There
was no pain.
He dreamed he was falling through a
dark, endless void, but the void held no fear for him. Time was imperceptible
here; it could have been only a brief moment or an eternity. He was comfortable
and safe. Nothing could harm him.
When he awoke, he could feel a faint
warm tingling sensation crawling across his skin. The transition from sleep to
consciousness was smooth and barely noticeable: one minute he was falling and
the next he was lying on a soft cot, surrounded by a brilliant white light that
seemed to emanate from nowhere. There were four solid walls that looked like
alabaster, polished to a high shine and smooth. A silver chair sat in one
corner. The room was otherwise featureless.
A door on the wall opposite him he
had not noticed before slowly opened and a tall, chiseled man with gray hair
and cold gray eyes entered. A kind of benign air preceded him, seemed to ooze
from him. “Michael,” the man said.
Am
I dreaming? Michael wondered, and realized he had spoken aloud.
“No,” the man replied. His voice was
soft and mellifluous, and somehow put Michael at ease.
“How do you know my name?”
“I know much and more.”
“Where am I?” Michael sat up and
rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Every muscle in his body felt relaxed. It was a
feeling he could scarcely put into words but was ultimately blissful. “This isn’t
my house.”
“Are you afraid?”
Michael paused and wondered for a
moment. “No,” he finally replied. “This has to be a dream.”
“You may think of it that way if you
wish.”
“What does that mean?” He was clad
in a small white undershirt and white shorts, clothes that were not his own.
“It will be made clear in time.”
Michael ran a hand through his curly
black hair. “Where am I, then?”
“So many questions. That is
understandable.”
“Answer me,” he implored, beginning
to feel frustrated.
“Even if I told you, you would not
believe. Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember?”
Memories of pain and anguish leapt
up unbidden to lap at the shores of his mind. Detached sensations of fear and
despair. His head was clouded in a thick fog. “I don’t know.” He felt confused,
but he was still at ease. The bizarre notion that he was not awake would not
leave. He had never felt so relaxed in all his life.
The man pulled up the chair and sat
down, crossing his legs. “Try harder.”
Michael closed his eyes. The warm
sensation spread throughout his bones, began to envelop him. The light pressed
against his eyelids and began to burn brighter. A picture resolved itself in
his mind. A bright star burned above him. Everything was brightness, blinding
him.
“What do you see?”
“The sun.” And just like that, the
fog began to dissipate.
“Keep going.”
Michael
rolled over and thrust himself deep inside his girlfriend.
Elizabeth arched her back and
moaned, “Oh, Mikey.”
He loved it when she said his name
like that. He leaned down to engulf her mouth, their tongues desperately scrambling
for purchase. The sun poured in through his open bedroom window, glistening off
his milky brown skin. Nails now dug into that skin, scraping down his back. “Ouch,”
he said, biting off her kiss with a grin.
An hour later found them both lying
on their backs, drenched in sweat, in the throes of young love. The heat was
unbelievable, and Michael’s mother had refused to turn on the air conditioner. Today
was their one-year anniversary, and most of his classmates hadn’t thought it
would last this long. Eighteen wasn’t exactly the most forward-thinking age,
but somehow Michael and Elizabeth had made it last.
“When will your mom be home?”
Elizabeth asked.
Michael spread his legs and
stretched out, basking in the afterglow. “Relax, we still have time.”
“You want to go again?” Her small
breasts heaved with each breath.
“No way, I’m spent. Don’t you have
homework?”
“It can wait,” she said and leaned
over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
They both rose and slowly dressed,
then sat back down on the bed. Michael lit a cigarette, which they passed back
and forth, each taking a couple drags at a time. “Should we be smoking indoors?”
she asked.
“You worry too much, babe.” He
stretched his arm out and handed her the cigarette.
She grasped his wrist, noticing the
marks on his arm. Hesitation marks. “Michael, again?”
His cheeks flushed and he pulled his
arm away, averting his gaze. “They’re old.”
“You’re a poor liar.”
No response.
“Mikey, honey, I thought we talked
about this. You said you were going to see a doctor. How do you think this
makes me feel? How do you think I’m supposed to feel?”
Another silence. They both sat
there, feeling awkward, smoke hanging lazily in the air. Not a breeze stirred. “My
mom can’t know,” he finally said.
“I never said I was going to tell
her. But you have to do something. You need to get help.”
“What if they lock me up? What if
they take me away from you?” he asked, his voice suddenly full of dread.
Always the voice of reason,
Elizabeth snapped back, “Don’t you think I’m a little afraid of losing you too?
If you really love me, you’ll tell someone. Every time you…you do this, it’s
like,” her voice choked off, “it’s like you’re cutting into me too.”
Michael twirled a piece of his hair
through his fingers as he pondered this. Elizabeth was right; he had been
battling a great depression for almost a year now, but now it was escalating.
The self-harming had started right after school ended. Unlike most of his
classmates, Michael hadn’t been ready to graduate. He was afraid of the real
world, of being an adult. He didn’t have any skills to speak of, hadn’t applied
to any schools. Ostensibly speaking, he had no future.
That is what scared him the most.
When Michael tried to look ahead, to see into his own future, all he saw was a
deep, bottomless pit. It was black and foreboding. The only thing that kept him
tethered to reality was Elizabeth. She was his rock, his lighthouse, the one
bright thing in his otherwise dismal life. She didn’t understand his
depression, but she had been there for him through the worst of times, and she
hadn’t left him. Not even once. Michael couldn’t begin to fathom the pressure
it put on her, to have her weather such a constant storm, and he loved her all
the more for it.
He rolled over and looked into her
eyes, pleading and desperate. “I’m sorry. Please don’t leave.” It was all he
could come up with.
“I’m not going anywhere, Mikey. And
neither are you.” She leaned in and their lips met, and before he knew it they
were rolling around on top of each other again, clothes shed, their sighs and
smells mingling with the hot summer air that filled the room, which slowly rose
up before escaping out the open window, lost on a breeze.
