(i)

It's been around three weeks since Klara's brother in law died. Maybe more. A lot's happened since, so it's getting hard to tell. She's been trying to put her thoughts in order, but all she can think of is Mom. It was a lot like this when she passed away – no pomp and no nonsense, just Dad's morbid relief as he told them that he wouldn't be driving them to her place on the fifteenth. Klara couldn't stop staring at the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his lips as he told them – crooked, heavy, like it was about to tip over any moment and then he would break down.
It never did. No one properly grieved for Mom. Wulfie was still young, and strange as it sounds, Klara felt that Mom would've hated them if they cried and made a scene. How clumsy their grief was, how crude! If they couldn't mourn her elegantly, she would rather be forgotten. Yes, that's what she felt. Either way, there was a funeral and everyone pretended to be sad; she was so young, she was such a raw talent. Everyone talked about Mom like that – like she was gone – even before she was, so nothing really changed much in the end. Wouldn't have changed much if Klara and Wulfie had cried as they lowered the casket.
That was when someone told Wulfie, right before they left the church, what it means to die. He really is simple, Klara thought at the time. It's not like he didn't know? People die on TV at home all the time. Still, something about the run-down chapel, its peeling orange facade and the bumpy graveyard in its shadow, seemed to finally drill the permanence of death into Wulfie’s head. Klara didn't know to do more than numbly watch over Dad's attempts to separate him from the church's magazine rack that he'd clung to in the wake of his tantrum… It was really unsightly. And that's when she first saw it, something dark and lonesome inside her little brother’s heart, the air around him so frigid that everything in vicinity, and hell too, might freeze over under his gaze alone.
All in all, she’d been a bad sister. She couldn't pretend otherwise. She barely forced herself to call when she heard the news last month… so when he picked up they both just sort of breathed into the speaker. After five or so distorted puffs she heard Wulfie say, „Klara?“ She can't imagine what he must've thought. They just sat in silence for a while, listening for movement on the other side.
By the time Klara knew she’d overlooked something about him, Wulfie was already different from her, more than her, even – or maybe she was truly blind, and that heart had always slept within him, choked out and kept hidden by the harshness of their upbringing. Maybe Wulfie had always been like Dad – no, not like their foolish father who could only foolishly cling to what he loved without the desire to know it and die for it – but like Mom. But Klara had never been anything like Mom, she didn’t even like to think about those things. She was a practical girl.
A practical girl, that’s about right. A practical woman too - thinking about her mother’s funeral and her brother’s dead husband with such a straight face… Dad liked to call her a machiavellist and some other big words, but she always liked to think she was merely sensible. She can say what has to be said with the kind of face people wanted to see – please consider hiring me, I like effort and work and mediocre men. I like it joyless and hard. Wulfie wasn’t as verbose as Dad but he had more resolve when it mattered – A stone-cold bitch, he called her once, and she supposed it was fair but…
She's getting put off by this train of thought. She ought to think about something else.
Like the last time they came to visit Mom and they were by the beach house where she lived in late summer. She no longer remembers what Mom had worn or what her face had looked like – what she remembers is the stretch of the sea, the glistening stripe where blue met yellow and it was too bright to look at, that was where she stared. And she watched the sea from the cliff and thought about how sunsets in the city weren’t really yellow, more like the color of mustard as seen through a haze. The last bit of color that the sun labored to squeeze out spilled across all surfaces like a fog and all the beachgoers turned towards the sun silent. Like a funeral.
Mom was in one of her mellow moods, just before everything really went to shit, and her foot got tangled in the remains of an old plastic bag when she turned to put one of her earbuds into Klara’s left ear, “Here. Tell me what you think.”
She felt it was a bit sad, so she told her that. And Mom got upset, told her something really fucked; told her, “I’m gonna keep living like this as long as it’s funny. And then I’ll just stop!” She laughed, a startling sound like marbles falling down. “I don’t care what the side characters think! Who are you? And you?”
“I liked your older songs better,” Klara remembers saying. And suddenly as though sobering up, Mom shook the plastic bag off of her foot and looked at her with a fondness she hadn’t expected to see that month, “But if it’s for her, maybe I can write it. A happy song, heh!”
And the way she said it made Klara physically bite down on her tongue until it felt like cotton in her mouth. She wanted to tell her that they won’t let Wulfie go to school cause he’s seven and doesn’t yet talk like the other kids do, and that she wanted to paint; to paint this sky in gouache on the rough face of a sheet of cardboard and that that’s what she’ll do in life… but she didn’t. What good would it bring me, she thought.
She said, “I’m looking forward to hearing it,” or some such empty garbage, and she never did paint the beach quite right.
She doesn’t know why she’s thinking about Mom in front of Wulfie’s front door – She knows, she knows, she just won’t admit it – but she is, so deeply that she startles when she hears a distant scrape and realizes no one’s opened the door yet, it’s just the taxi pulling away from the driveway. She stares at the aged door of that familiar beach house and knows it’ll be heavy, that crossing the threshold would be the hardest thing she’d do in her whole life. She watches the door in patient horror, and she doesn’t imagine Wulfie would look like the last time she saw him, that big young man in a severe shirt. She thinks a seven-year-old boy would swing the door open and sob into her skirts like they're a church magazine rack…
And then she reaches for it, feeling like an executioner at the gallows, and knocks.

(ii)

Her name is Laura.
Madam S. is a name reserved for the whispers of her enemies. Mom is the one who cracks jokes and plays the piano for their daughter on the monthly visits. The death god appears and disappears as the two of them come together, the only hands that can stop the raging god that rests inside his flesh.
Alone with Marion in this dim autumn afternoon, she is Laura. Lau, the way she sits on the barstool, drinking something she shouldn't be drinking with that stupid smile that suggests a joke you're missing, ra, the dirty band-aid on the bruise underneath her right eye. Marion knows what Laura is. He has no interest in his glass of wine, and yet he sips from it with near religious focus. His eyes though, betraying him, slide ever so slightly to the left and Laura’s grin is upon him.
„Dearest Mary, do I have something on my face?“
The angry old god inside Marion stirs.
„Well, if I do, wipe it for me, will you?“
On the first day they met, Marion knocked Laura down, hard. Her dark eyes widened and before she knew it her back hit the asphalt, mouth agape. Marion’s victorious little smile slowly fell as he realized who he’d hit.
It's not as though it had been undeserved. Laura was an arrogant bitch who spent all her time doing whatever she liked just to taunt him. She looked up at Marion, shocked, and then made a face of resolve and grabbed his ankle. And there was nothing. She didn’t hit him. She didn’t pull him down. There was a complete absence of everything – an absence of power, an absence of ideals – and Marion toppled down to the ground, falling gracelessly on top of her with a yelp.
And now, it's not that Marion didn't know how to fight back. It's just that he wasn't prepared for fighting someone so similar to himself. They regarded each other for a second, and then in a heartbeat Laura had him pinned to the ground. She glared directly at him, and Marion expected to see satisfaction in her eyes, but Laura's face was one of wonder, maybe even impressed in some odd masochistic way. With grim satisfaction Marion realized he managed to leave a significant bruise on her jaw.
Slowly, almost hesitantly, Laura offered him a hand.
It's a dim afternoon and they're sitting in a dirty bar somewhere in the neighborhood, and that was almost five years ago.
Laura is still grinning. „Come on. You're clearly ogling at something.“
„There's nothing,“ Angry Marion, Marion who walks six feet above the ground. Laura crawling in the city shadows. Laura’s spidery fingers dancing across the piano keys.
„My beautiful eyes?“
Marion who ignores the taunting.
„My blinding smile? You can wipe it off if you’d like.“
Marion rips the band-aid off of her face with a sickening squelch…?
“Keep going,” Laura tells him.
So Marion keeps going – that’s just how it is. The edges of his self burn away as he allows the deity beneath his skin to bloom and flow through his veins. Teeth bared, he shows her his true face: his power to devour, to feed on war and travesty. Old gods desire blood and flesh, and Marion provides. He is hungry, and he wants all their lives to fill the god-sized hole inside him. How corrupt of him, how awful.
Until –
„I’m already done, Mary.“
Slender fingers wrapped around Marion’s wrist so gently that no one would think Laura was capable of it. Against his will, Marion is anchored, pulled along with the tide. Can a suicide be a crime of passion? Yes, yes, yes, Mary, yes.
And then Mary-god is just Marion again, stripped of the sentimentality of the immortal, and all his limbs tremble as he collapses into Laura’s arms, limply falling back onto the cheap double mattress.
„I thought I told you to –,“ He pauses, feeling the godhood retreat into the depths of his belly.
Laura laughs a little, a phantasm in white sheets. „I love watching you,“ she says conversationally. As though Marion had been playing a violin and not ravaging god's wrath upon her body. Mary-god and Mary and god blur in Laura’s mind and they're one, how cruel of her.
She laughs and starts getting dressed, an undershirt and a shirt and a tweed dress. It's a sight straight out of a horror movie, her bare body, ordinary and clean with nothing to suggest how terrifying it feels to press up against her skin.
"Where are you going?" Marion attempts – and fails – to sound uninterested.
"Oh?" Laura turns around at the doorstep, the barest hint of a smile on her lips. "I thought you were angry with me."
"I’m always angry with you," says Marion, and then adds, "If you get yourself killed, I'm going to end you."
"What an opportunity! I must see to it, then," Laura pauses to grab one of Marion's hats from the coat rack and places it neatly atop her head. "My, my, as though I’d let myself be killed by just anyone. No one is Mary."
No one is Mary. Marion wonders, in the hypothetical space inside Laura's mouth, how many versions of that statement exist, to how many people it has been rephrased: no one is Eva. No one is Robin the psychiatrist. No one is whatever-woman-or-man-she-wants-something-from-today.
"Now, now, I can see you’re thinking something mean. Behave and I’ll wake you up nicely." Laura tips the hat’s brim. "Good night, Mary."
After her footsteps disappear down the hallway, Marion stumbles up and bleeds in the shower.
Marion has a Laura-shaped bruise on his jaw. Laura never fights with her fists, except for when she's fighting Marion. It could be a real to-the-death fight, and no one would know the difference. Perhaps, in a way, it always is. They never go easy on each other.
The key to defeating Laura is being Marion, and that only works on some days. Any other day, you can’t win. He charges forward despite the ache of this morning's injuries and lunges into the air, moves to kick forward and purposefully leaves an opening where his hurt ribs are, just a trick of light.
Laura doesn't fail to notice, and she reaches forward with those hands of hers, right into Marion’s trap. Marion twists and lands a kick into the middle of her chest, props himself up, up and away weightless into the air. He's almost out of reach but then Laura grabs him by the calf and pulls him disgracefully down. Skin-to-skin contact breaks Marion’s spell and he’s down on the floor. That makes forty-nine wins for each of them.
Laura's upside-down face flashes a grin as Marion attempts to catch his breath, "if you were in better shape, that would've worked, I think. I wonder if it's a stroke of luck or you're getting really good at this, hmm?"
"I've practiced."
He is almost surprised when Laura pulls him to his feet. "Practiced? Just for me?"
Marion spits – red from his split lip – near Laura’s feet. "I'm winning next time. Don't test me."
“My, my,” Laura simply smiles, the warmth in her voice so strange. "I'll be a dead woman in the morning if I do.“

(iii)

“Eve, can I have a match?”
Eva studies her friend on the other side of the booth: Laura’s elbows are on the table, her face squished between her palms. It’s the way a child might sit, and yet everyone knows what she is, what she does. Deathwish Laura, Laura who believes that to live is to devour others.
Eva gives up and slides a matchbox across the table into her ready hands. Laura beams and pockets it.
"Hey," Eva protests. "You said a match.“
"I've tried sharing and I've tried caring," Laura smiles sweetly. "Neither has worked out for me."
"You’re awful," says Eva, but she smiles. She’s always been too soft when it comes to Laura. She’s not sure what Laura does to her: maybe she put a hole in her, maybe she grew roots in her. Suppose it doesn't matter.
"Besides, Eve," Laura says quietly, like sharing a secret. "What if you die tomorrow?"
"Why would I die tomorrow?" Eva laughs into her glass, but Laura looks grave all of a sudden, an uneasy look that doesn't suit her.
"This is a cruel world we live in," Laura twirls a lock of hair around her finger. "Any of us could die at any time. Don't you know that kings kept skulls in their palaces to remind them of it? Memento mori, I say, memento mori!"
Eva heaves a sigh. "I don't understand you, Laura. You're an amazing person, but you're always talking about death. It's weird."
Laura takes it as a compliment, maybe. "Does that mean I can keep the matches?" she feigns an innocent gaze, spinning the little red-and-yellow cardboard box in her nimble fingers.
"Sure," Eva gives up. "Go ahead."
"Perfect!" Laura claps her hands. "Now when Eve dies, every time I go for a smoke it'll be like smoking with her again."
"Laura," Eva rolls her eyes heavenwards. "There you go, being morbid again. I don't want to think about death."
"I hope you understand," Laura goes on, "that you saying my name has a unique side effect of pulling me out of a state of mind in which I’m floating in the middle of a field of dandelions and forcing me back into the harsh reality where I'm sitting with a matchbox in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other and confronting my own twisted existence. Which reminds me, I promised Robin a dinner tonight."
"Robin is out of town," used to Laura’s ramblings, Eva ignores her.
Laura shrugs, "Do you really never think about your own mortality?"
"I don't see the point," Eva downs her drink. "We all run out of luck sooner or later."
"What’s your favorite book, Eve?”
Eva eyes her. It’s not like Laura is particularly interested in books, but she likes to ask things like this, just to make you aware of how she knows what’s close to your heart at all times.
“You wouldn’t know of it,” says Eva.
"Ah, the everlasting wish of casket-sleepers to create something immortal!" Laura exclaims woefully, pretending to swoon. "They say that a part of the author always survives in the book. Hey, Eve, do you think I could read that first page you’ve been writing for a month? I'm very interested in your legacy."
"Maybe some other time," Eva humors her. She studies Laura as she tinkers with the matchbox. Open-closed. Open-closed.
"I should be a writer, too," Laura muses. "It's such a creative way to deliver a piece of your mind into this world. Nay, I think I'll stick to music and violence. When you're in Rome..." she gives a graceful little sigh.
"You're an interesting person, Laura. I wonder what you'd write."
"A eulogy," Laura giggles into her palm. "Ooh, or a suicide note."
"Laura."
"Eve.”
"You want everyone to believe you're a heartless murderer," Eva studies Laura’s unreadable smile, the one that looks like a barricade or a brick wall. "But you're not."
This seems to surprise her, and she laughs quickly, lifting his eyebrows. "Ah, you're right. I'd say I'm actually an incredibly hearty murderer.”
Laura stands up abruptly and puts on an out-of-place looking fedora hat. "I'm afraid I have to be on my way. Alas, the night is young, and I've promised myself."
"Ah." Eva nods. "Take care. See you on Tuesday."

(iv)

(iv) Marion kicks the door shut, and immediately frowns when he turns. Laura is already there, sitting at the foot of his bed and staring out into empty space. There’s a whole human skull in her hand, and Marion would rather not ask where it came from.
“Hey,” Says Marion when a minute’s gone by and neither of them has looked at the other, “Who said you could let yourself in?”
A silence, heavy and ominous.
Marion squares his shoulders when no answer comes, none of their usual banter, but he won’t ask Laura what’s wrong. He won’t comfort her. In all these years, they’ve never once exchanged such words.
“I’ll be leaving now,” Laura proclaims after a while and spins the damn skull in her fingers.
“Suit yourself,” says Marion. “I’ll open a bottle of wine and have a divine night without you.”
“Someone’s dull,” Laura sounds uncharacteristically gloomy. “I mean, I’m sick of this life. Sick of you.”
“I’m not in the mood for your mind games,” Marion scowls. “Stay or don’t. I couldn’t care less.”
“Eve is dead,” says Laura, and rolls the skull across the floor.
Marion stands very still for a moment as he watches it hit the wall, make the pitiful last few inches and then still, “So she is.”
“Tired of life, Mary?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t keep track of the whole pack of humans you keep on a leash for fun,” Marion is suddenly, and inexplicably, mad. “I’ll humor you. So you’ll do what now? Leave this city? Leave our children behind?"
Laura rubs her hands like they’re itching underneath the sleeves, “I’m going to write a happy song.”
Marion’s fingers pause around the third button of his vest. Laura could’ve slit her wrists and painted the whole room red, and it would’ve surprised him less than this. “Good luck with that,” Marion throws his vest and shirt across the room with enough force to resound in the momentary silence.
“I’m serious.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Marion watches her through narrowed eyes, this thing splayed across the ornate bed – this bed where they do what humans do: where Laura had once, with playful eyes, strangled a man with one of Marion’s ties and promptly cut him apart in the bathtub. He scoffs. “Laura, you’ve never done a happy thing in your whole piece-of-shit existence.”
“Eve knew so,” Laura shrugs, and then looks thoughtful. “And she told me to do it anyway. It scared me when I realized she knew what I was. Looked right into my eyes and saw me. It frightened me to the core. What a wonderful feeling, fear. No one’s ever scared me like that before.”
“Bullshit,” Marion spits. “What could she understand?”
Laura laughs, a joyless sound. “You trying to say you understand?”
“Better than humans do, yeah.” Of course he’d know.
“You could never understand.” Says Laura, and her voice is cooler than it’s ever been before. “Your head’s so full of things. You’re too much for humanity and I’m not enough. How could you understand?”
Marion stares at Laura for a while as she crawls across the floor to pick her skull up. Something about the sight finally sickens him to the point where he turns away and towards the vanity, “Then just go. The fuck did you even come to say goodbye for?”
“Would you prefer an honest answer or a poetic one?”
Marion clenches his jaw so hard it goes white in his reflection in the newly cracked mirror. Inside him, the god stirs with a ferocity of a whole night of slaughter. He barks an ironic laugh, “Of all the damn misery in the world, I had to be born as a man who can’t live without you.”
“Now that’s pretty poetic.” Laura tilts her head, “I’m sure you’ll find a nice hill to die on, Mary. Cause that’s all you wanted when you became my lover, wasn’t it? Something worth dying for, anything. Doesn’t matter what thing.”
“Don’t project.”
“I’m not. You’re just the most like me,” In a rare occasion, Laura turns and looks him in the eye. “Eve understood, but you’re the most like me. That’s why I came.”
“Whatever. We stick together because we’re not so easily breakable. Can’t be said for old Eve.”
“I’ll kill you,” Laura’s voice is entirely even. “You think I won’t? I wouldn’t even lift a finger. I’d just have to leave you alone and you’d rot.”
“I know you would,” Marion spits back. “But would it be easy? Nothing showing on that ugly mug of yours?”
Laura is silent. Silent, silent, not even a shuffle. “You wound me. Of course I’d cry before I sent you off.”
“Get out,” Marion says without turning. “Get the fuck out of here and don’t you dare come back.”
Marion waits for the creak of mattress springs as Laura stands up, for his hat to be stolen, for the audible smirk in the good night – but nothing comes. When at last he turns he’s alone. He stands perfectly still as the sun sinks into the muddy water outside the window and the room falls dark around him, and doesn’t lap up the contents of the dusty bottle of wine after smashing it against the wall. He feels the god stir inside him, begging to be released, to hunt, to grieve, to take what it wants to take. It hurts. Everything hurts. It hurts – but why, Marion doesn’t know. Why? He thinks. Why is he mad?
What is it that he wants to take back? He would never be able to figure it out.

(v)

Wulfie gets into a fight with the biggest bastard in his class on the first night of the graduation trip, and smacks the teacher who tries to separate them on top of it. All in all, his future isn't looking bright. He waits to be sent home, furiously tapping his foot, when the other guy turns to him with a conspiratorial glint in his eye.
„I have four hundred Euros in my suitcase. Run away with me, won't you?“
His name is Faust, and they're not friends. They're not even acquaintances. He's almost as tall as Wulfie, his hair long and curled like a girl's. Everyone calls him a faggot, so that's what Wulfie called him too after Faust slammed a fist into his stomach.
„Or would you rather go back home and have your bitch of a sister yell at you for embarrassing the family? What?“ adds Faust when he notices Wulfie's frown, „I listen and know things!“
Wulfie thinks about Klara and her gloomy older boyfriend who drives her to college in a silver car, and feels his stomach make a cartwheel. He and the boy who started beating him first ditch the class and walk around Barcelona until midnight, and then Faust gets them a room in a cheap hotel an hour away from the city center.
Wulfie frowns, already tired of the adventure. He finds that sharing a space with Faust requires… small talk. Faust is always, Wulfie thinks about it for a moment. Trying to fill in the empty space. Sharing an interesting factoid about the local flora. Chatting about the weather. Wondering what people would think about them both disappearing after evidently beating the shit out of each other – they go back and forth through that one several times like, I dunno, maybe they think I killed you and went back to the juvie. Haha, Beowulf, good one. At least Wulfie can count on Klara to leave him alone when he made it obvious he wants to be alone. Faust is exhausting and incomprehensible.
He starts talking the very moment the door shuts behind them: „The rooms aren't as run down as the lobby, are they? Oh, we've got a little balcony too. Have you seen my laundry bag? The red plastic one – yes, that one. Do you mind if I shower first?“
It goes on even as Faust returns from the bathroom, looking off in a normal pajama shirt, not tightened into the disgustingly neat navy shirt he'd been wearing. He glances to where Wulfie is lying in the middle of the double bed and arches an eyebrow, „Are you feeling okay?“
And that's when Wulfie finally snaps, turns his head and bares his teeth, „The hell are you going on about?“
Faust blinks once, feigning ignorance, „You just seem a bit off tonight.“
Wulfie always seems off, that's his thing! He huffs as he stands up and goes to the balcony to smoke, fumbles with the lighter in the dark. A shuffle of socked feet comes up to him from behind – Faust joins him. The balcony is shit just like the rest of the place, just a stripe of concrete framed in rusted iron. Faust leans against the wall; Wulfie leans against the railing. It creaks and bends an inch.
Wulfie exhales the first puff of smoke and says, „So?“
Faust has a piece of gum in his mouth. Wulfie can see him move it around the inside of his mouth. „Nothing,“ Faust shrugs. „We're just hanging out.“
„People don't just do that.“ Wulfie frowns, flicks the gathering ashes into the night. „Hang out with me.“
Faust raises both his eyebrows – they're blond like his hair, look too bright and saturated on his face – and says, „Are you blind? You're the bully here. You've got half the school at your feet.“ There's a weird accusatory undertone to his words, not quite jealousy, but not far from it either. Wulfie supposes Faust isn't very popular. He doesn't really know. Anyway, it annoys Wulfie, the presumption that he's simply pretending not to enjoy the negative attention he gets. He frowns, „They're just curious cause I'm tall. Or cause I don't talk. Or doin' a challenge.“
One time a random girl from year eleven had just snuck up on Wulfie in the hallway and kissed him, and Wulfie flinched and shoved her six feet away on instinct. The girl looked at him all wide-eyed for a moment like, what the hell is wrong with you? before rejoining a group of friends who welcomed her full of giggles, without as much as looking at Wulfie who stood there frozen, staring down at his fist. Can't believe you actually did it, Ema!
Wulfie realizes Faust is giving him a pointed, somewhat expectant look, so he shrugs. „People don't give a damn to get to know me, and that's fine by me. It's whatever.“
Faust joins him in testing the limits of the aged railing – it creaks once more under their added weight, but doesn't cave in. He says, „What are you like, then?“
Wulfie scoffs, „I'd say fuck around and find out, but you already did.“
„So, you're witty
„Very funny,“ Wulfie runs his hand through the coarse hair in the back of his head. It needs a trim. „Just figured, even if I spent time with someone from school, it wouldn't be someone like you.“
„Oh?“ Faust arches an eyebrow. „I'll bite. What am I like?“
„I dunno,“ Wulfie narrows his eyes at him for a moment, trying to gather all he knows about Faust into something concise that separates him from the monotone procession of faces at their school. „You've got good grades. You suck up to adults but you actually think they're more worthless than shit. You probably like books. Or theater. Normal stuff like that.“
„Normal?“ Faust sounds surprised. Pleasantly so or not, Wulfie can't tell. Finally, he seems to give in, „Alright, I'm normal.“
An awkward silence settles once more over the tiny balcony. Wulfie's eyes zero in on the faint colored ring his own lipstick has left on the cig, on Faust's long hair. He remembers the way Faust's eyes would narrow when people stared at him, almost a challenge to point out this or that. Right. Just two normal guys, having a normal smoke.
„You know why I asked you to come with me?“ Faust says out of the blue. Wulfie goes to say, I don't really give a damn, but he is a bit curious, and it's not like he has better things to do. „Why?“ He expects Faust to spill the same old bullshit everyone who sucked up to him said about him being really strong and cool.
„Cause you scared me,“ says Faust. „and that was new. The feeling of looking up at someone who could snap me like a twig. It wasn't like in games, or books. It was more real and honest than anything I'd ever felt.“
Wulfie turns and gives him a long stare, then. Faust goes on rambling, „So I decided to run away and go with you. And it was mostly cause… This might sound weird, but I felt like I could relate to you. It might sound stupid now, but that's what I thought… What are you looking at me like that for? Still think I'm just some normal guy?“
Wulfie frowns a bit, „Nah. I think you might be the only guy I know who's more fucked in the head than me.“
„To be fair,“ Faust smiles, pushes the gum to the other side of his mouth with his tongue, „You don't know that many guys.“
Wulfie makes a sound like, hm.
„Now you,“ Faust elbows him in the shoulder. „I told you something I've never told anyone. Now you do it, so we'll be even.“
Wulfie thinks it over, shakes his head, „'S not how it's supposed to go. Won't be real cause you forced it out of me.“
„So you're the kind of man who values honesty like that, Beowulf?“ Faust's voice is airy, like it's not that important at all. „I don't care what it is as long as no one else knows. It doesn't have to be personal or meaningful.“
Wulfie gnashes his teeth. If he hates talking because he’s bad at saying what he means, he hates talking about himself on principle. What’s there left to say? The truth of Wulfie is evident as though plastered across his forehead in big red letters that read, back off for your own good. They can see he wins his fights. They can see he’s used to doing things he doesn’t like. There’s no need to explain it. There has never been a compelling enough reason to.
He imagines an entirely hypothetical conversation – the bad seed, that problem kid you know to avoid when you cross his path, all bloody knuckles and torn clothes and stomped-out cigarettes. People talking about his lipstick until they didn’t dare to, putting on Klara’s lipstick like he’s trying for a confession without having to say anything. And he didn’t say anything. He just kept beating the shit out of them.
But Faust never really asked him about any of that, did he? He just asked for something, anything. And Wulfie has already slipped into what was almost a conversation way too easily, maybe because Faust doesn’t really register as other people in his head – other people were Klara and Dad and random passersby in the hallway unlucky enough to have found themselves in his proximity. Faust attacked him first and laughed as Wulfie socked him in the face. Just two normal guys having a normal smoke.
“I like bugs,” says Wulfie flatly. “I know a lot about them. When I lose my cool and need to calm down I say their names in my head.”
„Huh,“ Faust huffs a polite laugh into his hand. „Interesting. Now I can't not imagine this stuff in your head as the soundtrack of you throwing punches.“
„No,“ Says Wulfie much too quickly, immediately feels like an idiot for it and resolves himself to explain it, if only just part way. „Too far gone by then. I don't mix bugs with fighting.“
„You really like them that much?“
The amusement in Faust's voice can pass for curiosity, so Wulfie admits, „I wanna study biology.“ He knows how stupid it sounds, Wulfie who's had his nose broken more times than he's attended a science class. But he can't help it. It's the one thing untouched by violence and judgemental stares and all else, and it's his alone.
„Thank you for sharing,“ says Faust, with too much sincerity for someone who forced him into it. „Hey, do you want to kiss?“
Wulfie chokes on an exhale of smoke, and stupidly hacks into the cool air. His hand reflexively tightens into a fist shoved into Faust's face as he stumbles back, „You making fun of me now, fucker?“
„Sure,“ Says Faust, looking all too bored. „Relax. I know you don't like me, and I don't like you either. Just thinking about how depressing it'd be to die without doing it. When I was a kid I used to think, I won't die before I have a best friend, but now I think this should generally be enough.“
Wulfie peers down at Faust and wonders what the hell is wrong with him. The guy just confessed that he expected – or intended – for this to be his final wish, that he's been like this for a long time, maybe. But he's still moping about this kind of cheesy teenage dramatics?
„If you don't feel like it, I'll find someone else.“ Faust shrugs.
It's dark outside, and all the bars within walking distance are no good. The teachers would probably get mad if something bad happened to Faust and Wulfie came back home without him. But it's not like that would happen. Right. Faust could protect himself. He was mean and vicious and violent when they fought, he beat Wulfie worse than anyone before him and his ribs were still bruised. Faust could take whatever Wulfie dished out. If Wulfie shoved him six feet into the room, he'd stand right up and shove him back.
„It's whatever,“ says Wulfie. He turns to awkwardly stand with his elbows against the fence. Faust spits out the gum, steps on the railing and props himself up to reach Wulfie's mouth. It lasts just a second, dry and uneventful. And then a second time, experimental, Faust's tongue finding his. Wulfie keeps his hands on the railing – there's nothing sensual in it, even more so impersonal than kissing a total stranger had been, but it seals a promise anyway, the pretense that no conversation that could be made light of has happened here at all.
Faust steps back down, so there's no need to shove him away. If he did shove him away, Faust would've pushed him over and off the second floor, and there's a strange comfort in it. He seems to think for a moment, and shrugs a little, „That was okay. I forgot you smoked. I'm going to brush my teeth now.“ Then he turns on his heel and goes back into the room, leaving Wulfie feeling like it's all been a part of some bizarre schedule Faust had prearranged just to confess that he's evil and never going to make it home from Barcelona.
It's not like Wulfie cares. He looks down to find his cigarette has burned down to the filter. Sighing at the waste, he flicks it over the railing and wonders if the only person your age you can hang with after beating the shit out of them is your best friend by design.

(vi)

Throughout her childhood, Klara dreamt of romance in the most depraved sense. A love like Mom and Dad's, a man ensnared so thoroughly that the more they beat each other black and blue, the more he'd come back to her. It had to have been utterly addicting, the taste of a forbidden kiss that no one else knew – still, the first time a boy shoved his tongue down her throat was more tasteless than styrofoam, a kiss barely swallowed and forced down her gullet.
There's a picture of Wulfie and his dead husband kissing framed on a cupboard in the hallway. It sends a wave of revulsion through Klara's gut on instinct, and she forces herself to look away from it and into Wulfie's face, the unshaven side of his jaw. He looks her up and down, „The books are in the living room.“
When they talked on the phone, Wulfie ended the conversation by off-handedly muttering about some of Faust's photography books he doesn't want anymore. It took Klara two weeks to realize it was an invitation.
The living room is on the first floor. Klara doesn’t know why she expected it to be bleak and spartan, but it’s anything but. Some of the furniture is old, as old as Mom’s brief stay here that led up to her death, and some of it is plastic and modern and colorful. A large TV covered in a thick layer of dust, and heaps of magazines and clothing thrown about. On the kitchen counter there’s a terrarium with no bugs.
Wulfie rubs his eyes as he all but collapses into the single armchair. Klara stands at the door frozen and alert until he actually raises his eyebrows and says, “You can sit, if you’d like. For a bit.”
There’s no second seat in the living room, so Klara brings a chair from the kitchen and sits across the small table. “Give me a cig.”
Wulfie passes her a brand new unopened pack of cigarettes and a lighter that says Barcelona in big red letters. Klara finds it a distasteful trinket. No one moves first to light their cig. No one moves first to reach the ashtray. They sit near each other and Klara thinks about their faces - wide, rough in structure but delicately pretty around the eyes and mouth.
“I wish you could’ve met him,” says Wulfie in the end, eyes fixed on the bright red coffee table that wasn’t there when Klara was young. “He brought life into this place.”
Nah, thinks Klara. All he brought here was more death. But she doesn’t say it. The thought feels like somebody grabbed the rusty knife in her side and twisted it just a little.
“But I didn’t know what to do, face to face with the depth of his unhappiness.” he goes on. “It scared me. Made me lonely.”
Lonely. A brother and sister, lonely for something they can’t find in each other.
“When you were a child, I always wished you’d die,” Klara bites the inside of her cheek. “But when I found out you two made a life for yourself, I was relieved.”
Wulfie stares deeply into the side of her nose, and Klara wonders if he knows how much it hurts her, his gaze cold and unyielding like Mom’s as Klara makes her frail unspoken confession: the one who really wanted to die was I all along.
“Despite everything,” she says in the end, and it’s perhaps the first time ever that her voice has wavered in such a way. “I really… wanted you to exist. I knew Mom and Dad would only hurt you. I knew we’d be no family… It’s so selfish, but I’m glad you were born. You’re the one good thing they brought into this world.”
It’s selfish, but I’m glad you were born - what a cruel thing to say to your brother. And yet, “It’s fine,” says Wulfie, and she doesn’t know what he’s telling her - it’s fine to be sad? It’s fine to forgive yourself? It’s fine to die? They’re not fine – nothing is fine. But Wulfie’s huge body is shaking like a leaf no matter how much he’s trying to hide it, and more than anything Klara wanted to hear those words, to believe them. Even if they’re a lie. Even if they’re cursed.
They smoke in silence. Wulfie wears lipstick no longer, and the filter of his cigarette is clean. Klara’s is dark red – Mom’s color – she wipes her mouth into the back of her hand, and stands up, “I should go. I don’t want to keep you busy,” she says, though neither of them have better to do.
“Mhm,” says Wulfie, staring straight into the terrarium with no bugs, and Klara wonders if he’ll be fine. She wonders if she’ll be fine, anyone. “Good night, Klara.”
“Night, Wulfie.”
“Hey,” and Wulfie looks like he’s about to do the hardest thing he’s done in his whole life - allow himself to be gentle with her, if only for a moment. “Don’t be a stranger.”
She smiles, or perhaps just imagines herself smiling at this.
“Good night, Beowulf.”
As Klara leaves the living room with six photography books under her arm, she wipes off the remains of her lipstick. And then she ties up her hair.
As the driver starts the car, the sun sets, slowly and mournfully as though sinking into a grave it dug for itself.

(vii)

At first, it feels like the last tether that bound him to the world of the living has finally snapped. Everything else was long gone, in a whirlpool of exhaustion and paranoia. Even the cheeky, childish love for Beowulf that matured so suddenly into a sad and hopeless thing – it has long gone. The dry and chilling winds that shook their little beach house rang and howled in the empty shell of Faust S.
He opens his eyes one morning no different from any other and thinks, I am going to die today. Beowulf is still asleep on his side of the bed, his bare chest slowly rising and falling. When he wakes up past noon, he will find the bedroom empty. Usually, when Faust thought about this part of it, he felt that betraying this man would dirty his hands to the point of no return, and then not even the sea would be willing to shelter the rot of his bones anymore. But today, he thinks of nothing.
He goes to the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror. This bathroom had once been someone else's. He imagines a beautiful woman pissing or doing her makeup in the neutral yellow light. The thought makes Faust's eyes sting and bile rise in the back of his throat, and he quickly ushers it away.
For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, Faust's own reflection stares back at him. Unwashed hair hangs in thin and matted strands. The face is ghastly, skin taut over the cheekbones, ashen, overgrown in dark tufts of beard. Back when he was a teenager, Faust had some vain thoughts of wanting to die looking pretty – that when they find him his corpse would be clean and as handsome as he'd been in life, cause he'd have prettied himself up before doing it and worn his Sunday best. Only for the sake of old wishes does he force himself to start washing.
He scrubs off the sweat and grime, shaves in slow, even motions. As coarse dark hair gives way to the pale line of his jaw, he sees them before he feels them, fat tears rolling down his cheeks, no longer tears of loneliness but a desperate call for a shadow devoid of all sensation to feel something, anything, for the body to start kicking and fighting to live. But it does not. Faust finishes shaving and ties his hair with his last remaining scrunchie, dusts off the front of his pajama shirt.
Still staring at the shaver, Faust realizes that he's stalling, and that simply wouldn't do. If he didn't have courage, he'd have nothing, is what he always thought. So even with that pale face blotched with miserable tears, he stands up. Stores away the shaver and the towel and his wedding ring, and goes outside to the cliff, sits on the edge facing the dark water.
Right. Get on with it. He slowly loosens his grip on the jagged rock that he clutched desperately with clawed fingers like he's scared someone might push him in, and looks down into the crashing waves. His whole body trembled. He didn't think he'd be this afraid.
The tremors that steadily shook him from within grow into soundless sobs, choking on nothing. I'm sorry, he thinks at no one in particular because there's no one good in the place he's going to, and he's frightened to even think about the living, but there's no one left who believes I can go on, no one who needs to be saved except for me. And for him, no one would come.
Trembling on the edge, all the missing feelings rush back in at once, all the long-gone love. He thinks of what he'd told Beowulf on their wedding night, that he'd have the strength to face death if his face was the last sight burned into his mind. It's still true, but the fuzzy image of Beowulf he struggles to recall does not suffice. He wonders if Beowulf would be sad when he died, or only disappointed. He looked sad when he begged him to calm down before, but he also looked angry, said, Man, you gotta come back to your senses, you'll get yourself killed.
And it's not my senselessness that killed me, thinks Faust bitterly, it was you, all of you! Why won't anyone come? Even the voices in his head are silent! Why won't anyone come for him in the end and tell him it was fine to go on living, not even those he created from nothing with his two hands? Why does he have to go alone, watched only by the silent jury of other souls who fell to damnation here? Ah, I really am a cursed existence. Maybe I'll be eaten by Beowulf's mother.
It's easier once he lets go, crosses the point of no return. His hands cease shaking, and he feels a grim and mortifying tranquility once that brief struggle for life ended, as though someone held a pillow over his face until he stilled. Though he always imagined death as some kind of an ironic triumph, Faust has always known he wouldn't live a long life. The wind is quiet with its howls this morning, and it is a good day to die.
The dark watery surface vibrates and ripples with the growls and shrieks of the corpses on the bottom, and they grow louder still when Faust jumps in and they smell fresh meat, almost like the buzz of spreading news, today we feast! The water is cold as a grave as he sinks and sinks… and realizes he doesn't even know how deep the sea goes here. He itches to find out. Struggling with the final mouthful of water that fills his lungs, his head falls to the side, unblinking eyes turning towards the sky. And he sinks.
Beyond that, all memory of death has left him. He doesn't even remember the snapping of jaws as they bickered for a taste of his flesh.

(viii)

„The author’s intent brings us together,“ Laura loves to say it, that same old smile dancing on the red curve of her mouth. „Intent meaning love.“
Marion has heard this train of thought before. Laura would spit it at enemies crushed beneath her heel and whisper it to devotees in the throes of ecstasy alike, so he doesn't question why she chose to repeat the mantra as she paces around the bedroom this morning, her back blue in the half-dark.
„What we call fate is nothing but inherited love,“ She goes on, and Marion only half-listens, lulled into thoughts by the rhythmical thrum of her voice.
„To reach the true ending, we must overcome it. People are always fighting like dogs in a ditch to reach it. Freedom.“ She turns to Marion and looks oddly serious. Though Laura's face is severe, there is always amusement creeping around its shadows and suggesting a joke you can't grasp, for the world is her playground. Her expression is different now, and if it weren't Laura, Marion would almost call it wistful.
„I too have wrestled the author at the bottom of the gutter, taking my life into these two hands from those who beat me and spat on me. I even rose to the very pinnacle of existence. Yes, now all that remains is to gain freedom.“
Laura rarely speaks of her past so openly, so Marion snaps back to full attention and squares his shoulders. Laura laughs at that and he feels himself humiliated – he is her right hand man, her apostle, not to be treated as a child endearing in its ignorance! – and so he schools his face back into deep contemplation.
„I know we must become the ferrymen who'll take the souls of the resolute to heaven,“ says Marion. „But Laura, if there's nothing more to life, why bother living it? If our existence within this narrative is only for the sake of being freed from it, where's meaning in the rest? All the things that are neither cure nor poison?“ things like the nights they go out into the city, drink and dance and take lovers as though they're ordinary creatures. Like the shoes she likes that clickety-clack down the halls – there has to be meaning in everything, Marion thinks, if it's Laura. Long years ago, he called her a god of death. Now he feels that she is either God himself, or she killed God and ate Him raw, and Marion doesn't care much for the difference.
But Laura merely smiles, her brown eyes seeming almost red – and ah, she's whispering into his ear now, come underground and trust me, life can be so sweet, if you try it my way you'll forget it might end with anything other than paradise.
„Let me tell you, Mary,“ The first trickle of morning light spills across Laura's skin like a rain of gold and she turns and draws the curtains, that wicked smile still dangling off her lips, „There is no meaning. The truth is, this world is one huge funny joke.“
And that's the last time Marion would ever see her.
When he comes back from the graveyard, he thinks ah, how foolish I was then to doubt you. This narrative really was one big joke in the end. Their small children watching the burial silent and solemn. This final relic of a world where humanity knew to do nothing but devour. The most important woman in the world, made to be destroyed by something as simple as an invisible illness, by the mundane that she despised so much. It really was just a joke devoid of a punchline, Laura…he struggles to breathe, chest heaving, and sees himself as a cog in an unchanging mechanism of mass media, a monotonous perpetuum mobile…
And recalls how for all they taught him that God was forgiving, his god has never been.
Marion reaches for his cup of coffee.
He drinks it cold.

APPENDIX: MOTHER, DO NOT PHONE THE HOSPITAL

(i)

“Get a move on, sweep the terrace or something.”
My left eye starting to twitch as I spoke was her cue to remove me from the house. After the old man lost his job, we moved to a two-room shack outside of Zagreb, where it was cheaper to live and she could grow some of the food on her own. Besides the room where we all slept and a kitchenette, there was a terrace and an attic. That attic was by far the more interesting of the two, but we spent one night too many huddled up there to evade him. Let me tell you about the terrace instead.
It was a square of concrete, walled up on three sides and open on the fourth towards a street called Naftaplinska cesta - oil and gas road. Nothing in my childhood was poetic other than my rage. And whenever it threatened to spill out, she would send me to sweep the terrace with a corn broom. That broom was the epitome of everything that enraged me: just like this rage of mine, it was something that could be found in every household. Ordinary, cheap. You could sweep the terrace, or you could even beat your wife with it if you liked. Take your pick.
My mother did not know of the play Faust. The pinnacle of literature for that woman were the paperback erotica novels one could buy at the newspaper kiosk. Thus, to my great disappointment, she could not name me after it. I was actually named after an inventor. In 1617, a man named Faust Vrančić jumped from a Venice tower wearing a rigid-framed parachute and survived. He would later describe it in his book of machines, calling it the Flying man. But I digress. These are simply the things I pondered the most while sweeping the terrace: flying men, jumping men, falling men. Sometimes I imagined them gracefully landing, and sometimes they’d splat against the walls of my mind like overripe tomatoes. One miscalculation was all it would’ve taken for Faust Vrančić, the genius, to be labeled as Faust Vrančić, the suicidal idiot who had to be scrubbed off the Venetian square. But seriously, isn’t the borderline between those two dangerously thin?
As I pondered that, my rage would often subside, and I would then be allowed to come back inside. What’s more, I would even be happy that I did something kind for my mother.

(ii)

Beowulf peered at me from under his ridiculous fluffy bangs like, watch your mouth, so I carefully reconsidered my wording: “...ended up screaming at me to get out.”
I almost thought he wouldn’t say anything. It wasn’t unlike him to leave me hanging in the middle of a pointless exchange with myself - and I didn’t mind that much. I’ve always liked the sound of my own voice, and anyway, Beowulf’s aloofness made for most of his charms. But a second passed and he said, “Yeah… my bad.”
“Whatever,” It was the closest thing to an apology I would ever get from him. “I’m done. Give me that.”
Beowulf’s lighter was heavy, ornate silver - not the kind a college freshman should carry. He had another one, a cheap plastic trinket that said BARCELONA, but he never used that one. I passed him the blunt, and he stared at it for a while before taking a hit. It was almost cute, even though there was nothing cute about Beowulf S., all sharp edges.
“Relax, would you?” I laughed a little. “It’s not gonna bite you.”
Beowulf’s eyes zeroed in on the smoke rolling out of his own mouth as he exhaled. “I’ve never smoked this shit before.”
We passed it back and forth a couple of times before I finally said, “This is the part where I ask you why you cried when I touched you, by the way.”
Beowulf’s dark eyebrows knitted together. He was ruggedly handsome when he did that, nothing like the panicked expression he’d flashed last Tuesday. “Don’t,” he said.
“Another question, then,” I kicked off my shoes and laid on the bed. It smelled like Beowulf’s cologne, sharp and citrusy. “What’s up with all those scars on your arms?”
I studied the coral red ring Beowulf’s lipstick had left on the blunt before putting my mouth around it. I knew Beowulf was trouble, with his torn clothes and his chains and his short fuse. I knew he’d been to the juvie too, and probably had more street fights under his belt than I could count. Still, I was surprised when I took his jacket off and found a dozen scars, pale deep scratches down his forearms.
“What? You cut yourself or something?” I nudged him with my foot, just to be mean, but he just sighed heavily as he slid down the wall until we were lying side by side. “Or something,” he said dryly. “Had enough? I didn’t call you over here to talk.”
I laughed at this. “Cut a guy some slack, will you? I like you cause you’re hard to get, but if you never tell me anything… I’m gonna get bored of you, you know?”
Beowulf looked straight at me, and his gaze was unfocused, like he was looking at something behind my shoulder. I briefly wondered if my words might have hurt him, before reminding myself who it was I was talking to. Right. Beowulf couldn’t care less.
“Can I touch you a little?” I ran my fingers through his hair before he could answer. His hair was dark and fine, curled at the tips and soft to the touch. I felt him tense, but he didn’t pull back.
“Where’d you get this, then?” He said suddenly, and I felt his rough thumb trace my own hairline. I was just trying to keep my mouth busy as my hands roamed down his neck and towards his chest, so I was surprised when he spoke, his voice slightly raspy.
My hands paused around the hem of his tank top, “My old man.‘S fine,” I whispered into his ear, because he seemed uncomfortable. “I manned up and took care of him.”
I wondered if getting high with Beowulf was a bad idea. I wondered if I ought to say, tell me if you want me to stop, if Beowulf was actually more frail than he looks under all that muscle. I didn’t stop, though. I pulled his black tank top over his head and threw it onto the pile of textbooks and empty beer cans on the floor.
“Yeah, we both manned the fuck up,” I said as I straddled him. I “Tell me, is that lipstick your sister’s or your mommy’s?”
Beowulf grabbed my wrist with such force and speed that it very nearly scared me. In the resulting silence, I could hear both our heartbeats, each louder than the last. He said without a hint of humor, “Now you’re making fun of me?”
“No,” I laughed to cover up my sudden discomfort. “I like it. It makes you stand out.”
Truth was, Beowulf stood out too much even without his penchant for makeup, too big and too silent. Deep inside my mind, the alarms kept ringing, back off while you still can, because nothing good could come out of catching feelings for a guy who was all beaten up every other time that I saw him.
Instead I pressed up against his chest and buried my face into the crook of his neck. I felt him freeze, his hands awkwardly coming to rest on the small of my back, afraid to move.
“You know, that time I started hitting you… I really wanted to…”
Beowulf finally moved to cup my waist. His hands were so big, they halfway closed around it. “Don’t say it. It feels gross.”
“Okay.” my shirt joined his on the floor. “Then just look at me.”
“Don’t want to,” Beowulf mutters stubbornly.
I grabbed his chin. “Look. At me.”
“I said I don’t want to!” He snarled, something between a child and an animal. One of his teeth was chipped away at the front.
“What do you want from me, then?” I was getting tired of playing with him, felt aimless. Beowulf seemed to honestly think about it, and heaved a weary sigh that resounded in the silence. “Just want to feel a damn thing.”
That sort of thing, at least, I was good enough for. With his giving in, silence fell upon the dorm room.
You know, that time I started hitting you… I really wanted to be killed by you.

(iii)

“Get a move on, sweep the terrace or something.”
I was still pretty young when I figured out that I didn’t want to leave any remains behind when I died. In other words, I didn’t want to be Faust Vrančić who fell from the sky. I absolutely despised the idea of people looking at my body without me being present in it. Do you understand my agony? It turned out that not even leaving this world is simple.
I would later learn that autism runs in your family the way alcoholism ran in mine. I would later see a photograph of your mother, only twenty-nine when she hurled herself off the cliff by the house I made a home in. When I understood things, I understood them all at once - how and why we got where we got - but by then it was too late. To go back would be to untangle all the knots I used to desperately tether myself to you.
I drove myself to visit her grave since you didn’t want to go, five hours to Zagreb and back. The grave had no angel statues, and stood lonelier than the rest. Standing there and murmuring prayers to a god I don’t believe in, I felt the lines between us blurring. I was her, to you. Was I her, to you?
In 1993, a woman named Laura S. jumped from the cliff by her house and did not survive. And although people remember the inventor of the parachute, they don’t remember her. I don’t think that’s fair, I truly don’t. I don’t think that survivors are worth more than the those who gave up.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry. But every time you send me outside to sweep the terrace, I hate you a little more.