“Is
that all you remember?” The man with the gray eyes looked at him inquisitively.
“I can’t remember what happened
next…” Michael trailed off. “Where am I? What is this?”
“Understanding will come soon
enough.” He uncrossed his legs, then re-crossed them on the other side. “Let me
assure you, you are in a safe place where nothing can hurt you. I mean you no
harm.”
Somehow, Michael knew he was telling
the truth. The voice lulled him into feeling secure. He couldn’t explain why or
how, but the man sitting in front of him didn’t seem threatening in the least,
and exuded only benevolence. His instincts perpetually tried to tell him he was
dreaming. He couldn’t be sure. All he knew is he wasn’t afraid.
“You love her,” he said
matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” Michael replied with no
hesitation. “Is she here too? When can I see her again?”
“No, and that’s to be determined.
You have many questions Michael, and I am eager to answer them, but first you
need to remember the rest.”
“Why? What’s going on here?”
“Time is short.”
Michael sighed and closed his eyes
again, trying to fill the gaps in his memory between then and now.
He
could remember the heat refusing to dissipate. He could remember his mom
calling him to tell him she was working late. He could remember being excited that
he had extra time to spend with Elizabeth, just the two of them in his bed. He
could remember crying in her arms after they made love, the way she held
him—nonjudgmental and patient and caring.
It was embarrassing and it made him
feel weak, but he could not help it. There was a distinct sensation of being
trapped in a very small box, with small windows etched on the sides where
people could look in and laugh. But Elizabeth didn’t laugh, she didn’t blush
and look away. She didn’t make him feel like a freak.
Michael supposed love was like that,
though.
That’s what kept him going, putting
one foot in front of the other, forging through each day despite the immense psychic
pain that threatened to cripple him: her undying affection and unwavering
devotion to him. It was inspiring, in a way. Like being constantly surrounded
by a swarm of angry bats, Elizabeth was the light that drove the pestilence
away. He could count on her, and she could count on him as long as they were
together, and it was that mutual confidence that provided the pillar Michael
leaned on in times of despair. Even though he was terrified of losing her (and
nothing would soothe that fear, no matter how irrational it was, it persisted on
and on), he managed to get through each day by reminding himself that there was
one thing worth living for.
So he forged on.
He reminded himself of it when he
woke up. He reminded himself of it when he stood in the shower, barely noticing
the water as it assailed his skin and fell earthward. He reminded himself of it
when he ate, nearly numb to the pleasures of taste. He reminded himself of it when
he masturbated grimly, conjuring up images of her and memories of their time
together, feeling as though he were ascending from some unholy abyss, only to
collapse back into misery after his climax.
He had always heard that suicide was
a coward’s way out—a selfish act of commiseration only chosen by the timid and
faint of heart. He didn’t feel that way though. Ever since he had first cut
himself, suicide terrified him greatly. Bleeding hurt, and he could only
imagine that bleeding to death would hurt even more. In his mind, suicide was
an act of supreme courage, reserved only for those with the inner strength and
fortitude to see it out. Whether this was foolishness didn’t occur to him, it
was simply what he believed. It was probably this thought working in tandem
with his fierce devotion to never let his girlfriend down that prevented him
from crossing that threshold into everlasting night. Terrible nightmares of
drowning, of trying without purchase to claw his way to the surface, plagued
him at night. In his dreams, Elizabeth was always standing at the shore, arm outstretched,
but he could not reach her.
He was also deathly afraid of the
other side. What laid beyond after death. Michael was by no means a religious
man, but he considered himself to be spiritual. He was not an atheist, but he
did not believe in a God that intervened in the affairs of men, and as such he
never felt any need to pray. It could be said his belief was nominal, lacking
any sort of practical application to daily life. He clung to the hope of a
higher power simply because the alternative was too scary to think about. He
did not understand how other people went about their lives knowing how
insignificant they were. The thought of aimlessly floating through space, a
speck in the universal spectrum, was too much to bear. Whatever was in store,
be it heaven or hell, or an eternity of nothingness, or reincarnation, Michael
was in no hurry to find out.
Now he could remember rolling over
onto his stomach, snuffing out a cigarette in an ashtray sitting on his
nightstand. The evening sun was just beginning to touch the horizon, placing it
eye-level with the open window. Elizabeth lay beside him, still. They had not
left the room in hours. Michael was in heaven.
“Promise me you’ll stop.” She
shattered the silence.
“What?”
“You know what I’m talking about.” Her
hair spilled around her shoulders as she sat up. “Michael Acuesta. Listen to
me. If it’s this bad, you need to get help. This,” she looked around the room,
gesturing with one hand, “this is nice and all. I like spending time with you
like this. But our discussion earlier…nothing’s changed. You have to do
something.”
Michael wondered a moment. The tone
in her voice was no-bullshit. “What keeps you going?” he asked finally. “I
mean, this life…how do you carry on?”
“You think things aren’t rough for
me too?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She sighed. “You, silly.” Her eyes
pierced his. “You keep me going. You think you’re a burden on me, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Well, that’s not true. The truth is
that I want to be there for you. It
gives me a reason. I’m afraid of the future too, we all are. But I know I have
you. And you have me.”
His heart swelled. He thought for a
moment, rubbed his eyes. “I guess I’m not the ideal boyfriend though, huh?”
“What’s ideal about any of this?”
She shook her head. “But it’s all I want for now.”
“What about later?”
She turned toward him, took his face
in her hands. “Just be here with me, Mikey. Stay right here. Don’t go anywhere.”
“What?”
“I know what you’re doing. You’re
trying to stress yourself out again. I won’t let you. Just enjoy this moment
with me. Hold onto it. Let the future be in the future, and focus on the now.”
“Okay.”
She laid back down and yawned,
stretched like a cat. “Don’t you have to get the mail?”
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot.”
And so it was, as Michael walked off
the curb onto the street to open his mailbox, that a sedan traveling approximately
forty-one miles per hour struck him and killed him on the spot.
“Wait,
what?”
No comments:
Post a Comment