SERUM

TYPE 5

Maion's story

It felt good to be here. It felt like home. No - it was more than that. I don't know what home means, but when I was there...I think it felt like...home.

I liked to watch those odd and poorly made independent movies with Sacrael. I liked to watch Elli as he sat silent and shared a smoke with me. I even liked to listen to Raphael's worries.

When I was at my own home...or house perhaps I should say no one cared about me. I understood why they didn't, it was logical, but some part of me that didn't want to accept this cold logic felt a burning hate towards everything that had to do with it, a hate so strong that it had almost killed everything else inside of me.

I could understand what sickness made my mother say those things to me with her sloppy loud voice when she stood in front of the sink with a half-smoked cigarette between her wrinkled lips and peeled a carrot with shaking hands. This wasn't reality to her. Her everything was that bottle with that transparent light-brown liquid inside. That bottle was her reality. I could see the fatigue in her disgusting black eyes that were surrounded by a ring of brown-black decay. All of her was brown somehow. Her skin is quite pale, but somehow it's brown too, as if the earth had already consumed her and made her brown like itself.

And she was repeating the only lesson she had taught me in all her life: that I'm not worthy to be loved, not even by myself. "No one in the world cares about you. No one ever will. All they care about is themselves. Don't you forget that, you scum," she would say. Maybe she didn't mean that…But that's how I interpret it.

When I thought about her, that creature that had brought my god-forsaken existence into this world, I felt nothing whatsoever. She had taught me that, to not feel, because if you don't feel, you're unbreakable. She had repeated this cliché to me over and over and I felt nothing about that either. I'd shut my ears to her a long time ago. I'd shut my heart and my soul to the rest of the world a long time ago too. Only she could hurt me. Only she could drag the little nine-year-old, Maion, by his neck into the bathroom and hold a knife in front of his face that was stained with tears and his nose running. Only she could make him bleed like she wanted to make herself bleed. Because I was a part of her, of her blood but her blood was death itself.

But this special person had almost made me forget all about that. This person had smiled at me without asking for my reasons. I know it was in fact just a mocking smirk, but to me it was the most beautiful smile I'd ever seen. Because this smile wasn't a smile grown-ups give to children, an excusing smile passerby's gave, or the routine smile business people put on. Therefore he was the most beautiful one I'd ever met. He made something inside me change. He made me forget. Was that a bad thing? I don't know...It's pointless to think how things would have turned out if you'd chosen to do the thing you didn't choose to do just then. Those are thoughts that can drive you insane.

It took a while for that smirk to actually turn into a true smile, and when it did I was too afraid to watch it. I was afraid it might blow everything I'd been up until now away. Away just like that summer wind blew the delicate flower petals away, making me wish for summer snow. Summer snow like the feelings buried deep inside my heart. I don't really know what summer snow is or what it looks like, but somehow those words sums up my feelings. I imagine it's both warm and cold, possesses both the bold beauty of the summer and the immortal melancholy of winter. It was as if the petals of life would still float in the wind above my head even though the snow had transformed the world into white crystalline particles of death, as if I could stay with him forever without him ever smiling at me, without him ever saying the words he should've never let past his lips. Without him ever...

I knew he was joking when he called me things. He liked to call me a brat. I guess I was a brat, but for him I liked to be a brat, and he didn't seem to dislike it either. I'd learn all this about him by now, now that I'd been his companion for three months, the happiest three months of my short life.

I could hear his silent cackle when he gracefully turned on his heel and walked away from me, almost dancing, on the street, not waiting for me when I shouted at him to wait because there was something in my boot. He knew I'd run and catch up to him eventually, pounce him from the back so he'd have to shove me away and call me a brat again. I did anything to feel that warmth I so longed for.

Longing is black and I always long. I'm always black. His rays of light scare me and blind my black eyes that are so used to this darkness that they won't ever truly be able to grasp that light. I'm nothing but longing.

"Ueriel?" I whispered to his semi-sleeping face half hidden in the pillow. "Ueriel!"

"Uh...what? What do you want?" he grumbled, not bothering to open his eyes.

I nibbled at his ear and cheek, putting my arm over him and letting my fingers slide into his brown hair that was spread on the blue pillow, my thumb rubbing the side of his smooth forehead.

"Nothing." I grinned and started to kiss his face.

A grumble escaped him once more and then, with an annoyed sigh, Ueriel turned his head away and adjusted the blanket. "Shut up then."

"Don't pull, I'm freezing," I whined, snuggling closer to him and shivering from the sudden cold that was caressing the skin on my back.

"Get off me, brat. Go get your own blanket."

He'd already given up trying to talk me into going home to my mom. He realized he couldn't, that I'd just want to stay with him more.

"No. It's too far away and the floor is cold too. You go get it." I regretted saying that since I didn't want him to go get me a blanket. I wanted us to lie like we were now.

He was silent for a moment. I could hear his breath and the air in front of his nose was warm and made my fingers that I was holding in front of it damp. I rested my chin on his chest. He slapped my hand away and snorted, and then decided that he was too lazy to go get it, so he adjusted the blanket one more time to cover me too. "Sleep now."

I didn't say anything, my chin still digging into his chest. I feared he would soon push me away because it was hurting him, but for now he pulled his hand from under me and ruffled my raven black hair slowly, gently pushing the side of my head down on his chest.

"Ueriel?"

No answer even though he wasn't asleep yet; he was listening.

"What do you think summer snow looks like?" I turned my head to dig my chin in his chest again so I could see his face properly.

He raised an eyebrow and opened an eye. It looked funny. "I don't know," he said after thinking for a moment. I could tell he'd actually pondered it. I didn't think he would think about such a thing, I imagined him to be rather rational and a realist.

I pushed myself further up with my knees and toes, falling on him. He didn't try to push me off.

Both of his eyes were closed now, and I looked at his eyelids in the dark. The moonlight was giving off a white light, unveiling its true form to us from up there in space.

"I want to kiss you." I told his eyelids. They didn't answer and so I kissed him, trying to push my tongue into his mouth. He didn't resist, but he didn't welcome it either. Then after a while he gavein and kissed me back before opening his eyes and staring into mine. They looked as black as mine in the dark and they were expressionless like the rest of his face, like my face. But I felt the beating of his heart hurry up beneath me, betraying his facade, forcing mine to beat at the same speed too. And I liked to believe that there was blood rushing to his cheeks to make them look like mine, even though I couldn't really determine that in the weak light.

He rolled on top of me, our lips still touching. I let my hands slide under his shirt and slowly took it off him with his help. Ueriel took off my underwear and his own with frustration, sucking at the skin on the nape of my neck.

"That tickles," I squeaked, my head cocking automatically to shrug him off. He tugged at my hair to keep me from doing that, his other hand and his legs trying to force their way between mine.

If there is a limit to how many breaths you can take in a lifetime, I think my life shortened with by decade that night.

I pulled his head towards me and started kissing him again, breathing in the air he was breathing out. Ueriel touched my lower parts with frenetic warm hands, not trying to give me pleasure, but rather exploring me. He released his lips from mine while taking a deep breath through his nose and moaned silently against my shoulder when I touched his limb and licked his cheek.

Ueriel stopped suddenly, holding my hands down beside my head to stop me too. He looked at me and then tried to stop his nose from itching with his upper arm before turning to me again. My heels were digging into the mattress and his sincere wordless question made me cringe. I turned my head away, staring out of the window and at the stars, those heartless voyeurs. I heard him pull out a drawer, and then the awkward sound of the condom package opening and him putting it on. He reported that he was ready by turning my head forcefully towards him and kissing me, opening my legs further and forcing himself inside of me. The mattress was now making my heels burn and the blood left from my fingers that were clutching the bed sheets. I moaned as silently as I could. I don't think it was that silent though, because he placed his hand on my mouth and whispered "Shush!" while thrusting further inside me.

"I love you," he whispered hoarsely.

I felt my body mortify. The sounds from the insects and birds outside and the low music streaming from the always-turned on computer in the corner of the room deafened me. He always had music on at night. It had taken a while for me to get used to it when I first got here.

His barely audible moans made my head spin. I stared up at the ceiling over his shoulder, letting soft and fast gasps escape me. They wanted to get out, not because of pleasure, but rather because of panic and fear.

My desperate nails dug into his shoulders, trying to signal to him to stop, but he just continued and I couldn't manage to move.

Ueriel just repeated the words over and over, but I knew it was something he was saying in the heat of the moment. Or did he mean it? Nevertheless it was like swords piercing my whole being.

He emptied himself, slowly sliding out only to fall on top of me and slink his arms around my body to fall asleep.

I laid awake all night, listening to the music and trying to distinguish the words.

Mother taught me only one lesson in the course of her short lifetime, and that was that I didn't deserve love even from myself. So I listened to her and didn't love myself. Therefore I cannot ever love.

Longing is black. Longing is all I ever was, am, and will ever be. I'm blackness. I don't have a heart because this longing resides there, but since longing is black, there is just a black space where my heart should have been.

When the Sun woke up and compelled the dust to dance in the yellow air, I packed my bag of memories and left.