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GRASS

by Timen Jan Veenstra

Short story

Rippling rivers of light. Street lanterns reflected in shiny paintwork. A familiar click, the car locking shut. The softly fading rumble of an engine cooling off. Standing beside the door, his head slightly tilted, he breathes in, taking a deep breath to suck the air deep into his lungs. To lift off in one single breath, free at last of… of what? Of what not, really?

The wind gently tugs at his curls, tickles his nose, slowly dispelling the smog, the exhaust fumes, the stale feeling of too many people, too many things. Too much at the same time, the same place. Clover and bark instead, a hint of blossom. The air is tingling, buzzing, whirling about. It’s something to do with grass, with the time he was little, with running and skipping and laughing, feeling that life could only get better. That there’s still a whole world to discover, mysteries to unravel. And that it matters, this feeling he had when sprinting across the lawn in his bare feet.

A minute passes. Another one goes by. He has almost forgotten this day and all days preceding it. He has almost forgotten the reason for his existence, the undefinable gnawing in the pit of his stomach driving him on. The cramp of missing. Something, somewhere. The emptiness that has been spreading throughout his body for days, months, years. A cramp turning the colours of the world around him into shades of pale. Yellowish, mouldy, worn-out white. Sky-blue dispelled by wisps of stifling grey.

She takes his hand and he looks at her, wanting for her to end the missing, the searching. Her and her platinum blonde summer hair, her round mouth, her black clothes clinging to her body. And her breasts, her breasts, her…

He looks her in the eye and sees a reflection of the street lanterns, wanting to bury himself in her kisses, drown himself in her body, be smothered by her flesh, die in her arms gasping breathlessly. Forget. Forget. All wishes that didn’t come true. Stillborn dreams. Hope gathering dust. Himself.

She takes him with her.

Along neon signs hurling their four-star status into the world. Across long carpets of black asphalt. Past closed doors of tall glass buildings, their footsteps echoing hollowly against dilapidated concrete walls. A smell of piss and blood and vomit, lacking any reminder of grass. She squeezes his hand, her painted nails piercing his flesh. She takes him with her, briskly, charging along without delay. He feels his legs cramp up, and stutters, ‘I don’t normally do this.’ She smiles. Something inside him wants to point out the synthetic smell of her hair, her fake nails, the crimson lie of her lipstick screaming that she’s dangerous. That it’s dangerous to pretend. As if he doesn’t pretend himself every day, with his fancy suits, his lease car, his secretary. The same car and the same route and the same traffic jam day after day, meanwhile growing older and greyer, his lower back becoming painful when he sits down stands up lies down his fingers getting stiffer lines appearing in his face and the idea that you have only thirty twenty ten years left and hating yourself for the cliché that you’ve become because your life was meant to be bigger better different…

He abandons himself to the flow of time and concrete, to the clash of what he knows and what he wants, casting a sidelong glance at the stars, zooming cars slowly fading out of earshot. She takes him past petrol stations, down alleys, passing overflown rubbish bins and ramshackle harbour sheds whose broken windows help emphasize that all of this once was only an illusion of life, that no one has ever managed to tear themselves away from their imperfections. That no one nowhere has ever become more than what they were, however much they wanted it. You live, you die, you’re reborn and that’s it. When she drags him into the building, pulling him past plastered pillars through black shadows up the stairs, and pushes his body down onto a creaking bed, he no longer wants to distinguish the how from the what: everything has become the same. Or it was already, and what does it matter? Having stopped wondering why, he doesn’t want to feel anything but her hair on his fingertips, doesn’t want to smell anything but her, his lips on her skin, yielding to the uncontrollable need to dissolve to stop existing to disconnect from a life that never does what it promises to melt away until there is nothing but her breath against his ear his cheek his stomach knowing it’ll stop it’ll stop it’ll stop let it let it let it stop…

The bed creaks, her hands unfastening his fly. Then she drops down on her knees before him, her skirt still on. He looks at her, at how her hair falls around her shoulders, her breasts moving with her body, her back creating a shadow theatre on the coarse concrete floor. And he notices how the light of the street lanterns doesn’t stream in anywhere, how the world outside remains outside, stays away. And the ceiling, the ceiling, the ceiling…

Her smile. Her mouth is moving, she’s asking him a question, her hand resting on his thigh. She smiles and asks him again. She is sincere, and he doesn’t know how to handle this, having a person at the end of the bed, between his legs. He gestures: carry on. Don’t stop, never stop. Not now, not now. He feels her tongue circling around, circling his dick. Her hands on him, moving up and down, up and down. Faster, faster. Squeezing, massaging, pulling, she coos, caresses, whispering sweet words. But he only hears his own fake panting, he’s only aware of the forced suppression of his retching. He feels nothing but the resounding rush inside his body, his fear balled up into a knot in the pit of his stomach.

When she’s done, she settles down next to him. He sees his shadow reflected in her pupils, his hands are shaking. Wordlessly, she gives him a cigarette, which he smokes. ‘Thank you,’ he says. She nods, leaves.

While he just sits there.

Thinking of the smell of grass.

Published in Extra Extra No 13
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