Cleaved

“I’m so glad you’re back, man,” Lionel said.

“Yeah, me too.” I said it, but I didn’t mean it. In truth, I couldn’t stand the sight of Lionel. Rabbit either. I was so fucking sick of all my friends and their stupid bullshit. None of them knew shit about shit, and it was so god damn enraging to even have to look at them.

“Hey, man,” Rabbit said, popping open a printed beer. “Henna’s been asking about you.”

That perked me right up. “Really?”

“Yeah. Saw ‘er down at the Poker. She was lookin’ fine, by the way. Fine as hayell.”

“And she said she wanted to see me?” I asked. Cos you have to double-check things with these slipshod motherfuckers.

Rabbit took a swig, his tall, thin body bending some as he did. Then, he let go a long burp. “Naw, she didn’t say that, exactly. But she was askin’ ‘bout cha. So I reckon she probably would like to put eyes on you, you know.”

“Will you drive me up there?” I asked. I was old enough to drive—crazy as that fucking was—but was not currently released to drive, you know, medically. I had to complete a series of evaluations over the next several weeks, each of which would gradually restore my civil privileges—assuming I didn’t go batshit again. Or, more accurately, get caught going batshit again.

I was still thinking about all that when I heard: “You comin’?” Rabbit it asked from the doorway, beer still in hand. Lionel stood next to him in a belly shirt and spiked leather jacket.

“Huh?” I asked.

“You ready to go?” Lionel asked.

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

So we went to the Poker. The whole way there, I hoped against hope that Henna was up there still. Please Abraxas, I prayed silently, let her still be there.

She was.

And when my eyes found her, my heart filled with a pure rose gold light and an effortless smile spread its wings across my face.

She smiled, too, Henna. Though it was … tinged.

I went to her as fast as I could without running.

We hugged.

She smelled great, like always. I wanted to kiss her, passionately, desperately. I didn’t, though I did look into her eyes like I wanted to.

Henna looked back like she would kiss me back if I kissed her, but she didn’t kiss me.

The four of us hung out and played pool, shot guns in the alleyway behind the place, right next to the peacekeeper depot, drank beer.

Well, I didn’t drink. I didn’t want to fail any of the evaluations and have to go back to that rancid fucking shithole, see fucking Hook’s face again. Fuck that guy.

Lionel started play wrestling with Henna, and I caught Rabbit staring at her ass on and off—which, I mean, to be fair, looked fucking rad..

I thought I might lose it and shoot both of Rabbit and Lionel. But I didn’t. I did shoot at all–didn’t even touch a gun. I let the three of them do it. And wrestle. And drink beer. I just sat there, smoking cigarettes, and feeling like I might die with each moment that passed and I wasn’t alone with her.

I did get what I wanted, though. You know, finally. I get what I want, babe, and this was no exception.

When they tired of shenanigans, we all went to Lionel’s place. Lionel’s parents weren’t home. In fact, Lionel’s parents were always fucking gone. No one ever knew where to. And so their creepy ass Jungle mansion in the isolated deep wood made a most excellent chill spot for delinks like us.

The three of them went through more beer—Rabbit and Lionel especially. Henna only had one more, I think. I kept staring at her lips. I could see her tongue, too, whenever she would take a sip. I wanted to kiss her so much it hurt.

As these things tended to go, the night went. The guys passed out in the living room watching a horror flick, and Henna and I went upstairs—upstairs, in what would have been one of Lionel’s older sibling’s room, you know, a few years earlier.

The room had a very familiar and particular scent to it. I’d been here many times, with many different people. It was like a homecoming—I thought about it like that because I’m a writer and I think in terms of themes, and doing so reminded me that once I had been here after homecoming. With someone else.

Henna looked at the bed, then looked at me.

There was a passion in her. I could feel it. But there was something else, too, that I could also feel, and it worried me.

“Do you want to get in bed?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Goddess, yes.”

Do we did, get in bed.

The sheets felt cold, and the contrast with the moist Jungle air was odd. I knew we would soon warm up in there, so I smiled and nestled in close to her.

Henna’s scent overtook the nostalgic ghost smells of the room, and I began to lose myself within her once more. As I did, the doubt and worry melted away. I could feel our souls docking, interlocking and synchronizing again, and it was amazing—amazing that such a thing existed at all, that I had been lucky enough to be born into a universe where something like that existed, and that I has even better luck to find it, to find her. That’s what I was thinking, when I kissed her.

It wasn’t the first time we’d kissed, but it was the first time we’d kissed since I’d been in. So being out and being with her, in bed, alone in the mystery of that house, was enough to send me. And send me it did into a wild passion.

We kissed and felt and tasted each other in ways only we could. Only the two of us has access to this world between us, within us, that was made of us, comprised of our bodies, hearts, minds, and souls.

Amid this, I stopped to look lovingly into Henna’s eyes.

“I love you,” I said.

And then I saw it—a cold ray that cut across my chest.

“What … is it?” I asked. I asked, but I knew.

Henna swallowed hard, and I could see tears forming in her eyes.

When she spoke, her voice was soft and wet sounding, like she had a cold. “I don’t love you,” she said.

My head felt like it might crack apart and all of my organs would be sucked out and spill over my torn face onto the bed. A searing cold fanning out through my body, wrecking my nerves with its touch.

“I’m sorry,” Henna said. I don’t know for certain she said that, but I think she did.

I wanted to slap her. I felt the reflex enter my mind and go into my degraded nerves.

She saw it—the impulse in me—and looked almost relieved, which made me very sad.

I started to cry.

“Do it,” she said. “I deserve it.”

“Why?” I asked. I sounded like a big baby, crying and sobbing.

“I shouldn’t have let you think I did,” she said. “None of it would have happened. You wouldn’t have taken things so badly and wouldn’t have … you know … It’s my fault.”

“But why don’t you?” I asked.

“I just … don’t. I’m sorry.”

She held me, and I cried. I cried a lot, without dignity or beauty.

It wasn’t her fault. I knew it, even then. I knew it, but I couldn’t prove it to myself. And it would be years before I could. Which created an opening for bad things to come in.