Vanilla

Fifty Eight

Can I run

Should I burn

I've always thought it was a bad idea; the kind that was good to have. People should be allowed bad ideas sometimes, because knowing they are bad—that they should remain as ideas and not some part of reality—must mean some good. But I wasn't good.

Felt, sometimes, like I was only pretending to be. Like I was only doing that for the sake of everyone else I kept close. But too close to the flame was a heat that no ordinary thing could stand and even against frozen lakes and snow, they begin to melt. That would mean I had to burn alone.

It started out as a thought. A bad idea.

Like I knew it wouldn't have to happen, being alone, but I considered it anyway. Kinda like a form of entertainment. Like being allowed some bit of the future and laughing at it not because it sounded stupid but because you weren't all that keen on believing something you knew was possible.

It wasn't the bad kind of lonely. Just, alone. Singular. Like, with two dogs and three rooms. Bed, dogs, and a gym. The gym's the living. Or the kitchen. Or something. Maybe I don't even need a kitchen. Take-outs for days. Weeks. Years. Yeah I could get with that. Working at some gas station, making average, scraping through, not living the life 'cuz that wasn't what I needed anyway, and definitely not anything close to busting my ass off to get by. Maybe move on to a farm or something. Get a barn. Buy Caspian. Or steal him, whatever. So Caspian and two dogs, then. Fifteen years in a gas station, thirty years in a barn. Buy a cornfield or something. Make scarecrows and shit. Die alone.

Sounded like a plan.

But they better come for me at fifty or something since anything beyond that was just way too long. Now that I think of it, the whole thing didn't even sound like a bad idea. It was a neutral thing. Not bad in any way, but not good either, not anywhere near the kind of happiness that the rest of the world seemed to be searching for, but also not the summary of some tragic life story that was honestly kind of boring. Just a little...

Empty.

I don't think people really get what I mean by empty; and what thinking about things like these at the age of sixteen really mean, and what thoughts could really do. Dark ones. The kinds born out of an abyss, because there really isn't anything down there. Just a hole. Not a sad hole; not wet, not dry, not uncomfortable or anything, just, a hole.

It's there, sometimes. Like I see it up ahead, that sort of thing, but when something's in front of me I just forget about it for a moment and then when they leave, I see it again. Up ahead.

I started seeing it back in the guy's apartment in New York. He was at the restaurant and I was making lunch according to the menu he fixed. Tortellini. Mushroom and ricotta filling, I think. And I was doing that by muscle memory, not exactly thinking about anything in particular, just doing my thing in the kitchen to the whir of the fan with the radio on. The weather forecast was up and they were talking about a snowstorm next week upstate.

I didn't even know what I was doing next week. Probably cooking. And... spelling. Maybe one or two practical sessions in the restaurant. Then... if he had some time, a five-course dinner at some place he liked. It had been two years since KFC, by the way. The uncertainty was probably my only hope at hanging on to a nice bucket to myself. Wasn't going to happen, but back then, I was a little more hopeful.