Kitsune: The Flip Side

He’s cutting a salad. Sliding the knife through the firm green stems. No thoughts in his head, no feelings inside. Or maybe it just seems that way. He’s so drunk he can’t feel his fingertips. They’ve gone numb. Why is he cutting this? He’s forgotten. Probably because he’s supposed to. Kit’s bracelets. Dangling on his wrist. One, two, three… Nine. He doesn’t even have to count. He knows exactly. He remembers how she tied them—fastened every single one. He remembers every meeting from the first to the last second. There was one more, a tenth… instead of a bracelet, he got something else. Instead of a memory notch—a full stop. That’s it. The end. Finish. Apocalypse. He looks at them and realizes he hates these harmless trinkets with a passion. They’re like notes from paradise, pages from a diary of happiness, nailed to your chest with massive spikes before someone gives you a boot up the backside. So that while you’re frying on a goddamn skillet, you don’t forget for a single second, you bastard, how happy you once were. Exactly… need to get rid of them. They’re burning his arm, burning his soul. Fuck them. Great idea, brilliant. Lou presses the knife to his wrist and drags it along the veins. The ceramic blade, sharp as a razor, slices through skin, fishing line, thread. Beads scatter across the table and floor like colorful spray. The knife shrieks, snagging on a silver chain with charms. It pisses him off; he hooks the chain with the knife and jerks. It snaps, slithering down like a silver snake. He looks at his wrist. He’s cut himself… large drops hurry out, falling onto the tiled floor. Beautiful. Like crushed raspberries. Kit… she used to feed him raspberries. They’d messed around and got covered in them from head to toe. Kit… He hesitates for a second, then presses the blade to his wrist and slashes his veins. Deep, down to the tendons. It hardly hurts, like a burn, that’s all. He cuts again and again… Nine gashes, blood geysering out. One for every meeting. A bit of a shame about the tattoos… He drops the knife on the table and slowly slides to the floor. A red puddle spreads rapidly across the light tiles. Everything will be fine and quiet soon… completely. His fingers go numb, his lips too. His head spins… moving is already agonizingly difficult… consciousness leaves him at the same speed the blood leaves his veins. Kit, Kitty, Kitsune… her mermaid eyes with their dark wells of pupils grow, expand, filling the space, hypnotizing him, and finally pulling him down into the black, viscous depths. He surfaces from this void—devoid of sound, smell, or color—in a hospital ward. The sharp scent of medicine and the hum of machinery were the first sensations to return. Then he felt how tightly his arm was bandaged, from fingertips to elbow. And both his arms were tied to the bed. Well, bloody brilliant… he’s probably in the loony bin. Then he opened his eyes and saw the light from the hallway, falling into the room in a square through the little window in the door. It was dark outside… night. Then he felt a searing thirst. Some fluid was being pumped into a vein in his intact arm, but his lips were parched and cracked. He tried to lick them. But his mouth was a desert too. I wonder who saved his arse? In the back of his mind, Lou vaguely remembered a figure leaning over him, speaking; he remembered blurred flashes flickering in the dark abyss. Jeff? Tom? A doctor? Or maybe it was an angel? Or Death? Who usually visits the dying… But he hadn’t died. And he couldn’t tell yet if that was lucky or not. The night dragged on agonizingly. No one came in. The machines worked steadily, likely sending data to a nurse’s station somewhere. Louis lay wrapped like a swaddled infant and remembered. Back then, after the row over the drugs, Kit had stayed with him for three days. Lou had bent over backwards to smooth things over, practically crawling out of his tattooed skin just so she’d forgive him and trust him again. They walked a lot. He showed her all his favorite, memorable spots in his hometown. He wanted her to meet his parents, but she refused point-blank. She said—later, when her English was better. They already knew Tommy… Tom hadn’t really liked Kit, he was jealous. Until he met her in person. As soon as they met, he fell under her shapeshifter charm just like everyone else. The lads were practically pissing themselves with delight whenever they heard Kit was coming. Firstly, they still hoped to beat her at cards. Secondly, even without cards, she knew how to stir things up and talk everyone into some scheme. Ike once lost a bet to her, and his eyebrows were the stakes. Kit, armed with tweezers, plucked them into a completely camp little line. He swore like a sailor while they howled with laughter, filmed it on their phones, and posted it online later. Poor Ike had to pull his fringe over his eyes for a month. Lou smiled, remembering that moment. And right then, the foulest sensation returned—the heartache. It came back without knocking, flowed into his chest, nested there between his heart and stomach, and began to whimper like a puppy left out in the rain. Lou groaned. No one could hear him anyway… And if they did—he was in a hospital, and you’re bloody well supposed to groan in pain here… And he didn’t have to specify which kind. Looks like they were right to tie him down. A tear escaped and rolled down his temple. He wiped it against the pillow. Kit… Oh, Kit… He’d ruined it all himself. After that incident, something between them had changed. No, not quite. It had cracked. Snapped. She stopped trusting him. No, she didn’t say that, of course. He felt it himself. That sixth sense. He’d quit the drugs, he really had… It wasn’t hard. He didn’t even need them that much. They were easily replaced by alcohol, which Kit didn’t object to so fiercely. She could drink herself, and she liked to, when the mood struck. But she knew her limit perfectly. Hell, she was made of nothing but virtues; he’d realized that right away. His perfect woman. Not his anymore… He’d started getting jealous of her. Fiercely, until he was blue in the face. He’d always been quietly jealous; he just tried not to show it. Kit herself would say with a laugh that she’d outgrown that pathetic feeling and gave Lou complete freedom. Her logic was: you can’t tie someone down if they want sex with someone else, right? No one has power over feelings. On one hand, he agreed… but on the other, it meant if she wanted sex with someone else, nothing would stop her either. Right? Then there were those crowds of men hovering around Kit like moths to a flame… Lou had made a discovery that wasn’t very pleasant for him—she was friends exclusively with guys. Truly friends. She was an equal. She’d pour them tea or vodka, she’d have a cigarette for company (even though she didn’t really smoke), listen to their problems, wipe their noses. Discuss women. There was always a fold-out bed in her flat for a “mate” who stayed late. And he didn’t suspect her of anything… but those bastards definitely had something else on their minds! He saw how they all looked at her… He started doing her head in. Properly. Like the worst kind of needy woman. No, he wouldn’t have dared to shout… Kit would have told him to bugger off immediately and permanently. She didn’t tolerate rudeness. But whining, quietly dripping on her brain, calling a hundred times a day, bothering her at the worst possible times—that, he did. With all his rockstar ego. He didn’t even ask her: what was she feeling? She said “I love you,” and that was that. And he felt entitled to suffer, describing his misery to her and demanding she drop everything and fly over to comfort him. Once he’d snapped, got drunk as a pig, and threw a massive tantrum… with tears and accusations that she didn’t love him, was using him, mocking him, etc., etc. That she had no soul of her own, so she fed on others'. Lou didn’t realize that due to the sudden drug withdrawal and the excess of alcohol, he’d simply developed psychosis. He was hurting and bitter. And he wanted to be with her. He thought he was absolutely right. And Kit didn’t understand either, because she was far away… So she just told him to sod off. She said politely—my boy, you have worn me out… why don’t you just… Actually, she apologized for being harsh later, said she loved him very much… but it couldn’t go on like this. She’d had enough. He was a wonderful guy. He’d given her the best time of her life. But it was better for them to split. Being together wouldn’t work, and it was better for him to find a girl closer to home… and younger. Someone not as complicated as she was. Lou only realized what had happened when she switched off her phone, wiped him from social media, and blocked him on Skype. Even then, he still hoped it was just a row and things would settle down. Bloody fool… How clever—to hand a woman a tangled mess of your doubts and problems and say “fix it!” And she didn’t bother looking for the ends. She just hacked through the knot and that was it. Resolved it in one go. Louis sniffled. The door to the ward creaked open, and he saw a familiar and beloved messy head. Tommy. :)