The silence between the sounds of far off fireworks was starting to grow shorter and shorter. Tallinn was barreling towards New Years as I made my way out to confront the couch. It sat there in the darkness, occasionally being lit up in bright colors from the explosions in the sky. It was watching me.
‘Come here, Tiger,’ it said. This was no longer the ratty couch I had seen in the garage, the upholstery was completely spotless; there was a strength that lured between those perfectly stitched flowers. ‘Come here and get comfortable Tiger, come here and sit down.’
I made my way through the mud; one hand gripped around a bottle of moonshine the other deep in my jacket pocket. ‘That’s right Tiger, come to me, let me help you feel alive.’ My fingers were still bloated and numb, but I could feel the sharp edge of the knife in my jacket. All I had to do was get close enough to-
CRACK. I lifted my foot to see what I had stepped on. At first it seemed like a pile of white toothpicks but as soon as I saw the finely cleaned skull I knew what I was looking at. ‘Oh, don’t shed too many tears Tiger; it’s just a rat. There’s no pleasure without a price. What’s one vermin life compared to the ecstasy you’re about to experience. Come here Tiger, let me show you what all the fuss is about.’
I pushed aside all the memories of Maarja’s pet. This wasn’t the time for mourning. I could feel the couch reaching into my mind; I could feel it slowly taking control. ‘Is that a knife in your jacket or are you just happy to see me Ti-‘ I stabbed the couch.
The booming of the fireworks was overpowered by the ripping of upholstery. I slashed away at the couch madly, tearing apart its perfectly stitched flowers. The knife made quick work of the cloth. With every jab the fabric seemed weaker, within seconds the sleek couch was reduced to a mess of stuffing on wooden legs. The adrenalin started to run out, whatever bravery I felt was replaced with heart palpitations. I let go of the knife and backed away. Looking at the ruined piece of furniture felt like looking at a corpse. Guilt and panic spread through my chest. I lit up a cigarette and fortified my soul with some more moonshine.
The sky was filled with bursts of light. Somewhere off in the distance people were screaming a countdown. As the nicotine and alcohol spread through my system I started to calm down. Ripping apart the couch felt like murder as I did it, but with a couple moments to process everything and some chemical help it seemed just like regular vandalism. I was on the other side of something bizarre, but I was on the other side. A mass of fireworks blasted off at once. It was 2013.
With a smoke in my mouth and a bottle in my hand I greeted the New Year. The bright lights in the sky boomed with celebration, the thundering of the fireworks shook the world as it tumbled into a new era, the far off cheering gave me hope. I stood in the dark watching the world celebrate, thinking that maybe 2013 would be a good year. That thought was cut short.
‘Oh Tiger,’ the voice in my head slithered, ‘I told you we weren’t done.’ I turned around. The couch was still a mess of stuffing, but slowly, ever so slowly the stuffing started to throb. The yellow foam frothed from the couch towards me, slowly turning blood red. ‘Come here Tiger, come take a seat.’
“What do you want?!” I screamed, throwing my bottle at the couch. The moonshine hit the wooden frame with force, shattering the bottle and sending shards of glass all throughout the waves of pulsating stuffing. The couch didn’t care. The flowing waves of stuffing raised from the ground, they morphed into tentacles. The mud caked appendages reached for me.
‘ I want you Tiger, all I want to do is to make you feel good,’ the couch said in a whisper dipped in rapture ‘I want you inside of me.’ There was something about that voice which froze me solid. Electricity crackled in the air, the fireworks had just become flickering scenery, the eyes of the universe concentrated; it was just the couch and me. As if my body was not my own I put the cigarette between my lips and reached out. The pulsing appendages of the couch wrapped around my hands. They beat with life as if connected to a giant heart, or stomach, but they were impossibly cold to the touch. Yet feeling the stuffing move between my fingers sent shivers of pleasure down my spine. The couch squeezed my hands ‘Come here Tiger, let’s dance.’
The tentacles weren’t strong, it felt as if I could break away at any moment, but I didn’t want to. I knew what I was doing was wrong, every single neuron in my conscious mind wanted me to run, to fight, but I was controlled by something much more primal, something from a much darker part of my mind. ‘Don’t try to fight it Tiger. You know you want to be with me. You know you need to be with me,’ she laughed as the tentacles wrapped themselves around me. ‘Wild horses couldn’t drag me away,’ the couch sang sweetly into my ear, ‘Wild, wild horses, couldn’t drag me away.’
I stepped from side to side in the embrace of the tentacles, slowly making my way towards the couch. The voice whispered something in my ear. I moved my head to hear it better. My cigarette was taken away from me one of the tentacles squirmed itself into my mouth.
I was sixteen again, holding Saale in the aftermath of a house party, except I wasn’t. Her tongue moved with the same passionate tenderness that it had before, but now it was cold and I could feel bits of shattered glass peeking out of it. Her kiss tasted like bubblegum and cigarettes, but now there was a hint of iron mixed into it. My mouth filled with my own blood. ‘YESSSsss, god Tiger, you taste so good! Are you as turned on as I am?’ the tentacles checked, ‘Oh Tiger, we’re going to have so much fun.’ It slithered the cigarette back into my mouth. I obediently puffed.
The stuffing of the couch moved into one massive whole; the last bits of upholstery ripping on their own to allow the blob to gather itself. The tentacles let go of my hands and started to work at my belt. When the stuffing finished its job it led me towards the heap without touching my hands. The mass of stuffing groaned as it parted its way in the center. A hole opened up. A hole blacker than the darkest night. It was dizzying to look into. ‘Fuck me, Tiger,’ the couch growled. I sharply inhaled, making the tip of my cigarette shine in the night.
‘Put it in Tiger, put it in and let me take you to a place where you’ve never been.’ I was so close, that groaning maw spread in front of me ready to take me, but as I looked down something else grabbed my attention. Around my ankles, in my pocket, my phone was ringing.
VRRRRR! VRRRRR!
‘Oh Tiger, don’t think about anyone else right now. This is about us,’ the couch growled. Two tentacles reached out, one towards my pocket and one towards my mouth.
I was about to close my eyes and prepare for another bloody bubblegum kiss, but as the couch reached for my phone I managed a passing glance at the screen. The name snapped me out of whatever trance I was in. “Saale!” I yelled. The cigarette dropped out of my mouth and fell on the stuffing where it started to sizzle. I grabbed at my phone.
‘NO! YOU FUCKING VERMIN. COME BACK HERE!’ The couch screamed, but it was too slow. I grabbed my phone and ripped myself away. I tried to run away, but the pants around my ankles tripped me up. I crawled a couple of paces with the phone before picking it up.
“Hello?”
There were explosions on the other end, people laughed as they wished each other a happy New Year in a foreign tongue. Even while I was a couple meters away from the eldritch mass of couch stuffing the prospect of my one bit of communication with Saale being an ass-dial tore through my heart. “Hey,” she finally said. It wasn’t an ass-dial.
“Hey,” I replied. Behind me the couch was screaming, its tentacles were reaching for my feet but I kicked them away. I put my pants back on and stood up. There were more important things to attend to. “Happy New Year Saale.”
“Happy New Years, James,” she said. The couch kept on screeching in my head, but all the noise was blocked out by Saale’s long sigh. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, “I’m sorry that I ran away today, I’m sorry that I didn’t answer the door yesterday and I’m sorry I told you to come to Tallinn. I was drunk and lonely.”
“Me too,” I said, the blood in my mouth turning sweet, “I’m drunk and lonely right now.” I turned away from the couch. A sense of warmth traveled down my back. It felt nice to hear her voice again.
She laughed, but then her voice went cold, “Do you hate me?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so at least.” The warmth on my back turned to heat. I needed to see her. “Saale? Could we meet up for a coffee or something? I just want to talk.”
There was a silence. Well, it wasn’t really a silence, the couch roared with rage behind me, but Saale was silent and that’s all that mattered. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she finally said, “I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for. I care about you James, I really do but we can’t keep doing this. We were good together. It was a nice three years but I don’t think I can be the person who got hitched to their high-school sweetheart.”
A fever of disappointment burnt through my spine. Even though it was below zero outside I was sweating. I desperately searched for something to say, something to make her change her mind but words refused to leave my mouth. “Maybe, one day, we can be friends. I want us to be friends. I don’t want to lose you James. But for now,” she sighed, “I think we should see other people… and maybe not see each other.”
I started to stammer out a reply, or a plea, or something to make her reconsider but the phone was slapped out of my hand with fiery force. The screen went traveling through the night until it finally went dark in a pile of snow. My cheek stung with a burn. Suddenly I smelt it. The smoke. The warmth I was feeling on my back wasn’t the byproduct of the phone call. The warmth came from the fire.
‘COME HERE YOU VERMIN,’ the tentacled inferno screamed as bits of broken glass sprayed from it. The frame of the couch was indistinguishable from the creature that hid within it, before me stood a wall of fire. In that wall there was a hole, darker than the darkest night, the abyss beckoned to me.
‘YES YOU VERMIN, LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT THE ONLY THING STANDING BETWEEN YOU AND HAPPINESS,’ the couch screamed, ‘YOUR WOMAN WILL BE SPREADING HER LEGS FOR SOMEONE ELSE TONIGHT, ALL YOU HAVE LEFT IS ME.’ The flames crackled, the tentacles reached out for me, the maw of the creature opened wide. It could fit me whole. This was no longer about sex. This was erotic suicide.
I stared at the fire. Beneath the heartbreak, beneath the booze, beneath the voice that this creature was forcing into my skull there was still a remnant of consciousness. I knew that if I was to give in to the lure of the couch I would die. I held back as the couch burnt. The voice went quiet.
‘Tiger,’ it finally said, with a voice full of sweet sex, ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I love you. I just want the best for you. Let me mend your broken heart.’ The tentacles were burning away, pieces of the burnt stuffing started to drip into the mud. ‘What else are you going to do? Continue living with a broken heart? Watch her fall for someone else? Show up at their wedding? Tiger, we both know you’re better than that. We both know there’s a better way.’
The moment still haunts me in my dreams. I see myself, fresh out of high-school, confused, hurt, alone, staring into that demonic fire, considering what it has to say. I can smell the toxic smoke laced with floral perfume, I can feel the mud squish beneath my feet as I walk towards the couch, I can feel that hot, embracing warmth. If I didn’t have friends I would have burnt to death, or worse, ended up as a pile of finely picked bones. Luckily, at the moment when death was luring me in like a moth to a flame there was a shit-faced Maarja to save me.
“JAAAAMEEES! HAPPY NEW YEAR!” I heard moments before I crashed down into the mud. She jumped at me with a running start. I had no chance. “May your year be filled with health, wealth and good sex!” She planted a sloppy kiss on my cheek before she registered the fire, “Wow! Look at the flames!”
Karl came running in after her, “Maarja! You’re being very drunk. Stop-“ he froze and looked at the fire. “You have started the fire without us James.”
I looked at the couch, the flames had taken most of it but its mouth was still open. ‘Last chance Tiger, if you don’t come now you’ll spend the rest of your life living with this heartbreak.’ Karl walked over to us and lifted both of us up with minimal effort. For a second I considered running into the fire, to feel the full force of whatever I had felt the previous nights, but as the flame ate away at the last bits of the couch I just stood and watched. “Do you feel better now James?” Karl asked as he placed his pawn on my shoulder. Maarja put her arm around my waist. The three of us stood there in silence. The couch no longer spoke. It was just a burning piece of furniture.
“Yes.” I finally said, and in the strangest of ways, I did. I felt much better.
Karl went inside, got his guitar and we had the bonfire we talked about in the morning. Maarja didn’t last long, she took one pull from the vodka bottle they had stashed away and then tapped out. Karl and me stayed until sunrise, long after the couch had become nothing but smoldering remains. We finished off the entire bottle, both of us getting too drunk to properly function. I have a faint memory of telling him what happened, of telling him about the voice that loomed in my head, of the death of Fritz, of the couches demands for my flesh. Yet I can’t tell whether that memory is accurate. Karl and me haven’t spoken about the couch since, but then again, he isn’t much of a talker.
The only clear memory I have of the aftermath is the three of us singing Wild Horses by the Stones. His rendition of the song is second only to the way it sounded off of my Sony Erickson when I was sixteen. Hearing an oldie in the faint light of a near-death experience is nice, but nothing will ever compare to the muffled speakers of teenage love.
Two years later Karl and Maarja tied the knot. My doomed visions of the future were correct in one regard; I was alone at the wedding. Yet I wasn’t thinking about Saale at the reception, I was thinking about Laura. Laura and me met through Tinder back home; things seemed to be going really well for three months but when I asked her to join me at the wedding she saw it as a bit too much of a jump and broke off the relationship. I spent the wedding feeling bummed out, but I definitely didn’t feel the need to get sexually involved with any furniture.
After Laura came Annie, after Annie came Suzanne and after Suzanne came, oddly enough, a different Annie. With each ill-fated relationship that passes the moving on gets easier. Realizing that I don’t want to be with the person I am involved with, or, in the worse case, that they don’t want to be with me, has become an easier pill to swallow. With every relationship since Saale break-ups have started to feel more like facts of life rather than the cataclysmic events they were back in the day.
I don’t think about her much. We still wish each other a happy birthday and the occasional merry Christmas, but it’s been eight years, we’ve both grown into different people. Yet sometimes, on dark nights like these, I think about Saale. I try to imagine what life would have been like if we stayed together, what life would have been like if I moved back to Estonia and took a stab at starting a family, what life would have been like with her.
And sometimes, if the night drags and the air is still and sleep won’t come I think about something else. I think about the couch. I think about the couch and wonder what it would have felt like to fuck it.