This was a great experience that I doubt will be often. Getting to write a story inspired by artwork and music by the same creator. I feel like more than ever the music really drove the narrative on this one.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Artem Chebokha
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8eNe4G
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Her love was a horizon lodged in my throat. Flat, with a pulse of steepled rooftops, but that pulse was rare. Always dead center, no matter how high or low you went. And I usually went high.
Slick aluminum shingles, always precarious, but so was she. Broke me out of equalibrium with more than her eyes gazing at me above a mask through which her hot breath puffed clouds more beautiful than the ones above. It smelled like the sun. Felt like it, too. When she leaned on my shoulder, face to my neck, angled up to aim at the spot behind my jaw and below my ear. Got me every time, skin electric.
“The best kind of sunsets are the ones that look like the end of the world,” she’d said.
That one had, a swirl of fire with a hot center. Like looking at a cross-section of Earth, that molten core bearing down on me. I shied away from it. She noticed.
“Afraid of heights?” she asked.
I shook my electrified neck. The brush of her soft chin that had escaped her mask made it worse. Made it better.
“You afraid of germs?” I shot back, stupidly. Her hand left mine, and the leaving made me remember that it had been there to begin with. That’s when I knew she was for me. That feeling of absense. A hole. I know that sounds fucking cheesy, but it’s true.
“Prove it,” she said and sprinted away across the roof.
My sneaker slipped on condensation before I even considered going after her. Maybe I was afraid.
Her silhoutte soon matched the rest in the dwindling light, head bobbing like a moon or a sun, bringing chaos to the skyline. In that moment, I felt like I could touch the moon, or the sun.
I went after her, skirting vertigo and chimneys and air ducts, telling myself that if I kept up my pace, not hesitating, I wouldn’t slip and end my life. Somehow I knew she was worth it. The hand she’d held was so cold it hurt, and I feared if I didn’t hold it again, it might shatter like ice. I know that sounds fucking cheesy, but it’s true.
“Hey slowpoke!” A call that came from everywhere as if she had ascended to the sky, became the earth and everything in between. But no, that was just my disorientation. I honed in on her location, standing with hands on hips in that sexy way, wet asphalt glinting like gold dust around her.
I found my way to a fire escape, and she laughed me the whole way down, clapping me to the finish line I did and didn’t want to reach.
She tugged her mask down and blew me a kiss before dashing down the street to anywhere I’d follow. Where I followed her was through a maze of piss-scented alleyways, home to a nation of cats who ruled homeless men in cardboard castles. They were scattered ball bearings that tripped me up.
“I was wrong,” she said gripping a light post with one hand, circling it. “You’re worse on the ground than on the roof.”
No kiss this time, virtual or not, before she made her way to the ribbon of water that looked even more majestic, slim and precise, bringing the sky to the ground in an illusion that made my eyes hurt.
I picked my way to the docks. She wasn’t among the crates crowned with rope and bird shit. I held my sleeve up to my nose to mask the smell. Nothing pretty about that.
Then something flew toward me, a bullet, a torpedo, a meteor. That frozen hand of mine was my dominant, so I brought it up to deflect the missle, but it was as heavy as a block of ice. My head took the impact instead, right on top.
The cutest laugh you could call a cackle flocked around me. Birds took flight as I stumbled back. I mentally thanked the deck hands for leaving so much rope. And so many crates.
She joined me then, to rub it in. Or so I thought. She glided to me and kissed the top of my head with her mask still on.
“I always hated football,” she said, picking up the object of her declaration. She tossed it from hand to hand. “But my brothers made me practice.” She nudged herself a seat next to me. “I always thought it was such an ugly shape. So I disassembled the one we had and reassembled it into a heart shape. I’m damn good at sewing.”
I should have laughed, but I didn’t, and I could see she waited for me to.
“I like it,” I said, and I did.
She punched me in the shoulder. “No you don’t.”
I looked into her eyes that were like staring into the sun. A crash sounded in front of us.
“Whale!” she said miming a telescope. She found it funny. So did I.
She held my hand, and it came back to life. We watched that lone giant breach once more until its waves were like all the others. She took my head in her hands, and I almost melted, unsure if I would be able to stand–no that was the wrong word–
She tilted it down to where I faced the ground, our feet touching, connected, and right where my cowlick exposed a hint of scalp, she placed her unmasked lips.
Remain whole. It was a phrase I’d needed, not a word. And I it blew my roof off. I know that sounds fucking cheesy, but it’s true.
“Tomorrow?” she asked.
She didn’t give me time to answer, because she knew the answer, another shadow lost among shadows.
I stayed there, my hand heavy again, but my head weightless, afire, never smoldering.
I never saw her again, but I still come back to that spot, where I am now, because I can never miss a “tomorrow.”
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