Fermentation Read Online Free

mouth. He was crying too; we were laughing and crying and eating and everyone in the café was watching us. I took two to catch up.
    The pain was unbearable but we kept eating and staring at each other and then at the glasses of water. Finally Serge grabbed at one. I sat back and watched him as he gulped the water down, letting it spill over his chin, and then he grabbed the second glass and drank that too. When he had finished I took the bottle, poured some more water and then picked up the glass and took a small sip. He stared at me across the table.
    ‘Why do you do that?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Pretend.’
    I took another sip and then flung the rest of it over him.
    ‘Baptism by water,’ I said, and stood up to go.
    Serge remained motionless for a moment and then began to laugh, the water dripping down his face.
    I walked round the table, leant over him and began wiping the water off with a napkin. ‘Everyone's watching us,’ I said into his ear.
    He got up and bowed to the audience.
    When we returned we made love on the floor of the apartment with the chameleon sitting in his tank beside us.
    ‘I'll pay you back for that,’ Serge whispered as he pinned my arms down so that splinters of wood dug into my skin.
    I turned my head away. The chameleon was watching us with his still, cold eyes.
    ‘He's changed colour,’ I said.
    The first time we made love we were walking home through the ninth district. It was a few days after I had found Serge and we had been visiting some of his friends who lived by the station. After we left their apartment we walked for a time and then Serge ducked down a small side alley and motioned for me to follow him. This corridor, for that was all it was, a narrow passage leading from one street to another, smelt of piss and old men's excrement. Halfway down Serge stopped and opened a door. He led me into an empty building. When I looked up I could see thousands of stars through blackened beams. The building was completely gutted, nothing but a dry black shell.
    Serge had prepared everything; paraffin and torches already lay in the centre of the room.
    ‘Stand here,’ he said as he led me to an open space near the back of the building.
    He lit his torches and then began to walk around me throwing the flames into the air. I could feel the heat against my cold skin as the torches flew inches from my face. I could hear the fire as Serge threw it over my head or past my face and caught it and threw it and caught it again and my eyes became mesmerised by the flames and watching his hands as he caught each torch over and over. When he stopped he came and stood before me; stock still. He tilted his head far back and opened his mouth to eat the flames. He put the fire into his mouth and one by one the torches went out and we stood in the dark.
    In general I cannot remember the first time I made love to my previous lovers. I remember particular things about each of them: Luke whose lips tasted of salt from the sea and Jan who liked to bind my hands with cord. Xavier caught my attention by diving underneath me as I swam past him in the local pool. I was in love with Jess for months before he noticed me, and then there was Ethan who took me walking along the railway tracks and fed me raspberries and Klaus in the snow, whose light blue eyes I still feel resting upon me. There was Mark who repaired TV s and liked to make love to old Frankenstein movies and when I kissed Ben I remember tasting oranges. But the moment I first made love to eachof them blends into one slightly awkward unsatisfying memory that I have forgotten or reinvented to suit my mood. The truth of the moment is faint and remote, like books I have read where I remember parts of the plot but more often than not mix the storylines up or confuse fiction with fact.
    With Serge it was different. I felt like an animal that has been caught in a car's headlights. He laid the torches down at my feet and easily drew me to him
    At first when he