Category : Stories

Sub Category : YoungAdult

Part 7


After the third try, the door finally gave in and unlocked itself. Rolling his eyes enough to see the back of his head, Noah pushed the heavy wooden door in, tossing his shoes off in one smooth motion. Adjusting his eyes to the dark, biting his lip in concentration, he slipped the key card into the allocated slot. With a click, the room came to life. Taking a deep breath, his eyebrows did a quick up-and-down at his reflection in the mirror of the dressing table. Yup, still the same feeling, he thought to himself.

He fell into bed heavily, sighing loudly. Two, two, eight, two; the four digits that was his home for the weekend, the four digits that meant nothing beyond its designation, the four digits he just told someone an hour ago. That someone told him to call her some mundane name of a flower, a name he knew was only an alias, since who goes by their real name in her line of work anyway. That line of work he did not necessarily disdain but until a few months ago never assumed he would subscribe to.

There was a certain magic to the detachment he felt in a hotel room. He was sure this room, this bed at the very least, had seen scores of lovers, friends, relationships either made or broken, deeds done best forgotten. The ceiling lights would have watched every act, heard every word, smelled every odour, and that last thought made him make a face, imagining the many smells that had filled this room. Getting his thoughts back on track, he compared the room to his life; so many people coming and going too.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Slipping it out lazily, he saw that it was the lady calling him. He also noticed how his thoughts had helped kill an entire hour of time just lying in bed the exact same way he had walked in. She told she was in the lobby, he told her to wait for a bit, and then pocketed the phone again. He took a deep breath and let out a sigh. He pushed himself into a sitting position, allowed his blood to flow before he padded his socked feet to the bathroom. He needed to clean himself up.

After the third try, the door finally gave in and unlocked itself. Smiling at her apologetically, Noah motioned her to walk ahead of him. He wasn’t nervous since this wasn’t the first time he was partaking in a transaction of this nature. She wore a small, tight-fitting black dress, which he assumed was satin or latex, he couldn’t really tell in the dim lighting without necessarily touching it. Touching her was exactly what he wanted to do now, seeing her curvy hips trace a path to his bed so casually.

“Quite a nice room you got here,” she said, her voice a husky, musical thing that gave him goosebumps. 
Given the muted acoustics of the room, he felt like even her breathing added a nice touch, almost like she was breathing into his ear. 

“So, what do you have in mind?” she asked him, tracing her finger along the countertop and turning to face him, smiling. 

The low neckline of her dress made him breathe in deeply. His eyes focused on hers. He liked her face, her lips, her eyes, her nose, the way she watched him.
He smiled back, a touch ruefully. Moving close enough to see the goosebumps on her arms, he realised he was also not too shabby. Or was she pretending? He didn’t really care. The escape was all he needed. 

“I need you to take me away from here, take me away from everything, for the night,” he said seductively.

She cocked an eyebrow and bit her lip. He was standing so close, so dangerously close. He brushed back the hair from her face as he continued, “I’d like to lose myself to you, and to take it slowly and completely.”

As she leaned forward and kissed him, he tried to compile all his experiences into one; all the beautiful kisses from all those people he’d loved and unloved. He wanted to celebrate the good in his life, however mediocre, however little. He wanted to touch her the way he had touched them all, the way they would want him to. He wanted to taste them on her lips. He wanted to find them in her eyes. He wanted to carry them the way he now carried her to the bed. He wanted the world he once called his own.

She was gentle in his desperation, gentle in holding him, gentle in guiding him. He started to lose his train of thought and imagination. The faces he tried to summon shied away from his mind's eye. As he pulled away from the kiss, she looked at him with a face a little too real. Her lips traced new memories on his stubbled jawline as he tried to unbutton his shirt. Being on top, he saw how her hair, long, black, glossy, pooled around her head like a crown. He closed his eyes as he leaned into her, her full, firm breasts pressed against his chest.

Yet the memories would not come. Frustration built up like a snowball avalanche. He wanted something, something specifically vague, yet his sensations betrayed him. They told him how the woman who embraced him had smooth, smooth skin. They told him how she smelled like rose petals, no, like jasmine. They told him how the only thing between them now was the lacy lingerie she was easily slipping off. They told him how she was standing now, breathless, reaching over to the stereo on the counter. They told him the songs she played were his favourite, even though he’d never heard them before. He wanted to sing them now, sing them onto her skin, into her mouth. What he first wanted was not what he was getting, and by all that he believed in he regretted not a moment. His memories washed away in the waves of shivers she sent down his spine, the same way she shuddered uncontrollably at the way he worked his magic. His senses told him she was saying his name in a way no one else can. 

When the morning light broke through a crack in the dark curtains, he decided to stop lying to himself. She wasn’t just a face in the crowd anymore. Last night was not just a meaningless compilation of moments, or a momentary release from the chains of his existence. His life wasn’t just a constant reiteration of mistakes left unsolved. She wasn’t just a faceless, nameless person who happened upon his path. She wasn’t just someone he could forget a week later. He realized then that she wasn’t laying next to him either.

He nearly panicked, assuming that she might have taken his wallet or his watch before she left discreetly. He bolted up and looked around. Seeing everything untouched, he berated himself for stooping so low, but unbidden thoughts no one could control. He then noticed a napkin with something scribbled on it on top of the counter. A note? He grabbed the napkin and it read.... “Hey, don’t worry about paying me for last night. Thanks for a great night. Hope you find what you’re looking for.” It was signed off with a name different from the one she had given him. He looked at the lipstick stain on the bottom corner of the napkin and smiled. 

His moment was interrupted by the loud ringing of the hotel phone, which he picked up lazily and croaked a hello into. It was the hotel reception, asking him if he wanted to extend his stay or checkout in the next two hours. He thought about it for a moment before asking for an extension, to be billed to him later. "Have a good day, thank you so much." Click. He stayed on the line, the silence made him hear her voice in his head. She had said his name in a way no one else could. 

He sat at the edge of his bed, draped in the sheets they had shared and sweated into. He could still smell her, like rose petals, no, jasmine. He ran his hands over the marks on his back where her nails marked him hers, smiling at the way it stung. The little bruises on his neck flowered in red, where her lips made promises unkept. He was almost considering calling her again, but he stopped himself. No, that wasn’t what he needed now.

He called the reception, told them two, two, eight, two, and then told them he changed his mind. He wanted to check out and get out, hopefully, to find himself again, but he didn’t tell them the last bit. "Have a good day, thank you so much." Click. He was going to find himself in a place that was not just another hotel room, not just another four digits, not just another pair of arms embracing him. He was going to find himself where he always was, where he always would be, where he was most real.

With his bagpack in place and his shoes comfortably on his feet, he walked out of the lobby with a smile, only to feel his phone buzz in his pocket again.

“Actually, on second thought, how about we grab dinner tonight?” the voice in his ear said. The same voice that had said his name like no one else could. 

Noah smiled. Maybe a night embraced with rose petals, no, jasmine, could be a good start.

..... 


Noah was startled by a loud boom which in his mind sounded like an explosion. He looked around him, expecting to see fire, debris and pandemonium but everything seemed calm and quiet. For a moment he was disoriented and confused. His heart was pounding hard in his chest. Where am I, he wondered to himself. 

He allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness and tried to focus on his surrounding. Across his bed against the wall, he saw a bright glowing red light. What is that, he asked himself. He trained his eyes on the light, trying to determine what it was and then it hit him; it was his lightsaber, one of his prized possession from his Star Wars collection. He relaxed and lay back down on his bed. He knew where he was; in his bedroom in his apartment. Again he was confused. How did he get here? What happened to the girl he was with earlier who smelled like rose petals, no, jasmine...? 

He thought hard, forced himself to remember, to retrace his steps and to recall the day's event leading up to where he is now; in his bedroom. He remembered meeting his friend Fred in the morning and he remembered spending the entire morning till late afternoon with Fred, brainstorming on a potential music project. Then he remembered meeting another friend, Paul, who had asked him to tag along to meet some clients of his. After that, he remembered riding home. So where does the girl fit into this, he wondered, confused. 

He tried to recall what he did when he got home and he remembered falling on his bed, drained and exhausted from his day spent with Fred and Paul. He looked at the clothes he was wearing; black jeans and black shirt, the same clothes he wore when he left his house in the morning. Then it dawned on him that he must have fallen asleep, which can only mean one thing; the girl who smelled like flower was only a dream. 

He thought of the dream he had, of the mysterious girl in his dream. Who was she? He tried to picture her face but in his mind's eye only one face emerged. He remembered the conversation he had with the girl in his dream, was she a call girl, a night butterfly? He scratched his head in wonder. Why would he dream of a girl of such profession? He has never gone down that road before so what does it all mean? Is the dream a message of some sort, a sign perhaps? Is he supposed to decipher the hidden message inside the dream? He was clueless. 

He continued to lay in bed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling while he allowed his mind free rein to roam wherever it wanted to go. Some thoughts swam in the puddles of disjointed memories that dotted the stage of his mind, thoughts that could be better utilised if only he knew how. Lethargic, unfeeling, and overall weary was how he would paint himself. If only he can find the energy to dig out his brushes, he would surely repaint his life. But the canvas stayed sentimentally empty, reminding him of the bleakness of the beginning, any beginning, to be precise, before there was colour.

He shifted around in bed. Something sharp dug into his side. Before he managed to pull it free, he knew it was his phone by the annoying little beep. "Fuck!" he swore. That was the shortcut to make a voice activated phone call, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember how to turn that feature off. By the rustling of the covers, his device picked up something, and panic began. Swearing again for good measure, he managed to wrench his phone and check his screen right in time to see the name.

He swore a third time.

The call had gone through, ringing twice before he managed to disconnect it. Sighing in frustration, he lay back down and unlocked the screen. He opened the messaging app and scrolled down to her name. He hadn’t been in touch with her for so long. How long? He couldn’t tell exactly but he knew it was long overdue. His fingers flew fluidly over the keyboard. 

“Hey, sorry about that," he typed. "Accidentally butt dialled you. Gosh this is embarrassing.” He read his message before sending, which he hoped she would understand.

He looked at the time on his phone. 3:00am. He put the phone next to his pillow and tried to go back to sleep. 

When his phone vibrated near his head, he frowned. Hoping it wasn’t someone asking him something regarding his elusive responsibilities in life, he looked at the name. The same name he had accidentally dialled, the same one he had just apologised to. Humming to himself quizzically, he opened the message, or messages to be exact, he had received in response. Checking the timestamps, he saw that she had waited an hour or so to reply. 

“Hey,” read the first message. “That’s alright,” read the second message with some laughing emojis. 
“I was quite surprised,” said the third message. 
“How have you been?” the fourth message read. 
“It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?” was the last one.

It really has been a while, he thought to himself.

He responded to her, and thus began a conversation. They talked a little about life, how things had changed, the new things they were doing and the opportunities they had embraced. He was thinking of a way to broach the unspoken subject, and was relieved when she motioned at the elephant in the room. 

“I didn’t get in touch with you because I heard you were back with Barbie and I heard you were pretty happy with her,” she said simply. 

He smiled at the mention of Sheila's nickname which Feira had picked for her - Barbie. This is one of many private jokes he shares with Feira. He wracked his mind for the exact days they had stopped talking, remembering how yes, he was with Sheila back then, and how initially Sheila had made him happy, until toxicity bubbled and ended it.

He tried to justify himself to her. He tried to justify himself, to himself. She was reluctant to talk about it at first and tried to shrug off his intention. She remarked that they turned out to be just so different from each other, but he begged to differ. He was going through a phase, he explained, coming to a close of a section of his life. He was trying his best to tell her they had drifted apart just because circumstances didn’t seem to tie them together at that time, and that things shifted around enough for changes to happen. He wondered why he was trying to explain himself, but he didn’t stop. He felt if he were to stop now would mean she would see him in a different hue, one which did not shade him right, one which would shadow his virtues.

“It’s alright, don’t worry so much, love,” she said. 

He was relieved.

They talked about the next few months. Where he was going to be, where she wanted to go, how she hadn’t met someone worth giving her time to, how he wasn’t spending much time on anyone unsubstantial. He felt like he was being laid bare again, seeing himself in the light he tried to shine on everyone else. He smiled at the thought of being so different yet never noticing it, being so vacant yet never fulfilling it. He felt his text message confessional was doing what five missed therapy sessions should have done. He smiled. The moonlight slowly absorbing the dark night into the horizon and colouring the sky in shades of pale yellow against the blackness of the night. She made him smile. She always knew how to do that. She had always had that magic touch. 

“Well, it's getting late, I’m going to sleep now. It was nice hearing from you. I’ve missed you.” she said, her cue that she was ending their conversation. 

He told her he missed her too, genuinely meaning it, hoping she believed him. He really did though, something he didn’t expect, given how long they had been away from each other. They were never something permanent, maybe not yet, he mused, but they were definitely something constant, something always in motion. As he tucked away his phone beside his bed, he smiled at the ceiling. It felt good, grounding himself again.

Sometimes all it took was to dust off the bookshelves and pull out his favourite title. Sometimes all it took was to carefully pry the pages of his memories and trace the smiles with his fingertips. Sometimes all it took was to look back at the person he was building with and smoothen out the edges before putting down the bricks again. Sometimes, he needs to be in constant motion, and sometimes, he needs to just be.

His butt dial accident had opened up a portal he had forgotten. He was okay with that.

..... 


Noah was awakened by a feel of light streaming on his face. He rolled over to his side to avoid the sunlight and was planning to continue his sleep. But his sleep was already disturbed and try as he might, he just couldn't get to that slumber again. He groped around his bed in search of his phone. Time check: 8:30am. He groaned. He didn't get to sleep till around six that morning after his text conversation with Feira. 

Feira. The mere thought of her jolted him wide awake. He recalled their conversation just a few short hours ago. He smiled. He wondered if she's already up and about. He contemplated texting her, to say good morning then quickly dismissed the idea. He didn't want to push his luck, to arouse her suspicion by seeming too eager. But at the same time, he so badly wanted to talk to her. He groaned again. Feira was heavy on his mind. 

He recalled the long heart to heart talk he had with Ray a few weeks ago, how he had bared his soul and poured his heart out, how Ray had suggested ways for him to earn back Feira's trust and to win back her heart. He felt a knot in his stomach. Can he do it? Will he be able to win her back? He doesn't know. 

Ray had told him that he needed to work on himself, to correct himself before he can even think of getting Feira back. He sighed. 
He looked deep inside himself, his life. Too many promises left dirty in the washing machine left forgotten. He walked through the dusty rooms of his memories trying to find the ones he liked. Resolutions. Promises he made to himself in hopes the revolution around the sun would  make him a better person. Most of the promises included ideas of success, the plan to work harder and push further, the naivety of the enterprise really not dawning on him until now. No, it wasn’t the promises that were naive, that were immature. It was the attitude he had, that superhuman spirit that felt this time for sure, would be his to conquer. The two feet that carried him to where he is now felt like they could outrun their shadows. The naivety of the enterprise unbeknownst to the soul that drove them, the soul that was him.

As he fingered the moth-eaten fabrics of the many disguises he had worn in the past, the many faces he had shown and the masks that covered them, he felt nostalgia. He felt a longing for the lies he told himself when things seemed a little too hard, when the bed, the pillows, and the duvet felt more like home than the kitchen he was planning to cook his meals in. So much of the clothes he wanted to give away seem to grow in the pile he left them in, the pile which he seem to end up rummaging through when his laundry basket overflowed. These were akin to the mistakes and memories that he dwelled upon in hopes of finding solace in the familiarity, progress in the constrained, safety amongst the scars. Surely he would not fall prey to those pains again, would he? He asked himself, as he wiped away the tears that had fallen. 

He sees a light at the end of the room, between the looming stacks of boxes left open and the walls covered in scratches and paint. Hope, that was her name, the little voice that never failed to appear when the bleakness set in. The bleakness is what he calls his melancholy, his immortal, his darkness that was not the absence of light but the presence of unfeeling. The bleakness was the beast that clawed through his smile and into the things he loved, mutating them, contorting them, corrupting them, until even they could not bring him happiness. Hope, that was her name, the little voice that bounced around the candle flames and beckoned him further. Was he going deeper into his own mind when he should be trying to get out? Hope flies past the empty pages of his heart where the ink begged to be immortalised by promises.

Empty pages? He wondered as he looked at them closely in the light that was left in her wake. No, these were the same pages, the same promises, and the pen threatened to trace the very same letters again. The tracing was the easy part. He knows it was the forgetting that was even easier, that slight nudge he gives himself to drive his train off the tracks again. He smiled ruefully, remembering the mornings he had spent patting himself on the back for the simple effort of making promises, yet, now he stands ashamed. He is ashamed of the ink that had dried and now ran in rivulets. 

The inky lines came to life as his tears began again. The lines becoming a Rorschach for the psyche he hid behind. Did he see a butterfly? A wound? Beauty? Or does he see the constantly changing entity that was him, in the dark, wet lines of his promises unwritten?

He burns them in his mind. The papers brought little warmth to the void he found himself in; alone again the same way his day had begun, alone again the same way he knows he would sleep tonight. The bright embers of his determination seemed to outshine the light by the little flitting voice, the one that now pulled at the back of his collar beckoning him to follow. He turned away from the flames with much reluctance. He did not want to miss how the ash finally settled, how the wind of his breath breathed out the troubles before he inhaled again. He waited, fought against the distraction until he knew it was done. 

It was done, he told the voice. Hope looked at him, her faceless existence a picture of curiosity as he smiled at her. Burning the worn out, aged ink brought a liberation he could not fathom, so now he held her hand as he took the lead in his escapade.

Hope, that was her name, the little voice that trailed behind him as he walked through the hallways of his mind. The walls were decked with pictures, the same polaroids he kept looking at to remind himself he could still love again. He ignored them now. He had enough faith in himself to know love was his greatest strength, albeit being the window to his weakness. Yet the same window, he noticed now, held back the sunshine that would have painted his walls in the bright hues of sunrises. The sunrise was what he was searching for, not the fireworks, not the barbecues, not the bottles of spirits and stolen kisses, just the sunrises. He pushed through another door, another hallway of regrets framed and then painted over, and for the simple fact that they still existed, he set them, too, on fire. He was burning the life he was to leave behind.

Going through that final doorway reminded him how beautiful the sunrise was. The beauty wasn’t in the colours, no, it was in the way second chances danced their dance for him. He could see how he wasn’t giving himself the chance he deserved. He saw how his bruises and scars were not what he needed to hide but the very things that gave him personality. He saw how his memories were not the things that were to anchor him but guides to the constellations above. The sky above and the ground below were one and the same as he floated upon the void of emptiness. Was it truly empty, though, the darkness? It was dotted with the stars that were his dreams, his aspirations, the torches that drove him to the heights he tried to imagine. Why were they simply blinking now, twinkling away in the abyss? He needed more than that.

He sees now how promises weren’t enough, resolutions weren’t what he needed. A turn of the day and a new sunrise would not bring a new man in his place, he knew, a leaf flipping over and being greeted as a stranger. All these resolutions felt more like a destination than a journey, more like a leap of faith than a climb. All these promises felt like a need to change who he was, not a celebration of who he had been. All these lists felt like reasons to leave himself behind and chase the phantom of a man he envisioned himself to be. The little dots in his sky weren’t stars, they were holes to the heaven he fashioned out of great expectations and wishful thinking. He forgets time and time again, heaven was where he lay his heart, home was where his heart is. He was the embodiment of all his efforts and here he was, looking away.

The sunrise taught him that there were so many people whose love he could not live without. His mother, his siblings, his best friends and everyone else; the little pieces of love that kept him afloat yet he was ignorant of. He now stands on a cloud of all this love accumulated as the doorway left him in mid air. He looks around him to appreciate the colours of their love, the simple little smiles all the way to the numerous times their words and actions had saved his life. There was no need for words to promise him their love, there was none at all. He loved, if not enough, then too much, every time he fell in love, yet there was still more left to give and he vowed to give again. 

There, Hope said, that was his resolution. This was not the time to shed who he was and become something he wasn’t. This was the time to be Noah.

The journey that should matter to him lay behind him. The path he had cut through the trees, the roads he paved and the bridges he built outnumbered the ones he had burnt, the doors he had  closed and the curtains he had drawn. Maybe the beginning should be spent appreciating who he was, who he had been, and who he knows he would be. His resolution is to love, love, love Feira. His promise is to never give up on himself. His wish is to grow, to be better. His journey was one of a thousand sunrises, and a thousand more.

With the newfound determination and resolution that was sparked by that little voice called Hope, Noah smiled. He feels confident now. He's got this.