Resting Place
A soft filter against the hard focus of time
Hey! How often do you remember?
While time flows fluidly through nature and reality, our memories arise as disjointed fragments.
The essence of any given moment is a sensory onslaught of every sight, sound, smell, and sign. The processing of all that raw data into coherence is taken for granted in the grand scheme.
For if it were not, the horror of always experiencing everything everywhere all at once is beyond a nightmare.
Rather than a movie review, what I’ve been dwelling on is more the next step. The transformation from what is happening right now into a granular film.
The images stored in my head fade over time. The music blaring in my ears as the soundtrack and the score dulls in turn as frames are frayed.
Yet even as the exactness loses its edge, the emotions still sting.
In a detour, I was particularly fascinated by this question while writing Rhean. How an immortal processes the passage of infinite time is inherently inhuman.
I tasked myself with bridging that paradoxical gap to make my protagonist an understandable and sympathetic character.
"The history of the world and my role in it were more a half-forgotten dream than a true memory. The hazier details better understated than fully explained."
Saudade de casinha
And as far as us mere mortals are concerned, I find traces of these ambiguous emotions in the (sub)conscious limits of (self)controlled and (self)contained identities.
That is to say, we hide who we are out of fear of who we’ll find.
And then that bottled up reality spills out anyway.
In that attention to detail lie the burning embers of what once was and what could one day be again.
Meanwhile, lamentations are sung and suffering is glorified in an attempt to reconcile the contradictions. Success defined differently from understanding.
All we ask from (in)cognition is acceptance and forgiveness.
And then the moments slip away into a crystalline dream that only reflects the vague sensation of the memory.
But that version of reality never even truly existed.
Refraction
I couldn’t tell you how long it had been. Like we all do, I fell into a routine. I suppose the marked difference with me comes down to any regrets lingering in stifled actions.
Although I find myself asking how much blame falls onto the scope of understanding the question. A gilded cage and nothing more or a crestfallen raven and nevermore.
All that rapping on my door.
Plucking away at notes in a song my ears no longer hear. I saw myself tasked with the minutiae of monotony as a gift from God.
I lift my hand once, I raised it a thousand times. One sip from that sea and my bones had worn themselves thin. A change in seat and the seasons were marked by as little as their background noise.
Trite inconvenience and we all get back to work.
“Master Stephen?” Roger spoke in educated tones. Polite conversation in the open air. A cigarette downstairs. That man was paid to welcome an heir. Someone to snuff out the passion of my flame once and for all.
“Coffee?” I enjoyed dancing with some of them. Stolen glances flirting with what came next, I still struggle to remember every face.
“Wouldn’t be Monday without it!” She was different. I felt it the first time we met. The servant and his smile welcomed me to the next stage of my life.
“Every week for as long as I can remember.” I looked up at her, waiting for the drink to cool.
“Well, how long could that really be for?” Jessica joked back and I stumbled over my own feet as we walked down those hallowed halls. A single step and half my life was gone.
My flesh and blood as an offering to the altar.
His name was Robert and he looked just like me.
The windswept facade gave way to ruinous remains. The cutting edge that was once my signature style soon became a dull blade. The kid was sharp though.
Cut from the same cloth.
But for some reason, we pretended like nothing ever changed.
“Jess…” The taste of her name was sweeter as age crept up from behind.
“Steve?” She never forgot what it felt like to be in love. A contract where half the weight was sometimes missing.
Our baby boy had long since left home, but we pretended like nothing changed. We stayed within the confines of our comfortable routine. The motions of the day were already on a fixed schedule we set in stone long, long ago.
And all throughout it all, she supported me and I supported her.
I lifted my arm to pluck at the old strings. She remembered raising her own a thousand more times. The sips in that sea where our souls gorge on the expression of our deepest emotions.
In the final moments as the last images charred the edges of my eyes, Bobby was back with the grandchildren and more. But all I could focus on was the joy in my slowing heart.
My long, deep breaths reminding me of how Jess would be waiting for me somewhere up there.
I heard the melody. I would even say perhaps for the first time again.
The one I wrote that day we met.
How I expected disappointment, but Roger knew I would end up pleasantly surprised. All those years ago when we exchanged sarcastic looks and I walked outside to light another cigarette.
I relaxed into a similar expression as I fell out of the neverending routine.
Not a watcher, no longer a lost man.
A raven’s death finally knocking on my door.
And then once more.
Happy Together
I hope you enjoy this week’s piece of flash fiction. I ended up completely rewriting it halfway through. I found myself uncomfortable with the direction of the story.
Hollow, safe, lacking vulnerability, and most of all antithetical to the section it precedes!
The exact critique would be somewhere along the lines of derivative and redundant, but the core of the issue for me was that I could feel myself simply going through the motions rather than properly exploring my emotions.
A little insight into how my writing process works.
In fact, I’ve been tempted to start calling it unhinged authenticity.
How does that sound to you?
Otherwise, enjoy your week.
And until next time,
—JMB