Children of Darkness

CHILDREN OF DARKNESS

A Short Story by C. M. Oguz

***

     When walking about school Jack would always be scanning reflective surfaces, such as glass-panes or metal lockers, to see whether he was being pursued. His mind ached; it was an exhausting existence. He knew that he ought to stand up to his bullies, but he felt too powerless to orchestrate any resistance. It was probably too late now anyway. Trying to muzzle up his fear was pointless. He bathed in it instead.

     It was a matter of time; it was always only a matter of time before he was singled out and terrorized, the magnitude of his pain indiscernible to everyone around him. Silent screams would arc out of his pupils, ionizing the air with distress. A call lost to the echoes of idleness that lulled onlookers, including the circus of adults – teachers, guardians, counsellors – who never saw him. Despair haunted Jack, blotting out the luminescence that drives character growth in others of his age. He lacked the warmth that ordinarily thaws a child’s world, that soft incandescence that defrosts the ice cold universe.

     Jack had always liked mirrors. They were comforting. He could force out a smile and then close his eyes to imagine what the smile was about, prying open new worlds that forked into ever-radiant alternative timelines. He lived and adventured in these realms, luminous with dreams, unlike the one he was trapped in. Trapped was indeed the definitive word that described his entombment in a suit of pain, scabbed over with layer upon layer of despair. He wore reality like a mask, stapled painfully to his face. He was too afraid to peel it off save for in the non-space of a reflection. For only in that abstractness did he feel secure.

     It was a Thursday afternoon and despite the streaks of sunshine oozing through the small, rectangular window, Jack remained holed up in a tiny, dark bathroom on the third floor of Primrose Elementary. He often hid here during recess to avoid being utilized for fun by other kids too juvenile to realize the extent of the harm they were causing. Jack hated the school corridors. Their dazzling white fluorescence offered little shelter or respite, unlike small, dark spaces. Worming his way into those was his forte. There were so many things wrong with Jack’s mind. None of it was inherent, of course. No, it had been wrought by his peers, by parents and teachers, and by so-called civil society. All had forsaken him.

     But there was one thing Jack had that no one could take from him: He loved cloistering himself up in his thoughts, reflecting upon reflections, back-scattering a facial expression until everything external dissolved into his latest impersonation – a conjuration of alternate realities to replace the real one. These dream versions of himself probed a normal life, gently distilling a semblance of dignity inside the safety of his mind. This was all Jack had really, without which life would be completely unendurable. He had been forced into – boxed into – a different elemental composition than his peers, who could never understand why he often appeared so withdrawn and pensive, further fueling the ruckus of taunting and bullying.

     Is this why Jack ended up doing what he did? I sometimes wonder if it could have been avoided. It is hard to say whether what happened would have occurred without the putrid miasma of school bullying that sullied Jack’s vitality, a smoke-screen through which he had been forced to observe the world, like a dark cataract glued to his eyes. Can we really judge Jack for what he ended up unleashing upon this world? Surely a child cannot be blamed for an atrocity so visibly in the making. Did he really have any other choice?

     After all, this tale is as old as time. It continues to operate across countless felled stars where abandoned children sit in complete darkness, obfuscated by the marble pedestals that their radiant peers pirouette upon, while full-grown adults, deafened by a pantomime of inertia, ignore the fatal plea that blooms within the shadows.

     The school bell sounded, disturbing Jack’s meditative composure. He quietly returned to class for an hour of English – not that he really listened. Sunlight poured into the classroom from a large rectangular window, decorating the small glass cabinets leaning against the opposite wall with streaks of energized color. Jack gazed around, briefly, surveying where his bullies were seated, trying to figure out exactly how he could slip out after class without aggravating their reflexes. Sid O’Brien sat diagonally behind him on the left, with several of his cronies in an arc to either side. Jess, who enjoyed goading others on and took particular joy in tormenting Jack, was seated up ahead. Some other less notable potential aggressors were scattered about, Jack duly noted. In the meantime, though, he had a short while of calm. Tuning out the sound of the lesson, Jack gazed at the flickering colors dancing upon the glass cabinet. Sunlight shimmered through the trees and onto the cabinet, causing tiny beads of light to form and re-form into different shapes and contours, swaying across the electromagnetic spectrum, miming a dream… Jack’s eyelids drifted shut.

     Rise little Jack, rise and SHINE!

***

     A glorious April’s morning emerged inside Jack’s eyelids. The sun was beaming its coronal ejaculations to the tune of the cosmic dawn. He bolted out the front door of his house with an uncontrollable smile plastered across the lower portion of his face. Dazzled by the glittering rays reflecting off the porch railings, he nearly fell down the front steps. His heart was racing, beating away like a little butterfly, cognizant that it lives for but a moment. Today was the day; the day he would tell Ruby how he felt about her, how much he loved her. What a beautiful day! In fact, this was Jack’s favorite day.

     The smell of awakening flowers perfumed the air, winnowing across the nearby woodland. Everything was beautiful. Of course it was, this was Jack’s dream. He was safe and happy in here. His conjuration thus began in his bedroom on that glorious morning, as it usually did. That imaginary day had played out so many times in his mind, always featuring some kind of elating scene involving himself and, of course, the crimson jewel that he was so smitten by. He loved building-up and savoring the forthcoming moment when he’d truly get to shine; to shine into Ruby. In brittle reality he would of course never do such things. Ruby barely knew him and was likely impartial to his existence.

     Jack gamboled towards the bridge that lay within a densely wooded ravine about halfway on his route to school. Primrose Elementary sprouted out of the valley like a concrete pimple just after the winding footpath descended the bridge’s off-ramp. Its entryway was flanked by two gargoyle statues of alleged historic significance whose facial expressions always reminded Jack of Thalia and Melpomene, Greek muses of comedy and tragedy. He was afraid of Melpomene and the disturbing, painful look that was glued to her ossified face. Jack was indeed a superstitious boy, always veering towards the joyous Thalia while ascending the steps to school.

     As he passed through, Jack caught sight of Ruby. She was sitting next to Jess on one of the uncomfortable stone blocks that glared out from the rim of the courtyard. It was simply impossible not to notice her, he thought, even though the sentiment was his alone. Her back was facing him, and she seemed to be listening to Jess, her best friend, rather intensely. He’d find her later, he decided, extracting his headphones to greet the interior of the school building. The cheery atmosphere died a bit as the music stopped and the cold, dry air of the corridor slammed into his face. The school day loomed ahead of him. But this was Jack’s dream. He did not need to experience all those boring parts; he could skip them.

     Just after the closing bell had sounded and the corridors had emptied considerably, he spotted Ruby standing beside her locker, rummaging around for something with her usual chaotic zest. Gathering all the strength his body could muster, he gently approached her. This was the moment he had been rehearsing and replaying for months. The moment he began his irreversible approach, everything peripheral faded into pale oblivion.

     “Yes? What is it?” Ruby’s voice stunned him, subsuming his entire being. Something felt different, something that Jack could not pinpoint at that moment. Ruby seemed different than how he usually conjured her in his mind.

     “Ruby, I love you; I love you so much, I just wanted to let you know.” Jack spurted out in an awkward, semi-trembling voice. He had not planned on saying this, whatever this malformed sentence-like entity could be called. In fact, this specific line had not animated any of the million sequences he had so carefully regurgitated.

     To make matters worse, he had no idea what to do with his arms. They were just hanging off his torso. Is this really how people stand? Jack thought, mortified. He quickly plunged both his hands into the safety of his pockets. But he was immediately certain he had done this far too forcefully, and furthermore, his hands now felt wrong inside his pockets. Are these pockets too small? Do people even put both hands into their pockets? Jack was terrified. He desperately needed to look normal. He quickly withdrew his right hand from the fabric enclosure it had just barely greeted and tilted his pelvis slightly to the left, eventually feeling half-satisfied with his latest pose. He could feel his cheeks burning as he mustered all his remaining willpower to look up at Ruby’s face. Had she noticed all the fidgeting around? He was already so embarrassed.

     Ruby’s eyes were not moving, two perfect emerald spheres just sitting in absolute stasis, absorbing Jack’s mind, siphoning out the truth. The truth that this was a mere daydream. What right did he have to dream about her anyway?

      He wanted to melt into her, she was so sublime, so consummate with elegance, so completely perfect. He could see entire galaxies receding inside her dilated pupils; endless vortices of starlight and dreams, whirling around, efflorescing, singing.

      “Sorry Jack, I do not see you that way.” Ruby finally replied, after what felt like an unreasonably long time.

     These words hit Jack right in the solar plexus, cutting his breath. His little heart ruptured open like a sunflower greeting an entirely starless sky, a cosmic lacuna suspended in vacuous blackness, grinning specifically and exactly at him.

     He stood there, mouth and mind agape, not knowing what to say but also because a cascading demolition was dismantling everything inside him. Columns of darkness vacuumed up all luminosity, revealing the absolute nullity that had been so delicately concealed beneath. His barely born, evanescent dreams and ambitions evaporated in an instant. A blinding bleakness rippled through the ashes left behind by this annihilation, perforating Jack completely and overwhelmingly.

     But this was not how Ruby usually replied. “Why isn’t this working…? WHY?” Jack yelled, inside his head. At least he hoped it was all still in his head. How embarrassing it would be if he was instead shouting this aloud in the classroom; that classroom in which his thick head was currently slumped forward, mouth slightly ajar, oozing dribble down the front of his tightly buttoned shirt. Most of his classmates had by now noticed his ugly composure, not an irregular occurrence by any means. He looked pathetic. But he would not be waking up any time soon.

     “Oh okay, I didn’t really mean it anyway.” Jack managed to eventually say to Ruby, lowering his gaze away from the twin beams of energy that she was directing right into his face.

     He did not know why he said this. It felt like the natural response he needed to produce, a futile defense against an overwhelming force. This was uncharted territory. Never before had his dreams gone rogue.

     “I was just messing with you, silly!” he quickly added, forcing out a terribly stiff smile for a split-second, knowing that he needed to continue piping this tragic tune, despite also knowing that it would not alleviate the weight of a collapsed star. He playfully punched Ruby’s shoulder very gently, hoping that some juvenile contact would further drive his act home.

     “Oh, don’t worry about it.” Ruby said, broadcasting her indifference. She then turned around and walked away. The echoes of her gentle footsteps painted the walls with disappointment and rattled softly against the metal lockers that lined them. It was suffocating.

     Jack stared after her, mesmerized by the sound, unable to look elsewhere. His eyes were not actually focused on anything, but appeared to be concentrated on the air somewhere between himself and where Ruby was receding from sight. A scent of jasmine lingered in the space she had vacated. Jack needed to get away from there, from everything. Was this not his dream?

     He burst outside and began sprinting aimlessly, running nowhere and everywhere simultaneously, like a ball of electricity arcing towards least resistance. His mind was unusually colorless. There seemed to be nothing left in it; a cellular reactor deprived of energy, spiraling towards meltdown. He was seemingly unable to exit what he was sure had started as a daydream, as a juvenile hallucination. This was meant to be his safe space. Why isn’t this working? Jack yelled inside his mind. Maybe this was reality after all. An unending hallucination sounded just like reality.

     He approached the large bridge he passed over every day, but this time he stopped at its edge. The wind was intense. He breathed in deeply, momentarily imprisoning the smell of fresh spring air drifting down the valley in pursuit of the gushing river. The small rampart in front of him felt like the bars of a cage that existed exclusively to curtail his freedom. He hated the feeling. Climbing atop the stone ledge, he could now survey his surroundings unimpeded. It was such a long drop; he shuddered as he gazed down, lost in thought. Waves swollen by the melting snow-caps were lapping against the massive concrete pillars that anchored the bridge. Just where concrete met water the pillars splayed out a few meters wider; the perfect spot to aim for. This intrusive thought bled into Jack’s mind from outer infinity, unobstructed. A riptide was luring him inwards, directly towards the sweetness of unbecoming. He yearned to return to the amniotic warmth from which he had first entered this cold world of sentience and starlight. Jumping would be so… easy.

     It was right at that critical juncture that Jack began hearing a soft whisper. It was coming from somewhere deep within him, somehow piercing the psychogenic detonation that was otherwise raging across each and every one of his nerve endings. He knew this voice: It was Ruby. She was invading his mind, whirling around inside it, ever so softly. She spoke his name. His name. It made him smile as he stood oscillating calmly in the evening breeze. The wind was caressing him, ever so delicately. He had, by now, slowly edged closer to the rim of the rampart; the front half of his shoes were already suspended in air. For the briefest of moments, millions of grass blades stopped swaying in the wind, the surrounding trees drooped their branches imperceptibly lower, and the flock of birds passing overhead stopped flapping their wings and began silently gliding forth. Time was concentrating, getting denser and more viscous, slowing down to a trickle. The more Jack listened to Ruby’s voice, the softer and sweeter it became. It was ever so safe, ever so inviting. She was calling him. Lighter than a feather and gentler than a flower petal drifting in a soft zephyr, Jack released his body and fell towards her warm embrace.

     A sudden, loud, and painful feeling spiked Jack awake. He opened his eyes, opposite him leered the grotesque visage of Sid O’Brien, his hand recoiling from having hit Jack across the face once already. Next to him were two of his pathetic acolytes, seemingly amused that he had fallen asleep in class, again. They could now feast on him. He also noticed Jess, leaning against the window in the background, laughing at the ongoing incident like a cyclone of malevolence. But despite his stinging cheek and the ongoing bullying, Jack was momentarily relieved that what had occurred with Ruby was indeed not real.

     The English teacher, Mr. Wilson, had long since vacated the room, effectively sealing Jack’s fate. Why had he not awoken sooner? The most notorious inquiry in human history slithered into his mind. He felt trapped, only this time it wasn’t a nightmare, but his very own reality masquerading as a nightmare. That did not bother him as much as it should though, he’d acted out this play more than enough times. Resignation was his strongest attribute. Scenes of classroom bullying were murky, cloud-like filaments that barely hurt him in the physical sense anymore. Enduring these fun little beatings was his forte, unfortunately.

     Jack did not care that he might be suffering permanent brain-damage from getting hit in the head at a velocity that amused his peers. Why would he? Worry is a virtue assigned to those who assume a future awaits. No, in that exact moment what bothered Jack the most was something else: Why had the world secured inside his eyelids failed to project warmth? Why had his imagination ended so badly? He was scared to lose the one thing he thought he could never lose: his carefully choreographed dreams. Had despair murdered hope? He was seemingly unable to shut the gaping maw in his psyche. Even in radiant scenarios where he conjured away his tormentors, still something haunted him. Was their un-existence not enough anymore? Sid’s right fist making contact with Jack’s left temple interrupted this half-formed thought.

***

     Six years passed with little change in Jack’s life. But I will refrain from tedious repetition, especially considering Jack’s is not a pleasant one to narrate. I’m sure you will agree that it is always supremely upsetting to witness a child in distress, since it goes against all notions of karmic fairness. Yet every once in a while, the Elysian ballroom of youth decides to prematurely draw the curtains, and the celestial banquet that ordinarily ought to animate the innermost reaches of a child’s mind ends up rotting away, withering, and retreating into a shell of such intense darkness that no stars dare shine upon it. To pull a child out of that darkness is really the only thing that matters. But Jack still waited there; he lurked down there somewhere, sinking, being pushed closer and closer towards ideas and actions hushed up and bottled away by civil society. But no one saw Jack. Can we really hold him responsible for what followed? After all, an energy build-up will tend to release itself, eventually.

     But I digress, for Ruby’s life was one of butterflies and sunshine. The passage of years had done little to sully her vitality. She still lived happily with her little brother and grandfather, and the world just kept getting more beautiful and more colorful. She was able to discern meaning, purpose and direction in life, such is the age when maturity begins seeping through the cracks of pubescence, when the two briefly co-exist in an awkward sort of harmony. After fulfilling her elementary obligations at Primrose, Ruby had begun attending Ferndale High, a much larger establishment where the wider world encountered her. Over the following years, she was slowly baked into an exquisite mold: efflorescent, joyous and ambitious. After all, she had none of that sticky ichor that clings to children of darkness, sucking them back into the maw, again and again. But I digress, for this is Ruby’s story. This is the story of that cherry-red bundle of exuberance whom we like hearing about, whom we hope reflects light, not darkness, much like a mirror.

     It was nearing the peak of summer and Ruby had just received the great news. She had been accepted into Leatford Academy’s prestigious art school, a month-long summer program that only admitted the most promising young talents. This was a coveted opportunity to gain a foothold in the art world, Ruby’s dream career. She was elated and her galvanized mood could be felt by all those around her; everything in her life felt so perfect and exciting. But despite this, somewhere deep within her mind, embedded beneath layers upon layers of joy, was a tiny concern that suggested everything might be a bit too good. Surely it would end one day. Ruby occasionally felt this thought bubble to the surface for a brief split-second. At that precise moment this worry was materializing through downcast thoughts at the prospect of leaving her friends and family behind for a whole month. She had never gone away for so long. When would she next see her brother and grandfather, or Jess, her best friend forever? In today’s connected world this would hopefully not be too much of a problem, she thought, trying to comfort herself. She had already made each of them pledge to at least one video-conversation per week. Frankly though, Ruby knew that it was a feeling of missing out on the Ferndale summer that animated her nervous response at the intimidating thought of going away for so long. Summer was Ruby’s favorite season, after all. Ferndale was so beautiful during those long, warm evenings.

     Sunlight poured onto the large desk in front of her, illuminating the meticulous chalk drawings and acrylic concoctions that she had generated over the past few years. She snapped out of her sentimental spell and resumed cataloguing her artwork into folders and binders, a long overdue tidying. She needed to select a few of her favorite specimens to take with her to Leatford, several hours distance from Ferndale. Only so much can fit into two suitcases, and Ruby had so many other items and paraphernalia to take with her, some more useful than others. But it was so hard to choose between her different creations. Was it wiser to take her chalk drawings that not so subtlety exuded a political statement on the lack of governmental effort to combat climate change, or would it be better to stick with her abstract acrylics that were reminiscent of pop art and which she thought more highly of? She picked up her creations in order, studying them each in detail as if seeing them for the first time, trying to imagine the reaction of an outside observer. It was a tough decision. She did not want to come off as an insufferable virtue dispenser from the very first day, but on the other hand Mrs. Gilford had advised sampling the political stuff since the Academy was known for championing liberal activism.

     The doorbell rang, jarring Ruby out of her meditative cataloging spree. She sprang up, aware that she was alone in the house that morning. Still preoccupied with these ruminations, she swung the front door open without much forethought, half expecting to see a work of art. A pair of cloudy blue eyes greeted her. Rays of sunlight shimmered through the long, dark eyelashes delicately encircling them. “A work of art!” Exclaimed something inside Ruby, although in that moment she was not aware what it was.

     “Here’s your package ma’am.” The young lad said, looking into her eyes as he handed over a small rectangular parcel enshrouded mysteriously in what seemed to be at least two layers of dense cardboard.

     Ruby did not recall ordering anything, but this thought remained only half-formed in her mind as she nonchalantly reached out for the parcel. For she suddenly recognized the delivery guy. It was Jack, the ‘weird kid’ she knew from school, despite the branded clothing and matching baseball cap concealing his hair. Well, she did not really know Jack, no. It was more of a cursory acquaintance developed in a shared class during her final year at Primrose.

     “Hey, Jack” Ruby said, before quickly adding, “it is you, isn’t it?” She let her left shoulder fall towards the door-frame, gently leaning against it like an inclined plane, conveying that she did not mind standing there a little longer than what was customary.

     Jack smiled, seemingly relieved that Ruby had recognized him, since he had not wanted to disclose his own recognition prematurely lest she fail to reciprocate. “Yes, it’s me, hey Ruby. We were in Mr. Wilson’s English together a few years ago, weren’t we?”

     “Yes, exactly… God was that a dull class!” Ruby said, smiling back, happy to have found a common denominator to hinge this otherwise potentially awkward conversation on.

     “Indeed, it was! Well, glad we both made it out of there alive!” Jack responded in kind, beaming away as if beholding the whole world. Inside his skin, though, he remained hesitant. Was she aware that he had often spent those years daydreaming about her? She had animated so many abstractions in his mind back in those days. Did she somehow know? Unlikely, he knew. Besides, it had been several years since she’d even seen him.

     “Well, I’ll leave you to it then, enjoy the package.” He added, assuming a more professional tone, conscious that Ruby was his customer in this particular interaction.

     “Thank you, Jack. Have a nice day!” Ruby replied, watching him gently back down the porch steps, unaware of the whirlwind eviscerating his insides.

     “Likewise, have a wonderful day!” Jack hollered back, tilting his chin up ever so slightly. Just as the final, lingering syllable died in the air, Ruby had completed the purposefully slow motion of shutting the door.

***

     After delivering Ruby’s package and a few dozen more, Jack encountered a problem with the rear axle of his bicycle, which he always used for said deliveries. Fixing this took an unreasonably long time and siphoned away his already dwindling willpower reserves. After completing his rounds, with what little residue of energy he could muster, he cycled straight home, weary that it could reoccur. Summer was tiring for Jack. It was nine in the evening and yet still the final rays of sunlight were displaying the filth and grime that lined the grubby neighbourhoods of outer Ferndale. On those summer nights it remained light outside for much longer than what Jack would’ve liked. He usually slept – or lay in bed staring at the void – for many more hours than the average person his age. Darkness just made the whole process easier.

     Arriving home, he hurled his shoes into a corner and himself onto the edge of his bed. He stared at the colorless palette that dominated the wall, bored stiff, looking for something to kill time with until it felt acceptable to sleep. His existence lacked the necessary minima of vibrancy that made ordinary people not sleep through every living moment. For Jack was still haunted; hounded by insidious traumas that snaked across his vitality. The thing is, Jack was not normal. And while it is doubtful that he ever had been, by now it was carved in in his very bones. He was a damaged product and he hated himself. And this was precisely what the Red Haze loved to exploit. This hazy dream-state was a psychogenic spiral that danced upon the ashes of his wounded cerebrum. It seamlessly wormed into existence out of the abyss, bleeding into his mind even as he fought against it. What made it worse was that it was self-generated, appearing every so often after distractions and duties and routine tasks all left him. This was when he was most vulnerable and in danger, endangered by himself.

     While lying in bed staring at nothing, Jack began squirming. The inevitable had begun, despite his best attempts to block the intrusive chain from linking together and locking onto him. Yet it was tremendously difficult if not impossible to curtail this primordial energy that bubbled in from the edge of infinity with unfettered ease. The frenzied pounding of his cross-wired neurons was not something he could defuse. He closed his little eyes, sheltering the cerulean jewels that hid so delicately behind his elongated lashes from the images to come. No portals to reality could exist. It was a private, visceral dream-state, and a playground of deniability once defused…

     Out of the void emerged the beautiful visage of Jess, her skin dreamy like a pane of glass. She stood in front of him. It was often Jess – for some reason unknown to Jack – who would be looming over him wielding a six-inch switchblade, like the one she had once threatened him with in the fourth grade. This time she held the blade clasped in her right hand, rising above him with a menacing look grinning out of her dark pupils. She slowly knelt down with the grace and rigor of a ballerina, her eyes locked onto his, dragging the blade’s dull edge gently across his exposed chest in anticipation. Similar scenes had played out so very many times before in Jack’s mind. He could almost feel the warmth of the blood gently trickling down his abdomen as Jess slowly began exploring his flesh without breaking eye contact. Jack sat there obediently, infatuated with the sight of blood glistening on Jess’ elegant wrists and curvaceous figure, his blood, yes that what was really nailed this scene. His pulse had, by now, accelerated into celestial orbit. The scent of iron-oxide always felt so real, such was the power of this scene that slowly soldered itself into his head. Jess really enjoyed it of course, for in this distorted realm she loved hurting Jack over and over again.

     He did not always fantasize about Jess, in fact Jack was not obsessed with her by any means. Sometimes he would imagine women with purposefully non-descript, faceless personas, dragging their claws across his exposed skin, harming him, hurting him, slowly yet precisely. At other times it would be a cacophony of other characters, real or imaginary or a blend of both, taking enthusiastic turns enjoying the visceral sandbox that was his flesh. This vicious prelude to the inevitable deluge, this Red Haze, arrived seemingly out of the blue in opportune moments separated out across weeks, and sometimes even months. This was despite Jack’s enormous struggle against it. Yet it arrived. And it always felt unbelievable and so unreal and wrong once Jack snapped out of its coils. It was always so embarrassing having to cover up the self-inflicted scars that eventually began accompanying these concocted realities. This was a major problem, for this was something that escaped his mind and left a visible marker in the real world. When the haze washed away it often left him in tears. What’s wrong with me? He whispered to himself in desperation. Jack, who had once dreamt of starry skies suspended in soft pink globes, now found himself involuntarily drawn towards whatever this oddly alluring nightmare was. He disliked himself to the point of hatred.

     Life had gifted him this psycho-sexual joke as some form of divine punishment, he was sure by now. Little was he aware that this was his primordial, reptilian brain’s way of healing. This was how he was able to flip the narrative of darkness and illuminate it. Craving what he had once feared and loathed was a means of asserting power over his past, over his traumas. This was a form of psychological scabbing he had been pushed into due to the lack of emotional support from elsewhere. It had been his mind against the cold external world, left to rot, left to necrose, slowly churning a twisted narrative of pleasure out of despair and distress. Most importantly though, it was a narrative that now he controlled. He was the one in charge; he alone could start, stop and define the course of things. By the age Jack had noticed these yearnings were not normal, they had already formed into an unstoppable force. Calling it a force is wrong of course, for it was actually a shield; a shield that his mind had formed, a hardened callous sheltering him from the relentless hammering of the external world. This was, then, how Jack had spent those intermittent years.

     Unfortunately, the problem was not only limited to the realm of midnight desires. No, that would have been manageable, since he could safely indulge in these twisted fantasies that linked his mind to the dark gaps between the stars inside the safety of his own head. That would have been no problem compared to what was really going on. But all this self-loathing had inevitably led to a host of other problems for Jack, including low self-esteem and social indifference, alongside reclusive and destructive behavior. Lately he had begun approaching these issues with wary resignation, recognizing that fighting against what he now believed to be his nature was likely futile. He decided to just accept himself, which effectively included an acceptance of his projected worthlessness. He well and truly loathed himself and harbored not a single molecule of self-respect. This was, then, where Jack had been; slowly dissolving in an acrid puddle devoid of hopes and dreams, of any proper hopes and dreams that would ordinarily be considered viable human ambitions. He had given up on himself.

***

    Ruby had no clue about any of this, of course, much like almost everyone else around Jack. For her, he was an intriguing character whom she found somewhat attractive in a mysterious and unreadable sort of way. She was not aware of all the suffering Jack had endured back when they shared a class at Primrose. She had no idea of all the long recesses Jack had spent in front of the bathroom mirror, bleeding tears from his haggard eyes, distilling a nightmare from others’ jubilancy. Ruby had, on the contrary, sat at the very front of the classroom, inundated by curiosity and youthful zest, and listened intently to the lesson. She’d taken notes, completed all the assignments, and filtered information and ambition from her teachers. She would always be the first out of the classroom, forever eager to attend whatever other exciting activity awaited round the corner. She had never had the opportunity to get to know Jack. During the few seconds after she had shut the door on his receding visage she wondered, rather naively, what sort of person he had become.

     The package Jack had just handed to her was indeed addressed to herself, Ruby noticed, somewhat puzzled. She could not recall ordering anything. What if it was something malicious, like a trojan horse trying to infiltrate her life? At that moment Ruby did not consider this possibility, why would she? Most people would not. She grabbed her grandfather’s ornate letter-opener and used it as a blade to pry open the cardboard. Having created a graspable flap, she impatiently tugged on it, ripping the box open with no concern for its future deployment as a container.

     Inside was a large sheath of metal, quite heavy, Ruby realized as she tried to remove it. Rather annoyingly, she could not fit her fingers between the box and the object to pry it out. Overturning the box in frustration yielded no results either. She therefore picked up the letter-opener and began carving further into the cardboard without much care, mutilating any semblance of dignity the box might have had. After a long minute of harrowing and rather exhausting effort, she was finally able to yank the metal object out with a single surgical motion.

     She was puzzled to find a large silver tray, a metallic plaque with ornate carvings etched all over its top surface. It had to be a mistake, clearly. Neither her nor her grandfather would have ordered such a thing. It was presumably some form of antiquated decorative implement. She placed it carefully on top of the small chest of drawers near the front door.

     The cardboard corpse on the floor was getting on her nerves, so she carefully scooped up all the bits of corrugated fiber-board that her dismembering spree had scattered about. Its shape was now awkwardly flayed and not foldable, so she tried to crush it into a flattened pulp by stepping on it a few times. She nearly fell over in the process; it turns out a maimed cadaver of cardboard is surprisingly resilient to being crushed. That indignant irritation when small things that ought to just submit to powers greater than themselves momentarily protest flooded over Ruby. No eulogies were read as the disfigured thing was finally stuffed head-first into the overcrowded recycling bin, a cellulose graveyard where space was at a premium. That was its duty after all, to live and die in service of things more valuable than itself.

     Ruby went to wash her hands; the faint cardboard-scented stickiness that lingered on her fingers bothered her just enough to warrant this detour. On her way back from the bathroom, she noticed her grandfather slumped over a pile of papers that bore the municipal letterhead. He was using a magnifying monocle that Ruby found really outdated and archaic in an effort to make out some of the fine print at the bottom of a small label attached to a rectangular box. She helped him defuse the situation sprawled out over his desk, before directing his attention to the mysterious delivery that stood silently in the hallway. The package had no company name or anything on it, and she’d shredded the bar-code so thoroughly that it was scarcely possible to ascertain its prior existence.

     As they wracked their brains on what to do, Ruby suddenly realized that she did indeed know someone who might offer some insight. Perhaps she could ask Jack for advice, he had delivered the thing after all. Maybe he’d know something of its origin or at least how to retrieve its return address. He’d surely know what to do, Ruby thought, unaware in that moment that Jack was occupying space in her mind regardless of the misplaced package. After some clever social media jockeying, she found someone who knew someone who likely had Jack’s telephone number, since Jack himself was nowhere to be found on the internet.

     By the following afternoon, Ruby was indeed in possession of Jack’s contact information. But despite having an online follower count in the five-figures, Ruby felt a modicum of anxiety as she began dialing the number. She felt hesitant and a bit nervous, rather surprisingly. She was uncertain whether it was because she had not phoned anyone in a long while – what an old-fashioned mode of communication – or whether it was something to do with Jack’s cryptic persona. She did not however, in that moment, entertain the possibility that she may be attracted to him. Alas, this notion would soon become as clear as moonlight beaming through a cloudless night, and as suffocating as a windless sail clawing across a blackened ocean.

***

     On that Saturday afternoon, Jack was sitting on a low wall near the town square, gazing idly at the climate activists of Ferndale chanting in vain for reduced carbon emissions, sustainability, and a better world in general. What did all that mean, he never quite understood. He knew what it meant, but was unaware why it mattered. Those kids garnered a lot of positive media attention for their outspoken criticism of government policies and their idealistic stance for a better, healthier, greener future. The morbidly amusing thing for Jack was that several of those individuals had been his bullies in elementary school. Those same people who had nipped his life in the bud, dismembered his psyche and ground away his vitality. All those days in elementary school when he had scampered away to the restroom and cried alone, considered ending his life, and thought of ways to do it before abandoning it out of fear… all those days had been delivered by the likes of these same people. Those who now marched for the planet had previously forsaken his very existence, Jack mused, gently blowing air bubbles through a plastic-straw into a bright graveyard of orange soda, toying with the effervescent liquid ever-so gently, ever-so playfully. He’d consume it, eventually.

     Unfortunately, Jack had developed something of an apathy, bordering on dislike, towards the planet that you and I also inhabit. He had no interest whatsoever in its longevity. Why would he? He loathed these activists. This teetering sphere contained nothing but suffering and nurtured the progenitors of his suffering. It was a giant space-boil awaiting extraction, not something to cherish. By now Jack was well aware that the world did not emit its own light, but merely reflected strays it stole from the stars. He yearned to watch the whole world burn, to watch this dark speck of dust burst aflame just once in its life-cycle, like a glorious supernova. His thoughts diverged as he carefully extracted a cigarette from his shirt pocket and promptly lit it. He began dragging out smoke, while watching the colorful climate enthusiasts try to hand fliers to passing pedestrians. He began counting, one in every four people or so were taking what was offered, but he was almost certain they then deposited it in the nearest bin.

     Jack felt tired after his mail run that morning. He got up and rolled his shoulders back, they protested with crackling moans. But it felt good. He should probably go home now, he thought. But just as he was about to leave, he noticed his soda can, almost empty, still sitting innocently by the edge of the sidewalk where he’d placed it. He’d drained it of all but a sliver of its original vitality. It had no purpose anymore. He stepped on it, savoring the sound of metal being eviscerated as it gave way and buckled into a smaller version of its former self, oozing orange viscera from its foaming mouth. Jack looked at the activists, still milling around pointlessly. Taking another drag of smoke, he kicked the metal cadaver into the bushes, hoping they had seen. It gave him great joy to spite them by doing little acts of morally reprehensible pettiness.

     The righteous chanting being vomited around across the road slowly petered out as Jack walked away. The streets slowly morphed into grubby and decrepit corridors as he left the town center for his apartment in the ghetto-space of Ferndale. It was not the safest nor the most pleasant area, but that was all he had been able to afford. He kept his gaze down, fixated on the ground; that was where safety was. Perhaps inadvertently, perhaps deliberately – we shall never quite know – Jack began conjuring scenarios of destruction in his mind. He had lately developed an unsavory habit of imagining how he would obliterate his enemies; all those who had wronged him, all who had hurt him. Unfortunately, anyone who stood in the vicinity of this tidal wave was to be washed away; a little collateral cannot be helped, Jack thought, in cold-blooded sobriety. But he knew that supernovae can only discharge once. He had one shot before becoming entropy, he must not waste it. But Jack also knew he did not have the guts to do anything spectacular, his would likely be a smaller nova. This though cleaved his solemnity asunder, frustrating him and taxing his mind.

     Jack sighed. Little Jack… He knew he was no maniac; he was no harbinger of death. Poor little Jackie… He was not here to sow death nor spite the radiant souls who live and laugh oblivious to their surroundings. What will you do Jack? But deep down inside of him a bubbling, sublime energy kept whispering. Why preserve… this? Preserving the status quo was neither a natural nor an obvious choice in his condition, suggested the whispers, weaving gossamer threads in and out of his tired mind. What do you have to lose, Jack? He hated this voice, mostly for how sweet and succulent it sounded. But the voice loved him. It was reason, distilled down to its basest, most elemental composition, piped through an animalian filter into his thick head. Nudge the scales, Jack, just a little bit. He had to curtail it, continuously. It was exhausting.

     But there was also something else. Something beautiful, shimmering beyond the red hot embers of continuous pain. Something ephemeral, irresistible. For somewhere deep within Jack’s cognizance, a carpet of scabs begged for silence. They begged to be left alone. They wanted to evaporate into the safety and comfort of non-existence. Jack dreamt of death. This realization was slow to seep into his conscious mind, blocked by societal constraints that he unknowingly followed, those constraints that trap lost souls into self-made prisons and conceal the exit. Alas, nature finds a way. Jack considered how comforting absolute absence would be. But there was one problem. How would he then punish the world? He was not ready, not quite yet. Vengeance and dissolution – two opposing forces – collided across his mind, projecting a future enriched by an illusion of choice. What will you do, Jack?

     An abrupt noise drilled through these thoughts. Jack’s phone was howling an alert: unknown caller. In a somewhat unusual turn of events, he felt the urge to answer it, even though he usually ignored unregistered numbers.

     “Hello?”

     “Hey Jack, is that you?”

     It was Ruby, Jack could immediately tell, he would have recognized her voice through any medium. Jack was good with voices, he identified people from their intonation, emphases and other such idiosyncrasies.

     That phone call would change a lot, and not just in Jack’s life. After all, he lived and operated within society, albeit on its murky outskirts, where it was beaten into a more brittle and unforgiving version. But every once in a blue moon, energy trapped out in the outskirts has the power to trigger an eruption in the rosy center. Jack was capable of impacting things. He had agency – perhaps his most valuable asset. Ferndale’s future, which wormed across diverse multiplicities of countless tones and shapes and contours, was funneled out of a few of them and towards a few others during that phone call. The town’s destiny was momentarily suspended in a beam of starlight that crackled across the cellular network, entering Jack’s ear and thence his mind. Ruby was shining into Jack.    

***

     “Maybe we should grab a coffee sometime?”

     Jack would never forget the way Ruby had phrased that daring inquiry on the phone that day. It was so unexpected that he had almost defaulted to auto-rejection, curtailing himself at the last moment. And then after that; their actual meeting, it was so… enthralling. Of course, Jack had been surveying, plotting and computing every word and movement he made, over-analyzing every tensor of his motions and behavior in front of Ruby – for he was now completely out of his depth. Somehow, though, Ruby had never stopped smiling.    

     Over the following few weeks Ruby and Jack got to slowly unveil ever-widening little glimpses of each other, with the misplaced package serving as the perfect, almost fairy-tale like catalyst. The second stimulant for this somewhat unlikely companionship was the cancellation of Ruby’s summer program due to an unexpected earthquake in the Pacific Rift, leaving her with a wide-open summer schedule. They began taking long walks through the woodlands to the north of Ferndale, sometimes even cycling to the starting points of various hiking trails. Jack loved the solitude the mountains offered, while Ruby loved his enthusiasm, plus she appreciated the exercise – ever vigilant Ruby, ever mindful of health and well-being and all that. Every so often they descended and peeked into music venues, concerts, and even a film or two together. But the gist of their relationship was conversation. For they found in each other unexpectedly relatable characters. Jack admired Ruby’s drive and elan, and tremendously fancied her physically, while she was, in turn, enchanted by Jack’s secretive charisma, humility, and outwardly care-free character, alongside harboring an undeniable bodily attraction for his slim frame.

     As months wore on, they grew quite close. But Ruby remained mildly annoyed that Jack refused to see her sometimes, mumbling some excuse they both knew was a bad distraction. She could only coax him out to meet her once or twice a week, at best. And, she still had no idea where he lived. It was cryptic, but more so just plain irritating. But beyond all that, there was also a stronger barrier between them, firmly deployed from Jack’s side, for he did not possess the mental capacity to lower the shell he had conjured around himself. He had been abandoned and trampled on by society one too many times, developing a hardwired gag-reflex for unfettered intimacy. It was not just his family and classmates that were to blame for this, but all the teachers, tutors, counsellors, and the rest of the adult circus that milled around him, alongside the very institutions, government bodies, and checks and balances that ought to ordinarily shield a child in civil society.

     Over time Ruby realized something was roiling around in Jack’s mind, yet he would not share anything substantial. Ruby knew he had some demons locked up in there, but she needed more time to unravel the cephalic coils that barred the outside from looking in. It was too intimate; Jack feared her reaction, her judgment, her pity. He wanted none of that. That was his worst nightmare. Ruby, in turn, grew increasingly frustrated, unaware of what was going on. This rift eventually grew in size, estranging their relationship bit by bit. Their emotionally divergent scripts simply did not compile.

     Now at this point you may surmise that Ruby eventually gave up and moved on with her life. But no, much to even my own surprise, Ruby stuck with Jack through thick and thin. Indeed, she was a highly sensitive girl with a heart of gold, and she knew that pulling Jack away from the abyss may well be the most important thing she would ever do in life. What is important, after all? When all is said and done, what matters? Ruby often mused over these inquiries on those warm summer evenings when she caught Jack’s head slumped in a fog of stress, unable to savior the view. She considered her artwork, her online fan-base, her educational excellence, and all that. How much would she need to forsake to extend a bridge of vitality to this kid? For even though he had not divulged much to her, Ruby knew that Jack was tormented by something, and she also knew that he had considered suicide. She had pieced together at least one such instance from subtle pointers in their conversation; Jack did not share such things voluntarily, as always. It killed Ruby to slowly realize the extent of things, but it also energized her into indignant determination. Ever-driven Ruby, ever watchful, ever optimistic.

     Perhaps it was some form of primordial natural selection that Jack was inadvertently drawn to the person who harbored the most compassion towards his predilection, the person who emitted vectors of starlight so radiant that she could shutter away the darkest demons. Momentarily released from the machinations of the underworld, Jack began to enjoy and take pleasure in many of the surface world’s mundane happenings that he had not previously known. If normal people all live such weightless, care-free, almost ethereal lives, then that explains a lot of the common concern with elongating it, Jack thought, musing over concepts and worldviews that had puzzled him for so long. Even the Red Haze retreated and let him be, dazzled by the luminosity that was slowly filtering in. Did it still lurk down there? He did not know since during those magical days towards the end of summer Jack never strayed into its grasp. His newfound joie-de-vivre was nothing extraordinary or even particularly pronounced when compared to the average person. Its extraordinary power stemmed from the stark contrast with what he had had before: absolutely nothing.

     All was good and merry for a few months, but the weave began to unravel during the ascension of winter. The gibbering demons of yore were merely dormant in Jack’s mind, and the long, dark days of winter triggered a series of cascading regressions in his psyche. Ruby tried her very best to be the resplendent sunrise that Jack needed, but it was to no avail, even her blinding phosphorescence was insufficient to blot out the shadows. It was all unraveling right in front of her eyes, she was privy to every mental battering Jack tried to weather. The weaker he got and the more helpless the situation became, the more Ruby tried to prevent it. She spent ages trying to ascertain how to contact self-harm and suicide prevention lines on his behalf and convince him to follow through with them. She spent weeks seeking medical and psychological help for him and expended endless amounts of energy and mental effort to crack his feedback loop.

     After all is said and done, can we really blame Jack for what he would end up doing? Had the world really nurtured him enough to mount a defense against what happened? It is funny how small children almost always paint the sky a bright blue color, as if the gray, colorless tones of the overcast months do not exist. And the clouds are almost always white and puffy, suspended in rays of sunlight, but somehow never obfuscating the sun. It is almost as if perspectives are shifted in this juvenile angle, the rules of physics seem different. In the cold reality of the physical world, clouds have a habit of smothering starlight whether they are darkened storm-bearers or this white puffy stuff. But in the radiance of a child’s mind this stark reality becomes subsumed by an acute imagination blocking out colorlessness and anti-vitality as seen in endless unprompted children’s drawings all around the globe. Even Jack had drawn these puffy clouds and bright skies in his youngest years, for no child is born a servant of darkness. It is not nature, but nurture, or lack thereof.

     At that moment, near the dead of winter, those same clouds were now obstructing the crimson glints of enraptured starlight that vectored off of Ruby in every cardinal direction. Even the avatar of radiance could not pierce the beetling smog-clouds that loomed over Jack’s thinly-stretched vitality. Those clouds were his lifelong traumas, internalized, compartmentalized, distilled, but never completely dispelled. They hovered like eye-floaters, swimming in and out of his vision with little respite. Were the heydays of summer an anomaly? These clouds were now, once again, in front of everything else; always in the foreground, always dictating his vision. He was stuck, trapped. He just wanted to leave. Even Ruby seemed unable to help Jack, for he was beyond grasp. He was receding, his spine disintegrating under the pressure of existence. Was Jack truly incapable of life, whatever that entailed? He himself also considered this a lot; a hell of a lot more than someone his age ordinarily ought to.

***

     It was a rain-sodden afternoon, just like many others before and after it, and Jack had just completed a particularly putrid mail run where his raincoat had decided to split down the seam, becoming useless, mere minutes into his shift. He was forced to return home, forsaking that afternoon’s earnings, much to his annoyance. To make matters worse, because he never paid the heating bill, he had no radiator or other heat source to properly dry out his now-soaked clothes. Nothing ever dried in his airless little cell of an apartment with its permanently moist, clammy walls and mold-speckled ceiling. His clothes were mottled with mud and street grime, but he needed them since he always tried to delay his dreaded laundromat trip as much as possible. The rain could not win in this situation.

     He crept down to the apartment’s basement, careful not to alert the doorman, and quietly pruned out a single large brick from a non-structural, decaying wall specimen he had visited several times before. The gaping hole he left in it concerned him little, even if the wall had been structurally important it would likely still concern him little. He was almost certain it was not though. He scampered back up the stairs and smacked the brick down on the rusty metal ring that framed his single, portable stove-top. He turned the gas on, kindled it and let the brick absorb energy for an indeterminate amount of time, almost forgetting its existence. When he returned, it was glowing with heat. It felt so good radiating onto his palms. He carefully took his thrice-rung clothes and draped them at various strategic angles over the brick. It would continue to emit heat for a very long while, Jack knew from practice. Hopefully that would make his clothes a bit drier. It would suffice if he could warm them up just enough to eliminate that horrid, cold dampness that otherwise stuck to his skin upon first putting them on. A warmed-up damp object goes cold gradually. Jack preferred that, it was less uncomfortable. On his luckiest days he would forget they were damp, absorbed in some other task that dulled his senses by the time cold reality bled back into him.

     When it finally got dark, Jack left his cramped cell to talk to Ruby on the phone, as he often did. He hated doing anything worthy of dignity within that concrete enclosure. The walls spied on him; they had seen him at his lowest. They always saw him at his lowest, for that’s where he crawled whenever things got particularly untenable. Ruby’s presence would not be sullied by this setting, he had decided long ago, not even her voice. He would not be seeing her today; he could not in his current state. His clothes reeked of clammy dampness mixed with sweat, exhaust, smog, and probably even a sprinkling of fungus. No, he reserved his cleanest moments for Ruby, moments that came about twice a week at best. She would not be seeing this.

     The streets were broadcasting depression, as usual. The area Jack lived was not the most pleasant, to put it mildly. He chatted to Ruby while walking up and down the squalid sidewalk near the entrance to the container depot opposite his apartment. A massive chain lay taut across the entryway, presumably to prevent unauthorized vehicular entry. He began twirling his fingers around its snug little holes half-consciously, subsumed by Ruby’s warm voice. His facial contours melted into a softer version of their usual rigidity. A malfunctioning streetlight buzzed above him, complementing the electronic efflorescence emitted by a nearby signpost, ringed with antiquated neon bulbs.

     An immense sound suddenly bulldozed away all tranquility. Jack turned round: an ugly four-wheeler stood next to the signpost, its over-sized engine still humming with excess energy. He checked his watch: 10 PM. It was not particularly late, yet the clientele frothing out of the four-wheeler suggested otherwise. It must have been so overcrowded and stuffy inside that thing, Jack thought, watching intently as six men finished clambering out of it. Their composure declared hostility. Jack knew how quickly an unnecessary exchange of words could escalate in these parts of town. By now he had already hung up on Ruby, politely. Yet he kept his phone by his ear, trying to shelter himself in the indifference it projected. He slowly began meandering away, as if unaware of their presence, while cautiously surveying his surroundings.

     By now, all the men had congregated around the boot of the four wheeler. Jack saw what appeared to be a cocoon like object being dragged out and dropped onto the cold asphalt. It squirmed. Jack realized what it was. He swallowed down something, and was startled by how loud his own gulping sound was in the deafening silence that now blanketed his side of the street. Had they heard him? Had they really heard his throat? Unlikely, he knew. He continued backing away, gazing curiously at the swaddled body that was now vibrating with fear on the pavement as the men milled about, discussing something in loud whispers. They’d dropped it on the edge of the road, but what Jack assumed was its head lay awkwardly elevated on the pavement, a foot or so higher than the rest. It looked so uncomfortable, Its mouth was taped shut, as far as Jack could tell in the pixelated half-light. A head in that position on an inclined, presentable surface directs all attention toward its vulnerability. The slightest pressure to the neck area would be enough, Jack realized with a sick feeling.

     He stopped looking at the scene, though its contours remained welded to his mind for a little while longer. He pitied the cocooned person who was likely savoring a few last breaths. He pitied that it was alive, that it was still alive. He was by now almost out of vision. But it was exactly at that most inopportune, most unexpected, most unbelievable moment that it happened. She happened.

     It was Ruby. Jack’s jaw almost hit the floor as he immediately recognized her joyous gait and beautiful silhouette despite the darkness. She was approaching the unsavory scene from the opposite direction. What was she doing here? How?! All of Jack’s survival instincts lit up at once, like a rainbow of electrodermal activity brushing down his spine. Was she looking for him? But how did she even know about this area? Jack’s mind was racing. He needed to somehow prevent her from approaching the car, lest something bad happen. Ruby was absolutely unaware of the incident unfolding in front of her. Jack noticed a cable like filament draping out of her ear, much to his utmost dismay. She was listening to music, he realized in absolute horror. She was listening to music in this dark street in the roughest part of town, completely lulling her perception. He could not help but exude a small laugh, a little hiccup; he loved her.

     He tried waving in an angle that only Ruby would notice. Nothing. Her phone was busy stealing most of her attention. The men had not yet seen Ruby approaching, still busy surveying the cocooned body in front of them. They would soon though. A tide of reptilian energy overcame Jack’s little cerebrum, he knew not from where. Jack was fast. Running was the one thing he was rather excellent at. He ran full-speed towards Ruby, bee-lining to her luminous presence. She barely noticed his approach. The men had by now surely seen him. Were they pursuing? He thought he heard some shouting, but dared not look. He grabbed Ruby by the wrist and toyed that unbelievable line between the primal and the civilized, somehow managing to drag her away while simultaneously making sure not to apply too much pressure to her wrist, her arm or her body, like a gentle beast, a polite predator. Ruby was stunned, fumbling around trying to extract her headphones. By now, Jack had pretty much lifted her. He was somehow carrying her – he did not think he was capable. He was not very strong, normally.

     After a long few minutes, and after many, many twists and turns Jack finally heard Ruby’s protests. They were safe, for now. He was so relieved. He dared not describe the exact details of what was going on in the street, informing her instead of more generalized dangers in a scolding way. A scolding which grew more bulbous at being informed that Ruby had triangulated his location from their phone call. Apparently, she had wished to find him, to see him. It was sweet, but also infuriating. He kissed her forehead, gently, in-between breathless panting. That was a run to remember.

***

     Sitting in an alley, slumped against a cold, concrete wall with Ruby leaning against his shoulder, his still damp shoulder, Jack realized he could not hide from the sun. She was right here, inquiring about his living arrangements. Maybe it was not so bad, Jack thought, rather naively. For his own perception of his cramped apartment cell had long since failed to register just how bad it was. It was not good. He took her there in resignation. And, in fact, the sight of his home, his life, affected Ruby more than he guessed, much more than he could ever realize. Devastation would be an understatement for the cocktail of feelings that assailed Ruby’s entire body at the realization that Jack lived in this. Jack failed to notice the almost immediate change of vibrancy in Ruby’s face. Pity oozed out of each orifice. Can we really blame her?

     Now at this point I will refrain from monotonous repetition about how luminous Ruby was, about how determined and stubborn she could get, and about how she was the kind of person who could deliver a ball of compassion through the very vacuum of space. Life and her own position therein were irrelevant. One cold January morning, a few days later, downcast from the rivulets of gloom that slithered down the window-panes, Ruby began drawing out a final plan; one final decisive push to bloom into Jack. She was sitting in the attic, safely behind the single circular window that kept the frigid outside at bay. The attic was her safe space. Little did she know that elsewhere, in darker days and within dark nooses, Jack had similarly headed for small, enclosed spaces in times of acute distress and hopelessness. Some might find cosmic comfort in that.

     Ruby knew Jack was close to ending it all, to doing something that civil society would not approve of. She knew not exactly what she feared, but thoughts squirmed into her mind. Ruby was intelligent. She was so smart. She knew what Jack needed; she charted a plan. She was going to win. Jack had been abandoned by all of society except for one resplendent soul, who decided at that moment to forsake her entire existence, if necessary, for a chance at extracting his. But would this extraction end as badly as the first one? What if it did? Was it worth enduring that all over again? The amniotic sack from which Jack had been pried all those years ago had not led to the most successful outcome, after all. In alternate timelines, pirouetting around alternate stars in alternate universes, he could see the faces of unborn Jacks laughing back at him, mocking his situation, his entrapment, his liability of existence.

     Ruby’s presence complicated the following years considerably. Life is not the simplest thing, apparently – at least a life worth something greater than zero.

***

     “Let’s go for a short walk together, fresh air will do us good.”

     Ruby often presented such seemingly innocuous suggestions to Jack through the following days, weeks and months, luring him out of his shell with surgical care. What she was really doing in the background was far more impressive though. For through these small tokens of affection and activity, Ruby was gradually re-constructing Jack’s vitality, those psychogenic buttresses that keep ordinary people sane and functioning in the face of adversity. Everything Jack needed slowly filtered into his life at molecular pace: a supporting environment, social connections, small and achievable goals, a rediscovery of hobbies, and perhaps above all else, non-judgmental ears. This took time, of course. It was a slow process. Yet Ruby was patient; she was delicate yet invasive, careful yet powerful in her approach. She knew exactly what needed to be done. There was not a single shadow that could hide from her luminescence, such was her drive and determination.

     Years passed like this. In fact, so many years passed that they banded together into a decade, a large timeworn entity that enjoys nothing more than censoring its predecessors. By now, Jack was something different. The intervening decade had blurred many of his worst childhood memories, covering them with an artificial veneer, wrapping them up in layer upon layer of distance. This hazy edifice may be mankind’s most merciful liability. It remains unclear what exactly Jack was concealing beneath his new façade. We may never know; he may never know. But perhaps it does not matter, for it had already begun to snow on that cold November’s morning, and the snow looked so incredibly beautiful, carpeting the ground in a glittering matrix of soft crystals. The first snowfall of that year had arrived surprisingly early in Leatford, the large port city that rose up a few kilometers west from Ferndale. This was their home now.

     On that cold morning, Ruby was standing by the window watching the drifting snowflakes from the warmth of the fourth floor. She gently sipped her coffee, imbibing her morning dose of liquid-pleasure. Today was her day off, but her back was aching a bit. She must have slept in a funny position. Her age seemed intent on declaring its presence at every turn. She had recently turned 30. What a terrible, round number. She sat down and gazed at the television, demoralized by the grim state of affairs projected by news programs that never dwell on anything positive. A school shooting there, arson over here, some crazed, war-criminal psychopath over there, etc. Items on the news were always so similar. It really brought Ruby down. In that moment she was not cognizant of the fact that she herself may have pried Jack away from the brink of a similar sort of madness. The years had blurred much for Ruby too.

     I am not sure whether, left to brew in ice-cold rays long enough, Jack would have degenerated enough to illuminate one last strand of the stratosphere. Why does anyone, after all? Genetics can scarcely-account for this mess we as humanity find ourselves suspended within. Why do acts of malice occur in this world? Sylvia Wilkens surely wondered this in her final weeks, as did countless other discarded souls. But who are the perpetrators, if not you or me? Must it always be that third person receding in the distance? For children of darkness continue to rot in shallow gutters all over the world, gutters sprawled out in plain sight, yet submerged in apathy and frozen by inertia. A fatal plea brews within those dark confines. It festers, it putrefies, it necroses. I worry for Ruby, I worry for you, lest it one day decide to bloom.

     Alas, I digress, for Jack had been vacuumed out of these shadows by one particularly luminous soul, named after the crimson jewel that she so aptly represented. Years had passed since their high school graduation, by now Jack and Ruby were married and living together in Leatford; she was an art teacher while he worked in an in-substantiate office block earning a pay-check to swoon over her with more dignity. Years had passed since that fateful day where Jack had inadvertently unveiled the extent of his misery to the sun. The sun had dried it out, over time. But it had taken a long time, such a very long time.

     That particular morning was a week-day, much to Jack’s dismay. He got dressed with little cognizance of the process and found Ruby in the living room cuddling a large cushion, her mind stolen by the woman blabbering on the television screen. So many years had passed that Jack scarcely realized how good he had it now. His house, their house, was now so clean, luminous, and full of life. It was cozy. It was comforting. The walls did not spy on them, or press upon them, or harness excess pain from the outer cosmos and concentrate it upon them. But was Jack happy? That is a hard question to answer, especially since by now Jack had flung open the front door and was getting annoyed by its creaking wails. He needed to oil it. This thought taxed his mind, unnecessarily.

     It was a regular Wednesday morning, or so Jack thought, as he descended the spiral stairway of their tall apartment block, carefully stepping over discarded Halloween decorations. He threw open the front door and was greeted with the full icy glory of November herself. The construction site opposite the road was still ringing with the annoying warning sounds the industrial machinery made anytime they moved even the slightest. Despite being a minor annoyance, it had begun to really grind him down, like many other small inconveniences in his life. These sort of things had never bothered him while he was in the gutters; these were so insignificant. Yet now, invigorated by Ruby’s luminescence, his palette had grown accustomed to a much higher version of existence, a version often even cherished. The will to live that Ruby had injected into him, that she had bloomed into him, had many side effects though. Jack shrugged. This was nothing.

     Rectangular amalgamations of concrete, brick and cement glared out from either side of the highway coursing through the busy port-city of Leatford, located about a two-hour drive from Ferndale. Jack was so tired. But not in a physical sense, no, in fact that would have probably been a blessing. His body had not been tired in a long while, welded instead into static rigidity over the course of long sedentary years. The entropy of tedium and stress had overcharged his entire musculoskeletal system, which ached for a proper exothermic discharge. It was overloaded with energy. No, it was his mind that was so supremely tired. He yearned to go somewhere calmer one day, where light-pollution and smog dared not obfuscate the stars. But he did not really have a plan for this. It was instead a sort of mild feeling pressing against his mind that was ever-present but conveniently ignored or delayed. Maybe in his forties, Jack thought, shackling his dreams onto an arbitrary, ever receding future moment. Who would’ve known that continually postponing a dream could feel so right. For each time he gambled with time, Jack was so sure it was the sensible and correct thing to do.

     Preoccupied with these thoughts Jack did not even realize that he had climbed into his car, driven on autopilot to his workplace, disembarked, and was now getting wet. He hated the rain, even more so when he had forgotten to bring an umbrella, such as that present day. He gazed at his shoes as he walked towards the building, anxious that they did not get too wet, for that would be mildly unpleasant. His perfectly dry clothes absorbed a few droplets of rainwater, suffocating them in a high-quality fabric maze in the few seconds before he entered the building.

     “Hey Jack, how are you?” A voice said, indistinguishable among the generalized colleague-space that occupied the area between individuals here.

     “Good, good, yourself?” Jack replied, looking briefly towards the general area where the person speaking to him stood, not actually stopping completely, just slowing down slightly to conform to the bare minimum of formalities. He was not even consciously doing this. This was how the work-space functioned; it was normal. In fact, it was expected. He was not even quite sure who that was. For deep down in the suppressed fissures of his mind there lay a gibbering thought-mass that sent him sporadic signals to never let up his continued indifference towards anyone he may encounter. Anyone but her.

     Jack entered his office cubicle, nestled into his desk chair, and turned on his work computer. As he waited for it to boot up, he swiveled around, crossed his legs, and gazed out the window. The sky actually looked quite picturesque set against the trees in the foreground, he thought, even though he had not actually looked around at all while he was physically outside two minutes ago. Jack liked seeing things through a screen of some form, be it silicate, polarized crystals, plastic, or some other form of barrier. Anything to shelter and protect him from the bewitching glare of the outside would do. The real world was just too intimidating, too visceral. Except her.

     He turned back to his computer screen, which had now booted up with a background image of space taken by the Hubble telescope in the 90’s. He had really cherished the image when he had first set it as his desktop background several months ago, yet now he did not even consciously acknowledge its presence, it had become no different than emptiness. Its existence or non-existence was effectively the same. Despite the former initially possessing many positive attributes greatly separating it from the latter, they had eventually equalized as time wore on. What was the purpose of even keeping the picture? Had Jack entertained this thought, he may have deleted it or tried to change it with something fresh. But he did not think of this. In general, he did not really think of anything much. He was sort of semi-aware that he was wasting his life away at the office, but he periodically blocked these kinds of unproductive convictions from morphing into anything harmful. Chugging along was his motto, after all he’d chugged along in much darker days. This was just how things were. Everything was fine.

     Endless emails, spreadsheets, number crunching, multiple coffees, and a few meetings later he was nearly done with the day. But the day was not done with him. On his way out of the office, just as he was entering the elevator, Jack was reminded via his mobile-phone alarm of an appointment he had scheduled at the hospital. By the time the elevator descended and opened its doors, in that brief moment, Jack huffed and puffed, got irritated by the slight inconvenience this was placing over his dinner plans with Ruby, and then overcame this with an acceptance that it would be for the best if he went and got it over with. That way he would not have to delay it once again, going through the awkward phone calls associated with rescheduling at the last minute. What a hassle that would be.

     “Hey darling, I am going to be a tad late tonight, forgot about the damn doctor’s appointment…” Jack said, holding his phone sandwiched between his neck and cheek as he tried to pry open the back door of his car to throw his work bag in it.

     “Oh no! I forgot about that. Well, get it done of course. Good luck! By the way, I may or may not have a little surprise prepared for you when you get here.” Ruby’s voice beamed back.

     “Oh nice, I can’t wait! Hopefully this won’t take long, see you soon.” Jack loved her energy, he always had.

     “Bye, good luck babe! Keep me posted.” Ruby hung up promptly, saving him from having to fiddle around with his phone. She had heard him igniting the engine.

     Jack threw his phone on the passenger seat. There was, as expected during time critical situations, a tremendous amount of traffic impeding his route to the city hospital. Jack pondered about whether to call and say he might be a bit late, or just try to make it regardless. What was the unwritten rule for this sort of stuff? 5-10 minutes was probably fine, he thought. But what if he was 15 minutes late? Stressing around about this sort of thing the whole way, he finally arrived and dashed inside to be herded to his appointment by the front desk staff. The news he thus received up-ended his life.

     “6 months or so.”

     The words hit Jack in the face. Why had this happened? His life was not his to forsake. Ruby did not deserve this. Not even the beatings delivered by Sid and co. had hurt this much. He leaned back, unable to process the information properly. His amygdala assumed full control, launching a catatonic spiral of fight or flight, fed by his hypothalamus pumping adrenaline and cortisol into his bloodstream like a diesel engine. Ionic storms raged through his cardiac muscles, triggering high frequency vibrations that pushed the limits of his vascular system. Thoughts were racing through his mind at a rate beyond what could be processed by his scarred, and apparently tumorous, body. A magnificent display of fireworks danced across his synapses setting each individual nerve ending ablaze with what could only be described as a cellular disco, a molecular vortex dismantling his entire reality from the inside out. Plumes of gastric acid began launching themselves up his esophagus, sweeping the insides of his mouth in a logarithmic spiral of geometric perfection. He tried to swallow down the metallic residue but could not move his throat. All the while his breathing was so fast and shallow that he began choking.

     Coughing and retching, Jack threw open the double doors of the hospital with such primal strength that most people in the front lobby jumped at the sound. He leaned against the outer hospital wall, slowly sliding down until he was crouched on the floor with his back resting against the cold, hard surface.

     “Unfortunately, it’s already metastasized significantly.”

     Words of the preceding few minutes began emerging out of the void. His seemingly benevolent tumor had in fact metastasized and the doctors were giving him a life expectancy of approximately six months. Was it caused by all the acute stress he had experienced throughout school and which still clung to him like layers of cellophane? Jack felt so angry. All those times he had wished to die, thought of ways to do it, and now… now he could not handle this news. The cold wind shriveled his hands and ruptured tiny capillaries in his nostrils. But Jack’s mind was mind elsewhere.

     Closing his eyes, he imagined Ruby’s soothing breathing pattern in times when she had fallen asleep before him. Her mere presence felt like the entire world condensed into this small organic fragility. The whole universe was there, right there, he thought. The entire cosmic carpet was rolled up into a small cellular cylinder, and it was just right there through all those times, Jack yelled at himself, silently. Although confined to a thought, he was definitely shouting these cogitations by now, really barking them inside his thick head.

     If he could somehow trim away all the collateral from his life what remained would be such a heart-breaking, minuscule fraction of the whole. Had his second extraction been worth it? Had he really cherished it? After all those days contemplating suicide, including actually attempting and failing at it, here he was now seemingly upset at this outcome. There was only one person responsible for Jack’s tears, for his sorrow, for the volcano of gloom that was now erupting out of every molecule in his mind. She would be devastated.

     He grabbed his phone and looked at the list of things he had on his calendar: Wednesday: company social night, Thursday: tax return reminder, Friday: evening gym, Saturday: extra project meeting,…He could not keep reading it because he began laughing, and it was such a forceful laugh that his eyes began watering and impeding his vision. Suddenly, everything felt morbidly amusing. He laughed and cried at the same time. After several minutes of hysteria, Jack threw his phone back into his pocket, and exhaled. He stood up with a revitalized sense of purpose, wiped away the crusted lines of tears from his cheeks, and decided to face what remained of his life. He felt strangely energized.

     He drove straight home and found Ruby still sitting on the sofa, in a completely different position, watching her new favorite television series. He smiled. He could not and would not tell her the dire news. He just could not do it. Her soft smile and day-to-day energy, which he had cherished for half his life, and the way she had now turned around and was innocently asking him how it went today, and the fact that they would soon proceed to engage in a variety of mundane activities like nothing else in the world mattered was too enchanting to disturb. The last thing he wanted was to disrupt the beauty of such simplicity.

     “Oh, it turned out to be nothing at all” Jack said, trying desperately to sound believable. Yet, there seemed to be no plausible reason for Ruby to suspect he would be lying at that very moment, hence she did not. After all, the tumor had been diagnosed as benign the last time he had inquired about it.

     “Great news! Well now that scare is out the way, what’s going to be your next one?” She exclaimed with a shallow chuckle feigning mockery, while swinging her arms around him affectionately.

     But then she suddenly shook herself free from his reciprocating embrace with the excitement of a little child and looked up at him. Her eyes were sparkling like twin beams of pure energy, breaching his insides with the warmth and luminescence of the sun.

     “Well, hopefully nothing!” Jack said, trying to feign an upbeat tonality, but this time he was about to cry, his eyes began stinging, he could feel the tears building up. He gently pressed Ruby’s soft body against his own calloused skeleton for a few seconds longer than usual, trying to prevent her from looking up at him. He breathed in deeply to mask the sorrow that suffocated the scene.

     “Guess what I made today?” Ruby interjected in a triumphant tone, wriggling free and failing in her excitement to see the moistness of his pupils, glistening ever so slightly in the half-light.

     Her excitement made Jack smile, almost reflexively, he just loved her enthusiasm for such small occurrences. She filled the room. Ruby always filled any space she was in. Her joyous energy was endless. He knew without asking that she meant food.

     “Is it some form of dessert?” He probed, guessing that it most definitely was. He would have guessed that even without any cue; however, he had also noticed the little mess in the kitchen, just barely visible to him through the slightly ajar door. That mess was the imprint of creativity, carrying with it an energy of pure, chaotic exuberance. A dancing star had bloomed in the kitchen, he could tell. He could always tell.

     “Yes, I made us tiramisu to eat after dinner today! You’re going to love it.” Ruby burst out, unable to endure the guessing game any longer, even though Jack had only just started.

     Jack laughed. “Oh, again? Go on let’s see it then!”

     Ruby grabbed his hand and dragged him into the kitchen, not unlike the energy with which he had once dragged her out of the slums of Ferndale, many years ago. Her energetic pull caused them both to sort of half-walk, half-run nearly tripping over each other.

***

     Jack died a few months later with no progeny, cellular or intellectual – likely for the best. And a few generations later not one single person alive would even know he ever existed. It was all gone. All the pain he had built up, packaged, and bundled into scar-tissue decorating his cerebrum was no more. It was now entropy. All his stress-induced cellular mutations were finally decoupled from his flaming heart. His legacy was preserved, for a brief while, in a short note he had composed for Ruby, which she found inside his bed-side table after returning home from his funeral. This belongs to Ruby, like everything else in this tale. I never saw the whole thing, but I will reproduce the small part of it that I did glimpse:

–

“Life is an abyss, an ocean of darkness.

Rare it is for the ocean shelf to recede, and rarer still for the little specks of sand, revealed and alive for but a moment, to glimpse a star.

But I was blessed.

For within this frigid darkness, I saw one single star shimmering with such radiance that it lit up the very sutures of the universe.

One single star, alone in the sky.

One single star, like an engine of luminescence, ejecting coronas of such beauty and color that darkness itself shirked away.

One single star that re-structured the fabric of reality.

From then till now and onward, there is but one thing that matters to me:

Keeping this star aflame.

–

Do not worry, my star.

Do not fret nor frown, my star.

I am here in the night sky, right where you placed me, just north of Orion’s bow, basking in your warming rays, as I always have.

You are the most beautiful soul to ever descend upon this earth.

I’d gladly die a thousand times over for you to live but once.

I’d gladly endure eternal torment just to convert one of your frowns into a smile;

Just to re-kindle the light that ought to forever sparkle within your emerald-framed pupils.

Your mind is the most beautiful place in the universe.

Just the thought that right this moment I may be within it, is more than enough for me to rest in peace.

I need not be next to you, though I would wish to of course,

But as long as you’re happy, whether I live or die is immaterial.

–

I have been blessed with a life beyond what is ordinarily attainable.

Each time I caressed your hair as you fell asleep,

Each time I heard your laughter,

Each time those viridescent pearls melted into mine,

In every such moment I’ve already lived a thousand times over.

Never has a grain of sand lived for so long,

Nor curved so close to the heavens.

So do not grieve me, my star.

Stay aflame, my avatar.

I’m not far,

My superstar.

**

Cover Image: Chiaroscuro illustration by M. G. Kellermeyer