You’re walking down the damp London streets with floods of people pouring against your steady pace in the opposite direction, your hands entwined by cold rough fingers that grip your icy skin with a firm clutch. The sky is a deep black that offers nothing but the light rain that lays gently over the open city, and festive lights hang above your head, glowing neon against the void that is apparently the sky. Your jacket is thin and you feel the coldness penetrating your skin, setting into your bones as you both wander in and then quickly out of shops in hope to find what you are looking for. You finger coats way out of your price range and wish you were the inventor of a money-making scheme that could reward you with everything you’ve ever wanted. But you’re not, and so you leave, returning to the hustle of the streets and the strange faces that glance at you for not even a second before passing you by.
He wears an orange hat, the one that looks like a tea cosy. You always thought it looked like a tea cosy, but you were too shy to mention it to him for fear that he’d get offended. It’s looking worn now because of its usage, the way he never shows his hair when out in public. He wears a thin jacket too, a mixture of green and white, one hand in his pocket and his other gripping yours. His skin looks clear and his freckles translucent against his slightly tanned sheath that covers the intricate patterns of human makeup hiding below. You realise how beautiful he is and a smile breaks across the sky, the rain pattering on the top of your head and down the nape of your neck.
The first thing you feel is the liquid running down from your nose. You realise that it’s not snot, because it doesn’t have that sweet, rank flavour that reminds you of eating bogies when you were a kid - it tastes metallic. Blood is dripping from your nose, down to your lips. You reach forward with a shakey hand and let the blood bleed over your dry fingers (you should take colder, less frequent showers). Before you can register where this blood has come from he grabs your head, his fist flying towards your face again and again as he pounds his knuckles into your nose and forehead. You ask him to stop, tell him he doesn’t have to do this. Your hands are covered in thick slushy mud from where he pushed you over the low bushes, and faces from the flats just three metres above peer out of the window at the ruckus below. You like it, he says. You like it.
The sky is no longer breaking with a winter smile, it’s fucking swallowing you whole.
You fight and try to push him off before he puts his finger in your mouth. You bite so hard that you hear a distinct bone-crunching sound and think that perhaps you’ve bitten his finger off (in fact, it turns out that your tooth became loosened at the root). He rolls over, running up the hill before stopping at a brick wall and continuously smashing his head against the hard surface. You watch him fall to the ground, guessing that he must have knocked himself out. Faces are watching you on the streets as you gather your belongings, fighting with the bush to retrieve your camera bag, and running up the hill. Your face is covered in blood, as are your hands.
Hell, you’re even wearing women’s clothing for a special dress-up night at the club you were en route to. Imagine that.
He won’t go, he refuses, and he buzzes and buzzes and you cry and you ask people to get rid of him but he refuses to. I’m gonna kill myself, he says, if you don’t come down here. You call the police, you’re frightened, shaking. You make a statement for an assault but say you don’t want to press charges. You’re such a sucker that all you say you want out of this is for them to make sure he’s safe, forgetting that he’s just decided to make fun with fists.
You try to resolve things with an intermediary. You manage to smile, because if you don’t, you’ll cry, but he retains his sullen look and rarely speaks. You see the sadness in his eyes and realise how complicated this situation is. You can’t stay in a relationship that leaves you feeling like this, but your heart is exploding for the person that you’ve always been waiting for. You try to justify his behaviour, you make it your fault, and you realise that has to change.
The sky is cracking open above you both, the black abyss of nighttime sparkles roaring in the solar spectrum. You look up, your neck craned backwards, and feel the slightest essence of warmth on the back of your neck. The slightest inkling of positivity in the mass of negative space that hangs over your tiny, insignificant head.
