The Tenth Word

I sit beside my window. I look at the sky. It is black. It bathes my seat in shadows and causes my body to disappear from sight. I pretend the moon is not there and lean back into my seat.

My chair is hard. But why? It is velvet and there are cushions. But it digs into my spine and I haven’t the strength to pull myself forwards. What is the point anyway?

So I sit in my dark chair and I look at the dark sky. I feel the darkened moon and the cold that it brings. So begins my darkened tale. Unceremoniously. It begins on a night where I am unable to sleep and instead look towards a moon that I resent.

Why would I pick the moon to direct my hatred upon? It is simple. It is because the moon cannot fight me. I can pretend that I am strong against the moon. I can pretend that I am made of diamonds rather than of glass. No one can hurt me and no one can destroy me.

But soon the sun shall rise. Soon it shall leave its hidden bed and allow its beams to stretch across the horizon. Slowly. Carelessly.

With the flippancy of one who, in his honest opinion, doesn’t give a damn whether people want him there or not. In ancient civilizations people worshipped the sun. They named him their main god. They loved the sun. They loved him enough to kill. They loved him enough to offer the blood of their family to placate him.

I love the sun. I am not certain whether I love him enough to kill. I cannot imagine myself painting his steady beams with the flesh of my mother, my father. I love him because of his unawareness of people’s opinions. The moon hears what people have to say about her. She shrinks slowly and becomes a mere slit - she then disappears. One night passes and the moon remains, hidden in the place where no one can find her until she has gathered enough courage to appear once more. But even then she does not burst into the sky in full glory, but as a small, shy slice in the black, black sky. Growing, growing, rounding herself and becoming beautiful. But then she disappears again. She has no backbone, the moon. She is a coward.

The sun on the other hand never changes. He is bright and he is bold. He shows no fear and ignores all complaints of the heat. I love the sun. I worship the sun. I would do anything for the sun. Except kill. I would hate the sun as well if he asked me to kill.

It was in the papers the other day. A man kept three women locked in his basement. He forced them to love him and to entertain him. His excuse to the police was loneliness. That made me angry. My fingers tightened around his paper throat and I tore it to pieces. But I did not kill him. Make note, destroying his image does not kill a person. That man is high up on my list of people I hate. He is second to the moon. But I do not hate him only because of what he did to the women. I hate him because he said that he was lonely. He ridiculed the lonely people. I am lonely. Should I fetch three men for myself off the streets? Lonely people do not do things like that. Lonely people steer clear of other people. Lonely people isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Lonely people become lonely by choice.

It is not a voluntary choice. It is a choice that the lonely people are unaware they are making. It is a fault in their mind’s defense. The mind becomes convinced that other human beings are a danger, a hazard. These convictions keep the person away from the others. They keep them away from the danger.

Lonely people do not realise that though. They think it is the world blocking them out. They begin to turn away from the world that they believe does not want their company. Most do not realise that. I am one of the few who does. And that makes me lonelier. There is nothing for me to do except wait for my mind to correct itself. Sometimes it feels as if I am waiting for the oceans to dry.

Why did I start thinking of that man? Murder, that’s it. One of the women died. Three entered his basement and only two came out. No, that isn’t true. Three did come out, but only two of them were breathing.

The woman had died two and a half years into her capture. She was his first victim. He took his second woman six months before the first victim’s death. The third was about six months after. It was another year before the first man was arrested. But he never cleared out the body. She stayed in the basement with her other two captives, rotting. The two released women were interviewed. The description of their lives was published in newspapers across the country. The youngest woman was happy to be interviewed, to share her story, to shock the nation. I read an article about her in the paper. There was a paragraph from an interview in which she shared her experience.

When I was thrown into the room it was the stench that first took me by surprise. It was everywhere, thick and sweet. It climbed into my throat and overcame all of my senses. I hadn’t lasted ten minutes before I was sick. Miranda, the woman before me, was looking at me. She told me that I’d get used to it. She said the woman had been there for months, she wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.

I had liked Miranda’s response more. She was more honest, less dramatic. I considered her my friend. Her interview was broadcast live on television. It was a stupid move. They couldn’t edit out what she said. The questions were often longer than the answers.

Interviewer: What was it like when you were first locked in your prison?

Miranda: It felt like I was in a basement.

Interviewer: Yes, well, of course you were. But hypothetically speaking, it was your prison. In three words how would you describe your life as a prisoner?

Miranda: You want me to give you two years of not having a choice as to what I could do, what I could eat, and what I could say - in three words?

Interviewer: Is that too few?

Miranda: Too many.

Interviewer: That is an interesting response. Would you care to elaborate on that?

Miranda: No.

Interviewer: Well, the…well, the woman who died, you knew her for a short while. What was she like?

Miranda: Dead.

Interviewer: No, before that. What was she like before her…demise?

Miranda: I wouldn’t know. We never spoke.

Interviewer: You mean to tell me that you spent a whole six months in very close quarters with a woman, and you never spoke a word to each other?

Miranda: I don’t see why I should tell you any of this.

Interviewer: Well, it is obvious that you are suffering. Talking about it does help, doesn’t it?

Miranda: If I wanted help I would be seeing a psychiatrist.

Interviewer: And are you?

Miranda: What difference would it make?

Interviewer: Miranda, please, we are just trying to help you. This was such a large trauma in your life. Talk to me, talk to the audience; help us to help you.

At that point Miranda stood up and left the set. She didn’t give a word of warning. Her exit was not dramatic. She just left. Stood up. And left. Left the interviewer speechless, her mouth gaping as she struggled for words. Left the cameraman wavering, uncertain whether to film the remaining woman or the black hole Miranda had disappeared into. Left a set that was silent, a live audience that had nothing to say.

For some reason, when I had sat down to watch the interview I had recorded it. It was not necessary. But I did. And I was glad for it. I re-watched the interview. Again and again and again until I could repeat Miranda’s lines word for word. I mouthed them alongside her. I admired Miranda. She was diamond.

I watched the news again the next day. I wanted to see Miranda again. I wanted to hear what she had to say. But there was no one except the third girl, Lara. The one who played to the news cameras. She shaped her story for the listeners. She was the imprisoned woman that people wanted to see. Nobody wanted Miranda. What interest is there in an escaped prisoner who is silent about the escape?

The first few days I was there I did not see the man again. Miranda refused to talk to me and I was unable to sleep with the - the corpse looking at me from the corner. It was horrible! She had been there for some time since her death and the flesh was rotten enough to reveal bone. Nobody had even bothered to cover the body, or to wrap it. She was not even laid out. She sat, with her legs crossed, leaning against the wall. One arm - it was black and purple with congealed blood - was lying across her lap, the fingers catching the opposite wrist. I remember it so clearly. I spent days with no other person to talk to and nothing to do, and the only light we had was at just the right angle to illuminate the corpse. No one had taken the time to close her eyes and

part of her cheek had disintegrated, revealing half a skeletal grin. I was afraid to close my eyes for weeks!

And that was what made her popular. That was why the public loved Lara. She told them what they wanted to hear. She shared all the gory details and the horror show truths. She shared them all without a qualm about what she was saying. She was perfect.

I did not know if it was obvious to any other person but it was alarmingly so to me. Lara had only been in captivity for a year and a half before she was rescued. And she had said herself that she had had very little contact with her captor. She had indeed spent plenty of time with her corpse friend but that was it. Miranda had known the woman at least a little. She was there when the woman died. She had had the pleasure of being the man’s favourite occupation and had lived with the body. But nobody considered that. Because Miranda refused to talk.

The light is beginning to creep in now. I can see my hands. I can see my fingers silhouetted against my leg. The air has become grey rather than black. And then it becomes tinged with orange, infused with red, illuminated with gold.

What a good description, I should become a writer. I manage to pull myself forward and, without turning on a light, reach my computer. I turn it on, pull up a blank page, and place my fingers on the keys.

I take them off again. I don’t have a plot. I do not have anything to write about. The sun? But what does the sun do? It rises. I pick up my hands once more. I shall have the sun break its natural orbit and have a secret rendezvous with Mars. I type it in slowly, painstakingly, one finger per key.

One day, the sun did not rise. The world remained dark.

A terrible beginning. A terrible beginning to a story with no plot. A story that is not going anywhere. It is not even a story that can fly but is grounded; it is a story that was never even given the dream of wings.

I delete my two sentences and begin again. Consider beginning again. My fingers creep slowly across the keys, not pressing a letter, maintaining a pristine whiteness on the screen of my computer.

Creeping, creep, crept. My fingers move and mar the white with the dark smudges of letters.

Crept: It starts in the back of your throat, crackling loudly. After that, it creeps up your tongue, hauling itself higher and higher before rolling dramatically off the tip. Once the R has rolled, your mouth moves to shape the E, a soft rest after the hard previous letters. P, your lips spit the letter, not venomously, gently, like a quiet breath on a dandelion in the summer. T, your teeth, tapping together and hissing

out the letter. Crept: a word that uses your whole mouth to pronounce. A word that is even and balanced in its smooth breaths and staccato clicks. Crept.

I take a few moments to read and re-read my small paragraph. Time somehow manages to edge its way into my vision and I curse it for that. I need to work. Soon. Time, it never stops running, is always changing. The same thing will never happen again at the same time. Curse it.

I save the changes I made to my blank screen. A small icon pops up, asking me to name my document. I falter. It takes me longer to come up with a title than it took me to describe a word. Eventually, time pushes me once more and my fingers move across the keyboard.

The Book of Beautiful Words

There it is then. Official. I shall be writing a book. One of beautiful words. Crept is only the first of many. But what will come next? I cannot know. I suppose that I will when I say it. It will slip out of my mouth and I shall have to allow a moment of silence. A moment to treasure the inaudible echoes of my beautiful word.

I walk to my work. A small building where I hold a small position. A small position where I spend my small days doing small jobs. The small jobs that large positions are unable to do themselves. Large positions would be helplessly lost without small positions like me. The people who give me orders are the important gears and cogs, I am the grease that keeps them working smoothly.

That has always been and always will be however, an unknown fact. As it is, many machines and inventions seize up and die eventually. Because no one considers the importance of grease. Companies on the verge of bankruptcy let their smallest employees go first. They break under the strain of poverty anyway. Throwing away their oil and allowing rust to take hold was their downfall.

So I step into the entrance hall of the office building. I am shrouded in grey. Grey walls, grey ceilings, grey people. Grey voices twist through the air around me, staining the dust motes. The golden air that has begun to shine outside is slaughtered as soon as it enters through the grey doors. I suppose the colour of the world is determined by the eyes that see it. My eyes see grey.

I find my desk in the corner of the grey room. I sit. I wait. The small jobs have not yet begun. But they will. Tasks tick as steadily as time does. I cannot spare myself the few empty minutes I am given and take a sheet of paper. I put my pen upon the paper. I do not think and instead begin to write. I write what comes through my pen when I do not think to control it. Out of my pen flows ink. And the ink shapes itself into what I choose to title the Equations of Life.

The Equations of Life:

Insults + Regret= Poison

Poison + Time= Death

Death + Love= Tears

Tears + Anger =Solidarity

Smiles + Kindness= Words

Words + Time = Friendship

Friendship + Years= Love

Love + Forever= Uneasiness

Uneasiness X 2 = Tears

Tears + Anger= Solidarity

Insults + Regret= Solidarity

Smiles + Kindness= Solidarity

Insults + Regret = Smiles + Kindness

Therefore…

Insults, regret; Smiles, kindness

The two equations result in canceling the other out. It is like placing a positive number and its negative counterpart side by side. They cannot stay together in the same setting. But they also cannot decide which number is to go, so both leave.

Word Problem: Once the two problems are cancelled out, what is left behind?

Answer: More equations. More life. It never ends, a complete cycle. But once the truly bad and the truly good cancel each other out, all that is left is the muddled uncertainty in the middle. A fog that requires humans to blindly push their way through.

Additional Question to think about: Once the equations cancel each other from existence, what happens to the answer?

Answer: The answer to the equation itself is left floating in the air, waiting to be picked up and added into another equation. All results in solidarity, so that is the finale to that particular equation fog. Everyone ends up alone at least once.

Something to consider: Is the final end of life solidarity? Is that how the equations of life truly end?

Post-consideration: It is impossible to know. People can be hopelessly alone when surrounded by other people, but they will not share their isolation with others close to them. It is impossible to see into a person’s mind. But the equations of life are not narrowed down to these two equations. There are multiple. Thousands. They are created, destroyed, they begin again. So a person shall experience the solidarity. It shall go into a new equation. And instead of the ending, solidarity can be the beginning. But the final answer must be somewhere. For if there were no answer everyone would live forever. The answer is there but I do not know it. Not yet.

Two pages. Two. Filled with useless, illogical equations. Illogical. But what is logic? How would I know whether my equations make sense or whether they do not? They make sense to me yet I consider them illogical. Perhaps to another they would be incomprehensible. But they would see logic. In the equations. Their mind would see the maths. Maths is logic. To them. Logic is addition and subtraction. To them. Me? Equations change quickly. Frighteningly so.

A woman. Her hair is dark and pulled back tightly against her skull. Eyes shine, black and beady behind rimless glasses. Nice smile but on a sour mouth. Her footsteps click loudly against the tile floor.

Purpose. That is what it is. Her stride screams of purpose. But what is it? I meet her eyes and wince away. Her purpose is me. She wants to talk.

Click.

Please go away.

Click.

Please don’t talk to me.

Click.

It isn’t worth it.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Each click is a threat. Closer and closer. No escaping it.

Bravery. Brave. Breathe. Smile. Talk. Here she comes. Smile. Reply to conversation. Smile. She’s slowing down. Look up. Smile. Open your mouth. Breathe steadily. Smile. Supply answers but don’t ask questions. Smile.

Run.

Pushing through the crowd. Hand on people’s shoulders. Get out of my way. You’re in my way. Crowds. People. Everywhere. Smile. Remember to smile. Door. Go in. Alone. Free.

Remember to participate in the conversations that occur and smile accordingly.

The answer. I know it. The final equations end…when the maths problems give up.