I was bowled over by the number of reads Perplexus received. A special thank you to Karkoolka, fallingstar22 and ems32.
To answer fallingstar22's question, yes, most (read: all) of my works are on Hunter/Tori and I am looking forward to posting a majority of them in the future.
And I would like to thank ems32 once again for pushing me enough to post this one and another person too: Mrs. Blondilocks, you know who you are...
And it probably goes without saying that I do not own Power Rangers. Neither do I own the songs or the lyrics that I'll be using in the chapters.
Moving on to this story, it will be a proper full-length story. So, here's Chapter One for you…
Hunter
I keep going to the river to pray
'Cause I need something that can wash all the pain
And at most I'm sleeping all these demons away
But your ghost, the ghost of you
It keeps me awake
- Ghost,
Ella Henderson
That night, I saw dust.
Caking the remains of a life forgotten, covering them, smothering them, asphyxiating them to death. I think I ventured to remove it, to allow the remnants of a distant past to breathe; tried to give the already dead a life.
But I was defeated by the overwhelming power of annihilation and obliteration.
Destruction.
I tentatively wiped the pervasive dust. It sprang up, layering itself on my face and forcing me into a fit of coughs. I blinked, my eyes watering from the dust that had entered them.
It was beyond me why I was trying to give life to these horrid trepid memories. I tried to remove the dust again but failed.
It just would not go away and in the darkness, it kept on piling and piling; growing. I felt myself slowly being buried in it: first up to my heels, then my knees. I felt it insidiously crawling its way up to my neck.
I think I screamed, moved my limbs frantically, tried to brush off the ghostly feel; the touch of the past.
The last thing I remember is my stifled scream, trying to break through the dust, trying to look for an escape, trying but losing its way in the anfractuous elusive maze of survival.
I woke up with a cold sweat all over my body. It had happened once again. By now, I should have become used to it: these distorted images- memories- of a battered past. But that had not happened. Instead, every time I dreamed of it, I woke up with a newfound fear.
Every time I wake up, it is a struggle to go off to sleep once again: to shut down all the thoughts, doubts and questions preying upon me and convince myself that I will not dream again.
Most days, I fail. There are other days, though, when comforted by the presence of a pair of reassuring hands on my chest, I drift off again, suddenly emboldened to face the past.
But those days are rare; the nights spent with that person are rare.
Today is not one of those days.
I take a quick glance at the woman sleeping beside me. I curse myself silently for not remembering her name. I find my way in the darkness, putting on the clothes that had been discarded last night. Gathering my belongings, I leave the tiny apartment.
Out on the streets, I see the sunlight slowly breaking out over the horizon. There is something captivating about the orange glow; the crepuscular beauty of nature. I have to scoff at my thoughts, wondering since when I referred to the nature as captivating.
As I walk through the streets, I get to think. I do not think about last night or the girl I slept with. I have stopped doing that: questioning myself about my frequent one night stands. I have come to accept them as a part of me. There is no reason behind what I do, there is absolutely nothing behind it. Over the years, I have worked myself into this space where I just do it; perfunctory.
Once upon a different time, I might have tried to change my ways but not now. Truth be told, I have seen so much in my life that I do not give a damn whether what I am doing is morally and ethically correct. Somewhere down the line, I probably lost that sense of judgment and now it has ceased to be important. The way I see it, as long as I am not leaving a trail of tears and pain, it is alright; no harm done.
The sun has now risen in all its glory. The streets, though, are desolate. That does not bother me. Emptiness has never bothered me. That is another thing that I have learned to embrace.
Just another addition to my morbid life.
I do not realize where my legs are taking me until I hear the loud persistent breaking of water against the shore. The beach at this hour, too, is empty.
Removing my shoes, I walk barefooted on the sand, observing how my feet sink into it, only to resurface. The sand covering my feet is somehow reminiscent of my dream.
Nightmare.
My mind seems to have the ability to conjure intensely visceral dark images every time I go off to sleep.
Last night, it was dust. I have never been able to comprehend why I keep going back to that place in my dreams.
I have thought about it plenty of times. I have tried voicing it out to her but never have mustered the courage to actually do so. I know that she has been waiting for an answer to a question that she asked three years back but I just cannot bring myself to articulate all my thoughts. I know that she deserves an explanation after everything that she has done for me and I tell myself every day that if I ever talk about it someday, she will be the first to know.
She has never pushed me too far, never forced me to open up. She has always given me my space, respected my reasons to stay bottled up, understood that I have a past that I do not like to dwell upon.
But that's just how Tori is. She understands you, without you ever spelling out a thing. I realize that if she had been here now, she would have understood what was wrong. In some inexplicable unfathomable way, she always does.
Sometimes I wonder how this happened with her. I had not even wanted to get close to her. Well, I had not wanted to get close to anyone. Because from previous experience, I knew how that ended. But somehow in her own way, she had broken down all my walls, breached all my defenses and worked her way slowly yet steadily into my heart.
The first few months after the realization hit me that I had fallen for her, I hated myself. I told myself that it was wrong, that no matter how much of a moral-philistine I was, falling for my brother's ex-girlfriend was completely unacceptable. But the more I told myself, it was wrong, the more I found myself falling for her.
And then, I reached a stage where I stopped caring about boundaries with her. I began to love the complicated relationship that I had built with her: our unspoken mutual caring for each other which ominously verged on a deep physical longing, our quiet understanding, the moments I spent with her, holding her in my arms, her head resting against my chest, her hands covering mine, or the nights when we drifted off to sleep beside each other, her hands gently placed on my chest.
Where we are, we have beaten about the bush for far too long and I know, the day one of us take the next step, there will be no turning back and considering things.
I wish things were not this complicated, that the consequences were not this tortuous.
Convoluted.
I wish I could just tell her how much she means to me but I can't. My life does not work that way. It never has. It was designed to be fucked up.
The beach is now slowly filling up with people, mostly couples out for a walk or fitness freaks out for their daily workout routine. I glance around, looking for her, wishing to see her in the crowd, with her hair open, her surfboard tucked under her arm, as she goes out to brave the sea.
But I don't find her and I slowly disappear from the beach, leaving the signs of habitation far behind me.