• Previous part (14)

At the intersection between the Antonio Valverde and Pintor Berrueta streets, I leaned over the graffitied railing to watch the two feet of greenish water flowing below, where countless small waves collided. The sight of muddied pebbles and an aluminum can rippled as the watery creases glided in undulating curves of light and shadow. Every second, the universe’s CPU calculated millions of minute interactions along this insignificant stretch of river even if they passed unattended, and remained barely comprehensible to the few that stopped to look.

“Hypnotic, isn’t it. Always moving but never going anywhere. Just flowing along whatever path was carved out for it centuries ago.”

I had waited three days to hear that voice once more. Elena had tied her almond-blonde locks into a ponytail, save for a few strands that framed her face. Afternoon sunlight bathed her forehead and crown, igniting her hair into warm, shimmering gold. The light caught her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, revealing their smooth texture, while her pale blues shone cool and glassy in the shade beneath her brow. A gradient descended from the illuminated ridges of her collarbones to the zipper of her black hoodie.

Elena tilted her head slightly, and along her bare neck, the right sternocleidomastoid contracted and relaxed as if alive, outlining the dark hollow between the muscle and the graceful curve of her throat. I imagined my gaping maw encircling her slender neck, teeth pressed hard and sinking into her spasming, taut flesh, pulse thumping against the tip of my tongue, then I’d clamp down and yank, severing veins and arteries, ripping sinews and muscle that would stretch like melted cheese before snapping. I’d chew on her succulent, coppery flesh as hot jets of lifeblood from the glistening crater in her throat with its exposed tracheal rings blessed my face in crimson splashes.

She adjusted the strap of her backpack, slung over her left shoulder.

“I should warn you: I’ve barely slept four hours. I dreamed I was sitting in an empty bathtub while a giant cockroach stared at me from the bathroom wall. It had these alien, eerily-intelligent eyes that made me feel exposed, like it knew things about me I don’t even know. Then I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“So, not unlike a certain human with whom you spent an afternoon at Bar Palace. Who, as you put it, dissected your darkness.”

Elena’s eyes widened. She turned her head and knit her brow as her lashes fluttered nervously. Then, she fixed me with a contrite gaze.

“My brain does have this twisted way of processing things—turning real connections into monstrosities I can understand better. Maybe it’s easier to deal with a giant insect than a human being who might see through my bullshit. But no, that wasn’t a cockroach version of you.”

“How can you be sure?”

“You make me feel seen, not exposed. That cockroach was older, almost like a father figure. Or maybe a god. A godroach. The Eternal Lord of Filth. It had been watching humanity since we crawled out of the primordial ooze, and it spent its time judging us, judging our entire species, as it waited patiently to inherit the Earth after we nuke ourselves to oblivion.”

“I’m glad to hear I wasn’t a bug in your nightmares.”

“Anyway, what’s this place you want to show me? Hopefully not a mass grave of your victims.”

I pivoted and pointed toward the blocky apartment towers, one a muted taupe and the other cantaloupe-colored, further up the narrow, sloping road. Towers erected decades ago to shelter the dutiful working class that once stored there, few would escape their confines except in a hearse. On nondescript balconies, potted flowers fought for distinction, futile as a thin coat of paint on a rusted hulk.

“We have a bit of a hike ahead of us.”

Elena’s fingers lingered on the zipper of her hoodie before dropping to her side.

“Artia? You’re taking me to the place where dreams come to die? Growing up, I thought these towers looked like enormous gravestones.”

“Our destination lies beyond this decaying corpse of a neighborhood, and I’m confident you’ll enjoy it.”

“Figures we’d have to walk through the worst part first. Some twisted metaphor for life, right? Trudge through the rot before you get anywhere worthwhile. If there even is such a place. Lead on then, mysterious guide.”

We headed up Pintor Berrueta Street on a narrow sidewalk that corralled us into single file. As we passed a row of recycling bins, a green igloo belched its fetid reek in our faces. I held my breath, then crossed the road toward a corner bar.

“Stench of the apocalypse,” Elena said, a couple steps behind me. “The end creeping on its way to gobble us up.”

“Or the stench of stale alcohol.”

We climbed a short flight of stairs into a murky arcade sheltered beneath a concrete overhang. Half the businesses had gone bankrupt; the plate glass windows had been papered over, and the metal rolling shutters had clanged shut.

“We’ve witnessed this town fall apart, haven’t we?” Elena asked grimly. “Not in one big catastrophe, but in tiny individual tragedies, piece by piece, year by year. A slow, agonizing necrosis. The stores we frequented as kids, the playgrounds and parks we played in. Irún’s heart and lungs are failing, and no one gives a shit. I’d leave, but where would I go?”

“Anywhere away from here. That’d be a good start.”

“What other place would you recommend? Aw, crap.”

I stopped to look behind me. Elena, hands tucked into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie, twisted her slender right leg as if showing off the two stark white stripes running down the sides of her black joggers. The cuff of that jogger leg had rolled up, unveiling a pale, sinful ankle that would slither into my dreams. She stared at her untied right Converse.

Elena shrugged, then skipped ahead while fluttering her hand in a winglike motion to urge me onward.

“Let’s keep going. I don’t want to stop here.”

We pressed on through the shadowed passage. An elderly woman, likely in her late seventies, doddered towards us, taking up the center of the arcade. She had wrapped a plaid scarf around her neck, over a timeworn cardigan. As she carried a tote bag in a papery, veiny hand, she lifted the other to point at Elena’s canvas shoe.

“You’re dragging your shoelaces along the filthy floor, dear. They’re going to get dirty.”

Elena sidestepped the old lady, eyes fixed straight ahead, but her eyelids twitched. The woman called out behind us.

“You should be careful. You’ll trip on those laces.”

I spoke over my shoulder.

“She knows.”

Elena had frozen mid-step, a scowl distorting her features as her eyes rolled back. She whirled around and stepped closer to the elderly woman, whose face had crumpled into a webwork of wrinkles, whose shoulders had hunched as if her torso were collapsing in on itself.

“Have you ever worn shoes with shoelaces?” Elena asked coldly.

“If I have ever worn shoes?”

“With shoelaces.”

“Of course, dear. I was young once, too.”

“Okay, so you know that when one’s shoelaces come undone, the person wearing the shoes is aware of it, and you’re just bothering a stranger for no reason.”

The woman’s sunken eyes widened, and her lips quivered.

“Dear,” she started in a conciliatory tone, “there’s no need to get upset. I was just trying to help. You’re going to trip and hurt yourself.”

I could hardly tear my gaze from the sway of Elena’s almond-blonde ponytail, yet someone in that desolate arcade needed to stop this nonsense. I fought the urge to rest a hand on her shoulder; who knew how she might have reacted.

“This may be the epitome of ‘not worth it,’ Elena.”

She turned away from the elder and strode ahead. After she passed me, I quickened my pace to match hers. She sighed deeply as her right Converse dragged its undone laces. We climbed a longer flight of stairs. To our left, the wall was blighted by a collage of jagged tags. We stepped out of the arcade onto the asphalt of a parking lot. Decades of pedestrian and vehicular traffic had eroded the once-solid zebra crossing into patchy remnants. Elena raised her eyes toward a peach-colored apartment tower.

“The world feels strange and fragile, about to fall apart like a cracking facade and reveal that this whole thing has been a cosmic joke. Do you ever get that feeling, Jon? In such moments, I wish we had a soundtrack to our lives. Something melancholic, like nineties shoegaze.”

When her pale blues met my commonplace irises, her lips parted as if she were about to continue, but then she glanced away and lowered her head. Her eyebrows drew inward, her lids grew heavy.

“I can hear your thoughts,” Elena said. “Be grateful an old person tried to help you, you miserable bitch. You didn’t have to be polite, just smile and keep walking. You could have given her a moment of good feelings instead of this bitterness.”

“That’s you self-flagellating. I couldn’t give less of a shit about the old bat. I just didn’t want you to get riled up for no good reason.”

Elena’s voice carried a trace of anguish.

“If I want to drag my fucking laces along this disgusting pavement, that’s my prerogative, and if I trip and break my neck, well, good fucking riddance. One less burden for my parents, one less monster for the world to deal with. So keep walking, and mind your own business. What’s next? Someone stopping to remind me to blink? To breathe? To keep my heart beating? People grabbing onto any excuse to butt their heads into someone else’s life. So desperate to feel useful they’ll point out the most obvious things just to convince themselves they matter. Looking for connection where there is none. Sorry, Jon. Four hours of sleep and cockroach gods. If it serves as consolation, I’m bound to end up worse off than that hag. Senile. Desperate to talk to anyone. But I’ll have nobody, because I pushed them all away.”

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Author’s note: today’s song is “Brand New Key” by Melanie Safka.