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Euphoria
Chapter 1: Melancholy
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
- From 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' by John Keats
Wednesday
1:47 am
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Norman Jayden was awake again.
His apartment was quiet and still but outside a gale raged, battering the helpless windows with undeserved ferocity.
The woman in his bed remained sound asleep and the sheets covered her naked form, concealing her secrets from him. He was reclining in the armchair across the room, watching her through lidded eyes, a bottle of vodka in his hand.
She had black hair, poker-straight. Her cherry lips were parted invitingly and smeared with the faded stain of lipstick.
He had first met her only a few hours ago in a loud and garish nightclub. She had smiled and laughed and he had soon determined she was the type to happily accept an invitation of let's go somewhere a little more quiet from a random stranger. He had been right, of course. Norman was an excellent judge of character.
They had tumbled into his apartment, tongue to tongue and lips to neck and hands everywhere. The bed had endured their sudden, rude disturbance as he flung her down upon the mattress and ravished her with frenzied kisses. Their clothes were shed as quickly as their pretences and then she had whimpered and moaned under the ministrations his hands offered. It was always this way: rushed and fervent and fiery. He liked it. It served as the perfect distraction.
Distraction. That was his holy grail, the treasure he was relentlessly hunting for. Something, anything to divert his thoughts from… well. In truth, his life was a game of cat and mouse. He spent his time chasing down criminals or fleeing from his memories, but either way the thin line between hunter and hunted was always obscured.
A pair of black sunglasses lay innocently on the tabletop some way from him. Norman caught sight of them glinting with the city lights from the window and instantly heard the unmistakable rustling of leaves along with bizarre, impossible flashes of sunlight. His brows knitted. Why are you so damn immersive? He stared down his foe but the lenses merely gazed back at him unblinkingly. Like sunken eye sockets, veiled in shadow.
Hidden in the depths of his subconscious he had a hypothesis which only dared to rear its head when he was in a state like this, intoxicated and lost in limbo somewhere between waking and sleeping. ARI is so inescapably engaging because they want it to be. They designed the fucking thing, didn't they? And Triptocaine is as addictive as herion, maybe even more so, because they need to keep you hooked… He shook his head like an old dog so the thoughts would go away. Ideas like that lead to dangerous places.
He cast his sight desperately around the apartment - anywhere but on those glasses. It settled once more upon his sleeping guest, and the vision of her slowed his anxious heartbeat somewhat. He raised the vodka bottle to his lips and drank hastily. Much better.
But his mercurial thoughts inevitably drifted away again as his eyes roved over her body. Perhaps some part of him felt a degree of guilt, he mused as he tasted the clear spirit. She seemed like a nice enough girl. He remembered she had whispered her name into his ear with her hot breath and her heavenly mouth suckling his collar… Tiffany or Tracey or Tess. He hadn't paid that much attention to what she was saying.
And in the morning he would cast her off without a second glance.
Jayden was a regular to bars of the city and they were accustomed to his well-honed routine. Stand in the corner, brooding and mysterious, until a victim had been picked out. A different girl every night. But that wasn't necessarily a bad thing and it didn't necessarily make him a bad person, because those girls knew what they were getting themselves into when they chose to hang around places like that wearing skirts that short with a smile plastered to their faces and hunger in their eyes.
He sighed uneasily. They were all adults, all prepared and, goddamnit, willing for one-night stands. Were promises made in the flickering shadows, between those burning sheets? No. No, he wasn't guilty of anything. He gave them exactly what they were looking for and asked for nothing in return but a single night of ecstasy. And companionship.
The woman slept on serenely. They always did, but he often awoke in the early hours of the morning. It was his dreams that betrayed him.
I've got it under control. I'm doing fine. In the afternoon it was easier, when the sun was bright and looming, but when he slept his demons would come out to play.
That's why he couldn't be alone; why he needed a warm body to hold.
And the women were good for him. Alcohol was good too. He had tried so many things to shroud his mind and make him forget, so many things. Triptocaine was of course the best but - no. Enough of that. The liquor bottle would work just as well.
He took another sip and winced as the fluid burnt his throat. It was a pleasurable burn, a forceful angry burn ordering his brain to take the night off.
Norman remained in the armchair for a while longer. He could still hear the wind whistling violently outside. He began to feel his consciousness melting away and knew sleep would come soon, a merciful blessing. Placing the vodka on the nearest flat surface he could find, he made his way to the bed and lay down, shifting close to the heat that radiated from the figure resting there.
From that angle, facing away from him, she appeared flawless and doll-like. Jayden tenderly swept back a strand of ebony hair from her face, feeling the glossy strands with hushed curiosity.
He was a fickle lover, full of desire and compassion but only during the black sincerity of night. In the day it was all too much and these divine women were no longer goddesses but pointless irritations buzzing in his ear, so they were discarded like dreams. In the daylight they served him no purpose. There must always be purpose.
After a time he wrapped his arms around the girl's waist and buried his head into the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent of oranges and cigarettes. Sleep came easily.
I'm the lost cause and she's my saviour. At least for tonight.