by David Thomas
even graveyards. You know all the weird little places that city’s have. And I’d have this feeling inside me all the time. I was searching for something, some sort of meaning, but had no clue as to what it was or where to find it.
I just couldn’t make sense of it all. How people were with each other. How lives are found and made. If love was real, or some well-developed social need. All those stupid secrets, that adults won’t tell you the answers too, because the truth is, none of them really know the answer anyway. Everything confused me. It was like waiting to breathe, all the time.
This one time I somehow managed to get on top of a rundown dockside factory. You know the kind all red brick and small windowed. I think I’d been out all night wandering. So I sat down on its roof, tired, confused, just the usual stuff going through my head and I remember the dawn was coming up with the cold morning breeze. And I began to notice for the first time that strange colour you get just before the sun comes up, even before the birds begin to sing.
It’s kind of like blue, but you know you just feel it’s something more, something wiser than anything you’ve ever known and that sound without sound, all mixing and twisting together, it feels like the universe is right there in front of you, just waiting for someone to see it, to comprehend it.
Well there I am on top of this building looking out over the docks, with this colour, this view just doing what its doing and right at that moment, right then.”
She fingered the caterpillar button that, Mary had given her.
“It’s hard to say into words, even stranger to say it out loud. You can only feel it deep inside your secret self -in the place where only you go, where only it goes.”
She let go of the button and carried on.
“And everything there and then just clicked in to one place. It was like a trick had been revealed to me. That was the first time my mind realised it had a soul, that I had a soul inside and it was beautiful and clean and that blue, that endless magic out there in the morning sky was also a part of me, we were the same.
I had found an understanding - a small ray of light had finally broken through the wall of my confusion, which I’d been encircled in, for so long. I had realised in that blink of an eye. That me, you, all this, everything that ever happened, ever will happen, are all one, just one, the whole God damn lot of it, just one perfectly designed symmetry.”
Rubbing her eyes and face, she took one last deep breath. “I want to feel that again, too see it again and I’m sorry - I threw my life away like some spoiled child, thinking I was better than anyone else. That it was only me who could yearn or feel that much.
That was my mistake you see, Sexton. The truth is, everything is the same, exactly the same at its deepest core, just in different kinds of orders, like a pack of cards that’s all and I should have remembered that blue, that unforgettable blue which showed me that, before I decided to pick up that fucking razorblade an prove a selfish point to the world.”
She stood up slowly; the fire glowed beneath her face. She now had a look of a woman in complete control.
“When I go now, I’m not going to Nirvana, the Summerlands or any other kind of place. I’m going to that blue again - to that place my soul knows - the place that all souls secretly know deep down.”
She looked towards me, that was the first time I saw the colour of her eyes, they were blue, her kind of blue.
“So what about you, what’s your thing, you’re going to be the only one left here now.”
“It’s time for you, you better go, Scar.”
“Sexton you have to say something. What’s your realise from this place. Please while I’m still here to hear it. I don’t care anymore why this happened. Just say something, anything. Stop playing games - take that mask off.”
All I could do was stay silent at her. It was all I ever wanted to do in a way that had no clear meaning. But again none of this has, has it?
She looked at me and clicked her tongue. “Ok, if that’s how you want it, I’m sorry for that I really am. I hope you know what you’re doing, Sexton.”
She reached into her coat and brought out her Zippo. “Here you better take this.”
“Thanks.” I ran my thumb over the phoenix, Scar watched me do this. “Can I ask you a question, Sexton, before I go?”
“Seems only fair, Scar.”
“Don’t you feel it, feel like there’s some greater story going on here, even?”
She stopped, as if afraid to ask me the question, but she fought through her emotions.
“Even when we were alive, didn’t you feel it, feel you were part of something bigger?”
I shrugged my shoulders and spoke as honest as I could. “Goodbye, Scar.”
She shrugged her shoulders as well and gave me a farewell smile. “Goodbye then Sexton, remember fate is only fate if you let it. I hope your choice is the right one and you don’t end up like the monster Mr Kydd turned away from. I got my answer, just find yours ok.”
She then turned and walked back towards her grave. I looked away, a little ashamed for being cold with her. It was over, just me now alone in this lost graveyard, this stage of long goodbyes.
For a long time I stood there thinking about them all going or gone down their different roads. About why this had happened and what I needed to do next, what I needed to say next to you.
The fire slowly died out and I became aware of the hiss of the trees, the slow rocking of their branches, it sounded much like the last ebb of a tide slipping out into the deep dark ocean, as if nothing important had happened.
I looked around for a moment, unsure of my own thinking. But hadn’t that always been the problem? I never wanted to say what the others have found the strength too. With each passing of them - all I could do was bury it deeper within myself. I just couldn’t say the things that had haunted or gifted my life; I never would, not even to myself.
And there in that passing spark of thought, the strangest feeling came again, like when I first arrived here, that intuitive emotion that you just had to follow. I knew it was time for me to go back to my grave, but for good this time, forever.
The silent revelation felt like an arrow finally being realised from the bow, heading for one curtain point, one bulls-eye of an answer.
It was because I didn’t say anything, didn’t tell anyone, that I had kept it all a secret inside and locked my emotions away into some dark corner of my mind. And I knew now it was worth just as much as if I had said it all out loud. It still made everything feel distant and surreal, but it also felt like it was the right choice, if only to me.
As I passed each of their still and silent graves, I stopped at, Doc’s and there on top of his headstone instead of flowers lay the unread card from his reading, I wondered what it was, wondered why she’d left it there, but thought better of it than to look, it was theirs, there’s alone. Something’s are just not meant to be known are they?
I carried on to Scar's to put her Zippo back on her headstone, didn’t feel right to keep it, it read she was just 18 years old - yet she died with as much wisdom and love that any human being could ever wish for. I made sure she had flowers.
In the far distant the dawn was beginning to rise up, it looked like it could turn out to be a beautiful day. I began to walk back to my own grave and there on top of the headstone as I came near I could see a single flower. Scar had remembered me after all - she knew I’d find a way out of this maze. I picked it up as the first flickering rays of light danced over the horizon and held it in my hands, staring at its natural beauty that, Doc so longed to see in his own life. I put it back on top where it belonged.
Before entering, I took one final look round to find who I’d been speaking too all this time. Too finally see the face that I’d been telling this truth too, this story too. To ask for some tangible last words to why it all happened, but I knew there was nothing left to say to you.
Because death is never a complete story is it? How could it be, life isn’t. Tha
t’s the problem isn’t it? No matter how hard we try, we can never truly get to the root of the problem. Never get to the clear facts. And so we must each struggle with what we find, in whatever time there is, as I have.
And again in that passing thought that strange unknowing feeling swept over me, an answer did come as I stood at the foot of my grave. The final piece of the story slipped into place. I did know what to say and to whom. The answer was staring me in the face.
It was me, just me, I’d been talking too all this time, for it is only we in the end who can judge our lives, only us who have to live and die with it and that at the end was good enough for me. The circle was finally complete. The moment had finally become, now.
I am glad I never did said anything, nothing at all, except the only word that seems to make sense here, the only one you should say, as you step between the life and the death of your own story.
“Goodbye.”