The Dark Side - Crush
1. Warning, this entry is long.
2. Each passing day, it gets harder to tell this story, but I owe this to our readers. And more and more, I feel I should not limit it to just the four chapters I thought would suffice.
3. I’m considering moving “The Dark Side” to a subdomain, seeing that our hosts, Node Six, now support subdomains. Thoughts, anyone?
4. Previous chapters of “The Dark Side” can be found here :
Chapter One - Origins | Chapter Two - Tempest
And without further ado:
The Dark Side - Chapter Three - Crush
——————————————–
Pippin: I didn’t think it would end this way.
Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path… One that we all must take. The grey rain curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it.
Pippin: What, Gandalf? See what?
Gandalf: White shores… And beyond. A far green country, under a swift sunrise.
Pippin: Well… That isn’t so bad.
Gandalf: No. No, it isn’t.
It was bad. Worse than I thought. I had messed up big time, and there was no turning back.
There was no sunrise for me, there were no white shores, no green country. In fact, my future had irrevocably intertwined with my past, culminating in my present, my now. As The Architect would say, a brilliant success equaled only by its monumental failure. And this was it. This, was all.
I knew I’d have to try and fix it somehow, but I didn’t know where to start. In my life, I had never ever felt so terribly afraid, and so terribly alone. Besides, truth be told, I knew, deep down in my heart that there was no way I could fix something like this. Absolutely no way. Yet here I was, lying in the dusty corner of a dingy room, trying to figure everything out.
The shattered slivers of glass jutting out of a rusting window frame reflected the last rays of a kaleidoscopic African sunset. As the warm rays fell on my sleeping face, I felt a cold shiver run down my spine.
I was scared. My terror was pure and absolute.
I forced myself to get up and slowly walked across the dusty floor towards the window, intending to tie my makeshift curtain across the other side of the window. Outside, the gloomy gathering of storm clouds grabbed my attention and I could not help but think how appropriate it all felt.I stood there for a long moment until I was broken out of my reverie by the first drops of rain hitting the ironsheet root.
A few moments later, the bucket I’d balanced precariously on top of my tin-metal suitcase in the center of the room began what would be a long career in preventing my belongings from getting drenched.
I stared out the window as night descended rapidly and the storm increased, snaking rivulets of water down the broken glass. I felt the spray of rain make their way inside the squalid room and I turned away from the window. Lying on the floor in the corner of the room, I watched the window, knowing that any minute, someone could simply walk into the room while I slept, oblivious and unaccustomed to my new surroundings.
Exhausted, and lulled to sleep by the monotony of a billion raindrops hitting the iron sheet roof with enough noise to wake the dead, I slowly drifted into an uneasy sleep, and as my eyes closed, I caught the last glimpse of lightning, heard the earth shattering rumble a split second later and in the distance, a pack of wild dogs howled.
That’s when the tears started falling.
—
Arwen: Do you remember when we first met?
Aragorn: I thought I had wandered into a dream.
She was beautiful. Impossibly so. And in the awkwardness of my adolescence, with long lanky legs, skinny arms and a cheesy grin that made people think I had 72 teeth, coupled with my introversion tendencies, I knew, that never in my wildest dreams would she even know I existed.
I was fifteen, we were in the same class, senior five, and by virtue of my expedited education, I knew she was at least a full year or two older than me, as was everyone in my class.
Unfortunately for me, we shared two classes, Mathematics and Physics. and I spent every waking moment of my day thinking about her. Dreaming of walking up to her and her smiling back at me, then taking my hand as we made our way to the upper classes from the Physics lab. Always, without fail, my day dreams were rudely interrupted by the roar of the class as the physics teacher approached my seat and asked what was so funny about Bernoulli’s fluid dynamics that made me listen with eyes closed and smile like an idiot.
I’d blush, if that were possible, given my complexion, a dark shade of purple and I’d hurriedly begin scribbling high level equations in my notepad, switching almost instantaneously from being inattentive to challenging the teacher’s postulated theorems.
Occasionally, I’d turn round to look at her and she’d be staring right back at me, with this weird expression on her face, and I’d feel even more useless, as a newborn duckling is wont to feel when presented with the first chance at flight.
And so it continued for the entire first term, the report I took home earned me one of the harshest tongue lashings I’d ever had, from my dear dad, and the meanest of sneers from my step-ma. I vowed I’d not let a “mere” girl do this to me again.
Second term began and I was resolute in my decision. I pretended she didn’t exist at all, paying very little attention to her, not that she asked for it in the first place. It was to such an extent that I’d always be on the board explaining stuff to my fellow students, perhaps more often than not, trying to subconsciously prove to her that I was worth her attention. Once, only once, I looked at her and she smiled.
I didn’t sleep for a week.
Her smile, her beauty, her very essence was etched in my mind.
My other classes were less stressful. Chemistry and Art. Chemistry was a veritable nightmare, academically speaking of course, what with the complexities of sub-atomic elements being represented by mere chemical equations. I loved it nonetheless, especially the practical sessions, when I’d stray from the assigned practical and being experimenting on the most ridiculous of ideas. One time I managed to create the most horrible smell in the known universe, I think. The lab was closed for two weeks.
Art class on the other hand… It was a chance for me to excel without trying. It was a reprieve, a few hours of freedom during the academic week when I could just… chill, doing nothing and yet have everyone ooh and aah over my work. And it wasn’t even on abstract Renaissance expressionism or cubism, much as I wanted it to be. It was good old still life, living person, nature and the works. My brush and pencil were the tools of conquest.
3:30 PM, a lazy Monday afternoon, shading away at another masterpiece, I noticed the perfume before I noticed the person. I’d never smelt something so beautiful. I turned around, frowning and curious, thinking, perhaps that one of the girls had accidentally spilled one of the numerous indescribable and unmentionable contents of their petite bags or worse, that the guys were playing a silly prank, and as always, the joke was on me…
And there she was. Standing in front of me, A3 art sheet in hand, looking all shy and petite with the white blouse and grey skirt, nervously biting the tip of her 4B pencil, and with the most beautiful smile in the world.
“Hi”. The voice of an angel. My heart stopped.
“Ummmm…” Me.
“I’m Samantha”
Deafeningsilence on my part.
“You have a name, right?”
She’s giggling, I’m dumbstruck, on the verge of a heart attack.
“Anyway, I just joined art class, because I need all the points I can get”
I nod numbly, wondering what that has to do with me, and wishing God was still in the business of opening the earth beneath people’s feet.
“The art teacher asked me to come to you, saying you can help me, since you’re better than everyone else in this paper, you can help me get up to speed.”
“Uhhhhhh… are you sure?” Corniest statement of my life, she just smiled and nodded, gesturing towards the art teacher.
I turned and looked in his general direction, and he chose that specific moment to start walking towards us. That was when, mercifully, my wits returned to me, and I invited her to my side of the art table, clearing as much space as possible so I could give her the full benefit of my much lauded artistic intellect.
“Everything okay here?” art teacher.
I nodded, and she smiled.
What followed was the most beautiful time of my life. I looked forward to every single class, because now, she smiled AT me, she talked TO me and she walked WITH me. I owned the upper classes, even the house captains were afraid to touch me. I found out later, that I was not the only one who was vying for her attention, and the fact that I seemed to have found it, gave me that extra cred that every student craved. Suddenly, I was no longer skinny, lanky and geeky. I was cool, suave and sophisticated.
The day I found her seated next to my usual seat in Physics lab, I almost fainted.
To immortalise an african phrase, I had arrived.
Arwen: Long years have passed. You did not have the cares you carry now. Do you remember what I told you?
Aragorn: You said you’d bind yourself to me, forsaking the immortal life of your people.
Arwen: And to that I hold. I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.
Aragorn: You cannot give me this.
Arwen: It is mine to give to whom I will. Like my heart.
She gave me her heart.
Senior Six vacation, we hadn’t seen each other for months after school. I longed to see her, just to catch a glimpse of her around town. It’s not like Kampala is a big town, you can walk for thirty minutes in any direction and you’d be out of town, and besides, I was working smack in the middle of the city, near one of the most popular hangout joints, she had to be around somewhere.
The number she gave me didn’t work, and I was devastated. None of my friends knew her number, and the ones who did, wouldn’t give it to me. In my naivety, I didn’t understand why. Later, I learnt they were jealous because I was not from the cool or loaded family, and yet I had somehow managed to get with one of the hottest girls in school.
Then one day, as fate would have it, she walked right into the internet cafe where I was working, slaving away for the local capitalists. She screamed my name in surprise, and everyone turned to look. I turned around from the client I was helping, ready to tell the person off. Then I saw her.
The world stopped.
It was just… her.
Her smile, her poise, her body, her grace, her hair… Her smile, again. Everything else ceased to exist. She was was all that mattered. I didn’t know she could be even more beautiful.
We hugged awkwardly, the kind of hug you give when you’re not sure what kind of hug to give. She asked me if we could go have lunch outside, and knowing my perpetual brokeness only too well, she said it was okay, she would pay. I grinned sheepishly and asked my boss for permission. The excitement on my face must have helped.
We talked for a long time. She told me she’d gone to the village for a break and had some issues at home to deal with when she got back, and to make matters worse, the number she’d give me was out of commission, those being the days when numbers were still issued by Uganda Posts and Telecommunications, and involved men with overalls climbing poles and manually linking wires.
She looked so beautiful across the table, and, now that we were out of school, it crossed my mind that there was no way she was still mine. She must have found another more loaded dude who could take better care of her.
“I thought I’d never see you again.” She was close to tears.
“Me too” My awkwardness in full throttle.
“I love you. I love you so very much.” She said it, tears streaming down her face.
I reached out to her and held her close to me and kissed her hair, knowing that this was something that only God, in his omniscient wisdom, could have orchestrated. I made a mental note to read an extra chapter in the Good Book that night, as a token of thanks.
We’d never hugged, and we’d never said the three words, and yet there, in the crowded ice cream parlour, on Kampala Road, with six thousand four hundred and eighty nine eyes on us, it was perfect.
It was my first time at Cineplex. I’d scrounged for two months, misering the little pay I got and walking a certain formidable part of my homeward journey after work every day, just to be able to take her for the movie she was positively dying to watch with me.
Antwone Fisher.
We loved the movie. I loved her more. She cried during certain parts of the movie, and being the kind of guy that always had a white handkerchief just for those unpredictable moments, I wiped the tears from her eyes.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She caught me staring, and giggled nervously, telling me to pay attention like we were in class, telling me there’d be a surprise test on it afterward. We laughed, loudly, and the guys at the back shouted at us to keep it down. I reached out and touched her cheek. She leaned closer to me, and I drew her with one hand towards me, holding her face with the other, intending to get closer to her. She turned her face more towards me, and I looked deep into her eyes, for what felt like an eternity.
And I felt the soft velvet touch of her lips against mine.
Thunder.
And lightning.
—
The rain had stopped its relentless assault on the roof, and in the process, filled my tiny bucket to overflowing. I cursed under my breath when I saw the muddy area where the water had overflowed onto the floor, I thought of my belongings in the tin-case, but decided there was nothing I could do about them anyways.
The room was freezing cold and outside, there was absolutely no sound aside from the steady drip-drip of the rainwater off the roof top.
I looked at my “disco” watch. 9:30 PM. I needed to eat.
I looked over at the next bed, if you could call it that. My room-mate, or roomie as we called them around these parts, was fast asleep, shivering in the cold and mumbling in his sleep, fighting with his own brand of demons that tormented him every night. I could feel his pain, but I had problems of my own. I shook him awake and asked if he wanted to go out to scavenge for food, seeing as it was our first night in this neighborhood. He said he was too tired, but would appreciate it if I could buy him something.
A ferocious gust of wind slammed the door into my chest the minute I opened it, almost knocking me off my feet. Muttering expletives, I wrapped my jacket tighter around me and bolted the door, hoping my roomie didn’t get the urge to go take a leak or something even more potent, like a dump, because he’d be in lots of trouble in case I got delayed.
The Bwaise market was a typical African market. Congested, smelly and impassable. And that was before it rained. The rain made it even worse, so I just stuck to the external areas of the market, wandering around looking for the rolex dudes, who for months to come would be the sole caterers to my culinary needs.
Supper was a measly affair, but it was food. Two rolexes each and a couple of bogoya would suffice. It was food, it filled our stomachs, gave us a raison d’etre and kept us alive. We knew if we indulged too much, we’d both be walking to and from work for a like a week, which inadvertently meant our expenses on shoes would go up, seeing as work was about five kilometers away.
My roomie, his day job being a few shillings shy of casual labour, and his night job requiring four hours of graveyard shift madness, fell asleep immediately after he’d thrown the last banana down his throat.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. Her memory haunted me too much. So much that staying awake didn’t help any.
—
Arwen: Why do you fear the past? You are Isildur’s heir, not Isildur himself. You are not bound to his fate.
Aragorn: The same blood flows in my veins. The same weakness.
Arwen: Your time will come. You will face the same evil, and you will defeat it.
I shared everything with her. I told her every little detail about my past, the bad, the ugly and the very ugly, and then some. She listened like I was all that mattered, gazing into my eyes with such rapt attention that made me feel a little uneasy sometimes. For the first time in my life of solitude, I had someone who truly wanted to know who I was, the man I wanted to be and the boy I already was.
Again, we shared everything. I told her all there was to know about me, my weaknesses, my yet undiscovered strengths, my hopes, dreams and ambitions. And she reciprocated, she loved me, and never let me forget it. I knew every little secret of hers, stuff that made her cry, her embarrassing moments, and how at some point she would look in the mirror and feel ugly.
I was dumbfounded. How could she ever be ugly? Julia Roberts could be ugly, Megan Good could be ugly. But Samantha? My adorable angel? Never in a million years. I told her as much, and she blushed and smiled.
I loved that, making her smile. My heart would leap for joy every time she smiled. The world stopped when she smiled. Well, my world at least.
We’d part every day with a vow to never leave each other, a promise to stay true to our love until the very end, until death took one of us. I’d look deep into her eyes and see the absolute child-like trust, a silent voice that spoke to me in loving whispers, telling my she would always be there for me, till the very end.
One day, I decided it was time. I mustered the courage to tell her the one thing I had vowed no living person would ever know, something that was hidden deep in my mind, kept under control by a mind that refused to acknowledge its presence.
So, in the green evening shade of the Bah’ai gardens, we sat down close to each other, wary of the ground-keeper’s no-touching, no-kissing, no-funny-nonsense policies, for we were on hallowed ground.
And there, to a weaver-bird serenade and in the magnificent splendour of another beautiful African sunset, I removed the last of the bricks from the wall around my heart. I let her in on my deepest and darkest secret, knowing well, given the gravity of what I was telling her, that this might be the last time she spoke to me, and I’d go around for the rest of my life wishing I had never ever spoken a word.
When I was done, she kept quiet, and looked away, into the distant horizon. My heart sank, and I mentally braced myself for an end I hoped would never come. The silence was unbearable. I lay down on the grass and stared up at the sky for a brief second before closing my eyes with a heavy sigh, wondering how I was going to make the dreaded journey home on my own with an irreparably devastated heart.
That was when I felt her lips on mine, kissing me lightly and quickly, lest the grounds-keeper descend on us in wrath. I opened my eyes, her face was above mine, framed by the brilliant sun, almost angelic, smiling that beautiful smile of hers. Then she said, “I still love you, no matter what”.
I was complete.
A couple of weeks later, I walked to a phone booth to call her, breathlessly waiting to hear her voice and eager to hear her scream when she realised I was on this end of the line.
“Hello” It was a different voice.
“Umm, hello, I’d like to speak to Samantha please.”
“Who is this?” The voice was defensive. I gave them my name. There was silence on the other end of the line for the longest of moments.
Then, “I’m sorry, but Samantha is…”
Thunder.
And lightning.
—
My eyes opened in terror, and I looked wildly around, trying desperately to hang on to the vestiges of her parting smile, only to find my roomie kneeling over me, a worried look in his face.
Ten minutes later, I was sipping a cup of hot sugarless coffee, still shivering, definitely not from the cold, because I could feel it, the fear. It ran deep into my bone marrow.
My roomie told me I had been screaming in my sleep, shouting her name over and over again. He had tried to wake me, but I wasn’t coming out of my sleep, and, starting to panick, he had put his clothes on to rush to the grocery stores to make an emergency call. I told him it was a nightmare, and after making sure I was okay, he left for his night shift.
I cradled the hot cup of coffee in my hand, savouring the warmth, and knowing sooner or later, I’d have to get up and lock the door. The howling wind slowly creaked the door open, and I looked outside, into a night that was black, deep, impenetrable and worse still, very ominuous.
Just like my future.
Frodo: Who is she? This woman you sing of?
Aragorn: ‘Tis the Lady of Lúthien. The Elf-maiden who gave her love to Beren, a mortal.
Frodo: What happened to her?
Aragorn: She died.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Loooong…. but not for nothing.
And long overdue too.
June 30th, 2008 at 10:01 am
No, four chapters will not contain this.
Yes, move to a subdomain.
June 30th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
So it was all just a dream? Beautiful, nevertheless.
June 30th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Shenzi…
June 30th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
I’m only quarter-way through…
But damn! This is so good!
Let me scroll back up.
Oh, and check this: “ironsheet root.”
June 30th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
15 in s.5?
Sha! You mean you aren’t actually faking all your genius tendencies?!
June 30th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
@Mama Pete, thank you.
@serenity, it wasn’t a dream at all.
@Cheri… shenzi???? translate please
@ princess, man, I hunted for typos like crazy, guess the post was too long, and yes, 15 in s.5, but then again, this is not exactly an autobiography…
One vote for a subdomain so far…
June 30th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Oh, this is beautiful!!!
The emotion is so raw, so perfectly described.It sounds irrefutably genuine, like you just tore out and pasted the pages of this boy/man’s diary…
I am captured. I await part 4 impatiently!
*You have managed even to distract me from pointing out other mistakes!
June 30th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Shenzi is what the hyenas in Lion King say.You have watched the world’s greatest animation, haven’t you?
I think Cheri uses it as a euphemism for “shit!”
Or merely an expression of surprise…
June 30th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Aaaaahhh… but I have watched Lion King like ten times. Weird that I don’t remember that.
And thank you, thank you.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:13 am
Aw! This is brilliant and beautiful………… It’s so raw and so real, I’m close to tears! Completely captivated. Part 4? When? I be waiting with bated breath
July 1st, 2008 at 10:15 am
Eh! ‘oba’ Shenzi was one of the hyena’s names?
[shrug]
Let Cheri tell us…
July 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Princess…that was Whoopi’s name in the Lion King. And yes, I have watched the world’s greatest anime…it’s one of my faves.
But u’re right, I use is as euphemism for shit cuz there be little children everywhere. Sometimes…Bull shenzi.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:10 am
[...] The Dark Side - Crush I told her all there was to know about me, my weaknesses, my yet undiscovered strengths, my hopes, dreams and ambitions. And she reciprocated, she loved me, and never let me forget it. I knew every little secret of hers, stuff that made … [...]
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:13 am
I don’t…I just can’t….my eyes. Can someone just give me the gist of this?
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
She died….???
See sometimes, beauty can become a barrier between a person and the world because we stop at it and fail to connect to the person inside.
I see your beauty as inside rather than outside… a reverse of hers. And the friendship came to an abrupt end!!
Life happens!!!! How do you cope with the breaking of what you feel is a binding of souls? That is the question.
Sorry i just can’t be flip in the face of something so deep!
July 25th, 2008 at 9:43 am
clocks jewelry directory…
[...] even be friends anymore it still means that something is happening. So you kiss and do stuff in your bed and her cat watches you from the doorway and as much as you want to get up and close the door, or even run out the door you can”t [...]…
September 25th, 2008 at 11:25 am
for rolex sub…
Where can I get my Rolex watch repaired in Paris?…
October 15th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
We have been an ebay power seller and paypal confirmed seller of wow gold for years.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
[...] There’s one particularly sad one that I just can’t find. Would fit perfectly well with The Dark Side. Oh well, some other [...]
May 21st, 2009 at 6:11 pm
was just passing through then came along this…wow.
raw…guys fall so deep into love sometimes…
I especially love the Lord of the rings extracts! arewn and aragorn were so beautiful together! awww!
True life or fiction??
July 31st, 2009 at 11:44 am
[...] the worthiness and readership value of aforementioned blog to have been irredeemably diluted by mushy, painful, sentimental and irrevocably redundant mind-numbing pseudo-intellectual dribble, said [...]