Perfume

She still remembered how life was when she was just a child. The memories were still fresh, beautiful virtual pictures in her mind that seemed to linger behind, regardless the hideous amount of time that had gone by. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the white hills of Alaska, her distant hometown that had always been sheltered in cold, and the thousands of trees painted in a diffuse green of such ornate beauty in the middle of snowstorms. She remembered the houses of cherry-colored wood – the cabins – and the roofs of white wonders that she could see from her own cabin right on top of the mountains. The sight had always felt sweet and inviting, the little houses in the middle of crystal snow and the trees spread far on the horizon, separated by occasional raven streets and translucent lakes that lay down below.

She really missed it - that life that she had left behind. It had been so long ago that she was sure she shouldn’t remember how everything was at the beginning, but she did and perhaps that was why it hurt so much. The possibilities were endless with the memories and the ‘what ifs’ became far too many every time things went wrong. She knew she couldn’t have prevented it and staying in Alaska had never been an option after they were gone, but she wished now more than never her parents hadn’t died that day almost twenty years before and she hadn’t been sent away to live in California with a uncle she had never met, because then, maybe things hadn’t gone so wrong with her life in the end.

In the first months she lived there, California never felt like home; it was too hot, too southern, too different from what she had always known. For long she remained the awkward child, never sustaining long conversations or amiable laughs, and always protectively cocooned in the young Haner’s side. Of course, now she would lie and say she never needed Brian’s protection, but both knew she had been too weak and too young to go through life by herself without him to push bullies away and make her hot chocolate every time she was sad. Gradually Brian had convinced her to open up, to let California grow in her heart and to believe she could make friends that would stay for life. Thanks to the cousin she had never known, she had let her young mind believe she would be happy in the state of surfboards and scalding sun and it was then that she begun to smile again.

When she met Matt the jigsaw of live became endlessly intricate and marvelously blotched by the beautiful rainbow wonders. He was an enticing boy back then, a ten year-old with shaggy brown hair, big hazel eyes and profound dimples adorning each cheek, adorable depressions on his skin that would appear every time he smiled at her or laughed at a joke she would tell, even when it made no sense or lacked humorous qualities. She had loved him there, after the tantalizing smiles and doe-eyed looks, and he had loved her back with butterfly kisses on top of his tree house and many fresh glasses of lemonade on the old swings of her backyard.

He had always been perfect for her, the safe harbor ahead the revolting seas and the warm shelter on every cruel thunderstorm. He had been her everything, her angel, her home, her most desired Californian perfume. He had been her life. She always knew that together they were a forever, something infinite that would last through every beautiful and every unsavory moment. That was just how they were, two souls that once merged into one and never became lonely again.

For long she believed it all to be true; she believed she had found happiness in his sweet smiles and lasting embraces, in his vibrant honey-blue eyes and his rough voice of a mellifluous comfort. And she had been right. She was happy. How could she not? He had given her everything: joy, love, life.

And then he gave her Mel. She would never forget that day; not the day she was conceived because, if she was honest, she never knew which time had been the one. But she would forever hold in her memory the first time she ever saw her, her daughter, her baby girl that undoubtedly had been the most beautiful creature to ever grace this world. She had been a special kid, a sweet child with a sparkle in hazel eyes and a cherry lollipop in pale-red lips. She still remembered her daughter’s laugh, some melody resembling the sweet awakening of the fairies, and she still remembered her precious hair, the color of the morning sun and the brilliant sand grains meeting the ocean in golden waves that always smelt like sugary coconut and strawberries.

She hadn’t been planned, but she had been wanted more than life itself, of that everyone was sure. No one could ever resist those innocent eyes, luminous irises speckled in jade and honey with the occasional sapphire light in the depths and dots of raven in the corner of her left orb. And, surely, no one would ever forget that smile, some precious abyss between lush lips with gaps where small teeth were missing that made the gesture more beautiful than anything else she had ever seen before. Because that was how her baby was; a princess among caveman, an angel. And now she was gone, no longer there to brighten a day with an innocent laugh or words of good morning barely understandable in a young mouth of missing teeth and premature human language.

She was gone.

Sarah let out a sob as she realized it, as the cruel reality came crushing down on her and her hands stopped fiddling with her too full suitcase, now too incapable of any movement. Her heart hurt, it was as though someone was twisting it, breaking it, and now even her lungs could no longer sustain the air that was poisoning her insides. With shaky hands she grabbed them, the Polaroid pictures that had been laying above her clothes for long as she mustered the courage to aspire their history into her mind once again. She didn’t have an album of photos telling a life story or a box full of memories and old pictures worn out by the passing time; she only had them – those two Polaroid wonders that she had managed so save for herself when Matt took everything that once had belonged to their baby and hidden them away in that damned attic Sarah had never been authorized to step inside.

The pictures were old, beautiful portraits from when the child was just a baby, and the rough paper was marred with irregular dots of a mixture of blurry colors from the fallen tears that had met its surface in countless dances of pain. Mel was smiling at her, a shadowed precipice among her lips and big hazel eyes staring up in wonder, and Sarah couldn’t help but smile back in that bittersweet kind of way as tears fell down her eyes like an overflowing river, leaving her to feel more suffocated than before.

Suddenly, those times were all she could think of, the times of loss and torture and pain. The times of heartbreak and anger and sorrow as the world changed and became just another idiotic place. She could only remember the tears, the desperation when she found her baby to be gone, to be lost in the hands of a monster who had her murdered before she was even dead. It had been just another normal day when everything happened, in a time of happiness and warmth and love. The world had been so normal that day no one ever expected it to change, but one minute she was there – laughing like an angel sent from heaven to this lost hearth – and the next she had been taken, vanished in the air like dew melting under the morning sun.

She remembered the newspapers, the magazines, the internet, the trees littering every street of California. It all had been littered in smiles, the face of the small Melanie Anne Sanders in the middle of white and the word lost painfully inflicted bellow the dying colors. Even now, six years later, it still seemed impossible things had gone that way, because surely, in a healthy world your daughter isn’t kidnapped, your daughter isn’t beaten like some stupid ragdoll, your daughter isn’t raped as though she is just another sex toy only worth to give away sick pleasure, and your daughter isn’t killed in a dark alley like a criminal facing his cruel last days.

Because, in a healthy world, that only happens to the others. And you remember those stories you hear on the morning news, stories of people who hurt in their own way, and you think it will never happen to you, you think it only happens to those you don’t know, because it’s easier to be blind to it all, to believe that cruelty is nothing but a dying myth, to have in your heart the certainty you won’t ever have to hurt the way others did. But Sarah found out the world is nothing but sick, a mess of perverted histories of unfathomable cries and pain, and everyone is predisposed to the kind of hurt that consumes it all.

That had been her time to suffer, the time for her family to die, and in seconds her perfect world destroyed itself like a bomber smiling as he pulled the life-line. In the awakening of a sick new clock everything was tears and broken smiles and she found out her Matt wasn’t perfect anymore as he let her to live life by herself, as he forbid her to cry. It didn’t even matter that she had hoped for years that everything would be okay, that the wounds would heal into ugly scars and her world would be whole – even with fractures telling its history of a cruel passing time – and she would become bitter-sweetly happy again.

Because Mel was dead and Matt chose to die along with her, leaving an abyss of broken hearts and a mutilated woman behind.

When another sob got loose from her hurting throat, Sarah let her hand fly towards her mouth as she cried, her eyes falling shut when the pain became too much. The sobs were racking her insides, breaking the inner flesh into debris of hurt as she realized how much she missed her baby girl, more than she ever missed her hometown or the parents that left her far too early and far too lonely to survive. She missed her so much she felt like she couldn’t breathe and it was like a part of her body had been taken away, leaving her to bleed to death without anyone by her side.

However much it hurt, Sarah tried to close her heart to the pain. She couldn’t cry now, she couldn’t go down when, after so many years, she finally made her decision to leave, to find the happiness that had died inside the house she used to call home so long ago. With a determinate shake of her head, she let the pictures fall onto the suitcase as she zipped it up, running her fingers bellow her nose and cleaning the tears on her cheeks before moving across the cool tiles of the room and grabbing the second purple suitcase to finally pack the rest of her belongings no longer littering the room.

When the sound of a door opening echoed throughout the tense air, Sarah felt the hairs in the back of her neck standing up almost painfully and soon her heart launched itself into a fit of irregular pumps. Without having to look up, she knew who was waiting by that door. It was the electricity again, the shockwaves that travelled from his heart to hers and from hers to his in an endless cycle of love and lust and pain. It was him and the way she felt his presence like static – inviting at first, to suddenly burn like flames in a fire.

She let out a shuddered breath, body quivering as she turned to face him. Sarah couldn’t contain the gasp as she took him in: the dried blood painting a path down his nose and onto his shirt, the summer clothes disheveled and far too long hair a mess of knots and sand grains. And eyes empty, lost like they had been since that tragic night six years before.

He was staring at her in wonder, tired eyes unmoving and mouth open in a silent request.

“What are you doing?” he finally asked, voice hoarse from the countless screams of pain that had fallen down his throat during the horrible slow hours of that day.

Sarah felt like she ought not to tell him as she stared back at him, heart still pounding and head dizzy from his presence still lingering like static. Perhaps, it was the way he looked at her, the emptiness in hazel eyes horrifyingly captivating, or maybe she was just afraid she would get lost in that hurting gaze again and the pain in his eyes would make her give up her decision in order to keep fighting for his life instead of hers.

Regardless the reasons, he deserved an answer because she would be gone soon, leaving him alone to face he demons that she was already sure would quickly consume him all and he would become like the universe and the stars. Bright and dark; full and empty. Infinite and dead.

“I’m leaving.”

“Why?”

She looked down at that question, licking her trembling lips and wriggling her hands that now moved in patterns down her pencil skirt, part of a nervous habit she once picked up and never learned how to control. The apathy in his voice scared her and she had to remind herself that was why she was leaving: because he didn’t care. He was still too lost in his own suffering, having created that hideous stoic outside that let him to feel nothing, to never be him again. She was leaving because he didn’t want her and she knew from experience that it didn’t really matter how much time passed; he would never want her again. For some people, time doesn’t heal. For Sarah, time only prolonged the suffering she should have run away from exactly six years before.

“I can’t stay here,” she retorted in a whisper, slowly packing away her things. And her heart broke even further when he didn’t move, when he remained numb to her departure and uncaring to see her slip between his fingers without the simplest try.

He looked at her lethargically, as though he didn’t understand the words that fell down her lips in another river of pain. For moments she wondered if he really didn’t know about her suffering, if she really was right every time she told herself he now could see no one but himself, but there was no way he couldn’t know. There was no way he could have heard her cries for six years without ever realizing she too was lost in hell. “Why?”

The blazing anger that suddenly grew in her watering eyes should have made him react; in another times he would have frowned sadly at her and, without any question, he would have held her in his arms and cradle her until the rage was gone and she was nothing but a mess of apologies that he would silence with wandering lips. But now he didn’t move, didn’t even flinch at the flames that grew along her fierce jade irises that burnt, burnt in disappointment and the still eternal pain.

And that’s what made her scream, what had her world crashing down into irrevocable ruins and her heart exploding inside her chest. Because he would forever not care and the tears falling down her eyes in cruel paths of burning flesh were to him just a drop in the ocean of pain that he carried inside.

“Because you don’t make me happy anymore!”

The silence wasn’t painful, for the silence was nothing except numb. Sarah covered her mouth with her trembling hand to muffle her sobs as Matt’s empty orbs began to shine, as the honey and jade sparkle to irises like sapphire became luminescent with tears that he didn’t hesitate to cry. To her, he looked like porcelain drowning in sorrow, rigid pieces of breakable skin drunk in salty tears of an unbearable pain. His cries were silent, but they were translucent to that vile heartbreak that for years had him dead on the inside.

Sarah sobbed in loud desperation when he opened his mouth to her, body still and tears falling down porcelain face like the climax of a summer storm; warm and angry and lonely and sad.

“I- I’m trying…” he whispered, voice strained and laced in torment. Because now he was nothing but a castaway taken away by life angry waves, losing himself deeper into the bottom of the sea. For him, there was no paradise ahead this life. Only darkness and loss and desperation in a different hell from that which he lived in on hearth.

“You’re not, Matt. And you don’t even see it,” and then, as the tears fell down both lost lovers eyes, her hand fell onto her stomach like another warning bell. That’s when the emptiness in Matt’s eyes disappeared and he became nothing but a man consumed by the flames, wishing he may have been a phoenix to make himself reborn from such excruciating ache that grew larger and larger inside his chest. “I miss her, too. I’m the one who carried her, Matt! She was my treasure. My baby,” as the tears slid down her eyes, Sarah let her arms to wrap around her flat stomach, protecting the aching emptiness where her daughter should have lived forever, far from the world that was too full of humans that were nothing but the perversion of sick animals. Far from the world that once went crazy and never cared to be sane again. “I miss her so much, Matty. It hurts more and more every day,” she cried, arms tightening around her waist as she closed her eyes in burning hate, mouth twisting like her broken heart. “And you still act like you’re the only one suffering! Like I was nothing to her!”

He didn’t know if it was the way she said it, with tears shadowing her cheeks and rage painted on her lips, or if he had finally had enough of suffering alone and the apathy was no longer strong enough to make him numb. But suddenly it was that same numbness he didn’t care for and, in a blind daze of yearning and sorrow, he ran to her and let their lips and tears to mesh together in a for long lost synchrony of nothing and everything and nothing again.

And soon both were too gone to care. If for him this was a beg for forgiveness and for her the last goodbye, they didn’t know, but in a fleeting moment they became eternal, infinity again. As blazing bodies melt into one another the pain became ephemeral, beautiful almost, and the tears were nothing but burning desire for flesh and brutality and lust. So they drunk one another through the night, the feelings primal like the ones of cavemen, savoring the pleasure with blind eyes of raw and carnal insanity.

In seconds they both were like universe and stars: bright, dark, full, empty, infinite and dead! Oh, how they had died into one another! Disgusting pleasure showering unmoving hearts in shockwaves of poisoned blood and death. Together they became earth and fire and air; and their tears were the water that murdered spirits overtaken by pain. They were no more the envoys of a god, but the sinners pleasuring themselves in the life they took from the other in their search for the final end.

As he cried to reborn inside of her, they were animals of crazy lust: irrational, hungry for the killing of two hearts that were already dead. And his thrusting movements of desire were shots of anger and sorrow and hate into her as she begged him for more, as she commanded him to numb the ache and make her feel alive again.

When they were gone, lost in a climax of raw feelings and carnal fulfillment for the hurting flesh, she laid against his shaking body and whispered in the daze layered by the hurt of the aftermath, “I love you.”

And when he didn’t answer, she smiled into the darkness of their life. However the past, nothing mattered in the end and they could fall asleep into one another just like they died just a fleeting moment before. Because he was pain and she was love and together they would forever be everything in between.



When Matt woke up at last he knew he had lost himself in a dream. The grandfather clock hanging down white walls was marking the two first hours of a new day, but from the strangely open window the sun shone warmly as it danced into the room, forming a path o light that resembled the demand of an angel to follow through a quest.

Matt looked beside him to see the green-eyed girl there, sleeping away the hurt he had caused her for countless hours and days and years. She laid against his chest, unmoving, hands above his skin making him shudder from the contact of love instead of pain. He closed his eyes in search for the feeling of change, because she had surely saved him before it was too late and now he would want her again, feel her again, love her again.

But as he held her close, the tears appeared again, saltier, thicker, because he still felt nothing except the pain. He sobbed loudly into her hair, cries of hurt for finding her body dead and still never crying because of her. He still cried for the daughter he had lost, for the emptiness of his soul and for the numbness in his heart that was too small to feel any other thing, to want his soul mate again.

In a cacophony of aching sounds, he fell onto the floor and cried into himself; now too broken beyond repair. He was a dead man walking, a spirit without spirit and a soul without soul. And he was now numb to the perfume of life, eternally stuck in a past that lost its bittersweet aroma in a time that was forever gone. In a time that would never be back.

So, lost in tears and sobs and the will to get away, he ran into the light and found himself stopping in a stupor. He was now walking above clouds of the whitest light, mellifluous flocks of makeshift cotton enlaced along skies of a blue as sweet as sugar and tiny birds soaked in raven soaring to the infinite in a dance of freedom and happiness of the irrational kind.

He walked forward without a purpose, moved by invisible strings that worked him like a puppet. When he reached her, she smiled at him, hand outstretched towards him in an invitation that had him sitting by her side and holding the offered flesh in the daze he was allowed to feel in that place of clouds and sun and dreams.

Together they sat staring at the morning sun rising above the horizon, hands melting into one another as if they were one; always together, never alone.

“Daddy,” she then said quietly, voice tugging at his heart that was still numb, but now felt the warmth of the sound like nothing he had felt before.

“Yes, baby?”

She smiled, whispering tenderly, “It’s so beautiful up there.”

“Where is beautiful, Mel?”

The small child sent him another smile, moving closer to him and wrapping her little arms around his waist as she rested against his chest. And he smiled because he could feel her, the baby he had lost but had now returned.

“With the angels,” she whispered softly. “They keep calling me through heaven’s door and it’s so beautiful there, daddy. Everyone is happy.”

The dream allowed the tears in his eyes to spill and he watched as they never fell, instead becoming those same raven birds he had seen before; free and flying happily towards the horizon that saved them a new tomorrow.

“Have you been inside yet?” he asked quietly, heart aching at the look of sadness that crossed his daughter’s angelic face.

“No, daddy. I can’t.”

“Why not, baby? You can’t go to heaven?”

“I can go to heaven,” she answered, looking up at her father with a frown of concentration marring the skin between her bright hazel eyes. “I just can’t go now.”

“Why?” he asked, himself frowning at her in confusion.

She smiled softly before hiding her face in his chest once again, small feet dangling over the clouds as she held him tighter with her tiny arms. “I almost went to heaven once, but then I heard mommy praying. She said that you were sad, daddy, so I told the angels we would play together later because I had to save my daddy and make him happy again.”

And that’s when he finally understood: the reason why he hadn’t moved on, the reason why it still hurt so much. His baby had been waiting for him all along and he had been selfish, drowning himself in feelings of sorrow as his child waited for him to heal so she could play with the angels and find the happiness humans had taken from all those years ago. Matt had been wrong all along, because he had never let himself forgive and forget. But now, as he looked at his daughter sitting by the clouds, smiling in that same childish and innocent way, eyes still sparkling with a promise of a happy tomorrow, he finally understood that she had been a part of the better humans. Part of the children that had great hearts of nothing but purity, love and forgiveness. Part of the only ones that still mattered in that same sick world.

His daughter had been part of the angels before she was even knocking on the door to the heaven she deserved. His daughter was the princess of them all.

“You can go now,” Matt said at last, smiling down at his personal angel as he made the decision he should have made long ago. The decision to let her go.

“Are you happy, daddy?” she asked, excitement quickly growing on the depths of her innocent orbs.

Matt thought about the question and all that was happening in the reality that was his own. He knew he wasn’t happy yet – his baby would still be gone in the world where he belonged -, but he remembered Sarah and the way she loved him, unconditionally and without asking for any kind of return, he remembered Brian and the rest of his friends that prayed for him to stay alive and now he would remember his daughter that wasn’t lost in a world of darkness, but instead living in her personal heaven, playing with angels and smiling again because she was happy, free.

No, he wasn’t happy, but now he was almost sure one day he would be.

“Yeah, baby. Daddy is happy.”

And when she kissed his cheek, the words ‘I love you’ wrote themselves in the vibrant blue sky, making him smile and close his eyes as he felt her vanishing away, her laugh echoing in his mind as she walked towards the gates so she could move on, only looking back once to smile at her daddy and wave, leaving her last words to live forever in Matt’s heart.

”I’ll see you soon, daddy.”