I'm in a bar.
It smells of wine, cheap sex, perfume and mold.
A woman sits beside me. She's at that tender age when when she starts to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never truly loved. When the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. 35, her best years fleeting behind her. At such a time the magic needle compass of the will hovers between final resignation, and the hope of an erotic experience.
Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, because this was the moment to say it, because it suddenly dawned on me that this was why I had come, to tell her she's enough. But the words strangle themselves in my throat.
She smiles at me.
Its tight. As if it costs her.
I hear a voice then. A woman, singing a sad song about a man that had lost his way in the city of angels.
Her eyes are brown.
***
A week goes by and I finally kiss the girl I've always held in my dreams but never allowed myself to see. I knew then that she will make the world as mad as she has made me, for her lips could rewrite history
She was always the first one. The forbidden desire was hers first and foremost, and I was the lucky recipient. At the beginning anyway. It would eventually turn into something else.
***
Its the summer and I'm in love.
I had made her the angel of my dreams just as I had hoped she had made me the angel of hers. And maybe if I had been able to. Maybe if I had been able to tell her that I'm so afraid of losing someone that I love, that I refuse to love anyone. Maybe that would have made the impossible possible. And maybe, just maybe, things might have unfolded very differently. But I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deep inside, and now I am here instead of there.
The most painful feelings, the ones that cut deepest, are the ones that seem irrational - yearning for things that can never be, feeling a sting of emotion over what never existed, longing for what might have been, regretting not being someone else, and being discontent with the world as it is. These subtle shades of the soul's awareness paint within us a picture in mourning, an endless sunset of who we are.
She wasn't in it like I was. Its still just a game to her. She hasn't been to the other side where all hope dies. Where after losing everything, you lose the last thing- yourself.
And do I have regrets?
***
It's the spring.
The first time we made love. I burn from the inside out as I drink from the maddening wine of her adulteries. I hope no one ever has to think about anything as much as I have thought about her. One day, someday soon, she'll be embarrassed about the things she said- things she did. Things like this.
No matter how solid she feels in my arms she is made of smoke.
***
It's Christmas and she still lay in my arms, only now ten years has gone by.
She tells me she's afraid. She says I'm like a god now. I tell her there is no god and if there is I'm nothing like him.
She asks me if I still love her. I tell her I do, that I always will.
***
As I lie to her, its winter a year later.
I'm in a room full of people wearing disguises. A very young, very beautiful woman looks at me- and smiles.
After each long kiss, she places a smaller gentler one upon my lips- like a signature.
***
She- finds out a month after that. Her eyes aren't that brown anymore. Its like the color had been bled from them. She asks me if its because she's getting old.
She's right.
She's aging noticeably every day.
As I stand suspended in time, I realize that I'm tired of her- these people. Tired of getting caught up in the tangle of their lives. So I leave...
***
Years have passed, and I keep being drawn to pictures long ago of when I was a boy. I keep wanting to apologize to that little child. I made wrong decisions at bad times and turned him into me.
And do I have regrets?
Just one. Just her.
I hear a voice then.
A woman- singing a sad song about a man that had lost his way in the city of angels.
***
About the Creator
Clerone Benting
As a writer, I've found my home on Vocal. Here, I share stories that reflect my love for emotional depth and suspenseful twists. Join me on this journey as we explore the complexities of the human heart, one story at a time.
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More stories from Clerone Benting and writers in Fiction and other communities.
Black Marks
Cities never sleep. Not really. Even in the dead of night, parts of them are still fitful and awake. Junkies prowl the back alleys, looking for a score, or a mark. Red light clubs run like bad dreams, their flashing lights and pulsing sound systems melting everything into surreal nightmares. 24-hour grease spots waft their smoke into the air, and the trains run, and run, and run. Cities are predators, and like all the most dangerous creatures, even when they look like they’re sleeping, all it takes is one wrong move for them to eat you alive.
By Neal Litherland3 days ago in Fiction
Comments (1)
Wow. This is super: The most painful feelings, the ones that cut deepest, are the ones that seem irrational - yearning for things that can never be, feeling a sting of emotion over what never existed, longing for what might have been, regretting not being someone else, and being discontent with the world as it is. These subtle shades of the soul's awareness paint within us a picture in mourning, an endless sunset of who we are. I liked how it ended as it began. Great job.