Cecilia had come home from nowhere. She had stepped out one last time to try and clear her head in the turbulent lanes of the city. Nothing; she was still as empty as a suspended bell jar. The girl felt increasingly cold as air seemed to just sweep through her, taking with it all last shreds of sharp life. Coming home to an empty, windy apartment was just the same. Blown up.
She needed warmth, she needed life. The life and warmth she had shared with her Dorian. Immediately, like an addict's thoughts spring to the poison of his choice, hers leaped towards the shower.
There was no time to take her clothes off. She let the water drag the seams and stitches of her attire down into the drain, alongside weak locks of fire-red hair. Holding on to her knees, she let the water bubble in her ears. The cold silence inside her mind seemed to be gone.
"Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper
"I love you"
Birds singing in the sycamore tree
Dream a little dream of me"
Such was the bluntless of its poetic univers, that Cecilia immediately felt drawn to the ideal image of that romantic place. She opened her eyes and saw what she really expected and desired to see: Dorian. Not the peaceful decorum in the song, but the one who she was dreaming bitter little dreams about. Dorian.
Only his face wasn't exactly the way she'd remembered it. With an upsurge of panic, she thought that she might be forgetting him. But no; Dorian's face had an almost inhuman air. It was a merman's face, and all the more beautiful so. She felt drawn by the shimmer of his skin and the explicit mistery that hung about him. His barley locks were floating around his face. His eyes, even without the pupils and irises, held to her such love...The love she was missing.
The love that had died.
Cecilia tried to caress his face, but however much she tried to soothe his newly acquired skin, he was too far. It took her a while to realise he was pushing away from her.
"Not like this," he said. "You can't love me like this. Come to my side, love me here. Love me forever; mermaids do not die. Come, trust me, my love."
The fantasy, the dream, the illusion was interrupted by a rush of cold water from the shower. Mrs Humphries - a lady with many cats and a weak bladder - had flushed the toilet.
But, however inconsistent and short, the fantasy, the dream, the illusion had twirled and twisted Cecilia's atriums and ventricles. She had made up her heart. Follow, or get left behind.
She would not be left behind, to droop in daily madness and grief. She would follow him, wherever he might go. And today, her road was the sea, her home the mermaids.
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