She called herself Lark, though her name was probably something dull like Emily or Claire. She was nineteen, maybe twenty, with a face that looked like it had been drawn in charcoal, smudged eyes, a mouth that never quite closed, and hair that hung like wet string.
She wore oversized jumpers and carried a notebook filled with poems about drowning. She said she didn’t believe in love, but she followed it like a bloodhound.
He was forty-two. His name was Julian. He taught literature at a university that overflowed with disappointment.
He had a beard that made him look thoughtful and a voice like a worn-out cello. He drank too much wine and quoted Rilke to strangers. He liked girls who didn’t know better.
They met at a poetry reading in Glebe.
She asked him if he believed in ghosts. He said only the ones we sleep beside. She laughed like she’d been waiting for that line her whole life.
By the end of the week, she was living in his flat, scribbling in her notebook while he graded essays and smoked out the window.
They were poison for each other.
She wanted him to bleed for her. He wanted her to disappear when the sun came up. She wrote him letters she never sent, left lipstick kisses on his books, and cried when he didn’t notice. He told her she was too young to understand real pain, then slept with her anyway and she loved to be used.
When she came, she'd smile, and tell herself she was a good girl.
They broke up on a Tuesday.
She threw a mug at his head. He told her she was a child. She said he was a coward. He said she was mistaken. She left with a suitcase full of his shirts and a copy of Lolita with her name written in the margins.
But she didn’t really leave.
She started watching him from the café across the street. From the park bench near his building. She followed him to lectures, sat in the back row, and wrote down everything he said. She memorized his schedule, his habits, the way he touched his beard when he lied.
She sent him letters. Dozens. Some were blank. Some were filled with drawings of birds with broken wings. Some were just the word “mine” written over and over in red and black overlapping ink. He stopped opening them. He changed his locks. He told his friends she was unstable.
She broke into his flat.
She didn’t steal anything. She just rearranged the furniture. Put his books in alphabetical order. Left a Polaroid of herself sleeping in his bed. He found it tucked inside his copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
He called the police. They shrugged. Said she hadn’t done anything illegal, which he thought was a joke and a nightmare. They said maybe he should stop dating girls half his age.
She started showing up at his lectures again. Sat in the front row. Smiled too much. Wore his old jumper. He stopped teaching. Took a leave of absence. Started drinking more. Stopped shaving.
She wrote a play about him. Performed it in a warehouse in Newtown. It was called The Window Man. He went. She saw him. Smiled. Bowed. He left before the end.
He moved to a new flat. Didn’t tell anyone where. She found him anyway.
She left notes on his door. “I know you’re lonely.” “I’m still yours.” “You can’t erase me.”
He stopped answering the door. Stopped answering the phone. Started sleeping with a knife under his pillow.
One night, she climbed onto his balcony. He woke to the sound of glass breaking. She was standing in his living room, barefoot, bleeding from the wrist.
“I missed you,” she said.
He didn’t speak.
“I thought maybe if I bled enough, you’d have me back.”
He told her to leave.
She sat on the couch. “You used to read to me.”
He called the police. She didn’t move. When they arrived, she smiled at them. Told them she was his wife. Told them he’d forgotten her name.
They took her away.
She was institutionalised for six months. Released with a prescription and a warning. She stopped writing. I started painting. All her paintings looked like his face melting.
He tried to forget her. Started dating again. A woman his age. She liked movies and didn’t ask too many questions. He told her about Lark once.
She said, “That’s terrifying.”
He said, “She was beautiful.”
Then came the fire.
His flat burned down on a Thursday. No one was hurt. But everything was gone, his books, papers, photographs. The fire brigade said it was arson. Said someone had poured petrol through the mail slot.
They found a notebook in the ashes. It was hers. Inside was a single line: If I can’t have you, no one can.
He moved again. Changed his name, shaved his beard, and started teaching online.
She disappeared.
For a while.
Then one morning he woke up to find a bird nailed to his door. A lark. Its wings were torn. Its eyes were missing.
He stopped sleeping.
She was never caught.
He died two years later. Heart failure due to stress. He was alone.
She died two months after that. Overdosed in a squat filled with paintings of his face.
No one claimed her body.