Outside Existence

Chapter 3

“Tristan, you don’t have to come.” Astah said, almost not wanting him to come. Even in his dress-up steampunk gentleman outfit, Astah found it difficult to let him come. She didn’t want him to see the side of her that came out when Hara was around. He had seen her through worse, she still didn’t like him seeing her at the brain space when she was in conversation with Hara, which hopefully wouldn’t, though likely would happen. 

“No, I think it would be a good idea if I came, stopping you from…Murdering her.” He insisted, a grin appearing to match the latter sentence.

“Ok, but, if I kill her, I’m blaming you for not stopping me.” Astah kidded, fixing the lace on her steampunk maiden’s getup, so it flounced in just the right way on top of the leather corset that accentuated her narrow waist.

“Don’t worry, that’s why I’m here,” Reminded Ru, adjusting her makeup, to fit with her medieval dark green dress, that perfectly accompanied her pale skin and bright red hair “To stop you from letting her. I know it can be hard, not letting Astah murder her. But I have plenty of experience.”  She meant every word, and she meant the sass behind them. She wanted to make sure that he knew, he had to know that she had been there for Astah, when he hadn’t been there.  

“Good. Let’s go.” Concluded Astah. They took the gold Audi. Just to be impressive.

“Someone remind me why we’re going to this.” Ru asked, as they pulled up outside, just across the street. There were coloured swords of light creating a brightly lit sphere surrounding the house. The house itself was two stories tall and looked like the designer had an obsession for rectangles. From the front façade of the building it looked like three concrete rectangles of different heights, as well as rectangular windows, rectangular shrubs, rectangular stone slabs making a path to the front door and a rectangular door. The door was mahogany brown and had silver handles that where far too extravagantly intricate to suit the size of the door.

“No one will know who we are, probably, unless they’re looking for us. Plus, it’s the party of the decade, because her 18th no one will remember and her 21st is going to family only, plus, no one throws a party like Hara.” Astah convinced no one that this was, in any way, anything but a good way to start a fight. As well as the fact that the rest of the group felt as if going when Astah didn’t, was a betrayal, but if Astah went, then it was fine. The group was tight, and loyal to fault. In any case, Astah used to hear from Hara about how great her 16th birthday would be, she wanted to see for herself how it turned out. 

They walked up the front lawn and through the open door.  The interior decorations where not fit for a house party, far too much glass and too many expensive looking objects. As you walked in, there was a set of stairs that started with a very wide bottom step, and slowly became thinner around the middle, and then at the top, had another step, the DJ had been placed right at the top centre of the stairs. There was a room to the right, another to the left and a large one behind the stairs, as well as five smaller ones upstairs. Every room was packed with people in masks and costumes, talking, eating, chatting, singing with the music and dancing. The music was thumping out of what looked like human-sized black rectangular prisms, they had speakers that reverberated with the beat of the music that shook the floor. It was almost impossible to imagine anything louder. Astah loved it, she couldn’t hear the demons, just like she had wanted, talking with Hara, so many years ago. 

“If you could pick any age to be born at, and stay that age forever, what age would it be?” Astah asked, the taste of chocolate melting on her tongue.

“Sixteen. When I have my sixteenth birthday, I want it to be at my house. Everyone in costumes and masks, no parents on the premises, everyone dancing.” Hara fantasied, staring into the distance, imagining it, picking out every detail.

“And the music so loud, you can’t even see properly, because it would shake the light.” Astah added.

“So loud you can’t heart them, huh?” Hara replied.

“If that’s even possible.” Astah said, hopeful.

“Let’s go! What are you doing? Come on. We didn’t come her to look at the décor!” Ru insisted, noticing Astah’s distant gaze.

“How about we find a partner for you?” Astah suggested “Leon said he would come, didn’t he?” Astah wasn’t really asking. They started to wander around the various rooms searching for a Sherlock Holmes with brown hair and a ridiculous, two-foot-tall top-hat. That was what Leon had said he would be wearing. They eventually found him in the kitchen sipping a drink and bobbing his head to the music.

“It is so good to see a man with some class.” Said Ru. Leon stood there for moment, not saying anything, just gaping at her beauty. He partially regained his senses after a long second.

“You look shiny.” He responded, his wits not about him at that moment. It wasn’t a lie, it was very true. The dress that Ru was wearing was dark green and velvety, it embellished in the light that was coming out of every dark corner, nook and cranny the place had.

“It goes shinier when she dances.” Astah teased. The confusion that had slowly punctured his features had, just as slowly, been replaced with realisation.

“Would you like to dance?” He was surprised at his good fortune. They walked into the dancing room, it was directly in the front view of the DJ booth.  Astah was glad Ru had found someone she liked, even if he wasn’t the brightest cookie in the batch.

~

Astah walked up the stairs, into a corner of the house that she had not visited for several years. She walked down a corridor and looked around to make sure there was no one there, or at least no one watching her, it was a quiet-ish corridor at a party, someone was going to come stumbling around eventually, probably with someone else not far behind. She walked into the study. It was a small room, bookshelves lined most of the walls. Astah tried to remember which one it was. She would have been shorter, so she crouched down, following her sheer muscle memory. She turned to her left, eyes closed, arousing long ignored memories. She opened her eyes to her hand resting on a book. The book was the right size, but it had the wrong feel. Astah removed her hand to reveal a book spine that had been tortured. It had mostly been burnt, but it also had s***h marks bordering the burns and multiple colours had been dragged around the rest of the spine. As if a child had been viciously trying to erase something with crayons, then texters, then markers, then the child had grown up and tried to tear it apart with a pocket knife, then grown some more and tried to burn it off the face of the earth. She pulled it. It came out of its place. ‘The Two Musketeers’ had been penned in gold lettering on the front of the red, leather cover, which was in as bad shape as the spine. The lock had gone, Astah opened the book. The spine had been spared mercifully compared to the inside of the book. Each page had been uniquely abused, different from any other page, not only abused, but also humiliated with crude and inappropriate scribblings in unfamiliar handwriting. Astah felt behind the book’s place, the lever had been hacked off, probably with a steak knife, but there was still a stump there. She pulled it.

 There was a creak of aged hinges that did not want to do as they were told for fear of not being able to guard what was beyond. Astah pushed the section of bookshelf, it swung back into a room Astah later wished she had not entered. She walked in, expecting faded drawings, papier-mache fencing swords, pink and purple French-style outfits and childish, wide-brimmed hats with far too many feathers to be reasonable. Her childish paradise. Instead, she found a dark cave of reds and blacks, posters with famous people on them, song lyrics carved into the walls and, on the far side of the room, on a dartboard, her own face, but with horns and a tail, surrounding the dartboard were names like ‘freak’, ‘weirdo’, ‘psycho’, ‘nuts’, ‘loony’ and ‘schizophrenic’. Astah was slightly disappointed at the sheer lack of creativity, she would have thought she was worth at least a touch of originality, but she was also slightly impressed at the fact that Hara had managed to spell a four syllable word correctly. She walked up to the board and put the name Monster in neat, bold, even letters, right above the picture of herself. She took one last look at the newly found crash site of her childhood memories and walked out. She found Tristan looking for her on the roof.

“Where were you?” He asked, in his kindly quiet, inquiring way

“I went to see something I remembered about being here.” His sideways glanced asked ‘what?’ “I went to go see this room that Hara and I used to play in as kids, it was one of the rooms that her dad had hidden away in the architecture. He gave that one to Hara. As kids, it was like our secret tree house. It’s…very different now. You can smell the teen angst in the dust, amongst the stench of smokes.” She explained. She wanted the topic to change, Tristan obliged.

“I see what you meant.” He agreed with her about an opinion she had always expressed to the full extent. She had always said that Hara’s house had the best view of any house Astah had ever stayed in. He looked out onto city lights long away on the left side, distant streams of light coming off the highway on the right, and straight down the middle, was Hara’s backyard, which consisted of a forest with a path of wooden boards leading away into the darkness, it had that air of mysterious adventure around it. Beyond all that, was the shadow of mountains and a reflective lake. It was breathtaking.  “Shall we?” He offered her his hand, like a true gentleman.

“We shall indeed.” They went downstairs and danced the night away. Or, at least, some of it. Before it was rudely interrupted.

~

 “Is that really your costume Astah?” Hara yelled from across the dance floor, loud enough for everyone on the dance floor to pay attention. The music had become quiet, more like background noise than dance music. “Well it’s not a very good disguise, is it? I bet you didn’t even bring me birthday present!” Hara yelled. Astah was not going to take this without retaliation. The room, the dartboard and the names came back to mind.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot to bring it and it was a really good present too. I got you your knife back, I finally managed to get it out of my back. And it’s not a disguise. Unlike you, I don’t wear masks.” Astah retorted, seeing Hara like this made her sick and angry. Hara was in a fox costume. Astah remembered the name she had called her, years ago, when she first met Ru “she’s been replaced, with a traitorous, lying, conniving, scheming little fox! No, not fox, that would be offensive to foxes.” It was a very provocative fox costume that covered more of Hara’s head than of her limbs and barely covered her chest. This person was not the Hara that Astah knew, Astah hated it. She hated thinking that the Hara she knew was simply an illusion put up by this mess of a human, and when Astah called someone else a “mess” you knew there was something seriously wrong. Everyone had heard Astah, and no one would forget the fight that was to come, except for Hara, Hara would be haunted by it – despite the amount of alcohol content in her body – she would remember that feeling. She would never forget the utter and pure concentrated terror that would run through her veins like electricity across a city’s powerhouse.  

“Astah, we should go.” Tristan tried meekly, whispering the wise advise directly into her ear. She managed to ignore the words anyway.

“Oh, do you now, you tell everyone everything?” Hara poked “So you wouldn’t mind me telling them some secrets?” Hara half shouted, half screamed.

“You already did that!” Yelled out a familiar female voice from inside the crowd. Kiara smiled, knowing no one realised it was her who had yelled the words. Hara either didn’t hear, didn’t want to pay the words any attention, or was too drunk to notice.

“Astah here,” Hara pointed to Astah and stumbled into the person next to her, without realising. “Has her own demons!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, each word hardly distinguishable from the next. Hara threw her head back, coughed, then laughed. Though it was more like a cackle then a laugh, it came from the back of her throat and her entire body shook with each breath.

“Astah,” Ru tugged at her sleeve.

“You see it’s funny, because everyone thinks it’s a figure of speech! But it’s not.” She giggled, biting the orange and white, long, fake nail of her index finger. No one thought it was funny. Nothing about the scene was funny. Not Hara’s drunken craze that hung around her like a fog around a swamp or Astah’s intense and fearful stare that mimicked a fusion reactor.

“C’mon, it’s not worth it.” Tristan re-tried, but Astah was affixed to her exact position.

“You see,” Hara repeated herself, addressing the crowd that had gathered “Astah hears voices, and screams in her sleep, because she has bad dreams. Oh boo-hoo.” Hara pouted her lips and pretended to cry mockingly, but no one else was insane enough to laugh with her.

“Astah, we need to leave.” Ru could sense the red level of the danger zone that the battle was rapidly approaching.

“But it’s ok. You write to Jami and tell him all your problems, can’t you!” This not only enraged Astah, but it also infuriated Ru and Tristan, which was why both of them were failing to drag Astah away from the scene. They had been urging her to leave before, but now, whatever harm may come to Hara, was deeply deserved, even begged for. By this time, Hara was stumbling around, the drink that had been in the cup in her hand was now soaking into the carpet and dripping down Hara’s forearm. She turned around, away from Astah.

“And she can barely tell the difference between reality and the voices in her head! And worse yet, it all started when her Jami left!” Hara’s face had turned purple from shrieking. She had gone from being one step beyond ‘too far’, to a million steps beyond ‘unbearable’ in a few words.

The crowd yelped and then fell silent, each action passing over the mass like consecutive waves. Astah, was, at this stage: wrathful. Hara turned back around to look at Astah and the colour in her face dissolved. She tried to scream, but even her voice had made a run for it. Astah had allowed the demons control, just a sudden outburst, but it devoured her. It was just one single tiny slip for a millisecond, but the door had been opened, and the demons forced it open further through their mere masses. She no longer had control. Her body responded to its new master. Astah turned white, evil white that only comes with knowing what white fire felt like on a soul. Her eyes went black, a black that left a human in question of the existence light. Around her eyes was an impossibly dark shadow, and her lips were drained of their typical red colour. Her features altered themselves, so they were perfect, her nose changed ever so slightly, so it became straight and her eyebrows had changed shape, becoming murderess black and her cheekbones, always defined, had seemed to become even more protruding. Even her hair managed to create a shadow over itself in order to become black and straight, defying gravity by gently flowing down her, as if it were streams of black water, like it was the river Styx. She was the image of perfect and terrifying beauty. The effect was intimidating, leaving a person in awe of her complete and consuming frightfulness.[1]

Meanwhile, Astah was busy fighting her worst nightmare. The Perfect Demon was back, fighting for power just as hard as Astah, as if it had no other choice, as if it was this or death. It’s face riling, it’s eyes distracting, it’s entire being, too much for her to handle at once. It was like trying to punch a whirlwind. She was weakening, but she thought of the hurt this being could do to Ru, to Tristan, if Jami ever did come back. She could not give in. She forced her will to overpower the demon. She fought back, and she won. 

~

She woke up in a hospital bed for the second time in a week. The first thing she saw was her mother. Her mother had a beautiful face shape, slightly narrow with high, defined cheekbones, petite nose, almond shaped brown eyes. She had short, wavy brown hair with natural blonde highlights. She was reading a magazine on futuristic housing, with a picture of compacted hexagonal units on the cover. Astah slowly sat up.

“Oh, mon étoile.” Her mother cooed. “What happened? Ru said you went white and your eyes went black! And you had to be rushed here.” 

“Can I have some food please?” Astah was starving.

“Oh, yes of course.” Her mother had taken a second to realise that Astah had been asking her for something instead of answering her question. “I managed to sneak in some cheese and warm bread.” 

“Mmm, comfort food. Thank you” Astah thanked. She took a bite of the bread and noticed that her mother seemed to be expecting something. She scanned her memory. “Ohh…” she said, realising that she was required to give an explanation. She never felt quite right trying to explain things that had to do with her and her demons, to other people. It didn’t feel fair, or right and she was always ashamed of herself, especially now. She had let them in. No matter how she could try and defend herself, she couldn’t. Nothing would ever excuse those terrible moments. “Umm… Everyone got very drunk?” Astah tried uncertainly.

“We both know that’s not what happened. Well, it probably did happen, though not to you, or Ru or Tristan, but even if it did, that’s not the explanation.” Astah knew her mother was right, and her mother did deserve an explanation.

“I let them slip. The demons.” Astah confessed, her voice breaking slightly. “But only for a second, and barely. They just took control, I didn’t think that would happen. I just thought…maybe they would…I don’t know, give me Darth Vader powers or something.”

“What, you wanted to strangle someone?” Her mother laughed, not realising that is indeed what Astah was referring to, until Astah looked at her. “Who?” her mother asked, not wanting to admit it to herself. But the look in Astah’s face was too obvious to feign ignorance. “Oh.” 

“She was asking for it. She kept…poking and prodding at me, and they kept telling me to…so I just…I thought it would be simple, just let the little ones that just wreak havoc pass. I thought I would just break some stuff, maybe break her, but then…and I knew I had to get control back.” Tears trailed down her face, leaving paths of salty sadness in their wake. 

“Mon étoile.” Her mother repeated, wishing there was something she could do. Now everything was out of her hands. Nothing she could do could change what was now inevitable. Too many witnesses, even if they had all been excessively drunk, not a single police officer would believe that they all had the exact same drunk imagination. Astah had already thought of a solution though; tell everyone it was part of her costume. It would give the authorities a good excuse and no one wanted to think that they were stupid enough to be that scared of something that the authorities said was a prank. 

“Can I talk to Tristan.” Astah stated. At this point, there was no question in the statement, she was going to see Tristan, she would get out the hospital bed and walk to him, no matter where he was. She would trek across galaxies to know that he didn’t hate her for losing control. 

“I’m right here.” He stated coming out from behind her bed. Her mother had the good sense and kindness to leave the room. 

“Hey.” She said, hoping to gain time to analyse his eyes and expression. Trying to figure out how he felt about her now. He smiled at how casual and normal she sounded, just the same as the first time he decided he loved her. 

“Hey.” Astah said as he approached the tree that she was sitting on, casually dangling her legs over the edge of the tallest branch in the tree. 

“Hey. Come on, I want to show you something.” He impatiently urged.

“Ok, coming.” She replied, mildly confused and intensely intrigued. They jogged over the hills, the whole time, neither of them said any words, communicating in only confused glances. Astah noticed that they stopped walking over hills and had come to a flat surface, with far more trees.

He led her past a natural hedge of willow trees and prevented her from falling into a wide stream. The danger wouldn’t have been falling in, but rather, slipping on the thick carpet of green moss that layered the floor of the stream which gave the water a rather gentle look, despite the off-green colour. She looked across the stream, and then up. There was a rope ladder hanging from two trees on either side of the river. He took her hand and lead her across and through the remaining grove of trees.

“Close your eyes.” He commanded, and she did so, allowing him to lead her. He continued looking behind him every few seconds to see her reaction. He led her into the centre of a meadow, with grass and wild flowers up to her waist. “Okay. Open.” Her eyes flickered open. The change was not simply in her face, but in her entire air. She was excited and impressed and in sheer astonishment of the setting. He saw her standing there, in a simple, light, patterned white shirt and jeans that made her shine, but not in the physical sense. He knew that there was light reflecting off her shirt because it was white, but it was more than that. She glowed with a tangible hope and life surpassed her brim. He could see the darkness that lay in her eyes, but they simply made the brightness more noticeable. He would never know anything more welcoming than her eyes, or more kind than her smile, or more joyful than her laugh. He loved her.

She looked into his eyes now and saw the same things that had always been there, but she also saw pity, and worry, even anger. Most have a nasty habit of scouring at pity, but Astah understood it, she did not enjoy it, but she understood it. It would have been hard to see him go through things that she could not stop nor even make a difference to, she would be worried for him, she would be angry at the situation, she would feel sorry for him, that he had to experience it. She understood.

“What happened?” She asked, dreading the answer, but knowing that she needed to ask.

“Well, you went pale. You looked…taller…more…scary. You gave a good display of the basic human instinct when faced with a predator. Some people froze up, other people ran. No one tried to fight, though.” He explained solemnly. “The human instinct must be smarter than I thought.” He joked, seeing her expression. She smiled. She looked at him, asking him a question she was too scared of to form the words. “No one was hurt.” He replied. Her relief dripped from every feature and muscle.

Ru came in.

“Hey. I was so worried. Are you ok?” Ru questioned, examining Astah’s every part, making sure she wasn’t injured, as if the incident would have left a bruise.

              “I’m fine…well, I am now anyway,” Astah was trying to recall her last memory. It was difficult. She could remember looking at everyone, she could remember slowly becoming more and more angry. She remembered getting hot. Then everything went black. But from somewhere in the back of her brain, a scene presented itself, like rummaging through a library and having a book wave at you, or move just an inch out of line, so it was noticeable. She grabbed at it.

She was seeing everything, as if through an orange filter, and a feeling arose with the image. The feeling of deep and intense analysis, as if she knew a blueprint of everyone in the room, as if everyone was just a series of lines, shapes and interactions with light, all of which could be taken apart and put to use. She could remember feeling enwrapped in a cold chill, the feeling you get when you have been in the cold so long that you only feel a dull numbness brushed with an insignificant coolness.

She shut out the memory. If it had been a book, she would have burned it. She thought back to what had made her so angry. Hara. Jami. Betrayal. It was so hard to think of him. To think of his leaving. She knew that if he just left her like that, he wasn’t strong. He wasn’t worth being around if he just runs like that. But she knew why he ran, not because they had a fight. No matter how much others told her that, no matter how many times she tried to convince herself, she knew the truth. He had run in fear. In abhorrence. He had run thinking she was a monster. To see his face again would kill her, to even think of him was like stabbing a bruised scab, to hear Hara mention him was like being electrocuted in a pool of lava. How! Dare! She! What right had she to mention him? Of all people! To bring up his leaving! Why would she want to do that? It doesn’t make sense!

None of it had been fair, or right, or just. Fair, right and just, were things that life, was not.  But life was something you had to deal with, when people gave up on life, or the life they were living, when people ran away from you because they can’t deal with a single fight, or even lots of fights, they were not brave. They were not strong, and they weren’t dependable. If he had run from her, just because of  a few fights…How could she think this? She knew he hadn’t run. She knew the story she had told so many people – the lie she had repeated so many times. She knew that was not why he had left. In his place, she would have run. And she knew perfectly well the real reason for his leaving, not because of some meagre fights, not the story that she told everyone. Convincing the entire world that someone else was the villain, doesn’t make you a hero, or even a victim.

The worst was watching him leave, he didn’t do it dramatically, he didn’t do it on a rainy day, with the big family gathering and them all crying while he picked up his suitcase and walked out the door, stopping at the frame for one last glance at his old life that he was preparing to leave, no. He did it silently, in the wee early hours of the morning when nothing made a sound, during those few minutes before the daylight animals woke up, but just after all the nocturnal animals had gone to sleep. He knew that she would try and stop him, he knew that she would hold him back, she would have stopped him. She remembered waking up. She remembered that the house was far too…empty-feeling, far too soundlessly undisturbed, like the universe had said it was supposed to still be asleep, as if it was giving him time. She had gone to his room

“Jami?” She called out to the freezing cold and barrenly empty room. She ran. She burst into a sprint. She didn’t take care how long she had to run, she would get to him. He could have gone any which way, he could have gone through the bushes, he could have trekked over the mountain, but the road was the most direct, least wild and wisest choice for someone who was on the run, even if he wasn’t on the road, she would have at least gotten all her energy out by the time she came to a crossroads. After going down their long road for about five minutes at a strong sprint, she saw him.               

“Jami!” She called to him, with a hoarse voice and a dry throat. He didn’t turn around. She kept running. She was gaining on him. She was only three hundred metres, he should hear her.

“Jami!” She called for a third time, smiling. He heard her. He turned around with a confused expression, but once he saw her face, he turned back around and started running faster. She was confused, and sore, and tired, and thirsty. There was only one thing for it: she ran faster. They were matched in speed now, but he was faster than her, if he wanted to be. She tried to call out.

              “Sto-” She lost her footing, she tripped and skidded on her side. The worst thing about country roads like this one, was that they weren’t dusty or dirty like rural roads, but they also weren’t new or tar-ish enough to be smooth like city roads. The half-way point that this road was at, made it all the worse. It was gravelly and rough. The small stones scraped at her shoulder, moving down to prey on her forearm, and finishing with a savage attack on the top seven layers of her skin and what would become a spectacular bruise on her hip. He turned around. He stopped. He took himself forward a step, holding out a hand. Then he turned back around. And ran the other way. Away from her, from his bleeding, hurt and lonely sister.

He had run from her. When she was hurt and when there was no one else around to help. It had been the worst pain she had felt in her whole life at the time. There she had been, down and broken and bruised. And he still ran from her. He had left her, alone and abandoned on a dirt road. She had silently wept herself to fitful sleep for weeks on end after that. She couldn’t think of his resolute face, the face that had left her. After that, she had passed out and had been picked up by a passing car, which was a random and significant miracle. She remembered waking up in a foreign bed, pain searing her left side like boiling water that had been frozen into her nerves. She remembered a handsome boy walking through the door. A young handsome boy.

He looked at her and was clearly shocked to see her awake. But he soon recovered and smiled at her. She resisted the urge to giggle and flick her hair.

                “She’s awake.” He yelled to the doorframe, out of which came a beautiful Brazilian woman with curly black hair. The boy walked over to her left side and removed a cloth that she had noticed, but decided not to remove, it had been cool, or at least room temperature.

“Hi. I’m Tristan.” He said gently and kindly, allowing her to float adrift in his beautiful eyes for a moment, before returning to tend to her arm. Tristan, she pondered, I like it.

She returned to the present. Everyone was there. All her friends, most of her family. Everyone that meant everything to her. And then she saw him.

[1] “Frightfulness” is a hard feeling to come by, as it is difficult to find a situation which fills your entire person, body mind and soul with fright. Even more difficult is to fill a person with fright for more than a second, as fright is a feeling of fear, that has a thick layer of shock with it, and shock is something you don’t typically maintain for long, it comes, you make sense of the situation and it leaves again. It is hard to find something that fill you with a feeling of fear and shock and then to maintain it. Seeing such a thing, feeling it stare and examine you sets off the sort of panic you feel when you know you going to die. It’s the feeling that people only get in their nightmares in the modern day, the humans that walked the earth in prehistoric times would have only felt this if they had come into contact with E.T. The drunk teenagers were having the same experience, watching the deadliest thing they could not have imagined standing in front of them.