To the right of my shoulder
by Yana Natova
“Ezra,
thank God you are awake. Come on, sleepy. You need to see this. The world has
gone completely mad” - Mia swept into the room, her overcoat billowing open
behind her as she zigzagged across the books on the floor towards me. She was
smiling. Her curly hair - a mess. She began removing her black leather gloves,
one finger at a time. - “Awake already?” – She raised an eyebrow.
“Jesus, Mia, it’s the middle of the night. Why
can’t you just once let me get some sleep? It is bad enough that you are always
eating my food and drinking my coffee.” I said from beneath the blanket.
“For
someone who has just woken up you are quite the talkative one. Shush now. This
concerns your project with the orange trees. Remember? The one from a couple of
years ago.”
I
fixed my gaze on the half smoked cigarettes in the ashtray. One of them had
lipstick marks on it… Certainly not the color Mia used.
“Ezra,
what is she talking about?” a fading voice sounded somewhere behind me.
Cold
shivered down my spine. I stood there in indecision. I turned around very
slowly in hope that Mia wouldn’t notice.
She was back again. The blue-green haze. My
torturer for a couple of weeks now.
Trying
to stay calm I got up and headed for the bathroom. As I looked myself into the mirror
I paused for a moment to examine what resembled a young-looking man approaching
his fortieth year, with jet black hair and a hawkish nose. My eyes were even
grayish than before. It was getting worse. First it was only the rash, then the
loss of appetite, now the insomnia and … the hallucinations. How was I ever to
tell Mia about this?
I
splashed some cold water on my face. As if that would help?!
“Ezra,
what project?” - the annoying fading voice persisted.
I
lifted my eyes to look into the mirror. The blue-green silhouette to the right
of my shoulder. It looked almost human. Almost… I felt her hand on my shoulder.
The flesh of her palm was like no flesh I had seen before. Its green ridges and
blue furrows bore no relation to the pink mound at the base of my fingers, the
pale valley of my palm. Her flesh, if that was flesh at all, had melted in an
unrecognizable landscape of swirling dust and particles. The coldness of it - in
sharp contrast with my body temperature.
“Well,
we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that ...
that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems ...
and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually
responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange
trees. I don’t know why they died, they just died.” – I started explaining
slowly. Talking to the haze… as if she was really there.
“Ezra!
Ezra! Come here. Hurry up you’ll miss it.” –For the first time in ten years. I
was grateful to hear that voice. It saved me.
I
made my way back to the couch. My whole body collapsed on it from exhaustion –
I almost felt it dismember. I repressed the howl.
“Mia,
that’s the stupid show you like…Why do you…”
The television program was suddenly
interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the
bulletin was about, since the announcer had a serious speech impediment. For
about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to
say, “Ladies and gentlemen –”
“I
like his hair. When you were younger, yours was as curly as his. You have to
tell her, Ezra. You have to.” – like nails in a coffin.
“Will
you shut up! I don’t want to tell her!” - I hissed.
“Here you
go, the way you like it.”
The aroma of
the coffee tickled my nostrils. Combined with the smell of the evening fog it
was the most calming thing in the world. It felt like home; like the valley a
thousand and one miles away from the childhood that never existed.
Slowly, I
managed to focus on the voice of the newsman. He was talking about the
mysterious cases of dead crows around the country that had become something
common in the last few weeks. For some reason they thought it was linked to the
project for tree planting that didn’t succeed. A project I directed and whose
mysterious lack of success was covered up by the government.
It was the
first stage of the epidemic. It always starts from the soil. Then the air. Then
the animals… People start missing and then only Mia and I survive. But no one
ever trusts us. I guess Fear is too strong.
It has its
mysterious ways. Once inside a house it
obeys the force of gravity indirectly. Inside walls, under the floor, behind
the curtains… never still, it seeps and trickles in unexpected directions;
surfaces in the most unexpected places; until it consumes the whole of your
castle, including you, as if you are nothing more but a speck of dust.
From the
beginning we were prepared, we knew just what to do, for hadn’t we seen it all
a hundred times?—the good people of the town going about their business, the
suddenly interrupted TV programs, the faces in the crowd looking up, the little
girl pointing in the air, the mouths opening, the dog yapping, the traffic
stopped, the shopping bag falling to the sidewalk, and there, in the sky,
coming closer… the cloud of clockwise fairies. The deadliest creations in our
world. Bloodthirsty and heartless.
Suddenly the
door flung opened. A thick cloud of dust rolled in, made a swift turn and hid
behind a chair in the dark corner of the room. It started giving out strange
noises. Then it felt silent for a couple of minutes. I stood up and made a
couple of steps towards it. Breathing kept to a minimum.
Then the noise
sounded again, a kind of ‘tee, tee’, accompanied by a quiet mechanical whirr.
Leaning over the back of the chair, I peered into the shadowy corner. A strange
brass object was moving about on the floorboards, its metal feet clacking
against the lacquer It was about the size of a human head, but crafted to
resemble a barn owl. Its metallic feathers shimmered in the low light. I
watched it for a moment as it paced about, just like a real bird, its head
twitching from side to side as it walked. After a few seconds, it turned its
head as if to regard me, gears grinding as its glittering, beady eyes adjusted
their focus, turning slowly to settle on my face. Then its brass wings clacked
and fluttered noisily.
It all ended
in the split of second.
The
constrained scream of Mia died in the night. Unheard. It was as if I never
were. Only I was there.
A green-blue
haze to the right of the shoulder of my Mia.
Almost human.
Almost…
