3. Like a rolling stone
What did Benjamin see in me? Sometimes I wonder if that was even his real name… But I know full well that this kind of musings come over me whenever I have doubts of my worth, whenever I begin feeling self-conscious and scorn myself because of my own actions.
Yah, whatever, back to Benjamin: What the hell did he want with me? I'm sure that at the very moment when he decided to share his immortality with me there must have been dozens, hundreds, thousands of people much more interesting than me around. Also, there were people more agile, beautiful, intelligent, important, even taller… Who was I, but an undocumented father trying to bring home the bacon for his family, working minimum-wage jobs? Who was I, but one amongst millions?
That damned night, a bit more than twenty years ago, if I had listened to the wife I would have been drinking my beers while watching TV in my own living room. But, because it was fight night on channel 52, I thought that a get-together with my buddy at his house was mandatory. At the end of the party, a little while after midnight, my stumbling steps took me through the back alleys, to avoid having any policeman pick me up for public intoxication.
Jail time would have been a better option… However, that night my traitorous, drunken feet made me fall in the clutches of Benjamin, quite literally. I stepped on some pebble, invisible in the night, and turned an ankle. I was already losing my balance when I felt marble cylinders shaped like arms stopping my fall. In the beginning, the only thing that surprised me was his sudden apparition. His looks were of a short, slight man, with vaguely Mediterranean and flat features, which was the first thing my eyes noticed. But, right after, I felt such revulsion rise up in me as I had never felt before, as if some filth covered in rot would have splashed my face unexpectedly.
He never said a word. I tried to get out from the circle of his arms, but it was like trying to nudge mountains. And, savagely, like a beast, in a violent movement, his mouth fixed on my neck. The pain! The point of contact with his mouth was a red-hot iron on my skin, and each gulp of blood being sucked out was a barbed wire twisted around my testicles, which yanked the soul out of me a little at a time. At the same time, it was also the thin line between agony and total calm… In a matter of seconds, I felt the part of me that could be considered my "self" unraveling, as if it were some dream in a fog.
Just then, he let go of my neck and looked into my eyes while he chewed his own tongue, from side to side. With a smile twinkling in his eyes, he covered my mouth with his in the most obscene kiss that anyone could imagine. The stink of sewage and graveyard in his breath was the least of things, because the mixture of his horrible blood and the blood he had just stolen from me flooded my mouth so forcefully that I felt the evil mix overflowing even out of my nose, causing me to gag, and making me swallow out of reflex.
Shorty dropped me to the floor. In a matter of seconds the ordeal was over, I thought. My consciousness dissipated little by little, like grains of sand swept away by the wind. Suddenly, though, the universe itself transformed into agony. The pain! If before it had seemed as if a barbed wire was squeezing my gonads, this time it was pain multiplied a thousandfold, a million fold, multiplied to infinity; and, each sensation, each thought, was highlighted by fire. In the middle of this titanic pain, I could hear reverberations in my mind of people I never met, of places I never visited, of words I never spoke, and a name: Benjamin.
When I thought I couldn't take it any more, once again the tiny man sank his teeth on my neck, in the same place, or maybe on a different place, it didn't matter, because pain was all there was, and the flame was the only dimension in my universe. The second time around I didn't feel as if my consciousness dissipated, but instead I felt that all my memories began to find new places in my mind alongside those reverberations in Benjamin's blood. But the pain was even sharper, more apparent, if such a thing were possible.
And then again the horrible kiss that lacking any lechery was the worst of rapes, with its unwelcome images and lessons, which would fill every corner of my soul, little by little…
How long all of this lasted, once and again, how many kisses and how many times I found myself emptied out of blood, I can't recall. But I heard a word in the middle of my being: "Enough." And the last thing I saw of Benjamin was the same smile in his eyes, before he disappeared forever. I have never seen him again.
What the hell did he want with me?
What did Benjamin see in me? Sometimes I wonder if that was even his real name… But I know full well that this kind of musings come over me whenever I have doubts of my worth, whenever I begin feeling self-conscious and scorn myself because of my own actions.
Yah, whatever, back to Benjamin: What the hell did he want with me? I'm sure that at the very moment when he decided to share his immortality with me there must have been dozens, hundreds, thousands of people much more interesting than me around. Also, there were people more agile, beautiful, intelligent, important, even taller… Who was I, but an undocumented father trying to bring home the bacon for his family, working minimum-wage jobs? Who was I, but one amongst millions?
That damned night, a bit more than twenty years ago, if I had listened to the wife I would have been drinking my beers while watching TV in my own living room. But, because it was fight night on channel 52, I thought that a get-together with my buddy at his house was mandatory. At the end of the party, a little while after midnight, my stumbling steps took me through the back alleys, to avoid having any policeman pick me up for public intoxication.
Jail time would have been a better option… However, that night my traitorous, drunken feet made me fall in the clutches of Benjamin, quite literally. I stepped on some pebble, invisible in the night, and turned an ankle. I was already losing my balance when I felt marble cylinders shaped like arms stopping my fall. In the beginning, the only thing that surprised me was his sudden apparition. His looks were of a short, slight man, with vaguely Mediterranean and flat features, which was the first thing my eyes noticed. But, right after, I felt such revulsion rise up in me as I had never felt before, as if some filth covered in rot would have splashed my face unexpectedly.
He never said a word. I tried to get out from the circle of his arms, but it was like trying to nudge mountains. And, savagely, like a beast, in a violent movement, his mouth fixed on my neck. The pain! The point of contact with his mouth was a red-hot iron on my skin, and each gulp of blood being sucked out was a barbed wire twisted around my testicles, which yanked the soul out of me a little at a time. At the same time, it was also the thin line between agony and total calm… In a matter of seconds, I felt the part of me that could be considered my "self" unraveling, as if it were some dream in a fog.
Just then, he let go of my neck and looked into my eyes while he chewed his own tongue, from side to side. With a smile twinkling in his eyes, he covered my mouth with his in the most obscene kiss that anyone could imagine. The stink of sewage and graveyard in his breath was the least of things, because the mixture of his horrible blood and the blood he had just stolen from me flooded my mouth so forcefully that I felt the evil mix overflowing even out of my nose, causing me to gag, and making me swallow out of reflex.
Shorty dropped me to the floor. In a matter of seconds the ordeal was over, I thought. My consciousness dissipated little by little, like grains of sand swept away by the wind. Suddenly, though, the universe itself transformed into agony. The pain! If before it had seemed as if a barbed wire was squeezing my gonads, this time it was pain multiplied a thousandfold, a million fold, multiplied to infinity; and, each sensation, each thought, was highlighted by fire. In the middle of this titanic pain, I could hear reverberations in my mind of people I never met, of places I never visited, of words I never spoke, and a name: Benjamin.
When I thought I couldn't take it any more, once again the tiny man sank his teeth on my neck, in the same place, or maybe on a different place, it didn't matter, because pain was all there was, and the flame was the only dimension in my universe. The second time around I didn't feel as if my consciousness dissipated, but instead I felt that all my memories began to find new places in my mind alongside those reverberations in Benjamin's blood. But the pain was even sharper, more apparent, if such a thing were possible.
And then again the horrible kiss that lacking any lechery was the worst of rapes, with its unwelcome images and lessons, which would fill every corner of my soul, little by little…
How long all of this lasted, once and again, how many kisses and how many times I found myself emptied out of blood, I can't recall. But I heard a word in the middle of my being: "Enough." And the last thing I saw of Benjamin was the same smile in his eyes, before he disappeared forever. I have never seen him again.
What the hell did he want with me?
To Be Continued…
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