Cross-word

By Sigge S. Amdal © 2007

Her hair was in explosive disarray across the pillow like the blood spurt pattern from a shotgun blast. It was slightly blond, streaked with brown and very beautiful. It looked like the crossroad of infinite options where only a handful suggested returning to the bed. She was fast asleep.

No. This had never really happened.

I was walking along the streetcar tracks, an hour past midnight and the night was extraordinarily quiet. There had only been a few passengers on the last train but the screaming emptiness had escaped attention until I got to the bridge only the brave, drunk or dumb dare cross at nightfall; not a single dealer in sight.

Was there a drought? Couldn't be. I hadn't heard anything and even if it had been the parks and bridges would still be crowded by junk sick users. None of them either. This suggested one probable solution as I felt a cold coming, pulling my scarf tighter together; some shit was brewing.

The patrolling police looked worried in the relative safety of their cars. One followed me for a couple of blocks before it moved on to the next possible suspect. The last few days I'd been subjected to various instances of unwanted attention due to my hair being cut back short. Yes, you didn't have to be a dog to smell a storm coming. The police had good reason to look worried, too. A week earlier, five of the most prominent members of a ruling gang, all brothers, had been jailed in an attempt to permanently cripple the operation. They were all looking at thirty to life. Someone would have to fill the vacuum they left behind, and nothing is random in the apparent chaos that is the reasoning of underdogs. Some were told, others disappeared, new faces appeared behind the scenes; another shadow curtain to the interiors of Oslo's underworld. Dealers just don't have Sundays off.

I looked across the street and in the general direction of her café. I knew she would be working late. It was late. I was there. I could easily... no.

I turned my nose back homeward. She knew where to get hold of me if she ever wanted to exploit the option.

I looked at the road ahead of me and I noticed with a smile that it was coated in gold, voluptuous in diversity, rich in detail, drinks and women. My memory had ceased to be a volume of retractable steps. Instead it had become the ultimate freedom of having no history, no regrets and no shame. Also the ultimate boredom if I didn't watch myself closely. There are those who have options and there are those who make them. I was both, depending on the present state of consciousness, so trivially true of everything that it's barely worth mentioning.

Was I being followed? I turned around.

Some jerk off suit-clad know-better son of a bitch decided to shoot his bike across the street right in front of me. 'Fuck off!' I proclaimed. I was fooling myself to be afraid. Must be tired, I thought, glaring thoughtlessly at three women getting into a cab. Ménage à quatre. Damn.

There was always the jeweler's daughter though. The jeweler's daughter did not have any name even though we had been flirting for years, ever since I moved in there. She was currently being put through the traditional arranged marriage, dating a twice-as-old while looking at me through the window when the night was over. How her family resented me I would probably never know.

By now I had certainly fallen to the friendly-position because I never acted upon my erections. Except for the immediate physical self-satisfaction of course. The jeweler's daughter. Like a beautiful Bollywood movie star save for the annoying song numbers. Looking to me to one day open her silent pregnancies, quoth the raven. It had been reading Rimbaud apparently. Damn silly bird. It was my conscience crying out, but tremendous fear of being sucked into another endless abyss of awe turned me off the lifetime opportunity especially crafted for the crazed and deranged. Would I too whip a horseman through the streets of Paris to try and locate the whereabouts of Satan? That would surely make my mother proud.

I rounded the corner of my street remembering all the other hopeless nights I had done just the same. I think many suicide candidates just try to get death over with in order to get on with life. The terminal paradox of the thoughts you really can't finish because you aren't strictly thinking about anything; you're fighting a presupposed construction of ideas, the structure itself, and the so-called answer will only emerge when the structure has collapsed, bridges burnt, and a new truth has crawled out from the ashes. Instead of killing myself I would just get some sleep.
Most pains in life are treated with food, rest and intense, masochistic masturbation. If those don't help you can always look for God. Try Paris.

Indoors, jacket off, no mail in the mailbox. I hereby return to the unreality I set out to begin with; Her hair was in explosive disarray across the pillow like the blood spurt pattern from a shotgun blast. It was slightly blond, streaked with brown and very beautiful. I lifted up the sheets and lied down beside her. She was fast asleep. I stroked her arm and side and she turned around to let me hold her. For a while I looked into the impossible statistics of her hair's internal composition. Then I closed my eyes to sleep with the warm of fulfillment only a sleeping beauty can invoke, when you are the last human to fall sleep in the world, and she is lying right next to you.

I would smell her hair forever.


Sigge S. Amdal is a word wanker from Oslo, Norway.