nuclear

Aenean shambles into the chamber, dragging the remaining of her sanity through the stale air swirling around the static inhabitants of the room like a swarm of dead hopes. It’s like being inside a house with faces she fails to discern; the tawdriness of the chamber makes Aenean’s head spin and long for a consummate degree of silence.

It must be dawn, and the moon can consort her no longer. The air is heavy with cold poignancy. Hiding her face under her ragged hair, Aenean is suffocating. Rue knots her stomach and obstructs her throat. She clenches her fists with a vigorous effort to stop herself from shaking. The walls are closing in and Aeneanfeels as if her body is about to implode maliciously. With a mighty endeavor, she continues to walk across the room until she finds herself facing an aged, dusty mirror.

Her pitch black hair is tousled. Her face is swollen. Her skin is rough and dirty. Her wild eyes reveal an inner ferment. Aenean rests a chipped finger on the mirror and begins tracing the outlines of her reflection. Slowly, she ratchets her self-disgust down, one notch at a time, and empties her mind of thought.

Exactly what Aenean feared has come to pass. She knew, this dimension of secrets and calamity was going to divulge her to one of the sharpest pain possible, to the constraint that even in her dreams she refuses to traverse; the communion of her heart. It’s an almost irreversible curse, a scarification nothing can compensate for. On a ghostly eve last year, Aenean decided to bestow an infinite fragment of her heart to a soul so mutually affected; a mortal. Little by little from that moment onwards, she let herself moves toward some unthinkable vagary. And everything appears to be elated and felicitous, at least to her innocent eyes, until emotions are blurted out spontaneously.

There is another dimension in this venture of two hearts; it is dark and barbarous. The thought scares her. All of a sudden, Aenean has outraged herself for getting lost somewhere along the path, searching like a forgotten child in the mist of forlorn. She is immersed in a sea of secrets and lies, left in a jungle of angers, frustrations and unanswered questions. She is undoubtedly lost.

Aenean cries her lung out. She can’t stand one more second gazing at her own reflection. Her vision clouds and her body is trembling. An irrepressible pain constricts her chest, sears her guts and swells the veins in her throat. With the little energy left in her body, Aenean garners all her might to stop herself from shaking again, straightens her back and focuses on bringing her heavy breathing under control. She must regain her consciousness. She must endure patiently; she must hold on to the door that brings them beatitude when fed with forbearance and candor.

Taking in every details of the chamber, Aenean gazes wildly and contentedly. She pulls at the cushion on floor she’s sitting on, adjusting it amid the blasphemy of her crying and walks more lively to the washroom. There is another mirror on the wall; smaller but clearer. Aenean hesitates for a while before looking at it to find herself smiling naively.

“I am human,” she assures herself and makes her way out of the room, carrying her sanity tightly to her chest, to the home of the mortal she undoubtedly dotes.



Published in Senorita Zine Vol. 2 (June, '12). Re-posted here with reasons you may ask if you must.