#7 I wanted to believe

A Chapter by Firehorse

There is only darkness in the darkness

Every morning when I’d walk through the Quad I’d feel nostalgic for the world I exchanged for this one. Today I felt more so because it was dark, cold, rainy and damp. I forgot to bring my umbrella but I wasn’t in the mood to care. Whenever it rained I’d walk under the parking tunnel instead of through campus. It covered the loading docks, the plumbers shop, carpenters shop and paint shop. When the painter saw me, he’d always say hi and I’d say hi back. That was the end of the conversation but it always continued in my head.

Today the rain felt heavier, and I invited the sound to drown out my feelings of regret. I inhaled the cigarette smoke and diesel fuel and breathed it in like a warm coat. A light flickered near the paint shop and the painter saw me. He waved and I waved back.

Then I lingered a few moments longer until our eyes met. He held my gaze like he knew something about me. I tried to say something clever but the voice in my head didn’t move fast enough, and by the time I’d thought of it he was gone. I wondered if he dreamed about me the way I dreamed about him - a blurry shadow standing in silence, one day coming into focus as a kind-hearted man, brave enough to rescue me from this windswept storm.

Months later I asked the other painter about him. He told me there was no other painter. The shop I was referring to was the air-conditioner storage garage.

When I returned to the shop at noon, I discovered what he said was true. I found a fiberglass mannequin used in CPR training leaning against the lockers. I looked at it sheepishly, embarrassed that I’d mistaken him for a real person who could have feelings for me.

I died because you no longer pretended to exist. The one person who I thought could see me wasn’t even a person. Then it occurred to me, that I thought I was kind because you were kind, and I was funny because you were funny. I looked over to the shattered mirror behind the broken chairs on the loading dock and couldn’t find the reflection of myself in it. Then I stared once more at the object of my affection, the figure with a blank face and stony lips that touched over hundreds of other lips, and mourned his state of never being revived. He was only a stand-in until the real thing came along.

I walked into the shadows alone once again and vanished. I could find no light to lead me out of the darkness, because after all there is only darkness within the darkness.

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