On Aki

Stella is a mess. She began drawing two years ago and has failed to graduate from the ordinary black pencil, etching out figures of women with broad, bony shoulders and often men with only eyes to speak, the rest of their physique a fumbling grey. She draws with a mind now blunt, seeking some other dimensions behind the penciled figures, a world with the weight of hope and secrets that lay just behind a naked face, but she is drawn to a boy called Aki, for reasons she tries to vocalise.

Aki is unlike the men she’s known, he doesn’t speak much but when he does it is something she personally finds insightful, or so she believes, she doesn’t remember anything he says but gravitates to that scrape and growl in his voice, and along with his quietness there is something she is unintentionally attracted to, obsessed with, completely taken by.

Her drawings have now gained a certain gore, the lines now slim and thicken and run all over the page, her figures look duressed and split, bothered internally by some darkness that is clawing and pulling them inwards, so their chests and legs and hands seem tied in pain but the faces are now without light, they are pale and eyes once intimate, now tell no story and become still chambers to a furious spirit.

Aki moved into their apartment 3 weeks ago, he has a life that is lived mostly alone, that is, he moves about without grabbing onto others, he feels not the need to share or rely on either herself or their other housemates. In the same hour of every day, he is by the phone and speaking to someone called Jen, who he obviously loves very much for this is the only time he’s ever heard laughing, seen animated or concerned.

Stella hates that she is not privy to this daily routine, or the relationship behind it, she gathers what she can and tries to embellish a bare identity, but what kind of person would Aki truly be attracted to, reserve a place in his otherwise solitary life? She is indeed disturbed by this mystery, finds it captivating, but tries to displace her mind from Aki.

In the rare occasions she allowed other men into her bed, they appeared in various forms and often good only for the night, she’d let the lights go dim and shut her eyes, concious to shut any thought of Aki out of her mind, only to feel him there on her skin, everytime it is touched and he is there tearing her from the inside, it begins to dawn on her that every object and person she sees and feels, despite their form and shape, is Aki.

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