Don’t play a role, just for now, and answer as Arya, not this mad lover type with a nature kink.”

He quietens. “I understand. What do you want me to do for you?”

“Will you kill me?”

His eyes widen, before he crinkles into a carpel of laughter. This time, he takes out an orange, peels it humanly, with his fine fingers, curled over the orange like a black shadow. Claws like static.

“I would never hurt you.”

“That’s why I’m asking you to end me.”

“You’re strange and funny, and you don’t believe I love you, but I love you very much. So stay, yes? I know you’re still in love with someone else, but I’d like for you to stay here, just for a little bit more.”

“I’m not still in love with him.”

“Did you ask him to kill you, too?”

“Didn’t have to ask,” I say dryly.

“What was he like?” Very softly. A moon-kissed whisper. He has asked me this every night we meet, dutifully. I have given him the same answer, like a prayer.

“I can’t remember.”

“You’ve forgotten?”

“Is forgetting possible? It is strange. It’s like he’s been erased from me. I only remember that he was, when something around me reminds me. A type of touch. Or a low note in a song.”

“You’ve dehumanised him. Made him your great artwork, so you live life through the mosaic of him.”

“I can’t put him together. But he is in my cells. I am sure of that.”

“You’ve only ever loved him?”

“I remember only him. Or, well, it’s only him I don’t remember. Every time I feel the same surge in me, like the beginning of love, my stomach feels uneasy.”

“That’s just butterflies.”

“No, not that. Like a knife in me, twisting. Like something bad, something very bad’s about to happen.”

He kisses my forehead. “I love you, despite. I was in love once, but it ended very sweetly. So I was able to say goodbye.”

“Take my body. Take me, ruin me, and end me.”

“Tomorrow, we will go out in the sun. Yes? You will go out with me in the sun? I’ll bring my ice-box, and-”

I move swiftly. 

I take his gun- a pearl crusted deeply, small and curled in the ice. A tender thing, really. Moony flesh, and killing at its heart.

I had seen it under the cornucopia of citrusy fruits in the ice box, when he first opened it.

I had seen it and made it a part of my mechanism, as simply as a chameleon licks and integrates into herself the strangest, rarest moth.

“That’s not a toy, Noor,” he is slow and sweet and wary, as one would be with an unfamiliar dog.

“I don’t know, I could play a hell of a game with it.” I point it first at him, feeling a kick from the globular fear in his eyes. Black as black. Then I put the gun in my mouth, laughing, feeling powerful and sexy. Like the only girl in the world. For one slice of a second.

“If you put the gun down, I will kiss you until you are the happiest girl in the world.”

I throw my head back, roaring. “You think you’re a tearing beauty, don’t you?”

“You’ll hurt yourself, baby.”

“You make me feel dystopian. Like you’re loving me because I’m all that’s left. Why do you fucking hate yourself so much? You are ingrown. You seek life yet never touch it. And god, how I hate kissing you.” I remember I’ve never fired a gun. 

“You have a weapon in your hand, my love, my heart. I’ll forgive you for everything, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tell me how to unlock this, and I’ll never come back to haunt you.”

I recoil, seeing that he is bracing to snatch the gun from me.

“Tell me, or I’ll pull the trigger and see.”

His face hardens. “You’re bluffing. You want to see me scared. Look, I’m scared for your life.”

“For my life?”

“Yes, for your fucking life. And mine, too. God, will you put the fucking gun down, you psychotic fucking slut. For god’s sake!” he sprays from his mouth in panic. Spittle ridges his chin like pimples. “You don’t understand. You’ll have to keep going back, unless you put the gun down, you’ll have to keep going back forever.”

“Oh, they’re coming to get me, are they? How dystopian of you. Been watching a too much sci-fi, lately, toy boy?” I slide the gun into my bralette so he cannot get it directly. It tears through the lace.

“Haven’t you ever thought, why you can’t remember ‘him’?”

“Because he fucked up my nervous system, that’s why.”

“Because there is no ‘him’.”

“He is the only thing there ever was.”

“Don’t be a dim slut now, and think. Think with your jelly fucking brains, why you don’t remember. Seriously, how have you not cracked the code yet?”

“You want to scare me. Because I scared you first.”

“I’m trying, god.” He takes a deep, cold breath. He is pale as pale, and very small. Like an angry scientist curled in his lonely lab, upset with his experiment. “I’m trying to fucking save you.”

“Your mind needs to be studied. You are one sad, sad specimen.”

“Look, I’m lonely, just like you. But we have each other. Have you ever noticed, we only have each other, in this city?”

“Talk about yourself. I have other friends.”

“Really? Name one.”

“Well. Well, there’s, well… For starters, the aunty who lives above me.”

“Wow. That’s just…”

“I didn’t mean that. I was being funny.”

“Look, I get it. It’s fucking lonely. But we have to make it to the end this time, both of us. And I’m begging you. Because if you go, I have to go too. You’re mine. I’m yours. That’s the rule.”

“I hate it when you get romantic. But when you’re scared, god, your lifeless little eyes, they make me mad with lovin’.”

“You don’t remember because you don’t want to. And it’s powerful, what they do to your brain in the pod. Trust me, I didn’t remember for a very long time. And in this world, you’re newborn, compared to me. I’ve been here alone, for ages. But you’re here now, and I won’t let you go. This is a living we can get used to, don’t you think? Until the end, please?”

“You play too many video games. And stop with the weird animal shows, please. They’re giving you a god complex.”

“Do you remember killing yourself?”

“I’ll remember when I kill you, if you don’t shut up.”

“If you just love me, it’ll be easier. But I can’t let you go. With you, it’s almost like living.”

“I’d rather fuck the twinkling squid. Or blow my brains with this gun.” The revolver slips out. I am a tumble of skin showing through a draping of torn lace. Arya is agile in his taking. He takes the gun, takes my power.

“The only reason you can’t love me, is because I am tender. I don’t know what you killed yourself for, but I’m guessing it was a lot of trauma. Listen, let’s keep this secret, together. And I’ll help you remember. Please? I don’t wanna keep coming back.”

“You’re one hell of an actor, you are.”

“After you remember, you cannot speak what you remember, otherwise they’ll find out and take you back to the pod. I’ve developed a strange immunity. My axons are fried. Once we were human. And simple, and crying was easy, and loving was easy.”

“God. I’ve never missed him more. You make me feel trapped.”

“He was freedom, was he?”

“He was beautiful in every way you’ll never be.”

“That’s because he wasn’t real! God, woman. You really think I’m giving a performance? Look around you, look at this city. Is this earth or a dream?”

“The buildings are real. And so is the sea.”

“That’s because you printed your world, the same as in your system, into this, fucking hologram, I don’t know what it is. It’s sick, it’s sick and we have no option but to make it to the end, to make it out. And your prince, he’s just someone you made up, so you’d have something to hold on to, on really cold nights.”

“For cold nights I have you,” I say snidely. 

“You’re not listening. Maybe it’s your quiet way of revolting against, whatever this is- but you’re only hurting yourself. Have you ever touched your skin and felt strange, like it is a costume, not really you? Have you ever tuned in to the loop?”

“The loop?”

“What’s your most tender memory?”

“The beach in Malaysia. The dying jellyfish.The big water slides. And a ski-trail, it started from our hotel room, straight into the heart of the theme park. There was also a mall, the biggest I’ve ever seen.”

“Alright. Tell me another one.”

“Street seafood. Found out my sister was allergic. She almost died that day.”

“Malaysia?”

“Yes.”

“All your good memories are one file, replaying, over and over. And you don’t even remember the bad. So you keep going. But your nerves are burnt. This place is hell. But the only way is through.”

I slide a clammy hand over my neck, my breasts, feeling the dip of my belly, the softness beneath. It is a rhythm I can only register because I am used to it. My body is a habit.

“He is real. He lived in my sector, before last summer. I have touched him and held him with my own hands.”

“Why don’t you remember him, then?”

“It’s a disorder. Has to be. I was terribly hurt.”

“Did he have a mistress?”

“I don’t want to go there.”

“You don’t remember. Not even a face comes up. You are a pixel-mush. A fucking, whatsitcalled, a fucking projection. At night, when they’re reprogramming, I’ve seen my own body flicker. It breaks open. It undulates like sound.”

“I’m going home. You are sick. And you don’t hide a gun in your icebox.”

“I went hunting today. Once the bullet leaves, it’s killing, no matter where it ends up. Left it on the side table. Couldn’t think of anywhere else when you showed up.”

“You hunt? You know what, I don’t care. You do not excite me. You’re just a bunch of contradictions. I’m going now. Where’s my scarf?”

He holds the scarf up. A play of photons, coloured in deep shades. Ghosts of violetbluegreen. My onceyellow scarf. A song of moths fabricised.

“Thankyou,” I say, reaching for the scarf. He takes my wrist, unforgiving as a knife, and wounds me into him tightly. His breath is all mango fumes by my neck. 

“Let me go,” I say calmly. His bare legs quiver against mine. For the first time I feel life emitting from him, instead of just surrounding him.

“You don’t get it. You don’t get how lonely it can be. I can’t let you go, because I don’t trust that you’ll be back.”

“I will be back. I promise.”

“You’re not a very good actress. I’m sorry. I can’t let you go. I’ll keep you locked, if I have to. But we can make it work. Maybe you’ll even fall in love with me.”

“Alright, I’ll come stay with you. Just let me go so I can get my things.”

“I’ll get your things here for you. Just please, don’t make it any harder than it has to be. I won’t be like your phantom lover. I’ll be the real thing. I’m here. Feel my skin.”

Everywhere he touches me is death. 

“Arya, please.” His hands are around my neck. He is trying to get me weak for captivity.

“You don’t get it. How cold it is, in the pod. I’ve had a history, with the makers of this play, it’s a long story. Every time I start having a breakdown, they come and get me. They keep me in the pod for weeks. Inject in my body whatever they need to, to erase the last of my memories, the last bit of human in me. Look at you. You are as good as dead. But lovely. Ever since you came, I have managed to stay sane. And to retrieve most of my memories. Please, don’t take that away from me.”

His hands tighten around my neck, in deep love.

My body dissolves into a pulsing. A song. He has become passionate. His loving 

a form of killing.

The last thing I see, from his window, is the black Rubicon.

Circling, eternally.

By Jasmeet Dosanjh