The Postcards Lie

Blue eyes.
In them I saw reflections. Of what I know not; maybe myself, or a whole lot of other people whose lives had ended long ago. Yet there they were. Reflections. Contours of unknown entities staring back at me, trapped inside the lucid blue eyes of a girl.

Her face is a blur to me. Just the eyes I can recall. It's a shame, I remember her being quiet well-known for her delicate features.

The eyes were lucid. In them I saw....nothing. The reflections were gone. There remained only color. Blue and black and white. They spoke of many things and nothing.

The reflections faded and with them the sun. It fell from grace in the eyes of our city and we cursed it for taking away its warmth.
On the other side of earth people awoke from their slumber, hungover on the empty pursuits of the night before. They cursed the sun for putting an end to their sleep.
But the sun kept on shinning and never slept.

I looked out the window and felt tired.
I looked to my right and the eyes were gone.
Then I saw the buttocks of the girl to whom those eyes belonged. She opened the bathroom door and slammed it. Behind her back a cat scurried across the apartment and jumped out the open window. I watched it fall and hit the ground below.

I turned around and felt wide awake.
The bathroom door opened. I saw the eyes again, and for the first time I noticed the girl was naked. She collapsed on her couch and began to laugh. Then she said, "where is my cat?"
I told her.
Thus came a silence that desired to stay with us forever. Only the needle could break the spell.
And it did.

She stood up and wobbled to her kitchen counter. A gust of wind traveled through the open window. Would she fall or withstand the storm? Too soon to tell. She turned her face and I saw the eyes. Third time and still nothing.
She smiled and I smiled back.
Then the needle played its part.

I gazed out the open window and saw the city dressed in black. Thousand voices suffocated in the dark. Only one voice rose above the rest: the cries of a neighbor's infant.
I listened until it turned into background noise.
It was the sound of midday traffic.
Then I heard a sigh from behind. A soft thud.
At first I did not turn around. I too was drowning in the pool of darkness, just like the city that never seemed to be awake. Suddenly the cries of the infant ceased. Ambulance sirens tore through the fabric of silence, then stray dogs followed suit and barked in unison.
A stranger who lived in the building across the street turned on their light.
Within the frame of their window lingered a faint glow.
And behind the glass there was life, however frail and insignificant.

I turned and saw the girl's naked body on the kitchen floor. She was dying.

(Convulsions and terror.
A moment of clarity followed by a deep seated fear.
Eyes now wide, helpless moans filling out the empty apartment. Outside the sirens can still be heard. The naked body shakes. From above it looks like a second messiah crucified.
Color drained from every body part only to accumulate in the face.
Now her face is a mishmash of all colors known to man.
Then the shaking stops.
The needle rests on the kitchen counter).

I turned around and looked out the open window. No lights flickered upon the city's horizon. The postcards lied, our city did not look beautiful at night.