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82
The huge clock appears in the sky yet again and pushes time forward.
“She WILL rage! You will be attacked with r-r-relentless force! … Julija is coming tomorrow!” I start moving from one seemingly random point to another. “She is coming, yet I’m getting sick of her. Listen, I can’t promise she will wage war against you, as she is unpredictable. I don’t know how she will feel, and I don’t know what she will do, but before that, and before I summon her by the usual ritual, we should commemorate the event!”
I gesture with my hands, carving a patch of blackness out of thin air. A set of images appear inside:
Me: “Welcome back, Julija! Welcome back! Julija! Julija!” I softly put her right hand between mine. “I fasted in your honour. You do not want me to be fat, do you? A-ha-ha, I’m so glad you are here!”
Julija: “I want you to be dead.”
Me: “I know! Which is why I prepared a contraption to freeze time. Come this way.” Upon seeing the device, she touches it with her ten fingers, and says, “It looks fine to me. Why did you fail last time? More importantly, why not use it right now?”
Me: “You know why. I summoned you because you are able to restore my ability to cry, to see beauty, and to feel happiness. You hold my sun. You stole it! And besides, you can’t pretend that you don’t enjoy yourself while you are here.”
Julija: “…”
…
It’s summer, and yet my whole body is freezing and trembling with fear at the thought I’ll give myself irreversible damage before I manage to faint. I’m sorry, but this won’t work! Something will have to push me … I can’t! You are asking too much, you bitch!!! … You are not even here anymore! It is you who should freeze herself, not me!!
…
Julija, I’m going to bed. My body did not deserve that torment.
Strangely enough, life without Julija would probably mean certain death.
83
She left because the summoning spell has a very limited duration by design. Had my body and mind been exposed to her sun for a week, I would have surely died. Tomorrow’s visit, Wednesday’s visit, is scheduled from late afternoon to Thursday evening.
84
The angel says that I’m guarding something.
Me: “I don’t understand. What am I supposed to guard? I know that she is a threshold. Even if I fly far, far away, she will always lurk beneath me. She wants me dead because, unlike me, she sees the world as it is, without any filters.
The angel alludes to abuse.
Me: “I was never abused as a child.”
The void angel suddenly vanishes into thin air, and from the distance I hear a new, different voice: “So, this is a matter of survival. The grey, cold, and symmetrical world was too much for you to bear.”
Me: “Symmetrical? Our world is not even a sphere: it’s a spheroid. Its orbit is not perfect. The whole universe is asymmetrical and imperfect. I don’t understand your obsession with symmetry. I agree with the first part. All those walls of mine are meant to protect my core, my dignity from the world I am forced to live in and dislike. To die unspoiled. To stay myself. To keep bad influences away. The violation was the result of the too emotional me living in a world that I deemed too cold and grey.
85
Honestly, I am so guarded either from my wounds or myself, that sometimes even the regular me can’t see the truth behind the thick armour I’ve been constructing since my childhood. I remember that years ago, during one night, the armour became transparent, and I was able to peer into the truth, but I forgot what it was. So many years of following my private protocols; it’s as if I’m trying to turn myself into a machine.
86
“So, have we met?” Silence. I start walking in a random direction, asking in a slightly loud voice, “Void angel, void angel, where are you?
…
Introduce yourself! Who are you? Why can’t I see you? Show yourself!” I’m showing teeth now.
…
Mister Unknown, you have taken the void angel away from me as if he were a toy. But that’s alright; his purpose was fulfilled, and I don’t want him back.”
87
Shadowy figure: “What you are doing is the work of someone who is writing a war report and does everything in her power to prevent a break-down.”
Me: “Before I may or may not remark upon your observation, and before I express gratitude to the fact that I was able to write again, I want to say that this document, which I have already partially turned into a fragmented story of fragments, will serve as an unpolished, coarse key to my Lake Redoubt, the character of which is much more solemn, and yet, au fond, also very violent and intimate.
The shadowy figure says that I should keep bitting at my flesh until I reach the bone.