Clara quickly crossed the road when she saw Kiril’s hunched outline stamping down the high street. She ripped the headphones from her bag and snapped them over her ears. She had met Kiril weeks before in a carpark close to her apartment when she had tried to rethread her bike chain. It had been impossible. She was frustrated at being unable to complete such an easy task, and desperate to relieve the rising pressure of her bladder. Again and again, she had lifted the limp chain and forced it to the cassette but it wouldn’t catch. As she stood and shifted her weight from one leg to the other, a stranger appeared beside her. There was a problem with her bike, he announced, and he would fix it. He told her his name was Kiril and she had replied, Clara.
Kiril had small pointy teeth and an accent. As he crouched by the bike he’d bragged about his motorbike to a wordless Clara—about its high speeds, the tools in his shed he kept for its maintenance, the wide space on its seat for her to join him next time he went for a ride. Of their encounter, she mostly remembered the delirious release that came from squatting behind a parked car to piss when he had left, and the lightness she felt once the hot flow of spite emptied from her.
Sporadically, Clara would see Kiril stalk the street and now here he was again: having seen her, he was running across the road to catch her. Always, he ran when he spotted her, trapping Clara beside him. She squeezed her eyes shut as he came closer. Leave me alone, she wanted to say. She snapped her eyes open.
‘Clara, Clara, hello, how are you?’ he said as he fell into step beside her. She hated that he knew her name. With exaggerated slowness, she removed her silent headphones and turned to him.
‘Hi, I’m in a hurry.’ The bag on her shoulder gaped open with the flowers she had bought for Marietta, and he leaned across to look.
‘You have flowers, a bottle of wine,’ he listed, ‘some raspberries. Your boyfriend, did he give these to you?’
This too, she hated, and the persistent questioning she’d tolerated from him when he fixed her bike. He had flicked the chain in place quickly, but it had taken much longer to return the bike. Did she have a boyfriend? he had asked while leaning into the handlebars, what was he like? Was he taller than Kiril, what was his job, did he earn a lot of money? Even, would he fight Kiril? His questions had been absurd. Clara had remained mute as Kiril boasted and preened.
He had smelt ripe then, as he did now, and there were dark stains on his greasy t-shirt. His buzzed hair made him look like some kind of prisoner, Clara thought, and his singlet and rounded biceps were a uniform for a club she would never join. As he walked too closely beside her, they passed in front of Clara’s building. She didn’t want him to know where she lived and kept walking. He pursued her.
‘I do not drink wine, Clara, I only drink beer. I can drink a lot of beer, all at once.’ He patted his stomach proudly and Clara looked at him. Kiril was a caricature: made-up, he couldn’t be real. And yet he was here, right now, stopping her from getting home. She didn’t reply.
‘Do you live around here, Clara?’
‘Yes, close enough.’
‘The rent, is it very much? Are you renting with your boyfriend?’
She wondered how old he was, and if he would be more or less threatening if he was younger than her.
‘My apartment is mine,’ she lied. ‘I own it.’
‘Oh Clara, wow, you own your apartment.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You must be very rich woman.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘You are very lucky to own your house.’
‘Yes.’
‘I must pay for my room every month. I rent it from an old woman.’
‘Sure.’
‘And she is very strict, she asks me for my money on the first day of every month and I am never allowed to not pay it.’
‘Good for her.’
‘She is a bitch,’ he spat, and she was uneasy.
They reached the end of the street and still he was beside her. He would follow her, Clara realised, forever. He would trace her route and shadow her constantly so that he was always around to pester and hassle and comment. Unable to remove herself, she turned the corner and began to walk towards the carpark where he had first appeared.
‘Look, Clara, I am on my way to lift weights at the gym. I am strong, not like you. You look very small.’ Clara watched, and in a long heartbeat she saw Kiril reaching out to squeeze her upper arm before he actually did it. She didn’t say anything to stop him. It was a cursory touch; a test of what he could get.
‘Yes,’ he triumphed, ‘it does not feel like you lift weights. You are weak!’ He cackled, and Clara saw his small teeth again, and saw too that he was emboldened by her non-response. She walked on.
‘After I go to the gym,’ he continued, ‘I am going to go and make a pizza. Do you like pizza, Clara? Should I make you a pizza too?’ She walked faster. ‘I am very good at making pizza,’ he said, rubbing his abdomen again. ‘You will like my pizza.’ Confident now that he could, he reached across and patted her stomach.
‘Don’t touch me.’ She stopped moving. ‘Don’t touch me, Kiril.’ He laughed again, and she didn’t know where to look. She moved her bag to her other shoulder and began to walk again. Home was too far away and Kiril was too close.
Without looking at him, she talked about him, asked if his was the gym near the intersection they were approaching, was he going there now, to lift his weights and become big and strong and hungry? He said it was, and left suddenly with a jerking wave that was too close to her face. Being alone again was a relief. In the quiet, Clara was aware that she urgently needed to piss and she rushed through the street and circled back to her apartment entrance. Outside the large doors, she hated that she forced a quick glace over her shoulder before letting herself in. Kiril wasn’t there, and she wouldn’t have known what to do if he had been.
She tore through the stillness of the lobby, ripping up flights of stairs because waiting for the lift was unbearable, clutching at her crotch and ramming the key into its slot. At last, she sat on the toilet with her bag in her lap as her outrage streamed out of her. The raspberries had escaped from the punnet and stained the creamy paper that wrapped her beloved friend’s flowers. The wine bottle was covered in a dark red sludge. She didn’t know what to do with the anger beating through her. She wiped herself and flushed the toilet. She watched her red reflection as she splashed water onto her face, soaped her hands, brushed her teeth. She wet her hairbrush and the cool dampness on her scalp was soothing.
In the kitchen she found fresh paper to rewrap the flowers and left her bag to soak in crimson liquid. It was fine, she was fine: Kiril was not here and he would never be here. Her breathing was steady. Soon she would be eating a warm dinner in Marietta’s kitchen. The next time she saw Kiril she would tell him, leave me alone. Kiril, don’t run to me. Don’t talk to me. She would, the next time. She must. Her stomach burned where he had touched her.
Anna-Claire Blogg is a short story writer based in Melbourne. Her work has previously appeared in Meniscus.