A Choice to Make

He finds himself sitting in an empty room.

He tries for a moment to remember how he came to this place, but it is as though he has, jumped, from one moment to the next. He remembers climbing into the auto, and reaching for the key to start the engine. But his next memory is of sitting here on this cold, hard floor.

It is the coldness of the floor which draws his attention outward for the first time. The walls of the room are nondescript, plain and flat, with no noticeable adornments or additions. The floor is smooth, it appears to be poured concrete. On the wall across from him there is a narrow door, not quite big enough for him to walk through standing straight. It has no handle or lock, no hinges that he can see, but there appears to be a small keyhole along one side.

His clothes are missing, but the items he had in his pockets, a set of four keys, his wallet, thirty seven cents in change, and the ticket he brought with him from home, are all laid out neatly on the floor a few feet in front of him.

He cautiously stretches out his arms and legs. They feel stiff, as though he hasn't used them in sometime, perhaps hours. Moving slowly, he rises and walks over to where his possessions are arrayed on the floor.

He picks up each of the items in turn and holds them in his hand, turning them slowly over and over. Why were these things left here, for him?

“Why?”

He picks up the wallet and opens it. It still holds his diner's card, his driving license, and the twenty three dollars he had with him that morning. The pictures of his sister and her daughter are still tucked away inside the folded up letter she sent him before the accident. He breathes a sigh of relief when he finds them, but quickly folds the letter back up without lingering on the picture itself.

He picks up the change. He expects it to be slightly warm, like change that had just been taken out of his pocket, but instead it is cool to his touch. He holds one of the pennies tightly in his fist for a moment, and feels it gather in some of the warmth of his body. He holds it up to his face and feels the warmth of the penny softly radiate against his cheek. It calms him.

“It's comforting.”

He picks up the ticket he had with him that morning. It was a ticket he had drawn on lottery, he always played the same numbers. 12. 3. 50. They had been, well, if not lucky, perhaps, preternatural. At least he told himself that. Those numbers had become something of a memento to him.

“A reminder.”

He picks up the keys. Four keys. The ignition key for his Morrie. His flat key. The key he used to open the small bakery he worked in. And the key to the footlocker he kept in his closet.

And one more.

“Five keys?”

He holds the alien key gently between his thumb and long finger pointed upwards. He turns it down and around in his hand, puzzling it intently. As a key, it looks no different nor more interesting than any of the other keys on the small loop he carries every day in his pocket. While he ponders this strange comer, he slips his finger through the loop and casually spins the keys into his fist. It is a habit he does unconsciously. He spins the keys and releases them, spins them and releases them, as he looks once more around the room.

His eyes once again settle on the strange door. Too small, with no hinges nor handle. And yet, that small keyhole. The keys spin into his fist once more, and he looks down at his hand. He is holding his flat key on top, but it is the unknown key which draws his attention.

He holds it between his fingers once more and brings it up to his eyes, obscuring his vision of the door.

“Perhaps?”

The cold of the concrete floor is beginning to seep into the souls of his bare feet as he gathers the rest of his belongings in his hands and shifts idly from side to side as he contemplates the door. How long has he really been in here? Who brought him here, and why? Are those answers beyond that door, perhaps only waiting for him to insert the unfamiliar key?

He thinks briefly of the longed for convenience of pants, not for their warmth, but rather their pockets, as he tries to clutch all his belongings in one fist. He keeps hold even of the coins. Perhaps they are not much, but they are one of the few things he has with him now which are knowably his own, and he has no wish to leave them behind.

As he approaches the door he holds the key more firmly in his grasp. He had hoped that closer examination would mean greater understanding, but such eludes him as he examines the finely chopped line which separates the edge of the door from the rest of the wall. Taking a deep breath, he inserts the key into the small slot near his waist.

“What are you waiting for?”

With a sense of finality, he attempts to turn the key to the right, only to find that it has no range in that direction. His anticipation flees him with the frustration of the ruined climax, and grudgingly, he turns the key back to the left. The key rolls smoothly in the cylinder, and he feels rather than hears a click, as something inside the door reacts to the spoliation.

And then nothing happens. He stands still, nude, holding his few possessions in his arms, with one hand outstretched towards the door. The door stands still, silent and sealed, joined to him through the key that is both inside it and inside his hand.

“Well what did you expect?”

He contemplates his next actions carefully, and once more looks around the room, perhaps inviting some inspiration from the barren walls. But none is forthcoming. With a despondent shrug, he pushes on the door with his opposite shoulder.

He almost falls forward as the door slides smoothly away from him in reaction to the pressure he applies. His mind tells him that such a solid door must be terribly heavy, and yet, it seems to glide away with the slightest touch. After only a few inches, the door stops again, but this time he can see a groove built carefully into the wall beside it. Removing the key from the lock, he pushes the door to the left into the cubby which seems shaped for this purpose, and it slides in just as effortlessly, fitting as perfectly there as it did in the wall to begin with.

As he moves through the now open portal, he notices passingly that there are no external pieces of protrusions on the end of the door. Only a small socket with which the door can be pulled from its resting place.

Beyond the door is something else. A place of memory and wild imaginings. He looks back over his shoulder and sees the characterless gray room open behind him. He turns again and here, before him, he finds a sea of shifting colors and senses.

He can smell the greens in the air, taste the vibrant smoothness of the surfaces at his feet. His ears hear pictures and thoughts from his childhood.

Here, he relives a moment when his father gave him a shiny red bicycle for his sixth birthday. Over there he can see himself hiding behind the walls of his grammar school with Thomas and Gordy and the bottle they stole from the headmistress's desk. Behind him he sees his first kiss, and his first spanking, and his first failure.

Somehow he is able to take in all these things at the same time. Somehow he is reliving them all at the same time. He spins in the room, still clutching those things removed from his missing pants pockets, and as he does, he sees once more the yawning portal back to the gray, featureless room where he first found himself.

“I know this place.”

And he does. For this place is himself, far more so than the few meager things he carries in his arms, far more so than all the worldly possessions of his life combined. This place is everything he has been and seen. And more.

He notices something as he relives every moment of his life simultaneously. There is a thread here. Something indecipherable, yet undeniable. Something connects every one of these moments, the memories he cherishes and those he does not. He can not name it, but he knows it's there.

He tries to focus on one memory. Not that one. The memory of this morning. How he arrived at this place.

He seems himself sit down behind the wheel. He seems himself reach for the key. And then he sees himself here. There is no memory in between.

“Something is missing.”

He rewinds the memory. His hand retreats from the key. He climbs out of the Minor. He sees himself roll back the window and remove the thin plastic tube. He sees himself return to the house, and sit down at the table. He seems himself pick up the picture, and the letter. For a long time, the scene doesn't change.

He watches as he sits, holding the picture in one hand and the letter in the other. He could see the picture now if he wanted to, but instead he chooses to focus on himself. He doesn't want to see it.

After an eternity, he sees himself fold the picture up inside the letter, tuck it into his wallet, and put the wallet back inside the pocket of his pants. He stands up and leaves the room.

He can feel it. That thread. The link between forever and today. He plays the scene forward again, and watched as he takes out the letter and picture, looks at them, drops them on the table and walks out to the garage.

He seems himself put the plastic tubing in through the window, and sit down behind the wheel and reach for the key.

“So that's how I got here.”

The thread extends infinitely in one direction. But he can feel it ending in him now. He can feel the loose, frayed end of the thread in his breast.

He holds the penny in his fist again, but this time it fails to warm to his touch. He holds it up to his face and it feels cool against his cheek.

“Can I relive that moment? Can I change it?”

It seems as though he has all the time in the world here. He begins at the beginning, and walks slowly through his life. Sometimes he relives a certain moment or memory again and again before moving forward away from it. Sometimes he slides past moments in one go. But never quickly. He wants to relive even his painful moments. He wants it all to last forever.

In time, perhaps in forever, he reaches that memory of eight months earlier. When he received a call. There had been an accident. A crash. Something no one could have prevented. He had made supper that evening. After he hung up the phone he immediately ran to his room and pulled the crumpled letter from the drawer of his desk. He smoothed it out carefully, straightening every wrinkle, and placed the picture he'd taken of them only days before down in its center.

He wanted to race away from this memory. He wanted a chance to change it. But it was not something he could change. Not from this place. Because the thing he wanted to turn out differently hadn't happened to him. He wondered if they had been given the chance. Had they chosen to leave things as they were?

“Did they choose to leave?”

The remainder of his memories were boring. Characterless. He had moved through each day like a sad doll. He had slept, and eaten, and occasionally bathed, but he had done nothing of consequence. Not until this morning.

This morning he had done something of great consequence. Something powerful. He had made his first real decision in eight months.

“And now you want to change that?”

He pondered that question for a moment. For forever and a day. He could. He knew that. From here, he could change anything. Except the one thing he wanted most to change. That thing was not his to decide.

But this was.

“Did they choose to leave?”

Could he?

She Really Felt

I had set out to tell a different story than the one that ended up on the page.

It was supposed to be something, else. Something special. Maybe it still was when I was finished, but it wasn't what I had intended.

It had begun simply enough, as I suppose most things do, with a chance encounter. I walked into the little coffee shop where she worked and ordered a tall mocha latte. Nothing fancy, but she smiled as she handed me my change, and I noticed the way her smile lit up her eyes.

Some people, when they smile, it doesn't reach their eyes. You can tell. Their lips curl up at the ends, and their cheekbones rise a little, but their eyes stay blank. They aren't really smiling. They aren't really happy. They are just putting on a mask. Maybe it's their job, or maybe they think it will make you go away. In the end, if you're watching, you can tell the difference between that and a real smile.

But she really smiled. She didn't know me, didn't have any reason to think we'd ever meet again, but she smiled at me. Here was a person who really felt emotions. It filled me with a passion. I wanted to see her feel something more.

I didn't go back into the coffee shop after that day. It was important that she not realize that I was trying to elicit some response from her. That would make it too forced, too fake. It would betray the purpose of the whole thing.

But I watched her from the parking lot of the shopping mall across the street. I watched her as she handed coffee to strangers. I watched as she interacted with her coworkers. I didn't use binoculars, that might give me away, so I couldn't see her eyes, but I remembered how they lit up when she smiled at me, and I could imagine them doing so again.

I imagined her sharing nice little anecdotes with the girl who mopped the floor. I imagined her wishing each customer a good afternoon as they walked out with their hot little cups and scones. I imagined her humming along to the fake music they piped in all day through little speakers up near the ceiling.

It was a wonderful experience, watching this pretty little thing love her life. But I wanted to see more. I wanted to see her feel other emotions. I wanted to see how real she really was.

I followed her home one night, just to see where she lived. I was careful to drive by quickly and continue on my way, but I remembered the spot.

I couldn't watch her all the time, I had responsibilities of my own to attend to, but when I had the opportunity I would drive by and see her working through the windows of the little coffee shop. Even when I was at work, or some ridiculous family occasion I would think of her and try to imagine what she was doing.

I started to carry a picture of her around in my wallet. I had taken it one day while she was out shopping with some people I assumed were her friends. She had just picked up a little handbag and was turning to show it to one of the other girls when I snapped the photo. Her hair was whipping around her face and framed it like the glow you'd see in those renaissance paintings of angels or god. Her body was turned away from the camera but you could see the look in her eyes. It was such a passionate moment.

One day when it was raining, I opened up the front of her mailbox. She always checked the mail when she came home from work, so I waited and watched as she reached in and pulled out the soaking wet envelopes. Each one, bills, cards, advertisements, was covered in rain water with ink running across the paper. I took a picture of her face as she shook them out in the lawn before she went inside. It replaced the other picture of her in my wallet.

A few nights later I went to her home and let the air out of one of her tires. It was Wednesday so I knew she'd be leaving for work at 10:45. I waited for hours for her to come outside, and when she did she immediately saw the flat tire. The look on her face was beautiful. This was a real person. Her frustration and surprise made me feel so warm inside, I began to cry. It was all too much. I had to drive away to a parking lot where she wouldn't see me express my emotions.

She eventually made it into work that day and I watched as she related the story to her coworkers. Each time she did so she relived the emotions of finding her flat tire. I took a video recording of her telling one of the customers what had happened. You couldn't hear her of course, I was too far away. But I could tell what she was saying by the way her expressions changed.

I stayed away from her home for a few weeks after that. I didn't want to arouse any suspicion. I found an internet site where she posted little messages for her family. I would check it every night before bed.

It had been more than three months since I first met her when I went by her house again and took her dog. I left the gate open so it would seem like it had run away. I watched her when she found the dog missing. I watched her frantically search the neighborhood. I watched her spend days driving around tacking up signs to every telephone poll with a picture of her dog and a phone number. I even kept one. And over the course of the next few weeks, I watched her slowly resign herself to never seeing her dog again.

I waited until it seemed that she had lost all hope, but not so long that she might forget about the dog, before I returned it to her yard one night. I had kept it safe in my home and even fed it the same dog food she used the entire time. I watched as she woke up the next morning and found it playing in the yard waiting for her. I watched her cry and roll in the grass with the dog in her arms.

I just wanted to see her feel. I didn't want to hurt her, but I wanted to see her hurt. That was why I killed her mother.

It was simple enough. The woman was old and frail. When the police found the accident, they just accepted the obvious explanation. An old woman had lost control of her car on a dark road and hit a tree. They didn't have any reason to suspect foul play, and so they didn't.

The funeral was almost more than I was ready for. She wept over her mothers grave. Quietly, with class, but powerfully. I could see the pain written bold across her face even from where I sat in my rented car nearly a football field away. I could see her shoulders shake as the pastor read the eulogy. I replaced the picture in my wallet with a new one.

I watched her for several years after that. Occasionally making little changes in her life to guide her towards something new. Once I had flowers delivered to her home addressed to someone else so she would think it was an accident. I cherished the look on her face as she picked them up and carried them inside. I made a noise complaint on her from a pay phone one night and watched as the police knocked on her door and woke her up. Another time I left a love letter under her windshield wiper made out to someone she'd never heard of.

Each time I was there, somewhere, to watch her. She became the canvas across which I painted a sea of emotions. And she felt every one of them fully.

In the end, I suppose it shouldn't have come as such a surprise when I ran into her that night.

I had followed her for years. I knew where she ate. I knew where she shopped. I knew where she went to church. But it was a small town. It wasn't that much of a stretch that one night I would find myself getting gas and look over to see her at the pump right next to me.

I wanted to tell her so much. I hadn't been this close to her in over four years, not since she sold me that first coffee. I wanted her to understand what I had done, and why. I wanted it to all be revealed, and I wanted it to never end.

What I didn't want was to see her look over at me across the top of her car with such dispassion. She didn't smile. She didn't nod. She simply saw me, and looked away.

The words died in my throat. My heart was broken beyond repair. I don't even know where I drove to after that, or how long I sat in the car before I got out and walked up to her door.

I opened it with the spare key she kept hidden behind the loose bit of wood along the porch rail. As I walked inside I imagined all the times we'd shared over the years. I wept at the thought of the little picture of her at her mother's funeral I still carried in my wallet. It was worn down from all the times I'd pulled it out and brushed her tears away.

I found her lying in her bedroom. I looked at her sleeping face and tried to imagine all those emotions played across it, but all I could see was the blank look she'd given me at the gas station earlier that night.

I called the police myself. I didn't want to get away. I didn't have anywhere to go now. I could hear them screaming at me to lie down as I walked out onto the porch. It didn't matter. It was all over now.

I couldn't understand how it had come to this. In between my tears I saw a vision of her smile.

Somewhere off in the distance I heard a sound of thunder.

In His Arm

It began with a small sensation on the back of his hand. Not quite like an itch, but kind of. Just a sensation. Like there was something he needed to address. But in his hand.

He ignored it at first. Perhaps he was too busy, or too stressed to take it seriously. He worked with his hands, they always had small nicks or bruises, one more irritating sensation wasn't going to slow him down.

But as day followed day, the sensation in his hand seemed to spread. It didn't intensify, but he began to feel it in his fingertips, and up towards his wrist.

He first really took notice of it while sitting in his home listening to the radio. He turned the program on every weekday evening at seven after dinner and listened to the old time music while he drank his tea. It was soothing. It reminded him of when he was a younger man.

But this day he couldn't seem to relax. On the table next to him sat the tall glass he had poured the chamomile tea into. He leaned back and closed his eyes, but he felt preoccupied.

That was when he realized he was rubbing his hand.

It was his right hand. His good one. Now that he thought about it, he realized that it had been bothering him for days now, he'd just been ignoring it. But after that afternoon, he couldn't stop thinking about it.

The next day, on the way to the grocery, he stared at his hand on the steering wheel as he drove. Now that he was paying attention, the sensation seemed so obvious that he couldn't understand why he couldn't just see the cause. It seemed like something so interruptive should leave some kind of mark. But the hand looked fine, it just didn't feel fine.

And it continued to spread. By dinner that night, he was feeling the sensation all the way up into his forearm. Like a tree growing roots through his bones. It still didn't hurt, but he was beginning to take it seriously. He decided to see the doctor the next morning.

That night he dreamt he was drowning in quicksand. His legs were trapped, and no matter how he pulled they seemed to become increasingly confined. He began to struggle, tossing and turning, and with each motion he was further constricted.

He sat up in bed terrified and realized that he had become entangled in the thin cotton bed linen he had pulled over himself when he went to bed three hours earlier. It had been too warm for a blanket, but during the night his sweat had made the bedsheets stick to his flesh and his tossing and turning had only wrapped them tighter around his torso.

He slowed his breathing and tried to distract himself from the terror of the dream. Slowly he realized that the sensation in his arm had spread up to his shoulder. He looked down at his hand, expecting it to be black now with the cancer that seemed to writhe beneath his skin, but still the pink flesh that was revealed to him seemed healthy.

He tried to lay back down and return to sleep, promising himself a visit to the doctor's in the morning, but it was no use. He couldn't ignore the sensation any longer. It was driving him mad.

He thought briefly about getting the old knife he kept beneath his bed and cutting into his arm, just to see if there was something under the skin. He actually reached under the bed and felt the blade with the fingers of his left hand, but he quickly abandoned the thought. It wouldn't be sharp enough and he didn't think he had the stomach to cut his own arm open laying in his bed.

But he couldn't stand it much longer either, and he began to fear what might happen if the sensation spread much further. What if it spread to his face? His brain? He wasn't a man of science, but this thing had him frightened. He staggered to the closet and dragged on some clothes before heading downstairs to put on his jacket and drive to the hospital.

On the way out the door he could feel the sensation reaching up past his shoulder. It seemed to be extending fingers into his neck towards his head. His panic nearly unmanned him as he fumbled for the key to start the old truck.

The hospital wasn't far, but the sensation began to spread faster as he drove. To his mind, it seemed like whatever was happening to him knew he was getting help, and was flying toward some conclusion in an effort to prevent that. It seemed to crawl up the side of his neck, dragging itself by its fingernails just below the surface of his skin. In his terror he began to drive faster and faster, racing against the agonizing advance of the sensation. He ignored stop signs and speed limits as he pushed the old truck towards the hospital.

But he knew he wasn't going to make it. Somehow, without knowing why, he understood that this was a struggle for his life, and that he didn't have a chance. Perhaps if he'd gone to the doctor when he first felt it in his hand. Perhaps if he'd gone in before bed that night. But now it was too late. The thing in his arm was going to win, there simply wasn't time left.

He thought about the old time music he listened to every weekday at seven. It reminded him of when he was younger. He wished he were younger now. Perhaps a younger man could have fought off this thing. Perhaps a younger man would have acted quicker. Perhaps a younger man would still have years left to live before dying here in the road tonight.

He felt it now, in his face. It was slowly oozing up the side of his jaw, towards his right eye. It didn't seem to be spreading down into his chest or back. It had a destination. It was headed not for his heart, but for his brain. He had no idea why, but he was filled with dread at the thought of what might happen when it got there. What he might become. He couldn't live like that. Whatever it was, he couldn't let it take him over.

The sound of the front left quarter panel striking the metal guard rail along the side of the bridge sounded like someone dragging broken bottles across a chalk board. It buckled at first and tried to push the truck back onto the road, as though the bridge itself couldn't fathom why he might want to leave it. But he kept the wheel turned hard into the rail and it quickly broke away. His front left tire went over the edge of the bridge and out over the empty space below just as the sensation reached into his eye.

He saw such things. Things he had never imagined in his simple life. It showed him what it was, and he understood now. How it had come to be inside him. What it meant to accomplish. It showed him the things that could be achieved. It took seven seconds for his truck to crash against the icy water running in the river below the bridge, and in those seven seconds he saw everything.

The impact drove his body first into the steering wheel, and then immediately past it and through the windshield beyond. Hard against the water below, the windshield was heavily reinforced, and the impact destroyed most of the structure of his head and upper torso instantly. No longer conscious of his experience, he was spared the terror and agony of that incredible impact, and as the truck drove him deeper into the cold dark water, and the parts of his body that continued to function long after being rendered irrelevant shut down from hypothermia and blood loss, the sensation which had begun in his hand faded away. Some parts of his brain were still receiving signals from his spine and efforting to understand them, but that was just the final electrical discharges of a collapsing biochemical system. There was nothing left to interpret those signals. No one left to act upon them.

People would fail to understand what would drive a seemingly sensible, middle aged man to get dressed and drive off a bridge in the middle of the night. They would assume drugs or alcohol, but none would be present. Eventually they would decide he must have simply fallen asleep, or become distracted. Perhaps he just lost control.

He might have, had he not take that last action. Perhaps he even did as that first tire slipped off the road. Certainly by the time he hit the water.

But he had been in control when he pulled the wheel into the guard rail.

It had been a conscious, deliberate act by a man who was admittedly desperate and afraid, but still in control.