Palm line

A short story

He sat on the edge of my bed and listened to the horrors of forever. The acute restlessness of his grotesque thoughts disturbed the two of us. I feared for myself, and he feared for both of us. His hysterical outbursts are very violent, and I could predict one coming. I wanted to put my hand on his back and rub it slowly. I wanted to talk him into getting back to me, because I needed him. But I daren't, a mere touch would have been like unleashing a pack of hungry, abused dogs. The dogs would come towards me to feed and to revenge. So I remained quiet. I studied his face, in hopes of finding few remains of humanity. His dark, dazzling eyes have sharpen, but they still carried delicate fragility. I laid in bed for countless minutes, silent. I awaited for his tornado to pass, hoping, this time, I'd find shelter.
Each time, after his frantic agitations, I woke up smothered in terror, opening my eyes to a lifeless, cold corpse repulsed me so very much, that I retained my eyes shut several minutes, preparing for the horrid bombshell that follows.
I woke up that morning to find my neck bruised, his tattooed hands on my flesh imprinted transient scars that etiolated,eventually. Unlike many things he has punctured indelibly on my memory. His wrist was wounded. The cut, freshly drained of blood smelled very badly. I vaguely recalled the constant gliding of blood drops cradling me to sleep in a night of fright and doom. His body rested peacefully next to mine. I put my head on his chest yearning to hear the pulsation of his heart. He was alive and I was relieved.The constancy of his heartbeats disturbed me very much. I was envious of its perpetual regularity. Why couldn't he be like his heart? Warm and steady. I got up and reached for a first aid kit. A continuous prolonged pain restricted the flexibility of my neck, I couldn't move fitly for days. I held his arm, his body temperature was very inviting, I wanted to be coated with its moderate heat but I couldn't wake him, his angelic face rested so peacefully on the pillow. Icould still see his sharp features, so magnetic, in the back of my memory. I sterilized his wound and wrapped a bandage around it. I then took hold of his right hand and gazed intently at the prevalent deep line at the center of his palm. The source of all our miseries.

The sight of the palm line took me down memory lane. In our early meetings we went for a picnic by a lake. The landscape's aesthetic appeal was in sync with our mood. We laid on a white sheet and listened to the music of our hearts being played by nature. I held his hand and felt the deep line at its navel. He hesitantly pulled back, and looked candidly at my eyes. I couldn't help but feeling drown to him. We started talking about our lives. I told him about my passion for poetry and art. My dreams of being reconginzed for the emotional power of my paintings and the complexity of my poetry . He told of when he was kidnapped when he was fourteen years old . His dreams of ending his life and utterly forgetting about the traumatic event.
Life has taken all my life feelings away from me. I felt guilty because I couldn't sympathize with him. He spoke his sorrows to me, and I sat numb beside him thinking only of how the sun reflected a beautiful hazel color in his tearful eyes. My cold heart couldn't ache for him, but warm body could. I took him down a dusky road to a house of confusion and egoism. My house. I laid him on a bed of guilt and melancholy. My bed. And fed him a body filled with passion and heat. My body.
Trapped in a world of unspoken words we sought in each other pathetic companionship. The wound in his right hand constantly reminded him of a distant tragedy and reminded me of a current one. His tragedy, of course, is more dramatic than mine. I know nothing about it though,except that it is related to his right palm and the line in it. I learnt to never ask him about what happened. I learnt so many things during our relationship. Like how I shouldn't put perfume when we get intimate, or how I must never put sugar in my coffee if he was beside me. Odd things like this. And I obeyed, like a little puppy who would do anything for his master, who would kill for his master. Except that, in my case, my master ended up killing me.

Desperate for things he could never have, a person he could never be. He left me for some crazy cult who promised him salvation. I am now 64, my life has gone wasted, and my story has absolutely no purpose.