The Sonder

She looked up at the wall. Keeping the glass in her hand on the ground, Maryanne stood up, went towards the wall across from where she was and rather impulsively, caressed it. Don’t you worry darling, she thought, you’re safe now. The gypsum that covered the wall was barely holding on, after its recent slaughter. Fiddling playfully with the torn skin of the wall, she smiled at her own misery. Nothing made sense to her anymore. She’d asked herself the same questions a million times already. Sometimes, we humans build walls around ourselves in pretence of protecting the world. Sometimes, we humans cannot accept our insignificance, and sometimes, which is most of the time, we drown in our own gall.

So when she found that her wall was being torn down strata by strata of skin, she silently mocked at the metaphor. She ran her bloodied nail-less fingers through her hair, and rested it then on her waist. Cocking her head a little to the left, she said out loud,

“Bravo-”, she paused. “A masterpiece”. Then humming a tune, she swaggered into the kitchen and washed her hands with some dish-wash.

Then she was unaffected once again. At least that’s what she told herself.

Maryanne went up to her room and stood in front of her dressing-table mirror. Were she her old self she would have been hysterical, unfixable, broken by now. But something in her came out that night. And she liked the feeling of it all. She decided that finally, things were falling into place. Finally, SHE gets to play god; To wreak havoc at her whim. Maryanne looked at herself; her bloodied shirt and what used to be a pale blue skirt. She grabbed her hairbrush, tamed her hair, cussed at the reflection in the mirror lovingly, and decided she was going to sleep through the night with the stain and stench of dried blood on her clothes, the smell mingling with that of perspiration.

Maryanne wasn’t blind, or deaf, or limbless. But she was starved. Her emotions were too strong. There was no one to quench it, wipe it off the floor; no one who would try to douse it. She felt that the world made everything on it numb. She would occasionally make things called friends, and she would forget about the things just as quickly, to avoid the pain of knowing that they were waiting to pounce upon the chance to forget and ignore her. What ailed her ability to socialize was her possessiveness- her unwillingness to let go once she branded anyone or anything as hers. This, though trifle looking, was anything but trifle. Her blunt intensity scared people- sometimes she would burst out laughing for no apparent reason but for that she felt like it. Sometimes she would be sucked into her own vortex of loneliness, and would look like marble, not moving an inch, just taking in all that the world had to give. She would say things to herself and to the world, to see how the words looked, hanging there, in the air.

Then she met Mike. Michael Lenning Latrell. The artist. The poet .The story-teller. Everything she adored. Everything she thought she needed. She loved the way he breathed, the way he framed his every sentence, the way he smiled through the corner of his mouth, his curly black hair; Just the thought of his existence made her day. Her happiness was excessive and she was tending towards cherophobia.

Maryanne came across Mike’s works at the college art exhibition and was taken aback by its simple brutality. He drew women, their faces invisible with pride and shame. He drew men, their facades of strength, within which the hollows were more hollow than the insides of storms. He drew pain, affliction and love at the same time. He killed and pillaged man, drew them for what they were- dementors. Maybe it was just her mind playing tricks on her; maybe it was just her own interpretation of things. But she burned inside to meet this man, who could depict her so well without even knowing her. She very well knew the urge could result in a farce- a shattering of the image she portrayed of him within her, because it was all a matter of interpretation. An apple on canvas might just as well have been interpreted by onlookers as a representation of hunger, trickery and the deceptive nature of shiny appearances.

But she took the chance anyway.

“Michael Lenning?”

“What about me?”

“I love your art.”

“You are not the only one”- and he looked up from his clip-board at her. Behind those thick rimmed glasses, he had piercing amber eyes that gave her a rush instantly. His eyes were sharp and so were his features.

“I think I’m in love with you. Already. Uh ..I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying. Delete. Delete. Delete. I did not just say that. You did not just hear that.” Nervously, she flitted around, flailed her hands about her and almost tripped on her own leg. “Please don’t hate me please don’t hate me I don’t know what I’m-”

He cut her mid-sentence and tamed her flailing hands in his-“Now that’s a first. Take your time, miss. Well, I must say, I’m really flattered and you have …you have, you…have fractals for eyes. I –I-I am ..”

They stood there, looking at each other, feeling the tumultuous waves of emotion, bathing in the exploits of feelings though they barely knew each other.

They were henceforth, never seen beyond each other’s closest proximities. He took in all of Maryanne unlike anyone ever before. But eventually, she began to weigh him down emotionally and psychologically. There was just too much of her to satisfy. He had loved her for this intensity , which became the very reason he began to despise her. He needed acid now, to reach his inner Art, for all that he could reach with ease was impatiently used up for Maryanne. Yet, he chose to exploit his emotions further, and loved her with all he had- her raven eyes and wavy hair were somehow very hard for him to resist, and she learned to bask in all this attention. To him, she was beauty. And painfully so.

Beauty is a liability. It is the only sort of liability that once you are relieved of, leaves you drowned in loneliness, self- loathing, and some sort of forbidden regret; the liability that led a certain Mr. Gray to murderous lengths of betrayal; the very thing that spelled Troy’s devastation.

Beauty is a storm, and it lasts not for long. Anything ephemeral is beautiful.

Beautiful;

Such a catastrophic word.

Beautiful was what Maryanne was to Mike. But just as he began giving more of his time to her, Others stopped giving theirs to him. What he represented in his Art was her, and somehow, it was repelling to Others. At first, he failed to notice that his strokes were losing effect but eventually, when his friends from not so long ago told him that he’s as lost as a cloud, he realized how utterly spent he was.

For a little time further, he paid no heed to his friends’ advice to leave her. He just could not bring himself to do that to her, because she’d been through that pain one too many times more than she ever deserved.

One night, he was out drinking with his friends. Roland, his reckless blond haired friend of sheer genius said with a rather delirious seriousness:

“Mikey baby, go get yourself checked at the Ding Wing. Maybe they’ll tell you  that you’re going to die of some kind of stress disorder. Gosh, man, let go of that crazy woman already! She’s eating you inside out!”

“Roland, you do not understand. So keep your nasty opinions to your self.”

“ What is there to ‘understand’?”, he sniggered, “she’s a God forsaken narcissist! I’m not surprised you didn’t see that- obviously, you lack the virtue of selfishness. Don’t you see what’s become of you now? You’re just another of her toys and she’s almost done sucking you dry!”

“ I refuse to listen to anything you utter. Don’t pretend to know her as I do. Tell me, have you loved anyone so much, that you don’t really care what’s happening to you anymore, so much so that opinions don’t matter anymore? I love her!”

“If you say so; Fine, you love her. But does she love you? Do you actually think that she’s going to be your share of forever? Maybe it’ll take you forever to realize what you’ve gotten yourself into! All I want you to know is you are dying out. And it is  because of her-”

“ROLAND, STOP MAKING ME MAD!YOU’RE DRIVING ME NUTS!CAN’T YOU SEE HOW TIRED I ALREADY AM AND, and..and all you can do is go on and on about the same things I’ve been deliberately hiding from and …” Mike fell silent. He had closed his eyes while spitting out those words, as if looking at them would blind him forever. But now, he slowly opened his eyes, realizing what this meant and somehow, felt a lot calmer and silent as though accepting the fact killed the storm.

Roland was looking at his glass of gold and froth, and smiling.

The calm before the storm.

Maryanne hadn’t realized how much she’d changed as a person. Whether it was because she spent most of her time obsessing over Michael, him being the presumable instigator of her metamorphosis, or because change was an immutable law of nature, she did not venture discovering. When she woke up that day, Mike had already left for the studio, leaving a note for her saying he would be at The Buffington in the evening, catching up with his henchmen and discussing a new collaboration with Roland, the illustrator man. Though arguably one of the most impressive illustrators in town, Maryanne always jokingly told him his work was lack-luster and pretentious, and that maybe Mike could teach him a thing or two about illustration.

She had caught the destructive hint of jealousy in his eye and immediately wanted him to stay beyond the proximities of Mike’s life. But for this fact, she liked the man, rather paradoxically ,because she felt she understood his emotions better than he did, and that by distancing the two of them , she would be doing them both a favor. Now , what she intended to do was often easily interpreted as a negative deed, though in her head it was just goodwill that she saw. Needless to say, Roland despised the woman. But she did not know. To him, it looked like she did not want to know.

The Maryanne from a few weeks ago would have been quick in detecting  thoughts of supposed malevolence directed towards her, but she had grown too used to being happy and in love now, that she forgot how to read between people. She became less explosive and more nourishing. She did invisible small things for him which she made sure remained invisible because validation spoiled her. She watered his petunias and roses and irises everyday, and laughed with them at the futility of everything. She smiled more for him. She dressed pretty for him, even did up her hair big, and every day, a new paper butterfly which could be easily mistaken for the real thing, adorned her raven hair. She wanted to forget the storm that she was, to see him happy.

The morning was shimmering in the water of the previous night’s rain and the cool breeze added a hue to her that songs were written for. So it wasn’t exactly Pandora’s Foreboding she expected to rip her apart that day. The library had given her the week off for her tireless ‘services’ during the past few months. And oh, was she revealing.

“Mike, do you know what sonder means?”

“No. What does  it mean?”

“It’s something I find extremely frightening. Do you want to know?”

“Yes. I want to know. Can you get to it already?”

“Other people have dreams. Every single person that has and will live on the face of this planet has a story, the plurality so intimidating. Why is it that only a some stories sell in millions? Isn’t it scary that we are all just so tiny, in this insignificant speck of everything and nothing? Isn’t it scary that we are not the only ones? Or is it? Why on earth should we be allowed to think that other stories care about us? Is it all just about who sells the most or who has the most? I’m frightened of life, of everything in it, because there are loads of us, who refuse to acknowledge this insignificance of our physical system in the universe. There are just too many dreams and stories that come to abrupt, shattering endings, never to be recovered again. I’m afraid I won’t get to read every story ever. I’m afraid.”

“All that in a word?”

“Uh-uh, in a word.”

Though she felt it was abnormal how they never picked up arguments, she let that thought rest. The note had said ‘The Buffington’. Maybe she could give him a surprise visit, and maybe, it would become a date. She ran upstairs all excited and put on her new favorite blue skirt- a shade of blue that put all the Mondays to shame, she thought. Moreover, pale blue was his favorite colour. Mike’s latest undertaking was a mural. He often used the room’s white washed wall as his ‘Primary Sketch’ book. After use, he would white- wash it again. It was hard work, and the wall wearied too. She tied her hair in a low loose plait and wore a flimsy silver bracelet that matched her white lace shirt. She put on her flats and left for the bar.

The music was blaring and the heat was setting in.

She squeezed through several narrow alley- ways of people and she still couldn’t find Mike or Roland anywhere. Then she found Mike, stoned and staring into oblivion into his brightly lit phone that illuminated and cast a play of shadows on his face. On the chair beside him sat a grinning Roland, who caught her shock and laughed, “Lookie who’s here Mikey! It’s your Maryanne!”. She instantly caught wind of something unusual. But Mike barely looked up at her. He stared at his phone, the white blur. When he finally looked up, he was smiling, his eyes bloodshot.

“Ooh, you’re on it again aren’t you? You think wearing my favorite color will get you what you want every time? You can’t be wronger wrong uh more wrong. My pal over here tells me for the umpteenth time you’re a witch, and I finally chose to believe it.” By now Roland was turning red-“Go on, pin it on my doll, make me obey!”- he caught her by the neck and closed in the distance between them, and he stood towering over her, almost choking her to tears.

“Mike, you’re killing her! Let go of her!”, Roland shouted trying to release her from his iron grip.

“Wasn’t that the point of the whole thing, not to let her go around making nothings like her out of everyone she bumps into, anymore?” he let go of her; she stood there trying to catch her breath, bending over with unbearable hurt. Through the blur of tears and pain, she looked at Mike, who had become something else in less than a day. Had she made him that? She thought she had changed, or hadn’t she? She stopped the heavy sobbing and realized that their little tantrum had gathered a tiny group of spectators, people who had gathered around to watch her dreams being broken, her being broken. She gathered up the sharp, ridged pieces of herself and her resolve, and looked at Mike. She wanted to finish it then and there, but not with so many stories around. She wanted her story to be hers, not diffused sub-versions in and by other stories. And this one was going to end in murder.

Mike got home, to his silent studio, much after noon the next day. He was brooding over what he had done to Maryanne the previous night.  It was just the booze talking, he was going to explain. But  the booze always spoke the truth. When he opened the door to his kitchen, he found a mess of knives and spoons and broken plates and her rage. He decided he was going to clean up and make up for the mess he made. She probably isn’t home. Shit, what have I done.  He started picking up the broken pieces of her favorite plates, and nicked himself. Sucking at his wounded palm, he ran upstairs to get a band-aid for himself. When he pushed the door open, he found her lying on her sides on the bed, facing away from him. She was still wearing the blue skirt, but it looked like she’d rolled in mud or something; bad humour.

The room was silent.

He expected her to shiver at the anticipated touch on her shoulder.

“Anne, I’m sorry. Let’s fall in love again.”

The knife. The gleam caught his eye, and he picked it up.

He smelt death around him and turned to look around himself.

On the wall in brown, was the last thing he’d wanted to see:

Y o u  w e r e  m y d r e a m. G o n e. GONE. I’ll be gone.

It wasn’t brown. Dried blood. Suddenly, out of his daze, he realized he had been walking in blood. She lay motionless, facing the other side, her life- blood on the floor, her lacerated wrist and bloody shirt limp on the bed. Her hair was appealing even then, her beauty undying.

G O N E.

He shook her as if she was just asleep, begged for her to be pretending. He realized this was her masterpiece, the writing on the wall that barely was.

The storm had passed. Eternal dark had set in.

The storm had passed.

–END–