In Her Eyes – Part 4
by John Walker on Mar.19, 2006, under The Rest
So, after claims of putting this up as it was two years ago, I’ve changed my mind and gone through the last four parts tidying them up, and in the case of the last part, fixing it from a horrible mess.
In Her Eyes – Part 4
If she drilled straight down into a sphere – perpendicular to the surface – she would reach the centre. She had been drilling for days now.
The surface, that was where humans live. All of the mysterious, the phenomena, the ‘unexplained’: that was immediately beneath. All this searching for the paranormal, the desperation to learn of so-called powers beyond the regular, was so laughable. The various media so hopelessly scrabbling around, wanting to be the first to prove that there are psychic powers, that humans can do more than they believed. And all the time the answers were only one layer down.
Telekinesis – the ability to move things with the power of your mind. A “power”? Ridiculous. She had become bored of the act itself. Banging the fridge door around, days old as an talent, was childish and trivial. Destroying fruit, the puerile behaviour of the immature.
The vase – that still held the resonance of respectability. First of all, it wasn’t easy. And secondly, it came from a further layer beneath.
***
It’s a holiday. She’s twelve. She’s with both her parents in Spain. They’re staying in a chalet near the coast, and they’ve been there for four days now. Yesterday she was stung by a jellyfish, and the marks on her leg are still red and itchy. Less irritating than last night though, and certainly alright for running around on. She’s been out on the rocks by the cliff again, jumping from one to the next, seeing how fast she can go. Now she’s back for lunch, and this afternoon she’s going for a walk with her new friend, Richard, who is in the chalet three doors down. Richard is fourteen, and is also on holiday with both his parents. And he’s bored too.
They went for a walk yesterday, and they stopped on the rocks by the cliff. They had been throwing stones at the jellyfish floating off the shore, and after a while they got bored and sat on a rock. Richard asked her if she’d ever kissed a boy. She had said no. He put his hands in his lap, and she wanted him to kiss her.
This afternoon they were going for another walk, and she was sure this time that he would. She had never kissed anyone, but she really wanted to kiss Richard. He was sweet, and didn’t act like boys in her year at school. And he was fourteen! Two years older! She would be able to tell Helen, and Helen would be jealous.
She had gone back to the rocks last night, and it was then that she had slipped in and been stung by the jellyfish. She couldn’t wait to tell Richard about it, because the red stings looked amazing. She would show him the stings, and he would think that she was cool, and then they would kiss.
***
The anger was like nothing she had ever known. Surface layer anger is human: useless, mostly shouting and shaking, occasionally violent. Beneath the surface: more dangerous, unpredictable, the stuff of bad horror novels. But she was further down now, deep beneath, and anger was vast, alive, on fire. She could hear a deep thump, the noise of a bass amp two rooms away. It was regular, matching her heartbeat, beating in time with her. It was maddening her, mocking her. It knew her, knew her depth, knew the knowledge that was meant to be her secret. WUMP… WUMP… WUMP… Unstoppable, beyond her reach… perhaps even deeper.
She was livid, her mind screaming rage, her whole body clenched and shuddering. Why? Why couldn’t she control the beat?
***
Richard is already waiting. He’s outside her chalet, five minutes before they are supposed to meet, sitting on the grass, waiting for her to appear. She sees him before he sees her, and she half-skips over to him.
They are walking to the rocks, and she knows they are going to kiss. He looks nervous, and he’s more quiet than yesterday. On the rocks, she is showing him her legs. He is responding just right, admiring the red marks, interested and impressed. She sits next to him and before she even realises, she’s asking,
“Have you ever kissed a girl?”
He tells her he has, but only once. Then he gulps.
“I’d like to kiss you though.”
Eyes screwed tightly shut, mouths pursed and awkward, closed lips meet closed lips, pushing together, breaths held. It is the first kiss.
***
Fires ripped jagged tears around her. A plant on the windowsill, a jar of coffee by the kettle, three on the wooden table, one at the bottom of the curtains. The objects themselves weren’t burning, but instead the tears through them were. The flames alight with the colours from beneath, from beyond the surface, wild and furious.
The curtains did not catch light from the fire below them. There was no sudden eruption of blaze, no pillars of flames reaching to the ceiling, no bubbling paint on the wall around them. But the curtains were not surviving the fire either. As the flames met the material, it was gone, absorbed. It ceased to be. The fire did not burn, but engulfed, removing the very existence of the curtains, tearing at their reality. These flames had no tolerance for the surface. They took it away.