Kieran

Maybe it’s boredom. Maybe it’s Astrid’s sudden seeming peak in serotonin. Maybe it’s because a part of me grows tired of fruitlessly working to make a connection with a thousand strangers. Whatever it is, it drives me to invite Astrid to more adventures.

Soon our exploits bleed into more hours. More days. More weeks. We spend so much time drinking in sights and tasting food – “This is the best thing man has ever created!”, Astrid had said about chocolate ice cream – and feeling music that we almost lose track of time.

Deep down, however, my thoughts can barely stifle the ticking clock at the back of my mind.

“What a total Betty, am I right?”

I tear my attention away from Astrid as she bobs her head up and down to the record music blaring dully from her headphones. We are at a record store across a beach after taking a break from trying to meet women – or rather, I am taking a break from her incessant pointers on how I should “better myself at wooing the female heart”.

“You’re a total Betty,” I crack the same smile which used to help me get away with a lot of things back then.

It works; she falters a little. Those heavily-lined eyelids flutter, but then she regains her wit and snorts. “You trying to get yourself a discount?”

“I’m honestly more of a cassette guy,” I confess, leaning over the high counter with my chin propped up on my fist. “How about a name instead?”

She regards me cautiously. She’s probably wondering if I’m joking or not – which strikes me as strange, because she really is a pretty girl, what with her jet-black bangs falling over her brown skin and her Metallica T-shirt. She’s cute.

“How about...Elton John?” Her ringed fingers pry a record off the selection shelf next to the counter.

“Would you personally listen to it?”

Her lips purse thoughtfully before she shrugs. “Not really. I’m more into Radiohead, Nirvana…you know.”

Too bad. I like Elton John. “I’m personally more of a Queen guy myself.”

“Please,” she smirks. “Everyone’s into Queen.”

As she continues to offer me more selections and advertise newer bands, I catch a glimpse of a boy approaching Astrid out of the corner of my eye. He starts to pick out a record for her and fixes it into the player.

“...and that’s why Metallica’s probably never going to have a bad album.”

My lips quirk upwards at the passion in her tone. “You ever hear of Green Day?”

She blinks, puzzled. “Yeah.”

“They’ll be big in a few years’ time. You should probably start making bets with anybody who contends otherwise – it could earn you a couple of bucks here and there.”

The girl narrows her eyes, trying to unravel the joke behind my words. When she cannot, she gives me another one of her cynical smirks instead. “You’re a little wack, you know that?”

“And you are being redundantly mysterious about your name.”

She sighs. “It’s...Mika.”

“Mika,” I say, offering her my hand. When she shakes it, I tell her, “I hope I’ll be able to catch you in here tomorrow, Mika.”

“But you’re not a fan of records, remember?” she reminds me.

“Perhaps. But I like one name in this store.”

Her cheeks colour. Again, she gives me that look: the one that tries to search me and my motives, to see if I’m just playing around. So I fix her with my own look, hoping it to be a little more genuine than the spark I can’t seem to feel.

When I leave the store, Astrid is already waiting for me outside.

“Made a new friend?” I ask, shoving my hands into my pockets as we stroll beside the road opposite the beach. The sound of the waves rushing against the shore fills the air with background music.

“I should be asking you that,” she pulls a face. “And, no. I think he wanted me to hire his acquaintanceship with something of monetary value.”

“What do you mean?”

“He kept asking me for...my digits?”

An amused chuckle escapes me. It warrants me a glare from her, so I have to explain: “He wanted your phone number. You know, to contact you with a phone – those little boxes?”

Recognition dawns on her face. She nods. “Ah, the common contraption.” Her face starts to light up.

“Can I have one of those?” she asks, patting me on the arm. “That boy really was a lovely character.”

I wrinkle my nose. “What am I, made of money? It’s a miracle I haven’t gone bankrupt with your consistent eating.”

Again, I earn another cold glare from her. She harrumphs and looks away.

“Fine. If that is how little you treasure me, then so be it.”

I return the next day for the girl. Mika. She appears genuinely excited to see me, and that alone sparks a faint promise which pulls me to visit her again, and again. We start to talk less about music and more about her life and school and her parents.

Slowly but surely, I start to feel it. It’s not so much an attraction as it is a connection, something to tether me to this place each day.

One day, she asks me to grab a cup of coffee after her shift is up in the next hour. I promise her instead that I will pick her up the next day, and when she asks for my number, I make up an excuse about my house phone being serviced. She further questions me on more things, like where I live and how come I don’t go to their school in this small town. To each of the questions, I lie cleverly. I’ve prepared for this, after all.

When I come to pick her up the next day, the store has already been closed and she is nowhere to be seen.

I try catching her the next day, just before she can leave the store. For some reason, I expect an explanation for yesterday.

“I don’t think we should be hanging out like this,” she tells me, looking down at her feet.

We stop seeing each other after that.

Astrid

Two hours before midnight, I find myself restlessly wandering in my chemise toward the kitchens.

Eli’s boxes of cereal have been restocked. I pour myself an amount he would not miss in the morning and fill the bowl with milk. Leaning against the tall counter on my elbows, I eat in the dark.

Four months. Four months have passed since Kieran’s promise that he would find a woman to love him within the week.

The sound of feet shifting against the cold floors causes my ears to perk up. I turn around.

“Do not be alarmed. It’s just me.”

Kieran stands in his unflattering robe, bringing with him a small lamp to illuminate the way. He sets it down on the tall table in the middle of the kitchen and opens one of the cabinets.

A glass flies into his hand. Even in the dim light, I notice that his fingers tremble slightly when he tries to balance a kettle in his grip.

“Do you need a hand?”

The kettle dips a second too soon and unleashes the water from within. A sharp, searing sound causes every muscle in my shoulder to tense up.

“Agh, ouch!” he sucks in a sharp breath. The kettle clangs heavily against the floor. He leaps out of the way, but I can tell that the water has spilled all over his foot.

Kieran lets out a mangled cry.

“Are you alright?” I step towards him. “Let me -”

“No, it will heal,” he snaps.

Without warning, he picks the glass off the table and hurls it across the kitchen.

I jump in fright, not so much at the sound of it shattering into a thousand fragments against the cabinets, but more because of the angry roar that escapes his lips:

“It. Always. Heals!”

For a split second I wonder if midnight has come.

“Why did you have to go into the West Wing?” he cries. “Now we’re just feeding all this- this -” He picks up more things to throw at the empty walls. Things I can barely see in this darkness. “This false pretense to feed the rest of them. We shouldn’t have met. None of this would have happened if we had just never met!” he bellows every syllable at the top of his lungs.

“Why didn’t you just listen?”

His arm sweeps across the tables and counters and everything turns into a mess of destruction. Every dull crash of the bones in his hands against stone and wood makes me flinch.

Kieran howls in pain and fury until he loses his energy.

With his back turned on me, his hunched shoulders move up and down while his heavy breaths feed the tense silence. The shadow of his curled fingers on the walls displays the promise of talons in the coming hours.

Tears spring to my eyes. I turn my head to the side and blink them away.

When I find my words again, I struggle to keep my voice unmerciful.

“Are you finished?”

He does not reply at first. Just as I begin to wonder if he has even heard me, his body shifts until I can see the shadows cast upon his face.

Right here in the dark, with his posture so weak and his rage so raw, I can finally see just how long this man has lived.

“Look at me,” I order, lifting my chin.

His gaze remains glued stubbornly to the ground. He angles his face slightly away from me in shame.

I make my way around the table that separates us. My bare feet gingerly step around the broken shards of glass and porcelain, which are slowly starting to form themselves into utensils again. As if nothing had happened.

“Look at me,” I repeat, softening my tone to a gentle caress.

My hands reach up to cup his whiskered face. Slowly, those blue eyes meet mine – the eyes of a human being. Eyes that betray the hopelessness of a century.

His chest rises and falls against my forearms. We stand there, paralyzed in regret and uncertainty.

Using the sleeves of my chemise, I wipe away the streaks of moisture on his face. The tears keep rolling down after I do so. When his face contorts in grief, it is all I can do to swallow the thickness forming in my throat.

Kieran dips his head onto my shoulder. Automatically, I wrap my arms mildly around his torso and hold him while he falls apart in the dark.