Streetlights bend and danced in the daylight hours as I ran below them, hurrying past their bright lights toward home. Vibrant greens bleeding into the grays of the paved streets, I took my bouncing steps with great purpose -- I was expected to arrive soon! Alone and blissful was I beneath the canopy of summer, joyous from cheek to cheek after a great and tumultuous journey through my childhood miljoo glistening with unexpected and mysterious occurrences. I had made friends and acquaintances, had defeated foes many and wild with them, had triumphed over adversaries fantastic and weird! Past the old sports field I strolled, past the house of my childhood friend I pranced and finally there it was, home. Just as it always had been, the row house I grew up in and the door that was never locked. And there she was, beautiful as always. Long brown locks flowing, a smile to capture the hearts of men, those hazel eyes I had longed for… my childhood crush, Vera. I rushed up to her and embraced her in a hug, and she took me in wholly and completely. Accepted me as I was, held me without a hint of condemnation in her body or mind. I felt like I was enough. I was enough in that moment, truly happy and warm to the core of my soul and it hurt so good. Grasped my heart and I felt it being compressed into a fizzing center of inner salvation. I was happier than I had ever been. Like a salty waterfall, I could feel tears of utter joy beginning to pour out, and it hit me. “Please,” I begged, “just another moment, a second at least. Not now, give me time! I can’t go back! Leave me here, please… I don’t want to wake up… ever --”
Oh how fast can the tears of joy turn into sorrow, how quickly the grasp of love become that of anxiety’s. The dream faded and once again I was left crying on my bed, hugging an empty bottle of cheap liquor.
For at least an hour I kept the pain going, relished it. Went through every moment of my sad existence, all the failures and mockery and missed opportunities. All the laughs, all the stares… if I would have justs and what-ifs, culminating to ruminations why have I not yet ended it all, released the closest to me of this burden. Why indeed? Oh yeah, because I deserve this, every last bit of it, was always the answer.
An insatiable need to smoke hit me and propelled me out of bed, the only thing that could get me up and clothed. I rolled up a cigarette, poured me a glass of water and opened the balcony door somewhat relaxed that all the others living in the same student apartment had either left already to attend their classes or were hiding in their rooms. For the half a year I had been living with the three of them I had never really talked to them, or attended any classes for that matter. I tried for the first few weeks of university to be a good student but couldn’t really find a reason to go. It wasn’t for me, or anything else really. Games and books and everything I once held dear had lost their meaning. Tobacco was really the only thing I lived for when awake, my only friend and light, and if not for smoking…
Smoking and dreaming, really. In the daytime hours I was always lost in my own inner world characterized by suffering and self-hatred in all its forms, but when asleep a whole new world opened to me. In those bursts of unconsciousness do something not otherwise possible for myself -- let myself feel positive emotions. In wake I had my seconds of positivity, but they did not last. I was not worthy of them and suppressed them immediately I catched myself in the act of being contempt with life, but when asleep I did not have that option.
After smoking my sixth or seventh cigarette lost in one of my usual daydreams of being a disgusting human being worthy of no love and especially physical connection, a pet peeve of mine, I retreated into my room and collapsed back onto my dirty bed sheets. I hadn’t managed to take a shower in a week at least, or do the laundry or brush my teeth. Those were not of important or a priority, but the smells were beginning to get at me.
This time the wallowing in self-loathing got stopped in its tracks by my phone beeping, an unusual occurrence to say the least. Maybe someone needed me for something, or just wanted to chat? For the few minutes I tried to muster the strength to get up I felt a bit hopeful. Perhaps I wasn’t altogether abandoned and forgotten? I was.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
I knew it even before confirming that it was only an email from some company trying to promote their newest widget, it always was, or if not that then a mass-message from the university to inform about this or that. The false hope was nice nonetheless, and even more satisfying was the morbid confirmation that I truly had no one that cared for me. Cultivating and finding new ways to feel awful had become a hobby and an art onto itself.
Vera… Why couldn’t I just be sleep all the time, with her or anyone, anything else but this! Some wonderful world with magic and potential an everything else than this mundane, hopeless world!
My neck began to bleed from all the clawing, bringing me away from the pointless fantasy. If I want to get away so bad I really should just end it finally… so I made the choice. This was the day and now was the moment.
With a newfound vigor I rolled my last cigarette, left the apartment for the last time and began to climb the stairs all the way up to the roof of the nine-story building. As always, the heavy door to the roof had been left unlocked. I walked to the edge and looked down, something I had done countless of times before. This time the cold asphalt didn’t look as uninviting and the idea of someone finding me splattered on it and having to bear the burden didn’t seem as bad.
This is it, I thought as I lit my last cigarette, this is it…
“Thinking about jumping again, I see. This is the day, right, Jay?” Startled, I turned around and saw a figure draped in a cloak that a Victorian nobleman would have been proud to be dressed in walking towards me, smiling from beneath its hood. “Do not worry, you still have time to decide. Smoke in peace, but before you finish you really do need to make that decision.”
In silence I stared at the figure. Something was seriously off, but regardless I did not feel at all ill at ease. It was like I had always known this figure, and it me.
“What decision,” I asked, oddly interested and drawn in.
“Whether to jump or not,” it said. “You came here to end it all, to seek peace, and there it is! Down there, and you only need to take one more step and this everything will be over --”
“Is there really an other option then,” I said, and to my surprise, laughed.
“Oh there is,” it said with a gleeful smile. “Dreams. Hopes. Aspirations. Vera. Wouldn’t you want a Vera?”
“...”
“Potential, Jay, a new beginning. Your history deleted, all of it. I know you would like that, Jay. All you have ever asked for, right? Those last two breathfuls, all the time you are given to decide.”
In and out.
“One.”
In and out, the cigarette flew away with the wind.
“So how is it, Jay?”
“Why not,” I said after a hearty sigh, “why not live another day for now.”
I still had no idea what was happening, but whatever it was had to be something better than everything before, or at least something drastically different. I took a wobbly step away from the edge and looked up at the figure and gasped. Before I knew it I was plummeting downwards, pushed by the figure. I tried to grasp at its cape but to no avail. This was it, just as I thought that I might be able to change things I will meet my death. The ground greeted me with open arms as I closed my eyes, embraced my faith and -- wait, I’m still alive?!
Shocked, heaving and panting, I opened my eyes and saw a massive, bustling, circular metropolis of weird towers and fantastic architecture spanning for tens of miles with huge medieval gates, thick walls, different and distinct districts. A true work of art right out of high-fantasy novels or movies -- and it was right in front of me just down the grassy hill I lay on, a road next to me leading to the city. Not even in my dreams did I hope to encounter something like this, but yet, there it was. But was I dreaming? Did I go to hell or heaven or what? Whatever the case may have been, a dream or not, dead or alive, for the longest of times I felt like I was truly alive, although unexpectedly sore.