The Mortal Fringe

by Jordi Ribolleda

  When I cross the door I go straight to the edge of the terrace, the swamped floor stands between me and the place where I will be sure that all I saw was a dream. I'm so close to the edge that I can see all those bodies again, clearer than ever, particularly Elizabeth's body, on top of all the others. She looks at me and reaches for my hand, as if she wanted me to join them. I come back to reality -or my version of it- when I notice that something is off. My right foot slips and I lose control of my body. The next thing I am sure about is that it was indeed, just a dream. My knees crash against the metal railing and my whole body weight goes over it.

  For a short moment, I think I'm flying. I am hanging from the edge. The fall would have been deadly but fortunately I was able to grab the railing.

  I scream as hard as I can, but the thunder mutes my struggle to get rescued. This –I think– is the moment I die. If I slip and fall from the roof, there's no way I can walk out of it, I'll break my neck on the act.

  I start to feel how my hands lose their strength, for more than five minutes I've been holding all my weight from here and my numb hands won't hold me for much longer. I am out of options and screaming is the only one I can keep on using, until my hands give in.

  "Help" I think to myself

  I scream for the very last time.

  My hands begin to shake, my whole body trembles and my voice is no longer useful. My hands can't anchor me to the building, to my life, anymore. It's like the railing is no longer there.

  I will soon be the first of the many corpses I saw on the street below my feet.

  Finally, my hands give in, and I fall into the void.

  CHAPTER 26

  Someone grabs my hand before I disappear into the darkness. Whoever it is on the other side pulls me up and over the railing. I remain on the ground, trying to recover my extinct breath. I don't want to open my eyes, I am too terrified to do so and realize that I am actually dead and I just arrived to whatever place awaits for us.

  "I told you not to put my plans in danger" That voice… I know it.

  But it can't be. Not her.

  I open my eyes slowly, and the figure of the woman stands out in the darkness. The lighting shows her face, showing dangerous traces of hate and fury through the horrid look she is giving me.

  Constance has come to my aid, not Elizabeth, or Jay. I need some time to process it. Have they forsaken me to my own luck? I try to stand, but I can't. She stands there in front of me, not moving, not even blinking. She looks at me with so dark eyes that I keep wishing for my death to arrive right now.

  Finally, she puts her hand on my shoulder and in just a thought, I am lying on the dry –and more comfortable– floor of my room.

  "May I ask what you were trying to achieve by throwing yourself from the roof?"

  "I did not… The dream, I just wanted to…"

  "Throw yourself from the roof and ruin Elizabeth's future."

  "She ruined mine" I whisper, regretting I said that just after doing so.

  Constance approaches me and with the sharp end of her boot she makes me roll over and lie on my back. She kneels in front of me and grabs my face with her two pointy and skinny fingers.

  "I warned you" she mouths the words very calmly, so I can understand everything she is saying "I won't let you damage her."

  "Like you once did?" I ask, recalling what Elizabeth told me about Constance's previous female protégée.

  With my eyes fixed on her long enough to see her fury grow sufficiently big to destroy the world, she crashes my head against the floor and knocks me out for the rest of the night.

  When I wake up I see Jay's fern eyes fixed on me. He is standing in the corner of the room and doesn't move. He only stares at me, and even though I am wide awake, he remains still. He is hardly recognizable, his body looks bigger, and stronger. I stand up, feeling the pain thorough my body, I am sure that I could count the bruises I have without even looking at them. My legs shake constantly and my knees don't seem to be able to hold my weigh, so before I fall down, I sit on my bed.

  "Welcome back" I say brining my hand to the back of my head, there's no blood; Constance didn't hit me as hard as I thought.

  "I'm not back, I only came to make sure you were not dead."

  "Yet" I correct him.

  "Exactly" he looks at me with his emotionless face, making me feel worthless of his time, and my life.

  We both keep our thoughts to ourselves, talking is not worth the effort right now, I am more concerned about what happened last night.

  "I'll be seeing you."

  "Wait" I say as quickly as I can. "Do you always do this? Or is it just because of me?"

  "Do what?" he sounds completely different, I've known him long enough to be sure, he's not the Jay I've been living with.

  "Asking people to trust you and then leaving them on their own, like if they were some piece of nothing that did not matter."

  He comes closer, so close that I could touch him if I raised my hand towards him.

  "I apologize, if we ever made you feel important to us" He disappears afterwards.

  My whole world is brought to pieces by that final statement. The conviction in his words and his voice tone were such that I believe what he said. I am nothing, I was nothing from the very beginning, nothing but an animal that was more fun to hunt if he believed that he mattered.

  "She will kill you too!" I scream to the top of my lungs "She has never cared about you more that she cared about me! You are just another piece on that shitty puzzle!" I stop to breathe “That's the only thing you can do, Kill.

  I stop again to look around the room and see if anything of what I said got to his mind or ears. Apparently it didn't, not to his.

  Suddenly, a force as powerful as an earthquake throws me against the wall, I hit myself almost in every bruise from the night before. It happens again, and with me, half of the objects in the room fly against the walls.

  "Shut up."

  "Elizabeth?" I ask, almost shouting. She was here, momentarily, but here, with me. I call once more for her even though I know I will get no answer.

  The last hit against the wall has opened up some of last night cuts and bruises and I am bleeding enough to start feeling dizziness.

  I stand up holding myself against the wall and walk to the bathroom. I take my blooded clothes off and carefully step into the shower. When the water hits my body my bruises sting, I do my best to contain a painful grunt but I can't help my legs from giving out once more. My knees hit the shower's floor, resulting in terrible pain and a hideous sound. Half of my body is in terrible pain and the other half is absent, like if it wasn't more than mere clay, dispossessed of all life. The water keeps pouring on me and I don't feel the pain of my bruises anymore, I'm blacking out. I can't stand this any longer. I can't fight anymore. I fall on my back and I lose sight of the world, leaving nothing but the dark of my eyes and the pouring water between me and the moment of my undoing.

  When I open my eyes I feel like if months had gone by since I stepped into the shower. My body is still wet, with water so cold that I can't stop trembling. My back hurts from lying on this icy ground for hours, and standing up becomes an impossible task to fulfill. One of my legs is completely asleep, I can't feel it and I can barely move it. I walk out the bathroom with nothing but the towel I picked up when I stepped out of the shower.

  The room is as empty as it was, nothing here reminds me of a life, or a nice experience. My mind is playing too many games with me, I even see the walls getting closer to each other, pushing me out of my own reality. It takes a while, but I finally focus on what is real and what it is not and I start walking towards my bed. I pass the exact place where Constance hit me and I sit on the soft bed that has been keeping my nightmares for all this time.

  I look at the bed table, and the haunting pages of that book look at me, I know it, that's why I am here right now, like this, because I knew too much. So I take the book and with an act of rage I rip it off in half. I hav
e the cover on one hand and the rest of the book in the other. I would throw it away, trash it out, but something in me has been ripped off with that brown cover. Finally, and before doing something I could regret one day, I take out my suitcase and I put the remains of the rotten book in it, being this the moment when my life in Barcelona begins to end, and my way back home starts, with something as insignificant as the packing of a book.

  I lie on my bed, and with my eyes closed I think about all that happened during these past hours, and by the end of the very last memory, there's only one thing I can think to myself, proudly.

  "I'm still living."

  CHAPTER 27

  Dear Mr. Stills

  These are the complete details of your flight reservation

  FLIGHT NUMBER A470AB

  ELECTRONIC 350559082

  DATE & TIME / DECEMBER 23, 2013, 10:53 AM

  ARRIVING / New York

  TOTAL PRICE / 600.12 USD

  Thank you for your attention.

  American Airlines.

  One week.

  These past days I have not been myself, all the exams have taken my thoughts away to fill my head up with names and dates that I will probably never have to use again. Now that the last months here have been put to test, I can officially say that my life away from home is finished. My suitcase is on Jay's bed, as I presume he will not be back before I leave, I am just going to put it there to fill it up every day until the very last second. As for now, it is just half empty.

  I run into Jessica on my way back from the last exam, the one with Constance, which I am sure I will fail even though I deserve the highest grade in the class, if not by its content, it should be for what she's made me go through. Unfortunately, Jessica remembers about my invitation to Christmas party, and my shyness and my desire of having a quiet final week make it impossible for me to politely withdraw my invitation.

  "Yes" I say "I'll be in touch" I promise with one of those stupid smiles on my face.

  The arrangement is so weird that she will be the one picking me up, since she moved out last week and I have no idea of where she lives now, I do not object. However, if my mother ever knows about that, she will probably freak out, not that she is a very conservative person, but she likes all those corny things about the boy picking up the girl right before the dance. Well, I won't have that, and honestly, I wouldn't even have the dance if I was more of a selfish person.

  Neither Elizabeth nor Jay have given any sign of life for the last week, I have not even felt their presence as I used to do when they first disappeared. To my own surprise, I don't think about them all the time now either, which to a certain extent, I think it's good.

  I have a thousand unread emails from my mother, she is most likely going to kill me since I have been missing for the last weeks. I log into Skype and luckily for me, she is online.

  "Where the hell have you been?!" she screams when I first appear on screen.

  "Hi mom" I say avoiding her first answer

  "Don't you "hi mom" me, little man. I was worried about you, Alexander!" she makes an ugly, dramatic, and more than usual pause- have you quitted eating?

  "No mom, I'm fine, I actually was very busy."

  She looks at me with a disapproval look.

  "My sweet boy" she is suddenly emotional "I am dying to see you."

  Dying, yeah, me too, I think after listening to her voice and realizing that the moment when all will go dark for me is approaching faster than I'd imagined.

  "My flight leaves on the 23rd, I was just sending you an email. Could you pick me up? "

  "Are you sure you don't prefer asking Dick, honey? You don't need to do this if you don't want."

  All of a sudden I realize how much I have missed her, after all, we only have one mother and I would lie to myself if I did not say that I want to see her badly.

  "Yes, I'm sure, that's why I came here for, remember?" I say smiling "Besides, I haven't heard of Richard ever since I left, so I'm guessing he would not be up for it."

  She smiles and tries to hide her need for crying.

  "23rd it is then, I'll be there."

  "Thank you mom."

  We spend the next half hour talking about nothing in particular, there's a lot we both need to catch up with. She tells me how the whole neighborhood is still trying to get hold to those Super Bowl tickets, some of them have even offered her incredible sums of money.

  "But I would not sell them!" She stands strong with her opinion even though I think she should have.

  And after a long while, the question that I had been hoping she would not ask, came.

  "How is your sweet friend Elizabeth?" the smile on her face makes me think that she pictured me coming back home as an engaged boy. I talked about Elizabeth in my last email, but I didn't think she would remember about it. But since I disappeared for weeks, I guess she has probably been reading that email every now and then to keep telling herself that I was alright.

  "We fell apart" if you could consider it that way “a little."

  "That's too bad."

  Memories about the last months and my last days with Elizabeth start to come back and I know that it will be too hard to handle in front of my mom, so I make up an excuse to hang up and once I have, I leave the room and go outside to catch some fresh air.

  "Why did you have to disappear? Why did you even approach me in the first place, you should have taken my soul right away, that was enough. Now the only thing you will get is the rotten shadow of what my soul once was, and that is just thanks to you. You asked for me to trust you, and I did. Now I ask the same from you, I am not going to suffer for you again, I am not going to risk anything for you again. My life is mine, and I am not going to waste it for you, not anymore. You have played me. I did trust you, the only one I've trusted in a very long time.

  You will not hear from me again, not ever. What we had you ended the moment you disappeared. What we had, you killed. I once read that you immortals had a special ability to read people's minds, and I know you can do that better than any other, so I hope you are listening to everything I'm saying. I can't go on like this, knowing that you are hiding from me, somewhere. Waiting for the right moment.

  You will not hear from me again, not ever.

  Trust me."

  CHAPTER 28

  Settling in was difficult, but moving out is harder. Almost everything is on its place now; my clothes are carefully packed along with some of the stuff I've bought throughout the whole semester, and the rest of my belongings are either in a backpack or on my bed, waiting to be stored. Only a handful of books remain on my desk, some of them are mine, the rest belong to the University library, I've had no time to take them back to where they belong lately, but I will do it before I leave. The room looks so empty that it feels bad being in here, as if I was a stranger, or in a white cell, with nothing to do or wish for.

  Not even Jay's freaky posters are here anymore, whether he took them out or they just vanished, I don't know, but the white wall is everything my eyes get to see, and it makes me sad. Sad because so much has happened here, and after I go, no one will ever know it happened. Someone will live here next semester, maybe next week, and never could he imagine what happened here, how myths became real, how everything became possible.

  These three days will be special. I'll make the most of them, I will even try to enjoy the Christmas party. Whatever could have happened, it didn't, and now I'm free to live my last hours in Barcelona as freely as I desire.

  I see the streets in a very different way, I've always noticed how they shed life to the people walking through them, but today I see the magic they hold, the inspiration they bring to me and the wish to remain walking them over and over again, with no intention of stopping. That's how magical I find it here. No monuments that I may have seen can match the beauty hidden in the narrow streets of the old city and the perfect geometry of the new one. Everything has made this a worth dying for experience; the city, the people, the living. I won't d
ream today, nor will I dream tomorrow, I'm more interested in real life today, and every day that follows.

  It is on my way back that I hear my mother's voice in my head when I walk past a flower shop, I can hear her yelling at me «if you don't go and pick the poor girl up, the least you could do is buy her some flowers, you little man», I laugh afterwards, I remember when she used to use that voice tone, I miss it. I wonder what she would say now, although she is probably with David.

  I walk into the flower store and the lady behind the desk knows exactly that I have no idea of what I'm doing here. She speaks English, but not fluently. Eventually, and after a fair round of misunderstandings, I get a simple and yet nice pack of blue roses. I liked the colors, and I am glad I did not go for the typical red ones, I don't want to be boring from moment one. She tells me that my date will be most happy with my small token, I am glad she thinks so, as I am not confident about tonight.

  When I get back in the deserted room I realize that my last walk around Barcelona has taken me longer than I anticipated, so I get my clothes out, I make sure they look alright and not too stupid for a party, I put the flowers on the bed and walk straight into the bathroom.

  I shower as quickly as I can, trying not to think about the pain of the bruises I have left, even though they are not many, they do still hurt. I am done in less than ten minutes. I know that Jessica will be knocking at my door anytime now and I don't want to keep her waiting; that would not be a good start.

  I walk out the shower and dress up with my black shirt and trousers, I am not used to wearing this kind of clothes so, out of curiosity, I look into the mirror to make sure I am not making a fool of myself. What I see is not a fool, but disturbs me even more. I get closer to the looking glass, as closer as I can.