"Someday love will find you
Break those chains that bind you
One night will remind you
How we touched and went our separate ways
If he ever hurts you
True love won't desert you
You know I still love you
Though we touched and went our separate ways"
JOURNEY, Separate Ways (Worlds Apart), 1983
Henrique was exhausted. Satisfied yet exhausted. He could barely keep his eyes open without immense pain searing through his eyelids. Every part of his body ached without exception. There was still much to do, but he wondered if he'd collapse—or even die—from the fatigue before finishing. Nikkie. The brief vision of her face injected pure adrenaline, rancor, and sorrow into his bloodstream, jolting him upright from the large, ancient leather armchair.
Midnight was barely an hour away, and he hadn't even finished the wall inscriptions. Time, money, sweat, and blood—so much blood—had been sacrificed to build this small château. A mere fatigue wouldn't stand between him and Nikkie. Tonight, Death would be defeated.
Smeared with black paint, he finished the last inscriptions—ancient, cyclopean symbols—on the Yellow Wall mere seconds before distant bells began to toll. He collapsed back into the armchair, surrendering to the weight of his eyelids. Gradually, his ragged breathing steadied as the Purple Mists veiled his rest.
Twenty years to build the château. Much time wasted hunting the perfect site—a quality foundation demanded worthy ground. Cemeteries first came to mind, but finding one for sale proved impossible. Abandoned hospitals, asylums, emergency rooms… any place steeped in medical agony would do. The best he found were half-built hospitals—thirty-year monuments to civic rot. Expected, in this godforsaken place.
Only in his seventh year of searching did he find it: a clandestine graveyard inside a "preserved" environmental zone—unpreserved, used by traffickers and militiamen for body disposal. Securing permits from City Hall and the criminals cost no more than a hundred grand each. A bargain.
Brick by painstaking brick, Henrique raised his château. Slow work—materials had to be perfect. Secondhand bricks from ancient houses, dense with secrets and blood. Wood only from trees where lovers carved vows or hangmen tied ropes. Agony and eternal love—the ideal blend. Furniture? Rotting relics from church bazaars or charity shops. Medallions, clocks, wedding bands? Pawnshops overflowed with shattered promises.
Every object held lost moments—threads connecting forgotten pasts to ignored futures. Henrique needed only to pull those threads to defeat Death. And so he did.
Relaxed now, pain receding, Henrique remembered. Oh, he remembered that face. Fine-boned, with a nose arrogantly upturned like a fox of fire, lips obscenely crimson against pale skin. Rebellious silver-gold hair cascaded to her shoulders—a waterfall frozen in time on the Ancient Five Peaks. But her eyes… those fascinating, cursed eyes that always drew him in, always corrupted him. Eyes tempestuously blue, extraordinarily deep and vast as the Ocean itself—equal in beauty and misery.
He sighed.
No matter how much time passed…
He'd never stop loving her.
The smell of cigarettes and coffee drifted invitingly from the kitchen into the couple's cluttered bedroom. Clothes and poetry books lay strewn everywhere. Henrique wanted to get up, but the chains of laziness bound him tightly to the disheveled comfort of the bed. Only when the scent of buttered toast sizzling on a griddle invaded the room did he finally rise.
He'd slept deeply—dreamlessly, Darkly—a mercy after weeks of sleepless anxiety. He pulled on the first t-shirt and underwear he found on the floor and followed his hunger to the kitchen.
Nikkie sat at the table, sipping steaming coffee from a large mug, a cigarette perched in a long black glass holder. Henrique froze, admiring her. Drowned in an oversized t-shirt—too large for her, too tight for him—her tangled hair spilled over the bottle-thick lenses of her black tortoiseshell glasses. A faint mist danced around her body. Nikkie looked too beautiful to be real. Her innocence was enchanting; her beauty felt like a whisper against the ear.
— "Keep standing there gaping, and I won't leave you a crumb."
Nikkie's voice snapped Henrique's stomach awake with hunger, breaking his trance.
— "It's delicious, thank you."
Henrique devoured a slice of toast in one ravenous bite.
— "God, you're horrifying. I was joking—you eat like a death-row inmate."
Her voice held reproach and provocation.
— "Yes, I'm condemned. Condemned to love y—"
Before he could finish, Nikkie cut him off.
— "Stop. Now. Seriously, quit reading Keats and Byron—those pretentious gothic Brits. Try Neruda."
Her tone sharpened, a coiled snake ready to strike.
— "Because I'm not blind as a bat."
The words made Nikkie erupt in laughter. She lunged across the table—hissing, savage—baring silver fangs in a smile. Calmly, Henrique finished another toast slice, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and waited.
The attack came: a deep, vicious bite to his neck. Blood sprayed the table, dumping him to the floor.
They made love right there, all morning long.
It was dusk when Henrique and Nikkie left their cramped apartment for the derelict square nearby. She clutched his hand with childlike possessiveness. They were happy. Buried in credit card debt, months behind on rent—but happy. These stolen moments were rare. Henrique docked cargo when the union wasn't striking—which was never. Nikkie flipped burgers by day, studied advertising by night. The teachers' strike meant one free evening with her lover.
Life was hard, but they clung to this: even if everything collapsed, they had each other. That mattered. And if God willed it, things might work out someday.
Nikkie pulled Henrique closer, pointing across the street.
Popcorn.
A vendor's cart glowed under sickly streetlights.
Henrique's pocket held just enough for his girlfriend's craving. He dropped her hand, scanned the empty street, and bolted across.
The screech of tires hit first. Then gunshots. Curses.
Then Fear.
Then Pain.
Rage.
And Darkness.
That goddamned Darkness.
How could he forget? Nikkie's body on asphalt? Gunpowder and ruptured intestines? That cursed car, those cursed bullets, those butchering bastards. How many years had he smashed his head against walls to silence phantom ambulance sirens? How many nooses, how many bridge jumps—only for the Devil to spit him back? Too many. But tonight—tonight—he'd end it.
He whirled to save her—
A careening car slammed into Henrique and the popcorn vendor. Bodies, cart, bones, blood, and corn kernels fused into a single pulp.
The final bell toll still echoed as Henrique jolted awake in his ancient-new château. Pain ripped through him. Nausea seized his gut—he vomited onto the floor.
Corn.
Everywhere.
Tire-screeches, gunfire, curses—growing louder, swallowing the room. He tried to rise. Failed. Gunpowder. Gasoline. Smoke. Had the war between traffickers and militias flared? Or had they torched his château—this aberration of rotten wood and scavenged brick—for sport?
Flames devoured the château. Every thread connecting past and future turned to ash. Henrique would never see Nikkie again.
He wept. Sobbed. Cursed Everything and the Almighty.
And in that final moment—
Nikkie laid two books on Henrique's grave: Byron and Neruda. No tears fell—hers had dried long ago. She left the choked cemetery, hidden near a "preserved" (unpreserved) environmental zone, beside the ruins of a château built lifetimes ago by a French immigrant. Her footsteps quickened.
She had work to do.