Many Words In Silence

Chapter 3

Sometimes I wish I could do what Llaluna did. Move eight hours away from the place that harboured all the memories that I had with Blake. Just run away from every good memory that made the tears slip from your eyes all by themselves.

She could. She had the means. I didn’t.

Her house looked like her from the outside. Weird and wonderful, with just a touch of way too much colour. The walls were purple, the roof was red, and as if that wasn’t enough, the front door was painted the brightest pink I had ever seen in my life. It actually made me cringe to look directly at it.

“God, someone needs to teach this woman that not every colour looks good on a house,” Lucy exclaimed next to me, breaking my thought into tiny shards.

“Yeah, cause you would’ve probably just painted everything pink,” I answered with a little grin.

“Well… Pink does go with everything,” Lucy said with a raised eyebrow. “But purple and red just doesn’t go with pink in that way.”

“We should probably knock if we want to be let in,” I muttered. “I don’t really want to stay any longer than what I need to.”

“Look Elijah… I don’t know how to tell you this,” Lucy said. I tried to look her in the eyes, but she was avoiding mine. “Llaluna is kinda freaky.”

I could not help rolling my eyes at her; “Why, aren’t you a master of the f*****g obvious?”

“It’s not that Eli. I can’t go in.”

Something in Lucy’s voice had changed. It wasn’t nearly as irritating as usual. It was softer; deeper even. Almost like when…

“I get it. She sees things that we don’t always want to show the world,” I said, and even though the last thing I wanted to do was face Llaluna alone, I understood exactly why Lucy did not want to face her. “Did she say anything to you when you came to get the lock of hair from her?”

“She saw everything. And she just blurted it out. I wasn’t kidding when I said getting that lock of Blake’s hair was one of the most painful things I had ever done. Llaluna was an a-grade bitch.”

“Then you’d better get on your way?” I suggested, still not being able to get Lucy to make eye contact with me.

“Phone me when you’re done?” she asked, turning around and opening the car door.

“Sure. I don’t think I’ll be too long. Depends on how much she wants to torture me,” I said with a semi smile, trying my best to take the edge out of the situation.

“Love you my pretty porcupine,” she said as she climbed into the car, started it and drove off.

It took me a moment to take in what she had called me. “Pretty porcupine,” I mouthed as I shook my head. Someone had to really tell her that her pet names for people are not only offensive, but annoying to the point where you wanted to drown her in the vomit the pet name created you to bring up.

Pushing Lucy out of my head was a mistake. I could feel the anxiety pumping through my veins as I neared the pink front door. I tried my best to think about Lucy calling me a pink petunia, or a pretty porcupine, but I just couldn’t. All that was going through my head was images of the very last time I saw Llaluna. Since I never went to the funeral, the last time I saw her was the night when Blake died. I still remember her sitting on the floor, crying out. I never saw her again after that. Not that she did not try and reach out to me. I just could not bring myself to look her in the eyes. The same eyes as the ones Blake had. I could not see the sadness and loss in the same colour eyes that had talk me that he would glue me back together and make sure I would not be broken anymore.

As the door grew closer and closer to me, I could not help but wonder, if somewhere in the house the couch that I sat on with Blake was still there. I could not help wishing that the kitchen table where she read my tarot cards would not be there anymore. I hoped that somewhere in the basement or the attic of this ridiculously painted house there would still be boxes with memorabilia of Blake. Maybe some of his hoodies, or some pictures he ones drew. Maybe even a letter he wrote to me that she never found, stashed away in an old book he once held in his hands.

I could feel myself hyper-ventilating by the time I was finally close enough to the door to knock on it. Everything inside me was screaming to turn back. To not see the parts of Blake that I never knew, but to rather run back into the street and follow it to the highway. I wanted to throw myself in front of the fastest approaching car with hopes of maybe meeting Blake in some wonderful afterlife, where we would be happily together for all eternity.

Instead I knocked.

I could hear footsteps on the other side of the door and for the first time I wondered whether it was really wise to knock on someone’s door before the sun has even stuck his head out from beneath the horizon.

“Who’s there?” a voice sounded muffled from behind the door, just as a porch light lit up the pink door in front of me. The voice sounded old and tired. Like I had awoken a vampire from a century old slumber.

“It… it… it’s Elijah…” I stumbled over my words. For some reason I felt like the blood was leaving my body. Like something wasn’t quite right. Like the night I knew that Blake was dead.

“Elijah? Blake’s Elijah?” the voice asked. I could hear something familiar in the voice. My mind told me it was Llaluna, but still it didn’t sound like the way I remembered her.

“Yeah…” I muttered.

The door first creaked open only an inch or two. I could see a mane of blonde and an eye I knew too well for only a second before the door was almost ripped out of place.

I barely knew what was happening. All I could make sense of was a woman looking much older than her years holding me so tightly that I knew I would not be able to breathe for another minute.

“Oh Elijah… How I hoped… But the cards… the cards… they said you would never… But they have been wrong before… they have… yes, they have been wrong… I am so glad they were wrong…”

Llaluna was sobbing over me. The one sob sounding more heartbroken than the next. I could feel her sadness. Her want to touch the person who Blake had touched last. Maybe this visit was long overdue.

“Come in,” Llaluna sobbed as she finally let go of me. Taking my hand she led me into the house.

I didn’t have time to look for the couch as she pulled me past the living room and toward the kitchen.

The kitchen looked so much the same as the last time I was in Llaluna’s house that it actually took me by surprise. Sure, it wasn’t the same kitchen, but so many other things were still the same. There it was; the same wooden kitchen table where she once read my cards, the yellow curtains with the sunflowers on them, and the red kettle on the stove. A real explosion of colour which mixed and matched all at the same time. I never thought that I would ever be in her kitchen again. I never wanted to enter her small little world where she was the queen again. Yet, here I was, with my heart beating, trying to climb out of my chest. I felt lightheaded, and even a little bit short of breath. I could still remember the last time I sat at that table, almost like it was yesterday and at the moment it was by far the things I feared the most.

“Sit honey. Make yourself at home,” I heard Llaluna say, but it was as if her voice was masked by a slight hum in my ears. “Coffee or tea? Or maybe some juice?”

Logically I knew I must have been looking at her like some retard, because she asked me again; “What would you like to drink?” before I registered and answered back.

“Just some water.”

“How did you get here? I didn’t see a car.” It was almost more of a statement than a question but I still decided to answer her.

“Lucy.”

“Oh… Her…”

Something in Llaluna’s voice told me that she wasn’t very fond of Lucy, but that was hardly news to me. Not many people liked Lucy. Gosh, I wasn’t even sure that I actually liked her. I did however understand her, and she understood me. That was what made our friendship most of the time. That and loyalty off course.

For a moment I just closed my eyes. The colours around me was just too much and I needed to get my heartbeat under control before I could truly talk to Llaluna about why I came to her. The little bit of rest for my eyes was however interrupted by a chair scraping backward over the wooden floor and a glass being put down right in front of me.

“I’m really glad to see you. I tried reaching out to you many times, but that Mr. van Leer is a hard guy to get past. He refused to let me talk to you,” Llaluna said looking me straight in the eyes. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. As much as I did not want to see the similarities of Blake in her, just as much did I want to remember the parts of him I was almost starting to forget.

“It wasn’t him. I didn’t want to talk to you,” I answered. I did not drive eight hours to lie to her. I needed help and the truth might just be the only way to get it.

“You didn’t want to talk to me?” Llaluna asked raising her eyebrow.

“Yeah… I couldn’t talk to you,” I answered and this time I actually managed to break eye contact with her. I could not admit what I needed to admit while I was looking her in the eyes.

“Why not? Were you scared after what happened at the hospital?” Llaluna asked.

I wanted to scream to her that she was the psychic. I shouldn’t need to sit here and pull the truth from the depth of my body that scratched me like thorns when I only tried to think about it. She should be able to take out her tarot cards and have a look – see the answer, and spare me the pain of having to say the words that keep on repeating in my worst nightmare out loud.

“There’s something I never told anybody before… Something that has made me hold on to Blake. Not being able to let go,” I said. I could feel a painful sickness boiling in the pit of my stomach. I was fairly certain I might puke.

“You have always been one for secrets Elijah,” she said, but nevertheless she took her hand and placed it over mine. The one thing that I needed to get the courage to say what I needed to say.

“I never deserved to be with Blake… I never deserved his love…” I could feel a sob wanting to rip through my chest but I kept as strong as I possibly could.

“What are you getting at Elijah?” Llaluna asked. A question mark floating over her face.

“I killed him. I killed Blake. I am the reason he’s dead.”