Hydrangea
Description
“I want to show you the dark side of the world.”
He said, while pushing me down. He kissed me several times, before grabbed my hair and cut it off. He cut my hair, then he burned it while looking at me with lazy eyes. I was watching him, wondering how much I loved him at this moment, and how much I wanted him to stop doing what he was doing. Somehow when he hurt me, I felt I was loved, I felt everything was right; whatever was happening was meant to be, even if it was me got beaten so bad I could barely walk. That was fine, I thought, if my legs were paralyzed, I wouldn’t run away from him. I would stay here forever, in this dirty hostel room that had no windows, and all I could see was his wet collarbones when he got out of the bath. Dear God, whoever you were, please give him to me, I heard myself praying, loud and clear; and my head was bleeding and my eyes were blurry when he hit me with something that looked like a giant stick. I couldn’t tell what it was, of course how I was supposed to know anyway; I was beaten up, and that was all that mattered.
“Don’t leave me again. Say it, say you won’t leave me here alone.”
He cried; and my heart broken into two.
“Baby, baby. Sweetheart, I will never leave you.”
I mumbled. My mouth was hurt. It was torn apart when he slapped me. I could taste how salty my blood was; it was like I was chewing steel and now it poisoned my veins from inside. Oh that was it. That was his love. That was his heart. He gave it to me while biting my bottom lip, then he it hard, so hard I felt like I could die.
“Did I break you?”
He asked.
“No, you didn’t.”
Then I said.
Then he held me tight; and all the wounds scattering on my body started to heal from the outside.
*
I met him few months ago. In a convenience store. A small one. At midnight. I bought a bottle of coffee, he bought a tube of cigarettes. The cashier looked at me, judged me I believed. I looked terrible, I knew. I hadn’t slept for three days straight. That was my daily life routine. I didn’t sleep much whenever I got high, and I got high every day, every hour, every second I could. When I ran out of money to buy drug, I ate. Food was my morphine. Food eased my pain. I starved myself ‘til the point acid filled up my stomach and my body began to eat itself. Food was always there as soon as I could remember. I lived with my mom, my dad died long ago before he had a chance to tell me what his name was. My mom, my little sweet mother who was working so hard to earn every single penny, I loved her. She was kind, she hugged me when she saw me sitting in the kitchen, and she rubbed my back to lure me to sleep. When she left, I could hear her cried. She cried almost every night. In morning, she woke me up while trying to hide her swollen eyes. As if it meant something, and I thanked her for that. My mom was just a damaged Chinese doll, but she was brave and she was stronger than anyone I had ever known in my entire life. I still loved her after she left me to go to the West with a guy in his big truck.
He came into my life like a typhoon. He hated that. He told me his name but I forgot. Somehow I was really bad as memorize people’s name. I often called them by whatever came up in my mind; it could be a color, an animal, a tree, ice or fire, coke, anything that reminded me of them. It worked for me, at least it seemed easier to identify a person with an object than give them an exotic word that has no meaning. I did remember my name, but I kept it secret as long as I could. There were only two persons in the world knew what my real name was. One was dead and one was gone. I was safe.
The first time we met, he asked me out. Actually it was after he paid for his cigarettes, and I was standing on the pavement like a statue, didn’t know where to go to, finished my coffee in half a minute and was about to cry. Someone patted my shoulder and when I turned back, the first thing I saw was his transparent brown eyes. It was like I was looking at a painting that I didn’t understand in a museum, too empty and small to figure out its meaning. It was like you lived your whole life and then one day, you found out that you were not as alone as you thought. His gaze fixed on me, our eyes locked and I couldn’t look away. It went on for a couple of minutes before he broke the silence by asking me if I wanted to “go for a drive”.
And I told him that “I do”.
“I do. A drive or anything. With you.”
“Nice.”
That was all he said.
He held my hand when he drove me home that night. He was quiet when I said goodbye. And I just couldn’t let him let me go.
*
It was good to reminisce, sometimes, if you got nothing better to do and you had too much time to kill. Did you know that you could always kill yourself instead?
I didn’t. I learned that two days after he strangled me while I was sleeping.
I could still smell his scent. It was the air I breathed, it was the thing that lived inside my lungs and I couldn’t tell you it was good or bad. All I knew was I didn’t feel pain anymore.
When I closed my eyes, I saw his face. He never smiled. But it was alright. He made me smiled and that was all I could dream of.
His tears were streaming down my face. Gentle and kind, it smelled like fresh herbs and warm sun’s rays. It brought out the feelings that I once experienced back to those days when my mom was still around. Her soft skin touched mine when we were cuddling on my bed. She would sing me a lullaby, her fingers ran down my spine, and it was something that could make you cry in a cold lonely night.
My lovely readers, whoever you were, I just wanted to tell you that I was not lonely the night he killed me. No, that was the best thing I ever had since I was born. Yes indeed it was.
He had his body on mine, his voice sounded like an angelic melody, his well-cut fingernails rounded firmly around my neck, and in a brief moment, I saw light. Before everything was swallowed into a summer night that I would never forget.
“I will never leave you alone.”
“I will be right here when you wake up.”
“Jiyong, take me to the river. Can you do that?”
“No one says I can’t.”
And he did.
Sunlight was on my face, clean and bright like a stream of diamond. I would go to the ocean, I thought.
And I did.
And it was beautiful. Everything was beautiful right before it breathed its last.
-x-
Foreword
*It was not about nyongtory when I wrote it. But after I re-read it, it fits. So here you go, my lovely readers. This is for you.
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