The ceiling. The age old desk by the window, the empty wardrobe, the black sooth on the adjacent wall which seamlessly painted a picture resembling screaming children. The blanketing solitude. One can begin to describe the room and Travis with any of these analogies. She said it was one of the bad ones and it could be the only truth to this house. Yesterday, at noon, Elvish had taken him on a house tour and few of the rooms were like his, worse. Black walls and ceilings and floors. When he'd asked for a reason, a vague answer involving a fire was produced.
Travis eyes stayed on the ceiling. Two dragonflies were really going at it. Fighting fist to fist near the fluorescent bulb over what resembled a dead insect.This was the only interesting thing that has happened to his life this past week.
A week gone by, he had spent every second of it in one place. Colby was stationed outside the door. So, throughout the past week, he had memorized every part of the room, had acquainted himself with the room better than he'd liked. From the sooth artistic work of its adaptation of the scream to the yellowish stain near the edge of the ceiling. In prospect of nothing doing other than lazing on the bed which was already giving him back pains.
This morning, around the early hours seven, Jovic happened. Banging into his supposed room as she had been doing on some days when she comes to only glare and make observations. Early hours, as sleep still called him, she had not come to glare but demanded he be prepared to accompany her out in the afternoon. Not waiting for a reply; not that she needed one, she left the room. So today for Travis might not be the same as these past days.
The coffee machine churned loudly as Travis alighted the long winding stairs. Why no one has bothered to fix an elevator in a huge place like this was beyond him. The stairs were never ending. He met Jovic at the kitchen. She was already prepared, lazily sitting on a dinner chair waiting for the coffee to brew. Travis looked her over. She was in a custom-made green sun-suit and her long shapely legs were with beign ankle-cuff heeled sandals. She looks like she came out from a magazine cover young men pay shameless money to see, while he was in a oversized beer-stained wife-beater shirt and baggy trousers which he felt belonged to one of the guys.
The only clothing material he has were the ones he wore when coming to this place as fashion should essentially be the last thing on a person's mind when found in such dire conditions. And throughout the week, he had been left in solitude wearing the same clothes. So he couldn't actually wear those anymore. It already reeks so badly that it could be compared to to a 5 months old's diaper.
So, while Jovic was dressed to the nines, he stood at the entrance of the kitchen, hands on his waist, looking like a houseboy that started newly. He never has felt more out of place than at that moment.
Jovic must have heard his footsteps. He made it a point to walk bedraggly and loud. But if she had, she didn't give out any reaction. Not until she grabbed a mug and poured herself a generous amount of hot steaming coffee. Taking tentative sips, then did she look his way. Her cold starepierced through him. Travis didn't trembled any longer. What's the worse that could happen again, Travis reasoned while getting a craving for a cup of what she was having. As it fell upon him, he went towards the pristine kitchen cabinets.
Jovic with her mug on a fluffer, hands rested on the dinner table, head dropped. She had heard him before he approached the kitchen, but she was less concerned. Her thoughts were hyperactive, swarming around her head, creating a chaotic mess. She was in a dilemma and it was to do with him. The man presently in her kitchen, Travis. For the first time in a while she was in the worst possible blind. Things were not going according to the plan.
To begin, she doesn't recall for the life of her, the moment she'd casted the spell that made Travis. It could be while drunk in those dingy bars she now frequent, she had accidentally let go, saying those spells. But she was not a forgetful drunk or the type to ever lose control, and there had been no strain.
And there was the issue of her magic. Either she was losing her touch or it begun fluauncting. This man here shouldn't be behaving in this way: like he was still in some control of his words and actions. The man should be hanging onto her every words like those travellers that comes across an oasis after being parched for days. Like the others.
But, he was not like the others. And she does not mean in the sense that he is beautifully handsome even in rags with those eyes which she feels though it shines with life and arrogance, it still carries deep patches of trauma in it's dark pits; her thought regress.
This condition though was interesting to her, if not also disturbing. Who knows what he could be up to. How and when his willpower will surpass her's. His will suppressing her magic and he will come gunning for her throat, screaming their all time favorite words 'burn the witch.'
Travis chattering with the utensils distracted Jovic. ''What the hell are you doing?'' she yelled, turning towards his direction.
"Getting my own cup of coffee," Travis answered, his back to her, his hands reaching towards the coffee jug.
She ran fingers across her forehead, watched him pick up the coffee bean on the counter and a frown marred her face. ''You don't make use of that one."
''Why?''
''Because that's for me. Only me. The coffee beans you make use of are in the top third shelf. Ok!''
Travis stretched to open the said shelf, his shirt riding up, exposing toned lean back. Jovic stared for a safe moment.
''This is not for me."
''What?'' Jovic raised her head momentarily displaced.
Travis stared at her from over his shoulder. ''Look at the label. It is not for me. Maybe Colby and the others are okay with it, not me."
Closing the shelf, he selects a mug out of where it is neatly stacked. Grabbed the coffee jug pouring all the black brewed content into the mug until the liquid spill from the rim of the mug.
''Now this," —he brings the mug towards the tip of his nose, sniffing, before completing the motion to bring the mug to his mouth— ''is good coffee."
Jovic could only stare, a comeback not forthcoming; wars has started for much less.
Travis came, dragged a chair out of the table and sat, stretching high his sore hands. He looked at Jovic as her eyes stayed glued to his stomach. "Look much," he said, pulling down his shirt.
She shrugged, pulling the coffee to her lips, taking a generous amount. Looked at him from the rim of her mug. "Now, who is looking."
"I wasn't. Either way, where are we going? I need to go get my clothes if am staying here for sometime."
"We are going to buy you new ones."
Travis disliked the idea. "What about my old ones. I could just go back and get them."
Jovic shook her head, pulling out her phone.
"I should go back and get them."
"You can't be let off your leash," she replied, without looking up from her phone. "You will do me more harm than good," she added as an afterthought, "plus it's dangerous for me if people see you going in and out of my house."
The mugs rattled as Travis banged a hand on the table.
"Any trouble miss," a voice said, heavy footsteps into the kitchen.
Jovic looked up. "No trouble Cobly."
"You think I'm trouble already, why then don't you free me?"
"Because I can't."
"That's bullshit. Wave your little hands and I'll be free."
Jovic dropped her phone with a sigh. "Once you are enchanted, there is no reversal."
"What about dipping my head in water with a firm resolution to put you to shame."
Jovic's lips stretched. "You want to put me to shame?"
"Why not? I mean it would be hard as your kind of feel nothing."
"If you want out of this," Jovic bit out, "I would be dead. I don't see that happening anytime soon."
Travis took up a spoon and stirred the coffee, round, round and round, mediating resentfully with a bitter residue on his tongue.
*****
The drive to Hida's was quiet. Hida has become popular as one of the trendy fashion retails over the last decade. Travis from the driver's seat where he had been newly designated drove through a road fairly clearly of traffic.
His suddenly gripped the steering wheel tighter, his hands paling, as a voice exploded in his head. He looked at Jovic but she was sporting a grimace, busy on her phone. He drove on. The voice spoke again, calling out to him. He answered, "Yes. Do you want anything?"
But Jovic answered, "I didn't call you."
The voice called out as before and Travis felt himself unraveling. The drive was quiet. Only Travis ragged breathing could be heard from the driver's seat where he had been newly designated. The voice low and cultivated, identical to Jovic's that he felt she was trying to make a fool out of him. So he decided to paid it no mind. But the voice became persistent and it kept on, about to split his skull in half. Finally all was quiet.
Then the voice whispered to him, "You are looking at spending your whole life in service to her. You want your freedom, don't you?"
Jaw tighten, eyes hard, he nodded. Looking back to see if he had been caught nodding to an imaginary voice.
The voice said to him: "What can I do to help? The goal is to make her trust you. Make her rely on you. Then at her weakest, we come for her."
The 'we', he had no idea to what it meant but nodded in perfect understanding.