the sea witch - part I

Back then I was just a kid of about 17 or 18, how could one ever have expected me to be able to figure out what was going on?
I never felt her changes as the whispers told. In fact, I never mentioned any changes except for her absentees; she was hardly to be found in family reunions the last year. Nickel believed I could not mention the changes because she has always been treating me differently, that there was no dark shadow on her face, when she looked at me.
And her father, well Gerhard has always been so silent that no one mentioned his deep anxiety for his daughter that very last year. Years later we finally figured out the reason why he was so intravagant, the secret he had kept from his family to protect them, the pain he suffered not to share with anyone.
And then suddenly, in an interval of a few months, everything happened. My father had a minor heart attack, so we moved back from Austria to Dresden – in Germany – for a while; so I heard the rumors about her for the first time: that Nina has turned to a mighty, scary witch. The rumor drove my attention to Jacque-Yves who was suddenly so terrified of Nina he even refused to say a word on why.
Nickel got herself in big trouble, I volunteered to help Jacque-Yves get her out alive and in return we made her quit her job for good and Jacque-Yves used the opportunity to make her life his own for good.
Dietrich, Nina's brother in law, passed away in a plane crash leaving Erika and their two sons in grief.
And then Janis, my brother, broke up with his Austrian girlfriend and turned gay, which was ok except for his sudden urge for depression.
As to me, I was suddenly amazed by Nina; I longed to see her, to bump into her, to hear from her or even to get to great her best friend on the street. I was turned – and I can not say it was just my curiosity – by the very fact that there has always been an excuse why she was not there, where I was. All over the 112 days we were staying at Dresden, I had not got the chance to meet her even once. What irritated me the most was that both my parents, Janis and Lidie, my younger sister, had all already met her several time, even Jacque-Yves could not avoid her presence despite his fear and his efforts.
But the she came one night, when everyone else was asleep including me. I suddenly opened my eyes and saw her there to my surprise, she was furious and the same time deeply sad. I could also see her loneliness and the long lasted fatigue in her body. I was amazed thousand times more than before. In silence I witnessed her efforts to do something most probably unpleasant, I saw her struggling with herself and I finally watched her fail. She looked down, with tears in her eyes, obviously disappointed at herself, angry or frightened I could not tell, cursing something or someone.
I never experienced anything like that night, as I felt a part of me leaving me and vice versa, then I felt a part of her getting inside me and vice versa, maybe it was what they call falling in love. I stepped out of my bed and hugged her.
In the morning, she was not gone! She had waited for me to get up. She looked at me and left without saying goodbye.
Later I figured out the reason to Jacque-Yves' fear must have been that I was her one and only failure in what ever she had been up to, when I found her in my room.
It was only two days later that the greater skin diver of Germany at the time, Gerhard Schwarzinger, lost his younger daughter, Nina, she was drowned the corpse was not found, but some friends of her had been filming their excursion on the river Elbe and it was seen with no doubt how she had drowned.
Gerhard himself – despite his habitual silence - seemed to be the only one to have a clue. Everyone remembered his warning to Nina saying she shall never get anywhere near water, and this was the first time Nina had disobeyed him.
We all rushed to their place as soon as we heard the news, but yet too late to make any conversations with Gerhard for his heart decided to retire after making sure the warning had been of no use to his daughter.
I can not claim I was keen enough to follow the signs, it was really for the me in her and for the her in me that I felt like there was much more to this end, that Nina, to whom I belonged, was not gone.
But following the eternal tradition of our family, according to which our youths are famous for their stupidity, I decided I had to believe the logic in the story: Nina was gone, there were no witches in the world, Jacque-Yves was a chicken boy and Gerhard had warned Nina for he disliked her or for he might have thought of her body as too week to handle any swimming.
When we were back in Austria, I thought of everything as already taken care of. I started acting school, I made me plans like any other young boy, I fell in love with a woman, I moved in with her, some time later she gave birth to the loveliest little boy in the world, whom we named Warner.
What I neglected was that, the more I stepped away from Nina and her memories, the more I lost me, the rest of me left me gradually, till I was left only with that little of Nina I had in me.
I left Austria and everything behind; they had all lost sense to me. Yet I refused to realize the source of my problems, I was emptied, I was sucked out.
Exactly this emptiness made me an excellent courier at Hollywood, for there is nothing better than an actor who has been totally emptied and tries to fill himself up with any character the director demands. I was shining at Hollywood while this deep dark hole was growing over me.
One night I dreamt of her, it was the most pleasant and peaceful moment I had experienced after a long long time. As I woke up in the morning, I found her black scarf in my hands.
Next day I was suddenly kind of waken up as I shouted at the co-star in attempt to say my dialogue, they said it was more of a load roar. I myself fainted afterwards.
When I came to, I just wanted to talk to my friend Jacque-Yves who seemed to be surprisingly the only thing I still remembered of me.
I told him I needed to find Nina, no matter how unreasonable or scary this idea might look like. And then it began, the years I was damned to search the world running after her scent, wherever the wind blew it to my face, demonstrating my confusion to my only witnesses, Jacque-Yves and Nickel who have decided to accompany me on a journey which made me eligible for any crime, any evil, and any madness.

Drache

eine kleine halbe Zusammenarbeit:

Sie saß in einer Ecke in dem roten Kleid. Sie hatte ihre Haare für diese Nacht extra blondieren lassen. Ich sollte dann gleich wissen, dass etwas nicht stimmt. Sie weiß, dass ich ihren roten Kleid nicht mag, und die blonden Haare standen ihr überhaupt nicht. Ihre Schuhe lagen auf dem Boden.Sie hatte ein Glas Weißwein in der Hand. Ich brauchte sie nicht ins Gesicht zu sehen, um zu wissen, dass sie mich anschaut.Ich hörte sie sagen: „Wie war es?“-“Du weißt schon die Antwort, warum fragst du denn?“Sie war ziemlich betrunken, aber sie wusste genau, was sie machte und was sie sagte. Sie nahm noch ein Schluk Wein. Ich ging zu ihr und nahm ihr das Glas weg. Ich schaute immer noch nicht in ihren Augen, trotzdem wusste ich, dass sie mich ansieht.Dann hörte ich mich sagen: „Warum tust du uns das an? Warum können wir nicht ruhig zusammen sein?“-“Erstmal antworte du meine Frage. Danach werde ich deine Fragen auch beantworten.“Ich sah ihr in den Augen. Es waren erst ihre Augen, die mich fasziniert hatten. Diese tief dunkel braune Augen, die einem die Seele wie ein Messer durchschneiden.-“Sie hat ihr Spaß gehabt, aber ich habe ständig an dich gedacht. Fühlte mich schrecklich unwohl dabei, als ob ich dich betrügen hätte.“Ich wusste, dass ich von ihr keinen Mitleid erwarten darf. Sie ist eine kaltblutige Frau, die einem das Leben zur Hölle machen könnte, sobald sie es nötig finden würde.-“Ich habe schon mehrmals erlebt, wie du die Frauen ansiehst. Denkst du, dass ich es nicht mitkriege, wenn du dich in einen anderen verguckst? Soll ich es dulden, wenn du mit einer anderen flirtest? Ich bin nie im Leben großzügig gewesen.“Das alles wusste ich. Ich wusste auch, dass sie nie richtig daran geglaubt hatte, dass ich sie liebe. Ich war mal in andere Frauen verliebt und sie wird das mir nie verzeihen. Es würde ihr gut tun (mir auch), wenn sie nicht so nachträglich wäre. Ich umarmte sie und kusste sie hinter den Ohren. Ich fühlte, wie sie weich wurde und ängstlich. Ob sie denn jetzt sicher war, dass ich keine andere will als sie? Sie hat mir öfters gesagt, ich solle so sein ,wie ich bin, ich brauche mich nicht zu verstellen. Was sie jedoch nicht wusste, war es, dass ich um sie Angst habe. Ein schlafender Drache ist immer net und friedlich, aber keiner kann sich an einen Wachen erinnern.

Letztschrifften

Ich habe es doch immer gespührt.

Es durfte nicht so stark werden,

jedenfalls nicht stärker als ich;

jedoch habe ich es nur einen Augenblick vergessen,

vielleicht ignoriert.

So riesig wie es geworden war

machte es allen Angst,

- mir auch -

so erschreckend, so mächtig, außer Kontrolle.

Niemand weiß nun, was mit uns geschiht

oder was aus unserer schönen Welt wird.

Was wird mit allem, was wir mit Mühe und mit Schweiß, mit Blut

und mit dem

Tode

unserer Liebsten

geschafft haben?

Wird alles so sehr vernichtet als ob es nie existierte?

Mich interessiert trotz des Ganzen nur noch eine Frage,

deren Antwort die Antworte aller anderen Fragen auch bestimmen kann:

ist es wirklich stärker geworden als ich?

Denn wir können uns noch ein Opfer leicht leisten...

when Aya just died

Everyone always thought of May to be the most beautiful sister.

Well we were all deceived; Aya was.

She had managed to hide it just like all what she used to hide from us. There was a tiny tricky point to it: Aya was not pretty at all, to be frank she wasn't even sexy, just legendarily beautiful for she herself was the legend.
Anu, our silent trouble making brother, was the first one at home to have figured it out but honestly he was for sure not the one to run around the house yelling: "Aya is damn beautiful and Erich tries his best to ignore it!"
Erich is actually our grandparents' cousin who is brought up in Florida, where he still lives. But he is only 10 years older than Aya and Anu; the Erich Schwarzinger. 
I tell you this surname means absolute trouble. Wherever you see "Schwarzinger", or as Gary told his grandsons - Erich and his brother - "the golden S", you should better show yourself most uninterested in any means of communication if you are not able to run away at once and get yourself to safety.

Aya was as delightful as life, the most marvelous child among the twelve of us. Her laughter was music, her games were joy and her voice was birds' song. When she ran it felt like wild horses galloping freely in the meadows, when she tried to hide a mischief it was as if fireworks were shooting out of eyes and when she got up every morning helping dad dress up… oh, I never ever saw any other child do that.
She was the life itself; it was such a pity she was to die first.

Aya was only 16 when she desperately fell in love with Erich, who was about to marry Tina, Aya's only friend at the time. The only one to know of her love was Werner, another Schwarzinger, kind of our Nanny ever since his father died. So when after a suicide attempt Aya ended up in hospital Werner was the one to call Erich first, knowing he was the only one who could keep Aya alive. Nevertheless Aya never completely recovered from the brain damage and she also came back home blind. Anu was the most furious one among us and with Aya's secret still unspoken no one could figure out the reason to the anger we all bore. 
Aya changed. That wonderful source of delight, our sunshine, that everlasting smile changed. She became a hysteric invulnerable dark teenage girl who quited school, dressed up like whores and started smoking like hell. In order not to break daddy's heart and to prove him that she was still alive, she started painting. Although she looked dark - as if paradise was conquered by the darkest forces of hell - her paintings were still reflecting life. Only this time it was a grieving, suffering, deeply injured sort of life. Pain from inside her was taking all over Aya's soul and on the outside she looked like a stranger to us,  taking advantage of Aya's room unjust.
Being blind brought her and the blind Tina even closer together. They became inseparable friends and this made her naturally also a close friend of Erich's. About 3 years after the accident Aya moved to Florida to learn swimming from Erich who was still a professional life guard back then. She surprised us all. But then there she shifted back to herself which relieved us all to a great extent. The pain and suffering was taking all over her and yet she was life once again. It was when Dietrich, Erich's son, was born that we discovered how much loving Aya was concealing inside her heart. She loved and praised the little boy like few mothers do. She then put a spell upon him so that no one who means to hurt Dietrich could see him. This one really surprised us and made us think for the first time that Aya was different and that maybe she was from some place else. After a while she came back to Dresden and did something just amazing: she adopted a child! It was a boy called Theo and she asked Anu to help her bring him up. No one could understand why Anu should have be chosen as Theo's father. We all knew Germanium was her favorite brother and Werner was an already experienced and responsible guy. It was until years later when Theo grew up that we found out what this parenthood meant to both father and son. So Aya and Anu started dedicating their time and energy to the little Theo, it gave them both life and joy. Even Aya's paintings changed greatly except in one thing: Erich always saw something extra in them, some sort of subliminal image no one else could decode. Later it came up that Aurora, our sister, was the only one Erich ever dared to mention this to. 
We all started to feel a sort of antipathy for Erich but why, no one knew except for Werner. Dietrich was 2 years old when Aurora and Erich managed to find out the secret from one of the paintings and got the confirmation from Werner. It was after another suicide attempt of Aya's. Except for the ever silent Anu though, no one found out about their grand discovery.

Theo was about 9 and Dietrich about 6 when Erich had that dream. In his dream he heard some Russian words over and over which he could not understand. So next day he came to our big brother Ray to ask for the meaning of the words. It said: 'next week by this time, the mermaid's corpse will have faded to ashes'. As meaningless as these words were to us, they yet made us all panic like hell. And when Aya asked about the commotion around the house we just told her that someone was supposed to die till the next week, no one could however tell her the exact words since no one wanted her to run around, trying to solve the puzzle. It was when Erich and Werner saw Aya and Germanium in each others' arms crying that they told us they used to call Aya "the little mermaid" between themselves. We all suddenly felt like killing Erich, as if it could have helped Aya. Although we refused to tell her the puzzle was solved, it was more than clear to her as well as to us that she was the one once her old brain damage started to get over her fragile body again. No one could figure out what to do, our 'life' was dying and we were all simply paralyzed. Theo and Dietrich hardly left her side, as if they both knew they were losing their mother and turning to orphans.

She started calling us to her room one by one, it felt like she was sharing herself among us and giving everyone some part she had kept for them since long. The last one to be called was Erich, no one dared to even stay around her room when he was called in. No one knows what happened but we all saw Erich come back from the pool direction next morning, we all saw him take Aya's dress back, we all saw him return with her dead body in that dress and regardless of Erich's great efforts, we all saw the expression on her face that she had been kissed the night before and the tip of her fins sticking out of the dress.
God knows how we would love to beat Erich up to death.