by Dan O'Brien
A cold shiver struck him.
He blinked his eyes, water flowing free.
The child was underneath him.
Crimson regret spread across her demure frame.
The Lonely touched the red splotches in fear.
Tears streamed down his face, carving chasms through the soot that had collected on his face. “No,” he whispered, wiping the blood between his thumb and forefinger.
The girl cried.
The world swam back into focus, screamed back into reality.
She stood, and then she ran.
The Lonely fell; the blood was his.
He breathed heavily, feeling the tightness in his chest.
He had been shot.
A shadow loomed over top him.
The outline of the machine gun was not lost on him.
The Lonely looked up.
The sun was bright around the man’s body.
He said something, but the Lonely did not understand. He tried to look past his shoulder, to the crying girl, but it was too much of a struggle. The barrel of the weapon watched him, dancing as the man held it over him.
“I….” spoke the Lonely.
The chamber clicked.
The round spewed forth, exiting the barrel in a mosaic of fire and powder.
The Lonely watched it: the jerking of the weapon and then the hot sensation as it struck him, icy coldness that spread across his body as the shock overwhelmed him.
He drifted again, these sensations different than what had happened when he traveled between the realms of the totems. This was what dying must feel like, a disconnection of everything you know––to fade away.
“The inequalities of society are irrevocably linked to the inequalities of men. All people suffer for the amusement of the masses. Though we fight for what we believe is justice and freedom, often we ignore that we fight only for our freedom and not that of all people. All of us walk this earth the same way, but the means and the philosophy of how and why we walk often separates us. We forget that we are owed nothing in this life and that we have only each other to depend on. In the end, all of the accumulated possessions that we have amassed mean little. We collect and collect, making space, owning, and in the end those things that we own, own us.”
The Lonely watched as the armed man walked away, his gun raised once more upon the fleeing villagers.
“I––we….” spoke the Lonely, though he could form no words. His hands were covered in blood, his breath heavier with each labored breath.
“The gap between human understanding and technology has led mankind to a place where it no longer wonders. We see things as statistical, logical, and as such we have forgotten that our beginnings, regardless of science and belief, are something of wonder. Whether you believe that we evolved from something else or were put here for some purpose, those origins are a thing of great imagination. We stop knowing each other as brothers and sisters of one race and instead as a stratified population that has fallen prey to systems of separation that segregate with unequal principles.”
The Lonely gasped for air, his mouth a comical enactment of a dying fish.
The world swam once more, the convergence of brilliant colors and distant sounds.
Then, again, it came back into focus.
The interior of the building was dark.
A thick cloud of smoke hung above the bar.
Men and women sat veiled and comfortable in the darkness.
The bar was dirty.
The people were vacant-eyed.
The Lonely looked down at his clothes, seeing the gray trench coat that hung loosely around his frame. He felt the wide-brimmed hat upon his head. A bulge at his side was a service revolver.
What was he?
“Societies will often find names for those who disagree with them. It may be commie, red, terrorist, revolutionist. These connotations change over time. Run the gamut from evil to good. Often it is the violence that brands them, but sometimes it is simple ideology.”
A bell chimed.
The door swung open and the Lonely turned to look.
It was dark outside.
The silhouette of the man was offset only by the dull buzzing of a flickering street lamp behind him.
The man wore the same coat, the same hat. Heavier in the middle and a thick mustache were among the many differences. He had pocked features and dull eyes like a cow chewing cud.
The Lonely watched the eyes of the patrons.
Distrust and fear swam across their faces.
Venom and misdeeds traveled in their hushed words.
The man made his way across the bar, sitting next to the Lonely. His mouth opened to speak, the words that came out a hauntingly familiar phrase. “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?”
“What?” asked the Lonely, his face crunched in confusion.
The man chuckled and gestured toward the bartender.
“I’m sick of hearing that, but McCarthy can’t seem to get enough. He’s after everyone, rounded up another bunch for hearings today. Madhouse in there I tell you, a madhouse.”
There was a buzzing in the bar, like a fly trapped in a neon light. A small sound at first, it soon grew to such a frequency that it overwhelmed the Lonely, forcing his hands over his ears.
“Men fear the unknown. Men fear those who are unlike them. Men fear the cry of those crushed beneath them. Fear is the greatest power of a tyrant, of any leader. They will use it as a weapon and as their greatest defense––striking out with it to keep the people in line, using fear to keep people distrustful.”
The Lonely fell from the stool.
The words of the man lost to the overwhelming voice of the unseen. He saw the people swarm around him, but it was the voice that struck him so resolutely.
It was that voice that guided him.
“There may come a day when the words of one person can change the world. Enough repression and tyranny and the people lose the will to rise above what put them there. Do not be among those who no longer wish to see the world as it is, to speak out for what you believe in.”
The smoke-filled world that he had so briefly inhabited filtered through memory, disintegrated from thought and again he was left with only darkness.
Darkness filled every corner of his being, every aspect of thought. He drifted aimlessly, lost in a void that neither comforted him nor harmed him. There was peace in the lack of stimulus, structure in the presence of nothing.
Then, again, he was anew.
It was the cold that struck him first, sending a shiver across his body. The light then came, an overwhelming beam that seemed to crush him.
“We are all writers of a destiny, of a grand plan. Within each of us there is a will to do something great, to enact change in a world we see as unbalanced. Is each of us correct? That the world is not as it should be and in desperate need of a savior? Or is this the very root of the human condition?”
The Lonely opened his eyes.
The world was water.
Dark blue horizons spoke only of more sea.
A cold wind passed over him again and he looked around, taking in every aspect of his surroundings. The air overheard hung high with thin clouds. The sun beat down upon him, though it was no longer the brilliant yellow globe that it had once been. It seemed polluted and angry, a deep shade of orange that ran with veins of slithering crimson.
He stood upon a floating piece of ice.
“Is this the end of the world?” he asked, surveying the emptiness stretched out before him.
Then the voice came again, powerful and trustworthy.
“Change is a constant, the ebb and flow of time and society has proven this time and again. When presented with cataclysm or apocalypse, we often run in fear of information, or perhaps doubt it for the words spoken. What we must ask ourselves is the price paid to avert such horror so detrimental to our well-being that we would not risk it? We must ask ourselves: are we so content with our ea
sy lifestyles that to change them is too difficult, to perhaps save that which we love is too complicated for we have to give up some of our comforts?”
The Lonely wobbled on the ice as a ripple in the water nearly knocked him over. A broad, white back of a polar bear broke to the surface, scanning the area. His wet fur seemed to have fallen out in places and the dark eyes reflected something very similar to fear. It breathed heavily and then ducked beneath the cold waters once more.
“When someone thinks as you do then it is an undeniable truth; but when you differ, then it quickly becomes opinion. Science dismissed because some don’t want to believe, or perhaps have been led to believe that such science is the product of something far darker. A conspiracy the length and breadth of which has formed a massive lie best defended as the beliefs, not facts, of another.”
The sky changed.
Dark clouds screamed overhead.
Lightning crawled across the sky like a swarm of angry creatures.
Rain fell, though it was not the beautiful summer rain, but instead distressed and unnatural.
A thick smell hung in the air: ammonia and sulfur.
He watched as the world died around him.
The ocean shook, waves ruptured and thundered to the surface.
He fell from his icy perch.
Heavy swells bombarded him as he struggled to remain above water. Something lurked deep beneath him. Though the water was cold all around him, heat was coming from below.
He cried out, but there was only the horrific, overwhelming sound of the world around him. Crashing waters, a surge as that vacuumed and pulled at his small frame amidst the chaotic sea.
He swallowed the salty water. Swimming through his throat and then deep into his lungs, he tried to exhale––but the water was ever-present.
He was drowning.
And there was no one to save him.
The voice did not come for him or the strange darkness that had followed each of his transports. Instead, he watched as the surface faded farther away.
He no longer felt.
Had he passed into the warmth, he would not have known.
There was no grand show, no cavalcade, and no intricate display of lights that announced the Lonely into the presence of the Keeper.
There was nothing.
They stood in darkness: the Lonely and the Keeper, the Keeper and the Lonely.
“You have traveled far, have spoken much on the ways of things have you not, Th’bir?” asked the Keeper, his tone heavy and proud.
The Lonely looked at the back of the Keeper, for he had yet to turn.
He searched for words.
“That is my name?”
The worlds that he had visited, the images that he had seen, were nearly washed away in the simple revelation that was his name.
The Keeper laughed and turned, his face shrouded.
His figure clothed in shadow and darkness.
“Do you not recognize your own name? It is a sad thing to not know who you are.”
The Lonely tested the name. “I am Th’bir.”
“That is good that you can hear your own name. You have journeyed through paradoxical worlds that tested the very boundaries of your intellect and reasoning to know this one detail, to know who you are.”
The Lonely nodded, a small smile coming to his lips.
“I am Th’bir,” he announced with more conviction, but it was chased away quickly. “What does it mean to be Th’bir?”
The Keeper paced around the Lonely.
“That is a question that has no answer I am afraid. You are Th’bir from head to toe and everything that entails it. I cannot tell you what it means to be Th’bir just as you cannot tell a frog what it is like to be a rock.”
The Lonely hung his head.
“Now that I know who I am, I am still empty.”
“That which exists is trapped between two worlds to which we are all bound, the two truths to which we all must face. This is the duality of being. Life and death, light and darkness––though light and life are no more synonymous than darkness and death.”
He thought of the darkness that had acted as the interim gateways for his journey. The Lonely shook his head, the realization of his name gone.
“That which thrives in the darkness hides, breeds fear. That is what we are taught. From birth to death, we see the spectrum as thus.”
The Keeper opened his hand above his head like a grand illusionist. The effect was subtle at first. But as the amber and golden colors radiated from his palm and crawled across the air, the Lonely saw them for what they were: fireflies.
“Do these thrive on fear? They exist in the darkness to bring light––to guide the path through darkness to their home using the light. Are they evil?” presented the Keeper.
“Darkness is not death, nor Light life.”
“This is what was written in life, so it is what will be written in death,” echoed the Keeper and spoke the words clearly and softly:
I am being,
I am thought,
I am form,
I am fleeting,
Like autumn leaves I fade,
I have begun to believe today,
Therefore it must be truth,
All that is behind me is blinded history,
That which lay before me the righteous path,
Though yesterday it was false,
Upon its awakening in me it has become truth,
I am without form,
I am void,
I am never-ending
I am eternity.
“Though it took you only a moment to write, it is truly the summation of a lifetime,” echoed the Keeper, the one once called A’thed.
The Keeper turned, removing the cloth from across his features and revealing for the first time his face.
It was the same as the Lonely.
“We are one. We cannot separate our lives, for energy is ever-flowing. Every being walks a path for which they do not know the way; though, it is such for every being until the purpose of their path is revealed,” spoke the Keeper.
The Lonely stared upon his own face, dumfounded.
“Why then are you the Keeper and I the wanderer?”
The Keeper paced away from the Lonely.
“We are all the shapers of our own lives, writers of our own stories. I am simply the other side of what your life has been. In another time, another place, it would be I walking as you and you, the Lonely, here as the Keeper.”
The world had shifted to a shimmering darkness, a contradiction of all things. Two figures stood: the Lonely and the Keeper.
They were two beings at the end and the beginning of time.
“We all exist as living and dead and so shall it always be, for we do not know which realm we walk in. We all may go on alone, but it is in the company of others that makes life worth living,” spoke the Keeper, the mist and mystery about him gone.
Watching the Keeper, the Lonely saw the duplicity of man, of being. Here was the thin line between life and death. This was the difference between knowing and believing. The beginning and ending of things are destinations of vast journeys undertaken with each choice.
And once more, he was upon the shore where he sought the Translucent Man. The sun did not shine. Only the cold winds off the ocean greeted him.
No more was the Keeper, nor was he any longer the Lonely. Turning back, he looked upon his footsteps. Cascading far off into the distance, he watched as the ocean winds blew gently over them. His footprints soon erased from existence, as if he had never walked upon the shore.
grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share