Darkling
Authors: Mima Sabolic
Darkling
Mima Sabolic
Copyright © 2013 by Mima Sabolic
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Contents
“Oh yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am”
- Virginia Woolf, The death of the moth
“Men died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh”
- Lord Byron, Darkness
Chapter 1
Free will
Some chase dreams, some nightmares. I’m still not sure which course I have taken.
It rained the entire road trip, which was not how I pictured my departure. I tried not to long for the Californian sun, because this was supposed to be a temporary absence. Every change is good—at least that’s what the brochures say. But I’m not used to it. I guess that’s why I drove the I-80 and ended up in this remote place, chosen by the blind landing of my index finger on the map.
Sioux City, Iowa. The town of sky walks.
I stayed at the Clarion Hotel. There was a conference in town, and I was lucky to find a room. I didn’t mind the crowd; for three days I had purposely avoided every soul on the road, so the sound of chitchat and the sight of a few smiling faces felt good for a change.
The Fourth Street Historic District was a block from my hotel. I walked in the shadow of brick buildings designed in neo-romantic style, a well-preserved legacy from the nineteenth century. Flower shops, bookstores, and bars filled the spaces behind the store windows. It was cloudy, so the color of stonework and old streetlights stood out in contrast to the rest, and there was a marker on the street—something with a name, but I couldn’t see it clearly through the heavy traffic.
Regardless of the traditional idea of Iowa rural scenery, this town had a certain allure. The mixture of history and spirits created a nice atmosphere, even on such a gloomy day. I had read on the net that
Children of the Corn
was filmed in Iowa fields, and that musician Glen Miller was from there too. I pictured the sound of trombones mingling well with the mid-fall weather.
My dad was a sucker for jazz. In our first apartment, instead of paintings or photographs, framed vinyl covers and flyers featuring significant jazz characters had filled the walls. He played piano. Nothing professional, just for his own pleasure. He never attended music school; he was an accountant and apparently lived in two different worlds: the one where he was, and the other where he would have liked to be. Thinking about my parents, I don’t know if he was right to live as he did, or if he just couldn’t do it—life—differently.
Nina Simone for rainy days and Billie Holiday was for melancholic moments. No matter what my taste in music was, I’d never lose the memories of that old crackling vinyl sound. That was the sound of home.
A tourist brochure from my hotel said that, of all the states, Iowa has the most towns named after European capitals: Lisbon, Luxemburg, Madrid, New Vienna and Rome. However, the populations of these towns were miserably low. Rome only had 113 people! And Swedish immigrants were the founders of Madrid. I found this interesting.
Hunger gnawed at me, so I stopped in at the first restaurant I saw. Without a second thought, I ordered a double cheeseburger with French fries and a Coke. The menu said I was in
Dante’s
. I figured it was nice to know the name of my poisoner.
The place was half-full. A gray-haired man, who someone called Bob, nervously watched football on the TV that hung from the wall.
A girl with the nametag “Sandy” brought my feast, and, as usual, I hardly ate and shuffled the food around my plate.
“Do you want a box for that?” Sandy asked.
“No, thanks,” I said, and then remembered something. “There’s a marker on this street. You know which one I mean?”
“Sure. It’s for Reverend Haddock, a victim of Prohibition.” Sandy returned to my table and planted her hand on her waist. “This town used to be a roost of alcohol, gambling, and prostitution. Iowa lonesome… where everybody closed their eyes for the good of profit.”
“It must’ve been fun.”
“Sure. You’d be sitting in a saloon watching two men fight over some paramour.” Her statement made a few of the patrons laugh, and I could almost see the wooden edges of the bar slowly transform into images from the past.
“One man decided to clean the town of sin and force people to obey the law.”
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“He was one tough bastard. But he took a bullet in the neck near that street marker.”
The suicidal mission of one against many. On my way out of
Dante’s
, I glanced at the booze collection. That Reverend died in vain, which reminded me how there’s not much sense to the passionate urges that make us move rocks. Especially when they’re motivated by the subjective whims of their time. Just like the truth, right?
On my way back to the hotel, Sandy’s words stayed with me. A slideshow of images passed through my mind: the shot, the bullet hitting bone, that tough bastard Reverend suffocating on his own blood, the bloody sidewalk, bloody street…
“Oh, sorry!” I said as I entered the hotel and bumped into an old man. I collected my thoughts, and realized that I was staring at him—into the deep, dark abyss of his eyes, deeper than I’d ever imagined possible.
I didn’t know what kind of face I had made, but he seemed equally startled. He wore a brown suit and held a dark coat in his arms. His posture was hunched. I’d never seen a face in such suffering. Even the position of his body followed an arc of sadness. Our gazes were locked in surprise. I could feel his pain stinging my skin. I didn’t know who he was or who he reminded me of, but I knew the pain he felt was something that no one should experience. Something that no one deserved. Before I realized what I was saying, the words had left my mouth.
“Here for the convention?” My outburst only intensified the weird vibe between us.
He was standing under a golden lamp near the reception desk. All at once, the noise of the other people in the lobby broke through to my ears. The convention was over for the day.
“You seem sad,” I stated awkwardly.
People were passing by us, noisily discussing dinner and the meeting. I wasn’t sure that he’d heard what I’d said, but his bushy eyebrows lifted and his eyes remained fixed on me.
Suddenly there was a tall man standing between us, his worried look locked with mine. I could hear the new man asking if I was all right. He repeated it twice. First, I heard a buzzing sound and then only my pulse beating in my ears. I tried to look for the old man, but I saw only his back. Two other men had appeared, and flanked him as they followed him out. They looked like the rest of the businessmen in the hall, but there was something different about their postures. The guy in front of me still gave the impression that if I fainted, he was ready to catch me. Avoiding him, I turned and retreated to my room, suffering the unnervingly slow elevator.
Shocked, I sat on my bed for a while. I had questions, but I couldn’t put my finger on any of them. I fell asleep fully dressed.
*
My scream woke me.
I pushed the damp hair from my forehead. Through the sunlight filling the room, I could still see the face from my dream—the sad lines and deep eyes gazing into me. They didn’t ask for anything; they just existed. My waking mind started to sweep away the dream-life pain. Those probing eyes still lingered in my thoughts, though. Suddenly, my throat soured; images of Selene and Kyle, fake touches and smiles, the silence of the friends who knew the whole truth…. And that was the moment when my
real-life
pain kicked in.
Lies. A ton of fears—hell, all my fears! I hated feeling like I couldn’t control my role in my own life! I now saw lies in every relationship. I felt like I was suffocating, I could barely breathe. A sharp cry left my mouth, destroying all my composure. I fell on the pillows, grabbing them tight, and then I sobbed, without a break, for hours. There was a lot of junk left inside me.
I believe I broke the record of listening to Dan Auerbach’s lines: “
Lies, lies… ohh, lies
” on repeat mode. When I stopped shaking and finally felt freer of the pain, a feeling of emptiness overtook me.
Staring at the white walls, I could smell my own tears. My body and my dark hair were stretched over wet pillows. I felt numb, fully exhausted. There were no more tears, only their shadows on the bed sheet.
When I was a child, I heard someone say that light-colored eyes see a brighter side of life, and dark eyes—the darker one. Mine are brown. It frightened me then, and now—I didn’t know what to think of it. I realized then that not only can you not trust others, but you can’t trust yourself, either.
It wasn’t hard to leave California. The problem would be going back, and that’s a subject I wasn’t willing to think about right then. That goes for some people I didn’t want to remember, either. I clicked the TV remote, hoping to find a good movie to help me forget about things.
There was a knock on my door.
It sounded again while I was deciding whether to ignore it.
In the silence between the knocks, I felt someone’s nervous presence outside. That was unsettling. I opened the door.
“What?!”
A boy, younger than me, was standing with his hand poised to knock again. He seemed startled, but I repeated my question in the same impatient tone.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I was told to give you this.” He held out a plate with a white business card. I didn’t take it.
“Mister is waiting for you in the lobby.”
Mister? Bushy eyebrows flashed in front of my eyes, so I took the card and closed the door. The card was a shade of pearl and felt nice to the touch, which instantly reminded me of
American Psycho.
Oswald Gray
Gazini, Inc.
Intelligence Analyst
Interesting. I quickly took a shower and dressed in jeans, a black shirt and a pair of Converse gathered my hair into a ponytail and left the room. I didn’t pass anyone in the lobby. Walking toward the leather sofas, I noticed the over-polite guy from the night before. I immediately looked around for the old man, but no—we were alone. The guy stood up and gestured for me to join him. Unwillingly, I approached.