Fragments of Wake
A Story
His eyes burn watching the child strain water from the sand, feet sinking as dead trees pierce the surface. Behind him is a pit. He does not turn but knows it’s there. Pretends it’s not there. So many debts. He stares through water and swims through the light-emitting diodes. Places and faces. Beautiful, confident, loud. You might be staring too. Right now. Dead trees of debt piercing the surface.
—Man of few words.
—Barely.
—It would not have mattered, had we met.
—I remember little except yearning. For something more than what was. I had much. But more rage.
—It’s you.
—I don’t remember. I might be but I can’t find it. I’m waiting. I’m waiting and there’s someone coming and he waits too but closer and closer. The closer he gets the more I remember differently. Once with an eye and another once with a black shroud. If there is life in his words they dance with no measure calling me child and telling me things could never be wrong to be set right. Songs so familiar yet strange, other-worldly. I could not have heard them and yet they tell me I have always heard them and have always been dancing.
—Curse?
—That or something more sinister. Trying to make sense of it.
—Not a unique affliction.
—It feels different. I know. It does always. But they feel so drowned. I cannot bear them like before. They feel unborn unless something inside me is screaming.
The water is gone, replaced by an old hotel. A Tudor structure with windows bearing the empty streets of a city barely alive. Dusk bears the hour, so weightless its shadow no other hour finds greed to steal its light.
—Is she cute?
—I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.
—Has to do with a lot.
—She isn’t… ugly?
—Do I strike you as the desperate sort?
—Sir, I do not know how we got this far. We are at capacity and accommodations must be shared considering the lockdown. Frankly, your questions give me pause.
A clatter of plates dispelled them. Cleaning over a table, a layer of sweat glazed her olive skin and refracted the bar’s low-light gloom. She arranged plates, stray forks, and wasted food. Rising up, she straightened her back and circled her worked shoulders—her white blouse and high-waisted black skirt creasing between the curves of her ample figure. Her face, now focused, exuded a calm yet graceful exhaustion, a rich and rare radiance... unravaged. Ghost of a ghost of her smile… ravaged. ‘Be honest, would you ever want to see the world through my eyes? No, babe… you look too long, and anyone, anything, can be poisoned.’
—I had a son once. Maybe two.
—Had?
—Their faces are gone. I stare at pictures and remember differently. Carried by the dancing light. Much worse than darkness. Light. Harsh, transparent. I prefer dark. Dims the details.
—Let’s not waste time.
—Waste?
—Maybe something platonic.
—Does life conform to your restrictions?
—Boundaries, standards—not restrictions. And they do make my life much easier, yes.
—Have you lived the lives you haven’t lived?
—Sometimes… more than life.
The first drops fell flat—scattered with no pattern across the glass. She gazed as they multiplied, watching droplets streak like shooting stars, absorbing others on the way down. They flowed so naturally, like rivers, and she switched focus: drops—with a blurred background, the grey view—through spots of drops. The car picked pace as they hung on to futile traction, pushed back and split by the wind. She stared, at hazing condensation, seeing names she wrote when child.
Some nights I read or play online chess. The games are fast (blitz—five minutes) and I slowly feel my sharpness begin to dull. Flagrant, elementary miscalculations. I lose symmetrical perception—the squares slide and slice against one another, killing my sense of direction (white or black, I do not know which way is forward). I see blaring (and usually false) ghosts of demise eight moves away, or futile combinations and endgames. Each move, or branch, leads to eight others, and them to eight more. I am in a room with a thousand screens. My mind is the room but I do not control it. I am a weary spectator, drifting from game to game.
—Do you pray?
—Sometimes… in distress.
—King of the non-believers.
—I know love.
—Practical, pragmatic love. Not worship. Transcendence.
—Service.
—To serve yourself. Everything churned to fit your distortions.
He watched him fade in and out, the child, straining water from the sand. The dead trees pierced the ocean now, roots strangling the shore. The pit was no longer behind him. He felt the sand in every crevice packing like clay. He felt the unborn songs, mindlessly sacrificed to the dancing light, stolen, given away so early they could not even scream. He ripped away, only for a moment, and felt the roots shake.
—The earth bends to the will of one in tune with nature.
—Most of me, is a slave.
—You mistake reality for what is real. The earth does not conspire, the absence of truth does not prove its absence. Perhaps, there is only One.
—Lies are powerful… they can change the past.
—Who is to blame for things only you cannot see?
Moments pass and I hone in on a sentence. I must have grazed it while gaging his rhythms. It turns subversive. The under-weave (the words behind his words—mine or his) bursts at the seams as beautiful but barely coherent passages rush forth. I follow them as they transmute through story. I rarely understand them but they emanate a sense of pure joy and honesty, unbarred by subtlety, brevity, or grammar. I linger and both the moves and words start to dissipate. I get closer and closer as an overwhelming sense of familiarity envelops me. I can barely describe it. There’s this unflinching impression, this innate knowledge, that I know where I am and where I am going. I feel an incredible yearning but also feel welcomed, like a child running into his mother’s arms. I eagerly accept this new world with its shifting faces, voices, and color. Perhaps I have dreamt them before and am simply returning. I lie in bed and take my final breath of wake, as his scattered words streak across my mind’s sky.