Quiet desperation filled the room, like the scent of lavender perfume in the bridal suite of a royal chateau. This sense of yearning was so palpable, so potent, that any and all who wondered into the vicinity were overwhelmed by it, feeling it tingle down their spine; like an impossible-to-reach itch buried beneath innumerable folds and layers of clothing, an itch so excruciatingly desperate to be scratched which yet agonisingly remains frozen in an unbearable state of anticipation, never satisfied, the tension never released, the triumphant climax never quite reached, despairingly close though it may be.
He was an addict; his tense body language, his nervous twitching neck, his shaking hands and quivering lips, his darting stare and bloody nose, his fast, shallow breathing were all signs pointing blatantly to this fact. However, this state of withdrawal he now found himself trapped within – like the steel-barred cage of a furious wild animal or the cement-erected underground prison of a cannibalistic warlord – was so foreign to him, so alien, that he had begun to believe he was not an addict, that he was a superior life form incapable of addiction, that his mental acuity was simply so sharp that it cut through any psychological dependency that other, lesser minds succumbed to. He had fallen near-fatally ill of a brutal arrogance, fuelled by years of traumatic childhood insecurity and a plethora of ‘isms’ his parents had been informed, by black-suited doctors, that their child was to be plagued by his entire life, unless he were to undergo the intensive regime of pharmaceutical medication they were seedily peddling, disturbingly pushing, no different, morally, than a hooded street dealer who hangs around on the corner of a bleak city street offering a trip to oblivion for a price.
And so it was, their sordid advice was taken and his confused and delicate child’s mind was warped into a state of chemical-dependence. Years later, now, his strange and surreal psyche melts, bubbles and fizzes within a cauldron of euphoria, it floats ethereal and ghostlike in a haze of wonder and blissful artificial tranquillity, it swooshes down a cinematic slide in the water park of his imagination, his synapses and dopamine receptors flooded with waves of pulsating pleasure, his soul effervescing in this supernatural potion, everything seeming so psychedelic and sensual as he gazes through glassy eyes, like a prism, at the great kaleidoscopic mirage of blurry images that dance all around him. In his mind he hears grand operatic singers and classical orchestras serenading him to sleep every night and as he wakes he swoons before a metropolis of glorious illusion.
From this marvellous bosom of dreams and fantasy arose his towering sculptures of words and sounds and images, he sculpted his artistic vision into a cinematic masterpiece, he crafted his future like a spell twirls and flickers at every nuanced motion of a wand, and reality, thus, opened up unto him a dreamy myriad of possibilities he previously thought impossible, a life of tropical grace and eternal pleasure, and so he found himself absorbed within a life of luxury, of opulent hotel lobbies, cigarettes on balconies overlooking twinkling city lights, of private jets to mysterious islands, every sensation imaginable available to satiate, of infinite-seeming beauty and wonders not even his drug-addled mind could have prophesied, each moment one of immense feeling and grandeur, each sight utterly exquisite, each scent stupefyingly stunning, each sound so achingly sonorous and melodious, that days flickered before his eyes like the pages of a book of fairytales, weeks thence morphing into months, years of ecstasy and adulation and glorious immortal-feeling joy and jubilance piling atop one another like furls in a dancing ribbon, until finally he awakens somehow, exhausted, in a shiny room, filled with quiet desperation.
A rubix-cube of paradoxes lay before him, as if he were a single lonely atom within a vast matrix of digital oceans and virtual skies burdened with the herculean task of somehow finding his way home, back to his father’s lap, upon which he would sit as a child, a hazy orange glow emanating from the rustic open fire which lit up his father’s face and caused shadows to dance on the ceiling, where he was truly happy, comforted and safe, feeling secure within the paternal embrace of his father, whose arms were impossibly strong, it seemed, and whose superhuman powers were greater even than superman seen at a glance in comic books, where he was protected by the embrace of his loving father, like floating down a clear-blue river with the strong lunar current into paradise, where all was well and as one wished. It was this feeling, Klementine solemnly realised, he was truly searching for, with every prick of the mojo pin, with every snort and sniff, with every powder he vacuumed off the cover of first-edition paperback books, with every pill he popped in pristine swimming pools, with every single syringe he gleefully stabbed into his arms in debauched mansions and orgy-ridden penthouse lofts.
It was that simple cottage, he was searching for, wherein he was born unto this strange earth, the land of which was cultivated and farmed for generations by his iron forefathers, in which he once sat on the lap of his father and played with the hairs on his forearm. Ah the simple beauty of his childhood, so pure and sweet a tear trickles down his eye as he gazes forlornly into his past, through the hazy mess of his modern life, at the quaint, delightful simplicity of his rural heritage, his home. For sometimes, he mused, to go further is to go too far.
Short Story by Stamos Mardou