Alley Cat

Emily Dickinson once said, “Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.”

I actually met her once. For a girl who was cooped up in her house her entire life, she proved herself more wiser than I ever have been in the entirety of my eight-hundred-and-three-years of life.

After living for so long, her words ring more true with each passing year. Most of the people I miss are dead and the pain they leave me with is excruciatingly unbearable. Leaving is always the easy part. But missing them? That’s a punishment that even Hell can’t match.

Luka takes me to his apartment. It’s located at the very edge of Queens. The complex is a downgraded version of the brownstone I burned down three years ago, but it’s much more spacious than the average New York City apartment. My footsteps echo the moment I step inside. Gray clouds collect in the horizon, accumulating where there had been none before. A clap of thunder shakes the walls. The lights flicker; it’s a portent of a black out that’s yet to come.

“This wasn’t what I had in mind.” I say, hovering near the door anxiously. It’s my only exit out of this place, and the last thing I want is to get locked in with a half-psycho. “Isn’t this the first place the police are coming to look for us?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Luka slips off his shoes and immediately heads towards the kitchen. “My family funds the NYC police department.”

“Your family kicked you out.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Luka shrugs at the countertop. He opens the refrigerator and takes out two sluggish lobsters. They’re lethargic from the cold; their curly short legs slowly twitch across the slick countertop. “They’re too busy killing protesters. Now since you’ve got nothing better to do, how about you help me kill these lobsters?”

“I’m not hungry.”

Luka takes out a gleaming stainless steel knife from the drawer and inspects it with a keen eye. After my disastrous encounter with his sister and his homicidal chef uncle, I expect him to throw the knife at me. To my pleasant surprise, he holds down a lobster and slices it clean through its head. The shell splits easily like he’s cutting through butter, and he does the same to the remaining lobster who makes a futile attempt to leap off the ledge.

“You still have the pistol in your back pocket,” Luka reminds me as he tosses the dead lobsters into a pot of generously salted boiling water. “I don’t get why you’re still scared.”

My hand trails to my back pocket where the pistol’s handle bulges through denim. The feel of cold steel chilling my fingertips comforts me before settling into vague disappointment. “I still don’t trust you.”

“You took my hand and ran for it.” Luka gets started on making a salad bowl. He dumps a whole bag of spinach and kale into a huge bowl and rinses the greens in the sink. “Doesn’t that mean something?”

I recall the moment of interlocking my fingers with his. It’s a fleeting recollection that leaves me confused and my head pounding. I don’t understand why I did it. It was an impulsive action that should mean nothing, but I can’t stop thinking about it.

Luka’s voice crashes into my train of thoughts. It snaps me back to attention. “Can you at least get started on the vinaigrette? We need to get the food ready before the power goes out.”

I run into the kitchen to wash my hands and dry them on a hanging towel. Luka turns to me with a victorious smile, but I vanquish it with a firm warning. “If you try anything, I will NOT hesitate to burn down your home for the second time AND shoot you point blank. Got it?”

“Yes m’am!” Luka says dutifully.

“What are you feeling?”

“Balsamic.”

I grab a knife from the counter and begin mincing some garlic. I scrape the tiny bits into a bowl. Then, I gather the rest of the ingredients out of the counters: honey, a bottle of Italian Balsamic vinegar, a jar of mustard, and two salt and pepper grinders. The measurements come naturally to me despite not having prepared the condiment in decades. I whisk the ingredients together, watching the condiment lighten in color before melding into a homogenous mixture and finally drizzle a drop of dressing onto my finger to taste. A mildly sweet but pungent tang makes my lips pucker. I like it.

Luka roughly chops a head of lettuce, only stopping to look over his shoulder once. “Helene Singh knows how to cook?”

I roll my eyes before setting the bowl aside. I start slicing some cherry tomatoes and scoff. “I’m eight-hundred-and-three-years-old. I had to learn eventually.”

Upon hearing my real age, Luka’s focus strays from his knife. It causes him to slice his finger and he winces. Blood trickles down his knuckle, clinging onto his wrist. It’s a stream of red that haunts me.

Mommy! I cut myself!

A little girl’s voice echoes in my ears. I stand frozen in disbelief until Luka’s voice drags me back to reality. “It’s fine. Just a cut. I got some bandages in the drawer.”

I head to the drawer and find a mini first aid kit. I work instinctually and quickly. Luka nearly kicks me when I dab his cut with hydrogen peroxide. Bubbles sizzle at the top of his wound, drying up the blood. I wrap his finger with a bandaid and bring his bandaged finger to my lips for a kiss. It’s only after I hear Luka’s sharp intake of air when I realize what I’ve done. Abhorred and disgusted at myself, I back away. I return the medical supplies back in the kit to distract myself from the nausea that’s building inside.

The supplies don’t fit. I pour out all the contents and start again. I jam pack the scissors with gauze and frustrate myself even more when I slam down the lid only to find out it won’t close.

Mommy.

I take out the box of bandaids, and it crumples in my hands. My iron grip causes the bandaids to burst out from both ends like nude confetti. Bandaids litter the countertop and pile at my feet, conjuring images of autumn leaves on dirt roads. Sounds of horse hooves steadily clapping the ground play in my ears. My hands fly to my head; it feels like it’s going to explode.

Mommy?

Yes, Baby?

Will you forget about me?

I fall to my knees and bang my head with my fists. Luka tries to help me up, but I hit him. I slap him. I fight him off. I don’t want anyone touching me. I scream like a lunatic and tear at my hair. I want the voices to stop, but they won’t. They fill my heart with longing and misery. I drown from my own wretchedness.

Why would you ask that? I don’t recognize my own giggles. I catch myself holding an invisible body to my chest. I kiss a long mane of hair that isn’t there.

Mrs. Jenkins doesn’t remember who her daughter is.

Mrs. Jenkins doesn’t remember who she is either.

Why is that? The little girl asks in my head.

Because she’s old. And when you’re old, you tend to forget things.

Does that mean you’re going to forget me?

I hug the invisible girl closer to my chest. She has no face. She’s a vacant gaping whole in my heart that can’t be filled.

Never, I say with all the confidence in the world.

Not even in a million years? The little girl’s voice beams brilliantly with hope. I wish that someone would run a stake through my chest to end it all.

Not even in a million years.

I wake up lying sprawled out on Luka’s couch. There’s a bottle of brown liquor on the coffee table with an extra glass laid out for me. Luka sits on a pulled-out chair and takes meager sips of liquor before chugging the rest down. His somber visage ages him considerably. For a split second, I see Emiliano in his place. He reaches over to the coffee table to grab the bottle and pour himself some more. Red splotches cover his forearms, which I recognize as burns. Welts rise on the surface of his skin, but he seems numb to it all. The liquor sedates his pain even if it’s temporary.

“You tried to shove your head into a pot of boiling water.”

Luka’s voice is devoid of concern. He takes another sip of liquor and gulps so hard that I can hear it from where I’m lying. His eyes are slightly pink, revealing his drunken state. When I don’t answer, he shakes his glass of ice. The crystalline ruckus arouses me from my daze like a rude alcoholic alarm clock.

“I don’t remember doing that.” There’s a desert in my mouth. My words may as well be made of sand.

“Well, regardless of what you remember, you really did try to boil yourself alive.”

I feel like I should cry, but I can’t. Luka reaches down to pour some liquor into my empty glass and nudges his glass with my own. The small clink produced from the nudge lightens the air with ironic humor. I sit up and take the glass. Luka and I take a huge swig that leaves our throats burning. My face contorts to convey a grimace that makes Luka laugh.

“This shit is gross,” I say right before going in to take another swig.

“This shit,” Luka says as he bends down to pick up the glass bottle of liquor and presents it to me with a ceremonial flair. “––is a three-century-old bourbon that was gifted to me from George Washington himself.”

“Liar.”

“I’m serious! George and I used to go out and get some drinks after a rough day of battle strategizing. He was actually a really fun guy!”

“I don’t know…” I say, staring down at the amber liquid in my glass. “He always seemed pissed off at me or something. Maybe it was because I was spending too much time with his wife.”

“The guy had ivory and metal for teeth,” Luka says in Washington’s defense. “You would look grouchy too if you had two pounds of scrap in your mouth.”

A laugh pours from my mouth and shakes me by the shoulders. Eventually the wave passes through and leaves me exhausted as I was before. Luka captures my gaze with his own, seizing it so I can’t look away. All humor drains from his face and leaves nothing but genuine sincerity.

“It’s okay to miss people. It’s normal for it to hurt.”

My smile wipes clean from my mouth, and I feel sadness take me again. “I only ever had one child, one daughter, and I can’t remember her. I can’t remember her name, what she looked like...whether or not she had my eyes...I don’t even know what happened to her. I forgot about her until now. I forget a lot of things.” A cruel scoff causes me to shiver, and I take another swig of liquor. I welcome the burn. “I bet after tonight, I’ll forget about her again. I’m old.”

Luka leans back in his chair, lost in thought. His eyes reflect a labyrinth of memories and experiences worth lifetimes. I can’t see through him, but a part of me wants to know.

“Have you ever had children?”

Luka hides his smirk with his glass. “Not that I know of. No. Maybe I do and I just haven’t met them yet. But…” He says, turning to me. “I bet you were a wonderful mother. You remind me of my own. She was a lot like you...very stubborn and determined, a bit of a tease, she loved people furiously. It’s why my dad fell in love with her. Everyone loved my mom.”

“Did she really die from a brain aneurysm?” The question flies out of my mouth faster than I could stop it. Fortunately for me, the question fails to offend Luka. He actually seems grateful that I’ve bothered to ask.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t as natural as you think. My mom was human and it was only about time until she aged and died. My father convinced her to let him turn her into a werewolf and for me and Daphne to get bit as well. Needless to say, my mother didn’t survive the process. And me and Daphne? You already know what happened to us. My father hasn’t been the same ever since. He became cold and he never stopped blaming himself. It’s why he got into medicine. A part of him thinks that there’s some secret magical formula to fix things but life doesn’t work like that.”

“That sucks,” I say with a heavy sigh.

“Having a fragmented memory sucks, too.”

We pause for a brief period. Even though we’re sitting right across from each other, it still feels like Luka is far away. There’s an insurmountable distance between us that’s filled with tension and caution. We both want to close the gap. The only problem is that we’re both afraid of getting stabbed in the back.

“You know...for a moment there, I actually believed you cared.” The liquor seeps through my mind, revealing my deepest inner thoughts. I’ve turned bitter from distrust. “You’re half-psycho. You’re not supposed to care. You’re not supposed to empathize. Why didn’t you just let me die? What do you possibly have to gain?”

Luka throws his head back to laugh. Now I’ve offended him, surely I have. Luka wipes a tear from his red eyes and shakes his hand of the tear. “Well for starters, less clean up. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get rid of a body in New York? The entire state is just a bunch of cities, and people, and steel, crushed together in a compact little space. Secondly, I got ethics just like any other decent person. There’s no way in Hell that I would just watch you boil yourself alive. And lastly, I’m half psycho. I’m a walking, talking, living contradiction. I stopped taking my medication just so I could stop loving you and yet…”

Luka’s mouth hangs open. Words remain trapped inside his mouth, choking him. Even he doesn’t know how he feels. I wait patiently for the rest of the words to come out, but a huge clap of thunder kills off the lights completely. We both stand up from our seats. An expansive blanket of darkness shrouds us; it amplifies every sound, every breath. My eyes quickly adjust to the absence of light and the rest of my senses sharpen. I can see every rise and fall of Luka’s chest and hear his heart beating wildly in its cage.

“Hold on.”

I raise my fingers towards the ceilings to summon ten little embers which burn my finger tips. The initial spark hurts my eyes, but I get used to it. The flames color Luka in golden orange light, bringing into focus all the features of his handsome face.

“That’s...nice.”

I arch my brow at him and say, “I’m not going to burn down your apartment if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.”

I come closer to him and grin when he maintains his ground. A part of me is disappointed. I’m so used to intimidating men that I don’t know what to do when they don’t run away. Luka brushes his fingers through my hair. It’s grown down to my lower back since I last cut it. I anticipate his fingers to get caught in knots, but they glide through seamlessly.

His touch tantalizes my skin. His thumb gently caresses my cheek as he inspects me. He checks the clarity of my green eyes and the suppleness of my lips. I observe how his mouth lifts at the edges and the way his tongue sweeps over his bottom lip. He blinks at me slowly, hiding his coffee eyes behind a curtain of lashes. Each lash is so thick and delicate, I can feel a breeze with each bat of his eyes.

“I don’t like the dark.”

It makes sense now why he can’t take his eyes off me. I’m the only source of light in the tundra of darkness.

“I thought you said half psychos don’t feel fear.”

I want him to answer, but he buries himself in the crook of my neck. His weight piles on me, threatening to knock me to the ground. I want to wrap my arms around him to save myself from falling, but my burning fingertips prevent me from doing so. A white flash of lightning gapes through the windows as if to tease me.

I slump to the floor, bringing Luka down with me. He hangs on me, clinging for dear life. Rain pounds on the ceiling. Violent breezes claw at the front door. Thunder shakes the apartment from its foundation with a relentless force that spares no one from its reign of terror. Nature’s cataclysmic persona evokes a gentle spirit within me, a maternal one. I exhaust one hand of its flames and stroke Luka’s curly locks, shushing him as I do so. His trembling body shakes against my own.

“It’s going to be alright. We’re going to be fine.”

It feels like an eternity. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I held anyone this close. It’s a strange feeling. I feel every aspect of myself, every domain, every wall, collapse. It’s all because of him. Luka Russo succeeds in defying all my expectations and brings out parts of me that I forgot that exist.

The lights turn back on, unveiling everything that had been hidden, making known the unknown. Luka and I rise to our feet and dust ourselves off. There’s a pink flush to his face that I can’t ignore. The petrifying look in his eyes exhausts the remainder of my flames.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

“What for?”

I wait for a moment and am surprised to hear tranquil nothingness. The rain has cleared. The absence of thunder puts me at ease once again. I turn towards the door.

“I should go. There’s probably a bunch of rippers out there waiting for me to kill them.”

“I have a spare room.” Luka interjects. His voice lifts off at the end as he waits with hopeful anticipation.

Somewhere in my mind, I recall the same exact moment three years ago. There we were, just us two, standing in the pouring rain. His curly hair weighs heavy with water and his shirt clings onto his skin, revealing the outline of his prominent chest. His eyes plead with me, begging me to stay.

When I don’t respond, Luka receives the message right away and leads me to the door. I stand in the vacant hall, hovering over the doorway. It already feels like I’ve been casted back out into the world.

“If you need a place to crash, you know where to go.”

“Got it,” I say with a confident nod.

“Okay.” Luka smiles back. “Well then. Good night, Helene.”

“Good night, Luka.”

The door closes gently before me, separating us once again. I linger at the door and wait for regret to set in, but it doesn’t. I’ve made a safe choice. But still, I wonder what would have happened if I had agreed to stay. What would it have led to?

I shake the thought out of my head.

I’ve fallen in love too many times with more people than I can count and it always ends the same way: them disappointing me or I end up disappointing them. I’m determined to end my final life on my own terms. No more romance. No more drama.

I’ll go out with a bang.