Chapter Sixteen: Autumn
I quickly found out that a week was by no means forever. It didn't matter where I tried to run to, I knew that time was always one loathsome step ahead, just that little bit faster than me. A week. Seven days. Such a pitifully short length of time in the grand scheme of the universe, just like how I was so fragilely small compared to a whole world of people. What would it matter if my flame were to die? There would always be a candle to replace me, bursting into flickering yellow and gold with a wrongly placed sense of self-importance and a feeling of invincibility. This newcomer would think that they could burn forever, that there would be no god who dared to extinguish this light. If they were lucky, they would live to feel themselves fading, live to realise that they were only one flame amongst many as they slowly, quietly, died out.
Yet a single candle can start a blaze that burns so brightly it defies time. After all, an idea can live forever, immortal amongst the dancing of burnt amber and red and liquid, golden rays of light.
I snapped out of my reverie, feeling the creak of cogs turning in my brain. Packing, checking, regretting. Such simple actions. Emotions were harder, difficult and complicated.
Love. To see faults and perfections, shoddy handiwork and divine quality all in one person, and then to feel your heart swell at the thought of them. Pure. Yet love was so often mixed with a cauldron of emotions; joy, mirth, guilt, pride, discretion, lust, carelessness and hope.
Dreams becoming nightmares as you realise that you can never fulfil them, not with your special someone. Not with your husband. Discovering marriage is a cage of half-forgotten remnants of desires far beyond you now. Having all the money in the world ripped away from you couldn't compare to the feeling of fading love, fading dreams, and a fading life. Twilight descending, no mercy, no compassion, just cold, logical reasoning as the sun sets. Self-pity. That stirring in your chest. Regret. Pointlessness. Again, an irritating dwindling of emotions and the reality that your flame is finally going out, with no idea to succeed you except for the betrayal in your heart. Love- a traitor. It once brought out the best, now the worst. The last whisperings of happiness gone with a flicker of a candle, and suddenly all the hate and horror and hope mean nothing as a tiny corner of the world is taken over by darkness.
Another day. Another dollar. Another aeroplane.
I tramped down to the reception, checking out and leaving with much less joy than I had come with. A strange sense of peace settled over me. I knew what I had to do - it was like getting an injection. What could a mere girl do to me that I hadn't already done to myself? I needed to meet Faye, I decided. I needed the whole saga of Jason's death to be over. I needed to get over my love for a dead man. I needed to start loving myself. I needed closure.
Faye would be my closure.