We decided to walk to her place and watch a movie. I can’t remember what we talked about on the way, but at one point, I flew feverishly into recounting a scene from a film I had seen once. The film tells the story of a man who is mistakenly accused of molesting a child. The man lives in a small town, and so when rumours spread about the accusation, he is ostracised from the community and his life naturally becomes a living hell due to this inextricable mark on his character. During one scene in the film, a girl whom the man has been seeing finds out about the allegations. The man and the girl are in the man’s house, and he states emphatically that he didn’t molest the child. Then, suddenly, for a brief second, a very subtle expression flashes on the woman’s face. The expression is one of doubt; she doesn’t believe him, but only momentarily. Even though this expression lasts only for a second, the man is extremely offended and tells her to get the hell out, ending the relationship.
I gesticulated with extreme passion how I thought it was incredible that such a facial expression (‘. . . and only revealed for a hair’s breadth of a second!’) could have such powerful implications. I think I’d hoped that by telling her the story, she would think me a ‘terribly passionate’ individual, with such a capability for depth and profundity that she would have no choice but to resign herself to the fact that I was not someone to be taken lightly.
‘But what do you think of share-bikes?’ she said, as we passed a mangled, orange share-bike.
When we reached her place, I put on some of her pyjamas. Something about this didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. We lay down in front of the TV and she put on a Nazisploitation film that I had wanted to watch for a long time. About half-way through the film, I realised that I had no idea what was going on.
‘Sorry, I’m really not following this plot at all. Why was she screaming as she ran down the hallway just now?’
I turned to her. She was looking at me with a strange expression on her face that I had never seen before. The expression flashed only for a moment, immediately wiped away like a glass of spilt coke. But then, suddenly, it was like warm saline had been injected into my heart and my whole body became relaxed and warm. This feeling rippled through me like someone had thrown a pebble into an ethereal pool of water that was my spirit.
I slowly leaned towards her and started to kiss her. At first, she was hesitant, but then the floodgates opened.
Kissing her lips was like taking a sip of water after being stranded in the desert for three days straight. As I drank her up, I stopped momentarily, moving back to take a deep look into her green eyes.
The expression on her face was that of a dead puppet.
Her glass eyes had a look about them which sucked the soul right out of my chest through my gaping mouth.
I cried out. Two ants were crawling out of her left eyeball.
‘Game over, fucker!’ she shrieked.
I gasped and woke up.
There was daylight around me. I was lying in front of the television. There was no one around.
I lay there for a while and then I heard movement in an adjacent room. She came out and asked if I wanted to go get breakfast.
After breakfast, she left to go to work.
As she was leaving, she turned to me and said, ‘I’ll see you soon?’
‘Sure,’ I said, spotting a little ant on the ground struggling with a crumb of bread.
I quickly squashed it with my foot.