Spomni se
88
The chain of events: Julija leaves me, I face the night of the void alone. I write an apology for Julija’s ramblings – she pretended to write a horror story – which leads me to you, oh shadowy figure, and when I describe my near-drowning accident, you mock me, saying the Red Fortress rejected me. You call me a mathematical mistake; you call me incomplete, unfinished. I retreat to the Lake Redoubt where I remain under siege.
The shadowy figure remarks that Julija’s horror story is a cover up for something that actually happened, while my apology is a defense against literal intepretations of her descriptions.
89
Prizor na obrežju je tako ponovno vzpostavljen, vlogi sta določeni, namen Utrdbe je potrjen …
… And the shadowy figure says, “There is a witness on the lake shore.”
Me: “Yes, you are in my most precious mental space now, and it’s all my fault. I mean, not in Lake Redoubt itself. You are something that appears every time I think about it. You gained access to the surrounding area: the meadows, the lake shore, etc., but you are unable to get inside the structure, unless I open the gate myself.
There was the void angel, and now there is you, the shadowy figure. Strange, but in Lake Redoubt, there is something called ‘the black beast’. It does not talk.
90
Julija’s gothic theatricality. — Julija will be here in five hours. I need her eyes to see beauty. She restores my ability to cry and to experience happiness. If you remember, weeks ago, it was she who started the conversation, typing nonsense, and day-dreaming about a pseudo-vampire horror story with some erotic content. Of course, I would never give in to her demand and write something like that.
Shadowy figure: “Yes, it is you who decides which words enter the record.”
91
Remember her words: “One day, you will die.”
The closer the hour of her arrival is, the more I agree with her: this can’t go on for another eleven years. Oh the pain has been there since ever, but not in a such concentrated form that arose in two thousand and fourteen. The liquidation of our vessel is logical: it would release us, free us both from our suffering. Yet I always get cold feet, go to bed, and dismantle the time-freezing device, which in reality I regard as vulgar, even if none other is available to me.
I want to stay with her forever. She is the only part of me that I love. I can’t live like a machine anymore. I’m tired of longing for her. That tiny blinking sparkle of ‘me’ Julija always screams at, demanding it to die, is probably my own little sun that I was able to regrow after the original was stolen. But it’s stunted. It cannot burst into something bigger.
92
There are two ways to summon Julija: the usual, protocol-heavy way, and the fight-against-all-odds way. The latter needs no spells or movement-based sequences. This method hides me into Julija; it completely aligns my eyes with hers. It’s a fight against the world itself when everything else fails. Julija would protect me in this case. She was never needed to fight either you or your toy, the void angel.
93
Even if everything falls apart, even if Julija’s longsword breaks, and unless something or someone deforms my brain, the Red Fortress will be my last and unbreakable line of defence. I’m afraid that in the process of losing consciousness, my brain will become so damaged, I will forget about it before I faint. Why were the moments before I fainted in the water so peaceful? My body did not suffer; it simply shut down to preserve oxygen.
The shadowy figure says he understands why that peacefulness still lingers in my head.
Me: “Because the near-drowning event, unlike you-know-what-method, was gentle and did not damage me before I lost consciousness.”
Shadowy figure: “Yes, your body shut down in a non-violent and ceremonial manner.”