Behind The Mask

Chapter 13

I walk out of the camping store and put my hand up in the still freezing air.

"At least it's not raining anymore," I whisper to myself, wondering if E.J. is already making arrangements to go back home.

I can't help replaying the fight we had over and over in my head. I feel guilty for what I have said. I don't know what came over me. I didn't mean any of it, but maybe it's good that I have said all that.

I stick up my hand once more and when no taxi stops I sit down on the curb, opening my bag and pulling out the list.

I slowly run my fingers over number ten. The end. The end of everything. The end of me.

"I'm glad you won't be there to see it," I whisper into the paper as if it's a portal E.J. can hear me through.

"Get out of the way kid!" a guy in a suit says as he walks by. Usually I would get up and scream something back at him, but not this time. This time the fight has been taken out of me. I can't fight any longer. Actually I just don't want to fight any longer.

I am done with this list of things that I still wanted to do. I am ready to skip to the very last one. What is the use of completing a list when you're gonna die in any case? Why do people follow their dreams, and their hopes, and ideals, when someday it will all be gone. Forgotten. Sure, a few people might remember you in the beginning. E.J. might. He might cling to a photo or two. Maybe he will even end up visiting my grave a few times at the beginning. But as my flesh decay over time, so will his memory. He will move on, like everyone does, just like I did with my mom. One morning you wake up and it dawns on you that you haven't thought about the person you lost in days, maybe even weeks. And you feel a guilty pain on your stomach, but by the afternoon life is happening again, a death anniversary speeds by, and you don't know where the time went to. Then, somewhere, a few years later you find that old piece of clothing you never returned when the person was still alive and you feel the old emotions returning and your brain fuzzes up completely, making you cry so much that you want to vomit. But the really strange things about all of that? As you cry you want nothing more than to die, but by tomorrow you look your responsibilities in the eye again and you keep on going forward, purely because you have no other choice to do so.

"Do you maybe have a dollar to spare?"

I look up into the face of an old lady. Well, not that I can judge by her face. The sun has done a lot of damage and I am very sure she is at least ten years younger than what she actually is, but that still doesn't mean she's young. She looks like she might have had dinner with Noah when she was on the arc with him.

"Are you homeless?" I find myself asking as I get up from the curb, my ass a little bit wet from the rain of the last couple of days.

"Yes," she answers, looking down at her hands, avoiding eye contact almost as if she is ashamed of her answer.

"Then what is the use of living any longer? What is the use of living when you have already lost everything?" I ask, reaching out my hand and taking hers in mine.

"For the same reason you are still alive," she answers, looking me right in the eyes, lifting her head almost like she has regained her pride.

"Which is?" I ask, not breaking eye contact once.

"We believe that tomorrow might just be better. That out there, there might be a saviour. That somehow, some way, a miracle will happen that will take the mask from your face and give me a roof over my head, and heal all the sick, and stop every war. It's human nature to hope, because without hope we have nothing. We are nothing. But as long as we hope the reason to live is there, because we can still achieve all the miracles we would like to have happen, if only we believe in our own hope," she says as she breaks into a smile, showing more than a few missing teeth and I can't help but show her mine as my mouth opens to answer and then closes again.