Fellow Beings
He awoke because he dreamt that he was walking in a vast desert, and after what felt like days stumbled upon a turquoise mirage, really bordering on a curious lavender—it was then when he fell to his knees and began to cry, sobbing for all the times he should’ve during his waking life and couldn’t. Specifically, it was the heaving motions and the lurching that brought him forcefully out of sleep.
Through his window a trapezoidal beam of light shined directly in his face, and he noticed that he was thirsty. But then he noticed he was no longer in the desert, and had been returned to his airy bedroom; perhaps he could wait to drink.
Instead he stuck his head out of the window into the blue void, fully conscious, sensing everything. On Main Street there were many women with strollers, one of them smoking a cigarette, the smoke cloud twirling from her lips like rising pines. The very first of autumn’s shedding all over the sidewalk. Little orange pimples. The slamming of a taxi door and the smell of exhaust and fish wrapped in newspaper.
He pulled his head back inside and sat up on her bed. Next to him and somewhere far off, a being with closed eyes was lying still. He plucked a few of her long brown hairs off the pillow and twisted them up into a miniscule knot between his fingers. Placidness par excellence, yes—she’d remain so all day; the “night shift” was a terrible experiment being played on humans, but for now, at least, he appreciated the view. Against her navy bed-sheets, illuminated by that same polygonal sunbeam, her speckled skin turned to beach sand, sand that he wanted to run his hands through and feel slip between his fingers. Sand that would melt away under the crashing foam of his desire; he wanted to melt away too, suddenly and covertly, into her chest and clavicles and lungs. Be breathed in and out as nothing but vapor. Bodies were overestimating and clunky; gaseous matter was a much more fitting vessel for the soul.
He had the other night, though, tried to steal away into her as nothingness—under the clandestine moon, when the scorn of the daytime was gone—though tragically, his dissolution had been checked.
“You make me feel so incredible,” the words escaped her palish, seashell lips. ‘You’ make ‘me…’
In the moment he could only return the sentiment, and somewhat hastily too, her sudden declaration knocking him from the heights of self-eradication: “You make me feel good too…” But it was another misstep, and only further drove the wedge. Their experiment was over. She turned away.
“I think I’ve got a long week ahead of me, actually…”
Now it was again daytime, and intoxicated with the dawn and her light, unconscious breaths, he moved to her desk and smoothed flat a slice of paper:
To my fellow being,
It is morning time, it is autumn, and we are not the same. For the time being, I think that we will never be one. Unity is impossible. And this is agonizingly obvious to me now. For all it’s worth, I still love you more than myself. Perhaps that is why I wished to become you. Nevertheless, when you awake to this note, I will be gone forever; not because of anything you’ve done or haven’t. It’s just that I’ve realized a certain truth, and it necessitates—more painfully than I could have ever imagined possible—our permanent separation. In fact, I must separate from everyone. I repeat for you, my love: it is morning time, it is autumn, and we are not the same.
Sincerest apologies,
Your fellow being.
It was rudimentary, but it would have to do. He stole another long glance at her while he dressed himself and exited from her apartment onto the open street. There was more commotion than before, and people walked busily in tandem, in small groups, alone, all—he silently spited—blissfully unaware of their own predicament. Should he tell them? Scream out into the crowd—there is a deeper respite yet! Turn to your neighbors and see; there’s no use! No, no… keep your mouth shut, harbinger of death. One was bad enough for today.
At the other end of town he waited at the bus station. Across the street the same old construction site clamored away with buzzing steel and much yelling. They’d been working on something for as long as he could remember, though he still wasn’t sure what it was going to be. He stopped and watched for a while the construction men slather bricks solidly into place, and hoist up steel girders through twisted scaffolding. Higher and higher they went, all the while wiping sweat and liquid concrete off their brows with sleeved arms. The sun was burning down on their bare, reddened necks with a fury; some of them looked dizzier than others with exhaustion.
Suddenly—through the fog of spiraling emotions he had spectating these poor men—he remembered to call his aging father, whom he had to remind daily of his medications. He picked up the phone only after a few rings, thankfully. “Hello?”
“Dad! Hey, did you remember to take your medications this morning?”
“What medications?”
“The one’s in the container on the kitchen counter, dad. Remember?” He wasn’t sure why he added that last part. He’d just shown he didn’t. “Just go check on the counter. There’s a pillbox for each day of the week there. Just take the ones in the Friday box, dad.”
“Alright, alright—I just don’t know why you treat me like a child all the time. You came from out of me, you know.” Suddenly across the street, a steel girder screeched and slipped out of its pulley, and came toppling down through the rafters. Hugely clangorously. After a deafening thump and cloud of dust, a commotion started up from the men on the ground.
“I know, dad, I know. I’ll stay on the line. Just let me know when you finish taking all your pills.” Heart pills, dementia pills, prostate pills, depression pills.
“What pills?”
“On you kitchen counter, dad. I just told you this.” There was screaming now from the construction site.
“Right. You did. I just don’t know why you treat me like a child all the time. I made you, after all.”
No matter how many times he called his father he couldn’t get used to the repetition. He hardened his voice. “Mom made me, dad. You didn’t do much at all, comparatively.”
“I can’t find the box you’re talking about.”
“It’s right on your—” suddenly the blaring of two ambulances rounded the corner and pulled up in front of the construction site. “Hold on. I’ll call you back dad.” Medics rushed onto the site, and he ran across the street to get a better look. Through the chain link fence the devastation was obvious. An orange-vested construction worker laid face down in a pile of dirt and blood and a handful of huffing, near-delirious men worked to pull the steel beam off of his back. The medics were all lifting too, and everyone was barking at everyone else simultaneously. Get this over here! Move that over there! Push! No, no—now push! All the while the man under the steel was silent and perfectly placid; in the heat the air quivered above the ground like a mirage. The dead construction man could’ve been sleeping had there not been any blood.
With tears in his eyes at having so unexpectedly run into death, and feeling acutely nauseas, he backed up from the fence onto the street. He had to hold back from retching, and he swallowed the acrid saliva pooling in his mouth.
He instinctively called his father back. “Dad—there was an accident in town, sorry. Did you— did you find your pills?”
“What pills? You know what? I don’t know why you treat me like a child all the time. I—”
“Never mind dad. I’ll be right over.” He hung up the phone. On his way there he doubled back down Main Street; everyone was still mulling about, unaware that death had passed in their midst. Give it a few hours though and the news would be all across town. Everyone would know. Flowers were to be wrapped and gifted, and there would surely be a large attendance at the funeral.
With that thought he purchased a potted white orchid and let himself back into her apartment. He placed the flower on her desk and stuffed the letter into his pocket. She was lying there still, as delicately as she was this morning. But how close death had been…