Cyclone Fever

‘Sometimes I really need to get out of my own head,’ I mumbled into my hands.

Oh God, had I just said that? I wasn’t even supposed to be thinking those things, let alone saying them. And yet, couldn’t I just allow myself the occasional day where I let emotion back into my life?

The simple answer was no. I gave up on emotion and love three years ago, and for good reason. It was what had made me able to achieve everything I had. It was what had ultimately made me able to survive this new, cruel world.

And yet, I had never found it so hard to keep my emotions locked away as I did now.

‘Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ Arjan said from across the room, his voice too loud in the silent underground bunker we hid in beneath the city. ‘I’m not going to say I understand you, because we both know I don’t really, but I know that life isn’t straightforward.’

I almost laughed at this point; saying he merely didn’t understand wasn’t even scratching the surface of the truth, but I at least appreciated the fact that he wasn’t trying to be all empathetic when there was no way he could actually relate to how I was feeling.

‘Everyone needs to get out of their heads sometime or another,’ he continued in a musing tone as he sat there gazing past me at the greying concrete wall, cracks mapped across its surface like cobwebs.

‘You have no idea,’ I muttered darkly. His eyes met mine, just for a moment, and then flickered away again, almost embarrassed.

That was how it always was. That was how it should be. We weren’t supposed to be falling in love. And we weren’t. Of course we weren’t...

I just had to keep telling myself that.

My job was to find out his secret. It had been given to me a mere few weeks ago. And to do that, I had to get him to trust me. Carl had warned me that I might actually have to get close to him; even pretend to fall in love with him. And I had taken on the challenge. No mission was ever too tough for me, and this was most definitely not going to be an exception.

What I hadn’t counted on was actually falling in love with him for real.

But I wasn’t...was I? This wasn’t love. This was just my elaborate acting performance. I was just pretending to love him. None of this was real...was it?

I dropped my head back into my hands again. In truth, I didn’t know what was real right now. I scarcely knew anything anymore.

‘Are you alright, Hurricane?’ Arjan asked. He sounded frightened. I never acted like this.

Hurricane. He had called me ‘Hurricane.’ He still didn’t even know my real name.

‘Headache,’ I mumbled, not looking up from my hands. It wasn’t technically a lie.

‘Do you want some water?’ he offered, always so kind, and generous, and nice. What had I ever done to deserve him?

‘I’m fine,’ I insisted dully. I looked up, gazing at the dim light in the centre of the grimy ceiling.

Without warning, Arjan got up.

‘Come on,’ he said with a sigh, moving across the room towards me, leaning on the arm of my chair but not quite sitting on it. My eyes followed his every step, my heart speeding up irregularly. ‘You’re not well.’

‘I said I’m fine,’ I said irritably. Whereas my voice normally held so much power and conviction, tonight it was little more than a protesting whine. What was going on? This was not me. This was not the girl that I had left everything behind to become.

He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, his touch burning through my top and into my skin, heat searing through my blood. I hated it. Why was this happening? I was not in love.

And yet...maybe I should let this happen. I was supposed to be pretending to fall in love with him anyway. This would just help in increasing the authenticity of my performance.

‘You know I’m here for you, don’t you?’ he said, moving a little further onto the arm of the large chair, its upholstery dated and moth-eaten. Suddenly, he was so close, his olive green eyes penetrating deep into my brain, studying me, surveying me, almost as if he could read my mind. ‘I mean, I know you’re not normally that sort of person,’ he continued, almost awkward, a little embarrassed again, ‘but if you did want to talk...’

‘I don’t,’ I said simply, barely whispering it. We were so close now that mere whispers were sufficient.

‘You know I don’t resent you anymore, don’t you?’ he added, his voice low in the dim, concrete room that seemed to be growing hotter and smaller with every passing second, the walls closing in around us. It was late and, for the first time in weeks, I really was exhausted. I felt dizzy and sick, almost feverish. I should be going to bed.

‘I know,’ I replied softly, my voice sounding too soprano and fragile. Whereas a moment ago I had been cold, sitting with my legs curled up to my chest and my cardigan wrapped tightly around me, I was now ablaze with heat. I almost wished I could be frozen again.

‘Please, Hurricane,’ Arjan said. I detected the change in his voice. Not only was it louder and harder, it almost had a note of desperation behind it. ‘You don’t have to run. You don’t have to hide. Not now. Not all the time.’

My throat tightened. I wanted to cry. When had I last cried? Other than two days ago, which was again something related to Arjan, I couldn’t remember. It had to be months. Possibly even years.

But here I was, fighting back the tears as my vision blurred and a knot tightened in my windpipe, making me struggle to even breathe. I was being suffocated. All the air had been sucked out of the room.

‘Of course I do,’ I said, trying to force a smile, and failing. ‘It’s what’s allowed me to survive all this time.’

‘But what’s the use of surviving if you can’t live?’ Arjan protested despondently. This was sounding horribly like the argument we had not so long ago.

‘I’m here to fight,’ I said flatly, almost robotically. ‘I’m here to do something real for this sick, twisted world. I gave up on love when...’ I couldn’t even finish the sentence. I couldn’t tell him what really happened three years ago. I had told him the lie because the truth was too painful for me to relive. I couldn’t have anyone knowing about it.

‘When...?’ he prompted. I shook my head vigorously. I wasn’t about to have that conversation. I refused.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said, turning my face away to stare blankly across to the other side of the unwelcoming underground room.

‘Come on, Hurricane,’ he said again, pleading with me. ‘What’s done is done. You can’t live your life in the past.’ Without warning, he was there again, his eyes like flames in a cold night, his calescent touch scorching my frozen skin, his soft breath breathing warmth into my desolate soul. We were Fire and Ice. He was all the warmth and heat that I did not possess. We were opposites, but maybe that was a good thing.

But he was too close. I couldn’t let this happen. I didn’t want it; not now; not after so long. I knew what I had been asked to do; that I was supposed to get close to him, but I couldn’t do it. I’d thought that no task was too difficult for me...it seemed I had been wrong. But right now, I didn’t care if this was real or pretend or anywhere in between; I didn’t want it to be happening regardless. I was feeling emotion again. I was hurting and loving and screaming inside, drowning in a tempest that blended imagination and reality together as one, asphyxiating in a fever the size of a cyclone...

My emotions were warring for place in my brain, and I couldn’t let them control me. Not after all this time. I couldn’t do it.

My entire body tensed and I shrugged his arm off. I watched his face fall.

‘No,’ I said darkly, horrified at myself. ‘No, I can’t do this.’ He moved a little further away from me, understanding the fact that he would never understand me, but that was not enough. I leapt to my feet without hesitation and ran, half staggering in my delirium, towards the bedroom. I slammed the door behind me and fell onto the bed by the wall, face down on the musty smelling quilt.

I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t care what I had been asked to do; I simply couldn’t get close to Arjan. I couldn’t do it, because as soon as it began I couldn’t tell in my messed up head whether it was an act or reality. I couldn’t tell whether I was pretending to love him, or whether I loved him for real. I had given up on emotion, supposedly for good, and I couldn’t let it back into my life again. I didn’t care if I was running from who I really was; hiding from my true potential; cowering in fear from the reality of life; there was no other way of doing it. If I wanted to make it through these dark times alive and useful, then I couldn’t get close to anyone. It was the sad life of a so-called hero.

With a tornado churning in my head and fire ravaging its way through my blood, I closed my eyes and, just for a moment, I let the fever take over.