When The World Collapses.

The knives in Damo’s house were sharp. In the kitchen, I stared long and hard at them. Their shiny silver blades, I could see my reflection in. What I saw though wasn’t me. It was a shadow. A mess. A monster. What I saw was a dead man living. It wasn’t the first time I’d considered suicide; far from it. Yet it was the first time I’d been this serious. Eyeing the knives, I imagined how it would feel to have one slice my veins and bring my end. I wondered how dying would feel. As my right hand began to lift a knife out of a kitchen drawer, for some reason I thought of my mother. What this would do to her. She couldn’t handle it, I told myself. It would drive her to a breakdown, I thought. Slowly, thoughts of my mother torn apart by my death began talking me out of my plan. Images of her crying flashed in my mind and hesitantly, I put the knife back in its drawer, I shut the drawer and stepped away from it. If I commit suicide, my mother will never forgive me, I figured. And the workers inside me smiled.

Inside, still feeling frenzied, a weirdness filled me. The fact that I’d been so serious, the fact that had I not reconsidered I could be dead right now, entered my mind and frightened me. Now, anything was enough to add to my troubles. Every thought I had just made things worse. The walls were closing in on me. I was suffocating. Damo’s house was making me crazier by the second.

Desperately, I left. I ran to the front door and exited, closing it behind me. On the grass that lay ahead of the house, I let myself collapse front first to the ground. My eyes open, I stared at the blades of grass that touched my face, my blood dripping onto them. Whether I was crying or not, I don’t know. I just wanted it to end. I needed the pain and confusion to end.

It could have been hours or minutes that passed me by as I lay there. With closed eyes I tried to shut out my thoughts unsuccessfully. It felt like I was diving headlong into oblivion when I heard my name spoken and footsteps race over the grass towards me.

I was pulled over onto my back roughly. As it happened, I opened my eyes to see Katya’s face contorted with anxiety.

“Owen! What happened to you?” She was frantic and worried.

“Huh?” I’d completely forgotten about the blood that likely formed a mask over my face. Katya was kneeling. Her hand took mine and pulled me up to sitting position. She wiped my cheek gently with the back of her hand, trying to get the blood away.

“Owen, what did you do?” Her eyes were so scared and in them I saw how bad I must have looked. What I’d done to myself. All I could manage to utter was an apology. Katya shook her head, a single tear slowly moving down her face, and wrapped her arms around me. “It’s okay.” She said. “I’ll take you inside and clean you up. I’ll make it all better.”

She helped me to my feet before retrieving the key hidden underneath the doormat and letting us in. She led me to the bathroom and ran cold water from the tap. As I leant over the basin, my pain was slightly relieved by Katya’s presence. Her hands ran water over my face and washed the blood away, off me and down the drain. As this went on, she asked me again “What happened?”

After cleaning myself, I took Katya to the lounge room. I pointed her to where I’d thrown the notebook after reading its words. Slowly, she went to it. She picked it up and, on my instructions, read it. Flicking to the middle she read aloud: “The cadence of her music with the sound of the waves reaching the shore made the writing even easier. Doing this, it was all I ever wanted to do again.” She looked up smiling. “You’ve been writing about us?”

I was cold. Shaking my head, I said “That’s the thing. I haven’t. All these things just keep appearing in my book.” I could feel my lunacy returning as Katya eyed me oddly. Her retinas fell back on the words as she flicked through the pages, reading various snippets. Finally, her eyes rose and told a story of confusion.

“None of this is real?”

“I know.” I said and I was shaking. “None of what I’m saying makes sense. None of what’s written in there makes sense.” Tears began welling as I began losing myself. “Katya, I’m… I’m…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. I had to cup my face as tears commenced flowing. I was hysterical when Katya again took me in her arms.

“Baby.” She said, attempting to console, to comfort me. “Baby, baby, baby.” She was holding on tight and I in turn gripped tighter. As I bawled, I felt an uncontrollable urge to be nearer to her. I felt that she was the only thing in the world that could save me. With a sudden impulse, I kissed her. I kissed her with the desperation of a man dying. I kissed her with the passion of a being with nothing to lose. We fell onto the couch, lips locked, entangled. Madly going, my hands ran down her side, over the jumper she was again wearing. Though, abruptly, she stopped us.

“Not here.” She said. “I don’t want Damo to walk in again.”

“Okay.” I replied, dire thoughts repressed now by lust. “Where can we go?”

Katya smiled deviously. “I’ll show.”

Taking my hand, she led me out of the lounge room and into the hallway. Past Damo’s door, she led me to the closed entrance of the second room. As her hand touched the handle, I shook my head.

“No. Damo said not to go in here.”

Katya shrugged and turned to me, still smiling. “What Damo doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” And then she opened the door. She entered comfortably, as if she had a thousand times before. Nervously I followed. Once I was in, my world collapsed. Katya stood in the middle of the room proudly with arms wide open as I looked around. In the room was a bed, a guitar, paintings, drawings and posters. Large pictures of Kyuss and Pink Floyd, magazine clippings about Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane. Where I was standing was in Katya’s room.

Katya’s room in Damo’s house.

Within a second, the confusion, the fear, everything was too much. Before I could say a thing, I fell again. Unconscious. And away from all that threatened to ruin me.