BoNSTRuK! First Chapter
Death/Water
The light tattered by the lightly cloudy sky awakens your eyes. The first moment of bliss is succeeded by a strong smell that does not come from your basement. (Strangely enough…?) It comes from the heart of the city, the reek of nature’s rotting soul rising from the snake-infested belly of Tehran. You hug the cushion, rubbing your face’s skin against its soft cover. The phantom ring of dead nomads’ caravan bells keeps you from slipping back to sleep. Deep down under, like a corpse sunk deep, the womb’s explosion is flowering with its roots upside-down, the stench vaporing assaulting your nostrils, secreting tar and oil. On its tar the city feeds and its oil it drinks.
But soon the earth will crack and the vapors of the dead earth will arise, suffocating all of us to death. What we ate from earth’s hands it eats back from our corpse. When the firmament is imbued with doom, everything laughs. The city will be taken back, step by step, brick by brick until the last unit. Its malformed, minced, rotten flesh of dirt will be taken back by the original owner.
With the realization that attempting to prolong the already severed thread of sleep is futile, you frown and lift your head, not seeing but sensing the heat of the carpet’s pattern burned on your face. Eyes puffed, squinting, you run your hand through your hair, scratching your scalp and giving an unfocused gaze to the listless yellow-white brightness towering over you outside the wooden window, with a pale and small moon attached to the corner of the image. Tendrils of a faint breeze works its way inside to rest on your cheeks.
The darkness outside eats me from inside. My body is boiling under the sun. I was a child of innocence in a land that takes no prisoners and I’m running through the woods in the depth of night and I will die with my mind crushed within demons’ hands and my knees hugged. I am living inside a grave inside this house inside endless cycles of torture inside a grave inside this house inside the pyramidic structure of this sentence inside a grave inside a grave inside a grave, colossal and molecular and outside is afterlife. There’s a sizzling warmth beneath my eyelids. They feel heavy and searing like wooden shutters from hell. There’s an ache on my back. There’s a bitterness in the cavity of my heart that’s discharging poison, or is poison seeping in from outside? The stratus clouds are like white, torn curtains. I am smiling.
You run your hand through your hair and smell the slight grease that came with it. You run your hand through the carpet, soaking in the warmth of the spot that was under sunlight’s slow march. You lay down on the spot and let the sunshine warm your body, depressing over how heavy your eyelids are and how much your back aches.
But although momentarily I forget, I will always remember. I am oath fractured. My will is like a lump of flesh hanging from my intestine’s strings while my broken bones stab it from inside. I am incantation. The end of earthly ways. The doom of mother nature's tyranny.
It has her hands on me. My breath…!
The moment you suddenly sit up your still retracted lungs struggle to suck the oxygen in. You inhale the thick soup of air in heavily and massage your eyes through your eyelids. The room has suddenly got darker.
This is unnaturalness. The four O’clock-ness in a fall afternoon. The whispers of a fading light crawling in through a melting glass, slowly sucking the life out of your limp body as the whispers of a freezing cold sucks the life out of a shivering soul away, slowly killing the light and voice. This is unnaturalness. The waft of death lingers in the air like a crazed, homeless demon.
You crawl to your room, squeeze into a corner under your desk, grab the notebook on the desk blindly from under, and begin to write,
“Sun hit me in the face again this morning. I’ll slay the morning. I’ll slay the sun itself. The headaches are getting worse as I forge ahead into the night farther and farther each time, only to reach the morning sun again. What am I? What do they want me to be? They call me to be a woman but I am man. I am humanity. I am to be crushed, but I fight until I’m crushed. They want me to think I am many things I’m not, but I know. I am man. I am woman. I’m the first to rebel against nature, against death. I am the first to fight against my death sentence. I am the first to rise against the unstoppable force, the unbreakable contract and make the whole thing go sour. I am the first to ruin the ceremony of death. For you, who may wither: I won’t wilt under the sun. I will fight it and I will destroy it.”
You walk outside.
The outside is open and endless, its roof hidden behind the clouds and the endless color. There’s no end to it. The corpse of earth is showing off its teeth. Electric poles are risen to the sky like needles sticking out the meat. The heat of asphalt claws and bites through your sneakers. The heat connects your feet to the flesh of the city, making you a part of it. The heat concusses you out of your mind. It is the death of the afternoon, and its corpse’s stench radiates a heat that didn’t exactly invite wearing a hoodie.
And the sun is in the center, contributing to the composition with a shade of… bloody red. A big ball of blood, always hanging in the sky and watching over me like a malicious god. There to punish me for the rebellion of humanity, slowly and torturously with its heat. Its heat. Its heat.
The earth will punish you as you are a human.
And I won’t give it the satisfaction of sealing my fate.
The sun threw its bright shade upon you, dyeing everything near a rose crimson and everything far a depressed yellow. Its shine engulfed this mutation of city like death. You reached into your hoodie’s pocket and took out the blade, the Shamshir, with which you sat to cut down the magnificent, bloody halo crowning the afternoon sky. With your command, just as blood flowed to your head, an energy streamed out of your Shamshir’s handle, shaping into existence as a blade, a tamed fragment of earth’s soul, and you slashed, a diagonal strike, and the sun fell from the sky.
It came crashing down and left a giant, black patch in the sky, oozing blood unto the blueness like a bleeding scab. Where it crashed everything got twisted and crushed and disintegrated into dust. The hellish heat it emanated baked the bricks to a powder and everything else to coal. The immense and immeasurable heat soon killed any senses on your face’s skin. Then your eyes melted out of their sockets and there was nothingness.
This is beyond gaining a lost composure. This is death. Pure death. And it’s the most mundane thing ever. There’s always something that comes crashing down and when it does, it feels like the end of the world, the end of everything as we know it, but after everything is destroyed and the dust is settled, it’s all the same. It’s the same thing all over again. Even if the whole universe is destroyed, a new one is born out of it, and the cycle continues. It continues as if it never ended. On the other side of death there’s another life that’s just as painful to live. Today is the end of the world but tomorrow… is the same world. Tomorrow I live the same life.
Carrying this precious insight, already blind, already dead, you walked. You walked to the sun and as the heat got more intense, you readied your blade with a tighter grip, raising it further in the sky to land a strike. The heat surpassed your body’s warmth. The heat jump-started your failed senses into life, as your glitched senses could now hear tribal screams and chants, visions of a lost girl dressed in all black throwing herself away from moving vehicles, and taste something pleasantly bitter, like tea, in the back of your tongue.
You had no way of being sure, but you felt you were close enough to land a strike, and with that, one foot forward, stumped to the ground, a tight grip on the sword, with both hands, you raised the blade and, amateurishly but confidently, slashed something…
...Warm, like blood, flowed from what I could assume was an opening on the sun’s skin and encircled me, encompassed me and I bathed in it. A sickly warmth. What I sought was to tear my clothes off, and wash myself naked in the warmth. I could use some validation right now...
You tested your grip around the sword. The handle was still in your hands and your grip was just as tight. You pushed it. Something solid seemed to resist against it. You doubled on the force, and it slowly moved, as if it was cutting through the soft and solid something.
It must not come crashing down on me. I long for the cold breath of air on the window in the rain. The summer is almost over.
You push the sword into sun and heat comes crashing down. It crushes you. With all its might. You lose the last things that gave you meaning. You lost the last bits of your existence. There’s death. Pure death.
The sun was slain. And with that, the yellow, ethereal blood of the cosmos rains on you. Father nature, God of earth, they’re dead. They were cremated long ago and their vapor seeped into this city and gave life to our inanimate servants. Tehran is the name of this new form of devastated earth. Horrifying as it may be, Tehran is the new father nature. The new mother Earth.
And what’s left... is the sky. Blue and imposing. Its face is flat and emotionless, un-clouded. It could as well be a symptom of this tumor-infested town, but then again, I choose to believe it as the face of God. Why? It might as well be something else that’s being imposed on me. Something out of my control, both inside and out of my brain. I am not shocked by this. I am another brown-eyed demon, after all.
“Sudabeh?”
The voice landed, cut through all the interference, and all of the blades of hair on your body stood straight. There was a slight surprise to her tone, as in: what are you doing here? I didn’t expect to catch you here after all this time. We’re still friends, right? You turn around, with a hesitation, as to what sight awaits you. Maybe it’s just your brain playing tricks on you? Maybe it’s an outer manifestation of your anxiety? A guilt? But sure enough, there she was, in flesh, covered in feminine clothes that you believe did her frail figure most justice. Perfect for the summer-autumn calamity. Her skin is like smooth, golden and vibrant clay. Her face, albeit a bit unremarkable, is bright and young. She’s latching unto an uncharacteristic Kohl-colored backpack hanging from her left shoulder.
She had stopped the whole world, just standing there looking at me, frozen in place.
A thin thread is made, and then tugged.
You can sense (or trick yourself into sensing) the softest ripple in the air as she suddenly bolted across the street with total carelessness, only to stop in front of you, apparently force-stopping herself from jumping on you and locking your neck tightly between her arms in an act of aggressive affection.
But she hesitates.
The air is tense.
Looking down into her innocently expectant but hesitant eyes, you decide to hug her instead.
You sense the air slowly leaving her lungs in a soft exhale. She feels softer than a second before, as her muscles stop being tense. She hugs you back.
“You are the tensest person I’ve ever known, Sudabeh.”
She means she wanted to hug me, but she was scared. That I’d run away from her.
“But I hugged you instead.”
“Why?” she snickers, discovering the absurdity of the exchange. “You’re so weird. Did you miss me that much?
“Ye- well… you just… you looked like you needed a hug or something, y’know?”
You stumble through your mess of thoughts. They pour out of your mouth clumsily.
“Uh huh.”
A swift breeze. It tries to keep going, but your pause was stuck in it. Nothing moves. Everything refuses to move until you recite your next line.
“Sorry I didn’t reply back.”
Another tense muscle in the city softens, or at least you feel like it does.
“You’re an idiot. But I’ll always love you, no matter how dumb you are.”
That’s gay… is what you think. You could almost say out loud but you stop yourself. Everything is not like it was before. If you said that now, she might think twice about being happy to see you.
“I’m just happy that I’m seeing you. In flesh. In front of my two eyes. Again.”
Her words are like a solid rush of calm, nudging the arrowhead of guilt stuck in my heart, washing over the wound. I feel embarrassed and blessed. I can foresee the bliss escaping me not long after. It scares me, for I don’t know how to cherish the moment as best as I can.
“You good? You look out of this world.”
“Should we… um, should you… do you have time to hang out a bit?”
Sophia looks at you, staring for a good bit before answering.
“I’m gonna punch you.”
Instead, she fiercely pinches your arm between her two knuckles.
“Ow!”
“Next time you say something dumb and stupid I will actually punch you. I’m serious. I won’t hold back.”
“Is that a yes, then?”
With closed eyes.
“Huh?”
She tugs you by your hand, forcing you to walk along with her.
“I have to show you this. I saw this a couple of days ago and I couldn’t believe it. When I saw it I immediately thought: dang! I gotta show this to Sudabeh,” she says, all the traces of annoyance and frustration vanished from her voice. But she doesn’t look at you.
“Show what?”
“Hush. You’ll see.”
“Is it something bad? Did someone die?”
“No! What the fuck.” She looks back to shoot you a reproachful glance. “Stop saying stupid shit. You’ll like it, trust me.”
You trust her. Hard to believe there’s still something even you could like left in this city, but if it’s her, you can trust it. Completely. Fully. Fool-y. Blindly. No, loyally. Loyally is a better word, I think. I’d like it even if it was the most horrifying and offensive thing, no problem. Or so you tell yourself. With her, even the glitches and the alarming sounds of a calamity crashing down would feel warm and pleasant, or so you convince yourself. So you try to convince yourself.
So… Something painted everything the color of nine o’clock in the morning. There’s a lively bright almost-whiteness on the face of everything. There’s a pale sunlight resting on everything. On the cold, ceramic tiles. It feels divine. There’s a nice tranquil. Nothing moves and everything stops unless it has to. It feels like palm trees, but in Tehran, there are no palm trees. It’s hell with all the orange and red taken away; and actually pleasant. Like an unripe life granted to you the moment you fall out of the void that’s called non-existence. It’s stasis at its best. The cool air flows into the nostrils with the least difficulty. The feet take you with them like an old friend. It’s childish joy. It’s heaven. It’s heaven…
Where is she? Where is my Sophia? Is she here in Tehran? Or in heaven? Or in heaven…
The smell of agitated bitter orange blossom. They dive into our anomaly of mindset. In heaven? In heaven…
Dead… tree branches? My knuckles against my crimson… cheek? Against her crimson cheek? Eyes water involuntarily. I want innocence, I don’t want a pharmacy. There’s a… purple flame veiled purposefully in our tar-colored walls. There’s an unsettling peace, an unwanted joy, an unwelcome satisfaction. I have happiness and peace, so I’m ready to be wiped away, clean. I am living, I never hid. I never chose heaven as my resting place. I never thought of bleaching this scene. I cultivated hatred by being happy. But this hell is my heaven… is my heaven…?
“Wait, Sophia!”
An ancient, oppressive energy has awakened in the maws deep in the city. There’s a shadow afoot. Like a bad breath, it escapes and fuses its putrid force of life into everything that is inanimate. The shadow has a mechanical body, born in factories but fueled by earth. Resisting alternation self-justifiably. To move stillness into motion it sacrifices the animate into unbeing.
The mechanical shadow does not look at your direction. Shadows don’t look. They don’t have eyes. They’re merely the effect. The afterthought of brightness. Its cold, metallic tendrils flicker in sunlight. It’s seeping into the ground; into the walls. Each moment that passes I’m more afraid it’s going to creep upon me to grasp my heart.
“There’s a shadow.”
“What?”
Your heart shakes at the consequences of rebellion. You feel too much for what you are.
“That thing. There. Can’t you see it?”
“The mechanical shadow? What about it?”
“Wha- what do you mean what about it?”
“I don’t see- what’s the problem?”
“They’ll kill you!”
“They do?!”
I feel delusional. Am I mistaken? Am I remembering something wrong?
“It’s okay,” she says in a worried tone. “We don’t have to go that way if you’re scared of them.”
“No. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Let’s just go that way. We don’t have to go through there.”
Your mind is clouded with thoughts. Is dying the natural consequence of animation? Without movement, there shouldn’t be any death. But even the still dies someday.
You can sense the smoke coming off of the infernal thing. It’s an unmistakable smell that anyone who’s lived in the city long enough can sense when the debris steals life and becomes life itself. It’s the alternative that nature has chosen to ensnare humanity in, you immediately pull out your notepad to write the memo in. What if one day the whole earth itself became alive?
“We’re here! Sudabeh?”
You quickly shove the notepad in your pocket. “Yeah? I’m here.”
“Come on. Come look at this.”
There’s a huge grin on her face, which meant whatever she’s showing to you must mean a lot to he-
“Oh.”
It’s the ice cream shop. The one we went to when we were kids. Like, way before. Way before the whole world became such a scary and jagged place. Way before the whole sky turned a shade grayer and duller. I honestly don’t know if I’m happy or not. I understand that I should feel happy about it. I think at least. But I don’t feel anything.
“I saw it reopened two days ago.”
Is that so…
“Well? What do you think?”
The rush I feel is both warm and disgusting. But I don’t mind it all that much. I want to go back to the simpler times. I want to go back to a monster-less world. I want to go back to mom.
“Is it the same guy? Who reopened it?”
“Same guy. He didn’t recognize me, but that doesn’t matter. His stuff are same.”
“You should’ve waited so we came together,” you fake-pout.
“But we are.”
“No, like, we went together for the first time… after all these years.”
The act you’re playing up starts to actually hurt. There’s no reason to be hurt over such a stupid thing. Why did shoot yourself in foot, Sudabeh?
“Aw come on. I just wanted to make sure it was right. Didn’t want to get you worked up over nothing…”
You give a smile. It’s not worth breaking her heart. It’s not worth it, you realize.
“Thank you.”
You hug her.
She hugs you back, letting out a reserved and amused laugh.
“You’re awfully cuddly today.”
“I just… ah, I don’t know. It’s just how it is.”
“Aw haha, alright precious, enough with the flattering. Let’s go inside.”
You look at it, squeezed into a corner at the curb, like a den. You set your foot inside and the overwhelmingly toxic smell of fresh plastic cover on the wooden tables grabs your guard by collar. The once friendly refuge was now too assaulting. Maybe it’s your fault. You’re probably sensing it wrong. Maybe it’s assaulting because you secretly want it or believe it to be. Because you refuse to believe it could shelter you again after all these years. Maybe that’s why the grandma-grade floral-patterned tablecloths are now replaced by literally tasteless plastic sheets. You wonder if you’re ruining it for Sophia too. You decide not to ask.
“You finished checking the place, inspector?”
She had already sat down. You sit in front of her. You wonder if you should apologize to her, but that would be too weird and too absurd. You know the only reason the thought occurred to you is because you want to suck empathy out of her like a voracious beast. What are you so hungry for? Not ice-cream, you notice.
“What do you want Sudabeh?”
“Oh, uh…”
There’s an old man standing beside you, looking back and forth at you and Sophia waiting for an answer. Your mind is locked in place like a ghost in camera shutter.
“Traditional?” she asks you in a tone that pressed you to confirm.
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
“I knew. That’s what you always ordered. And one traditional please!”
The man scribbled it down and left.
“What did you order?”
“Chocolate.”
“Did you always order that?”
She gives you a blank stare, before making a gesture with her face as in: I dunno.
Yet she remembered mine. Did I always order Traditional? Why don’t I even remember? It just sounds gross to me.
“So, tell me. How have you been?”
You look at her. She’s looking at you dead-on, with a pair of innocent, yet piercing and interrogative eyes, her shiny elbow adhered to the cheap plastic and her defined yet delicate jaw nestled between her hands. Her wristwatch dangling in her arm somehow adds to the aesthetic of the scenery before you; and distracts you from forming a sentence to answer her question. Well, a convincing sentence.
“I’ve been… fine.”
An unsure flair slips into your last word, which makes her click her tongue and sigh with frustration, as she’s contemplating how to word what’s on her mind in a more direct way.
“You didn’t come to the classes for the past week. None of them, Sudabeh.”
The conversation was being diverged into uncomfortable territories. Territories you don’t even want to acknowledge existed.
“How…”
No. If you push the pressure back on her, something might break. Something you don’t want to break. Let her have it.
Do I let her?
Sure, what do you have to lose?
My sanity.
It’s already twisted beyond measure. She can’t damage it as much as you already did.
Maybe she can help me.
Maybe. Are you willing to open up?
…no.
“I just need some time, Sophia.”
“Sudabeh! Look at me.”
She grabs you by your hand. You look at her.
“Am I not your friend?”
“W- what kind of question is that… of course you are.”
“Really? Why don’t you trust to even talk to me then?”
You don’t answer. The only answers you could give were something along the lines of it’s not as easy or I wish I could, something as dramatic and untrue. The fact is even you don’t know why you’re like this. Is that a good thing to say? You don’t think so.
Maybe it’s better to play theater.
“Sophia, I’m working on it. It’s not easy, but I’m trying to get back up. I would’ve told you about it if you could help. Of course I trust you. You’re…” You thrusted the prickly words out of your throat. “You’re my best friend, for fuck’s sake. If… If I want help from anyone, you’re the first person I would ask.”
Your words wash over her attentive and impatient expression like a wave washes over words carved on a beach, leaving nothing but a broken heart and hurt feelings. Disappointment. In you. As a friend.
At the timeliest moment, the shopkeeper comes back with your ice-creams and places them on your table, demolishing any opportunity for both of you to shrug off the exchange because… ice-cream.
You should taste the ice-cream.
Is this damned thing supposed to be saffron? You take a small amount with the edge of your spoon, not daring to take more. What will you taste? It’s bitter. It doesn’t even taste like saffron. It tastes like dust. Like the musty wood of a damp shack. You eat more. You force the ice-cream down your throat in silence, little by little. Tiny spoonful by tiny spoonful. It reduces to ash instead of cream in your mouth.
When you finish, Sophia stands up.
“No, wait…!”
“It’s okay. I’m treating you today.” She smiles.
“Is that okay?”
“What do you mean? Of course it is. Come on.”
You helplessly look at her put the bills on the counter. Well, you’re not actually helpless. You could help by sharing half the cost. You just chose not to.
“Come on. Let’s go, okay?”
The air outside has gotten more suffocating.
Sophia has no idea how much she breaks my fall. It’s because I give nothing back in return. It’s because I keep distancing myself further and further, and the only times we actually talk is when she’s there for me, like today, to be crushed under my weight. She should give up on me. That’ll make me happier too. She’ll only get hurt.
“You’re going home now?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
“It’s fine.”
“Nah, come on. I want to walk, if it doesn’t bother you.”
“Okay. That’s fine.”
The city refuses to interfere and kill the tense atmosphere. You’re not even sure if it’s just you. You don’t like thinking about it, but you’re actually starting to mind her walking besides you. You should be crucified for having such thoughts for that girl. She’s only trying to help you.
“Hey, sorry I kept pressing and made you feel bad. I should’ve been more mindful.”
“No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sorry. For being insufferable.”
She puts her hand around your back.
“Don’t say that. Stupid.”
For a second. Just for a second. You’d pour your heart out and everything will be fine. You trust her. You do. But if you tell her, she won’t believe it. She won’t understand. But you trust her. How can this even be possible?
“I just… well, I don’t want to push you or force into talking. Just remember when things get too hard or you feel like have nowhere else to go, I’m here for you, okay? I’ll always be here, helping you go through whatever’s going on with your life.”
Yes. She will. When this whole city inevitably comes crashing down, when the ground splits open in two and a great chasm opens to eat everyone up, she’ll be there with you. To fall down into the great abyss with you. You won’t be alone.
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“That’s what you should do,” she says firmly.
The phone in your pocket buzzes.