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a huge bright-green mantis was floundering on its back on the patio floor, pinned down by a dry, half-decayed leaf. i watched it for a bit, probably trying to wrap my mind around the fact that there were still mantises around in late October, while also feeling slightly embarrassed because, apparently, i had just destroyed its home while cutting the branches. then i helped it out.

it had a huge fat drop-shaped belly, terrible manners (well, who would behave after having their house so rudely demolished?), and a very firm intention to get away from me. i set it down on the ivy-covered fence; it climbed for a bit and then looked back at me. and i bet if mantises could talk, it would have said something like, ‘fuck you, you fucking fuck.’

i grinned and nodded. that seemed fair enough.

i’m not quite sure why i even started on that branch in the first place. not intentionally, i guess. in fact, for a while i wasn’t even aware i was still cutting. Pat asked me to trim two, so i did those first, then a couple more just because i was there, and then found myself chopping off whatever seemed too impudent, feeding mosquitoes, and, as i see it now, hoping to find something, anything, exciting somewhere among those innocent trees and bushes.

i’ve never been particularly good with pruning shears, and my gardening skills have never exactly been brilliant, so the more i cut, the more the place naturally began to look like a mess.

“oh, darling.”

Pat was standing in the doorway with that expression she reserves for moments when she finds something in a vaguely damaged state. that day, it was the patio and, apparently, me. simultaneously.

that was the first time i actually looked around. i think i must’ve had the half-startled, half-appalled look of a barber who got carried away and then suddenly realised there wasn’t much of the client’s hair left, because she laughed.

“it will grow back in no time,” i murmured, trying to shield the particularly ugly, protruding branch stubs with my body. it didn’t work very well and, to be fair, didn’t sound particularly convincing either.

she nodded, though. very solemnly, but with that little smile at the corners of her mouth that gave her away. i looked around again, shook my head and laughed. the place was definitely a disaster.

you might feel like there should be some sort of resolution, but alas, the story of my patio destruction ends here. later, when we had something that was supposed to be lunch, yet was happening at a time more appropriate for supper, she asked me if i had found anything.

“found what?”

she gave me a look over the egg sandwich i’d made for her.
“whatever you were looking for out there.”

that always gets me.

i told her about the mantis then. the fat belly, the terrible manners, the way it looked back at me from the ivy as if considering whether murder was worth the trouble.

“poor bastard,” she said. “you destroyed his house, frightened the life out of him, and then expected him to be grateful?”

i laughed and shook my head.

“good,” she said. “because i bet he thought you were a fucking fuck.”

i looked at her. she smiled and took another bite.

“almost word for word,” i murmured finally.

by then, whatever i had been looking for in the patio didn’t seem particularly important anymore.

the first thing i saw when i woke up that day was her standing by the window. the sun was heavy and low; it glared on the glass, licked the window frames, crept across the floor and, finally, sank into the crumpled sheets at the foot of the bed. she stood very still, still was the garden outside, and i lay there and watched a sunlight patch in the little soft gap between her thighs, and thought that the deeper autumn gets, the more erotic things become. i probably said it out loud, because she turned around and laughed, making that tiny brazen gleam disappear. i remember thinking that, probably, that spot was still warm, before i drifted off into a moony slumber.

i woke up again probably not much later, for the sun was still in the room. it now rested on her pillow, a warm-yellow shiny lake in the soft dent where her head would go. she wasn’t around. disappointing. i lay there for a bit, absently winding one of her hairs ‘round my finger, staring at the earring she lost during her sleep, and listening to the house sounds. a kettle, a cupboard door, chair legs creaking as they slid across the floor, quiet footsteps — very distant proofs that the world was slightly larger than our bedroom. i sighed, considering leaving the bed. and then she appeared in the doorframe.

i think she asked me if i was going to get up, and i probably said something i usually say when i’m not actually going to, still trying to play respectable and reasonable — like ‘eventually’; hell knows why. she approached, knowing that it was a lie, moving slowly, so that i could watch her properly, and i remember thinking that she stole my shirt again before she sat on the edge of the bed and before my hand found its way ‘round her hips.

still, eventually, i did get up that day, so that wasn’t a complete lie after all — not for too long, though. it was rather late, just after dusk, and i was padding up to the kitchen to get a glass of water when it struck me that the house suddenly felt very old, and large and abandoned, as if no one had been there for years. i remember i opened the tap and the sound of water falling into the sink seemed so loud and disturbing i turned it off without filling my glass even up to half. and then i got back to bed, back to the safety of that eroticised cramped space, where the sheets were still warm, and the earring was long forgotten and tangled again in her hair and sleep.

true supernatural stories from trustworthy people in the voicemail tonight 🔽

there was a storm last night, and i broke a lamp.

thinking of it now, honestly, i don’t know what really happened. i get these occasional bouts of clumsiness, you know, and i guess it’s the worst kind, for if it were permanent, i would at least be aware of it and act accordingly; but this one comes and goes whenever it feels like it’s a great time to bring in some chaos and destruction. as if the storm and blackout alone weren’t enough.

it was an old oil lamp we got at some flea market years ago, and i adored it — because of that heavy, stuffy odour that filled the room immediately after you lit it, because of that round milk-glass globe chimney that looked like the moon, warm and still; and, most of all, i think, because Pat loved the lamp so tenderly she gave it a name. Molly.

it was at dusk.
the clouds outside were Payne’s grey and very low, compressing the world, the garden, and the house until it felt as if the whole place might start suffocating at any minute. the kitchen looked like a maze made of shadows and ghosts. i stumbled upon a ghost of a chair first, then an apparition of a table almost knocked me down, then my thighbone met the phantasm of a counter. i should’ve known by then. but these little omens went unnoticed — too casual, too small and insignificant in this tightening, dim, dove-coloured space to care about. finally, i reached the lamp, filled it with kerosene, checking the level with my fingertip — partly because of the darkness and partly because i loved the smell it left on my fingers afterwards — put the chimney back, and started making my way out.

i made two steps, i think. maybe three. i didn’t even stumble. that’s the worst part. if i had, i could’ve blamed it on the bloody furniture, or my body behaving like some barbarian windmill. but no. apparently, a simple step is sometimes enough.

the chimney tilted slightly, with a creak, as if in slow motion. i remember watching its white sphere roll through the air. and the sound when it hit the floor — a very beautiful, almost bell-like tinkling sound.

i remember looking at the almost glowing white pieces scattered all around me and still not believing what had just happened. i remember kneeling down and thinking — i would probably be able to fix this — and knowing it was impossible at the same time. i remember collecting it all and not throwing it away, because i could not bear to.

somehow, every time i break something, it feels like a murder. probably because the moment i see the thing fall apart in front of me is the moment i realise how deeply i loved it, and almost immediately this understanding forms a hollow inside me in the shape of the lost object. sounds a bit unhealthy, i know, especially if we’re talking about an old oil lamp that survived WWII and many other disasters, but failed to survive my catastrophic relationship with space.

there. death is silly.

with all of this circling in my head, i got back to the sitting room.
i had to tell Pat.

she was curled up in that enormously big armchair by the window, wrapped in my robe, and maybe because the room was dark, i felt her warmth reaching out to me the moment i crossed the threshold. and immediately i understood this was going to be harder than i had thought.

i told her, eventually.

i guess a part of me wanted her to cry over the lamp — because i could not, though i wanted to. but she didn’t.

instead, she placed her hand on my back — a soft and very light touch, not even a consolation, more like the approval of presence — and we sat like this for a long, long time, until the sky broke with rain, until Tibald came by, frightened by the thunder, and pressed his chubby side against my calf, and until i slid into the armchair beside her, tangling with her in that robe, in the darkness, and that freshly born hollowness in me started to glow warm and still.

my fingertips still smell of kerosene.

this is going to be a very short one, probably because i've been in a very un-talkative mood since morning. you know, some days are just so — you open your eyes, the morning is lovely and everything in it is pretty ordinary; still, even the tiniest thought of combining words into sentences feels painful.

i guess i could blame it on the past week — i had to talk, and a lot, so that by Friday my voice had gained so much gravel and my tongue had gone so numb Pat said i sounded like a very old and probably very pissed man. well, i felt like one too, to be honest. i tried to wrestle with it yesterday, but eventually gave up, thinking that, probably, if there’s a time of year to feel old and drunk, it’s definitely sometime in late September.

so, a silent day it is.

Pat calls it ‘monastery mood’. well, i’m not quite sure what they’re up to in monasteries, but i really doubt i would fit in, for my silence has nothing spiritual in it. besides, my dressing robe is far from ascetic. the belt always clings to door handles; the fabric is too soft and heavy to stay in place, and, well, it’s worn by my wife half the time. and for half of that time she loses it ‘accidentally’ — on her way to the kitchen, in the hallway it slides down her spine as if trying to escape, or suddenly falls to her feet, as if tired.

and yet, despite a certain lack of spirituality in what is happening today (oh, that dressing robe!), it’s amazing how time slows down if you keep silent. maybe because you can’t actually measure silence properly, or maybe because somehow, at a certain point, all the little things you usually miss — the looks, the gestures, the touches — begin to mean more, being the only language left. and, once you get possessed by this pace, it feels like a crime to break it.

so i will not.