by Ri, Xesin
“Is it all just a game?” He asked one hot day. “Just a trick for power.”
She told him no but he didn’t believe her anymore.
For two weeks he stopped trying to be near her. It was hard not trying anymore for what he had so longed for and so heartily dreamt about. For two weeks he stopped but he couldn’t contain his disappointment that she didn’t seem to notice.
There were good times in this disappointment but they only lead to a deeper shame. Like when she put her muzzle to the air and sniffed and seemed to like an apple Farran was eating he thought to bring her one and perhaps win back her favor. When he threw it to her she just let it bounce off her dark nose and down to the ground. “Not today Farrran.” She went quiet soon afterwards as she had done so many times before. Those moments of solitude were nightmares for him. Across the cave he would feel her presence, the silence dragging itself out over him in a slow terrifying motion. Sitting or standing he couldn’t help but wait until he was alone so that he could howl out ot the sun ro the moon like a wolf in the night. He would howl deep and long knowing just why wolves howl. They got it. You howl for this life. You howl in fear of death. You howl because you’re not the alpha male. You howl because you are the alpha male. You howl since your ears are too sensitive and all that howling just has to be drowned out. You howl away the silence so you don’t have to think.
Farran stomped about like a child. He knew how he humiliated himself, he didn’t care. He wasn’t being told no. He wasn’t being told yes. He wasn’t being told anything at all. He wasn’t even sure if he was like or hated by her and the other miners since he acted like such a fool these days.
Now, everything she said hurt him. Good or bad it didn’t matter he couldn’t stand to hear the voice that spoke to him. She must be playing with him. What else could this be? But, Oh! didn’t she want him? She must! When those little moments of joy and fun Farran couldn’t forget them. They stung him to the core. He was no longer good company. Everything was bad. Even his good memories stung him now. He just wanted this thing to end. Whatever she had once been it needed to end but only she had the power. Perhaps if he weren’t too cruel she wouldn’t completely burn down the bridges between them.
“Oh so you think you’re so cool. Treat people how you want because you’re a so special dragon and we don’t matter.”
“Farran.” She seemed shocked but hadn’t this been what she expected when she used him so. What else could happen?
With her mighty nose she pushed him away.
“Hey. Be careful or the villagers will come and get you.”
She pushed him again.
“That’s right you’re so cool.”
“Farran, you know that being around you isn’t the highlight of my day.”
He shut his eyes against the pain of the words. Through all the pain he couldn’t believe how much that hurt him to hear. Nothing in this world could have been more terrible than that. Why? Really, he wasn’t anything at all, not even a toy. She really had just been playing with him. Ten times he’d tried to be anything in her life. Ten times. It was humiliating. It was infuriating. Not even to be a bangle about her wrist. But he just couldn’t hate her even now. He just couldn’t get away. Even if he had, he would have had those lingering regrets that he knew from his earlier life. He didn’t want back there. Bur not this. Not this sort of hurt. How could she say that? What had he done that was so terrible?
“But you’re the highlight of mine.” He whispered back.
She pushed him away again once more. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t done before to him or other boys but when she pushed him this time he fell. It had only been a matter of time until he toppled and now he did. He only fell onto his back but when he hit the ground his entire body shattered before her like a stained-glass statue.
The shards were of every color and shade but flesh and blood. They were colored and clear and bright in the light that surrounded them. “Farran?” She pushed against the shards with her nose and found them to be very sharp indeed. “Farran?” She licked them and they were not bitter nor sour nor sweet nor acidic nor anything but totally void of taste. Snatching one up into her mouth she bit down on it and found it to be strong like a diamond, maybe stronger.
“FARRAN!” She blew flames all over the shards with her scream. They did not melt. They did not move. They did not shake and they did not break.
A trick she thought. Farran is a wizard of course. He is merely playing with me. She looked left. She looked right. Lifting her great muzzle she sniffed the air for him but there was nothing. I will wait for him to stop this game, she thought, surely he’ll begin another. Time passed. First it was minutes and then it was hours. Soon night fell over her and those shards.
“Farran?” she whispered to the shards. “Shattered but by what magic? Can’t I bring you back?” The shards were exactly what they were. Some magic probably might bring him back, she thought, but what?
I’m not very tough. I guess I’ll just say that almost everything that was good between you and I is gone right now. Today, a common Thursday, you looked like you might have been hurt by my disappearance but trust me that a week ago, last Thursday, an uncommon Thursday, you hurt me worse than I’ve ever been hurt. It’s my fault but that only redoubles my shame. I don’t want to go into it but I didn’t know I even had the capacity to be hurt like that. I acted poorly and let my hopes run way, way away and I am so very sorry. I had no control over those feelings if you understand the ending of this story you must then see why my silence is not to hurt you but because I am simply unable to be anything right now. I am in a state of stasis where I will remain for a while. Simply stated I don’t know what to say for myself. I can only tell you that if you find love—hold onto it and be happy. Don’t try to bring me back unless you really want me to be a real friend or something more. You’ll have to decide because I am frozen.
Whatever your choices I will respect them. Whatever you feel I will respect you. I just can’t play any more. The game hurts me too much because I placed more on the table than I should have. I truly wish you well but things can’t go back to the way they were. I truly wish I could be what it is you want me to be but I don’t know anything anymore. Your strengths will always guide you and keep you well that I am sure of.
Something,
Nicolas.
Thinking about it now, it might have been better if he’d made her a mix with some love songs on it, or he could have called her a bitch and just gotten it all out of his system; but that wasn’t Nicolas.
He continued, “I see you have forgotten my name. I know you forget me. You know I predicted this once, do you remember? I told you about Harry Chapin’s song Taxi? I told you that Philip K. Dick loved music, talking about telling time by when the Beatles albums were released; and I told you that I was always surprised he didn’t discuss Harry Chapin while he liked so many others like Carole King and the Beatles; yet it seemed the loss and the magic of Chapin’s lyrics would have been something Philip would have loved.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You don’t remember me at all. Not even the fact that I loved that song, the cute eighties one about a guy singing to a girl that she ought to take him on.”
“Nicolas—I—I think it is nice to see you.”
Nicolas sat down on the sidewalk, sighed and laid himself flat on his back. He was supine.
“What are you calling yourself these days?” he asked, without even acknowledging the fact he had just lain flat on a public sidewalk in the middle of the day.
Her stepfather’s place was just a few hundred yards ahead, a short walk. And on the ground before her lay a spectacle.
“Nicolas, please. I’ve got to go. I didn’t leave; you may have stayed here, but it was your choice to walk away from me the last time we parted.”
“True, and I promised I would never ask you out again, I promised myself so many things—people used to ask what I would do if I ever saw you again. I used
to say I would probably be unable to stand because of being overwhelmed by emotion if I ever saw you again. I hate to be right, but I was right. I suppose I must tell myself, ‘I told you so.’”
“Do you want an apology? Will that get you up, Nicolas?”
“No, I arose from my shattered state long ago. I wrote that, just in case I ever saw you again. I called the story, ‘When Farran Stood Again.’ It is a short story. It is a sad story.”
“Damn it, don’t be a dick! Get up!”
“Funny that you should pick that insult after I reminded you of Philip.”
“I have to go.”
“Then you will leave me? Where will you go? California? New York? Idaho? Not North Carolina? Not Florida? Not Texas? No, not where the sun would burn your skin. Canada? Maybe. I bought a French book after I walked away from you, just in case you flew back around. No, I know, not Boston! Because you will go where nobody knows your name.” His tuneless voice and gentle chuckling froze her.
His eyes found hers after a time.
“Right?” he said.
“My real name is as good as any. I don’t run from anybody, Nicolas.”
“Names have meanings, my dear dragon, and you know that lots of things happen near a dead end if the right people live there.”
“Nicolas, I have to go.”
“Fine, I’ve named you Kiera.”
“That’s not my name, Nicolas.”
“In absentia it is. I renamed you. You weren’t there, and your other name hurt too much—so I gave you a new name: Kiera White. I’m sure you remember why I used Kiera. And White because you remind me of Harley Quinn. I like to think she finally married the Joker. Not surprisingly, you took his name—in your heart, I knew, you were always a traditionalist.”
“Is this funny to you?”
“I’m not laughing; I am just so happy. I can’t remember the last time I saw you so angry. You must be very busy. You were always your most beautiful to me when you were furious. You wear your anger better than you wear your smile.”
Kiera shook her head. “People always told me you were crazy.”
“They were right, but you knew they were right; and you knew I was crazy the first time you met me. You came back anyways. So it is. So it shall be.”
Nicolas was exhausting her like he always did. “I need to go.”
“You could have gone when you realized who I was. You could have run when you recognized my face. You could have ditched me when I laid down on the ground.”
He got up and faced her. He looked at her. She had never figured out if he was a genius like some said or just the loneliest crazy she’d ever met, a homeless man in the making.
“I still wish I had said the right things back then. I listened to ‘eraser (polite)’ over and over missing you.”
“I need to go, Nicolas.”
“’I will not say your name,’ ‘I will not say goodbye,’ ‘She looked so sad,’ are just some of the things I would repeat to myself trying not to forget. What is not fake, what is not untrue—I didn’t forget you, why did you forget me?”
And with the simplest of movements he lifted his head, walked past her and was away.
She began to go too. She was back on track. He called out from behind her, “You know that I got what I wanted, don’t you?” His smile was delirium on her mind. She smiled so big it hurt. “I got what I wanted, and Farran could never be happier; and so I arose, so the story goes. I always wondered, as I thought and thought of you, did she get what she wanted?” His smile dropped. He was patient. It was one of his worst qualities. She knew this was what all the rest of his show had been about. This was the only answer that mattered. She wanted, desperately, to answer the question; but she wasn’t so sure what the answer was. And then there was what it would mean—her, him.
He shook his head in disappointment. “I guess that was asking too much. I guess that crossed the line. I guess I know you can’t cross it. I don’t know—I don’t know. I don’t know why I thought this time things would be different, and you would cross the creek. Time has passed.” A tear fell from his cheek.
She saw the tear. She wanted to say so much, but the fact remained he wanted too much. If she went to him…if she were near him….
“See ya,” he said with finality.
“Bye,” she said as if she were addressing a stranger. And then she found herself yelling, “You are such a dick!”
“I know. Try and get over it. I’ll be around, but I doubt you care because I was around and waiting; I had to get up on my own, without you,” he called out. “I cried. I haven’t cried since then until right now.” And, even at the distance between them, she could see his cheeks glistened in the diffused sunlight. And still he turned and walked away.
And he walked away, for real, for true; and he walked on; and then with time, fear and history weighing back down upon her, Kiera started off for home, back on her mission to get to safety at her stepfather’s.
A government man, a Flint Farms man, a Synad man, an ADD man would have been one thing, but to run into a walking, talking, living memorial to the past was far more difficult. He was made of marble and steel. He would be here long after the Sun burned down and the Earth grew cold. A billion years were nothing to him. Life was nothing. Death was nothing. She, for that glimmering moment, as he had tried to tell her in his own distorted way, had been more than all that; yet he walked away from everything that mattered to him, not once, but twice. She walked and wondered, “What must that take?”
As she walked up to her stepfather’s house, she felt that she had reentered normal time. She was not around Nicolas anymore. He was a walking, talking, living memorial and also a walking, talking, living time-distortion, like a rock made of liquid water in the middle of a river. And now time was moving around her like it should. Her fears were normal again. Her thoughts were back and centered on the government’s consolidations efforts, Chuck Dean, the Flints, Mr. Synad, and the ADD Corporation like they should be.
As she pulled the key out of her bag and pressed the tip to the lock, she could feel a fear growing like a wildfire. Nicolas was like the Doctor, or Professor X., or Q. If he had thought and thought and thought and thought about terrible things—horrible things—maybe he wanted that for her. What did he really want? What was his story for her? If he was still angry then she was doomed to open this door. If he really had gone on without her, anything was possible. What if he had—gotten what he wanted—as he claimed? What did that even mean? They’d never even touched. Was there a warning in what he said? Only vague, abstract claims about time. She shook her head. What would he have said had she asked him her future? What would he have given her after the moment that had just passed between them? He had predicted the future before. He could be amazingly right sometimes, or at least, amazingly close to right, but he could be overcome. Nicolas was no god. Nicolas was no prophet. Just a fairly smart man with a lot of time on his hands.
“Damn it!” she cried as she dropped the key away from the lock. She swung her fist through the air.
He could have walked her to her door. He could have escorted her home. He could have tagged along; all she had to do was ask. He had begged her to let him come with her, once upon a time. He had once asked nicely and then not as nicely. She had treated him—she wasn’t sure. She had treated him like she had. It made her feel powerful, but he wasn’t the type of man who let her feel like this mattered. He was ready to give more than he had, he was ready to do more than any one man could, he was ready for her; but he had asked so much of her—hadn’t he? Wasn’t this his fault? He wanted her to show him love. He wanted her to show obedience. Didn’t he? Wasn’t that what a man wanted from a woman? Did he want that? Why didn’t he want what all guys want? Why didn’t he act normal? Why couldn’t he just be here? She wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t special. She wasn’t the best girl in the world. She was just a woman with a heart and a mind and a goal. Who was he? Who would he be? He was a walking, talking, living,
time-distorting memorial to a past event between the two of them that was built only on wanting and desiring but never on the culminating, never on the happening, never in the now.
She put the key to the door and then dropped it away again. She looked at the street and the houses and the lawns and everything.
What did Nicolas mean, “I got what I wanted,” and “Did you get what you wanted?” Did he know about Chuck and Chicago and No-bit and ADD and the hackers and the group and all the rest of it? Had he anticipated it? Would it be safer with him than with her stepfather? She was smarter than this. This was stupid. She had traveled all this way to be safe, right here and right now, easy, just like this. Yet, here she was, actually thinking about ruining that plan because of a chance encounter with someone she—casually? accidentally? intimately? destructively? knew??
She remembered he’d been the one who’d said to her, “You can be as complicated as you want, but you’ll only be wasting time.”
She jammed the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the heavy green door open. She jumped inside and shut the door and locked it quickly behind her. She had seen no threat. Nicolas would not follow her if she didn’t request him to do so. She was safe from him. He wouldn’t even call.
She turned and looked about the house she hadn’t been in for six years.
The house was the same. Books, dust, tapes, CDs, boxes and color pervaded the place. Her stepfather would be at work. He wouldn’t be home for awhile. She could leave a note for him, so he wouldn’t be so surprised to see her.
The house looked fine, she thought, as she took a few steps down the front hall going back into the TV room and the kitchen.
Maybe she wasn’t being followed, or maybe she had lost anyone who was following her; but the man in the parking garage had said, “People track themselves these days.” That was an absolutely true statement. Doing anything on a computer or a phone or otherwise could tip off someone who watched her stepfather’s on-line patterns. It wasn’t enough to get rid of a cell phone, to have no debit or credit cards in one’s own name, or simply avoid the phone lines. Patterns on the internet were more than enough if you looked at e-mails or a friend’s pages. Certain sites were almost guaranteed to be malevolent. Facial recognition software could be applied to video from a hacked camera or even security camera footage, even in places where the use of such software wasn’t strictly legal to use. Drones might be hanging up in the clouds with amazing optics and extremely high-resolution digital cameras. What was the average person to do against such an onslaught of technology? This new world was the catalyst for the group and other groups around the world.