I miss you like I would miss a pleasant daydream I cannot fully remember. Was there sunshine? Was I happy?
You are just that to me. A wonderful idea I had upon waking. An idea, I will realize fully once aware, best left to a dream.
What we follow will surface and you will know all truth. It is what we seek, what we have given everything to seek. And now we have failed, and that means nothing to you. But know that our failure is complete, with you and with the chase.
You will never hear from me again. That is my gift. That, my son, is love.
MATTHEW READ IT twice, then burned the pages in the fireplace. His grandfather never spoke of it. Matthew never forgot the words, the decipherability of which a task he ignored.
Within the year his grandfather told him of his parents’ death. His parents who were not. His parents who lived a haunted life, who haunted his own.
THIS CITY IS a fairy tale. This city is a skeleton, chipped away and faded to gray.
Matthew knew he would never stop falling fallingfallingfallingfalling
falling through the abyss. He did not know how long he’d been asleep. His consciousness was frayed, slippery. Dying, he thought.
Dying now. Dying.
“No... uh, no...” he stammered, shaking his head, seeking will, seeking a spark. “Dee!” he yelled out, panic boiling inside him, the last torn threads of panic that comes with death. “Dee... Dee, please...”
He heard her murmur, he heard her trying to dig through the rubble to find him, she was looking for him and her mouth was making a clicking sound that infected his thoughts with a fear so deep that he thought his heart would burst, his brain melt into syrup and drain away through his nose and ears.
“DAMN IT, ANSWER ME!”
And like that, it was all gone. The sounds of scraping, of something approaching him in the dark, of the visions of the morose landscape and empty sky. All gone.
Just black.
He touched his eyes with his fingers and felt their I’mreal solidity. He exhaled rattily, grateful for his broken nose because the smell of him was becoming rotten, and he was glad not to fully inhale the stench.
He reached, tentatively, for Dee’s hand once more, if for no other reason than to prove he could return to sanity, and to a world – albeit painful –
that was real.
“I’d leave her alone, boy-o. You want nothing to do with that, believe me.”
The voice sounded inches away. Matthew jerked his head around, wide-eyed, and stared at the blank expanse. “Who’s there?”
A hand rested on his shoulder. “Who do you think? That hot receptionist?” A pause, a frown in the dark. “Nah, she’s... well, she’s elsewhere. And trust me, she’s not so hot anymore.”
Matthew’s mind spun. He rotated his shoulder as best he could and reached his hand slowly toward the sound of the voice. He touched flesh. A face, an unshaven cheek. He felt the cheek muscle flex – the face was smiling.
“Don’t get fresh.”
Matthew smiled, then laughed. He knew the voice now, somehow could see the features of its face through his fingertips. “Kelly?”
“You are in a bad spot, my friend,” Kelly said, his hand caressing Matthew’s shoulder, then moving inexplicably to his side, where he was poking. He lifted the sport coat, slid his hand beneath, began feeling Matthew’s side through his dress shirt. He pinched his flesh.
“Ow,” Matthew said, chuckling. “Jesus, dude.”
“Sorry,” Kelly said, but he kept pinching, more lightly now.
Matthew’s mind quieted, it was so very dark, but he thought he could, just barely, make out Kelly’s features. His skin had a slight glow to it. A silvery luminescence that reflected, repelled the dark. He was smiling, Matthew saw, and rested his fingertips on Kelly’s face.
“God, I miss you, man,” he said, tears falling from his eyes. “I really miss you.”
Kelly grabbed Matthew’s hand but his hand is under your coat and squeezed it. He leaned his head closer to Matthew’s, their foreheads almost touching. He smiled, and then whispered, as if it were a secret between them, as if he were avoiding a thousand nearby ears, straining to overhear them.
“I can get you out of here, Matthew,” Kelly said, his eyes bright and alive with mischievous joy. “I can save you.”
Matthew shifted, brushed something away from his face, focused on Kelly’s eyes. “How?”
Kelly smiled more broadly, laughing with secret knowledge. “Do you want to come with me? I’m only going to ask once.”
Matthew’s smile faltered. Reason, or sanity, tried to break through the thick webbing that had spun itself around his mind. Kelly is dead, he said to himself, but the words carried no weight, no practical application.
“Am I dead?” he said, genuinely curious. “Are you a ghost? A shadow of memory?”
Kelly laughed mirthlessly. “No, man!” He gave Matthew a side-long glance. “You know, you’re acting a little weird.”
