ρяσℓσgυє: υи¢єятαιиту
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"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
Jack Kerouac, On The Road
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It breaks my heart to know that you'll actually read these words tomorrow. You certainly don't deserve to be dealt such an unexpected blow, but you do deserve a proper explanation, so I hope that this letter can at least provide more clarity than my aimless ramblings ever could. I'm going to leave it in a place where I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding it, and I hope that you'll read it all the way through, even if it seems too painful at times.
I have to start by asking you to forgive me for writing a letter just because I couldn't find my voice. I won't blame you if you want to call me a coward, if you think I deserve to be punished instead of forgiven. I'll still be repeating it inside my head, hoping you can somehow hear me:
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry it had to happen this way.
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As a child, he'd never been afraid of the dark.
It had been his only weird thing, really... the only thing that set him apart from ninety percent of the other kids in his neighbourhood or at school. Children weren't supposed to enjoy wandering into closets at midnight, pushing aside the shoes and falling asleep behind thick curtains of musty tweed and gore-tex. Children loved the sunshine, and closets contained monsters, and night-lights were made for a reason. This was all according to his mother, who, after so many months of failing to drag a suitable answer out of her little boy, decided to (of course) find a therapist off whom she could bounce a barrage of ridiculous questions: Is this healthy? Is it... you know... detrimental to his posture if he sleeps on the floor under his bed? Is he going to grow up to be one of those people who can't go outside or be in public? Is it possible to suffocate inside a dryer?
And the answers followed like equally spaced speed bumps on a long, level, otherwise empty road: Yes. No. Probably not. Only if the door is shut (and, pre-emptively, with raised hands: You can't from the inside).
After one thoroughly enlightening hour it was determined that okay, sure it was a little odd.
It was odd that Evan Halliday didn't just endure the darkness with a determined bravery that most kids his age exhibited. He actually liked it, sought it out, found solace in it, and this was an "unconventional behaviour" according to... science.
Still, there wasn't much to be done. Susan Halliday proceeded to painfully (and somewhat guiltily) part ways with her hundred and fifty dollar check, and Evan continued to wake up cramped between the clothes-hamper and the closet-organizer until his limbs eventually became too long to keep folded up all night without succumbing to pins and needles.
Yet, even after his hide and seek phase, as it came to be known, had passed, the strange behaviour would continue to reveal itself from time to time. In middle school he rolled his eyes at his friends and their fascination with ghost stories and Ouija boards and Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, their squeals of terror always punctuated by his poorly-held-back grunts of inappropriate laughter. They would, in turn, try their hardest to get a rise out of him, jumping out from behind the furniture, forcing him to sit through horror movie upon horror movie, solemnly warning him about things that supposedly thrived in the darkness: ghosts and monsters in all their various forms. But he couldn't even force himself to convincingly bat an eyelash. It was all just so silly; he knew the dark, had seen every last corner of it, and it seemed to him that he was the only thing that thrived there. If all of it were true, if there really was a legitimate reason to be afraid, he'd have discovered it a long time ago.
It couldn't possibly make any more sense than that.
And yet it was this same logic - on this night, now that he needed it the most - that was betraying him.
It was two am. He was seated in an almost-crouch on a low concrete ledge (or rather, the appropriate concrete ledge) beneath the sputtering fluorescent Tesoro marquee, somewhat concealed from plain sight by the long shadow of a soda vending machine. It was humming a low buzz against his left shoulder, yet failing to calm him even with its gentle vibration. His toothbrush, wallet, passport, and change of underwear casually ricocheted off the inside walls of his otherwise empty bag, shuffling around haphazardly with the alternating bounce of his restless legs.
This was it, the night that everything was about to change, and he couldn't even write off his skittishness as the simple product of an underlying childish fear.
He lifted his head, ignoring the dark, knowing that it wasn't what was bothering him, and tried even harder to ignore what really was bothering him. But it was pointless; there were so many other things, two-sided things, arguments and passions and voices of reason that warred within the confines of his far-past-the-point-of-exhausted mind, and at this moment they were tearing him in two. Still.
So much for conquering your indecisiveness, he thought to himself, shaking his head. Of course. Leave it to Evan Halliday to question his decisions even after he's supposedly made them.
He was officially the most pathetic human being on this curb.
The muffled sound of smashing glass and distant drunken laughter brusquely roused him from his trance. He craned his neck forward, angling his head awkwardly around the soda machine to see if he could locate the noise's source, but all he could see was the dark, empty street intermittently lit up with soft, tented beams of yellow light.
The clamour seemed pretty far off, and he was almost a hundred percent certain that it was simply the product of some forestry workers on a weekend high and one too many shots of Jack Daniels, but it still served to needlessly exacerbate his already anxious state of mind. He automatically drew his feet up until his thighs were pressed firmly against his chest, rested his chin on his kneecaps, and continued to wait.
After what seemed like another hour, but was actually only fifteen minutes, he glanced down at his cell phone, feeling around blindly for the appropriate button and jabbing it with his thumb to make the display illuminate, casting a subtle glow of blue-white light on his forearms and drawn-up knees.
Sure enough... Quarter after.
He shivered, setting off an unsolicited chain reaction that quickly became impossible to reign in.
His teeth began chattering, a gradual progression from rapid, feather-light drumroll taps to a deep, hollow, jaw-tensing staccato. Eventually, the rest of his body joined in on his knees' convulsing, the muscles in his neck constricting and pulling on his shoulders until they found themselves hoisted somewhere up around his ears.
He wondered if it was just the residual chill, his body's subtle way of nudging him back to his bedroom, of keeping Ryan Purcell firmly situated in his consciousness despite every attempt he was making (and had been making for the past hour) to block him out.
He closed his eyes and tried to centre himself by focusing on the almost deafening rhythm inside his chest, but even his heart seemed to be taunting him, prodding him repetitively like a mischievously persistent child: You're bluffing... You're bluffing... You're bluffing... You're bluffing... You're-
"You're right," he suddenly whispered aloud to no one, the soft sound escaping his throat with the abrupt snapping-up of his head. His lips felt numb, and they barely moved at all as he breathed out the rhetorical question, "What the hell are you doing?"
He shoved his phone quickly back into his bag, stood with a slight wobble, and began to march resolutely back down the road that had brought him here in the first place.
He didn't get far before he was blinded, though only for as second, by a set of high-beams that should've been toned down to a level more appropriate for residential driving - but weren't. He brought a hand up to shield his eyes. The light continued to move, sweeping past him and the gas pumps until it finally came to rest on a scraggly, abused-looking shrub. The car shifted into park not twenty feet from where he stood.
He was here.
What horrible timing... or was it perfect timing? He didn't have a clue, and he was suddenly terrified.
Time to decide.
As he slowly lowered his arm from its defensive position, a tiny flash - like a spark from a fire - caught his attention, causing his eyes to lock magnetically onto his slowly lowering hand. He held it out at waist level in front of his squinted eyes, its digits delicately arched, hovering motionless over a spray of broken bottle shards that picked up and refracted the glowing red beam from the taxi's taillights. The diamond on his finger was not unlike these simple chunks of glass, no more or less impressive to him than the destruction at his feet. It sparkled exactly the same.
And so he found it easier to finally exhale the gasp he'd been holding in since the cab's arrival.
He found it easier to take his very first step forward.
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αυтнσя'ѕ иσтє:
A shoutout to JesseHoe, whose encouragements and support had spurred me into writing once again. <3 <3 <3
So there ya have it. Please don't throw rocks at me. I promise I'll come up with something fluffy for my next project. On the mean time, I sure hope you don't hate this. I have been toying with this for quite some time, two years to be more exact, and, only recently have I developed enough ideas to put it on paper. Or screen. Whatever.
Do let me know what your thoughts are on the comment section below. Peace out!
*offers you a snow cone*