Le chateau de vent

She would never return. I blamed myself for it, for asking too much. She made up stories for me. Very small ones at first. Later she began to write them down. I thought about it for a very long time: why she didn’t leave me a note. She wanted an open ending. She wanted me to continue the story. The next morning the police came to my door to ask me some questions about the dead woman and I wondered about reporting her missing. But I didn't. They showed me a picture of the woman. Her eyes were closed, slack jaw, damaged and puffy face, red hair in plaids on a white pillow. "Do you know her?" they asked. I’d never seen her."Hasn’t she been reported missing?" "No, not yet." a policeman answered, looking around the flat. "Do you live alone here?" "Yes." I replied. "Be careful. Don’t go out alone at night," the policeman said when they left. I stayed in that day and thought about you. They showed the woman on ...

"Eh,I have a sexual question," he whispers, while looking around carefully."Do you do them as well?" "Mon dieu", I exclaim, "why is it necessary to talk about the details of your eh intimate relationships with me, an old clairvoyant. You should see a doctor, one of those young and dynamic types that go jogging every day." "Let me explain, it is more a question of the mind that of the flesh." he continues, almost panicking, his forehead now blinking with sweat. "Ok, *sigh* what is it my dear man?" I sigh, "Impotence?" "No, no it's nothing of that kind. I am of Italian descent. "But," he hestitates, sighs and shrugs,"I have a fixation." "A fixation? Well I must say I have never ever encountered anyone I knew to have a fixation. I don't even know what you mean, my friend." I just babble along, hoping to fill the awkward situation he is creating with pointless words. ...

She walked out the door and never returned. She was supposed to be home when I came back from work, but she wasn't. It came as a surprise to me. She was out of words and out of love. When I walked into the street that night, I saw policemen moving people away from the tree near the apartment. They had discovered the body of a young woman. Strangled. I imagined how they must have found her. Peaceful, frozen, bloodless. I sat in the kitchen for hours, looking out of the window until nightfall. I watched television crews arrive, trying to get a glimpse of the crime scene. And suddenly I realised it was over. She would never return. *Edited 2 times

It was mid october when they finally found the body. It had been lying under a thick layer of maple leaves for some time. The woman had been dead for 12 days. She had been lying in a small trench on the strip of public garden near the appartment buildings, under the trees. Someone had noticed some cloth sticking out. That day, when the police blocked the whole street, because people wanted to come and have a look at the rotting corpse, that day, in the freezing cold of the first winter, I left. I walked out in a grey coat and never returned.

You ask me about the woman's body. Is it still there? Undiscovered? Hasn't the wind blown away the leaves by now? "No", I tell you, "it's not happening now. It happened a long time ago, Time is relative. She can be there for a very long time." We are sitting near the window of our appartment and you are looking out to the patch of trees in the public garden. "She's wearing a poncho, so I guess it happenend in the eighties. Nobody wears a poncho anymore these days." You look worried. We've been having some fights lately. About time. Spending more time together. You want more time to yourself. I feel I'm acting like a whimp compared to your decision making. But I don't know what to do to win you back. You are already leaving me behind. "She was pregnant." I blurt out. "She was 6 months pregnant when she died." Your eyes become dark and shiny you are angry. "You don't dare", you whispe...

He's a thin boned man with carrot colored sandy hair. Thinning every day now. He blames his wife. Ex now. She was cutting off all social contacts. Keeping him inside the house all the time. Like a sheep, a little lam, reading his paper and watching a quiz. He always knew the answers to most of the questions. Why did he live like this for 10 years? Listening to her, putting up with her gloomy moods. And now he resurfaces and suddenly feels his lungs fill with air. His body is older but his mind wants to return to the days before the wedding, before the mistake. Make up for the time he missed. He buys new after shave and men's magazines. He dresses adventurous and goes into town quite a lot, walking. He looks at himself in the mirror and decides he looks pretty ok after all. He'll go to the gym. He feels reborn, young at heart and tries to charm younger women. He's ready to meet someone new. He reckons it's not too late to be a father. But the women he meets polit...