This is a story about a story that wants to be a song. It could be a song about trees. Or falling trees. Or falling. Or it could be about winds blowing hard, like tornadoes and hurricanes. This could be the intro, some kind of tender, inviting mumbling or scattered notes, slowly playing before the melody starts.

* * * *

North wind was blowing hard, goes the verse.

Just to be clear, the North wind is described as such for the sake of the story, or the aspiring song. The winds were Northeast all the time, or non-existent sometimes. On New Year’s Day we woke up to a fallen tree blocking our front door. We both knew that the year didn’t start well. It was a combination of strong winds and shallow roots. It’s now already summer, the path all cleared, pieces of the fallen tree still beside the door, for I’m too lazy to arrange them in piles and stock them for next winter. They’ll probably be useless by then, he claims and I can’t help but agree.

He never argues when he’s mad. I’d say he never gets mad either, yet I now know him well enough to claim otherwise; he gets mad all the time, only he’s good at hiding it. Until he feels safe enough to explode. He’s an endless, recurrent bomb. Never tired of exploding, when the time is right.

* * * *

South wind was blowing hard, goes the second verse.

“My mom called,” he says.

He speaks in a voice most people use when commenting upon the weather. He always has that attitude; as if he constantly gives the world the middle finger, grinning, saying “fuck you world, I fooled you.” Bombs don’t care for the outcome. He’s now walking ahead of me and I follow, as we walk in the park, among tall trees, which seem taller than when we walked side by side, still immersed in blissful ignorance. He walks blissfully like he’s in heaven while all I see is flowers about to wither, soil eager to be fed with decay, bugs buzzing in search of pray, and he claims I’m always so negative and I wonder how he does that. I’ve been hearing the cracks in my face lately, the wrinkles forming one after another, every time I laugh, or smile, or cry. So I try to remain emotionless, or at least not express emotion, if I can’t avoid feeling it.

We are no longer a couple. He left me after he found out I’d cheated on him. We had never argued before. Until that day, when he exploded.

* * * *

East wind was blowing hard, goes the third verse.

“I don’t feel like speaking to her.”

Of course he doesn’t feel like it. He’s the king of denial, the master of the art of procrastination. I’ll have to pressure him to call her back, only he won’t call until he’s ready.

When he found out about my cheating, he didn’t mention anything at first. He went to the kitchen and prepared some soup. He offered me the soup, feigning tenderness as if I had been naughty and he was gentle enough to forgive me. I was definitely offended that night. In hindsight, I realize that had been his intention: to humiliate me with an act of kindness. He had the moral high ground and enjoyed it. The soup was tasty as hell, I have to admit. I didn’t know then, because he had never made soup for me before, but the soup was the final warning before the bomb exploded. That soup is what I mostly missed of him when we finally broke up.

“Are you over him?” he asked. I nodded hard, as I couldn’t even recall how it was with that guy, for I was drunk and exhausted and vulnerable. But he took it the wrong way. He said I was trying too hard to be convincing. He looked me in the eye, as if trying to read my soul, only he couldn’t see through my eyes, he claimed and I blamed those fucking wrinkles again which made me expressionless.

* * * *

Incomprehensible mumbling during a guitar solo comes next.

“I’ll call her back later. Nice weather, isn’t it?”

He’s doing it again; agreeing with me to avoid conflict. I know he won’t call back.

Instead, he’ll only change the subject.

A few days after the tasty soup came the explosion, following an insignificant disagreement. “I think Camus killed himself,” I told him, and he looked at me perplexed. I’m well aware that’d ruin it all, his work, his theories, everything. So he faked a car accident. He put the train ticket into his pocket, making sure someone would find it and point the irony. Camus was my age when he died and he was tired. Sick of fighting the plague, sick of coffee and soccer and writing. It wasn’t fun anymore and life’s supposed to be fun at core and then everything else. I’m also sick of fighting the plague. Sick of fixing what’s broken, only to repeat the fixing the very next day.

Then followed a stupid fight over the dishes. He packed his things the very next minute. I removed a pillow from behind my back only to realize how more comfortable sitting on the sofa felt without it. I was that pillow to him; not too annoying, yet his life would be much more comfortable without me.

When I realized my cheating was the issue at stake, only he’d chosen a different subject which felt safer to him, it was already too late. In his mind I had started the war, yet he chose the time and place of the final battle.

* * * *

Instrumental bridge:

“Cold, but nice,” I reply.

We survived the explosion, unlike most of his relationships. We’re now friends and as a friend, I’m supposed to insist on his talking with his mother. They haven’t spoken to each other since she left his father. Yet I don’t. I’m a caring person most of the time. Until I’m too overwhelmed to care. So now I don’t. I only focus on the sound that’s coming from an open window. It’s either ‘Electricity’ or ‘Enola Gay’ by OMD. It always takes me a while to tell them apart, since they sound similar at the beginning. And I hear the familiar buzzing of the intro and that’s how electricity sounds. The bomb is not about to fall yet.

* * * *

West wind was blowing hard, goes the final verse.

“I have some soup left, come over,” he says.

His face is cold. He doesn’t mean it, yet he looks at me as if he hates me. I feel angry inside, yet I still smile. I can’t relax my facial muscles enough to look angry or mean. My resting bitch face looks awkwardly compassionate. My angry face is still made of smiles and fake understanding. It feels as if I have no control over my facial expressions, while his emotions are all over his face. He’s trying to hide behind words and acts of kindness, but I can feel his anger building up as he discovers the sad song in every story. He’s in a-minor mode, while I’m already singing the chorus in c-major, like it’s a happy song, for it’s happy interludes that make the path, or the story, or the song, worthwhile.

He considers himself a winner, as I consider his soup too tasty to leave behind. That soup is the symbol of the beginning to me, the opening kick-off before the battle to him. This battle feels better than his love. I pretend that winning is of no importance. That what matters is that I don’t have the skills to make a soup tasty enough to comfort him. Nor the skills to confront and deactivate the bomb. I hear the crack on my face again. Another wrinkle formed. Another emotion escaped. Another happy interlude before closure. My resting bitch face never looks mean enough; it takes a while before I notice I still smile, while I accept the invitation.

* * * *

We are now the Hollow Men, waiting for the world to end. Or the story. Or the sad song (bound to be hidden) in every story.

I can’t handle it anymore, I say.

I can’t handle it.

I can’t.

With a whimper, not with a bang, ends the song. Most songs end with fading out.

 

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in many journals, such as Molotov Cocktail, Jellyfish Review, Sunlight Press (Best Small Fictions 2019 nominee), Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, Ellipsis Zine, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Bending Genres, MoonPark Review, Litro, and others.