Written for a friend's site; can be found at inkvomit.codexed.com.
They're clearer now, louder.
You've just taken a phial of blue liquid enabling you to believe yourself to feel strong and young again in body and mind, to bring back a mentality from a younger self. It's also bringing back the voices you used to hear at that age. A side effect. Perhaps there's something you could take to counteract them - but your adolescent apathy towards the voices has returned as well - and you couldn't be bothered.
You gnaw your lip, smiling. The apathy was hardly adolescent. You've never been interested in making the voices go away, not at sixteen, not at forty five. It's wasn't really apathy either. You'd always preferred having the voices around. Seemed silly to shut out any part of your perception, really. Except no one else seemed to think that way.
You grin and mutter "screw them," something that used to be something of a catchphrase for you, back in the day. You're starting to feel like your old self again, the self that hadn't yet made all those bad decisions and then effectively committed suicide, making way for your more recent self.
"Doughnuts. It's time for doughnuts," the voices say.
You aren't particularly hungry, but doughnuts would be wonderful. If only they were more readily available. But of course the voices have more in mind than making you nostalgic for old food. They know that bringing up doughnuts will only make you think of Chukunda, that old bastard. Thinking about Chukunda is painful, even more-so in this state. You two used to be inseparable. Then he married Manda. And had kids. Three. He'd told you he could never be happy with such a life, and you could hardly believe he was. You sure as hell weren't. But he seemed pretty damn happy.
For you, the point had never been to be happy. You had been urged on by the voices and by the pain. Well, there hadn't been anything else to do after he destroyed all your plans, had there?
Trying to ignore the sound of Ali crying in the other room, you open the front door. Perhaps you ought to have brushed your hair, put on lipstick. But you know it's important to avoid looking in the mirror when you're on this stuff. It's important to avoid seeing your body as it really is, frail, worn, drooping, now that your youthful vanity is back in its full swing. If your eighteen-year-old self could see you as you are now, it might be enough to send you sobbing back to your bedroom where you would spend the night in tears, like Ali. A complete waste. No, it's better to avoid thinking about or doing things that you know would have debilitated your eighteen-year-old psyche. The dealer warned you of this. You're trying your best to follow his advice. The one flaw in this is that from what you remember of your eighteen-year-old psyche was that it was prone to doing things that would debilitate itself. What it's about to do right now will probably debilitate itself. This is something you have been trying not to think about.
"Chukunda," the voices say. "Chudi." Chudi was how you called him. You shut the front door behind you and step outside, unaccompanied, like you used to, those days before you allowed yourself to be taught it was dangerous to wander the streets alone at night, back when you knew what you would do to yourself if you were cooped inside was far worse than what could happen to you on the streets. You remember what you did when your father and mother commanded you to stay inside. You remember what the voices told you to do.
Better you leave now than trap yourself inside the house with Ali. Between the two of you right now there is enough angst to choke a crowded shopping mall. You doubt Ali would survive it.
And if you're there when her father comes home -
You don't know what the voices will tell you to do. You don't know if you'll be able to resist obeying them.
---
You get to Chudi's, hop up the stairs, and ring the bell. You're nervous like the first time you came here. Who will answer? What will you say? All you know is you need to see him, that need, that desire, is back, strong as ever. It's almost enough to make you believe that no time has passed, that the last twenty five years have been a dream, that he'll rush to the door and pull you into the bushes before his parents see you, and then hold your hands and kiss you and scold you for walking alone at night.
But you cannot believe this, because the plants are all wrong, the paint is a different color, the porch lights are brighter than ever, and you cannot hear Comi barking. The door opens, and it's him, not his idiot offspring or whore wife. Well, it makes sense that he would discourage them from answering the door after dark. Leon had discouraged you and Ali from answering the door after dark, though you don't usually heed him.
You're relieved that Manda heeds Chudi, though, since you don't know how you would explain to her why you had come and while you were hemming and hawing about it the voices would probably urge you to kill her.
He grabs you by the wrist slams the door shut, and pulls you into the bushes, and you can almost believe again that you were right and that no time has passed, except you know this time he's hiding you from his wife and kids, not his parents, and this time he's so big and old and his face is lined and his hair is going silver. "What the hell are you doing here," he asks you, his voice low. "You can't come here!"
He seems angry, and you remember what it was like to make him angry. It was terrifying. You'd perceived him to be pulsing, blazing with anger, and your arms and legs would tremble, and you feared he would leave you like a pile of twigs in the road.
Now he is fully grown, almost doubled in breadth, strong enough to lift bookshop bookshelves, and you have shrunken, faded, diminished, all of your strength scraped away by years of begrudged sacrifices and medication. You're further from being equals than ever. But you have to make him listen to you somehow.
"The voices," you start. He used to seem to understand about the voices.
"Voices? They said you were through with the voices!"
"Who said that!" Who was talking to him about you? You fucking hate fucking gossipers!
"/It doesn't matter," he says. "You better leave now, Manda and the girls are waiting for me inside."
Fuck Manda! "Doughnuts," the voices press.
"What about Ali," Chudi asks you. "What about Ali and Connie and Leon? They must be wondering where you are. They must be worried about you. You'd better go home." He's trying to make you feel guilty, a technique he used to employ against you quite a lot, but it's not working this time. You know they don't give a crap, and you're afraid if you go home you'll do something bad. "Can't you just take me for doughnuts, Chudi?" you say instead. "I really want a doughnut."
"You're fucking infuriating," Chudi says. "There aren't any doughnuts. You know they shut down all the doughnut places years back, I think when Katia was born. You'd better not come around here anymore. You should be home with your children."
"Children," the voices echo. They're a point of contention for you. You'd made it known to everyone you never wanted to get married, you never wanted any children. When you asked Chudi about it so many years ago, he made it clear that he felt the same. "Never," he said. "Never, ever, not under any circumstances," he'd said to you. "So," you ask Chudi, "what made you change your mind, then?"
He takes your change of topic in stride, he was always good at guessing what you were thinking about. "She did," he replies. "The more time I spent with her, the more I knew I wanted children with her, and only her."
You feel that familiar pain, you hear yourself make that familiar gasp, because how Chudi had come to feel about Manda was exactly how you had come to feel about him - only you were always too frightened to let him know how badly you wanted his son inside your womb, you always thought it would make him want to leave you. Then he left you anyway to have a daughter with Manda.
"And you?" he asks you. "What changed your mind?"
"I was lonely," you say. When Leon forced you to take the meds and all of the voices went away, it left you very lonely. Ali had helped the loneliness at first. Now she avoids you. The only way to get her attention is to antagonize her.
"What about Leon?" Chudi asks you.
You search for smugness in his voice, but can't find it. You can't even find pity. Still, this was a low blow, and you're not surprised at all he brought it up, he knew how it would make you feel. You only married Leon because you hoped it would hurt Chudi. You'd always gone to Leon whenever Chudi hurt you, for retaliation. It used to hurt Chudi to see you with Leon. But he stopped seeming to care after he met Manda.
Still, after all the tears he'd shed for you before Manda, he must have some idea that you'd only gone to Leon for revenge, that he couldn't actually provide you comfort or companionship, that until you started taking so many meds, you'd been waiting for Chudi to finally change his mind and come save you from him.
You can't control the sobs anymore. You can only think of the last night you came, the day he left you here in these bushes to cry, alone, after you begged him on your knees not to leave you. That was the night your world shattered, the night you wandered the town with tear-blurred eyes 'til dawn and then went home and cut your limbs to shreds. And it never got better, the pain never went away, the voices never got quieter until Leon wore you down and you started the medication. Chudi is urging you to leave again, but you're not really listening anymore.
No. It wasn't that Leon wore you down. It was the waiting that wore you down. The fact was that Manda was pregnant with Chudi's third child and you could no longer bear to listen to the voices that were telling you "No, this is not just a phase. He is with her for the long haul. You need to kill yourself." So the next time Leon approached you about a therapist, you just shrugged your shoulders, resigned.
Now the voices in your head are screaming. You can't think straight anymore. Chudi is shushing you. But he'll never change his mind, never choose you, not then, and not now, with your baggy eyes and saggy breasts. The years have brought out the worst in your features, and he can't stand how little you've changed, that you still cry like a child, that you never grew up. You've just come here to get your heart broken, like so many times before. You imagined that somewhere deep within him remained some part that still loved you, that still wanted you. Now you wonder if that part ever existed, if it was something you only ever imagined. You'd hoped that if he saw your tears after all these years, that part would stir. But there are so many tears in your eyes that he's shimmering before you, you can't even tell if he's being moved.
And the voices are still screaming, mostly indecipherable, but one phrase comes out: "he promised!" and even the sobs are wracking your body too hard to permit you to speak, you remind him he'd promised to take you out for doughnuts that night except he dumped you instead, you haven't forgotten, and at this, he embraces you and you sob into his collar, spurred on by his touch, and remind him of the rest of the promises and ideals and dreams he'd betrayed, but particularly how he promised he'd never let you be alone, never let you be lonely, and "you don't know what it's like to be alone," you yell at Chudi, echoing what the voices in your head are saying. "Ali and Connie lock their bedroom doors to me, and Leon is fucking the neighbor, and they make me take the medication so I do what they want instead of what I want but then the voices go away so I don't even have them, and you don't know what it's like to be lonely, nobody has ever left you like everyone has left me, so I'm going to leave you right now, I'm going to leave you here for good, I don't even care if you don't care" and then you can't talk anymore, not because of the sobbing, but because Chudi is kissing your mouth and you're too weak to get away, but it doesn't matter, because when he does release you, you're going to leave him alone in this poisonous village, you're going to New Zealand, you're going to work at a book shop and live in a little house by the sea, and ski in the winter, like you planned, without him, and without his seed in your barren womb.
(c)2010