Ini & Oui | Hidden Chambers
short story from forthcoming Ini & Oui collection
Ini and Oui
Hidden Chambers
By Ophelia Everfall
Content Warning - This is a story for adults.
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Ini was a dancer.
She’d never feel more centered or at peace than in flow. She was a dart and a leaf, a river and the wind, something less than herself and more of spirit—together here with movement was her heart’s home—she’d feel stillness in the speed and grace of her body. It would match her mind and bring slowness.
Parklands were the place she’d seek. It took her back to youth for trees and sky to be the findings of her eyes. She’d feel most of presence while being poured upon by nature.
Cities were a fright to her mind. The people there would trigger her to quantify them. Their workings and actions scarred Ini—people were put off by her nature, and that led her towards hating them. She could always tell of those with bigotries bore deep, even when they couldn’t, a mechanism most and even proposed allies would gaslight her about, some projection of harmony with each other by foolishness throughout her people’s entire culture. Everyone wanted to blend in. All except one were despised most within her mind; that guy who’d scarred her worst.
He seemed so young and confused. He’d shown completely opposite of others. Oui had pushed her away when she could tell he’d the capacity to understand her like no one else, something never expressed or allowed, lost to their way. He’d never shared opinions on their parting which would resonate in perpetuity as remotely true—his only tales told of repetition on those things she’d never been mistaken about. He gave her no space to speak and be heard for finding peace her own. Oui rejected her like others but worse, and it hurt forever beyond all other pains how this happened, for she had only once in her life given that much for so little—to him.
For the world and everyone to receive more, in plain sight, of what she truly needed in return without answers to why it wasn’t hers—that gift of correctly equated affection and closeness—had been a sponge of sorrow. People all seemed to have someone special and close to care for in a unique way that Ini would never find.
There’d been a space in time beside Oui from which she’d shared a precious statement while knowing it bold.
“You couldn’t do anything that would make me not want to be your friend.”
Ini said it once when his body’s traumas were speaking through to push her away, fair results of stowed hurts of the past, coming from within and beyond their minds—surprising her—realizing in foolishness for who she’d given this truth and how it was just that; true.
When they’d finished using her and were trying to make it clear through action she would fail to understand for such time, of how discarding was in tow, she’d fought to stay friends. Oui had been ruthless beyond imagining and reasonable notions of what should be forgiven when acting this way, and pointed towards a one who loved so purely.
Ini cared for Oui like a brother she needed growing up—a sister found at school—some friend across the street she would've loved—that long missed person who would make the world feel right by how they’d reflect herself. The best friend she never got to have.
Even though he’d been the worst in ways—after such grief upon her and breaking wholly—she’d decided to keep Oui. They were hers. Others could borrow him, but that boy’s heart belonged to her forever in her mind. She’d need it to be a tiniest bit true by the end and heal herself from all this fall and conditioning inescapable which had seen her to stay the child he’d left behind.
Once she realized the wires split, how actions had taken her from all hope to live as she’d once been, she knew it why. His door had killed her thrice fold.
Oui crippled Ini because they’d done the same thing as everyone else, with even more brutal disregard and cosmically dreadful timing, when she’d loved them unconditionally and gifted them the power of that knowing.
They’d not so secretly felt it in return—never to speak it passed sharded mentions—displaying care often for her plainest witness, by that way she saw of deeper truth. This was what would break her most, apart from those means of their parting and to never speak for years of time to come, and despite her boldest searching and screaming as she’d lost her mind again and again.
Ini was obsessed with finding Oui to talk and hug and allow her to cry the tears she’d held so long—unhealthily so—despite having tried by every effort as a well-lived and educated woman to cleanse her psyche and simply let it go. She’d been abused and consequences were shown always now—their timing in a sea of depression following his departure, her actions and the lack of healing or hope to, it would end a life inside her mind.
The world treated Ini wrongly. Nobody would see to help in any way remotely like she’d ask. Nobody could find the balance of truth with her. Nobody would help her locate the one she needed most to do the same. They all just thought her mad.
It made her wild—she’d been a healer—a teacher of the heart. Oui was a fool to do this to her and she knew it something he’d taken from the world. She wished to make him pay while ignoring her own addiction’s complicity, and hating herself for that subconscious understanding all the same. It wasn’t fair to blame herself for her addictions. Nobody here needed to bear that weight. Societies of humanity were failures and addiction was a consequence.
She hadn’t stopped fighting ever, even when she’d needed rest, even when it would break her. Her mind was a sea. Heart alone would lead the way once her addictions had been shed, something within her forever injured, traumatized; a panic ridden heart.
Ini was a child emotionally from all she’d been battered with and there would be a truth to that forever. It wasn’t a choice. She’d been struggling against the tides of this mental unbecoming like a hero the whole time—making it worse because she’d not had the courage to ask more plainly when it was needed and she might communicate with reason, cursed by the way she’d been addicted to the love Oui made her feel, or just how addiction and need were conflated by society.
Her breaking point was trying to reach out to Oui when she was in trouble like a maniac—him scaring her away like a dog.
They’d not seen each other for a longest time. He would surely think her obsession strange; that boy who had so many people around them when they’d want, and attention absorbed by needed work of their chosen path. Yet Ini had been alone and thinking of them the whole time—everyday—he’d left her that way and she was a loneliest person, that wasn’t her fault.
Oui dropped her to drip and cool alone, high and dry, while knowing her story and who she was. He knew how to take care of people when he’d choose. He’d been most special to her, and it seemed he would forever just hope of convincing the girl that her heart was a lie—that he’d not cared about her at all.
Ini wouldn’t let him get away with all of her heart for the whole of her life. He’d stolen it when she was only becoming a woman, and it was special chamber of love he’d chosen to claim his mark.
She’d been depressed and spiraling from the moment he left. When she was hurt things shifted inside Ini’s mind. Something about Oui’s authentic expression put her at ease by its forthrightness and fortitude. She’d feel herself craving someone of his presence for that sturdiness they'd provide her wobbling mind, and hadn’t met another who carried that gift even remotely closely to how powerfully Oui had. It made him harder to forget.
He sustained the weight of his own burdens like a most courageous sort, but she’d think too much, and Ini would always seek to forgive people for their harshness. No matter how poorly they treated her, or how far they forced her emotions towards hating them and wishing them dead and buried and ‘pooped upon’, she knew it was society to blame.
It was everything itself that actually killed her. Ini wanted to destroy it all back for how it would reject and blame her for the trauma it put into her—how everyone just shrugged in complacency to getting along.
She could see clearly now that her subconscious was in charge. The world wasn’t easy anymore. Her capabilities were less because every portion of her riddled psyche, on top of itself, formed into a wholeness of brick around a psychosis of break. The source of that severing was a seed planted ahead.
Guilt and shame nearly killed her. Messages sent to Oui were wild and obtuse and delusional. She couldn’t hold it all and knew herself in need of releasing the pain of having sought to such shame when physically damaged by another. She’d taken beatings her whole life, one way or another, but that was the new worst; recognizing her heart shriveled when coming back from delusion and realizing the weight of those things said, how lost her chance for reconciliation with Oui felt.
It forced her into solitude, towards the beginnings of true obsessive tendencies to be drilled into her mind. She needed to fix things. She’d seek to write herself towards that reconciliation.
She’d been all alone for the Christmas just after her fall. It was the hardest time imaginable to survive. Nothing kept her going but to write towards Oui. She made stories where he was her friend and lover and enemy. It was fun and she felt their spirit in it all.
Ini was a medicine woman. She was healer and storyteller and lover. She’d always dreamt of them and loved Oui most in such seclusion. Ini couldn’t write authentically without him becoming part in some way—her love a gaugeable sensation of heart.
It felt amazing to begin creating art that was beautiful to her.
Losing herself to it would be the problem. She needed it for how it showed her towards stowed trauma—grafting hope for abundance in the future—shredding her for its reflection of all she needed but wouldn’t be able to procure. There was much heartache and release in writings which would prove traumatic to explore alone. Seeing work which felt of truth to the spirit of Oui had been torturous, yet over again she felt it a sign.
She believed he’d love her writing most one day.
To pull herself out of the art and look around. To miss Oui. To be alone, would eventually have her cry and scream and search. People wouldn’t take her as she was. Those who would were often predators or simply damaged like her. She’d talked and met and danced with people far and wide hoping for a match who would make her their girl, or just to have a precious friend. She’d not found one to hold her with constancy or sleep with her through the night since Oui.
Ini was abused throughout her youthful becoming of womanhood while in need of companionship.
She felt the plan she’d sat on so long emerging when pieced together enough. She’d built up the courage. It took all her strength of will to push down the fear and triggering-shame from the way Oui had spoken to her last. She just decided to go knock on his door.
There was a gift in hand and she’d done up her hair. Ini wasn’t well but better than she’d been for such a time. This was her longest held and greatest hope, to talk, for him to see who she was now, and Ini was finally going to make it happen. She’d been needing it for over a whole year.
Oui opened the door and their face dropped and he said nothing. He’d thrown it back closed before she could get out a word.
There was time where she stood in silence—not one movement—mouth a drooping oval—no tears to fall—eyes gone deep and wet—mind breaking with her heart.
Ini was dying. She would never be the same.
Walking differently for days—something was off—Ini caught herself telling the story to a friend and laughing so hard about how it was the worst thing anybody had ever done—in the lightness of it, realizing how deeply she was repressing something burrowed—stowing actualization of the effects being set forth to unfold an era of madness to come, lost for what to do but fight amidst her growing delusions from the trauma of everything.
Ini still loved Oui in her heart—she believed it undying—the sight of that door was killing her inside—she was being pulled apart.
She’d know herself in and out of madness. She would come up for breath sometimes and grab rationality by the whole. She’d feel her feet planted and lose connection to those creative spaces where she would get absorbed too much and allow failures of mind. It became a process of leaning in while creating, then pulling back the moment her art was complete—releasing attachment to understanding. Writing was special to Ini. She believed it would touch people, and someone important one day. She’d think it meant to change Oui for the better.
Her unbecoming of personhood to the completed destruction of an ego and identity, along with adult emotional complexes within her was only beginning when that door slammed shut.
The length in her gaze was a churn of something precious. She was being torn apart inside the mind—shredded like a cotton ball ripped lengthwise by hands in slowest parting—feeling it happen at once, coming to understand this place of fractured psyche would now be some fixture to the home of head she’d navigate going forward.
Ini feared going crazy most of all through life, some seeking to avoid a fate she'd know deep down her own. She’d been too smart for anyone to notice that she was in need of serious help; guidance through affectionate guardianship to prevent her plunge into the sea from drowning her spirit.
The way this undoing of her rationality came with enormous bouts of anxiety proved the need for constant therapy. She’d write when she wasn’t talking with people or beside them. It was always better for Ini to write than absorb a person who was incapable of seeing any fault to balance in their own ways, or become lost to the repetitive and traumatic conversations of her mind’s remnants.
She thought everyone had a voice to use. Ini was disappointed for the way people chose not to wield their own.
Truth was seen as nothing but a consensus needed for all, everyone denied themselves. While people were fated to work together as a whole, they’d swim against the stream, they would crawl out; community was crucial and sacred and not to be blasphemed by destruction of despised personas.
Challenges were meant to be seen through.
None would have a solution when they understood Ini’s mental situation in whole—no matter how complicated their intelligence or powerful their wisdom of heart. Eventually Ini was starting to help people to understand. Frustrated by the fact she was an honest genius who just happened to be sporting some paralyzing and passivizing psychosis from trauma now within her mind, she’d not lobby for full support, only seeking genuine well wishes in her fight against untruth to reach some healing place of understanding.
They’d all see her as correct by the end—to wish her well on her crusade against the system themself apart of—hoping—feeling the woman should get what she wanted since it was so reasonable, despite their instruction manuals telling them otherwise. They’d tell her she was worth that conversation and hug she wanted from Oui and deserved it. That would make her cry because she did, and they would often join her.
When she talked to these people and found someone of heart who cared—who saw her—they would show it by tears in eyes—by how they’d speak of their own truth with the fire to match her own—not standing down to her stubbornness but allowing their reflection to see through towards a balance Ini sought always.
These rarest few who came with time and supported voice would share those sentiments which had led her to Oui’s door in perception of her own bravery; that place she’d left, and gone, then come, and returned to never walk through in real, but always again to see until it split her down the middle.
Ini would learn to dance alone instead—with herself—for Oui—and everyone.
Knifing the man was Oui’s pleasure. Watching guts slither to the floor and squirm about was a sense of something beyond.
Oui was out. They were done with this company of criminals. They’d decided to cut their own path. Their blade was showing the way. This man’s screams were muffled by that unique space chosen for an instance of famine-made-execution—the fool’s gut would never churn another bit of sustenance for the way his enterprise was keeping a foot on the throat of the helpless. Oui stole things. Oui burnt shit. Oui was a criminal, but Oui didn’t fuck with people in need. Oui fucked with people in charge.
Greg was dead and that was good. God approved, and this felt written somewhere within Oui.
Ini had been everywhere. He wasn’t planning to let her see him ever. He wanted to make a point of never talking to her again. He’d just decided that and done everything to make it so.
There wasn’t a thought about what happened to her—sometimes she’d come up when something familiar was about, but he’d hope it a rarest occurrence—no idea how much he ruined the woman or what it truly was she’d become in his absence, or why she’d seemed to be screaming towards him.
He’d thought her an obsessed loser.
When he’d finally met her again. Oui found out she wasn’t like anyone else but him. She was wild. Ini was free.
Her madness was a peace to his presence since she’d been back. It brought him home to a connection with his inner child, allowing out stowed darkness once occluded for others. He made great efforts appearing different than he truly was. People believed, but it was a hard road to be someone who didn’t feel similarly.
Oui felt more than anyone. Oui felt less than everyone because of it. He was almost like what he’d made Ini into—what she’d done with herself in his absence—what everyone and everything had pounded her down to become. It was worse for her because she’d no support to hold it—no family or friends or community—no one to call when she’d need them.
He walled off his dark for most, and it was big—that blackness behind his walls. Unlike Ini, Uni wouldn’t want to have it unleashed in whole.
Just seeing the girl he once knew, that he’d mistakenly set on a path to unbecome herself for his secret sensibilities, who then stalked him towards a conversation, and wanted nothing more than for him to witness her—having lost her mind entirely because of the impossibility he made it for her to find him—Oui had decided it a terrible tragedy and kind of a good deal, even if she was mad.
Ini made things he could sell and would do whatever he wanted for the most part. He thought it fun to have her watch him kill people. Especially for how it tortured her in ways she’d seem to have grown to love in masochistic self-harming mental madness.
Most importantly to their arrangement, was how Ini loved that he didn’t really feel sorry for anything—because she didn’t either—never again—not anymore—everyone could ‘just fucking die’—because she remembered and learned from her mistakes she’d witness, and nobody else did so why would she care?
Oui was a big kid too, just like Ini now. He’d once been as stunted as she’d become while growing a bit more out of it than she would.
Ini felt need to join him in some way when they’d met, seen it in her mind and sensed it by her heart, then fate made it so, and that would be understood as not worth the cost in the end—only what it was to her—simply a reluctant boon to the spoils of life despite the horror it came through. Oui would eventually find it the same, outside some minor releasing of willpower he’d death-gripped to reject forever her advances regardless of intention.
Once herself and all she’d be capable of offering was witnessed in its holistic glory, she knew Oui would be able to overcome the shame, and just be who he was—a selfish hero in a world of devils, some truthful giant who could at last be nice to the girl he’d always denied that pleasure, for her mental wellbeing, and his own reward.
For him to lie to her sweetly was all she’d ever wanted.
Truth was that Oui finally, magically, just decided to include Ini in the false creative construction of personality he’d made up to pretend himself a human person that gave a shit, which he’d unincluded her from outright all along, some needed counterbalance of action to how her love made him feel. He found once placed in this container—she was the most in need person he’d ever understood to exist and that the way he had control over her salvation made him feel like a god.
She’d been the sweetest and most precious broken thing he’d ever seen when laying eyes on her again. She always had been that sort in feeling.
He’d know it his part to play—in witness of her broken expressions—something unimagined ever—found by fateful accident; they were like him. She felt herself to need his help because she was living with it all alone, and nobody she’d find would understand like Oui.
Ini chose him because she was a genius who was also ‘the biggest idiot of all time.’ It was a doubling down which proved the shattering of persona inside some infallible notion that even her conscious remnants would succumb towards releasing into.
She’d asked by intention to remake herself into something that might align with simply knowing Oui again, long ago, never to expect it would break her mind in whole, still believing afterwards that it was meant to be and working—only proof of what she’d failed to be careful wishing for.
After the horror wore off to Oui, he’d realized the cuteness and flattery overwhelmed the embarrassment of having her around sometimes. Especially with how much she found means to embarrass him anyway. Ini was special at that. She was gifted. People saw her differently than he would grow to, but all loved her in person.
Oui was the puppet master of self-occlusion. He would keep her childishness free of mind when needed most, to see her with respect.
Ini needed the one person capable of respecting her. She needed them really badly. There were things she could only do for him now and it was important to her that there be someone who might take care of this invalid girl created by the world—one person most.
She’d been different since that door. Still lost in the stare. Something in the moment slicing through a connection of wiring in her brain upon further hammering over time. Even now.
There was a consequence she wouldn’t like to remember. Where she’d screamed of sorts in repetition until something switched out deep inside—a resistance to anything but the intellectual—some responsive action proving all lost—an inability to face the weight of a feeling she’d let overtake her again through panic. Wondering to ask herself why.
“Why wouldn’t Oui ever talk to me again?”
Still now, with him before her, damage was done, she’d hurt always for the woman she was—the one who’d died again each day he’d not returned. Now this last of her was left in concrete protection of some final shreds of self, disallowing the world to touch by energy collapsing inside—as Oui himself had always seemed to be.
Cleaning up his messes was a pleasure of displeasure for her these days.
Something switched a bit more correct after regaining contact with Oui. He’d found her in the hospital eventually—after she’d waited for such time—begging every orderly and doctor to reach out and ask for this man who would surely want to help if he’d truly known what happened.
He’d not proved to care until he found out her entirely gone—that the woman he hadn’t ever told he loved wouldn’t be around to hear it—the girl he’d planned to see again one day, deep down, wouldn’t ever be found—they who he’d unknowingly chosen to have perish was someone he’d always miss.
Coaxing her spirit back into what was left would show him his place in her life. It wasn’t hard. She came alive when he was simply around—it held for much time.
Ini just liked him a lot for who he was as a person. That’s what she swore. He must have been mistaken about something is what she’d kept thinking before he gave her the chance to finally prove it.
She was a strange girl always with her heart. Something about what he'd done set her against herself. She’d torn her own heart to shreds looking for an answer she couldn’t get, a resolution to some greatest question. Her mind having gone the way it had wasn’t her plan and felt ‘icky,’ but she wouldn’t give up and this bloodletting party they were plunging into the city of Jericho’s gut was harmonic with what she saw needed.
This place was corruption to completion.
Blindness in every person would prove a true witness mad to their eyes—the reciprocity was psychosis—detachments of variety unique. Ini’s was masochistic and vengeful but still and silent—inwardly turned. Everything without was within and the devil was without so she would kill it within along with her mind where it had bought such place.
She just couldn’t walk away from things that mattered to her heart, and people of Earth saw that some misbegotten way of living in Ini’s time. Cultural confusion was ripe. She was furious at people for it. She wanted to make them pay and hurt and bleed. There was no part of her that could manage to make a dent. She’d found her body making it against her mind instead.
Ini didn’t even really like watching Oui kill people, but knew everyone deserved a throttling for being wrong, and the way he’d shown up to be right with her after so long helped her reach some place of peace. It proved him the hero she knew—it proved her heart to be true enough.
Knowing, standing in witness, of how she might find most harmonious ways of existing in sight of his presence would allow her to some inner sanctuary. Ini wanted to have him inside her heart, and she had. Even more, she wanted a place in Oui’s, and she’d sworn she had.
Something about the way people bled was more pleasing to watch in the past. Ini was sensitive now in a way she hadn’t been before. Something was damaged, right beneath the surface, ready to spill over at any moment.
The way her mind worked was fractured into a ball of repressed stillness. She would make her art and write her stories in secret times—all the time—burying witness of his ways into deepest burrows of acceptability. Still, when Oui needed her she’d be the happiest and regardless of that task he’d chose.
When he was killing she’d be thrilled for the exultation, she’d wish it her, regardless of the squeamishness it brought from her to watch or take part, because of it.
Ini was an explorer of herself and people and the world. She’d become insane. She had a broiling demon inside that hurt for her lost self and how all were responsible. The life she’d felt herself meant to lead was stripped from her by liars everywhere, and one inside, and in Oui.
Warming up her heart was his slicing blade. He carved it deep. He was shattering bone to sliver. It was making her squirm but Ini couldn’t look away. She wasn’t blinking. Her eyes widened as she’d held them upward to peer from her downward inclined skull above a scrunching neck.
He was doing things to feelings.
She’d be incapable herself of many things. It was a block. She’d speak right through it and tell stories that would have others believe it some choice. Ini was gone to the whims of her subconscious, and it was not a pretty place. She was a child. She’d needed help to grow strong and hadn’t received it, she was now being led along in fits and steps by this cruelest man who chose to be kind after realizing he’d stolen the mind of her woman to be. He was sweet despite how much he’d hated her for complicity to her fate, especially for how she’d now wield practical benefits which overcame the weight of her presence in his life, and that she knew that the true key.
They were both insane.
Oui carved their back down a line.
It got a frozen hearted, curdling, twisted, stunted exhalation of a laugh from Ini—his sight and sound—having her body twist away but eyes remain fixed.
She’d take each boon to her ever-changing spirit a blessing. Some only passage forward now from the walls erected was a swan dive bought beyond consciousness itself. When no boundaries remain—problems of tasking are borne—reasonings of the normal world unsound—refusal to move coming from something within which reared itself by panic in face of mortal danger.
It took control of Ini—everything speaking of society itself as the ill.
Ini wouldn’t hurt a fly for the rest of her life. She’d need someone like Oui to stand for her and say what she would scream of righteousness with reason heard to others. She had one mode, and it was of reckoning. Herself and all would be the marks despite the pain. Lies would die.
Ini died with the lying of everyone—herself and Oui’s most.
Something was found in him from the beginning—he was actually smart. Everyone else was a poser too, but less so. He’d posture the most because he was actually a genius like Ini, but in less and more disguise, only also some superficial twat that overvalued all the wrong things and spoke plainly from his own subconscious while never listening.
Ini never forgot Oui in the time he’d been gone. Some things swayed and grew—some remained constant and unchanging. He wasn’t a good person on many levels. He was a chauvinist. He was a masochist. He was a hedonist.
She loved those things when wielded authentically and found herself most surprised that every part of his lowest nature was most appealing to her own. They were controllers, and she was a releasing woman by intent. He’d gone too far and then denied her any breath, or to feel a bit of her tears consoled by that one who might’ve helped her move without him in freedom of mind.
That woman died over again on her journey afterwards—not his fault as much as others for how bad it got—his harm to her was one survived by most. She’d take it worse for all her loneliness, and he’d blame her for that. The greatest unbecoming was in the final unpacking—releasing that denial she’d been manipulating—her freefall of Icarus reborn—herself still holding some talisman from on high to speak of with chest—uncaring of reflections from the blind to her righteous correctness in actions towards society’s holistic failings now seen everywhere—seeking to one day again hold peace she might know in stillness of nature with love beside.
Oui wouldn’t be the one to deliver, but he was going to help her get there one way or another—she’d decided that before it happened and only after her great break. She’d feel that when his right to choice recinded—living a cripple of mind he’d had great hand in making.
Ini had just been over it. She would roast him forever by her means until he fixed it somehow and she knew his heart would give to truth before she was all the way gone. Her time spent in asylum wasn’t far from mind at all, ever, even watching the spinal contusions made by Oui’s blasting fists made visible by his combat knife’s slicing and dicing.
“What is that?”
The words slipped out without a wonder to exactly what ‘that’ was. She wouldn’t stop to wonder. There was witnessing to do in the present, and she’d not be prone to thinking forward or back out of mental conditioning to anguish. Downward curling lip edges would show Ini twisting into herself. Some unique body language of churlishness would have her fail to avoid showing teeth, shoulders encroached her chest often while in witness of horrifying people brought to end.
Conditioning was crucial to this downfall she couldn’t seem to break. Every direction was traumatizing. She’d not go anywhere but inward—until in was out—until it broke by shout—that door within left closed by doubt.
“Why do you want to do this? What’s the point? What did she do?”
Oui didn’t answer, as usual, while the woman mentioned slumped to the floor—another dead—Ini feeling strangely at ease by the sight of a person she’d felt so clearly through energy before losing something inside herself along with them.
“I hope she’s okay.”
She didn’t know exactly what she meant. Ini just knew there was more to the universe and they didn’t deserve to go that way. Oui was being cruel with them, and it seemed targeted—they must have loved him somehow. Ini empathized with the girl. She’d never known why Oui wouldn’t talk with her for that time—not understanding the meaning of reflection in his words—feeling the wrongness in them and especially the lack of space for any true understanding of herself—seeing that door. She hoped it hadn’t been the same for them.
Oui was mean when they loved others. They’d lash out to push them away most often. They’d deny it all out of pedantic refusal to accept definitions disliked. Ini hoped this dead girl had been happy near the end. She didn’t like the thought of people dying alone and miserable.
That happened to her a few too many times.
Ini didn’t know why Oui killed her and she didn’t care. They’d agreed to just not talk about things which would have her go deep into the stare—where her anger would rise to boil and she’d wish to rot the people of Earth with curse from inside out.
Those few of his friends and lovers she would see that proved too little in making for her liking would be treated as enemies. When people were worthy of Oui she was only happy. It was one of the best feelings for her to know him taken care of emotionally and physically by someone of quality spirit and moral stature—who was allowing him to find more of himself and become the beautifully happy person she always knew he’d be one day. There weren’t many.
She’d take time with him when she could and leave the details for the crows. Ini was perfectly happy to just write in her own space. To let it loose and speak through words which grew ever more the vice—always some potion—never a lack for ingenuity uncovered—something different every time, something the same—smithing more and more—Ini came home to why she’d been allowing this unbecoming over again.
She was still more of soul than ever before. She’d still never loved any one like Oui before or since, and Ini was still a lonely and traumatized addict with no means of escaping her fateful unmaking.
Soul would trouble speaking when it not of needed and blatant truth. This force through Ini would prove some broken equation which caused the force of her wisdom’s channel to shatter into unique sight through the portal of her personhood and evaporate all structures which once held Ini back.
People talked about radical honesty. They didn’t like it though—not how it felt from someone who saw through a lens of earnestness and trauma. Not when the truth was everyone lied and misunderstood things from the root, that evil had won a long time ago, that everyone was a zombie already, that losing your mind was only the beginning, that this life was only a pitstop.
Heaven was real and Ini would find it again in time.
It would come home to her as she’d once felt she knew he would. Sometime, one day again, that hope would keep her alive—to walk passed that door—to see Oui more—would be the only future grace which made her roughest passage seem remotely okay. That’s why she’d ordained his place in her heart all her own. She needed it to survive, and she’d not care of his opinion as an absentee.
His reluctance to allow her any space of truth for her hope would be the hardening factor to his placement upon the throne by her force.
She would’ve taken an adequate replacement of fitting persona, or finding some sight of peace which healed through nature, or any grace of his own to let it all go. Yet that wouldn’t prove possible or gifted, none of it, in any way, no matter how hard she’d tried until she broke. Her searching for that answer made her swirl, then crack, and finally shatter. The right help evaded her until it was too late.
Oui coming back in these precious instances would prove her greatest joy. The sight of his eyes—the shape of his chin and nose—watching him snack on her couch while flitting about to make food and then writing beside him—chances taken to make him smile—it would bring Ini to places of healing ungraspable by any other but her and herself.
It was strange. She was almost getting better.
Still Corners - Eyes