Our Bloody Flowers

Chapter 9: Our bright future

Adam disappeared. She hadn't heard from him in a day and Mathilda was scared to death. It never happened. Adam was discreet, quiet, but he had his habits. So why was his shop still closed at 4pm? Why didn't he answer her messages? She felt that she had failed. She felt that she had thrown him into the lion's den without realizing it. They should have talked more about this story, thoroughly studied this last case. Everything was her fault and now Adam has disappeared!

A great inhalation. It didn't calm her down. Adam would never do that, not intentionally. Something had to have happened. The anxiety rose a notch with the sign in front of the cafe. It said "Exceptional closure today. Thank you for your understanding". Mathilda was close to calling the police, but what's the point? Adam was an adult and she couldn't tell them why she was worried. It was top secret. Even the boss wouldn't do anything. If he died in the battlefield, he would be replaced. If one was better, of course.

Adam was a lone wolf. But his shop mattered and Mathilda also thought she was important to him. He would have warned her, a simple text. A sign of life because he would have killed her if she disappeared without telling him. Where are you, Adam? What happened to you in the lion's den? Where did you go without telling me? Mathilda could not help scratching herself, reviving her eczema at the same time. Red patches uncontrollable here and there, bites of the cold, of stress, of the troubles of life. Of Adam who disappears without warning.

She imagined the worst, the knotted belly. Adam beaten up, lost in nature, at the bottom of a ravine, in a trunk, dismembered, decapitated. Adam crying during a crisis and hitting himself, biting his skin so hard that his teeth break. Oh, the memory of Adam during his crises is again lodged before her eyes and Mathilda feels like she is reliving those terrible moments, helpless for her friend.

*

They're in college, the sun is shining high in the sky. It could be nice, but it's not. The students around them talk loudly, it's lunch break. Adam didn't swallow anything, he can't. His throat is blocked but he pretends to listen to Mathilda, nodding from time to time. She speaks fast, as loud as the others. Leans towards him to shout in his ear some words. Adam jumps each time, with wet eyes. He lets his body stand against a wall because he knows he can easily fall. Mathilda takes this for a more comfortable position, has not yet grasped that nothing will prevent the crisis, not this time anyway.

Adam feels it rise in waves, like a vertigo that takes us little by little in a merry-go-round. Like an anguish that we try to keep quiet but that screams under our skin, stands on our hair despite the heat of the day. It comes slowly throughout the body, crosses the winding paths of its veins to the heart of problems. Hit a first shot without him being able to hold a whine. The crisis hurts, still concealable but the deafening noise only strengthens it. Again and again until the explosion. Adam is a time bomb, a grenade thrown among thousands of unsuspecting students. He doesn't have the strength to keep it between his palms, to keep it for the day. Not this time, unfortunately. He stealthily raises his eyes to Mathilda, his throat blocked by an involuntary silence. Understand me immediately! would he like to shout. Get me out, throw me out the window, open this throat, air, air, air and nothing else!

But nothing comes, no words. Just his weak inaudible whining in the hubbub. Yet he trembles and his eyes reflect a light similar to the glazing of painters. Beautiful blue eyes already imbued with many curiosities. Adam is frail, thinner at the time. Lips more pink, complexion less pale, eyes with less dark circles. But he feels like he has the legs of a young fawn, learning to stand among the galloping crowd. And Mathilda still tells him a story that he cannot perceive. But she smiles then he continues to hold back. Until the explosion, the last drop that is now waited, desired.