First memories were a strange and wondrous thing. They were blurry and distorted messes of collected images and thoughts and childish emotions. They were proof that the past was real, or was at least real to their beholder. It was a sort of validation, an invaluable Turing test of the psyche. One could argue against this praise of commemorated antiquity, but why would anyone wish to do such a thing?
Her first memory was the only proof her mother ever existed.
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It took two frustrated attempts to ignite the lighter, his hands shaking. The ocean air was too damn cold: he remembered it once as a peaceful sensation but now it just made him apprehensive, almost bitterly so. The flame caught the tip of his cigarette pinched halfheartedly between his lips, and died against the wind a moment later.
How long ago was it he started smoking? He asked himself the question without wanting the answer. He knew. He didn’t want to remember.
I wish you didn’t smoke those.
He turned his head and coughed violently, spitting the cigarette into the sand. His lungs were screaming in rebellion as they did every year, every time he came to this spot and inhaled that stupid, masochistic poison, and every time he hated himself just a little bit more because he didn’t want to remember.
And because he did.
Shifting footsteps and a red sunset and the feeling of butterflies and the sunkenness of a lost anchor, anxious hope and worthlessness. A thousand peaceful sounds time-locked in an overplayed memory. A picturesque romance typecast the enemy. A mistake.
The cigarette had gone cold but its job was finished. It was the smell and singular taste of sincerity. It was a sacrificial ritual in progress for decades.
He hated these fragmented thoughts.
What do you think you’re doing? Do you really think so little of me you’d make some stupid assumption like that?
I was just worried about you.
That’s a lie. You don’t get to barge into my life whenever you feel like playing lifeguard.
It was a punch in the gut, a lifelong fear. It had to be saved…
No, hey, I just want you to be happy. You know how I feel, you know I would never… never smother you.
Stop. You don’t get to do this. An exasperated sigh. He could smell that scent on her breath. You can’t just be a hero. You always assume the worst in people, like the world is a big black hole and you’re the only one that hasn’t been sucked in. It’s not a reality for us: it’s a reflection of you, because you just couldn’t stand living on without having someone to rescue. You need a damsel in distress. You don’t want me to be happy. You just need someone pitiful enough to save you from yourself.
One final exhale. A cigarette dropped in the sand and its scent hung in the air. It’s all that was left. All that could be known again.
The coughing stopped but his eyes were watering and the cold saltwater air didn’t help. He stood on stiff joints and brittle bones, muttering to himself. The stars were bright in the sky but he hadn’t the strength to care anymore.
I wish you didn’t smoke those.
He imagined it was her saying those words but he shut his eyes at the thought. He didn’t deserve them. He didn’t deserve any one of them.
It’s raining. Of course it’s raining. And the leaves on the trees are whipping around wildly, a discouraging sight from the bedroom window. Because the rain is a melancholic reminder, unsure if whether revising the memory is even a decent idea or not but definitely out of the question if the wind is strong enough to sting and jolt and leech the warmth and happiness from the skin.
Rain is a romantic backdrop, and most importantly a terribly cliche yet worthwhile foreground. And tied to an open wound of a memory only serves to make it depressingly peaceful.
“It’s nice,” she says. She likes the rain, too. Standing in it together with neither coat nor umbrella just served to strengthen that endearing moment. There are so many of those moments tied inexplicably together, where every breath, blink, and heartbeat is unabashedly wonderful, a shameless smile. A bond. To be with a woman that never ceases to amaze is a truly remarkable life.
The rain. The idea deserves a conclusion but it will never achieve one. The rain is an ache now. The story, a counterpart in its opposite, longs for a sequel but it was retired far too long ago. The wind is biting and the rain is a whisper, an intimation. Going out would be an unpleasantness, and now–today and tomorrow–perhaps it would be better to stay inside and close the blinds.
“I just…”
“What?”
“No matter which way I look at it, I don’t like it. Not one bit.”
“I know. Neither do I.”
“You had a choice.”
“Did I?”
“I… I don’t know.” He leaned back against the rail, blinking against the ocean wind and staring st the waves crashing and leaping over the rocks. “I guess not.”
Silence, save for the seagulls squawking on a distant shore.
“You don’t have to smoke those things anymore, dammit.”
“It’s an old habit, Jack, I know.” She was squinting. She didn’t like the taste these days, but she breathed it in anyways. The sea breeze snuffed it out, so she brought a lighter to its tip, cupping it in her hands, the tiny flame brightening her face like candlelight.
None of this should have happened. The ocean waves like slowing heartbeats, slower than a breath, slower than death, the birds screeching far away, loud as whispers but not unlike the voices in his head full of doubts, of fears, of sadness and a quiet pain that would sooner wait until the waves had stopped beating to come closer and say something before it was too late, because the smell of tobacco was a biter memory before they held hands and it was only getting stronger, coming back as though someone was pulling the floor up to his face really fast. And then it was over.
“I should go.”
A pause. A deep breath. Like the waves.
“Will I see you again?”
She flicked the cigarette on the ground. She thought she had wanted it, but she didn’t. She wasn’t sure.
“No, I don’t think so.”
The hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands, the million billion trillion people that flowed around a singular child, a fawn in the midst of indifferent predators, blank faces, or—more repugnant—ignorant faces, men and women, young and old, people of an assimilated culture raging with helplessness more stupendously weak than the child that as such was ignored, left alone, eyes yet growing wide with realization that there was no soft hand to anchor the self to, no smile to greet, no leg to wrap one’s arms around, no maternal voice to sweeten one’s ears, no tens or hundreds of points of comfort that barricaded off that swell of pure emotion a child was painfully capable of.
Fear.
Desiderium Fiction 