The Séance Table
Last December, I’d dug my own grave by cracking my heart open. I wished the fall could’ve just cracked my head instead.
I sipped my whiskey grumpily with a trembling hand, and it spoke to me of its own conquest. By today, my studio was a wreck, and I had to donate some of my works or throw the weaker ones into the fire and watch it burn heartily. The fire was always cackling, mocking me for what I had become, and now, I finally understood the joke.
Today was December 30th, and I locked myself alone in the swept-out studio. Everything—every painting, every sculpture, every figurine—was staring at me, accusing me of something terrible like murder, but that wasn’t going to stop the clearance. Everything needed to be gone, or the deafening sound of regret and doom would swallow me whole and I’d be forever damned.
On my lap was the second painting I did of her, amongst many, and I stared at it while lighting up my cigarette as if it had all the answers to the questions I didn’t even know existed. My mind had been jumbled ever since the sky was painted a reddish brown of autumn, and I wasn’t sure what to do to summon my sanity and peace. When there’s a hole in your chest, nothing felt right anymore. Your body just gave out, and so it exuded some sort of tiredness but never peace. Never peace. I hope I could tear the blackening, still-beating heart out of my chest and throw it away, if that’s what it took to wash away this numbing helplessness.
Perhaps, now was the time for my own clearance.
I sat back on my chair, breathed the cigarette smoke out of my system and laid my head back. It was four o’clock in the evening, and I couldn’t take the screaming match between my creations surrounding me anymore, so I flew out the house and went to the supposedly last place I should visit—the most haunted place I’d ever known: her abandoned flat.
The snow was covering the entry, and something broke inside me, having known that nobody had walked on my footsteps, that nobody had come home. The door was almost frozen, so it took me some time to push it open. And when it did, memories came rushing altogether. She’d opened the door for me, brushed off the snowflakes on my head, took off my coat and led me inside. Then we’d sat down on the little warm chair, and I looked at it now. I could see myself wrapping the bright, green blanket around us, stealing one or two words of playful affection that made her cheeks flush.
I blinked slowly, and the ghosts disappeared. I pursed my lips in an attempt to stop myself from throwing up my lunch down the frozen entry, then took a step inside the room before closing the door behind me.
A screaming sound from the boiling water took me back. Even though nothing was on the stove, I remembered her pestering me to let her fetch the blasted teapot and fix me up some tea. I chuckled when her flustered face came into my mind, but stopped as soon as I felt an odd, tingling warmth creeping on my chest. I latched my hand on to it for dear life, as if feeling it was the worst mistake I could ever make, because when I walked farther inside the room, it’s like a pile of bricks came crashing down around me. The ghosts of my past appeared in flashes of everything at once while I was standing just between the bed and the big window. I froze there, my eyes shut; and I forgot how to breathe.
If it were a case of murder, this very place would be the crime scene. Evidence was scattering around everywhere, but still perfectly visible to identify. The pricking sensation and heaviness swathed around my whole body like fresh bandages. I was the only survivor, black and blue with open wounds, carrying the horror to my last days.
I’d rather be pronounced dead at the scene instead.
This started to feel like a bad decision. I’d wanted to take a trip down memory lane until the end of the day. I’d wanted to force myself to see the true disillusionment of winter unfolded here before my eyes, so that I could chase away the built-up pipe dream based on every first step and action of my life that I’d wasted with her. For ever since then, this room had been locking me up as its sole prisoner. I’d banged on the door, on the window, screamed into nothingness, but nobody came. I was all alone.
I wanted to disappear into smoke.
And so I lit one up and sat on her bed. Plumes of smoke billowed from my parted mouth as I looked up to the ceiling and closed my eyes in silence. Unbeknownst to her, I knew she’d always cringed every time I pulled out a pack of cigarettes, every time she’d stolen the corrosive taste from my lips. Perhaps, this was indeed what I needed. Filling her abandoned flat with smoke could be my own method of clearance, so that the haunting would stop, the door would unlock, and I’d be unchained from this silent madness. If only it was that easy. If only it was that simple.
The cigarette hung in my mouth, and I wished I could conjure up her illusion so that she could stand here in front of me. I wished she’d hit me as hard as she could, scream at my face, curse me for making a fool of myself since her departure. I wished she could ask me to stay the hell away from her place, to forget her, to carry on. But it had been months since her last visit to this place, and the only one hanging around was always me. She was never the ghost in the first place.
I might as well cover myself with a white sheet and start doing my job as the elusive, unfriendly entity that haunted this place.
The thought amused me. I blew out another smoke as I chuckled, just to choke and cough brutally afterwards. Maybe I should quit smoking, I thought as I observed the cigarette seriously. And then I laughed—half-choking, but still I laughed. It’s amazing that in times of crisis, I could still laugh my pain away with pitiful humour that wouldn’t apply to everybody.
As I sat in total silence afterwards, I could feel the heartache slowly melt into something warmer—something I’d tried so hard to deny, yet I’d always ended up feeling. It was longing.
I couldn’t escape the past, because it would always be a part of my future. All I’d been doing was running from it, pretending nothing had happened, just because I thought it would be easier to carry on. But, truthfully? Nothing had been easy, and it would never be. I’d left a part of myself here, and I knew it would reside here until the end of time. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t just donate it or throw it into the fire. I’d cracked my heart open, and she’d filled the tiny broken part of it with her.
Thus, a part of me was, indeed, forever damned.
I walked to her desk and started scribbling down my last drawing for her, with a rugged piece of charcoal. As cliché as it sounded, I’d like to think that I’d ripped out my rotting heart, and used it up as the medium to sketch. As I frantically finished my drawing, the charcoal began to run out, carefully channeling the restless, vengeful spirit I’d carried with me.
The paper was smeared and dirty, not at all pleasing to the eye, but the drawing made me smile.
It wasn’t her. It was me. I captured myself in the drawing, along with it the horrors that suffocated me to this day. The absence of colour was perfect to summarize what I wanted to deliver: torture. My anger, my weariness, my confusion—everything that used to linger on my reminiscences of her—appeared on the surface, and I let them all burn me alive. The familiar disturbance of despair and regret greeted me again, along with a myriad of emotions that incinerated all my logic. I let myself burst out in flames, one last time, and let him remain that way here forever.
It almost felt like I was actually going to explode, but I got up. I placed the drawing neatly on her desk. If she ever came home, she’d know I’d rested my case.
And so, by December 30th, I walked out of her flat for good, leaving all deserted footprints to memories, and locked my ghost on the other side of the door, perfectly chained to yesteryear. On this day, everything had been cleared out of my path. Peace might never be completely restored to me, but I would remain unrestrained.
I could try to live again.
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