The Cold

2009, Yerevan, Armenia

Can't say for sure, when I stopped moving. Maybe it was happening for a long time, and I just didn't notice. Maybe I didn't need to move for a long time. I just felt one day like I was stuck in some kind of a liquid losing my will and that I'm drowning. I felt cold; the only thing I know for sure.

When she entered the room, I tried to smile, say it was all right, but couldn't. Seemed like I only needed to use my will and my lips would draw a smile, but I couldn't. She went to the mirror and opened a bottle of perfume; it's honey-almond-muscat scent would drive me crazy once. Yet I didn't feel it. I understood - I couldn't smell anymore.

I was lying under the sheets - cold.

Tried to reconstruct the scent of Cristian Dior - Pure Poison, but I couldn't. The liquid was touching my back and pressing on my chest and pulling me deeper.

She came to my bed, called my name, called me sleepy and laughed: I remember how sunlight was falling through white curtains and grains of dust were shining through it. Remembered that I had forgotten to clear the dust on the piano and it made me sad.

The liquid was pulling me deeper, and I understood I wanted to sleep again. Remembered, how in summer, while walking through dry grass, wild barley spikes got into my socks, and that was unpleasant. How I sat down on a stone and pulled all the spikes out.

Then I remembered how I saw in my dream, when I was little, that the big, green plants near our house were violets. And in the morning, when I woke up, I went to gather them, a woman said:

"Don't bother, those aren't violets".

Though I never told anyone of my dreams and those plants didn't even look like violets. Maybe that woman had seen my dream too.

She pushed me: it was unpleasant. I wanted to sleep. Then she lighted a cigarette and started smoking, sitting near me. She had braided her hair already.

I remembered how my bones ached and my skin itched after laying on wet grass: I knew the liquid would do the same.

Then she looked at me and got pale. Called, pushed and laid me on my back, threw the sheets away. I tried to laugh, tell her it was all right, but then understood, why I couldn't. I didn't want to laugh, I didn't want to say it was all right.

She put her head against my chest, then the palms of her hands. She started pushing my chest, pushing me deeper into the liquid. And I knew what I wanted to tell her: don't push me deeper, help me. Help me get out of this swamp, tear my chest, there isn't enough space there for me.

But I knew she wouldn't understand me. She never understood me. When she embraced me and kissed my lips, the taste of her spittle mixed with her tears was unpleasant, and the weight of her body pushed me deeper.

But that didn't matter anymore, did it?

Then, I don't know how many years later, trees tore my chest and pulled me out in the sun. And I knew all the feelings I had last had come back to me with the spring grass.

Author's Note

http://iwl.me finds the style of this story close to that of J. D. Salinger. Interesting, I think the "Good Day for Bananafish" influence would be obvious both in this story and in "Naichinge-Ryu", but that a computer algorithm could see it too?