This Present Darkness

TWO

One year to the day.

The end of the world. That's how Chad remembered it. The day that everything—life itself—stopped making sense, lost all purpose. Over the course of the last year, none of it had come back. He didn't even know for sure if he was still sane. How could a person know if no one responded to them – good or bad? The town had shut him out as if it were his fault that the community's beloved sons had done what they did. His fault because...why? He existed? He was different than them? Had his "difference" forced them to act out in a cruel manner? They were exonerated but he condemned?

It had filled him with indignation at first. Now it didn't matter anymore. He was invisible to them and no one even remembered. Sometimes that was the easiest way to lay a matter to rest; forget about it.

Chad stared at his reflection and the gold band on his left hand glinted in the glass. He looked at the reflected image of his wedding ring. He couldn't forget the way everyone else had. They hadn't been left with a crater in their chests through which the barren winds blew. Everything had been taken from him in an instant...and no one cared. He was the town queer and queers couldn't really fall in love, right? They were unnatural beings who only engaged in filthy acts of the flesh. They had no heart or soul. Empty inside and bound for hell.

His eyes suddenly felt heavy and he closed them. He didn't know he had leaned against the window until his brow touched the icy cold glass. He wanted to die but was too scared to step through that veil. No one was on the other side, waiting to take him into the light. There was no light—not anywhere.

For the first time in almost a year, his eyes filled with tears that seeped out and rolled down his chilled face. His hand raised and palm flattened against the window as his wet eyes rested on the gold ring he couldn't bear to take off, though it no longer meant anything. "I miss you."

The words frightened him. Words he had suppressed all these months. He didn't want to unpack the emotional baggage that came with them, didn't want to open it all up and face the pain again. If he did, he wouldn't last another year. He would defy his terror of the unknown world beyond the veil...and kill himself.

Two young men passed on the other side of the street, their images reflected to him in the plate glass window. Chad watched them without turning around; they were the ones who had done this. And now, they walked the streets smiling and laughing and joking as if—just a short year ago—they hadn't completely destroyed two lives, ripped asunder a beautiful marriage, leaving a man in his devastating loneliness to waste away into nothing.

You deserve hell, he thought dully. But hell didn't await them. In the eyes of man and God they had done nothing wrong. One less queer couple could only be a good thing, right? After all, queers didn't feel things the way normal people felt them; they didn't cry, or grieve, or hurt, or feel despair and loneliness. That would mean they were human. And they weren't. Just a glitch in the creative design. Mutations, if you will, that should be erased.

For all of this last year, Chad felt exactly like that. And he preferred it that way; feel nothing.

But all of the sudden, he was starting to fill up, as if his unbearable loss had occurred today—rather than one year ago today. Was it the anniversary of the incident that was bringing him full circle? What would happen when that circle was completed?

The two men passed beyond the window's reflection and in their place, another figure stood; unmoving and staring across the street right at Chad. It was the first time in such a long time that anyone took notice of him that it startled him, giving him a literal jolt to his bones. The image was blurry through his teary eyes and he blinked, squinting at the reflection, until the person began to slowly come into focus and he saw the face.

Without turning and looking across the street, Chad slowly pushed off the window and continued on down the sidewalk.

To answer your previous question—you're no longer sane.

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The road was dry and littered with dead leaves, bits of twigs, already crisping with frost as the afternoon faded. Chad walked along, leaving the town behind, his eyes straight ahead but oblivious to the nature he'd once found so lovely. Beauty didn't exist for him anymore; inside or out. His spirit was dead; brittle and cracked. He knew God still existed, but he no longer believed in Him. His faith was gone. His hope of good things to come—dashed to pieces.

He flexed his chilled fingers, vaguely recalling how it had felt to grip his bible...hold his husband's hand. They were both distant memories fading into oblivion; he would never hold either again.

The pain that had begun to build up inside him back in town was now a pulsing ball in the center of his chest. He didn't know how his heart kept beating—or why. Cruel spite? God's twisted sense of humor? He was terrified of death, yet longed for it with every tortured breath he swallowed. He felt like a zombie; moving about imitating the living yet with no understanding of how it felt to be alive.

Chad retained little memory of his walk from town out to his house. It wasn't home anymore; just a cold, dead catacomb like Chad himself. Should some stranger come upon the property by chance, they would surely deem it abandoned. Even condemned. It is condemned.

It was dark and cold inside the house. A cold that felt alive, its icy fingers digging into Chad's bones. A cold that caused an ache so painful it impaired his movement. Chad stood in the living room doorway, his eyes resting heavily on the fireplace; a cold, dark maw that hadn't been warmed by flames in nearly a year. His weary stare rose with effort to the mantle. Bare and gathering dust, the ashes of all three bibles long since disintegrated into the belly of the fireplace, along with the dreams of children...a family. It was all dead. Everything...dead.

Except the memories; the one thing Chad wanted dead. They had remained quiet for months now, but as with the rising emotions and pain—the memories began to resurface as well, pushing forth through his mind...reigniting the fireplace and filling the house with warmth...bringing Chad home again.

He blinked and tears fell. Go away. I don't want to remember. It was too late. The images formed before him; naked, damp bodies glistening in the firelight...tender caresses...whispers of undying love...