The thing that first struck me was how cold it all was.
A fluorescent light blinked on overhead, shuffling a brief half-rhythm with its harmonic clinking.
“I do love this kind of cold, she bites like a wolf in heat.”
The fluorescence threw a pink light over the kitchen, almost the same colour as the sunset snow stretching far across the Belarussian plains.
“Have you ever been bitten by a wolf, Louis? There's no pain at first, then it stings like hell when they start to tear the skin off.”
Styx growled. He never did like my travelling companion, and there were times when I don't think I did either. But it was he who brought us to this old farmhouse by the woods, he who had gasoline for the generator, he who found us a place to sleep that wasn't a frozen marsh.
I don't quite remember how we met. I think it was in Prague, in a bar. He kept buying me drinks and all of a sudden a month had passed and we were halfway across Europe together. Not that it matters much how we met, I suppose. It's only important that he's here now.
I don't know very much about him. Neither of us speak a lot. I know his name is Josef, that's it. He never talks about the past, only the future. He reminds me of Merlin, living his life in reverse, not knowing what's gone past and remembering what's to come.
I still recall the first thing he said to me, even before we'd exchanged names. He sat next to me at the bar, leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Come and explore the future with me.”
That's the first thing that struck me: how cold it all was.
“What say we warm up a bit?” Josef held up a bottle of vodka, the kind that makes your teeth itch just by thinking about it.
We sat at the creaking wooden table, taking turns at swigging the vodka. Soon enough, my head started to spin, and the world started to shake, like a movie projector thrown a sprocket.
Josef talked, more than I'd ever heard him talk before. I'd seen him drunk many times, and it would always loosen his tongue, but this time was different. This time he told me things that mattered.
We had almost finished the vodka when the blurs started to creep around the back of my head and into my peripheral vision. Josef started to talk about his sister. This is the only thing he told me that I remember properly. The only signal that cut through the noise of the vodka.
He told me about his sister. He told me she'd lived in Amsterdam and had a passion for seducing awkward, long-haired teenage boys, “the kind in flannel shirts who don't quite know what to do with their arms,” he said.
He told me about how she'd go to parks where they were sitting in the sun, about how she'd make friends with them and promise to buy them weed, and how, one by one, she'd seduce them, sleep with them, then discard them.
And every morning, after a successful conquest had gone home to explain to his mother where he'd been, she'd come to the kitchen—always naked—and make breakfast for herself and Josef.
And if at night she came home alone, she would always play Jefferson Airplane's “White Rabbit” and sing along while she and Josef drank themselves to sleep in each other's arms.
Until one night she didn't come home. Nor the next, nor the next. Night after night he'd sit, alone in their apartment in Amsterdam, listening to “White Rabbit” over and over again, drinking bottle after bottle of vodka.
He told me she used to ask him, when she was lonely, to explore the future with her. Now he had to explore alone, he said, so he left. He never returned to Amsterdam and, for all he knows, neither did she.
“Aurora was the most beautiful woman I'd ever known. I wish I hadn't lost her.” He picked up the empty bottle of vodka, and his mood suddenly changed. “So, Louis. Now it's your turn. Tell me something.” I told him I didn't think so. He put his hands behind his head.
“Oh come on, I showed you mine, now you've got to show me yours.” He laughed, loudly. Styx barked.
Styx always barked when Josef laughed. There was something threatening, something unsettling in his laugh.
I told Styx to to be quiet, but he wouldn't stop barking. He was looking at the door, one leg raised.
“Shut up, mutt!”
I told Josef to wait, I thought I heard something outside.
“Then let's take a look.” He rose to his feet and swayed a little, one hand on the table to steady himself. I wasn't sure if I could get up.
Josef grabbed my elbow and dragged me from my chair. I stumbled, almost fell, but he kept me up.
He opened the door and Styx bolted. I staggered after them into the hazy moonlight. I looked to the sky and swore I could see the stars moving as the Earth spun. I thought the constellations were changing, shifting to new shapes, making new patterns in the skies to tell new stories. I thought maybe they were bored of being comic book panels in the ancient Greek myths, and felt like telling stories of their own that were fresh and unheard. Then I thought there were no new stories. They've all been told already.
And I was alone. Josef had vanished into the dark woods, and Styx's bark was faint. I called to them to wait, and stumbled into the forest.
Roots and undergrowth tripped me every other step. The vodka ensured I fell each time. I could still hear Styx barking in the distance. Josef was silent. I stumbled on toward Styx's echoing voice, calling to him from time to time.
I didn't think about what he could be barking at. Some curious woodland creature, I figured. But vodka can set your mind wild. All sorts of fantastical creatures and unmentionable horrors came flooding to me. Probably a fox, I told myself. I didn't know if there were foxes in Belarus. That didn't help.
I groped on, barely breathing. The dog was a braver man than I.
I kept thinking of monsters in the dark, and laughed as lines from a poem I'd read as a child flashed in my head.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son.
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch.
This here's Jabberwock country, I tittered drunkenly.
I heard a whistle. The tune was familiar, but I couldn't place it. I thought maybe it was Josef calling to Styx. I called both their names, and Styx barked again.
I rushed toward Styx's bark and found him in a small clearing, sniffing around. I knelt and asked him what he'd heard. He stopped and growled.
I listened, heard snatches of singing. The tune, so familiar. Words drifted on the air, coming through in waves.
When she... eet tall... nd if you go... sing rabb... ou know you... to fall.
I thought I'd started to hallucinate, like I'd had some kind of mushroom. I began to wonder what the fuck was in Josef's vodka.
The singing stopped abruptly. Styx growled again. Someone whispered in my ear, “Come into the dawn with me, Louis.”
I jumped and behind me was a woman: tall, slender, the most beautiful woman I'd ever known. Her hair spilled over the shoulders of her green dress.
The shock of beauty subsided to the realisation that she knew my name. I asked her how she knew, who she was. She didn't answer.
She put her fingers to my lips to quiet me, then we kissed. I was too drunk to resist, too dizzy to pull away. She kept holding me, kept kissing me.
She broke off, and said to me, “Let the children live again, Louis.” I was too dazed to realise that she was talking nonsense. We kissed again and fell to the ground.
I think we made love, but I can't quite remember.
I woke on the forest floor with Styx nipping at my heels. It was just before dawn, that annoying grey halflight.
Styx seemed to want me to follow him. He was quite violent about it. He'd been my friend for a long time since I found him, but he was still a wild dog at heart.
I got to my feet and swam through the mawkish grey pre-dawn, stumbling after Styx.
He brought me to a large clearing in the forest, with a small pond in the middle.
On the lake there were shades of fog, gliding like ghosts with heads bowed and their arms by their sides. They made a sound, soft, like a distant swarm of bees or the buzz of unused speakers. A mist prowled on the water, curling round their feet, nuzzling their ankles, licking up their shins in eddies of wind. The ghosts coasted the mist, gliding on the lake's surface tension, leaving no ripples in their wakes.
These were the spirits who only came out on rainy grey mornings.
Styx was obsessed. I couldn't quiet him; he ran to the edge of the pond and kept going, bobbing up and down in his doggy paddle. He bobbed, further and further, spending longer and longer underwater, until eventually he simply didn't surface.
I called him and called him. The ghosts on the water ignored me. I jumped in after Styx, in a fit of panic.
I swam to the bottom to find Styx lying there, almost in the centre of the pond. I brought him up and lay him on the bank. He was dead.
I looked back at the pond: the shades had disappeared. I looked at the sky: the stars were gone, it was almost dawn. I looked ahead and the woman from the night moved through the trees, and came towards me.
I asked her again who she was. She told me, “I am Aurora of the Dawn,” and again she asked me to come with her into the dawn. I asked why, I told her I was fine on my own. She told me I had to come with her. I asked why.
“Because all of this has happened before,” she said, “and all of it will happen again.”
Where had I heard that before?
She kissed me and told me I was going with her. “Goodbye, Louis,” she said. “I'll see you again soon.”
This lady was crazy. She took Styx's body and again disappeared into the forest. I was left with a terrible hollow feeling, as though I'd been scooped clean.
I tried to follow her, but she'd gone too far ahead. I found the end of the woods, the pink sun spilling over the horizon onto the fields of snow.
There was Josef, standing at the edge of the forest, as if he'd been waiting there all night. He turned when he heard me approach, and came towards me. He leaned close and whispered, “Go and explore the future.”
Our lips met. I closed my eyes and I could feel his hands at the back of my neck, his thumbs slowly running up the sides of my face, toward my eyes, then searing light as he slowly pushed them into my eye sockets.
I felt the warm blood trickle down my cheeks, tasted its salt when it ran into my mouth. I couldn't move.
My hands began to swim, seeking his arms. I took his wrists, feebly. He pulled his thumbs out of my eyes, slower than I'd hoped for. It didn't hurt at first. Now it stung like hell.
Slipping his wrists from my grasp, he brushed his fingers on my palms and disappeared into silence. As I sank to my knees on the forest floor, I heard Aurora's song again, getting slowly further away.
One pill makes you larger,
The other makes you small.
I still live in that old farmhouse by the woods. Josef and Aurora never came back, and I haven't heard her song since. I never went back into the forest. There's nothing left there now but that terrible hollow feeling and the curious twittering of woodland creatures.
A fluorescent light blinked on overhead, shuffling a brief half-rhythm with its harmonic clinking.
“I do love this kind of cold, she bites like a wolf in heat.”
The fluorescence threw a pink light over the kitchen, almost the same colour as the sunset snow stretching far across the Belarussian plains.
“Have you ever been bitten by a wolf, Louis? There's no pain at first, then it stings like hell when they start to tear the skin off.”
Styx growled. He never did like my travelling companion, and there were times when I don't think I did either. But it was he who brought us to this old farmhouse by the woods, he who had gasoline for the generator, he who found us a place to sleep that wasn't a frozen marsh.
I don't quite remember how we met. I think it was in Prague, in a bar. He kept buying me drinks and all of a sudden a month had passed and we were halfway across Europe together. Not that it matters much how we met, I suppose. It's only important that he's here now.
I don't know very much about him. Neither of us speak a lot. I know his name is Josef, that's it. He never talks about the past, only the future. He reminds me of Merlin, living his life in reverse, not knowing what's gone past and remembering what's to come.
I still recall the first thing he said to me, even before we'd exchanged names. He sat next to me at the bar, leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Come and explore the future with me.”
That's the first thing that struck me: how cold it all was.
“What say we warm up a bit?” Josef held up a bottle of vodka, the kind that makes your teeth itch just by thinking about it.
We sat at the creaking wooden table, taking turns at swigging the vodka. Soon enough, my head started to spin, and the world started to shake, like a movie projector thrown a sprocket.
Josef talked, more than I'd ever heard him talk before. I'd seen him drunk many times, and it would always loosen his tongue, but this time was different. This time he told me things that mattered.
We had almost finished the vodka when the blurs started to creep around the back of my head and into my peripheral vision. Josef started to talk about his sister. This is the only thing he told me that I remember properly. The only signal that cut through the noise of the vodka.
He told me about his sister. He told me she'd lived in Amsterdam and had a passion for seducing awkward, long-haired teenage boys, “the kind in flannel shirts who don't quite know what to do with their arms,” he said.
He told me about how she'd go to parks where they were sitting in the sun, about how she'd make friends with them and promise to buy them weed, and how, one by one, she'd seduce them, sleep with them, then discard them.
And every morning, after a successful conquest had gone home to explain to his mother where he'd been, she'd come to the kitchen—always naked—and make breakfast for herself and Josef.
And if at night she came home alone, she would always play Jefferson Airplane's “White Rabbit” and sing along while she and Josef drank themselves to sleep in each other's arms.
Until one night she didn't come home. Nor the next, nor the next. Night after night he'd sit, alone in their apartment in Amsterdam, listening to “White Rabbit” over and over again, drinking bottle after bottle of vodka.
He told me she used to ask him, when she was lonely, to explore the future with her. Now he had to explore alone, he said, so he left. He never returned to Amsterdam and, for all he knows, neither did she.
“Aurora was the most beautiful woman I'd ever known. I wish I hadn't lost her.” He picked up the empty bottle of vodka, and his mood suddenly changed. “So, Louis. Now it's your turn. Tell me something.” I told him I didn't think so. He put his hands behind his head.
“Oh come on, I showed you mine, now you've got to show me yours.” He laughed, loudly. Styx barked.
Styx always barked when Josef laughed. There was something threatening, something unsettling in his laugh.
I told Styx to to be quiet, but he wouldn't stop barking. He was looking at the door, one leg raised.
“Shut up, mutt!”
I told Josef to wait, I thought I heard something outside.
“Then let's take a look.” He rose to his feet and swayed a little, one hand on the table to steady himself. I wasn't sure if I could get up.
Josef grabbed my elbow and dragged me from my chair. I stumbled, almost fell, but he kept me up.
He opened the door and Styx bolted. I staggered after them into the hazy moonlight. I looked to the sky and swore I could see the stars moving as the Earth spun. I thought the constellations were changing, shifting to new shapes, making new patterns in the skies to tell new stories. I thought maybe they were bored of being comic book panels in the ancient Greek myths, and felt like telling stories of their own that were fresh and unheard. Then I thought there were no new stories. They've all been told already.
And I was alone. Josef had vanished into the dark woods, and Styx's bark was faint. I called to them to wait, and stumbled into the forest.
Roots and undergrowth tripped me every other step. The vodka ensured I fell each time. I could still hear Styx barking in the distance. Josef was silent. I stumbled on toward Styx's echoing voice, calling to him from time to time.
I didn't think about what he could be barking at. Some curious woodland creature, I figured. But vodka can set your mind wild. All sorts of fantastical creatures and unmentionable horrors came flooding to me. Probably a fox, I told myself. I didn't know if there were foxes in Belarus. That didn't help.
I groped on, barely breathing. The dog was a braver man than I.
I kept thinking of monsters in the dark, and laughed as lines from a poem I'd read as a child flashed in my head.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son.
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch.
This here's Jabberwock country, I tittered drunkenly.
I heard a whistle. The tune was familiar, but I couldn't place it. I thought maybe it was Josef calling to Styx. I called both their names, and Styx barked again.
I rushed toward Styx's bark and found him in a small clearing, sniffing around. I knelt and asked him what he'd heard. He stopped and growled.
I listened, heard snatches of singing. The tune, so familiar. Words drifted on the air, coming through in waves.
When she... eet tall... nd if you go... sing rabb... ou know you... to fall.
I thought I'd started to hallucinate, like I'd had some kind of mushroom. I began to wonder what the fuck was in Josef's vodka.
The singing stopped abruptly. Styx growled again. Someone whispered in my ear, “Come into the dawn with me, Louis.”
I jumped and behind me was a woman: tall, slender, the most beautiful woman I'd ever known. Her hair spilled over the shoulders of her green dress.
The shock of beauty subsided to the realisation that she knew my name. I asked her how she knew, who she was. She didn't answer.
She put her fingers to my lips to quiet me, then we kissed. I was too drunk to resist, too dizzy to pull away. She kept holding me, kept kissing me.
She broke off, and said to me, “Let the children live again, Louis.” I was too dazed to realise that she was talking nonsense. We kissed again and fell to the ground.
I think we made love, but I can't quite remember.
I woke on the forest floor with Styx nipping at my heels. It was just before dawn, that annoying grey halflight.
Styx seemed to want me to follow him. He was quite violent about it. He'd been my friend for a long time since I found him, but he was still a wild dog at heart.
I got to my feet and swam through the mawkish grey pre-dawn, stumbling after Styx.
He brought me to a large clearing in the forest, with a small pond in the middle.
On the lake there were shades of fog, gliding like ghosts with heads bowed and their arms by their sides. They made a sound, soft, like a distant swarm of bees or the buzz of unused speakers. A mist prowled on the water, curling round their feet, nuzzling their ankles, licking up their shins in eddies of wind. The ghosts coasted the mist, gliding on the lake's surface tension, leaving no ripples in their wakes.
These were the spirits who only came out on rainy grey mornings.
Styx was obsessed. I couldn't quiet him; he ran to the edge of the pond and kept going, bobbing up and down in his doggy paddle. He bobbed, further and further, spending longer and longer underwater, until eventually he simply didn't surface.
I called him and called him. The ghosts on the water ignored me. I jumped in after Styx, in a fit of panic.
I swam to the bottom to find Styx lying there, almost in the centre of the pond. I brought him up and lay him on the bank. He was dead.
I looked back at the pond: the shades had disappeared. I looked at the sky: the stars were gone, it was almost dawn. I looked ahead and the woman from the night moved through the trees, and came towards me.
I asked her again who she was. She told me, “I am Aurora of the Dawn,” and again she asked me to come with her into the dawn. I asked why, I told her I was fine on my own. She told me I had to come with her. I asked why.
“Because all of this has happened before,” she said, “and all of it will happen again.”
Where had I heard that before?
She kissed me and told me I was going with her. “Goodbye, Louis,” she said. “I'll see you again soon.”
This lady was crazy. She took Styx's body and again disappeared into the forest. I was left with a terrible hollow feeling, as though I'd been scooped clean.
I tried to follow her, but she'd gone too far ahead. I found the end of the woods, the pink sun spilling over the horizon onto the fields of snow.
There was Josef, standing at the edge of the forest, as if he'd been waiting there all night. He turned when he heard me approach, and came towards me. He leaned close and whispered, “Go and explore the future.”
Our lips met. I closed my eyes and I could feel his hands at the back of my neck, his thumbs slowly running up the sides of my face, toward my eyes, then searing light as he slowly pushed them into my eye sockets.
I felt the warm blood trickle down my cheeks, tasted its salt when it ran into my mouth. I couldn't move.
My hands began to swim, seeking his arms. I took his wrists, feebly. He pulled his thumbs out of my eyes, slower than I'd hoped for. It didn't hurt at first. Now it stung like hell.
Slipping his wrists from my grasp, he brushed his fingers on my palms and disappeared into silence. As I sank to my knees on the forest floor, I heard Aurora's song again, getting slowly further away.
One pill makes you larger,
The other makes you small.
I still live in that old farmhouse by the woods. Josef and Aurora never came back, and I haven't heard her song since. I never went back into the forest. There's nothing left there now but that terrible hollow feeling and the curious twittering of woodland creatures.
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