Not Real. Not Imaginary.

PART TWOO: GREER. [A new way to see through her eyes]

‘Not again…please…not now…’ I thought to myself.

I was slipping into her mind again...and right at that moment, I didn’t think I would be able to handle it. So, I kept fighting it back…but it was in vain. I felt something odd, like a really strong tug…. It wasn’t me…I wasn’t slipping in…she was pulling me in!

It was the first time she had done it…or maybe…not. She had done it before…all those years ago. But, back then, it was different…and this connection wasn’t there. This connection was closed. And now, since I pried into her head…the channel slowly opened up, and now it was wide open for me…for her….

It must’ve been just like a small c***k in a wall…but she could still reach out to me, like she could slip her hand through there, and tap on my shoulder…hold my hand…and as if it was nothing…she pulled me in.

Her mindspace was something I can only describe as chaos...for there was no order, no sense of...anything. Everything was a blur, and it came and went the same way…like the waves on the shore, it came and washed away…and then was replaced by something else, that came and left the same way, without an order or a sense of permanence…they were all thoughts that just kept haunting her…and she kept pushing them away, only for them to be replaced with another haunting thought.

I realized she wasn’t doing it on purpose. She wasn’t trying to pull me in here…but she couldn’t help herself, something made her pull me in…something that disturbed, or worried her…whatever it was, it had been enough to make her feel she needed me here.

Since I couldn’t leave…I took a deep breath and moved forward…just a little, navigating throughout the storm of indiscernible images. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t see where I was going, if I didn’t know where I was supposed to be…I kept advancing, because something told me that by doing so, I would find the reason behind this….

The blurs began to take shape, and a white noise flooded my ears, making me cover them and wince annoyed. The noise was too much…it was deafening, almost painful. But it slowly started to go down…getting quieter, and quieter…until different, faint sounds, were slowly unveiled.

I could barely make out those new noises. It was hard to isolate them from the white noise that was still present in the background. I couldn’t do anything to hear them better, I was just certain that they seemed to be voices.

Suddenly, an image appeared before me…like a projection in a cinema. And just as it had happened with the sound before, the image was hard to make out…it was blurry and almost…pixelated. It was blurry, out of focus…like if it was a TV and I needed to adjust the antenna.

While I tried to make out what I was looking at, I heard the words that froze me in place:

“You should move in with me.”

I stood there dumbfounded, trying to process it….

That voice…I knew it…I knew it all too well and it had been haunting me the past few weeks…but, what was happening now? What did she mean by moving in with her? Why would she be asking that to Nina?

More importantly…I wanted to know…would Nina...do that?

'Home'

The word popped in the big projection in front of me, accompanied by a fuzzy warm feeling, that faded just as quickly as it came.

I saw myself in the projection. It was an image from earlier that day…when Nina left and I.... She saw me…and I felt like a bucket of…near to freezing water, had been dumped over me. I knew what that would do to Nina, what it was already doing to her…I could feel her guilt, and her worry…her hope, and her wishfullness….

Those feelings were battling inside her, bringing back the initial haziness, all around me…blurry thoughts coming and going, as if there was a strong wind pushing them in every direction. Meanwhile, the image in front of me changed and adjusted…little by little.

The image stabilized and focused…and I could see Terry’s eyes, reflecting a warmth I hadn’t seen before in them, nor had Nina for the matter....

“Just think about it for a while okay…I am being selfish by asking this, but I just really need you in my life. I don’t think you realize how important you are to me, and I don’t know how else I can demonstrate…”

I wished the sound wouldn’t stabilize whenever Terry spoke….

Terry wanted Nina for herself…I already knew that all too well. But to hear her saying it so shamelessly...it ignited something completely different inside me…a heat that just burned slowly in the bottom of my stomach, bursting and sending waves of a devilish heat all over my body.

I closed my hands in tight fists at my sides, and at that moment…all those small clips from before…all the images that had constantly slipped into my own mind during those days…played in front of me.

I felt powerless, and ashamed…heartbroken… I could feel the heaviness once more in my chest. I think that was the feeling I hated the most, because it was the one that lingered for longer, and with more intensity...it was the one that undid me like none other could.

And then…the last blow came from where I least expected…or…to put it in other words…came from the one place I really wished it hadn’t….

“If it really means that much, I’ll think about it.”

It was Nina’s voice….

I fell to my knees…and just stared at the space in front of me, where the projection was replaced by a spotlight, a spotlight in which Nina was standing now…there…in front of me. So close I could almost touch her… I reached towards her…looked into her eyes and then…she looked back into mine.

Our gazes lingered, for what felt like hours, in each other’s eyes; lost in our gazes. None of us dared to speak a word, and yet, it felt like the space between us was filled with them.

In any other situation, I would’ve been so happy to see Nina…but in this situation, I felt like I wasn’t ready. It was as if everything I had been getting ready for this whole time, was happening in a flash, and I had no idea of how to act.

Her eyes kept looking into mine, questioningly, looking in them for the answers to the questions that she hadn’t yet verbalized. Mine, were looking back into hers, looking for a hint that could tell me that she would finally wake up to the truth about herself.

It was as if time was running slower, and then faster, and then slower and faster at the same time; like it didn’t know how to act, like…this was what it had always been waiting for, and the excitement had made it forget how time is supposed to work.

I exhaled, and that made me realize I hadn’t even breathed this whole time. I was just standing there like a fool, focusing all of my attention on Nina. I was so fixated on her, being in front of me, that I forgot where we were for a moment.

As if it had happened to her as well, at that moment, she looked all around us, like if she was hoping to find an explanation in the infinite darkness surrounding our forms. Then, her confusion was directed at me, and in a subtle movement, her lips parted; she inhaled as if she was preparing, and then…as her voice reached my ears, I hoped she was ready, for what I had been wanting to tell her, since the first time she cried all those years back, when the shadows haunted her, and no one listened.