A Grim Fairytale
Illstration by Harumi Mima
And I’m telling you I felt my heart stop.
She knew everything. She had seen everything. How could this be possible? She was all smiles at how terrified I was. And I kept quiet for the rest of the evening.
I’ve always found places with a bite to be fascinating. They’re always oscillating between being lonely, grey capitalist dystopias and gemstone-like hardened, cyberpunk scenes drowning in brilliant shades of blue, violet and pink. This city is a beautiful piece of rugged art that God dipped in clear-neon green paint.
All of the people here are artists and poets and filmmakers, yet every single road has veins of unemotional logic and crafty science ribbing out.
But the best thing about a place is its people. I’ve never been to a city whose people I haven’t loved in a particular way.
Here, I met Sumire with her uncombed, tousled long hair, pushed back with a metal hairband. She was hunched over with her eyes absolutely, completely devoted to reading something. A sense of peculiarity made her magnetic — her personality breathed free because of her unusual nature. Her need for discipline, however, grew like vines around her strangeness. Another thing that I think shaped our relationship was the fact that she refused to ever tell me how she felt about me. I’d like to think we were best of friends.
If I sift through my memories of her, one that stands out would be the time she told me she loved to go to music concerts, the 1940s kind, and I could feel myself smirking, even though I really, really, really shouldn’t have been.
It had been five weeks since we were friends and I knew even back then that it’d never work out, us and everything, it couldn’t. I think the easiest way to demolish a friendship is to confirm the romantic tension that is woven into the fabric of your bond — to rip its threads out and make your friend stare at the fibres by holding their head down. And, so I decided not to mention it and that maybe I would hint at it later, but not that day. It was sometime in the evening, I was staring at the myriad of lights she had loosely fixed along the ceiling in a place she called her home. There were golden speckles on her obsidian walls that danced around in the room as the golden lights overhead hit the walls. I felt safe. I sank into the familiar surface of her sofa. She slipped her cottony feet into shiny punk boots and I watched her like a child sideyeing someone, filled to the brim with suspicion and doubt. She interrupted me with her laugh. She laughed in her knowing way. And I got up and straightened my limbs out like a ventriloquist dummy. All of my bones clicked outwards. Sprinting towards the nearest road, we signalled for a ride.
The stars breathed life into the raven-coloured sky, the moon tucked itself under a blanket of silver clouds — a classic tale of unrequited love. The highway air filled my ears with an eerie, exigent fear like water does when you dunk your head in; or like, the almost liquid smell of Venetian coffee. I couldn’t muster enough courage to ask her, “Aren't the 1940s singing crowd dead?” But I was afraid I would not word it in the best way, so I just nodded and smiled. Her lips broke into a smile so genuine that she almost convinced me to believe her words. I feigned fawning and gushing and was rewarded with a song of her giggles.
However, as sombre and romantic as things should’ve been, I was a jittery mess. This city can be very loud and very uncomfortable and very stinging without trying at times. We neared the performance stage. I heard the heavy footsteps dancing entirely out of rhythm, the speakers shattering the vibrations of the dancers, the squelching and slurping of mouths against fried chicken legs and the stripping of carpets from the wet grass as the festival began once again.
Sumire cheered and stretched her hands high up in the air, and there he was, Buddy Holly —centre stage, arms open wide, every word enunciated with gestures. He was tall with a well built frame. His arms had rippling muscles and he had a slim, sharp face. He was grinning at the crowd. Then, I felt a sensation in my gut and in my cheeks, following which were haunting flashbacks of breaking news broadcasts and headlines, all remorseful of the plane crash that killed him decades ago.
All the other people here seemed to have once been bound by mortal flesh but now stood as gaunt and fragile spectres. Their skin stretched tight over delicate bones, almost tearing. Their eyes filled to their optimum with emptiness. Hollow orbs, deprived of any vibrancy, stared out from sunken sockets that seemed to absorb all life. Their eyes, like ancient wells, were shrouded in an occult darkness. The dead bore a perpetual smile, an expression that hovered between contentment and mystery.
A hushed stillness settled over the cobblestone roads and dull yellowed vintage lamp posts. The air was thick and heavy with morose longing, and the jazz melodies hung in the air like tendrils of mist.
Sumire was fickle, and naive and unwarrantedly unafraid. I think her influence on me was evident, absurd and much too colossal to ignore. I had begun to believe that she’s lived a gazillion lifetimes in her seemingly ‘young’ 19 years. She let out another puff of smoke, breathing in the same air and her hair glowed under the neon lights overhead.
She picked up her messenger-bag and stuffed her jacket in and my eyes started to wetten. Big, fat tears sat at the corners of my eyes and I knew exactly what would happen next. Refusing to look at me whatsoever, she huffed and stormed out of the festival as if she’ll never come back. It was like the slamming of a door that rings out in the room, as I sank down with my back flat against the carpeted ground.
A grim fairy tale haunts this city, and this place is one that will devour me if I never do anything about it and I cannot help but await the inevitable cannibalisation that might, might just be the climax I’ve been denying myself so wholly.
My comfort lies in a world that doesn't exist in most ways, and my wellwishers tug at the flannel I treasure so highly; but their words are incoherent mumbles to my brain. Their ghostly hands extend towards me, tender caresses of comfort wane into ones of trepidation. Their bodies are steel-strong and unbreakable in the face of an opponent. Their eyes, on the contrary, are darkened by the shadow of fear crying out for guidance and comfort. Their minds run amok at night, disrupting the peace that existed; their mind is of violence and power. Their hair is as black as the day is long, and their skins burn with fire.
Their legs tapped against the floor to a coordinated rhythm stuck in their brain. And in that commotion I heard a distant, yet familiar song of chuckles; Sumire stood there, poised. Her nail polish was chipped away after hours of picking and scratching, only to reapply another coat just to scratch it away once again. Her skin was covered with concealer covering up scars from all the nights she pulled at her skin, clawing it with hatred. Her gums were burnt from the acid that visited her from time-to-time. Her hair was brown, lightening more as time went by, submitting to age in an untimely fashion.
And I’m telling you I felt my heart stop.
She knew everything. She had seen everything. How could this be possible? She was all smiles at how terrified I was, And I kept quiet for the rest of the evening.
This city, the people, its neon dipped streets, its light borrowed from long forgotten decades, they may all be dead. But that doesn’t mean it’s entirely sinister and it doesn’t mean that when I look at it, I won’t be filled with hope of the exact same golden stardust. Sometimes the abstract and the mental and the mystical are all as real as the ground you stand upon and the wrists you press your lips to.