I would never have gone to the library on campus that day, if I had known that to date ravens would be less painful, and that my long cherished silence of maybe a few months sticking to only myself and one else would be broken by hot, tangible dreams strangely alike those of a fourteen year old pricking herself with needles only to feel something real, something as strange as the heavy loaded emotion within her chest.

Maybe, in another life, I was once a terribly stricken romantic poet who tried to shower the world with her ill word phased longings. But in this world, I was no more fuelled by sweet love as I was fuelled by distasteful emotional writing. I didn’t want to. Hopes of slipping from all the labels brought to surface and pinned to unfortunate souls makes me sometimes trip over myself in a very overly done and contradicting manner.

It was a very unfortunate evening as I walked towards the main library, only wanting to hand back some books, as unfortunately also the semester was yearning for an end. Though to me it meant only more work in less time. And it was all that was on my mind.

I don’t remember which day in the week this was, and I don’t remember the weather. Nor do I recall how many people were still working in the library, and I can’t for the life of me remember which librarians where there then, though I usually can. What happened in the instance when I walked through the door and gazed over the work space with all its desks wiped my mind clear and clean of anything important. I did hand in my books, and I did wonder what to do with myself, how to spend the time until they closed. But more I asked myself what I had just seen, what was that creature so strange beckoning to his computer, working away idly at something I could not see, who was this person who had caught my eye as I came striding past him. Later on, after telling everyone who cared to listen, I would keep claiming him to be someone I had seen somewhere else, someone I was going to contact, and someone...someone. Only believing my own lie for a split second.

My memory has wiped what else was left before they closed. It has wiped how I followed him down to the metro, waiting to see which train he would get on at, realizing it was the same as mine, knowing that he’d sit somewhere behind me and wondering in amazement as he got off at the same station as I always do, but then walked off into another direction. But my heart will have blotched stains of how I trailed after on safe distance, away from the metro, pretending to do something else, seeing him vanishing in the horizon and then wandering off on my own without meaning. Incidentally, after having crossed a few blocks he’d come back into my view and my feet taking command over my body, following where he had walked. It was not just a safe distance to stalk his so very fine ass, but also to remain unnoticed and guarded. Streets were safely lined, open, stretching far. Every time I lost him, I turned another block and he came back into view. His back straight, with earphones on, and going at a fast pace.

I noticed how he had not taken an obvious short cut, and how he kept trudging on, ever further. By now, I was way off my own road, walking past streets unknown to me. Finally, as he was almost beyond my vision, and cars were preventing me from seeing much, he vanished into thin air. I would upon reaching the crossing note that he could not have walked to the right, but on my left there were so many options. And he was nowhere.

Though my object of fixation had now left me, I paced my time through older parts of town, past an enormous white building with the similarity of a small villa. I saw patches of forest, well worn little short cuts and everywhere the sweet signs of people and their families, where clothing would hang on lines and window sills were burdened with trinkets. There were small reddish houses, smeared and tainted signs from fast food stalls. I knew for sure I was lost in a strange world somewhere near my own, where I had never been before, and as soon as I knew I stood by another crossing, next to where my bus passes on the way to my apartment. I turned around, slightly, wondering if the other world, so new and wild, would vanish before my eyes as Narnia in the closet, but it remained vibrant. Joy overcame me with salient satisfaction.

After that day, I saw the library boy again a few more times. He would work all the way into evening, and then he would get up and leave, though he would no longer get off at my station. I would wonder silently if he had uncovered me, undone my little stalking tendencies, but paranoia as my second nature was to scapegoat for this notion.

I recall vividly most of all sitting at the front desk and staring out into the air, thinking haughtily of him, and straining my impressions to paper in a series of wonderful lines and curls, becoming a strange drawn being. And it was there and then that I noticed someone fixing their gaze on me and in he comes, around the corner, staring at me. How many steps did he indeed take, in those few glimpses from when I turned my eyes to his and from when I could no longer hold that intense gaze, and abruptly lowered my head? Another unspoken question.

Maybe I saw him 4 times. Maybe not. On the last Saturday, I had formed a plan to sneak a little note to his desk of choice, and run off as he’d read it. It would let him know that I thought him fine, and not just his behind. As is the thing with me, I had drawn him something, dragons, curls and lines of perfection.

On Saturday, I could not find him. Though as the day ended, he did turn up and left the building. He did not take the metro, and I tried to follow him a little, from far off. Then he vanished into another unseen nook where there should have been none.

And then lastly, on the Monday after, I saw him once as he entered the library and soon left again. At some point during the week, I pondered his mere existence. All my little ways and tricks would have needed him to be real to work, to be around. But he was no longer to be found.

I was stuck questioning why he had struck me so. Seeing so obvious how he’d come up next to me and on, the little silly adornment to his backpack, a cartoon skull. He had been dressed all in black, but reserved, with short black hair. There had been no feathers and ruffles, no velvet and boots, no painted nails or makeup. He had looked distinctively distant and cold, but not mean. In the strangest way, his face had seemed kind. But nothing made him stand out.

After he was gone for good and I was left back there with a note missing its recipient, I would sit for hours with my books, sometimes watching people go about their things.

I would wait for him to approach, for his gaze to settle on me again.

But I never did hear the rattling chains again, because, of course, he did have such.