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Living Next Door to Alice
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Living Next Door to Alice |
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sgreybe Member
since 2000-04-28
Posts 209London, UK |
LIVING NEXT DOOR TO ALICE Alice Storme was fifteen when I made the discovery. It was on a windy day like today when people stay inside their shuttered houses leaving the streets to those untouched by the natural elements. They hide from the Karoo dust but it always finds them crawling through the cracks of their pathetic lives, nestling in their brains where it covers everything. Even your most desperate secrets. Even if it were in the minds of other people. My secret was safe with her because it was her secret as well. I do not understand why she had to break the silence. Death seems to change everything. We lived in a small town in the middle of the Karoo where all roads led to the church, its white tower casting a shadow that never moved as the day drifted past. On Sundays we would sit there in the third pew from the front. And it was there that puberty hit me for the first time, where everybody (and especially Alice) could see it. It is a town were everyone knew everyone and as I wander around, I can see that it never will change. People still do not lock their doors at night, you can still see the shadows of giggling children running in Ou Dominee’s orchard – the peach-blossoms shining luminously like little moons on the branches – realising they will be told the story of the Garden of Good and Evil not for the first time in their lives. You can still hear moments of clumsy high school vrying behind the rugby clubhouse – realising that they will be told the story of the Garden of Good and Evil not for the last time in their lives. It is especially at these times when I prefer to live in ignorance, away from the light that all the memories flood back into my mind like the time the river came down and no one could leave town for four days. Living like we did seems easy and many people even wish for it. But it is a facile life, the only thing decorating it three flying ducks on a wall along with the portrait of Doktor . I will not say that I long for it. I miss it and I suppose that is why I came back. Back to where everything made some sense a long time ago. Back to where Alice is. Alice. Alice. Alice. The one simple reason why I endured school because somewhere between all of it, she was. Alice with the one green and one blue eye. Alice with the long nails that were against school regulation Alice with the strange laugh. It was something between that of a hyena and what I thought an angel’s would sound like. Hearing it made me feel good. It made me fall in love. With her, the divine, the prurient. It is very easy to become trapped by your thoughts and desires. Walking on the school ground makes me realise that even more as I recognise the places I followed Alice to and where she allowed me to kiss her once. It lasted only a few seconds but it was my first venture into the world of the forbidden with her. Not knowing if there would be a second one. That was not easy. I have often thought about what the best way to describe the emotions I went through during those times would be. I can say it was hard. But I would by lying. I can use words like damn hard of ****ing hard but I would still be lying. In short. it was impossible. I was a willing actor in a play, easy to shift and move around as she pleased. At this time of night the school is empty, the closed windows and drawn curtains making it look even more desolated. The smell of stale sandwiches and chalk dust seeping through the ventilation, surrounds the school almost as if it has to protect it. It was more difficult than I thought it would be to find my old desk but when I finally did find it, it was easy to recognise the carving I made which have been coloured with the ink of bored children trying their best to irritate the teacher by ignoring her: SdJ ♥ AS. I sat behind her that day like I always did. If someone were to ask me to draw the slope of her neck, I would heve been able to draw the little mole at the back of her neck just below the hairline, right in the middle. Not a centimetre to the left; not a centimetre to the right. Dominee used to say that everyone has a purpose. Some people chose to serve God, thereby leading the most noble life according to him. If that did not succeed they formed their own cult. Others preferred to fight for the rights of humans and when they weren’t as successful as they planned, turned to the rights of animals. Alice’s was to be my purpose. Unlike most people I did not search into the very deepest of my soul to find out what it would be. My purpose came to me. I did not see her the first time. I heard her. The howling wind had died down and there was absolute silence when I heard her laughing. I turned around and saw her and could just make out the faintest sigh before the wind started blowing again. For a moment I was not sure if it had really happened. She stood in front of her boyfriend with her green school gym tucked between her legs, forming a triangle at the top. Everything hardened up inside of me. She must have felt my gaze upon her because when she looked up her eyes met mine. Her hand made a slow movement pushing back her hair, her head tilted towards the right, her hand moving to her neck, resting there, the slightest smile on her lips, penetrating my being. For some time, looking, or perhaps staring would be a more apt description, was as far as I dared to take it. And it was enough. To touch her was like a dirty but suppressed thought because I heard her, saw her, smelt her. But at night I adored her. Her nipple, like a pink flower, hardens under the touch of my finger, a soft moan escapes from her lips. Her sweet breath is like a childhood memory which you can’t place immediately. I kiss her opened lips. I become one with her. In out in out in. And there I remained: suspended between life and her, life and memories of her, life and memories because of her. Remembering is like looking at your life through a pair of binoculars the wrong way round. You know the memories are closer than what they seem to be. You want to reach out and touch them, jump back into them, change them. Sometimes living was like that. It was quite an event for anyone to be invited to the Storme’s farm for a party and I received my first invitation to go there on Alice’s sixteenth birthday. I did not get a formal invitation like the others did and I should have known then already that I was not important to her. That I was a mere object to her in her quest for popularity. The day of her birthday was a day for snake bites. I think my dad called it a “real scorcher”. Alice’s party was at the waterhole like it always was. Mr Storme was going to take us there but Alice decided that we, Schalk her boyfriend, a fat girl, John and I should rather walk their. We started out early in the morning just as the sun was spilling over the koppies , breaking through the mist. Walking behind Alice was like walking in a dream –I literally followed in her footsteps. She was singing stupid songs that they thought was necessary to teach us in primary school and every now and then I would add a note. We were a little ahead of the rest so that Schalk wasn’t any where close. I was the only one to see how the sunrays caught in the fine hair surrounding her face, made the tempting tendrils look like a halo that “Jesus, man! Look where you’re going.” She stopped so suddenly that there was no time to stop and I stepped on her toe. By that time the rest of the party had already caught up with us. I feared her reaction but instead of continuing to scowl me she put her hand in mine. My hand made hers look minute. I tried to lift it to my mouth so that I could feel the brush of her skin against my lips but she withdrew with a wink of her eye that was so fleeting that I had no idea if it were real or just a twitch in her eye. “Come on, I want to get there before the sun hits the water. Best time of the day. Nanthuli won’t see us then and by the time he realises that we are there he will be so used to us that he won’t try anything.” “What?” The fat girl (I think she was called Lorraine) stopped right in the middle of the road, her red face puffing. She surprised us all when she agreed to walk to the waterhole that was about three kilometres from the farmyard instead of joining Mr Storme in his bakkie. “You going to bull**** us again with one of your stories? Don’t you think that we’re maybe to grown up for that?” “Who said this is a story? I’m telling you it happened. Elsie told me.” “Elsie the kaffir yes. And we all know what a reliable source she is when you want to get stoned.” Schalk looked around to see who was laughing. “Go **** yourself, man. If you don’t want to listen then don’t. Just don’t bother those that want to listen.” “Oh, piss off!” and with that Schalk was gone. “God Alice, don’t you think that was just a little uncalled for?” The fat girl was for ever trying to be like a peacemaker so maybe that was why she looked in my direction. For moral support. “Ag, if he wants to be a spoilsport then let him. Do you want to hear it or not?” I didn’t realise then that she had not left us much choice. She didn’t wait for an answer either. “Well see, it happened a long time ago. Thati was the most beautiful girl in the district. Few people knew however because she only came out at night. Because she was so beautiful, the thornbush became so jealous when she appeared where he could see her that it started to grow sharp white thorns and every time she passed a bush the thorns would grow looking vicious more and more. People started begging her to only come out during the night when all other creatures were sleeping because the trees started to launch thorns at them and after after one of the older men in the tribe lost an eye, they were scared they all might start losing their eyes…” “What started growing thorns?” The fat girl was walking at the back of the group so that she could not hear everything. Still, Alice was irritated with her. “The bloody moon. What do you think, hey? Try not to be so stupid ‘cause other wise you can also get going. Thati was very unhappy and instead of walking in the veld like she used to do, for she could spend hours following the trail of a dung beetle or even a tortoise, she spent her nights weeping. She cried so much that her tears started to form a puddle. The people didn’t realise anything. They thought it might be from the rain until someone pointed out that it hasn’t rained for years. They found no explanation for it and since everybody was sleeping at night no one noticed how much and how often she was crying. Exactly a year after she was confined to the darkness of her parents’ hut, she disappeared. No one knew what happened to her and they sent out people to look for her. Her father found her and floating in the pool and he was so overwhelmed by grief that he walked into the water and never came back. Now he stays there in a cave in the waterhole that his daughter cried for him. He only comes out early in the morning and at night when the water doesn’t hit the sun directly. And then he is a water snake.” “Ag, shame.” “Wait, it’s not finished. Thati’s mother was so angry with the people that she blaimed them for the death of her husband and daughter. She went to the thorn bush to ask him to carry little yellow flowers each year at the same time to remind the people of how selfish their wish to keep her daughter away from what she loved, was. The bush was only to pleased to do that because then, for at least a short while every year, it would be the most beautiful creature the little men from the district will lay their eyes on.” With that she was gone, the yellow fluff of the thorntrees closing behind her. And all the time lauging that silly laugh of hers. I have heard people enviously giving descriptions of the waterhole on the Storme’s farm. They sometimes called it the only sure thing in their lives except for the draught. There must have been a spell on it because it always remained at the same level no matter how much water was used to irrigate the lands or fill the water troughs for the cattle. All descriptions superceded it, however. It was in a secluded area made even more isolated by the high rock wall on the one side where Mr Storme installed ropes to climb to the top so that, when you jumped from there, you literally crashed into the water. On the other side there were rocks that looked as though it were the chairs of giants. A small forest of thornbush trees opened up on it, closing it off from the outside world. Alice was walking into the water when we came there, her clothes lying in a tangled bundle. When she heard us entering the spot, she turned around, smiling at us and plunged into the water with her arms stretched out. Her breasts were the last to disappear under the water, still regarding me, teasing me. It felt as though my clothes were strangling me. I had to get out of them and go to Alice but the fat girl was already with her, splattering all over the place, yelling high pitched “****, ****, ****”-s trying to get the attention of someone. Instead, I went and sat on a rocks where I could spread myself out, baking in the sun like a dassie , blinded by the sun, falling prey to an eagle. It was only when she stood in my sun that I realised she had been standing there for a while already. I opened my eyes. Her black silhouette was engraved in the azure of the sky. She blocked off the sun but it was as though she was blocking off all sound as well. “Aren’t you going to swim?” the words floated on the breeze of her voice, rushing when they came to my ears, thundering forth. She bent over me, shaking her wet hair so that the drops fell on my cheeks. The smell of her suntan lotion was caught up in the drops, the smell slowly drifting up my nostrils. It was as if I could feel the tips of her fingers touch my face. Faking reluctance I got up and began to undress and without looking back dived into the cold water. It was colder than what I thought it would be so that I shot back, breaking the calm surface. All that I heard was Alice’s laugh. It was different now, ugly: like a hissing sound. It seemed impossible for a sound like that to come from her lips. She made a backflip and suddenly, she was next to me. Her lips were smiling at me, showing off her teeth. She was so close that I could feel the kicking motions she was making with her feet to prevent her from sinking. She was so close that I could feel her breathing onto my skin. Little droplets formed on her eyelashes and when the sun shone on them at the right angle, she looked at me with a thousand eyes. It was impossible for a sound like that to come from her lips. “Let’s see who can hold his breath for the longest. The one that loses gets to start the fire.” I used to be quite good at holding my breath in the bathtub when I was small. Once, my mother found me there half conscious. For a very long time I wasn’t trusted in the bath. Therefor, I was determined not to lose. Also because I knew nothing of making a fire. The fat girl was appointed as referee and we went down on the count of three. I was a four again and drifting into another world. My eyes were closed but I could see fishes swimming, nibbling on my fingers. I only realised the touch of lips on mine were real when I started swallowing water. For the second time that day, I shot through the surface. Alice was nowhere. John surfaced next to me. At the end of that day nothing was real anymore except for the pain I felt and the touch of her hand in mine. I ended up collecting the wood for a fire, Schalk offered to make it. I did not look where I was going so I tripped over the trunk of a dead thorn tree, falling onto the ground with a white thorn sticking through my hand. The fat girl had to remove it to clean the wound. She smiled at me the whole time, wistling stupid songs pretending that they had no meaning to her. Alice did not even look up when I came back with the thorn visible on both sides of my hand. To her it was all just a game. And still, I could not say “**** you, Alice.” Life became even more distanced after that. I made desperate attempts to speak to her but the words would stick in my throat, becoming sticky like dry bread, forming clumps to hard to swallow. She was the first thought when I woke up. She was the last thought in my mind when I fell asleep. She was staring at me from the bottom of my coffee cup. It was her reflection I saw in the window when I walked past. It was her shadow that followed me and pointed south at twelve. I became her. In out in out in. I was Alice. Alice was me. Alice = Sarah. Alice did not come to my funeral. I have been to visit her a couple of times since then, but she is so involved with herself that she probably doesn’t even realise that I am lying in her arms. Maybe. It will be the one thing that I will never know. The moment of silence the prinipal ordered touched everyone except her. Some of the girls who thought they were my friends cried. The fat girl was shaking. Alice on the other hand couldn’t wait to get outside to tell everyone that I was in love with her. How uncomfortable I made her feel. How vulnerable and dirty I made her feel. It is so easy to forget that which comes to close to your own skin. To forget what it was like. To forget how easy it is to hurt other people. It was on a winter day that I died. The sun was shining but it was cold. I did not want to die cold. Some people think that dying alone is the worst than dying coldly but you can’t die unless you are willing to die alone. People interfere in business that is not their own and they try to stop you from doing “something stupid”. I walked through the house for a last time trying to remember things the way they were, trying not to leave my room in the usual state it was in. I owed my mother that much at least. In the bathroom I undressed. Slowly. Engulfed by the sensation of feeling my skin for the last time. Feeling relieved. Feeling loved. I ran a bath and stepped into it slowly trying not to upset the surface. The water was warm and it burnt my toes. How different this was. And yet it was the same all over again. It hurt when I cut my wrist but the crimson drops, colouring the water as they fell into it was so pretty that the pain did not matter. Lying in the bloody water was like being born again. I broke through the surface laughing. By Tredoux |
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| © Copyright 2000 Sylvia Greybe - All Rights Reserved | |||
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WolfsMate Member
since 2000-01-14
Posts 121New York |
A totally engrossing story!! Enjoyed this very much! "You never have to worry...Never fear for I am near" |
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Alicat Member Elite
since 1999-05-23
Posts 4094Coastal Texas |
This was a very well-written story that captured my mind's eye...I could see the scenes described, and hear the odd hyena laughter. Good job! However, I'm not saying I'm against the ending, but I wonder if it will fit within the guidelines regarding suicide. Now, I know this is a fictious story, but other's might not...and the very ending, while not exactly graphic, might cross the line. Just thought you might like to know.... Again, let me re-iterate that I really enjoyed this story, even the ending...but I'm not certain it fits within PiP's policy...let me know what you think. Alicat |
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Dusk Treader
Moderator
Senior Member
since 1999-06-18
Posts 1187St. Paul, MN |
This was a great story, so well written and just captivating. I wasn't too thrilled when I opened the thread but as soon as I started reading I was pulled in, excellent! I also agree with Alicat... I'm not critizing your story whatsoever, and I mean no insult but I'm not sure the suicide ending corresponds with Passion's guidelines. Great writing though, and much enjoyed. The cruelty of the popular against those people that are "different" is horrible... excellent story. Abrahm Simons "...Watching fate as it flows down the path we have chose" - Trent Reznor, "We're in this Together" |
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