Eros

THE BLACK-HAIRED MAN STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET with a worrisome expression. His head turns back and forth, as if he were looking for someone. His hair whips wildly in the wind, blocking his vision. His cracked lips opened slightly to let out a quiet sigh–smoke escapes as he pulls his jacket tighter against his body.

The man continued to stand in the middle of the street. Staring blankly down the long, empty road, he hoped to meet his fate here tonight.

He reaches a pale hand, which was trembling, but not from the cold, into his coat pocket and pulls out an old envelope. The once pristine envelope had now turned beige and was torn from age and lost time. It had lost all its luster and life. His fingers grazed over the red wax that sealed the mouth of the envelope shut for all its years unopened. With hesitance, he traces his fingers over the seal; his eyes bore into the outline of a coat of arms of a girl he once knew that was imprinted into the wax.

With hands steadier, but still trembling with a fear unknown, he finally pulls the red seal off. The wax sticks to the envelope, almost as if it didn’t want its contents exposed to the world, before popping off completely–now exposed to the horrors gifted by Pandora. He takes a deep breath, chest rising so high it felt like it was on the cusp of exploding. Still holding his breath, he takes the delicate paper out of the envelope.

Unfolding the paper, he begins to walk down the empty. His feet dragging along the concrete as he fixates on unfolding it. He feels his steps becoming heavier with each unfolding of the letter and each unraveling of his remaining sanity.

“To my dearest love,” his lone voice begins to read his old name out loud to the humming streetlights above–lights flickered occasionally in a way that seemed like they agreed with the man. He cocks his head to the side as his own name written in ink has become foreign to himself. The words spell out a name–his name– but it doesn’t belong to him anymore.

It’s not him anymore.

Instead, it became the product of years and years of trying to escape his own skin. Every syllable that rolled off his tongue reminded him of exile of homes that were never meant to be a home, but rather kindle for a fire that burned in his wake.

His eyes quickly scanned the remnants of scattered ink written in cursive. The letters were written messily and in a hurry; jumping out from the weathered paper at his eyes and making him dizzy. His knees felt like buckling in with each line read. Every ink drop bellowed words of despair and fear–anger even.

“I am sorry, for I am leaving tonight. I will not know when I will return,” he forces himself to continue reading as well as moving forward. “I hope we can see eachother again, even if its not in this lifetime. Sincerely, you love...”

His lips have become dry against the harsh winter breeze, he licks them. It brings temporary relief, but a stinging pain quickly follows.

The letter leaves a bitter aftertaste. He has no choice but to swallow it down.

“Lifetime?” he scoffs, tearing his face away from the letter. “I have plenty, yet it’s all the same bullshit...”

He retracts the paper from his sight and shoves it back into his coat pocket. “It’s always the same: saying that we’ll meet again in another lifetime or whatnot,” he rambled to himself. For what reasons unclear, but he hoped it would take his mind off each passing moment that he was condemned to live. He rolls his eyes as he openly mocks the girl who wrote him the letter–trying to rid guilt with another emotion for the time being.

The paper crunches in his pocket and he takes it as a sign to start walking at a faster pace. His long legs swiftly move in the night, leaving a trail of footprints in the shallow snow blackened by the many passing cars.

Although he rolls his eyes and scoffs and curses and rants, Bastien is at a loss of words. He tries to think of something to banish the vivid memory of his past lover. Anything, someone, something. But seared into the back of his eyelids, it kept flashing across his mind like the flickering lampposts that lined the empty streets he continued to trudge down. In the end, he sees them and they see him.

With a retching heart and a familiar sick feeling brewing in the bottom of his stomach, Bastien continued his journey–forcing his concrete filled legs to move. His heart soon becomes overwhelmed with pity, and regret, but what can he do when the universe was determined to knock him down every time he stood.

Something watches the man trot down the road from the sidelines. Not someone of some creature of this world or any world in particular. Its eyes follow the man’s figure and it licks its lips with anticipation–wondering what the man’s next move will be, in which every move the man made, the Being made one too.

“I’m sorry,” are the only coherent words Bastien managed to muster after racking his mind. He decided to leave the unsaid as such for fear of opening a part of himself he did not wish to discover tonight. He tries to reassure himself with those words. Now standing still, a pair of headlights rushes towards him.

“But I feel even more so for myself.”

The lights grow bigger and brighter with ever passing second, but time moves ever so painfully still for Bastien. His eyes unwavering, they burn into the headlights as they do the same.

“Please,” he pleaded under his breath, hoping for anyone to hear and bring him the relief that always never came for someone like him.

Embracing for impact, he closes his eyes and spreads his arms outwards like the birds he watches in the morning sky. Like an old friend, he welcomes Death into warms arms and prays that this time Death will finally accept his embrace.

But his move gets blocked.

As the huge pickup truck finally makes contact with his body, no tears trail down his face. Even if he tried he couldn’t bring himself to shed a single tear drop for himself. He couldn’t do that anymore–or at least not like the tears he used to shed where they flowed freely and genuinely. The only ones he could force out of himself were laced with arsenic and guilt–funny.

The car sends Bastien’s body through the air and an empty audience watches. The immense force of the impact was so heavy that he felt his chest collapse into itself. His heart crushed by his own ribcage that was designed to protect such a fragile organ. He fades away.

The Being keeps watching. Its hand swiftly moves to knock over a pawn on a chessboard that seemed to stretch on for miles upon miles. It chuckled softly like the blowing wind.

His whole body aches from head to toe as he opens his eyes to the morning sun that peaked through his dusty windows. Bastien has miscalculated again.

His mouth widens, letting out a blood-curdling scream as he pulls his hair out of frustration. His limbs flail about in his bed; kicking everything off and sending it flying to the ground. His body repeatedly hits the mattress. It shakes the bedframe and the legs dig into the hardwood floor. His throat sends out a dry scream. It rings through the hollow capsule he called, and meticulously curated, a body.

Lying on his back, Bastien tried to fall from reality, but not long after lying still, remorse began to eat away at his flesh– the same remorse that left him to rot over the centuries.

Growing rust creeps its way closer into his skull everyday. It infests his temple with words of death to bring him a brief moment of happiness.

Why me?–a question of his that was left unanswered. The question haunts him every time his eyes open to the world against his will. Those are the only words he thinks of without really thinking at all. Imprinted onto his subconscious at all times, they would draw him further down a spiral of self-hatred and repulsiveness that he cultured for himself. He struggles hard to climb back out, nails worn out and grip loose. He tries, but only to fall deeper.

Bastien gets out of bed and stretches his aching muscles. He proceeds to look at himself in the mirror with no recollection of the past twenty-four hours, but time after time, he knows the clock has been reset. The slight wrinkles that had formed on his forehead and around his eyes were now non-existent. He raises his shirt up, fingers grazing over his ribcage to trace over the outline of every bone he expected to be crushed. He expected to feel a gaping hole or bones crushed inwards, but instead meets with smooth skin and brighter eyes that held the same darkness.

“How unfortunate,” Bastien sneers, turning away with disgust. His throat still stung with every breath his body fought for. His lungs lit a fire every time he exhaled slowly.

He slowly strides around his room. His footsteps light and nimble on the hardwood. The walls were lined with shelves, from floor to ceiling, that were filled with boxes. The boxes were filled to the brim with envelopes that bear memories of his past lives. Letter that held different versions of himself, but always ending the same. Envelopes of all shapes, sizes, and ages served as a grim reminder that Bastien was really here forever.

He peeks at the boxes from the corner of his eyes. feeling too overwhelmed to look at them directly. He felt sad, selfish, horrible even. He hated himself for the means he took to accumulate all those letters over the centuries. But, without them, he wouldn’t know what it felt like to be alive. Even if it was only temporary, the weight of the world was lifted off his shoulders and everything felt like it was going to be alright after all.

He slips out of the room to pour himself a cup of black coffee he made the night before. It was still hot in the thermos.

Bastien watches the steam rise slowly while the clock marches on.