You Exist Because I Allow It

Once you lay eyes upon her, you'd know that the young woman you passed in the street, with the deep brown hair and piercing eyes filled with wonder and determination but fear of rejection and failure, was someone who would be someone given half the chance, like Madonna running away to New York. Young Cali was a woman who felt adrift in life, like a snowflake at Christmas or the dissipated gases of a long-dead star that we see in the sky because of the trick of the vastness of the universe. And as you stop because a glimmer of hope, or something similar to hope, in her eye catches your attention and imagination, you can't help but wonder.

So you follow her, not too closely, not too far away, making sure you have your story practised because it's not right to follow young women you don't even know to where they are going when they are going from A to B or through to C, D or Z.

You need to be able to answer her enquiry if she stops and asks you, with just a hint of disdain at the back of her throat that adds contrast to her bright and soulful voice:

"Why are you following me, man? I don't know you, man. Why are you following me as I make my way from A to B? I'm just out here living my life. Please don't ruin my day, as I have way too many things to do and say to people here and folks out there."

She points in the direction you believe is north, and she believes it too, but it is in fact west.

As she moves her limbs away from you, turning to face the direction she was before you stopped her,

she says, "No, I'm good. I have somewhere I need to be. Somewhere not here."

And no sooner has that last word left her mouth and floated on the congested grey breeze of the city where you live than she has made her way down the street and taken a left turn into a small alleyway that branches off into a hidden little square.

You are concerned about her health or about her arse going to waste. Either way, you follow her with the intent of checking up on her, and it's only when you make for the alleyway and the hidden mini-square that you see her slumped against a railing, looking at a strange water fountain that consists of a woman with her head in her hands, the water filtering from her eyes through her fingers to fall into the pool. But you still don't readily make connections because someone is shielding you, protecting you from the ugliness of the truth. And while your intentions are definitely muddled and murky, you still don't pick up on the nuances as your hands are placed around her dainty and silky-soft neck. You're not sure, but you think she fought back a little and then relented and leaned into your grip.

"Why are you doing this to me?" she asks you, so you think, but her eyes seem out of focus, like she is trying to tune her vision into something just off the main grid of reality, to the left of the puddled, tarmacked cityscape pathway of the prime dimension.

You can't help but wonder, if only because you saw it written on the inside of your eyelid as you closed it. Etched with a Stanley knife, presumably, it burns on fire with infection coursing through it.

You really should stop and think about things before bringing about the demise of a woman you met by chance.

You really should, but can't, because your hands feel round her neck and you turn her to face you.

"What is your name? Mine is Cali."

You know she is trying to humanise herself to stop you from killing her, but as you motion for her to sit on the bench beside the fountain, you stand in front of her, looking down at her as your hands grip the front of her neck, your thumbs gently caressing, then scoring, the delicate flesh of her neck.

Your thumbs feel fine as the nails bite the skin and impress their visitation, continuing to do so until they break in, intruding upon her body in ways even you didn't realise. Even she would probably have gone for a drink with you, established rules and boundaries, and eventually slept with you, but here you are, following the rules of an instruction whose existence and unknown inception should be telling you to stop and think.

But you can't.

Because I wrote, "Your thumbs feel fine as the nails bite the skin and impress their visitation, continuing to do so until they break in, intruding upon her body in ways even you didn't realise. Even she would probably have gone for a drink with you, established rules and boundaries, and eventually slept with you, but here you are, following the rules of an instruction whose existence and unknown inception should be telling you to stop and think."

Cali doesn't even try to reason right now because she is in your hands, and that's what I wrote.

Trying to kick you, she finds that the dirty, grim alleyway seems to white out, and you are left dangling her over a nothingness.

She grabs at you to grip tighter onto your body, as her only safety harness is your firm, clawing grip on her neck.

You feel compelled to watch as the lights of life, already intermittent and close to failure, dim and flicker slowly, but want to pull away and pull her to solid ground. But you lack the necessary impetus and drive to do such acts of heroism. So you watch as her eyes plead with you and she sputters saliva, gripping at your chest as her nails, like talons, rip at fabric and your own skin, and her legs kick and swing in the empty blank space beneath her.

Still she's kicking and calling, but her vocal cords aren't responding audibly to the signals from her brain. She's mouthing the words, help and please. But you just want to stop her fussing. It's past that point. You're too far gone, aren't you? Her weight is starting to drag you down into the uncertain abyss, but you want to hang on to the remainder of existence you have, even if it is half a bench and a small fountain with nowhere else to go.

A lonely island in a sea of sanitised white blank canvas of nothing.

"Why me?" you scream to no one but me.

"Why not?" I tell you.

As I watch my words take hold and you feel a moment of doubt, you feel the softness of Cali's feminine and dainty hands slipping from your own. You wonder, in that split second, as I flash an image of the future you could have together if you sacrifice your peace for partnership. But I never wrote that.

You see fragments of long days and weeks spent in bed, raising children, watching them become adults, growing deeper in love with one another as the years of your marriage become months and beyond.

And in that one moment, you open your arms and even wave her goodbye with a smile as her body breaks up against the white canvas, blood splashing as bones, muscles, sinew, ligaments, her torso and pelvis, brain, lips and eyeballs disassemble like a rocket ship leaving the Earth's atmosphere.

She is no more, for it is written that way, and you are left.

You.