I stared up at the ceiling, the veins in my neck bulging as I struggled to hold back a scream. I was holding onto something - someone, by the back of the head. His wavy mop of hair tickled my chest while his mouth kissed my breasts. His throat exhaled warm air against my skin, damp and flushed, while his hands were squeezing my sides excitedly. After a moment he rested his parted lips against me, took some deep breaths, and whispered, 'Wauoh. You are sexiest woman in all the world, ma chérie.'
My eyes fluttered shut. Fingers too weak to even reach out to him, I lay breathless and squirming on the mattress until he pulled my legs around his back and -
Just when I was about to explode with pleasure, everything halted to a stop.
My eyes snapped open. I was still in our bedroom, on our bed, but suddenly everything was dark and cold and Lotan was nowhere in sight. Every trace of his smell, warmth, touch...gone.
Confused, I sat up and realised my once naked body was now covered with rose petals: dark, dying rose petals, which quickly blew off me when a strong wind threw the window open and swept through the room. Sketches I'd made of Lotan blew all around me from out of nowhere. Photo frames smashed against the ceiling. I jumped up to shut the window again, but a freezing gale attacked me first, lifting me right off my feet and sending me through the bedroom door! My helpless body flew until my back hit the banister of the landing and I fell to the floor, choking and crying.
'Lotan!' I began to scream. 'Lotan! Where are you!? Where have you gone!? Baby, come back to me, please!'
There was no answer. I achingly lifted myself back onto my feet and pushed against the tempest until I could shut my bedroom door. It took all my strength, but eventually the wooden door shut and everything fell entirely still. Silent. I slumped against it.
Panicking and tearful, I pulled my knees up to my chest. 'Oh, Lotan, I need you.'
There I sat for a few seconds, crying alone, until the door to the nursery across the landing burst open and the storm surrounded me again. I gasped and jumped back to my feet, because toys and books and baby bottles were suddenly flying past my ears like rocks and Joshua was crying from inside the room.
'Joshua!' I screamed over the wind, pushing with all my might against it. I eventually managed to hook my fingers around the inside of the doorframe, and with a shout I pulled myself through. But as soon as I stepped inside the nursery everything stilled again, and the door slammed shut behind me. I leapt away from it with a gasp and quickly scanned around the room.
It was dark, and cold, and everything was overturned or broken except for the cot. I crept over to it, dreading what I'd find there. But when I looked over the bars I saw my baby sleeping peacefully, lying exactly how I'd tucked him in earlier, with his eyes shut and blankets unmoved. I wept in relief. 'Oh, Joshua!'
There was a knitted blanket beside his cot I wrapped around myself. 'Where's your papa, bambino mio?'
As if Lotan was trying to answer me, I suddenly heard his quiet voice echo through the air vent in the corner of the room:
'I written many musics, but this is the, er, most, latest.'
'What?' I replied, rushing towards the vent and bending down to peer into it.
I couldn't see anything but darkness inside, until suddenly musical notes came bursting out of the holes in the vent, zipping through the air like ribbons, carrying the sound of a song I knew well. 'The Ballerina'. The tune was a soft, gentle one in my ears, but soon the notes flew faster and faster around the room, beginning to form a circle around me which I tried to fight my way out of but within seconds I found myself in the grasp of a constricting snake, a tornado of music, which was both suffocating in its density and crushing in its volume. I screamed for help. I wailed because this was not how Lotan had written the song to sound. This was deafening, and painful.
But the notes began lifting me into the air, growing louder and louder and louder, denser and denser and denser, until everything was blocked out and all I could see around me was blackness. All I could hear was the screaming of the first love song Lotan ever wrote. Even my own screams became mute in comparison.
I tried to squirm free relentlessly, growing flustered and furious with the effort, but at long last the notes around me shattered and I fell to the ground, wheezing.
Now I was in my ballet studio: a vast, empty hall wallpapered with mirrors. It was so silent I could hear the unsteady beating of my heart.
Panting with fear, I looked around me, then tried to sit up. But while I moved a quiet, deep voice began whispering into my ear, so close by I could feel its warmth.
''The Ballerina'? You want to dance 'The Ballerina' again, Olivia?...'
With a gasp my head snapped to the side, but nobody was there. Even so, Lotan's voice continued calmly, '...This how we French kiss, dear lady...'
'Lotan?' I called out, wincing at the harsh echo of my voice. 'Lotan, where are you? I can hear you, my love! Where are you? Show yourself to me! Please, my baby -'
'I was here, playing the piano, and it was exploded. The whole house - er, building. With a bomb... My suit was very, er, dirty, and ripped, because I, er, er, was pull men and nurses of under the, er, er...'
'The rubble, I know!' I cried desperately, hauling myself back onto my feet. I quickly backed up against the nearest wall to me, glancing around like a meerkat for any sign of Lotan. 'I remember you telling me that story. I remember! Oh, please, my love, where are you?'
The rich voice only went on,
'I feel very happy with you, dear lady. I feel like, me, again. This is why I fell in love with you very fast... You make me excited about life, Olivia. Many excited, so I am not, er, er, often, feel tired.'
But then the tone changed suddenly, and the ballroom was filled with the shout, 'I can't control my head! I only sleep when I dream of you, I only eat when we eat together - I only stop play piano when I with you instead!'
Terrified, I sank down into the floor and pulled my knees up again. I could only listen while my husband's voice continued, 'I told my whole soul to you! Now go, Olivia. Go and think. Take all the time, ever.'
Soon it faded back into quiet again. '...Stay, Olivia. Stay with me tonight, please... Olivia, we dance out here - for one song, yes? If you please? With not, er, er masks, so I am see you and kissing your head. Then we go back for champagne and dancing inside...'
I sobbed into my knees at all the memories we'd made. Lotan's words started coming faster and faster into my ears, so that one line was still echoing around the room by the time another started. Soon the hall was filled with booming Lotans, each reminding me of a high or low we'd been through, each bringing fresh tears to my eyes.
'...You are angel lady, Olivia. You, you are a person, out of this world. You are a beautiful ballerina and your body is like, harmony, on mine... I hear music right now, and is more beautiful than Claire De Lune, or Liebestraum. I would playing for you if I could move, but I don't want to move from you... No. Not all feelings we say with words, Olivia. This, this piano, this music, is my language. This how I expressing myself. So listen, or go away.'
I squeezed my eyes shut. '...I, I think a toe is er, broken, but we must taking off your slipper now, Olivia... But is okay, I will do, er, very careful. I won't hurt you, ever. I promise... I wrote this song for you, and I regret I showed it for her very much... She wanted me to play but I couldn't make my hands play it without you - I was not seeing my beautiful ballerina! This is you, baby... Oh, Olivia, she, she, er, she force to listen it, and I was very weak.'
'...Et ma nouvelle chanson j'appelle, 'Mon Amour Éternel'... You will have my - our baby, Olivia? We made together, us, when we making love?... When the baby is, er, er, er, comes, I am, er, I be a good father, and a good man for you. I promise. I promise I do my very, very hardest best for you and our baby... I am serious, er, er, person, Olivia. - Like my papa. I am not silly. I'm sorry... Play again, this song! I like 'Waterloo'!...'
A frail smile washed over my face at the memory of Lotan dancing madly around our old living room with me, with his hair tied in a dozen ponytails and his face alight with joy.
The memories flooded on, the ever-growing volume making me clap my hands over my ears, despite most of these old events bringing my heart a blissful sense of peace.
'...He knows Papa's voice, Olivia! He listen for me! He is the cleverest, specialist little baby ever all in all this world!... Oh, Olivia, I am very many, so proud of you. This things you went through to make this baby... I want to not messing this up, for us. I want to sleeping, and resting, and being strong, for you and Joshua...'
But my smile froze over when I heard distantly, 'No, no, not tonight. Er, let go of my clothes, please, Olivia. I must stay here tonight... I hear music, more more more musics, all the time. I must play them or they don't leave away...'
The volume jumped up again on the words, 'I am bloody demon, like Maman said! I hurting my eternal love! Very bad! Stupide petite Lotan!... You are not, er, er, er, this problem, in my head. I am the problem. Please, dear lady, never leave me. I would getting only worse, if you leave me!'
'I won't leave you!' I cried back, water gushing down my face. My shoulders shivered beneath Joshua's blanket, so I pulled it tighter around my body and tucked it under my chin. 'Lotan, please, come back to me! I'm so cold, my love. P-Please. I need you.'
But Lotan wasn't here. Only his voice was present, saying, '...So, you see, Madame, there is sensations, all around us. They are waiting to be harnessed into music, or art, or dance, or some other creative, er, er, way... The best part, for me, is, er, she makes me gooder - pardon, er, - better, pianist. Before I met her, I was, so-so, but now, I am with her, and I hear symphonies and beautiful musics, always! And I want to writing them all for her, because some, er, feelings, I can't say in words - French or English... Shut up, demons! I was only little boy! Was not my fault!'
I cried harder. Lotan continued, his voice blurred now by the echo of a hundred memories, losing order and clarity and meaning altogether... 'Let them hear what I hearing, Olivia! Listen now, London City! Demons are talking! Demons are singing! Listen, or they steal your head forever!'
'Stop!' I yelled desperately, knowing even then that it was futile. The endless voices continued.
'...I WISH I CAN BLOODY DO THIS! Why you can't fix me, God!? What I did wrong to you!? I tried I tried I tried to love you!... I can't do to you! I can't making you my wife when I'm very, er, very, very, hopeless!... I was not turn my back, Papa! I was angry! I was scared every day! I was only small boy. So I am not this sinner here, Papa. Sinner is you... No, Olivia. I don't wanting help for water! This is silly! Stupide, petit Lotan! Make yourself strong!... Music is my, er, freedom, from my mother. She cannot hurt my music... Oh Olivia, my wife, I am feel worse inside than outside! My arm is not barely feel! But I can feel this pain in, er, er, pain in my heart... Please, Olivia. I will control myself this time. I will not forgetting my family. I will remember to loving you more than music.'
Overcome by the noise now, I stood up and started running across the hall to the wooden arched door. It was stuck shut, but I pulled and pulled and pulled on its door handle with all my might until it burst open. A gale was blowing around the passageway outside the room, but the eye of a hurricane would have felt calmer than staying trapped in that dungeon of memories any longer.
However, as I took a step out of the room, suddenly every echoing voice fell silent. I groaned in relief, clutching my head, but when I glanced back over my shoulder to see what had silenced everything, I found Lotan standing like a ghost in the middle of the studio.
He was watching me. His face was pale and his frame was weak, but his eyes were as resolute as ever when he parted his lips and said, 'I always love you, Olivia. You have my heart. But music has my soul, and mind, and body.'
YOU ARE READING
The Greatest Mind I Ever Knew
Romance**SEQUEL SERIES TO THE 3-BOOK 'RUTH HARRIS' SERIES ALSO FOUND ON MY PAGE.** Olivia Brookes is a young ballerina with her whole life ahead of her. Her biggest problem is finding patience for her mother, who has a lifelong diagnosis of Dissociative Id...
