Theo Palarie: Falling From Olympus (#Wattys2018)

4. The Man Wearing Black

I think night stalker might be on to something as my lens keeps steady on the erotic scene in the outpost; that is until the skinny girl —wilting her long neck in pleasure— decides to point in my general direction. I rock back from of her slim aiming finger. But what the fuck? It's too early in the love show to be discovered. So I recede from the moonlight, right as the guy rears from her thighs to steal a look for himself. But it's impossible that she could have seen me. The band room isn't lit to give me away, but the sound of my bowl of cereal clinking against the wall, probably does me in.

I calm myself to return my scopes to the far off carousing. My vision reaching out from the shadowing eaves of the room. My attention locks onto the solid brick wall, where the girl and the boy continue to embrace each other. The guy, now standing again, is smoothing his long raven hair to the side as he looks back. He's scanning the apartment's face. I can feel his eyes dismissing closed curtains —and eliminating dark windows— searching for the circular shapes of my lenses. He ends his search and fills the negative space between them. They've started a sashay of tiny steps. Waltzing side to side and around. Leaning into each other's ears as they whisper soft-spoken words that I'm not meant to hear.

Watching on, I can't help but feel my debauchery has checked the same box as Nightstalker. But fuck him. The male counter-part at the kissing corner is easing away, and the girl is lowering to his belt. No wait, she's actually collapsing. Her back is dragging against the brick and her skull is slowly chipping away into embers. Shooting off the rough surface as she sinks behind the shadowing print of the tree. The guy becomes one with the night, in a quick heavenward movement, and the scene is left littered in afterglow and fiery leaves.

Breathing has become a chore. My lungs are unable to expand. There's a boa of awe squeezing around my chest and the binoculars have clattered to the floor during the spell. My hand drums the dark ground in search. I'm unable to deposit my attention back to the flame retardant burning in the outpost. The embers, the remains of that girl, are still breaking and dying off into the dark. Drifting with the breeze like flash paper parlour tricks.

I excavate the ground for the binoculars and find them, inspecting for any cracks under the light coming in through the window. But nothing. I can't see anything in the space where I could see it all, a second ago.

I'm under the shape of something I can only associate with the ground. As if my own shadow has reversed the roles to umbrella itself above me. It's his! The young man's outside my window. Mr Kissing Corner has somehow compelled his lean body to hover five stories off the ground, and half his darling face seems to be absorbing the pale moonlight.

"I know you saw us" he begins. His voice slithering through the open window.

The only reaction my body knows is to turn and face the entrances behind me. Tylin's door is ajar. And Ashley's I would've heard, roll open, from a mile away. My head unwinds forward, canvassing the dark vista. My eyes even squint in the process. I'm trying to make out the details of his face through the window and its dust stained portions.

"I also know you can hear me. Question is how?" his voice is dead serious like he's about to punch me in the face.

As he continues hanging on nothing –expecting and tranquil like a fleshy piñata– I automatically lock spine in attention. The man outside is real; although the pale, near ivory skin I'm inspecting is to porcelain and ghostly to be human. His features belong to a marble bust: dimpled chin and long, jet black hair splitting ends at his neck. The strands turning silver in the moonlight. He's wearing black jeans and a matching iridescent shirt with the top buttons undone in sexually suggestive way. He's the type of guy who deserves twenty minutes in a telenovela. For a brief moment, I see him scrunching in through the window, but it's only a freak hallucination on my part.