Concave Staircase

Yes, he has three weeks to live, and he still wishes this is a joke.

It’s almost noon at night, and Redarenjelo just arrived this evening just a week ago. The welcome smile of Redarenjelo toward him is not the same as when this guy came here the first time—Hargest arrived with a company; this is his fourth visit since last week. Redarenjelo’s kitchen was already full of rats and roaches, and he risked even that by doing this.

The unfriendly bladder infection inside Hargest would pop him out of existence anytime. So, nobody would marry him now, and he genuinely didn’t wish for it, either. He may not want to sound greedy, but he wants it all.

Redarenjelo, who just hopped into his teens last month, has briefly opened the curtains with a lantern uneasily oscillating between his arms. “No swearing,” muffled Redarenjelo. But Hargest’s bothersome companion is already halfway in.

Hargest also catches him behind, saying, “Even a butcher can cook”

Redarenjelo agreed to be an alarm and stood at the doors while the wind of a crying mom steadily declined as she walked away from his vision. “Die soon, dear friend” was his mindset.

It’s cold outside and colder inside. Hargest kept repeating the word—today.

There is a pretty girl in his wow, but she doesn’t want to waste her smiles on him. Little known, her husband is lying next to her, yet Hargest pulled her up to a desk, and she cooperated as well. He kept something for himself and swept the rest of the nosy fragrances from the table.

He looked around for his friend to trumpet his discovery, but he was already on the top of a lass, and only his creator knew where he got that blanket—the hungry mouth has the sharpest teeth. Shortly, both are back to business, then a drop of tear sled from her eyes onto his thighs.

Hargest screamed at the seventh octave because that’s an eerily thing for a corpse to do.

Redarenjelo kicked into the morgue...

Why should my aunt have married him? Soliloquized, Rosescar. Even though wealth rained from the roof, his uncle not had tasted a quarter of that till death; the same goes for his aunt. She was worthy of being loved. Regardless of everything, people still couldn’t stop saying that she married the old man for his wealth.

Today, it was not about him or her; it was them. Since they are the most expected bloodline heirs among other beneficiaries, Rosescar’s aunt willed everything upon him and his brother. As his lifestyle was already kiting through a chimney, it was a yam in the yawn.

One day the solicitor mailed him, saying he and his younger brother must be indoors while reading the will. Be that as it may, Henny ran out of home at sixteen, and considering the flood and famine for the past few years, the chances that he was still holding on to his lungs are invisible to the naked eye.

He regarded that his brother was also barely getting by, and this word would definitely make him regret his run from home. So, Rosescar went in search of Henny, carrying the lever of his life.

It’s been four months, and all he found was: that it was not some grasshoppers that made the noise at nights but rather the crickets. He had to stay away from any storm because he was so thin and lean at this moment. Frustrated, Rosescar threw his Henny’s lever in a barn and decided to reach out to the solicitor to claim his share. And planned to negotiate with Henny if he came into the scene later.

Later, the solicitor intensely looked at some records and padded his shoulder in consolation, saying Henny had already taken the lion’s share and any conspiracies should have been appealed within ninety days after reading the will.

The solicitor also affirmed going to Rosescar’s home once or twice, which predated the reading, and returned with a different story about his disappearance each time. However, Rosescar was happy to hear that his very brother inherited her property and not some bad egg.

At his aunt’s residence, he realized why they didn’t spend all the wealth because they ever couldn’t; neither do the brothers, perhaps—the estate was such humongous.

Although they both are cut from the same cloth, Henny is not like him. The old yatman opened the doors for Rosescar, and Henny greeted his big brother saying,

“Ah! The dead man’s desires.”

And one thing was sure, Henny was not kidding about that comment. Henny—a fly with bird wings, made him eat the humble pie and refused to give his share or call him brother; that was a huge slap on his wrist. Humiliated to beg a beggar, Rosescar bewailed back home.

As a spectator’s turn, the old man at the gates looked around to see if anyone saw him. And he slyly called him aside with the same respect that he would shower Henny. Then the gatekeeper said, “Many crowns die, not making a king. Unlike your uncle, Mrs. Nile was a woman of principalities; she had willed me too that nobody knows.”

On the outskirts of Threeice Gulf, there was the gatekeeper’s parcel gift of land. It was a small book archive of Rosescar’s aunt. Every candle cast a shadow—he suspected this old man was trying to tie this upon him for money which Rosescar had not seen for months.

When Rosescar refused his unoffered deal, the old man said he had this for his daughter’s marriage, but she had lost her life to Jaundice before that. To this day, he honestly wanted to make money out of this; until now. Spoiled food is worthy, too—The broken old man told him to accept this as a will from him and said, “Life is easier than you think and harder than you imagined.”

Rosescar initially denied, then conjured up the four months’ rent he owed to his Limewell landlord, which hammered him to heel here. It was inexplicable that this house had a basement full of perfumes and oils.

And days into the house, he unearthed something even more enigmatic: these were not books of old fables but tables of labels where all perfume recipes are inscribed. And while selling some of those in the gulf, Rosescar parallelly taught himself to make his own.

Soon, most of his bottles turned into money, but it was so onerous for him to find a new flagon than to brew fragrance. And eventually, he ran out of bottles to pour or store. Then, he stocked up everything in a pine barrel, and a week later, people flicked his fragrance at his face because it smelled like pants.

After a lovely lesson from the wood, Rosescar squirreled every glass and goblet from all over the places he roamed and tediously carved a cork for all possible holes. Sometimes it fits, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes the bottle would still leak due to a break in its butt, which he overlooks until he makes a perfect cap.

Since the containers were a mixture of mugs and cups, he had to load the same in all. Even though it all smelled pleasant, who would come ahead with money for some half-filled garbage; not anybody new.

As days moved on, his means of living was much tilted towards persuasion than passion. Having enough of his cheese, Rosescar decided to reach out to Fasper to make his own glassware.

In Geralds, there was already a tasty woman waiting for Fasper long before him. She had a dozen needles disorganized in front of her and swapped the monocle a million times between her eyes. Clock has not passed a quarter; these men begin to worry more about a quaint lady’s future than their own.

Rosescar carefully chose the thinnest needle at her elbow and said that the bushy tip of the thread should be cut or wet to gorge through the needle. She guns the monocle to the gulf and thanked him beyond comparison for opening her eyes—No, that was not supposed to end like that,

Iskalaeybi thanked him for advertising waters and said she was an eyer.

“A what?” he asked. She left.

“Why are you taking my heart when you can have my life?” he said in a low confessing tone.

Also at the door was Fasper, who saw a path running over there towards love. Rosescar had a great trade with him and unemotionally tried to milk something about her. The fool-proof Fasper knew he had a private eye on her and gave what he wanted nonetheless. What to say further? Rosescar then plotted accidental meetings with her.

Soon, their laughter intertwined, and now they are falling in love more profoundly than yesterday. With some folded money in their hands, they went to Limewell together.

The sun was straight up, and shadows were falling onto itself. After his wife cheated on him with his best friend, Heartglenn was still breathing for his son. The slamming windows annoyed Tephiel, untrained to shut it down; she let that wide open and fell back to sleep.

The cold air again tickled her feet like it was dawn; she quacked out from the crib, realizing the terrible mistake she had made last night—It had been a week since she laid the wool to dry. Neither her mom nor the skull reminded her.

To retrieve at least the bleached remnants, Tephiel was running to the meadows, not brushing her mom off with her actions.

“Teffy! Teffy!” the same irresistible voice of yesterday—Redarenjelo was behind to claim her promise. He called her to the bay where the tides were now lower than ever before and tempted her, saying everybody had just found their secret spot and looted their Oyster.

Their uncivilized sprint toward the bay was destined in vain. Although the rival teens had already wiped their spot without a spot, they poured their time into the sea until evening, singing the lost ruins. There were storms of lovers’ thoughts on the bay.

Racing mind cleans the past; Tephiel was certainly less happy for being reminded than never to forget it again—the wool. They ran towards her laundry together, where on the top of a grassy mound were a few donkeys just out from the Lake Tortoise Loch, enjoying their lame existence under the sun upon her wool. Redarenjelo might have suddenly bloomed a notion of bravery, so he fired some pebbles that he found right at his bend. And as a calm consequence, those scared donkeys spared the wool.

The sun went down, and Heartglenn would have been waiting for Redarenjelo. The sole father who had frozen his arteries to toil in that morgue. Necroberg Holylan is an hour’s feet away from here. Since there was only one morgue for all four towns, someone should always be there.

Even though Tephiel was at his maturity, she could not even digest a day with the dead. And if there were a quarrel between them, it would always be on this subject.

For the sake of her being, Redarenjelo also made affairs as a bird boy for some of the farms in the town, including the garden of Iskalaeybi. If he had not been found in the morgue or farm, he would indeed be chasing yonder with Tephiel.

It was a windy morning, and the first time he had seen Iskalaeybi in such a vicinal, she asked him to go to the milkhouse because Rosescar was sick of dairies. Redarenjelo devoted his being to just seeing her again like that. So, he waited all along and even guarded her gardens at nights.

Fail man’s fine calculations—she called him again; the attraction he had upon her was so intense as it blew away the twenty-one years of hiatus like an avalanche towards an anthill. She never knew that his curiosity could be satisfied without answers. Iskalaeybi gave him the same four petras as yesterday to buy her milk.

One day, along with this occasional acquaintance, Redarenjelo was looking through her windows, and Rosescar was trying a new perfume for some mustache wax. He accidentally slipped the wrong seeds into the stein, so he had to cook it again all from the beginning.

As he gradually warmed up his new wax, the intense smell from the previous model was so disturbing, so Iskalaeybi had been given the job of disposing of the molten wax—how wasteful, she thought.

Outside the doors, she plunged her fingers nails first into the wax and enjoyed it as it dried. She then looked around to see if anyone saw her and tightened her grip to enjoy the remnants falling from her fingers.

Redarenjelo’s heart runs voiceless now, and it’s been days since he went to the morgue, but he punctually expected the brief opening of her gates for days.

Today, the door remained open for much longer than before, and Iskalaeybi was desperately looking around for someone with her pinafore splashed in coffee. How could Redarenjelo let that happen to her?

He went inside her house and learned it was not her coffee clash, but instead, an obnoxious upchuck of Rosescar entirely made up of blood. He was not sick; he was battling at his core to just stay in this world.

Redarenjelo already suspected he was not sick of any dust or dairy, and he had seen him working in poultry that predates marrying Iskalaeybi. Now Redarenjelo wanted to know the games that were played on top of him.

Iskalaeybi said she found him lying on his crib, limbs painfully tangled in odd ways, incapable of getting erect in the dawn. Rosescar barely even spelled a word, and Redarenjelo compelled her to take him to Dr. Li, his past friend, through morgue errands.

At the clinic, Dr. Li scrutinized Rosescar for hours while the kid was bathing in the light outside with Iskalaeybi. Silver lines on dual sides, Dr. Li, said he couldn’t find the cause of his palsy but shall be cured in a month, and after that, Rosescar would remain sterile for the rest of his life.

Upon hearing this, Iskalaeybi stood out of blood circulation. Dr. Li then offered her a wheelchair and some straps to regulate involuntary motion at night. Redarenjelo helped them go home and prepared Rosescar’s bed with straps on its margins. The straps were insufficient in the end, and Redarenjelo gave a cut of his belt for his legs.

It was already nearing moonlight, and the moon shines lonely now, not them. Iskalaeybi gave the keys to her room and told Redarenjelo to go there, whereas she would lie down here with Rosescar.

Trouble brewed within his love. He’s been tired of tickling himself these days, so Redarenjelo took the intimate things from her wardrobe and put some onto himself. He didn’t sleep that night—How could a starving man bake a cake?

Tephiel hadn’t seen him for days and desperately began hunting at his usuals. The sun was thin, and Tephiel was at the doors of Iskalaeybi; nobody headed out.

This still fueled her suspicion over and over. She went around the other side of the house, peeked through the window, and discovered Rosescar was not at his best, and the belt of her known scent yelled, Redarenjelo had some share in the air over here; it was the other window that broke her heart.

At the morgue, he was thinking about Tephiel—the name rings the bell. Behind the hung window was a shadow that only instilled terror. And Redarenjelo naïvely interrogated her presence in a slim surprise.

As her tears turned lava, he realized there were no words yet invented to face these kinds of circumstances, and that was the last day of her encounter. Ironically, he always wanted her to bring her here at least once, which came true.

Beyond her withdrawal symptoms, the only good thing was that Dr. Li was so compassionate for Rosescar and visited him time and time again right at home. Thoughts of Tephiel pierced his being from the inside out.

As the night curled, he had fallen asleep on the carpet floor in the home, and Heartglenn was too old to carry a teen to bed, so he put a pillow at his reach and moved to his room, undisturbed. Redarenjelo was up early and embarked on his bird business. At the knob, he saw his dad’s boots were inside and wondered if he was still home.

Yes, he was, always and forever. The time he called now was terrible. Redarenjelo never spoke more than a minute to his dad without a price. His worries were like futile afterthoughts over the shared food.

Though Iskalaeybi couldn’t attend the failed funeral, she grieved for him. That night in her home, holding hands, she told the mute Rosescar that she would adopt this young boy once he recovered fully. Within a week, the landlord evicted this futile bird boy, and Redarenjelo philosophized that this was how the last days of his life would be.

Escaped from his father’s unforgiven debt, he was dying on the dead streets and couldn’t bear it anymore. Then, Redarenjelo finally dusted his pants to ask for a share in Iskalaeybi’s roof. The fiendish night had just started, and she didn’t open the doors. To open, she must hear him in the first place; she was strapped, and Dr. Li was taking off his black boots.

No teacher had taught him a lesson as this window did. Even though he could not swallow these third-finger conspiracies of Dr. Li, he was unable to say or save her. Redarenjelo cemented his eyes to be opened till morning and speared the rusty isolated mailing post into him through the other way of his diaphragm.

As he was bagging up Li to the mortuary, Iskalaeybi was out of control and said he had curbed the only way for her husband’s salvation.

“Solving the maze by burning it!” he yelled before leaving.

In the evening, when Redarenjelo came from the morgue with a hand full of old sorries, she was not home. To top it off, rumors all around him echoed that she had murdered Dr. Li.

Iskalaeybi moved to the Gulf of Threeice with her husband in a wheelchair, where she traded her wedding ring as the last passage to pursue the medication.

Dr. Greedgardenrose was too busy in his business—a suicidal emergency. He was not like a scientist; This man looked like science itself. And there were hand-made fine geometry tools all around him. Soon he came to inspect Rosescar after safely handling his last chore to death.

“If suicide was courageous, then think of the person who lives the life that one wants to die.” comically said Dr. Gardenrose.

He took some of Rosescar’s saliva samples and perturbed his arms into the abyss of books and jars. Then he showed her a sketch of the Ice Eclipse Chamomile—a fragrant. And said this flower could cause such numbness.

“This was nectared from three hundred such flowers,” he showed her a translucent vial. And also wondered who would even need hundreds of such flowers; Iskalaeybi pictured the rest. When she vehemently claimed that Rosescar was well recuperating, Dr. Gardenrose also vehemently claimed he would not last for a month.

He then said there were no known cases of survivors who inhaled this in such high proportions. At last, she blamed herself for arriving too late, and Dr. Gardenrose now buried her heart which was previously plowed—He said even if she came a year early, it would remain a certain death.

The betrayal of Li and the verbs of Redarenjelo cooked her conscience. Upon leaving, Iskalaeybi emptied the vial she had stolen from his desk.

“I said no swearing!”

Redarenjelo kicks into the morgue and sees Iskalaeybi.