Spine

Ayden’s head is throbbing. There is a buzzing sound somewhere near him, and it is not that of a bug. He feels an urgent need to silence the noise and eliminate whatever is causing it. Not wanting to open his eyes, for the fear of coming face to face with something he isn’t ready to challenge, Ayden continues to lie motionlessly on the soft surface beneath him. Through the thumping of his own head, the man can hear soft footsteps, then the creaking of a chair. He opens his eyes, finally, and stares at wherever they aim first – a white ceiling. Shifting only his gaze to the left, Ayden sees the dark brown back of a worn out couch he must be lying on. Looking to the right, part of a room appears before him. The wallpaper is a light, dusty shade of grey. Through blurred vision, Ayden can see a desk, with an old-looking computer on top of it, which, he suspects, is making that dreadful noise. Somebody is sitting in the wooden chair in front of the desk.

Making sure the person isn’t paying any attention to him, Ayden tries to quietly angle his head toward them, but the rustle of the pillow he is resting on gives him away. The person turns. The woman, as Ayden can easily make out, does not look menacing at all. In fact, she looks a lot more vulnerable than Ayden, who is lying on a couch with a murderous headache, unwilling to move. She is dressed in a white dressing gown, which reveals her barely existing calves and small white-socked feet. A white towel is turbaned neatly around her head. Looking as though she has just come out of the shower, the woman seems somewhat helpless, and Ayden, through his confusion, can easily make out the features of her pale round face. Her nose is small and only very slightly upturned. Her cheekbones aren’t high enough to be considered graceful, but not so low to be thought of as the contrary. Her perfectly creaseless white chin does not protrude too far forward, and her eyes – wide and curious – shine with a bright green, which Ayden can see from the distance that separates the two.

The woman lets go of the computer keys and seeps from behind the desk. Ayden rejects his urge to shrink further into the couch. Smiling awkwardly, as though she isn’t quite sure what she is doing in there herself, the woman sits in a nearby armchair and tilts her head, as if considering Ayden, who is forced to angle his face upwards, in order to see her expression. Closer up now, Ayden can see a few faint freckles on the bridge of the woman’s nose, making her appear younger and more childish than she did from a distance. After a while, the woman finally smiles.

“Hello,” she greets in a deep, thick voice.

“Uh, hi,” Ayden replies in a husky tone, barely audible, and so uncharacteristic of its usual depth.

“My name is Vicky,” she decides to continue the conversation. She looks as though she wants to say more, but will herself not to.

“I’m Ayden,” the man replies. “What the hell am I doing here?” His voice is still husky, but louder and lower now.

Vicky looks slightly offended, but begins to talk again. “I found you passed out in an alley last night, so I took you home.” There is a slight pause as Ayden realises how a stray cat might feel. “You were naked.” She almost whispers the last words as her eyes become rounder still.

Ayden looks down at his body to make sure he isn’t exposed to the world any more. With a sigh of relief, he sees the black woolen coat he is sporting, the buttons of which are on the women’s side, and looks back up at Vicky. “Sorry?”

Vicky giggles a little – a high pitched tone, which contrasts with the previous depth of her voice. “It’s okay, it’s not like I haven’t seen… that before.” She seems to choke on another burst of laughter. Behind the smile, though, her nerves are bare.

Ayden decides to take advantage of the situation and sit up, to look more menacing; to make sure Vicky doesn’t mess with him. But as he tries to maneuver himself up, a sharp pain bolts through his spine and up his neck towards the back of his already throbbing head. The man lets out a pained cry.

“Shit, are you okay?” Vicky jumps up from her chair and sits down on the floor near Ayden, but she seems too afraid to touch him.

“I’m fine,” Ayden groans, before releasing a deep breath as he takes up his old position again. “There’s something wrong with my back. My spine hurts like a cunt!”

Vicky giggles again at his use of a swear word, but then regains a serious face after sitting back down. “You know, I saved you last night, and I gave you my coat as well.”

“Thanks,” he replies in a slightly sarcastic tone. To Ayden, Vicky sounds as though she is fishing for gratitude, and he doesn’t like it. He prefers his people real, and expects people to want him real too.

“Thanks? Is that all? You could have died out there if I had left you. It was fucking cold outside.” Her tone is getting higher again as a flash of anger tints her eyes.

“Well, what more can I say? It’s not like I can give you anything. I don’t even have any clothes.” Ayden sighs with shame as he remembers that this woman, who is taking her rage out on him, saw him naked just yesterday.

Her face becomes calm again. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have flared up like that. But I shouldn’t be apologising to you either. Anyway, you had your phone on you, and you were wearing socks, if that makes a difference.”

Ayden looks down to see a pair of non-matching socks – one black and one grey. Vicky leans down to pick something up off the floor. The man cannot resist staring at the exposed skin between the lapels of her dressing gown. He can’t help but admit to himself that this Vicky has quite a rack, despite her tiny waist, which is already accentuated by the tight rope of the dressing gown.

Vicky gets back up, unsuspecting, and hands Ayden his phone, which has been lying on the floor, apparently. After quietly thanking her, Ayden presses a button in an attempt to turn on the screen, but nothing happens. He swears and throws it back on the ground.

“You alright there?” Vicky asks.

“Yeah, my phone’s just dead or something. You don’t happen to have a charger for it, do you? Or a spare battery?”

“Nope, sorry,” Vicky shakes her head after examining the mobile. “We can always buy you a new one. Charger, that is.”

“I don’t have any money,” Ayden growls, as though Vicky is stupid.

“Well, you could get a job when you get better,” Vicky replies with a tiny smile on her face. It isn’t quite the answer Ayden was hoping for, but he agrees, deciding that it’s fair.

“How old are you?” Vicky asks after a short period of silence.

“Twenty-six,” the man mumbles with the disappointment of remembering his age. Whenever he brings up that dreaded number, he always remembers that he has done nothing good with his life so far. More bad than good anyway.

“Great. Now that we’re more familiar, are you up for breakfast?” Vicky stands up and releases her hair from the appalling towel. It falls down her back in long, dark orange strands. Ayden gags as he loses all appeal for the woman standing before him.

When he was young, after his mother left, Ayden’s father got remarried to a fiery and unforgiving redhead. She was one of the most hideous things the boy had ever seen – inside and out. She did horrible things to Ayden – took away his toys, his books, his computer games. She even threatened to lock him up in the basement for a week once. His father, of course, didn’t believe the boy. The woman tinted Ayden’s view of redheads grey forever. To him, they are disgusting, slimy creatures. It is an irrational, undying obsession with the hate, like an ailurophobe has an irrational, undying obsession with the fear of cats.

“Breakfast would be good…” Ayden mumbles. His dislike of the woman grows deeper and deeper by the minute. He is so focused on trying not to hate her that he forgets to ask her age.

The man sighs as he thinks about it. He has no clothes, his phone isn’t working, his spine kills him whenever he moves, he has no recollection of what happened last night, and no knowledge of where he is. To top it all off, he is stuck under the care of a woman he has great potential for hating. He squeezes his eyes tight, in order to wake up from some horrid nightmare, but he remains where he is – on an old worn out couch, God knows where. With a sigh and a whimper, he tries to turn over, but is met again by the pain.

“What an interesting time we’re gonna have…” he whispers, before closing his eyes, in order to escape this unknown world – at least for a while.