Nemonymous Night by D. F. Lewis

Author:D. F. Lewis [Lewis, D. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Chomu Press
Published: 2011-06-14T20:00:00+00:00

I tore up the page I had been scribbling on. And I returned to my desk, across the littered carpet, and powered-up my screen ready for easier tasks. Fiction was always easier than truth, a generalisation with which I would need to come to terms... eventually.

*

He called her Tho, as a gratuitously eccentric shortening for Thora. He was Hataz. Always had been. In full.

Hataz was more oriental than he looked. He and Tho were not necessarily a match made in Heaven, yet fair enough for two lonely strangers who both admitted they needed somebody. Their single attempt at love-making proper had been a clumsy exercise, neither of the participants earning flying colours for their efforts. They didn’t really get near enough to each other. They were probably scared of the final penetration: a fact left unsaid.

After that, by tacit mutual consent, they never indulged in a blatantly physical approach again. Going to the only cinema left open in the city, making big talk and small kisses, the ritual holding of hands, walking in derelict parks... these activities were surely sufficient for people like them, because (as Tho thought) “spirit rode the flesh like aura”.

They also played childish games unchildishly in Hataz’s place, such as Ludo and Draughts—and, even, despite the size of the flat, hide-and-seek.

Inevitably, affairs of innocent convenience wind down and, today, Tho was bluntly determined to cut Hataz from her life before she became too enmeshed—not because the relationship was particularly claustrophobic, but simply because she was scared of a dream.

“A dream you’ve dreamed?” asked Hataz, genuinely puzzled at the sudden mention of dreaming. They had just returned from a concert in one of the riot areas of the city near the old Dry Dock—where a little known jazz combo called Erich Zann had given a desultory performance on vibes, flute and zither in an obscure unlabelled nightclub. Now, she had chosen this moment in Hataz’s flat to make a prepared statement, one she had seemingly rehearsed in front of her wardrobe mirror.

“It’s not a dream I’ve really dreamed, as such—it’s strange, I can’t explain it.”

Hataz had started the evening hating the music. Now he was more generally confused than irritated—an uncommon feeling with him. Usually confident about life in general (if not with girls in the shape of Tho), tonight’s disorientation was difficult to fathom. He had already felt vague indications of being unbalanced on previous dates, but nothing quite like now. Surely she was not going a roundabout way to ditching him. His pride, as far as the opposite sex was concerned, seemed fragile enough, already. For one peculiar moment, he felt these thoughts were not his, but Tho’s. Osmosis? A twinning of auras?

“It was the edge of a dream, Hataz. I could see the dream in my bedroom, as if it had a transparent cover. Not really a bubble nor a balloon. Just a shapeless watery skin. Inside were all the nightmares I knew should have been in my sleep. I was awake, watching an independent dream that nobody was dreaming.

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