Bab 2: Like a Disease, a Change of Heart
They buried the girl in the box, the girl they readily erased from their memory, erased from her memory, and sat on top of the grave they had dug and filled with mud, roses and hatred with a cup of coffee, and misanthropic poetry that never let them wake from the nightmare that was their life.
"Beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you...
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock." (from Genius of the Crowd by Charles Bukowski.)
Mr. Gunn stared at the clouds from the holes between the tree trunks and the lights from the town looked like stars twinkling in the far away skies. Holding the cup in his hands, the rain pattered and dripped into the coffee yet he held it up to Inji's lips.
"That is my most favorite poem. Do you know what it wants to say, love?" He asked. Her eyes drifted from the town lights towards him, the eerily calm that his eyes held despite their brown color was like a black hole.
She thought, and thought, and thought but found no answer. Her mind was full of faze, like a smokescreen was surrounding her and she was reaching out into nothingness. She shook her head, and took a sip of the coffee that tasted like rain and mud.
"People that are exceptional in their fields, people like my father, people like our girl in the box, the look in their eyes changes whenever you ask them something beyond their fields of interest. It's an illusion, my love. A lie. There's no such thing as 'field of interest'. It's a fancy name for one and only thing that a person is capable of doing. They direct a hundred percent of their ability towards that one thing. Forget relationships, forget people, forget kindness, they sit down and do that one thing so why wouldn't they be exceptional at it?" He explained. Even though they were sharing their tasteless excuse of a cup of coffee, his eyes were drunk.
'If it weren't for the rain, I would have been able to see his tears. Why did he cry? I wanted to ask. But isn't that what you do after burying someone? Beloved or not, death is familiar to all of us. Sadness… is familiar to all of us. Even to people like him and me.'
"People like us… we spend our whole lives thinking we won't become anything. We weren't born to become anything, to do anything, to be exceptional." He said, his eyes drifting towards the ground. The never ending patter of the rain, the distant chirping of the ravens, the muffled breathing of the girl in the box were the clocks ticking towards the hour of her death. Along with the growing air inside Inji's chest, as it rose and sank while she tried to not lose her mind.
"When in reality, people like you and me are a lot more than just one thing. A man, a woman, a son, a daughter, a best friend, a boyfriend, a student, so many things to do. We just see ourselves in the tinted glasses of the world."
He placed the cup down and rested his palm on the muddy mound underneath them, where everything to life had summed up into. Death. His palm felt the wetness of the soil, the squelching that only he and the earth could feel and his lips adorned a smile that was taunting in its very nature.
"How ironic, isn't it? That at the end of it, we are all going under the same ground. How many flowers are on our graves doesn't matter. Feel the ground, Inji." He said, standing up. His chest broadened and his arms stretched towards the sky, the rain washed away his tears and the thunder blazed in his eyes.
"Feel the end of it all! The conclusion! The catharsis! The moment everything that we are reduces to nothing but dust!" He declared, in a manic passion as he embraced the guilt and let the higher senses conquer it. The senses of purpose, the senses above right and wrong, the senses that made a difference.
The thunder in his voice made the earth beneath Inji tremble, and she shuddered. She wrapped her arms around herself and stumbled back, her eyes wide and looked at Mr. Gunn the way they never had before.
Fear.
"Oh! How perfect death is! By nature or by us! The EARTH that we trample on, lay our waste on, commit atrocities on, tramples on us! Lays its worms, maggots, scorpions on us and devours us whole like the hellish monster! Ah! The art of an end!"
'In that moment, I saw the passion that he held for his art of death. Even when I shook, I feared, I hesitated, I fell in love with him a little deeper than yesterday.'
The thunder accompanied them throughout their artistic venture, helped them drown out the sounds of dragging, shoveling, burying, laughing, loving and lit the way for them as they descended the mountain.
Mr. Gunn held Inji's hand and held her close by his arm around her shoulders, hiding her from the witches cackling in the deep and dark woods, from the bruising wind as it shook them, carried them off their feet and towards the earth surface as soon as possible.
'What if the thunder struck us right here and burnt us to crisp? If there is a god above the skies, did we not enrage him by committing a sin?'
"Don't worry about nature, it's the only way it knows how to show love. More like tough love?" Mr. Gunn assured, like he could read her mind and the thought made her shudder. The closer they grew towards the foot of the mountain, the heavier Inji's heart began to feel.
It was morbidly deformed because of her swelling love for a man who was capable of erasing everything she placed a finger on, and because of the hole that's been ripped in her, sucking away all her humanity because of the sin she had committed.
The thunder continued to deafen the sound of life, the ravens flapped their wings and banged their heads against the trees as the wind struck them. One of them flew past the couple, crashing against Mr. Gunn's shoulder and pushing him back.
The weight of the wind aided and he fell back against the ground, his palms plunged into the wet, muddy rocks on the path. He let out a hiss, feeling the sharp rubble scratch through his skin and his blood seeped through the thin bruises.
"Are you okay?" Inji asked calmly, flapping her arms against her sides in anxiety and her brown eyes stared at Mr. Gunn with concern. Her heart slowly started to swell up, guilt mixed with compassion for two different people was too much.
Mr. Gunn looked at her, slowly pushing himself up to his feet. He snickered, holding her face in his bruised palms and the rain pooled against her cheeks as she stared at him, like a doll with buttons for eyes. Black, empty, odd.
"I am okay. You look like a drenched penguin. It's cute."
He said, pushing several strands of her hair from her forehead as it stuck to her skin like a wet vines, her pony tail looked like a dead lizard's tail and made him laugh even more, laugh even humanely.
Ironically.
'Does a penguin ever get drenched though...?' She thought.
"Alright. Give me your raincoat. Hide yourself and wait for me." He instructed.
She nodded, like she always has and moved under a tree.
The thick layer of the leaves would keep some of the rain away from her clothes and she thought. She took off her raincoat, her black dress flowing with the wind below her knees and she wrapped her arms around herself. She looked like a shadow of an unknown entity from afar as the thunder lit up her frame.
'Like a snake after gobbling up the eggs of an innocent bird, we shed off our skins and he went to the witch's hearth. Whether he burnt that snake skin or gave it to the witches for a potion, I would never know. But whatever he did, I trust him.'
After he took everything and made his way down, Inji came to realize the difference his presence made. Her knees gave up, and she fell down. Her back dragged down the thick trunk of the tree and scratched her skin, the faint bruises burned against the wind's cold brush and her lips trembled.
'What did I ever do to you, Inji?'
The strained voice of the girl in the box began to echo in her mind and her heart swelled up to her throat, her humanity began to choke her. Or was it the fear of being sinful? She didn't know. Her hands went up to her throat and she touched it, her fingers felt like a noose and she coughed. Coughing, wheezing, whimpering, crying and finally hissing, everything she felt was the imitation of the struggle the girl in the box was putting up.
"Weren't we ever friends even for a moment? Did my existence pain you that much? Did it always hurt you?'
The voice grew louder and louder, Inji's fingers clung to her hair and she tugged at it. Her head pounded as that voice hammered down onto it, like a painful memory.
Like a disease, like a change of heart.
'No, you didn't! You were my friend! Why did you have to be my friend? Didn't you see what I am?'
Inji didn't know what she wanted. The rain followed her, the thunder lit up her path and she ran. She ran towards the mountain, back to the spot, with a hope in her heart and a fear too.
'I will get you out! I will dig you up! I will put everything back to its place while you run! He will never know! He cannot know!'
Mr. Gunn was both her shield and her spear. He protected her from everything that hurt her, even her own humanity and she realized it was the truth deep into her bones yet she couldn't fight the greed. She was greedy for love. So he made it his purpose to love her till the depths of hell while she sat at the height of the sky. While she kept her humanity, and she didn't have to kill, while he colored his hands in blood and read her poetry.
He made her god and became the devil himself, to punish the humans that didn't worship her.
Inji reached the mountain after bruising her knees, bleeding her palms and she plunged her hands into the mound of dirt. The grave that they had dug and she began to dig through, like a dog desperate to dig a hole to survive the cold. The dirt seeped into her fingernails, made her skin itch and the bruises on her palm burned.
'What do I do? It's not coming off! She will die!'
She looked around desperately, other than the roses they'd left under a forgotten tree, there was nothing else.
"The tree! The shovel!" She yelled, to the skies, to herself, to keep her mind from falling apart and crawled towards the tree. She pushed the roses away, forgetting the promise they'd made and began to dig once again.
As she dug, her eyes drifted around and the thunder blared. The lights flashed from deep within the woods, her fear made her sweat along the rain. Her nails were covered and filled with mud, while her knees were bruised, her dress was a layer of mud.
As she dug deeper, her nails plunged against the metallic handle of the shovel and one of her nails pierced through. Like a jolt of electricity ran through her, her nail broke and the blood oozed out, blistering against her skin like molten lava. She didn't have time to cry, even though some tears slipped but the rain washed them away. She rose with the shovel and stood over the grave, pondering over the irony that the girl in the box hadn't even died yet they decided to call it a grave.
'Perhaps a grave means the house of a useless body. Like mine.'
She covered her face with her muddy palms and snickered, tears flowing through.
"Haha… I must have lost my mind…" She said, and began to dig through. The shovel plunged into the softened ground, and came out the roses they'd left on top of the box and coffee beans.
She shuddered at the thought of him finding her in this frenzy. What face would he make?
Her thoughts were answered like a prayer, and the thunder growled in the sky. The lightning flashed and made the shadow of him onto the grave, she paused. Her bleeding hands stopped, her limping legs slowly made her turn and her eyes met the brown eyes staring at her lifelessly.
At that moment she realized the devil was real, the one that lured millions of souls to choose hell every day. And today was her day one.
"What are you doing, love?"
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone