Page 46 of Teddy Bear

I approach with heavy steps in black boots through the snow.

The snow flurries are getting stronger; the snowflakes falling from the pale blue, cold sky are getting bigger and denser.

I take my backpack off my back, feeling a strong tightness and pain in my shoulders. Anyway, I put on black leather gloves on my fingers, which are additionally faded and reddened from the winter, and I alternately take a small shovel and a pickaxe, and while my whole body, back and arms, fingers and shoulders are stiff, I start digging.

A strong, sharp and cold wind cuts across my red, winter-cracked cheeks.

The paleness around me is getting tighter, colder, narrower; it closes around me like a vortex, overlapping and heavy.

He is every thought, every image, every word that flows through my brain. Against my will, he is here. He is hers, and he is mine; he is nobody's; he is from the darkness itself, the man to whom I give my life forever.

Underneath the whiteness of the snow, the loose black earth mingles with my black gloves. I bite decisively with a small metal shovel; time goes by, and the hole gets deeper and deeper. I become desperate, unsure if I hit the spot.

Everything is covered with snow, and I can't find my way around; it's been years since I buried Teddy.

I breathe in quickly, with effort, the cold, sharp air that cuts my lungs. I feel a sharp pain in my chest that almost folds me in half; I feel a sudden nausea and dizziness that almost makes me lose my breath.

The drugs I've been taking lately have made me particularly weak.

Why?

I try to ask some faint, residual part of the old suffering that still lives inside me, but that question grows paler, more and more insignificant, before the cold abyss of Danny's eyes.

Take me, have me, fuck me, use me, I'll be the rag doll that you can sew and put together as you like, I'll be your project, the biggest - to heal all your old wounds on me.

I'll be your dry, pressed flower in a colorful, faded herbarium; and no one will know it, except you and me.

Hypnotize me, bind me, fill me with your seed, burn my world and destroy everything I've known, dress me in beautiful clothes and put hidden medallions on me - a symbol of knowing that we belong to each other forever - control me, from the shadows, hidden, because that's how you know best, and I will always, again, gladly surrender to you.

Take my pain and old wounds; they will all heal if you guide me.

Take me into your shadows, into your darkness - you yourself know that this is our destiny, a vortex that we cannot resist.

We were made for each other, and that's how it will be from now on.

I am your dolly, and you are my doc.

Horror and paradise, all in one.

I sit on the wet ground, on the cold, soft snow, and take off my gloves to feel it under the calloused knuckles of my fingers.

Tears fill the corners of my eyes; I have to dig Teddy up; I have to.

I calm my breathing and wait for the pain that was squeezing my diaphragm to subside a little, then I put on my gloves, sweaty and wet from the snow, and continue digging.

This time I move a few centimeters to the left, looking for the grave of my childhood memories.

I continue to dig; it shouldn't be far below the surface. I strike with the pick and shovel, scraping the black, wet, and rotten earth soaking in the new snow.

It may have rotted, disintegrated, and soaked into the moist, heavy, loose, earthy soil.

After all, many years have passed, and I may be searching in vain for Teddy's soft, plush body - perhaps the outlines of my buried childhood are gone forever.

I dig on, furious now, fighting the onslaught of tears I'm stubbornly holding back, and the more childish despair I hate, which overwhelms me all over; I dig, fighting the flakes all over my hair, and Danny's eyes looking at me from all sides.

His observation room isn't just in the asylum; it's everywhere, watching my every move, and I can always feel his gaze on me—almost always, I'm floating in his brain, and he clings to me convulsively and gruntingly, refusing to let me go.

He holds me, within the confines of his consciousness, like a doll that his mother forbade him to play with a long time ago - and he can only have me when I'm not his.