Pier told me I wasn’t myself. I never knew if he meant emotionally, or creatively, or if he thought I shat differently, somehow. I would vacuum the floor or meditate in bed or take a smoke outside and he would say, “Hanna, what are you doing? That’s not like you.”
One early morning when I stood facing the apartment window, he said, “Hanna, you sleepwalking?”
I could have been. Zombified, dead-eye staring past the night light's reflection in the glass. Outside and three floors below, a black shape rose and swept past the window. In the park, homeless people warmed their hands over a blazing fire barrel by the playground’s slide. Sparks of light flickered in the surrounding bushes. The black shape emerged again, and disappeared into the facade somewhere to the side of the apartment window. I had considered naming it, the shape, but so far I just called it The Moth.
“Couldn’t sleep”, I said.
“You? Couldn’t sleep?” Pier said with emote surprise. “There’s a first for everything, I guess.”
I didn’t reply. Everyone had sleepless nights; why did he imply I was any different? In the glass, I glimpsed his reflection: a shadow on top of the bed in the corner of the living room, his head obscured by the lampshade on the bedside table.
“Come lay down”, the lampshade said.
I hushed him. “I’ve got an idea for a sketch.”
“Since when do you work this late?”
“A bum with a wish-granting fire barrel.”
“And all those times you’ve lectured me on the importance of only working during working hours.”
The lights in the bushes around the playground wasn’t sparks from the fire. They were familiar, cute little fireflies I’d cup my hands around and peer in at, a flickering glow, tiny heartbeats. I said, “Couldn’t sleep, that’s all.”
Pier said nothing for a while. Then: “You’re starting to freak me out, Hanna.”
“Go back to sleep,” I said.
Next morning we ate leftover thai food for breakfast. We ate leftover thai food for breakfast every morning. We bought it at the place down the block. It was our ritual.
Last night, when Pier went back to sleep, I entered my office and jotted down the ideas for my next sketch: a bum wishing himself and his fellow bums a better life, only for them all to become possessed by smartphones and seventy-five inch TV’s, their connection to nature—each morning waking up in dew drenched grass—lost.
I knew Pier would disapprove of this piece. He’d think it suggested financial well-being would make the lives of the homeless worse. But he would keep his criticism to himself. I knew him. He would.
I looked at him. One-day stubble covered his chin. He sat hunched over his bowl of noodles, his eyes invisible. He had a strange face—hadn’t I noticed before? His eyes resided deep in their sockets, his cheeks were gaunt, suggesting the shape of teeth.
“What?” Pier said. He now stared at me. The deep sockets made the color of his eyes imperceptible, but surely I knew. He was my partner. Surely I knew the color of his eyes.
“Just admiring the view”, I said.
Pier laughed, a short burst, like a single bubble rising to the surface of a puddle of muck. “You hate clichés.”
I took a sip from the cup of coffee in my hands. Lukewarm. Lukewarm coffee and noodles and fried vegetables in soy sauce: a normal breakfast.
“Is something up?” Pier said.
I said, “More sewage work today?” I asked because one day he’d fix refrigerators, one day he’d work at the dump, one day he’d waddle around in people’s shit.
He nodded. “More sewage work today. Did you know they use water lilies in the sewage system of Las Vegas?”
We sat opposite to each other, we ate noodles, we inhaled the steam rising from our coffee cups, we watched the digital clock of the microwave change, step by step. Our morning ritual didn’t usually seem this pointless.
“You’re not going to ask what they’re used for?” Pier said. He bared his palms, raised his eyebrows. “You love shit like this. Details. Water lilies in the sewers.”
He tried to impose a personality on me. He tried to change me back to whatever false memory he had of my past self. I shook my head and returned my attention to the bowl. One noodle left, moving around like a worm.
After a moment, Pier said, “You’ve closed the door to your office.”
“Oh”, I said. “Didn’t notice.”
“You hate closed doors. You were the one who wanted to put the bed in the living room. A few weeks ago you were about to take down all the doors with the screwdriver. I had to stop you.”
I swallowed the last noodle.
Pier spoke as if I didn’t remember, as if I had forgotten the me of last week. But I hadn’t forgotten, I hadn’t changed, he had: he was the one who used to shrug and smile and add, “Whatever you say”, but now clung to insignificant detail and pointless rituals.
Pier returned home at 17:49. “You’re not in your office,” was the first thing he said. His hair was still wet from the shower and he had changed from his working clothes. Of course he had, working in the sewers. But his skin still had a dark tint, and his eyes hid deeper in their sockets.
“Done working for today”, I said. I sat in bed, where I’d been sitting for a while now, listening to the heartbeats.
“Lovely to hear”, Pier said. He stopped in front of me, and looked to the side, towards the closed office door. “You left the lights on.”
“My bad”, I said.
Tiny wrinkles appeared in the corners of Pier’s eyes—the closest thing he ever got to a smile. He squeezed my shoulder before he continued into the kitchen. He held the plastic bag of thai food in his hand. This was our ritual.
After dinner, I went to the bathroom. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. She didn’t look as tired as she used to—no bags under her eyes, no strange wrinkles, no frown, her features the raked shapes of a zen garden.
Something lay in the shower stall behind her.
I turned around and crouched before a tiny thing: the body of a firefly, a piece of what used to be life, crumpled legs and transparent wings and no glow. I put it in my hand and stroked its back, then hid it in on top of the bathroom cabinet. Later, I would bury it in the dirt of the bonsai plant in the living room.
Pier tugged at the handle of the office door. Did I hear it through the bathroom’s walls, over the howl of the pipes? Even if I didn’t, I knew. I felt his spastic tugging, I sensed the moment when he realized the door was locked.
I exited the bathroom and looked across the living room, right at him. Pier’s left hand rested on the handle of the office door.
“What are you doing?” I said.
Pier spun around. “I was going to turn off the light”, he said. “Why is it locked?”
I moved closer, but positioned myself to always keep something between us—the armchair, the bonsai plant, the bed.
“Why do you close doors all of a sudden?” Pier said. He didn’t gesticulate as he spoke, he didn’t display any emotions, he maintained the monotone of his voice. “You’ve been acting weird. I think you know what I’m saying.” His eyes would soon be nothing but black holes.
Behind Pier, outside the window, the moth swept past.
“I would just like some privacy”, I said. “Why does a closed fucking door bother you so?”
“I’m bothered because I know you, and this”—his first gesture: an arm thrown out towards the office—“is not you. I know you. When we first moved in together, you didn’t even close the bathroom when you took a shit.”
“Would you stop telling me what’s like me and what’s not?” I said.
Pier moved his lips as if he was about to say something more, but didn’t. He shook his head. “I’ll go for a run”, he said, and began to dig around in the wardrobe, presumably looking for his excercise clothing.
When Pier had left the apartment, I buried the dead glowfly, and placed one of the crutches Pier used after his foot surgery underneath my side of the bed, and I hid a kitchen knife among old sketch papers in the drawer of the bedside table.
That evening, Pier and I kissed, and Pier told me he was sorry, that the sewage work was stressful and felt less and less meaningful. Like he didn’t get the appreciation he deserved. He didn’t say that last part, but I knew him. I knew he loved the dirty work because no one else did. I knew “someone has to do it” was a sentence he’d never utter, but probably thought about once a day. I knew he found pride in being the person who took out the trash. But all people saw was the slurry of shit covering his boots.
In bed, I listened to Piers breathing—low and deliberate, a steady rhythm. He either slept, or simulated sleep. Lights moved in the corner of my eyes, in the crack below the office door.
Pier spoke before I had a chance to get up. “Is that…?” he said. He lit the bedside lamp, and everything got saturated in suffocating light.
I sat. “What’s going on?”
“Wait”, he said, and turned the light off again. He put a hand on my shoulder, pushing me back down. “Look at the ceiling.”
“Pier?” I said.
“Just look at the ceiling.”
I did. Pier twisted my head so he could look inside my ear, his coarse, stuttering breath against my chin.
“What are you doing?” I said, and let my right arm fall down the side of the bed. I reached for the crutch, but couldn’t reach it with Pier holding me down. Not the knife either.
Pier recoiled, rolled off the bed and down on the floor with a sharp wooden clonk, his head hitting the bedside table, setting the lampshade askew. “There’s a glow”, he said. “Fuck, there’s something glowing in your ear.”
I turned on the light, squinted, kept Pier in my field of vision. The slanted lampshade casted the apartment in a ghost-ish almost-familiar light.
“What the fuck are you on about?” I said.
Pier shook his head, hurled it from side to side. Naked, he crawled around on the floor and picked up his scattered clothes. “This is too fucking bizarre”, he said. “I can’t stay here.”
“There’s nothing glowing inside my ear”, I said. “You’re going insane.”
Pier just repeated, “Can’t stay here, can’t stay here, can’t stay here”, while he got dressed. He left, and shut the door behind him, the echo of his steps and the singing metal railing audible through the walls.
He would come back, this time maybe with a baseball bat by his side. Maybe he’d beat me up and rape and kill me and break the office door open. Maybe he’d stomp around in there, and ruin everything. Maybe he’d snatch the fireflies from my cupped hands.
I got up. The moth moved above me and slipped inside the office at the same time I did.
Again, Pier returned. It was early morning when he slammed the front door open. He wasn’t himself: sleepless, his eyes black pits, the stubble a two-day beard. He brought the stench of cold sweat with him.
“I had nightmares”, he said, stumbling forwards. “Shapes and lights in my head. Wanting to eat me.”
I waited for him on the bed. The tiny heartbeats in my cupped hands had told me he was approaching. Above and behind Piers head, in the hallway, the moth hovered.
“I want to apologize”, I said.
“What’s in the office?” Pier stopped right before me, half crouched. A drip of sweat dangled on the tip of his nose. He kept his hands slightly extended, his fingers bent. He was here to kill me.
“Pier”, I said. “I’m sorry I’ve been acting strange. Let me make it up to you.”
“You don’t talk like that!” His hands chook. “This is not you. I’ve never heard you say you’re sorry in my life.”
“Well, I am.”
He covered his face with his hands and looked out between the fingers. “Just tell me what’s going on. What’s going on?”
I reached for him, touched his elbow. “Pier. Everything’s alright.”
His hands shot forward and grabbed my neck. He pressed his thumbs at my throat, his nails cutting into my skin. Jolts of pain shot through my body, up my palate and down my spine, to the tailbone. I sank into a lake, got trapped below the ice. An eyeless monster faced me from the other side.
In the ceiling, the moth jerked back and forth.
I placed a hand on Pier’s crotch. I caressed. I looked into the hollows where his eyes once were. I looked at him in the way I used to look at him. Spasms shot through my body, but I kept caressing, caressing the junk of an eyeless monster.
Pier eased his grasp. “I’m sorry”, he said. He cried, raised his eyebrows, looked at me. Brown. His eyes were brown, the eyes of the man I first encountered in a pretentious art gallery which we both hated.
I rose, and hugged him, getting up close, my thigh between his legs, my hands digging into the flesh of his back, my mouth kissing the side of his neck. He tasted like toilet water. “It’s alright”, I said.
“I’m sorry.” Pier’s face crumpled. “I don’t know what’s going on. Please tell me what’s going on.”
The moth held a glow worm in its claws, and hovered right behind Pier’s head. While I kissed the corner of Pier’s mouth, the moth guided the worm up his shoulder, into his ear.
Pier kissed me back. Lights flickered among the shoes and coats in the hallway.
When the entire glow worm had disappeared into Pier’s ear, I leaned back. I looked into his eyes. They were nothing but black holes. “I think I left the door ajar”, I said, and nodded towards my office.
Pier looked. The door was ajar. He untangled himself and approached it slowly. The moth followed, upside down in the ceiling. Pier pushed the door open with a closed fist, and stepped inside.
Maybe I could have made this a sketch: a piece depicting the descent into madness of a simple man whose only desire was to clean the streets and make sure people could shit without worrying about crocodiles chewing at their genitals.
At least Pier might have approved of his own end: he’d be part of the nest, of something bigger, his body giving birth to new life.
I stepped inside the office. The moth perched on top of the desktop lamp, surrounded by flickering lights. On the floor, Pier lay, his eyes black, his ears glowing. He gaped, wider than a living person could, and from his mouth more flickering lights got born—fireflies, and I cupped my hands around them, peered inside at the flickering glow, tiny heartbeats.
Submitted August 23, 2017 at 09:27PM by Blurry_photograph http://ift.tt/2vp6CM1 nosleep
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