“I want to know something,” he says now, but then he pauses as if not sure how to say, “.....what was your first impression.... your first reaction or ....sense.... that first day in the lobby ....?”
our last phone call had ended abruptly like the time before with Willem
....but my mind has been in some kind of dark bog; tangled up with painful and agonizing emotions about life. and need. raw emotion ....I don’t know.... and maybe he suspects the mudslide ....it is too far within and under it to .... be able to get out of it.... not the kind of terror people talk about ....ever; like being on an island surrounded by colossal dinosaurs breathing fire and slime at you with just a boggy pit as the only escape and out there in the vast ocean is a lost path where your heart is still bonded to because so is everyone who once mattered
“What?” I say as I forget the question
“I saw the look in your eyes,” he says
Then remember the question,
“look? What do you mean....?”
“You looked at me like you recognized me,” he says now; his voice low, it is almost a whisper
I remember now,
“yes,” I say seeing it in my mind again
“Did you think you knew me?”
It is only a second that I resist this. Between his question and the heaviness of the inky black bog wrapping its cape to seal out the air I ....go there instead
“Why have you not ever mentioned these things before?” I ask him
or is it the safety of not having to face me that makes it possible to
“Just answer,” he says
“Yes....”
“You did ....” he says but he seemed to already know
So why do I choose the darkest corner on the floor to sit down in now..... and press my face into the curved wall and say into the phone,
“....but it wasn’t until that time in your kitchen when—“
“you took the cup,” he finishes my thought
and then I am back there again in that moment,
“then it was like I ....knew.... it connected to the other ....things.... the dreams and then it felt like I had been expecting it.”
“So what was your first thought?”
His question is so strange now as so much time has gone but it seems some things are always,
“why do you ask me this now, Jörn? Is it because what I’m going through and you know I’m—“
“Please answer,” he says
“You go from never mentioning any of this and now with everything going on you choose now to bring this up—I don’t understand, is there something more dangerous happening that you feel forced to?”
“Just answer.”
“He came back for me,” I blurt out
“Wha—“ he stops himself in mid-syllable. The strange silence of the mobile phone dead-air nearly eclipse the conversation.
was the call dropped ....?
until I hear his long exhale of breath, like he had been holding it in somehow and I guess then .... gives me courage to say what I never got to tell him until now,
“.... it was a strange chill that began like a tap on the shoulder and then took over and with it, like, the blinders came away ....even as it makes no sense.... it makes every sense.... that is ....what it felt like.... since you ask me this ....now.”
And I think now suddenly of what he said last time.... ‘I shouldn’t have left you there....’ and recognize the parallels
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