Passenger

He breathed like air was the cure and the disease.

“I can’t,” he said. Lowered brow. Wild eyes. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I c—” His breath hitched. He lowered his forehead to the dull surface of the table.

After a long time, he looked up. The sun had shifted and he sat in the glare. He felt clearer. Calmer, in the setting light of the sun, buttery orange. The sunset was unremarkable, like thousands he’d seen before.

All was quiet. He closed his eyes. There was no one there to see him smile at the dinged kitchen table in front of him, scuffed by many happy family members’ knives and forks.

No one to see his pale skin made golden in the light, his hair turned butterscotch. He opened eyes made of amber and honey and stared straight into the light until his vision was dominated by a radiating ultraviolet sphere.

As long as he didn’t move, he could ignore it. As long as he didn’t think about anything at all or anyone at all—

The left side of his vision came to life. Words scrawled across the dining table, the wall, the window in front of him, the sun itself. No matter where he looked, the text was there. Words and numbers. Statistics.

He tried to look away and not read it. He tried to clear his head again and think of nothing but the cold metal in his palm, but he relented.

7:34 PM - 16 August 2054 − 74 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tracking location….
Location Out of Range
Current Assessment: State of Crisis…
Psychological Peril Detected
Seek Medical Treatment Immediately

I am, he thought.

His mother’s face flashed in front of him. Gaunt, angular, expressionless. He felt no remorse, only the emptiness he now recognized as his inability to love her.

She was the person responsible for the gun he held in his hand.

The weight of it was like a promise fulfilled. It was a measured delight he took no remorse in acknowledging. He edged his eyes right, trying to outrun the feed in front of him as it shifted and swirled with his thoughts.

He almost laughed as he brought the gun to his temple. His last attempt—through the mouth, the tang of metal on his tongue—had caused a cataclysmic panic to rise inside him.

It would have to be through the temple.

As he pressed the gun to his head, he remembered—those lines he’d made sure to memorize. They were whispered in his ear gently, rhythmically, and were then echoed in the scrolling feed.

I grow old ... I grow old ... 
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

The reminder was almost enough to make him lower the gun. The note. He never did get around to writing it. The IS feed in his brain made it impossible for him to forget anything, but it didn’t chime in reminders like an anxious parent.

Every thought, every image associated with parents and notes and poetry scrolled in front of him. His mother bringing a syringe to his neck. This will hurt, she said.

He slowed his breathing and remembered a time when he wasn't a fully-functioning hard drive. He put his finger on the safety.

The feed spun.

Death… Afterlife?… Gun… Bullet… Hurt… Will it hurt?… The fear… the fear… the fear… the gun… The trigger. Pull it. Pull it. Is this it?

From the door came a sharp knock.

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Absolution

Absolution Olive Streeter never could get a good answer out of her mother.

In response to a question about a certain piano piece that Abby just couldn't get right, Mary would spout off about meter and timing and the importance of counting off methodically in one's head while playing--one two three, one two three--in a way that, for Abby, thoroughly eliminated the joy of playing.

And yet when Abby asked why she was given a name that sounded like a daytime soap opera with characters named England and Cashmere, her mother would say, "I'm sure you know it was nothing more than that I liked the sound of it and wrote it down on a piece of paper after you were born. Now try it again from this measure and don't forget to count."

It was obviously no use asking her mother, and the one time Abby asked her father Tom, he'd smiled and said, "Is that really your name? That's awful," and rubbed her head in a way that ruined the perfect part in her hair.

Then, before anyone knew what was happening, her father moved out because they had "grown apart" after seventeen years of marriage, and no one but Abby seemed to think it was odd to say that, since things don't really grow together or apart but up, which left Abby to wonder whether her mother or father was left behind over time, or which of them had separated out like coagulated bits of day's old milk.

This time, when Abby asked her mother a question--why did Dad leave, just walk out the door like that with a bag over his shoulder and his wallet in his mouth while we were watching reruns of Boy Meets World with the sound as loud as it can go and no one even noticed what had happened until Excalibur started barking at the door like he does when something is wrong and I finally looked over at you and you were fast asleep and I had to shake you awake to ask you why why why--her mother said nothing, and Abby's sister Talia looked at Abby like she was the stupidest person on earth and said, "What the hell is wrong with you?" which is exactly what Abby wanted to ask everyone else.

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forever, forever, forever

There was this time at a concert when the people to my right parted and in the open space I saw a girl standing alone, crying while the band played my favorite song. I understood those tears because I also had a deep, inexplicable connection with the song, the lyrics, the melody that was both terribly sad and uplifting at the same time.

I watched her.

She was a motionless piece of art amongst the swaying bodies, clapping hands, waving lighters. And when she parted her lips to mouth the lines that I had scribbled so many times in my journal, I felt weak, like I was on the edge of this huge precipice and had to jump to see if I could fly. But it was so, so far to the bottom and my fear felt like a tangible thing keeping me firmly in my place.

I imagined approaching her, grasping her hand wordlessly and we would be like rocks parting a river around us. Or grabbing her face with both my hands and giving her reason to believe in destiny with a kiss that echoed in our skins like heartbeats, two heartbeats.

But I was tethered to my place on the floor by fear--fear of rejection, of my friends watching me, of the faceless bodies in the crowd that seemed menacing, yet transfixing. As soon as I lost sight of her, I felt a giant chasm open up in my chest, because I just missed the chance to share in haunting, ethereal beauty with a complete stranger in what could have been the most defining moment in my life.

If I was the universe and decided these things, I would make sure that the boy in the checkered shirt who had the weight of fear on his shoulders never received such an opportunity again, because these moments didn't deserve to be squandered by indecision or simple cowardice.

I realized then that the girl might go the rest of her life feeling that no one understood the wordless language of her tears or the way her chest constricts in a pleasant but unforgiving way when the singer says forever, forever, forever and the loneliness might cripple her like fear has crippled me.

The guilt of this was an almost audible wave flowing over me, crushing me, and my blood felt heavy in my veins.

But to anyone watching, I was just kid at a concert who didn't know how to dance.


(The song: "All I Ever Wanted" by The Airborne Toxic Event)

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