The surgery had gone terribly wrong, and now his memories were leaving him just as he left her. Circumventing with every fleeting breath. Pouring from him quicker than his blood. There was no evaporation to the flood.
—
Everyone told him he would be something one day. He remembered his mother pushing him along. His father taking him to school. His teachers telling him he was special—gifted was the word they preferred. Most everyone he met knew he was different.
Yes, he was different all right—different enough to prove them all wrong.
Yes, he would be something one day: dead.
He failed to see the difference.
—
He was 26 years old and never gave much thought to if he’d make it that far—to if he’d make it another day, another hour. He was worn and wispy and blew about with the wind. He knew right from wrong yet chose neither. His blonde hair once hung over his hollowed eyes—now he dyed it darker and combed it back, dressed in custom-made suits, making money while he made them laugh.
“Why don’t you come out more, Alex?” asked one of his best friends. They had been friends half their lives.
“I don’t know,” Alex replied, “I guess I just don’t like it.”
“Alex, why don’t you go out less?” asked one of his best friends.
“I suppose I should consider it,” Alex responded. Half their lives was only half enough.
They stayed in touch while they drifted apart.
—
If it wasn’t one love it was another, crowding his chest and clogging his skull, just as they had years ago; just as they did now. Some he won, some he lost, but this was no way to think of such things—and even if it were, neither outcome was flawless. The results were beneficial to neither party involved.
“What gives you the gall?!” she sputtered. “What makes you think it’s ok to make it so goddamn hard to leave you?!” she caught traction and ran. It was an early morning in late November. Her shape made geometry professors drool from their lips with stupefied gazes, incapable of finding a coherent thought, let alone the words to attempt to apply a rule, a meaning, a definition.
“I’m not the one leaving,” Alex told her. She had only been his girl for a couple illustrious months, but he never thought he loved anyone more. “You are.”
His eyes blinked heavy with goodbyes.
—
Sitting in a hospital bed, he couldn’t tell if it were then or now. Both, for all he knew; for all he knew it didn’t matter. He was bleeding out of many places, a cheap prop juggled by his consciousness.
He had lost her. She was gone.
—
It wasn’t as bad as the night with those kids. The night of St. Patrick’s Day when he was duped and beaten. It was hard to compare the two to be honest. They were in such different categories. One, the dilapidation of the heart and the soul and the mind; one, the destruction of the body.
It was easy to compare the two, to be honest. The early morning in late November was much worse.
He supposed the night with the kids ran a close second only because it came after the early morning in late November. It was a reminder of where he came from. It was a beating on top of a beating. It was rather refreshing really, a breath of nostalgic air. He found he couldn’t beat it.
They rained down on him with blows. They dropped down on him with feet. They smothered him with tumbling drunken bodies. He couldn’t help feeling it was their best imitation of precipitation, and therefore, entirely natural.
Being out of place, he saw how it fit.
—
“College was fun,” he blurted at last.
He was thinking of so many things to say to break the silence, he was ranking them from best to worst, and this little gem—this little ‘college was fun’ number—rang out involuntarily, and it was then he knew without doubt it ranked dead last.
It came from under one of his last breaths to leave him. It swirled about, making friends with his forlorn air. There weren’t towels enough to soak up his leaking fluids. They let them drip or they lost their jobs.
—
“The cottage was fun,” she mentioned without meaning, flipping the page in her paperback, trees passing on both sides. Pavement passing underneath. Her feet were on the dash, her socks warm and fluffy leading up to her thin, bent knees, her hair wandering down to the words on the page, to where she really wanted to be. It took only a glance for him to notice this, and to notice his hands. His appendages. His breathing and longing and the beating of his heart, closer to bursting out of his chest with the further they became.
Q: How do you miss someone who’s right next to you?
A?: It’s a hell of a trick.
She missed his glance because she looked nowhere near him. She turned another page.
—
It’s not that college wasn’t fun; it was that he hated it. And he hated the word hate—even more so, the feeling. So when he had to hate something, he found he did not know how to feel. How to speak. He chose silent delusion and considered it to be just as well.
“Alex, how do you find your life to be so much fun?” asked one of his best friends. He had not seen him in half his life.
“I don’t know,” Alex told him, “I guess it’s just that I never find any of it to be much worthwhile.”
“Why don’t you find any fun in life, Alex?” inquired his greatest friend.
“Mostly because you’re always asking me that, Guy,” Alex answered. “The less you’d do it the more I’d like it.” Half their lives was twice too much. “The less you’d do it the more I’d like you.”
Feet rained down upon him. Blows fell all over. These were not his friends at all. As his face bounced off the ground, a cranial basketball off a concrete trampoline, he couldn’t wait to tell Sadie how it all happened. How it all went down. He was already thinking of the words he’d use and the words he wouldn’t. Of how he’d build it up and break it down. Of every pause. Of every breath.
He realized—on the seventh or eleventh bounce—that Sadie wasn’t his girl anymore. She had left him on that early morning in late November.
Time was slow between the pounding. He was able to think between each blow. They put such effort in. They cared so much. He tried to thank them—with every muscle, with all his will (which was more than he could say about anything in months; years; ever?)—but time was faster than he imagined. They were not having it. They did him his favor with none in return. He sent RSVPs to no response. The ‘thank you’ cards were left unsigned. His guests left without satisfaction.
They stomped the thoughts out of his head.
—
When he woke up, Sadie was by his side. She glistened with tears. She heaved up and down, oh so delicate. She was beautiful.
“Please make it please make it,” she sobbed incoherently. Her head down, his right hand in both of hers. “Please make it please make it.” Her hands were frail and scarred and pasty white. She brought his hand to her face. “Please make it please make it.” Her tears soaked his knuckles. Salt sneaked into his wounds.
He cried out as he came to. Her tears hurt the cracks in his hands. He looked around and took it all in (well, as much of it as he could at the moment): existence! and all its little known yet overwhelming absurdity! He thought for the first time. He did not know who she was:
“Alex! Alex!” she wriggled down to her core, “Oh, my God—you’re alive!”
He shook his head all over, shaking it into and out of all sorts of things. He shook harder; he couldn’t sort it out. He shook his head like he was trying to empty something out of it, like a child with the last few coins of their piggy bank.
He knew her from somewhere. Her name was something like the number 80. It reminded him of violence. It reminded him of—
“What…”
“Alex, it was awful! We left the bar and—”
“is…”
“—and they were beating you and I tried to stop them and—”
“this?”
—a road trip of lust and loss.
He got up and stepped forth. He put one foot in front of the other. He left the hospital and taught himself to read and write.
—
Every breath reminded him he was alive.
He breathed.
“I’m just getting started.”
Ghost Town Theatre 