Tea With a Stranger

Adam sat in anonymity at his favorite corner table at his favorite little diner. It was 10 am in London and not a very eventful day. He sipped his tea of prematurely picked leaves and noted the clientele. A new couple full of giggles and hopeful glee sat at the farthest end. Laughing at each and every joke the other had to tell. A relationship built on give and take until one would give no more. You could say it was naivete but that was his fault to bear. His cynicism came from a once warm heart; a heart now turned gray and black by the longings for a lost love. He hides his smile with the brim of his cup wishing them the best.  

His eyes now gaze over to the young waitress with such a practiced walk. One foot in front of the other. Pop the hip! He came here partly because of her. Not for her in that physical and rather human sense of wanting someone, but rather "her" for what she meant to him: the inkling of a feeling. He had almost forgotten what it meant to feel for someone again, well anyone outside of her. To look upon the waitress, to watch as the folds of her skirt slip in and around her legs by the forceful and perverted nature of air sent feelings of unknown positivity all over his pale skin. To be able to smile at the way she would blow the loose strand of hair away from her face as she took an order, both hands far too busy with pen and pad to push it aside manually. 

Oh what an idea she represented and how often she crept into his dreams to keep him company. To tell him jokes and smile in his direction. In his dreams is where he wanted to keep her intact. A place where he would always know that the smile that graced her face, only making her more beautiful, was a smile brought by him. 

"In your thoughts is where she'll stay you deduce is for the best.

Her visage so perfect and pure, it'd be ruined with every following rest."

Adam's delicate day dream is harshly ripped away by a man standing 6ft tall over his favorite table. The man's shadow loomed over him, which was strange considering that the cast of every other shadow bent the other way. Even more troubling was the manner is speech. Speaking in limerick or rhyme is an odd way to make an introduction. Before Adam even had a chance to speak the man raised a palm-faced hand to gesture silence. 

"Please. No need to speak

I do have much to say. 

Such little time

It’s such a crime 

That I offer all in one day. 

May I have a seat? 

Again don't speak, 

You’ll have your turn I swear. 

If it wise, and though contrived,

To offer you my name,

Would it be a weight to bear? 

Or would you even care?"

The man wasn't answered nor did he need to be. He did not wait for his inquiries to be given rebuttal before seating himself across Adam. Cold air funneled around Adam in the most peculiar way. He felt intense, his back straightened out, and all his hairs stood on end. The man played with his manicured nails as if fully aware of the sensations overcoming Adam and chose to be the gentleman by waiting for them to subside. 

His hair was long and beautifully black, as if no light could ever bounce off. It was a black that was so deep it'd be lost even in the brightest areas of space. His skin was pale but without fault that you would think it was made of marble. Adam felt as if all his senses were failing him from vision to touch. Panic, anxiety, tension, he could not pinpoint what this was but there was one thing that stood out quite clearly in almost a dejavu fashion, and that was fear. 

"It is quite queer, this feeling here, that causes you to leer.

Emotions rampant, your thoughts so dampened by my presence inducing fear.

So ask away, if you may, these questions plaguing you this day.

Just take note, you little bloke, that lies will ne'er be spoken.

You have my word, a paradox I'm sure, that I hope is more than token."

A chill ran through Adam starting at the highest point of his neck, down his spine, and ending at his fingers that held his tea cup with the force of a toddler. He tried to ignore the chill by gripping his tea cup but found strength had left him completely. A numbness was setting in like a limb having fallen asleep. His vision turned blurry, the onset of a panic attack or an adrenaline rush. He couldn't tell the difference but with the thought of a thought of speaking, the feeling subsided. He breathed heavy and tried to place blame on anxiety over this poet's appearance. Humor him, a thought provoked. 

"Fine." Adam said with reluctance in his voice he did not bother to mask. "I'll bite."

He takes a deep breath, hesitating only slightly before humoring the individual seated across from him. His eyes never breaking from Adam's and his hands folded with the propriety only seen in nobility. 

Before he can say a word the waitress approaches, opting out of the use of pen and pad, use to the habitual nature of Adam and his lack of ever ordering anything other than tea.

"What can I get ya, Hun? Another tea?" She says, ignoring the other man entirely seemingly unaffected by his eerie aura.

"N..No. I'm fine. But he-"

She had begun the motion of her nod, in punctuation to Adam's "no", before he was able utter the rest out and had already begun to walk away. 

He sighed as he stared back at the man whose gaze remained unbroken. Has he even blinked? I can't bring myself to stare long enough to find out…

"So... Did you want anything?"

Adam's question lacked any real feeling. An empty gesture expressing a nicety he didn't know should be extended or disregarded with all other formalities that one would associate with a stranger tossing out pre-rehearsed rhymes. His question floated in the air. The tension so apparent it seemed like a gas thick enough that his words could be seen through the difference in air as they sluggishly passed through and crashed against the hellish mountain that was this stranger-bard.

The man paid Adam in kind with a gesture of heads spreads apart and a head tipped to the side accompanied by a smirk that could simply be read as "really? That's it?"

"So. No then. Okay. Well then who are you? To be honest I could care less but I feel it should preface the more important question of what the fuck do you want?" Adam's fear, as if a creature all its own, was responding the only way it knew how, with anger. 

Adam is not a strong man by many means, nor is he weak. He is just a man who knows what he likes, what he doesn't, has his habits and has his insecurities. And what he liked was to sit at his favorite corner table with his favorite green or white tea (all dependent on mood) and admire his favorite waitress in silence. All this, now rudely disturbed by the man. 

The man's face seemed unchanging in the way he smiled. No creases at the edges of lips, no heightened cheekbones, no wrinkles of any kind. It seemed as if all his features were painted on in real time as they changed atop a porcelain face. Even his eyes seemed like marbles containing universes slotted into two hollow holes. This made Adam even more anxious as he watched the man fix his cuffs, which frilled out under his suit jacket, a style rather reminiscent of Victorian era dress. Now that Adam stopped to look at the man in his entirety, he realized he couldn't quite peg any feature of the man to any iconic era. His suit jacket was of a modern cut: less emphasis on broad shoulders fitted towards the midsection for a V look, lapels small and not overly accented. His shirt however was something out of an Anne Rice vampire novel, very 14th century European, perhaps Gothic baroque or something akin to it. The collar gave way to a frilly mess of a red lace-like cloth over the black backdrop of the shirt, accented with subtle white pinstripes. Adam couldn't understand the aim this main was going for, but he supposed that his fashion sense was the least thing to be unsettled about. Then again, what the hell do I know about fashion?

"I go by many names from all across time

From the start of the universe with the Big Bang,

To the end of the last tree where you leaves will no longer hang.

Where there was nothing, there I stood

The angel whose face was covered with hood

My brothers watched as I fell from grace

My presence fading from existence without a trace.

But this story has been told through countless galaxies

Its words twisted and torn by telltale fallacies...

I have always been by your side, dear Adam

My poor child with pain no other can fathom

In your sleep I guarded you

That grey turning to a darker hue

You thought yourself so alone and broken

Through crystal tears your cheeks soaked in

I cannot grasp how you never felt me near

I was always at your shoulder to keep away the fear”

“You speak through puzzles and paradoxes instead of giving a straight answer. I don’t have time to waste with your shit that borders on cancer.” Adam retorts, his patience thinning. He can’t figure out what he means to imply through talks of pain and suffering. Adam never took himself to be someone that hurt more than anyone else. Yes he may have felt lonely at times, but who doesn’t? He may have cried over a lost love, but who hasn’t felt the pain of heartbreak? It is hardly something to make something out of! How does he even know any of this?

“Oh my child, don’t be so distant.

She came more than willingly

Yet you push so violently

You should of seen how excited she was, oh a shame you missed it.”

Adam’s anger was becoming more than something that could be held by mental leash. He had forced a distant memory far from the surface of his mind. He had buried it deeper than the oldest corpse. He covered that hole not with dirt but with longing tears and blood from attempted suicides. There were loves before her, but none after her. Her memory had become a flower poisoned and barbed with more thorns than leaves, yet its beauty never wilted. Now this man was bringing it all back, a necromancer of the forcefully forgotten, a black magician pulling the dead out of a forgotten hat that sat upon an ancient skull.

“Fuck you, you lowly shit. You’re the one she ran away with as if I was so unfit!

Unfit to love her, unfit to satisfy even though I did everything I could to try and rectify a relationship that was bullshit from the start. No, you have to come back and wretch it up from my pathetic heart!” Tears were welling in his eyes, bringing color to his pale skin. Hints of pink and red sprinkled across his cheeks and forehead.

The man only smiled that painted on, wrinkleless smile. His posture bent forward, elbows resting on the table, fingers entwined in each other with wrists bent. He gently rested his head on the top of his oddly white hands and just stared as if he was soaking in the frustration emanating from Adam. His rage as miasmatic as it was fulfilling.

“Well? Answer me!?” Adam yelled in protest. His voice a violent tone, but the volume hushed. “It was you she left with, right? All over some stupid fight!. . . I told her I loved her. I told her everyday thinking by some miracle she would always stay…”

Adam’s anger was diminished, being replaced by a sorrow he struggled to fight off every single day. The man sitting across from him only stared, the same way a child stares at ants underneath the intensity of a magnifying glass on a bright day.

“I had a hand in her leaving, but with me she never went

I only acted as a provider for the blade that was lent.

No, she left with one much older than I

But my hands played their part as did yours I must reply.

Don’t you remember my sweet blind child?

I said I was always with you even through the thick and the mild.”

Annoyed and beyond words Adam had to allow a silence to fall between the two in an attempt to collect himself. This seemed to affect the man very little as if he could stay in that singular position until he became the marble that he resembled.

As Adam’s thoughts became to sort themselves he slowly became aware of images that were never there before, or rather images left so deep in the void of his subconscious he never thought they would resurface again. Scenes of colors and distorted images, reds and blacks mixed in a macabre tie-die of self-loathing depravity. Adam grasped at his head as if physical touch would lessen the pain of realization.

As if responding to a stage cue, the man straightens himself in his chair and fingers through his inside coat pocket. Adam watches hunched over, his head in his hands and a face that expresses more pain than any man should have to bear. He waits what feels like an eternity before the man pulls out a clipped newspaper article and slides it over to Adam. The article was frayed at the edges and dried stains littered the image of a girl that took up most of the tiny square space. Adam recognized it immediately.

“How quick you are to forget a life that you claim you held so dear

You pushed her to a point out of malice and fear.

‘Infidelity’, ‘whore’, and ‘selfish’ were the themes of that night

She never hurt more than that moment when her lover changed to such a sight.”

Adam’s eyes became clouded by an onslaught of tears as he looked at the clipping. It had the picture of a beautiful young girl with long brown hair that fell to the sides and the headline that said “Local Girl Commits Suicide on the Near North Side.” He remembered the day he took that photo of her. They had just left a pet adoption center and were contemplating what they intended to get. Adam wanted a large male shepherd by the name of “Duke”, while she wanted the most adorable all black French bulldog named “Sally”. She was so good at pointing out why her points of view were always better than Adam’s.
“We have a small one bedroom with no yard. Where are you going to keep it, Adam! You are always so quick to go for the prettiest damn thing and never even think it through!”
Adam laughed at that, thinking of how appropriate of a reference it was to herself. He didn’t know it at the time he took the picture, but that day would be the last good day they would have, and in taking the picture he had immortalized that last moment. Now here she was, staring back at him after so many dark and troubled years.

“I know who you are…” Adam said, his eyes not breaking away from the clipping. “You were there when that fight went too far. She clasped that knife and never broke your stare. Blood dripping from her wrist like an open faucet, and yet she didn’t care. She stared at you with pain and malice, but why did I freeze in the moment? I never thought I’d be so callous. How could any of this really be true?”

 “From the apple to the knife you continue to confuse, forever ignoring that it has always been you.”

[So this is my first blog post and really my first short story. I love reading and writing and felt I'd do my best to take a go at it. I feel like the world is there waiting for you to make your move, you just have to be willing to actually get up and DO something about it, ya know. So this is my first attempt at "doing". -RM]