The Nun of Hell
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Resting your elbow on the darkest corner of the bar, you slowly mumble the Jack Daniel's blues. Your fingers tenderly hug the small glass like a brother. You occasionally appreciate the gentle drunkenness that flattens edges, dulls angles and slowly makes the building faces pitch and toss when you get back home. Even better : you find the misty gap that alcohol puts between things and yourself quite reassuring. And, in a state of indifference towards life, you watch the other drunkards. Is it a crime to be a boozer ? You wonder. Everyone is entitled to his little artificial paradise... |
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Ten feet away from you, upright with her legs crossed, a woman seems to look in your direction. You need to force your concentration to see it clearer. It is the Nun of Hell. Immobile and silent, she is gazing at you, but her contemptuous look is like a terrible judgement. You then turn away, indifferent, and you dip your lips in the drink... Here we are ! The look in her eyes has gone. |
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Oh no, It hasn't ! ... But it is now less despising than a little while ago ; it is a look of complicity. You respond to these appeals with a wink. Nothing. She does not react. In fact, it is still the same haughty smile. You no longer feel the look charged with insinuations that lay on you. But determined to get over with doubt, you turn your head over by ninety degrees, showing this charming smile that always won the vote of your reflection on the bathroom mirror. |
Yet, you hardly manage to focus on the aimed face by creasing your eye than deep inside your retina you receive the burn of the same inflexible look.
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You can not chase away the dreadful feeling of being scrutinised. Even though, turning your stooped back away from her, you are slumped in the kind of half-sleep that wets the outlines, you can not get it out of your mind.
And alcohol does not help. Instead of untying you from the present and its unbearable requirement for accountability, it sucks you down in deep shame. |
Ironically... For, although the environment fills up with pink elephants and accomplice winks, even if the bar begins to float softly among bulrushes and duckweed, the Nun sat over there is still the same, still sitting so up straight, pulling the same mocking face with her still so harsh a judgement.
Why in the name of God is she staring at you like that ? Doesn't she have anything better to do than minding a loser ? You are raging and you start to mutter out loud so much so that you get everybody leaving the place. There is no one left but you... and the Nun of Hell. |
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What a nightmare ! You grab a bottle of whisky and gulp down five long sips. This time you shall have the strength to bear her glance. She will tell you what she wants from you. And if you can not get her out of your mind, you will get her physically out of the room ! Here we go ! You stand up and resolutely tear along towards the stool from which she has been taunting you for more than an hour. But hardly up than you totter. Shocked, you realise that you can not even stand up. Vomiting over yourself right here on the floor would top it all. |
This time the Nun stands up and walks towards you. Now you can have a close look at her disdainful face ! Never you would have thought that a smile could kill... You are literally humiliated to death though. The implacable silence of the monastic is burning up your brain. And soon you pass out. You come round in the cold and sour viscosity of your own vomit. With your belly stuck to the ground you painfully lift yourself up on both hands. Your head is buzzing in a roaring racket. It is as if magnetised to the floor, as heavy as ten times your body weight. You look so pathetic to yourself. You emptied your whole stomach. |
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