TAIM AM - 'possessive skin'

6.

Chapter Three: Rebellion

Lily – 1980

_

The thing about living, is that you do not know that you are in fact doing as such. You wander aimlessly through life as if you know your purpose - know the intricate workings of it all. Yet, late within the night, as the hollow moans of the air loom over your half sleeping form, you wonder... You start to question the nature of it all; if you are here for a reason or are you just a pawn in another's game? Someone being manipulated to do the bidding of an omniscient being.

That is where I lay now, in the grasp of unconsciousness as the battle for answers overwhelms my senses, and in essence obliterates even the rudimental answers I have to counteract them.

I do not know how they came to be, just that they are and have left me peering holes into the yellowing ceiling. It became custom, residual. The vacant stares into the void of nothingness, as that is all that was left in which to do. For, I could not act upon desires, or aspiration. So, wallowing in a self-loathing state became systematic.

I could not indicate when it had begun on this very night, yet, the damage was detrimental none the less. I could however, tell you that as of this moment, the 23rd of June 1980, I had been twenty-two for approximately three days.

Here within the society that circulates around my form, that is decrepit, an age in which your loins shrivel and become forsaken to anyone that wishes to procreate. Yet, for me... the prospect, of straying, seems absolutely thrilling, marvellous, joyous; a cause to prance the streets in blissful song and harmonise with the others that are of a similar disposition. However, that is not the norm... "Undignified" – a person of my stature, should not, and will not, prance.

So the four walls that hold my form, and the decaying wooden structure I rely to hold my weight have become something of a comfort; the only source of true elation.

Escape.

There is however, her. The girl within the sunflower bed a strolls distance away from my abode. We happened upon one another on a fateful night that would ultimately change our destined paths indefinitely. Yet, as of such, we have in turn, only uttered three words respectively in the vicinity of each other. And that in itself, is of course, pitiful. However, as of that first exhaled breathed word that came out in a flushed manner of concealment, I knew that I would meet her again. That this chance encounter was not something limited to just that late night in the earliest span of May. I did think myself bizarre for wishing on such an occasion, but I could not bring myself to ponder on it for more than one residual hum of the clocks hand.

Now, as I lay here, I can picture the way the yellowing flowers danced with her complexion, bringing out the hue of her eyes as they glistened in the mid-morning glow. I can contemplate the nature by which her hair was caught in the hands of the wind and tussled into a state of no compliance, and left to clutch her chapped lips in a way that left my gaze to halt... to immerse itself within the subtle nature of her plump bow. She was truly mesmerising. But I did not speak in that moment, she enquired me to. Yet, nothing tangible or intelligent would bring itself to the fore and grace her ears.

The more I allow myself to wander over the memories of her however, the more they become tainted. Plagued. Tarnished – by him.

My father.

You see, he was a proud man. A man with the most dignified of stature within the confines of the society we kept. A man ailed by the word of his god, the divined personification. He could not distinct reality from that of his gospel and it caused a strain between us. A crack within the crevice. A divide in the infinitesimal relation.