I had somehow forgotten that the world was larger than just us.
Story (very) loosely inspired by this quote from If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin
I hated the planet. I was on one end while she was on the other. And the space in between—what you call the world but I call the distance—well that…that was our distance. It was personal. It was our willed oppressor; our fixed huntsman. The world, as an entity of it’s own, had a vendetta against us. I’d understood the concept of space in its entirety by its determination to keep us apart. It’d become a force, an obstacle; and since I was not above it—since by the sheer plight of my existence, I had to be part of it—I grew into this unyielding, constant contention with being alive.
It wasn’t long before she’d stopped being real. That other form of distance will do that. Temporal distance. We can beat spatial distance—we can close it. But temporal distance only grows; it just keeps on going. It will take things tangible, things real, and mold it into some pocket of your imagination. Shut it into memory. We see memory as a preserver; as a thing that saves; a kindness that holds on. But what it really does, I’m telling you, is it transforms and transfixes. Without remorse. Right in that order. It takes the thing—the object, the event, the person—and it brings upon a metamorphosis, a turn into something different. It makes the thing subjective.
Gosh! That thing, that thing that you loved—that person—for how it’s feel wasn’t familiar, for how it enchanted you, how it modernized some new perception that was hidden from you before; how it so kindly took you from yourself. You start to see it through your own lens; it becomes a biased thing. There is nothing novel about it any longer. And then it stays there, just like that—an object of yours. A center. Disgusting.
So this is what happened. This was my fate. She became a goal—my goal—an idea—my idea—and that’s the worst thing that could’ve been. For her to become as stupid, as trite as a man’s fickle fantasy with all the man’s biases, all the man’s projections and images. So disingenuous a thing she became under my agency. She lost all substance; she turned to the idea of her. It is a thing of disgust, to be laced, as she was, with my personality; my perceptions. How I feared I came to hate her; how I marred her by ascribing my own notions to her. I’d ruined her. I’d squandered her autonomy.
But it didn’t matter anyway. It didn’t matter because—I’ve said it—I said this was my fate. There was no other fixation to be had; none, no chance of it. No, there wasn’t, I tell you, because she was my first. What do they say about firsts in stories of romance. What do they say about childhood lovers. Those firsts are most tender; it wasn’t my fault. The firsts—they precedent all that come after. Of course there was no other else to want! Her magnitude was so much—there was no possibility of a match.
She was my first; my first taste of comfort. It doesn’t change, with time, as memories do, comfort. It’s done to us. It’s made. So it stays; it seeds; it builds roots in our skins so we seek it in everything we can touch. And so I’d be seeking it forever, seeking her back—her who I’d changed through memory; through imagination. I would be stuck looking, looking forever, forever, for that same hand to hold; that same face to smile at when playing with dirt on the sidewalk. I’m the only one who saw her, yes, and I did see her—she was real and we’d play, and she’d talk, and she had long black hair and black button eyes and I could see right through her body like it was only partly there but there was never any question to be had because if you grow up in a burning house then your whole world is on fire and yes, she was my first, so she was all I knew.
My parents knew, they knew because they did it, they brought her to me but then they took her away.
It was when I was 9 that they took her away. They sent her away. My parents did. I have to call them my parents for purposes here because you wouldn’t know otherwise. Ruth and Henry. They did it. They sent her away. They didn’t tell me where but maybe it would have been better if they did. If they had said she was in a small town in China, or a bright city in Australia, or the countryside of Thailand. My thoughts would be more accurate, at the very least; I could know when imagining her background if it should be rural or urban, and I could know if her English would be accented with the Orient. Maybe then I wouldn’t have been pushed to the brink with the brutal sadness, the unabridged anger, the forced acceptance, that since she’d gone and I’d have to make her up completely.
But they only told me she was on the other side. She was on the other side (it was me who filled in the blank with “of the world”) and she would have to stay there, they said, and it was for my own good. But they didn’t know what “good” was—see, she’d told me earlier—they didn’t have any clue of goodness, and she, therefore, would be the one to save us while they, on the other hand, would seek to stop her. She had prepared me; she had known; and that’s how I knew she was special. That’s how I knew she was real.
They would talk behind doors about the danger of her. It was worse than they’d thought; she wasn’t attached to me, it was me attached to her. Yes, yes because she was my everything. Some deal they’d made while I was still in utero (that’s where I met her; I remember it keenly); some exchange of money for souls; some curse of some latching that would end in destruction. Give the demon a human child to act as guide, and they’d never meet the poverty they’d been set for.
She told me they’d thought they could play god. She told me they’d thought they could have it undone—all their silly money (she laughed about it), they could buy their solution to their selfishness. Some man from church, he was known for unlatching. But it was a dangerous job (she’d called this Simony; she said it was common). They’d thought they’d have it all; the riches they sold their freedom for would buy them back their freedom.
But before they sent her off, she’d told me first. This, she said, was the fate. This was going to happen. She’d told me I would have to grow without her. She’d told me I wouldn’t like it. She’d told me I would resent them. I would resent the distance. I would resent the space. I would resent the world for imposing it on us. She’d told me not to worry. It would all fall into place. She’d told me they would use their money. They would enjoy it. It would never reach an end. And I’d have it too. And we’d have good lives, as her master promised.
It was a competition, she’d said. Her master and the other one. One with horns and one with wings. That was the balance. This world—dirty thing; oppressive thing—this world was just an interloper. It was between the up and the down. And the souls, they all went somewhere. And that somewhere would bleed—the energies, the intentions—the heavier one would, into this playing ground; this demonstration. So they needed souls. The down needed more souls. But all good things take patience—bad things do too—and we’d bear a heavy weight, the three of us would. The down would win the balance; they would be the crucial influence. The more people would stab, would steal, would cheat, would fight. We’d intercept the balance, us three. We’d be the turn of the century.
They did think they had beat it. She was unlatched when I was nine. They had fooled the devil; they had played god. They had bought their exorcism, from that man at the church, and it had worked (they weren’t sure it would). They had endless money, and they’d forgone the attachment. They told me she was gone; they said she’s on the other side; they said I’d forget her (this, I was sure, I wouldn’t); they said let’s move on.
But they didn’t know I’d feel the rip. It was an inevitable one; it was part of our fate. It was a severance I’d feel too long; it festered and festered and festered and it determined my all. And she’d become less and less her own and more and more mine, and I’d hate it. I’d hate each day I’d wake and feel the distance; feel the space; and I’d remember so much of her, and I’d think stop it, stop it, I am changing her, I am making her imperfect, I am imposing, I am projecting, she is becoming a figment, a piece only of my mind, I am losing more and more and more with each time I conjure her image.
So it was then determined; as she had said all things are. It is not the world that’s the oppressor—not the space which has divided us—it is I. It is both. It is all. The parents, which put her on the other side, and the world, which wouldn’t give her back. And me, who hadn’t stopped in time with her; who had kept on moving without her. There was no beating memory; there was no taking it back. The only chance I had to save her was to rid her of my thoughts. But boy, she was them all. I couldn’t help it really. I knew better than to continue perceiving her through that tainted, blighted hippocampus. Hippocampus, they call it. I studied it in college—I’d intended to beat it; to change it, so I could have her back the right way; the way she’d been when she was guiding herself; when she was merely the “cursed” attachment (but no, she was never “cursed”). I wouldn’t let it change her any longer. But my studies were in vain. They were utterly in vain.
So I had to do it. I had to do it. The parents couldn’t fathom when I came in with the gun. They said no, they said no we saved you long ago. They said how could this be. They said they had rid me of the latching, they had rid us of the fate. So I had to explain. I had to explain that I couldn’t keep perceiving. I couldn’t turn off the imagination; she was in every thought, and I didn’t know. I didn’t know if it was real. I had forgotten how she’d looked. Her image, I explained, it was wrong because it was mine. It was me, it wasn’t her. Sick. It made me sick. She had become a fantasy but, but, no, I didn’t want a fantasy, I wanted her back. That comfort, that first. And then I told them I had to bring them with me. Because they had done this. They had sent her away. They had created this distance. They had marked her some place else and marked me here. And the world would suffer too—I hated it. I hated it all. I hated it all because it was this large, dense thing, and I felt it’s presence all around me; I felt its intent. I felt its intent in keeping us severed. I was here and she was there. And everything, every single thing, every atom, every step, every molecule of air, it was all in our way. And they would suffer. The world would suffer because we, we were the balance. We were the turn, we were the last pin to drop, we were the super exceeding, and we, when we turned to souls, when we went to the below, we would push the Hell upon Earth; we would cause the chaos.
And then I understood, I understood it all when I entered. I understood that the parents didn’t mean the other side of the world; they meant the other side of reality. She was in the below. She was right all along; she said I shouldn’t be worried; she said I would bring on the end. She said it was part of the plan. We were returned. It was me, she’d said; it was my mind—it was my imagination, it was my nostalgia, it was my fierce, fierce love for her—which would consummate the world’s end.
