miraz

“When are you now?”

“Where are you now!!!!”

The voices kept screaming to him. Simultaneously, it seemed. He stopped looking for the source of the oral disturbances. The moment his prolixin was not enough to drown out the voices that kept disturbing him, his cigarettes and vodka are his best companions.

Not tonight.

So, there he sits.

On the edge of his apartment’s ledge. Way up above the 25th floor.

With the snow collecting on the streets below, he smoked his last drag of cigarette.

‪That one memory of us in the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. Nothing could ever top that. ‬

‪You dragged me there even when you knew I still had one more paper to study for, the day after that. You were adamant. Your only reasoning was that – listening to songs of heaven belting out from the many instruments from the chamber concert would heal me of my stress. More so than a tender back rub in a bathtub by you, would ever achieve.‬

‪I relented. You already bought the tickets without my knowing. ‬

‪You drove cause I hated driving a manual. Or driving in the headache inducing streets of KL. Or, merely; of driving in general. ‬

‪We were lost for a few minutes coz we took a wrong turn at one of the many intersections. Again, one of the many reasons why I hated driving in KL. Take one wrong turn and you’re somehow, suddenly, on a one-way road to gods knows where.‬

‪I opened up Waze then, as that was the only way I knew how to be a navigator. To be more helpful than to answer ‘hmmmmm…..’ when you asked whether I recognise the roads or not. Not just once, or twice. Perhaps, hundreds of time whenever we were together in your car, or mine.‬

‪We did manage to get to MPO. In time, but; just barely. Lady at the box office gave us a smile, looking at us. You, looking dapper with your red plaid and your black-blue vest. Maybe she was flirting with you, as things tends to happen when girls gets near to you. I didn’t even get to register the note of jealousy as you hurried our steps on the stairs. ‬For fear of missing anything. And, you hated the faux pas of coming in late to anything.

‪My memory of it is always a blur after that. It wasn’t the songs of heaven heard in MPO that made this memory so precious.

It was the tiny little magical things that happened along the way. Of all your efforts.‬ To get me to MPO that night.

‪Merely to appease me. ‬

From buying the tickets beforehand. Driving us there. And particularly, that naivety that no one looks at you like how I was looking at you, all the time. As my perfect man.

‪And, to be perfectly honest, I am missing all those tiny little magical things.‬ Terribly.

“Why are u falling asleep, sleeping?”
“I’m not. I’m slowly waking up. To the realisation that he has really fucked me well and good this time.”

Slowly, he tried to get his body to move out of the flimsy mattress he previously slept in. Neon light from the bedside lamp stinging his eyes as he tried to muster the strength to keep his eyes open, to keep himself awake.

“I got a phone call”, he continued speaking.

“Not sure when, but it must have been in the middle of the night. Aiman loves to show off his latest invention at crazy o’clock hours. I never got tired of it. I came here then. As fast as my Tesla could. We talked.”

“Next thing I know, I’m here and you’re there. Standing..Shouting…Where is he….have you seen him?”

“Who? Aiman? No. We have only found you. Alone. As you were now. Wearing nothing but a Superman brief. Sleeping like you own the place.”

“And,”

“As according to the hotel’s registry, you have been; for the past two months. From the 30th of September.”

He eyed the hulking body of the detective. Accusatory glances greeted him. Aiman really did fucked him up this time.

I write about him a lot. About how he has hurt me over the years. Of how our relationship was doomed from the very start. From the very moment we locked our eyes. Well, maybe not then. Maybe it was that time when he asked me to go to that favourite restaurant of mine. Yamamori.

Of lengthy tales of our star-crossed love, that traverses the norms of the present culture.

The secrets that we had to keep to keep everyone happy. To maintain the status quo. As it was. As it is.

To preserve everyone’s happiness, we sacrificed ours.

;

But.

In all honesty, though, there never was a ‘him’. There never was an ‘us’. There never was a ‘him and me’.

‘He’ was just a delusion. An imaginary concept I concocted.

‘He’ was created when I was at my weakest. Grappling with the idea of losing myself.

When my mind was so fucked up on the drugs of life. My ‘disadvantages’ that life herself seemed so generous to bear upon me.

Incapacitated, ‘he’ came about.

;

I’ve got to thank him, though. When all things are considered.

For if it were not for him, she would have definitely gotten that letter I wrote, hastily, that one night after that fateful bath.

My literal telos

People look up to me. When to buy, when to sell. Which property should they buy now. Anything to buy in bulk? Is it a good idea to know more about this company? Are they trading something sustainable?

If only, I could have asked someone about you. Your quality. Your worth. Ultimately, of whether investing myself in you would yield the highest return.

I screwed up. As easily as someone who got duped by Madoff. By Ponzi.

You came into my life, as suave as you were. Convincing me to invest in something I should have seen as “too good to be true”.

Yet, you succeeded.

Somehow.

By some peculiar way of yours.

Maybe it was those dimples, or maybe it was those thin lips of yours. They masqueraded the truth behind, falsely vocalising what I wanted to hear.

Knock on his door.

*Hey. You in?*

**One sec.**

Rushing sounds made. Body was hurled from a queen-sized bed and from its momentum, wave of air particles were cut away to give room for the body’s motion.

That was then. Mere six minutes ago. A small knock on his door, a small squeak of *Hey. You in?*. Final realization.

His world is ending. Ended.

Sat upright on his bed, his mind trying to process what the news entailed.

I called him X.

That was the only name he gave me when we first met. And the only name I was comfortable calling him when we were alone. So his name, however much illogical it was; stayed through the years.

We were occasional friends. Even lesser, occasional lovers.

We met up, we said our goodbyes. Then we meet up again in a different city. Always with the same tone of hi and goodbyes between us. What we did in between the two, were best left as secrets only known to the walls that surround us. Sometimes, the skies and the nature were our only secret-keepers.

The wild rendezvous kept me young I think, over the years.

And that’s the most unique aspect of him. Of X.

Just X. Not Mister X nor Monsieur X.

Very unique indeed. Never seems to age. Over all of the delightful years that we’ve met, age seems not to have crept up to him.

I’ve once deliberately called him out on that, one night. Called him –

My X – my immortal friend.

We were in bed. Skies were growling with god’s fury, and lightnings were thrown every few seconds. Blinding us. In our glasshouse. Sweats from our earlier activity, bathed our naked bodies, making two perfect glistening silhouettes.

Playfully cuddling him, I took a gander at what caused this aberration.

Vampire? He’s far too unromantic to be one. I follow Anne Rice’s styling of vampires. He’s nothing like Lestat or Armand.

Functioning zombie? Never have I saw him have any urges to eat my brain, after he ate parts of my body hungrily.

Might be a genetic aberration. Perhaps. But, for then; I’d never truly know about it.

He laughed it all off.

Hearing his dismissal laugh, I put the matter aside.

Only after a few years did the same subject came up again.

And I’ve regretted for not realising the signs.

HIS benevolent signs.