Fell of Dark

by Patrick Downes

  Stupid. I have no real reason to think you exist. I could be wasting time. Normal people have more than one girlfriend and even more than one wife. Why should I wait?

  I tell myself to wait because you’ll make everything worthwhile. I tell myself it’s okay to be lonely and to suffer and bleed because you’ll solve everything. I can’t be the only person on earth to go through life like this. I’m not utterly alone. There are others like me. You’re like me.

  Brothers

  “I’M NOT SURE IF you would be friends or enemies.” The man from the Barnabas kitchen, Kermit, with one dead daughter and one living son, was talking. “I wouldn’t want to have an enemy your size, but I can’t say my son would choose to be your friend. He’s not at a soup kitchen. I’m not sure where he is. Or maybe it’s me. I haven’t been home in a while.” He swallowed a chunk of bread. “You don’t talk. The silent type. He is, too. Maybe you’d sit together without a word between you. I’m thinking it’d be more for him than for you. He’ll soak up your gentleness. I frankly don’t know what you’d get in the bargain. We can’t choose our brothers.”

  I nodded and shrugged, and he took my arm. “He may never come here, but you’ll have to meet sometime, somewhere. I’m sure of it. Or maybe I want it for him. I don’t know. You two are marked for each other.”

  Even if I’d wanted to speak, what could I have said? There’s only one person I’m destined to meet. A wife, not a brother.

  Frustration

  WHO GUIDES ME? WHAT?

  I walk, read, think, write, and row. Is this a purpose? This is my to-do list.

  What is being prepared for me? Tell me. Tell me.

  Why?

  GOD GIVES US MYSTERIES to solve. Most of the time, these mysteries have to do with other people. Why do people steal from their mothers, murder children, burn down houses, sell drugs, rape, bomb markets, bulldoze forests, and hit men on bicycles with their cars and drive away? Why do people fight fires, enlist in the armed forces, chase muggers, become brain surgeons or monks, sell flowers, or teach eighth grade?

  Some people have a meaning we can’t figure out. They show up in our lives from the mind of a god, out of thin air, they stay for a little while, they show us our life, its future or present, and then they disappear. They fall through a drain. They burst into flames. They starve themselves. They walk away. A disease takes them. They die.

  Joan

  THE THOUGHT OF JOAN makes me want to sleep. What else should I do? I get so sad. I thought for sure you came as Joan. I thought your name was Joan. I was wrong.

  Spring, and I’d just finished my last final. I stood on the train platform during rush hour, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, waiting for the uptown express. Normally, I’d have chosen to walk rather than take a train or bus, especially when I felt restless, but I had to make a rowing practice. I’d already learned how to be gentle with a boat, but I was still getting strong. I looked along the steel tracks for the light of a train hurtling through the tunnel. Nothing.

  That’s when I noticed a girl reading a plain white paperback. She seemed too thin to be real, the silhouette of a girl projected onto a column. I couldn’t see her face behind her hair. The train pulled into the station, and the girl stuffed her book in her bag. She hooked her auburn hair behind her ear, and I thought I recognized her. The face I once saw in my winter breath, almost transparent, ghostly.

  You?

  The train, brakes screaming, slid to a stop, and I hurried toward the girl. I’m tall and strong, so I could push through the crowd. People told me to watch it, but I ignored them. I wanted to get on the train with the girl. When the doors closed behind me, I looked up. She stood facing me, but there was a man, a wall between us, and he smelled of sweat and hair gel. I hated him. I looked at the girl’s face. She was in college, I thought, eighteen or nineteen. She had different-colored eyes, one blue and one brown, unreadable, and a short, fine nose. Her thinness—. Her flower-print tank top and blue jeans gave her presence; otherwise, she might not have been there at all. She caught me looking at her, and I turned away, ashamed and frightened. I know how tempted I am by the impossible.

  When I dared to look at her again, she was reading her book. The title of it was in French, La symphonie pastorale.

  The train lurched. I hadn’t noticed it stopped between stations. It pulled into the next station, brakes squealing and squealing, and I wondered if the girl would get off. She didn’t. Neither did the man between us, and there was no room to move. The train shuddered, bucked into motion, and the girl, who was turning a page, lost her balance. She would’ve fallen into the woman on her right if I hadn’t put out my arm, knocking the man in front of me. I caught the girl by the shoulder, and she said, “Oh.” Her shoulder was small and soft in my hand. I thought I’d hurt her, and I pulled back. Her frailty vanished, leaving an emptiness in the middle of my palm, an emptiness heavier than the weight of her body. I could see the imprint of my thumb in her skin, like a burn.

  “All right?” I said, ashamed by my brutishness.

  “Yes,” she said, recovering. “You’ve got quick reflexes.”

  The man who smelled of sweat and gel sighed audibly and jerked his shoulder, as if from an unwanted touch.

  The rest of the way, I couldn’t look at her again. I hated myself. I felt stupid and oafish. Here was the girl I once saw in my breath—I still thought it was you—and I’d hurt her. She had skin soft as my breath. I was rough and stupid: I couldn’t touch a girl; I couldn’t take care of a fragile thing. Like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. I wanted off the train. If only I could’ve opened the doors then and there, the train in motion, and jumped out onto the tracks, escaped into the tunnel. I’d had thoughts of talking with her, but now I was glad for the wall of a man between us.

  The train rolled into the station. I couldn’t stay on a moment longer. I faced the doors and put my hand up against the glass. My hand was huge, an animal’s paw, a bear’s paw.

  The doors opened.

  I took the stairs at a run. Up, up, up I ran, into the perfect intelligence of sunlight and loneliness.

  Except I wasn’t alone.

  Wait. Where are you running off to?

  How could she—? Her voice came from inside.

  Stop running. Stop. Turn around.

  I turned around, and there she stood, not even out of breath, coming off the stairs to the subway. Why did you run away? Her voice still in my head. Did her lips move?

  “I thought—. How’d you follow me so fast?”

  I flew.

  I believed her.

  What’s your name, giant?

  “Erik.”

  “Erik?” She spoke out loud suddenly, excited. “Thorvaldsson?”

  “Thorvald—?”

  “The Viking murderer and explorer. Father of Leif.”

  “Lynch. But I always wanted to be a Viking.”

  You look like him, all coppery and shining.

  “What’s your name?”

  Joan. Walk with me, Erik Lynch.

  “I can’t. I’m on my way to the boathouse.”

  “I know.” Out loud again. “Walk with me, instead.”

  “I—”

  “Haven’t you been watching? Haven’t you seen me? I’m dying.”

  Silence.

  “I didn’t want to think—”

  “You can’t avoid it. Walk with me.”

  “Okay.” She took my hand. Hers was so fragile, like a leaf. “What do I say?”

  “We’ll walk for a while, sit in a park, and then we’ll say good-bye. I think I have a handkerchief. I’ll clean up your blood a little.”

  “My blood.”

  “Yes, your stigmata. Then we might kiss. After everything, you’ll think about me for the rest of your life. I’ll be dead in a month or so, maybe six weeks. But we won’t see each other
again. I won’t tell you where I am. I won’t tell you my last name. I’ll be the wife who’ll never be your wife.”

  At that moment, I knew, I knew for sure, she couldn’t be you. She said all the right things, but—. How could you die before we lived? Impossible.

  “You can’t be my wife.”

  “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. If you’d survive whatever’s killing you, then, maybe.”

  “Walk with me.”

  “You’re just going to leave me sad.”

  “No, I won’t. Erik, come with me.”

  We walked. It doesn’t matter what we said or where we went. I pretended for a little while she was you. We kissed, and when we kissed, the world flipped downside up. I picked her up in my arms, and she laughed. “Put me down.”

  “You don’t weigh anything.”

  “I’m almost dead, and this is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.” We sat down on a bench. “Witness,” she said, crying. “You’re my witness.”

  I nodded, and she let out a deep sigh.

  “Would you do me a favor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold me. Until the crying stops.”

  I cradled her, and one of us groaned. You’d think I’d lifted a tree instead of a dying girl. Everything felt heavy. All the silence. I shook. I could hardly take her weight. I pressed her nose and mouth against my shoulder and snuffed out the sound of her weeping.

  Fate

  I’M CONVINCED I’LL DIE young. I wonder if even you could help keep me alive. My father died surrounded by all my mother’s beauty and love. True love doesn’t prevent death. I used to think it did.

  I’ve got my invisible wounds. I can’t stop bleeding.

  I give blood for blood, and I’ll be dead before I’m twenty. For me, the sky and earth are the same. There’s no division, no horizon. I’m always walking in fog and mud. I have no idea where I’m going, but I’m going straight, straight toward the center and straight away from it. There’s no east or west or north or south. There’s only one direction. You and death, in that order. I can almost touch you, and you’re as far as the South Pole. I’m a clown and a genius. I’m alive and as good as dead.

  At the moment I die, everything will clear up. The sky and ground will separate. I’ll hear your voice. I’ll carry a man out of a fire or save a child from drowning. All done.

  Finally, I get it. I understand. I’ll die, and you’ll have to find another husband. You’ll be too young to go without love for the rest of your life. You’ll have two husbands. I’ll only be the first.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been sadder than I am right now.

  THORN

  WHEN I WAS TEN, Kulthat and Tillion drove me to the hospital. They told me if I didn’t calm down, they’d leave me there forever. I had my knapsack. I was screaming. Screaming and screaming. I wouldn’t stop. My father had put out ten cigarettes in my legs, and they were sticking up like little smokestacks. Why did he do that? He denied it of course. He said, I did no such thing. Never, never. The liar. Liar. Like I’d make that up. People are always making things up, but not me, not me. I tell the truth always.

  You’ll stay here, my demon parents told me. You’ll stay here if you don’t calm down. This place is meant for you. Hell. Gehenna.

  I stopped my screaming, and they took me home.

  But what if I had kept on screaming? What if I’d been left at the hospital? How much worse could it have been?

  Hirsute, that’s the word. I’m hirsute. Which, according to the dictionary, makes me horrid. One archaic use of horrid means shaggy, bristling, rough. Horrid also means shockingly dreadful. Abominable. Hateful.

  My hairline starts right above my eyebrows. My beard starts right below my eyes and grows south all the way to the bottom of my throat. I look like a monkey, though no tail, which makes me more ape. A skinny ape, runt ape, a laughingstock in a troop.

  My girlfriend likes me, though. Candace. How I ended up with a girl named Candace I don’t know. The name suits a girl or woman of a particular type. Classy, elegant. I’m not saying my Candace isn’t classy and elegant. She is in her own way, boots and all, but she’s no princess.

  “I don’t want to be a princess,” she’d say.

  “You don’t have to be.”

  “Good, because I don’t want to be. I’d rather be an expert in apes, live with apes my whole life. I’m practicing with you.”

  I let her shave my face now and then. At her house, in her family’s bathroom.

  “I always have to clean up super well. If my parents see little hairs all over the counter, they’ll wonder where the hell they came from.”

  “Tell them they’re mine. I had to shave for the tenth time in one day. They’d believe that.”

  “They would, but why here? They still don’t think we’re together.”

  “They never will. To them I’m nice enough but crazy.”

  “I’d say that’s just about what everyone thinks, sweetie.”

  In the Bible, Esau is born red and hairy and loses his birthright as firstborn to his twin, Jacob. And Jacob says, My brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. They weren’t identical twins. Fraternal.

  I have no twin, fraternal or otherwise. I am a son, but no birthright will come to me. My father has finally left me alone. My mother, too. She committed suicide seven months ago.

  I found her. Hanging. She strangled herself with a brown six-foot extension cord. The one she’d connected to her iron.

  Everyone asks: Was there a note? We always want explanations for the terrible things. Yes, a note. Three sentences. Very short sentences.

  Good-bye, Kermit.

  Good-bye, Hawthorn.

  Good-bye, Salome.

  No explanation. No confession. No peace. Simply done.

  This left my father weak and distant. He had no strength to beat me, no energy for torture.

  Once, a few weeks after my mother’s death, Kulthat came out of his hell and slipped while running after me. He fell like he was hit by a hammer. There he lay, on the floor. The sole of his foot facing the ceiling.

  “Hawthorn, help me.” My father’s voice. In pain. No more Kulthat.

  For the first time, I shuddered. A spasm like I’d been struck by a splinter of lightning. Not a full bolt. My head spun, every muscle clenched tight. My tongue between my teeth. No sound but a growl like thunder coming from somewhere inside of me. The Guardians.

  My father held his shin and blubbered, so I kicked his foot. Not hard. A little tap, but he screamed. I kicked him harder, and his foot tipped toward the floor. He screamed.

  “All the years,” I said. “Eleven years.”

  I tugged his foot around so that at least it pointed in the right direction. My father stopped screaming and passed out.

  A month after my tiny revenge, my father limped away. I haven’t seen him since. When have I been better off than now?

  Did he suffer enough? His first child drowned. His wife committed suicide. His son hated him. That’s a lot of pain. But I don’t think he suffered enough for what he did to me.

  Sometimes having a girlfriend means wondering how long you’ll have a girlfriend. I’m ugly. I know I am. Ugly outside, ugly inside. Girls don’t dream of boys like me. Covered in hair, angry, easily upset. Why would a girl want this? Every night, just as I fall asleep, I wonder if I’ll have a girlfriend when I wake up. Everything can change that fast, overnight. I could be left with less than nothing. Everything burned.

  So I ask Candace occasionally, “How long will we have?”

  “It’s never good when you ask this. It means you’re worried.”

  “Just answer. How long will we have together?”

  “Until the very last moment.”

  “What does that mean? It could end right now.” The Guardi
ans, already angry, always angry I’ve let Candace so close for so long, wake up a little. I hear them in my voice. “You could snap your fingers this second. Is that what you mean?”

  “You sound rough, Thorn. You have your demon voice.”

  “You said, ‘Until the very last moment.’”

  Candace puts her hand on my face, or on my shoulder. She might even kiss my cheek. She’s nothing if not fearless. “I mean the very last moment we have on this planet. Together.”

  “How can you know that?” I’m angrier and angrier. My Guardians mobilize the Sawmen. Pain gets closer. “You don’t love me. Who could love this?”

  “I could,” Candace says. “I do. Please calm down. We were having a good time.”

  The saws bite, and I’m done. Doubled over. Crying. Harmless.

  When I kicked my father’s foot, I tortured him.

  There are entire museums dedicated to the history of torture. There are men and women tortured today, right now, this second. The methods would give anyone nightmares. Anyone. Death would be a relief. Like aspirin or sleep.

  I can hear my own bones breaking, my own muscles pulled out of my body, and I scream, “Kill me, kill me, kill me.”

  I’ve already known what it feels like, this kind of pain. I know what it means to want to die from pain. The pain my mother and father, Kulthat and Tillion, gave me. Plus, the Sawmen. The pain and fear from loving Candace. Kill me.

  I miss my mother. I miss Tatiana. Shouldn’t we all have our mothers, so long as they aren’t out to kill us?

  A year ago, my mother left hell. We talked for a few months. We laughed and found a way to be together. We had an understanding. We wouldn’t mention Salome’s name. We wouldn’t talk about the violence and punishment and warfare between us. I would do this in return for dinner.