The Book Keeper (21 page)

‘Won’t, you are not my wife,’ I answered, looking in her eyes, her pupils large, soaking me in.  She took her hands off of me, startled.

‘You are married?’ she asked, shocked.

‘No. I have promised myself to give my wife my purity to her as a wedding gift. I feel very strongly about it.  There is nothing better to give
as a gift to my wife, than my love, my devotion and my purity,’ I tried to explain to her, without hurting her feelings.

‘Cohen.....’ she whispered as she put her hand back on my chest, a tear rolling down her cheek.
I pulled her against me and held her in my arms. 

‘I’m sorry. I feel like I have disappointed you, let you down,’ I whispered against her head, my eyes closed.  I was concentrating on controlling my manly desires.  I could take her here.  A moment of weakness.......for that brief pure ecstasy. It was so tempting.

‘Don’t apologize Cohen.  You are so much more than I could ever have expected. I am the one who is sorry.  I got lost in my feelings for you,’ she explained in a quiet voice.  I kissed her head.

‘I understand Georgia. Don’t be hard on yourself.  You probably have men eating out of your hands.’ I said with a low voice.

‘Yes, I am paid a lot of attention by the male population, but none has attracted me to the point of wanting to be physically intimate with them, like you.  And then it turns out that I can’t have you,’  she said, her voice sad.

‘Your purity will be the greatest gift that you can give you husband Georgia. Knowing that you are un
touched will be the greatest turn on for him.  He will love you all the more, and your past loves will not come back to haunt you or your husband,’ I tried to explain to her with a gentle voice.

Deafening thunder rattled the foundations of the building, cutting off the power supply.  Georgia tensed in my arms.
I kissed her forehead and released a slow breath against her skin.
Georgia.....

‘Stay with me,’ she whispered. 

I bent my head down further until my lips found hers. I kissed her gently and pulled away, squeezing  my eyes shut in sheer frustration.
Georgia......

She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her body into mine.

‘You are torturing me Cohen.  I want you.......inside me,’ she said, her voice low.

‘And you think that I am
not tortured?  Every cell in my body wants to be joined to yours.  Please don’t make this harder for me than it already is Georgia.  I will walk out that door if you continue to break me,’ I whispered into her ear.

But then her lips were on mine again.  She was kissing me with great passion, urgency, a hunger that could not be sated.

I moved my hands into her hair, our lips still locked, kissing her back deeply, and then pulled away briefly.

‘
Oh, I want you so badly Georgia. I want you.....’my voice husky.

Her evening dress fell to the floor.  She stood before me with her naked beauty.  Her pale unblemished skin singing to me.  She was a goddess.  She pressed her full breasts to my naked chest, and then the rest of her body
molded against mine.  I wrapped my arms around her and caressed her perfect back, so soft, so warm, exquisite.  How could a woman send my senses into a spin, spiraling down and into the point of no return.

‘Georgia..’ I said, my voice pained.

I released her and slid down the wall to the floor, my hands over my face, hiding my agonised face from her. My heart was tormented, by my mind.  My heart wanted the pure passion, to be temporarily lost in a world of ecstasy.  But my mind was restraining me, whipping me to submission.   

I ran my hands through my hair, scratching my nails along my scalp.  Physical pain would haul me from despair.  I stood, walked to the fireplace and grabbed my shirt.  I walked towards the front door, stopping momentarily to button my shirt.  I felt her hand on my shoulder.

‘I’m sorry Cohen,’ Georgia whispered.  I stopped midway through the last button of my shirt and stared at the closed door for a second. I took a deep breath, put my hand on the door knob and turned it, opening the door to my escape, and back into my comfort zone. 
I’m sorry Georgia, but you are not my wife.....

Dark storm clouds continued to unleash their fury in the nightshade hours.  I walked home in the pouring rain. Then nobody could see the tears that rolled down my face.  My heart hurt, my head hurt, my body ached for her,
my body ached for her
.

Live my life with no regrets.

And I would regret my moment of weakness, my moment of indiscretion with her when I meet the love of my life.  The woman whom I will love deeply, cherish and adore with my whole heart. The woman whom I will want to wrap my wings of love around, and protect her with my life. 

I will know her when she walks into my life.  I will know......
I have to believe that!

I start
ed to run in the pouring rain.  The physical pain will override the emotional pain.

As
I unlocked the door to my apartment, the drops of blood on my shirt caught my eye.  My scalp, my frustration. My life.  About to change tomorrow – for worse.

Under the hot water of the shower I felt nothing where my heart should have been.

No happiness, no fear, no hate, no love. 

Nothing. 

I was like an empty vessel.  It was like my body was undergoing metamorphosis in preparation for the Mind Reading Implant tomorrow. I closed my eyes and slid down the tiled wall, and sat on the shower floor, the warm water cascading over me like a waterfall, washing away the human-ness from me.  My heart was now void, my mind empty.  I was ready.

Chapter  15

Complete darkness surrounded me as I awoke from a nothing sleep with my nothing heart and nothing head.  I closed my eyes.  There was no going back.  I had committed to being the guinea-pig.  I could lose 100% of my sight in my right eye if the design components and organic combinations were incorrect. But if the engineering of this design was flawed, it had to be me who should pay the price of blindness, not someone else.

The weight of my backpack surprised me as I loaded it onto my shoulders and left the bedroom, and headed toward the front door.  The taxi would be arriving at any moment. 

I ran my hand along the wooden dining table as I walked to the front door.  My fingers grazed the bloody book.

‘You must write your full name and birth date in the book – it will all become clear.’

Her words bounced around in my nothing head, echoing in the vacant space.  I stopped momentarily and considered the deed that I must do.  Was I bound to it as the keeper of the bloody book?  Rules were meant to be broken right? 

The Bloody Book!
  I breathed in deeply, and then moved forward on my journey to the front door, and stopped.

A prominent bang sounded as my backpack hit the wooden floor. Infuriated, I turned and marched back to the dining table.  With
a blue pen, I was damned if it was to be black, I wrote my full name and birth date on the third pure white page of the bloody book.

Cohen Seth
Darcy

7.8.87

I closed the leather cover and lay the pen across the book and returned to the front door, hoisted the heavy back pack over my shoulder again and left to the waiting taxi in the street. 

Next stop, the hospital. 

Time was moving forward as though I was being sucked into a vortex. There was no escape. No waking up from the nightmare.   

The rain continued
as we travelled along to busy roadway. And it beat down upon my back like a thousand whips.

Admission into the hospital, pre-op and the journey into the operating theatre remain a blur.  Perhaps I had subconsciously shut off my mind to cope with what I was about to do.
Betrayal of my employer was a necessity, a must do.  Betrayal of the human race was unforgiveable, an enormous burden that would weigh upon my shoulders and heart forever. Would I survive the ramifications of what I was about to do?  The emotional burden that could possibly lead to self destruction?  My life was now a ticking time bomb, and the timer had been started.  Perhaps it was my destiny, and the timer had been ticking since the moment of my conception......

Then blackness overcame me……..

*~*~*~*~*

Pained seared through my right eye like acid burning my skin. The headache above my eye
was causing nausea. I didn’t open my good eye yet.  I didn’t want to. It would mean that I would have to face reality. The cold hard truth that I was now humanity’s number one enemy. Couldn’t I just stay in the dream state where anything that happened was not real, and hence I was protected in my cocooned surrounding.

The steady beat of the heart monitor began to annoy me.  I wanted to rip the bloody machine off its mountings and smash it onto the floor. Peace...I wanted peace.  But what peace? Peace from silence of sound, or peace in my soul?

The beeping of the heart monitor started to pick up pace.  The anger that I felt was being reflected by my increased heartbeat.  Within seconds I heard the sound of running footsteps approaching, and murmured voices over me. Then the sound of a female voice trying to persuade me to open my eyes.  Bugger!  I liked being in a state of suspended animation. 

No expectations.  No accountability.  No
pressure.

‘Mr Darcy, Mr Darcy,’ the angelic
and calm voice sang, while I felt the touch of a warm hand on my shoulder.

With great effort I opened my left eye. My right eye had heavy bandaging forcing it to remain closed.

‘Ah,’ I groaned as the pain seared through me again.

‘How is your pain Mr Darcy on a scale of 1-10?’ the angelic nurse inquired.

’10!’ I spat at her through gritted teeth.

‘Good to know Mr Darcy.  We can help you with that,’ she said, her voice calm.  She place
d a cylindrical device in my hand and guided my thumb to the top of it where there was a button.

‘When your pain is too much, push this button.  You will feel much more comfortable Mr Darcy,’ she explained.  I felt her push my thumb down on the button, and almost immediately my body relaxed, the pain numbed.  The world was instantly a better place.

‘Thank-you,’ I whispered to her.  She nodded, smiling at me, her clear sparkling blue eyes warm, caring.

The patient controlled analgesia was my best friend for two days. And then after that, I took oral pain relief.

Day four saw the removal of my eye bandaging.
It was neither pleasant, nor inspiring.

I was instructed to keep my eye closed as the bandage was removed, and to wait for the good doctor to tell me when and how to open my eye to meet the world.
  

The release of the pressure of the bandage on my eye caused an instant violent spinning sensation and nausea.  I struggled to keep the contents of my stomach
down. I breathed steadily through my tight lips to subdue the urge to vomit. After a short while the spinning ceased, and I was aware of the gritty feeling covering my eye, and then the cool sensation of the skin being cleaned around my eye.

‘Turn the lights off please,’ instructed the doctor.

‘Cohen……breathe out, and then slowly open your eyes.  Blink slowly when you feel the urge.’

I nodded my head slightly acknowledging his instruction.  It was do or die time. Eyesight or blindness
? Temporary or permanent?

I breathed out thr
ough my pursed lips with optimum control until little air remained in my lungs.  And then I focused on the muscles around my eyes, and opened my eyes with absolute control of the speed of opening.

My compromised eye lagged behind the healthy eye
as I opened them.  But open it was, accompanied by the air attacking it like acid, tears welling and running down my face.  I blinked slowly, in pain, then tried to categorize exactly what I could see.

It wasn’t clear what I saw, if I could see at all.  Darkness surrounded me, even with my good eye.  But that was the plan
, to introduce light to the implanted vision slowly, and to let my eye adjust to working with a type of filter over the lens. 

The doctor had not spoken.  His silence was
both irritating and frustrating. I needed to know what he was thinking.  It was a pity that the mind reading lens was not operational at this moment.  It would have been the perfect test for it. 

As each hour passed by, the light luminosity increased, until it was glowing at full wattage.
I sat, bewildered.  My vision was perfect. Not a defect in the field of view.

The good doctor performed the VEP test determining whether the optic nerve was working properly, the erg test for the retina response to lights of different brightness and colour, and the EOG test for eye movement as well as my visual acuity.
All good.

‘Cohen.  The outcome of the procedure appears to have been a success at this very early stage.  But I still refrain from declaring it successful officially until after six months.  During this time, your vision may fluctuate.  You may have glare, see halos during the stabilization period. I want to see you every four weeks for observation and fine tuning if needed.  Do you have any questions?’ Dr Williams asked, his eyes scanning my implanted eye the entire time, his finger and thumb on either side of his square chin.