It’s been three months since you disappeared. And I say disappeared because no one knows where you went. But I’m certain you’re dead. So it’ll probably be more accurate to say that it’s been three months since you died.
Our families doesn’t like that I use that description, but for how long are we supposed to play pretend? I know they’re thinking the same, even though they look at me with anger when I refer to you in the past tense. Do they think I want to do that? I’m the last person on this earth who would want to wish you away. After all; it’s me who lives in the apartment we bought together, surrounded by memories. So I’ve begun changing the way I look at you. Yet I still hope you exist.
Because even though you’re dead, you can still be here.
Every night, when I return home from another ungodly late gig, I’m met with Leo’s merry meowing. For as long as I manage to stay awake, he’s right there beside me. I sit down, he jumps up on my lap and purrs loudly. I stand up, he does the same and makes a figure eight around my feet. This kind of affection isn’t news to you, but it’s news to me. When you were here, you were his favorite. Leo might have spared some joyless minutes where he let me pet him, but if you were on the couch or he heard the rustling of your keys outside the door, I was nothing but air to him.
I think Leo have accepted that his best friend isn’t coming home, so he’s settled with me. And we’ve grown pretty close. He’s moving on the other side of the door already. He must have heard me put the key in the door. After work I went to the store and bought some gourmet meals for him; brown, runny goo with chicken flavor. So we’ve buried the hatchet. I’ve officially become his new first choice. And I don’t know what I think about that. If Leo has forgotten you..
I open the door slowly, used to being met with Leo and his nose being pressed against the wood separating us. But he’s not there. The meowing is still happening, just in another other room. Per usual I have to crouch so that the neck of my guitar, that is attached to my back, won’t hit the doorframe. I kick off my shoes and use my elbow to close the door, all in one fluent movement.
– Leo? Come on, I got yumyums, I call out, rusling the plastic bag full of cat food and walk into the kitchen.
I detach myself from the strap to my guitar case and lean the sticker covered, hourglass shaped box against the table. The instrument inside is well protected, but also well used. Your guitar is somewhere in storage, covered in old jackets. It’s nowhere near as worn out as mine, and its sound is way beyond what mine can pull off, but I don’t use it. What would you use then?
The sour smell hitting my face when I open the door to the fridge, makes me crinkle my nose. But I cast a quick glance at the clear Tupperware containing last night’s pasta dinner and decide that it’s fine. I keep it pretty simple here, as you might have picked up by now. You were the chef. More than once your mom has come over and made dinner to last me a week. At the same time she’s commented and scoffed at how thin I’ve become. I try telling her that this isn’t because I’m sad; I’m just terrible at making anything edible. You would have understood and laughed at me. Oh, how I miss your laughter..
I dump the solid mass of what I barely dare to call food on to a plate. Then I open one of the cans with cat food and do the same, only in a shiny bowl that has been licked squeaky clean. Leo is still making happy noises somewhere I can’t see. It’s not like him to ignore my homecoming. Once upon a time maybe, but since my promotion to most likeable, he’s usually never far away. I yawn. It’s almost 2 AM.
– Leo? I try again, giving him a seldom and usually unnecessary second chance to come to me.
Still no cat. Tired, but curious as to what is keeping him, I put his bowl on the floor and turn on the lights in the living room. That’s where I find him, with his feet tucked neatly under him so that he cosplays the perfect loaf on the couch. He has his eyes closed, smiling the way only cats can.
– There you are. Aren’t you hungry?
He doesn’t move, just keeps on purring. I shrug. This rare indifference is unexpected, but he heard me opening the can so he knows where to go if he wants its content. I yawn again and turn to go back to the kitchen, but something catches the overhead lights and then my attention. I pad on over to the stereo system. Even though I want to eat my sorry excuse for a dinner and crawl into bed, I reach out and pick up the demo to the album we never got to finish. My eyebrows narrow. I definitely wouldn’t have left the CD out in the open like this. The cover lies just beside it, a clear plastic frame with blue hurried lettering on it written with a dying marker.
My stomach tightens. The CD consists of unfinished riffs, blown sound files and sparking noise over our voices. But it’s the last I have of you that is real. Unedited. I swallow and my hands shake as I awaken the system and put in the CD. It’s a healing pain to hear you sing. A recording can never beat the real thing, but I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that this is the closest you’ll come to ever make an impression again, even though the rest of the world won’t ever hear it.
A couple of seconds goes by where we pick strings and adjust ourselves, and then a gentle guitar solo fills the living room. The first song we ever composed together. For 45 seconds there’s nothing but acoustic guitar music, undisturbed. Hypnotizing, building up the expectations. Then you start to sing. I’ve always just been a backup singer, which is my role now as well, because everyone knows you’re what people come to hear. Your voice awakens emotions, and you still hold that power. Through our speaker.
I turn up the volume. The music is like waves crashing against my internal cliffs. Outside the darkness has erased all that ever was before and after this moment. The reason why I’m never home until the wee hours of the morning is because the jobs are fewer and more difficult to come by now that our two man band has been reduced by half. I have a decent audience, but it can’t compare to the one we used to have. We could’ve been great, you and I. Alone I’m doomed to be mediocre, at the absolute best.
Tears run down my cheeks, but I don’t wipe them away. They trickle down to the collar of my sweater and create a cold necklace of salt water that chills me to my very core. I decide that sappy hour is over for now. They don’t do anything but give me a headache. Again I look at Leo and feel the need to run my fingers through his soft fur.
But the closer I come to him, the clearer it becomes that something about the picture in front of me isn’t quite right. I stop so that the coffee table separates me from the couch and squint towards where our drowsy cat reside. Either I’m sleepier than I thought, or I’m just observing the impossibility that Leo is floating approximately 20 centimeters over the pillow I initially thought he was lying on.
I bend down, support my hands on my knees and turn my head slightly sideways. No, Leo definitely isn’t in contact with the furniture under him. All of a sudden he shoots his chin forward and moves it rhythmically up and down, as if I’ve already started scratching him. I reach out, aiming for the mysterious empty space between the cat and the sofa. But I quickly pull back when a familiar sound makes my ears ring.
Your laughter. Clear as day, but with a slight echo attached to it. As if I’m hearing it in a dream. Only this time I know I’m awake. You laugh again, louder this time, and then you say:
– I think I’m back being the favorite.
I don’t feel fear, or surprise. Instead I’m filled with a feeling that can only be described as finally. I knew you still existed, just not in the same form as I got to know you through. And I’ve been prepared for that.
Still.
The realization makes something crack within me, the finality of what has been true for so long. Tears well up again. My throat tightens and again I’m left to fight against a repressed sadness I’ve denied the existence of.
– That’s okay. Leo is bad for my allergy anyway, I whisper and point to my watery eyes.
He probably heard his name because Leo looks up at me. His unimpressed cat face has returned, the one he used to send my way all the time when you were here; calculating and almost conspiratorial. A never-ending gaze of scepticism and hate over the time I stole you from him. I smile and welcome the cold shoulder he’s showing me once again.
Behind me we seamlessly continue on to the next song. As I look up and down where I know you’re sitting, the words the recorded version of you sing become infinitely more painful. These are the lyrics that ruined the paper we wrote them on because we both cried incessantly for every letter that was scribbled down. Leo leans unnaturally to the side and it looks like he’s being forced to jump down, reluctant to the nail, and immediately tries to jump up again. But this time he’s definitely just met with an empty couch. The familiar, but invisible lap is gone. I blink. More tears. Apparently you disappeared as quickly as you appeared.
I flinch at the sudden contact. As firm as an actual print of a hand, but still not of this world. I look down at my arm and at how the skin there is pressed inward. You’re holding it. Not hard, but firm. The feeling it radiates is that of a chilly fall wind captured in psychical form. If you can call this psychical.
I try to meet a look I’m certain is meeting mine, without actually seeing anything. Then I feel the same pressure around my hand. I watch as my fingers are spread apart and makes way for yours. You let go of my arm with your other hand and instead put it around my waist. And then, when I catch a glimpse of some small change in front of me, like the soft vibration that arises in the air over a fire, you press us together.
I feel no body heat, no indication of another human. But you’re there. You start to move ever so slightly. I follow your lead. If I close my eyes I can imagine that all the time I’ve spent without you is nothing but a conjured nightmare. I lean closer, feel the sturdiness of a chest I’ve been pressed up against countless times before. Now it’s like hugging the remnants of a capsuled memory. My own chest hurts from repressing the sobbing I’m denying myself.
– Where are you? I whisper, and your answer come out as an echo trapped in a glass ball:
– Just keep playing our song and I’ll be wherever you are.
So we listen in silence, wrapped around each other in every way that counts, while I dance with your ghost.
Fridatales 