The Lovers of Life

CHAPTER VIII - HOW HAPPINESS FILLS A HOLLOW LIFE

"We live in a beautiful world."

Don't Panic – Parachutes - Coldplay

After many hours of sleep, one might expect a fire to have crumpled down to ashes. A normal fire certainly would have been reduced to dust. But my fire had never burned down, for some odd reason of its own. It burned still as I woke and looked around me lazily. I was quite alone with my magical blue fire.

I stretched, yawned noisily and got up. I took a stroll around the huge room, occasionally picking up an ugly ornament to observe it. I'd forgotten about most things that littered the flat. The style was not quite my own and I immediately decided that I change it all. I was home. Might as well make it comfortable.

Maryann's flowers perfumed the air. I wondered mildly where she had been sleeping in the last years. I had told her she could come here, but she hadn't touched my bed or anything that belonged to me. Her smell hungin the room: she had lived here, but where? I found a small mattress rolled in a corner of the room on which a blanket was neatly folded and sighed. To kip on the floor for four years must not have been very pleasant.

Helena's smell hung about the room too. She'd often been here, but not always. How had it been for Maryann in moments of solitude? Dreadful, without doubt. The City of Chaos was not a pleasant place. All right, my flat was comfortable enough, far from the noisy mayhem, but still. A new stranded spirit has the right to company in Hell. Especially when they don't belong here.

No one sane likes living here – yes, this is a small clue: I'm insane! But when I had seen Maryann, she had seemed quite content. She had been picking wild flowers in the forest without a care in world, despite all the ghouls lurking there.

I walked out on my balcony and stared down into the street below. My flat was on the top of a tall tower – I didn't like having noisy tenants over me: I preferred to be the annoying landlord over the tenants. I had a superb view of the city. Far away, I could see torches bobbing in the streets. A procession of the ghosts, ghouls and other creepy things, it must be the night of the dead then. And indeed, I noticed a carved pumpkin with a candle on my balcony. I sniggered, but, well, I couldn't deny people of Hell their own little pleasures. I strolled back inside and crossed my apartment. I got out on the balcony on the side opposite the side I had just been on.

I went to lean on the banister. A few miles away, I could see a dark river flowing silently. The rowboat was just visible because of the lantern in it. It was leaving this shore. That meant another soul had just been brought in these parts. Ah, well, one more for the banquets down in the chaos of the celebrations. No, two more souls, it seemed.

There was something odd about these two figures making their way down the old path. They seemed too solid to be ghosts – even if ghosts are solid in Hell or Heaven where they belong, they are slightly transparent. The figures walked with the determination of people who know exactly where they are. They weren't ambling about in a state of shock and disbelief as newcomers usually do. I frowned as the two figures approached the City of Chaos.

I thought I could reckognize the figures. There was a shinning glow around the smallest figure. Even from miles away, I was able to know the aura belonged to Helena – she was the only star who dared wander down here. The second figure did not look like Maryann. I sighed and backed out into my apartment wondering whom Helena had gone to get now.

Maryann looked up sharply from the basket she had been emptying on a table as I entered the room. I waved and gave her a friendly smile. She gave me a rather timid smile and busied herself with her purchases once again. She had bought spices, some wool and something that was wrapped up tightly in red and white chiffon. I couldn't help noticing how pleasant the curve of Maryann's breasts was under her old corset – she was wearing the same dress she had had when I had brought her to the World of the Dead. Her dress had not ragged with the years; it would never change now that it was somewhere where time has no effect. But I thought it would be nice for Maryann to get out of her old clothes. Surely – surely! – she hadn't resorted to her old occupation down here. Whores were wanted by vicious and insatiable spirits. I was suddenly scared and I wondered how Maryann had managed to purchase her few effects, which were either scattered on the table or piled neatly in the corner with her mattress and blanket.