XXI
The Young Boy stumbled through the brush, unable to stop the flakes of blood from falling from his nose. Fairly soon, the fever would set in, and within an hour or two, so too would the horrible smell, and the cursed scratching - at his skin, and in the gaps between his teeth. Though he was absolutely sure that he was already dead, The Young Boy behaved anything but, tilting his head, and pinching his nose, as if death could be tickled into remission.
“Amor,” he said, stumbling over branches, and his own wobbling feet.
It was impossible to see. He could hear the sound of roaring laughter to his right, and what might have been a hungry bear, scratching at a tree stump, somewhere to his left. But it was so dark, though; an inch from his sweating face, and in the midst of his racing thoughts. All he could think of was the girl, and all he could feel was her suffering.
In his thoughts, she suffered because of her crippled legs.
In his thoughts, she suffered more, with a crippled heart from having been left alone.
And as he thought of her, weeping over his grave, his heart tore away like a century old sticker, ripping to shreds and taking with it, his logic and his reason, and exposing the naivety of his soul. It was absurd, the feeling he had to not give up and to fight the inevitable, even if that would only exploit his pain and suffering even more. And even more absurd, was imagining some way of outrunning this curse, and finding somewhere where they could be alone, together.
But love was absurd.
He could learn a trade, and then maybe build a wall; one so tall and layered so thick that no one would ever be able to get them. He could study art, and then paint the walls so that they looked like infinite space that had neither a beginning nor an end. They could draw a dozen stars for every day that they spent together out of harm’s way. And in the distance even, he could paint a comet, that upon it had a saddle fit for them both, and should any day be worse than the last, they could ride the comet for as far as it would take them, and they could make a home on a different planet, or in just a very quiet and untroubled part of the omniverse.
It took great effort to think this way, and he had no doubt that it would take some incredulous feat, or an intervening miracle, to see it through. He would have to race for an eternity. They could never truly stop. They could never call any place home. Knowing this, his mind started to tire, and in his thoughts, so too did the girl.
“Can we rest here?” she asked, as the comet slowed. “Just for a while, until I catch my breath.”
The Young Boy stopped the comet and looked at the girl who sat behind him. She was more tired than he, but unlike the boy, her exhaustion came from this extended and perpetuating grief.
“What are you afraid of?” The Young Cripple asked. “Just rest your head; I’ll be here when you wake.”
The second his mind rested, though; The Young Boy’s thoughts transformed into the saddest and most terrible kind. He imagined her nursing him through the worst of his illness; and he imagined the girl blistering her hands, as she slaved for an entire week, to dig a grave for the boy that she loved. He imagined the girl that he loved right after his burial, sitting on a sofa that was much too big for her, and in a room that was poorly lit, as her friends and family hoarded and pillaged her lover’s belongings. And finally, he imagined her older, making her bed by his grave; unwilling to heal, and unable to move on.
What a fool he was to think that this curse was merely his own.
“Amor,” he said again, this time shouting; making a hell of a racket as he stamped about in the dark, one hand clamped on his nose and the other, scratching and chopping at the darkness in front of him.
All of this sentiment, and he didn’t even know her name.