The Bear - digital art and story by @mariandavp

10pm. 850 meters to the parking lot and thirty five days to New Year’s Day. A million thoughts fly through my mind, a thousand Christmas lights feel on my skin like mosquito bites. Tomorrow I will resign. I waited too long, but it’s time to go. Look at me, thinking of my hectic job as an enemy, when for quite some time it has served me as medicine.

I put one foot in front of the other and walk through my daily jungle. I pass by a couple of homeless men sharing a needle. In few minutes they will be chasing again their very first high; I can smell their flesh rotting and wonder how different am I from them? Am I not too captive of a very first high? Does it matter where it came from? Doesn’t every extraordinary first time sweep me off my feet? Doesn’t it take me to God for a few minutes? Doesn’t it let me fall violently to the floor right after? After all love is a drug; but if it breaks me so hard, why do I want to feel it again? But no, I am not an addict.

I am not an addict. So whispers the homeless man as he injects the poisonous juice through his vein. He lies back to his mattress. His dried lips detach from each other. The air flows into his body as if it is the first and last time he breaths. I look closely for a sign of hedonic pleasure. But there isn’t any. He is broken.

His eyes set on the sky. Night becomes day, black becomes blue. The dirty mattress on the pavement becomes wet grass; he doesn’t smell gas anymore, only the chamomile that flavors a spring breeze. His muscles relax; he becomes one with the ground. In the beginning everything was flat. But now a forest grows in his horizon. How can it be? Was it an hour, was it a second? How long does a kiss last? How can a seed grow that fast? He watches closely. Something moves inside of it, inside of him. It must be big; he can hear its footsteps as it comes out of the wilderness.

It’s a bear.

They look at each other from a distance. The bear approaches reluctantly the man, who is no more relaxed - not one with the ground, but glued to it, unable to move as the bear comes closer. The man watches the animal’s movement, its muscles, its soft fair, its nails leaving their marks on the wet soil. It doesn’t seem so dangerous after all, even when it’s just one breath away. They won’t become one, they are both breathless. The bear falls weak to the ground next to him. They are now lying side by side on the dirty mattress in a cold November night somewhere in the center of Athens. The man reaches for warmth in the bear’s hug.

But the end always comes unexpectedly. The high is over and what would be a tender touch becomes a vicious attack. The bear’s nails cut through his tortured skin. He was trying to heal his wounds, instead he made them deeper.

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there, but he must have woken up from this nightmare earlier than I did. Now, he is standing right before me. I didn’t see him coming, so I got the scare of my life.

“Do you have some change?” he asks. I look into my wallet with trembling hands… I can’t find a coin. I take out 10 Euros and give them to him. The man screams out of enthusiasm.

“Thank you princess!” he shouts.

“Spend it wisely. I don’t want to be the one who kills you.”

“I will don’t worry!” He walks a few steps away from me. He stops. He shows me the 10 Euro bill. “Hey lady…maybe I won’t. Do you want to take it back and buy me a couple of souvlakia? And some smoke maybe?”

We buy the smoke first. I watch him prepare a cigarette.

“Good call” I tell him. He laughs.

“There is one desire that is stronger than drugs you know!”

“Such as?”

“To spend a few minutes with someone like you…”

10:35 pm. 10 meters to the parking lot and thirty two days to New Year’s Day. I still haven’t resigned – after all my work is my medicine. But the Bear is closer than ever… I can hear its footsteps as it comes out of the wilderness.

Note: Image made on Microsoft paint. All content is original.