Luke Alden - Happy Birthday Eternity

She steps back.

Her face scrunches.

Her chest rises and falls.

And that weight that her body had betrayed to me; I can feel it too.

‘Why are you doing this?’

And she asks this with a genuine concern in her voice. She asks this with a gait that moves in a sad rhythm.

‘Doing what?’

And she looks at me with puzzled eyes. She stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind and I want to tell her she’s right. But I suppose there’s no point in stating the obvious.

Her words come out in a hushed anger.

‘Coming around here and asking for him like that. How could you do that? Why would you do that? You know that he’s been dead for years.’

And it’s at this moment that I feel the hollow nature of my chest as all the breath escapes from it.

‘Look, you knew that my past was going to catch up to me at some point. I thought I could outrun it forever, but that wasn’t true. I slowed down. I faltered. And all my yesterdays, they took everything.’

This is Franklin.

This is my best friend.

He’s just a memory.

Like my wife.

‘We all have to reckon with our life at some point. Unfortunately it just wasn’t something I could handle.’

He’s been dead for years.

He shot himself in the head.

He used a rifle.

The stain on the wall eventually came out. But not before his wife figured out how to let go of everything.

‘I couldn’t make things work.’

Franklin is dead and I don’t know what that means.

I’m standing outside.

On the sidewalk.

‘There wasn’t a funeral because my wife didn’t think to have one.’

And he knows this because I know this, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to remember any of it.

I sit down on a bench.

He sits next to me.

‘I was caught cheating. I was caught and she threatened to leave me. It wasn’t something that I could deal with. It wasn’t something that I wanted to deal with. And no matter how hard I tried, she wouldn’t listen to me. She wouldn’t take any of my explanations. I couldn’t fix any of it.’

And Franklin was an asshole.

‘I tried to make things right. I tried to pretend that things were going to be ok. But it was a lie and I knew it and she knew it and we both knew that there was no way we could un-tie the knot that I had spent a millennia tying.’

Franklin was an asshole, but at least he was honest.

‘So here I am. Dead except for the part of me that hides away in that fucked up brain of yours.’

And now I’m wondering where I’ve been if he’s dead. I’m wondering when I am. I’m panicking because I don’t know where or when I am and I don’t know how long I have or haven’t been here.

‘You know, you always pinch your eyebrows together when you’re nervous or panicking. It looks like you’re trying to take a shit.’

I laugh.

He laughs.

And I don’t know where I’m going from here. I just know that I need to go somewhere. I need to go back to my old office building.

And I don’t care about noises in the dark and I don’t care about being alone when I go there. Not anymore.

‘You know, you need to stop worrying and just go find her.’

How long has it been since I’ve seen her?

Since I’ve seen my parents.

Since I’ve existed in any sort of ‘normal’ way.

I don’t know.

I can’t even venture a guess.

Am I in a memory right now?

And I feel my muscles aching as I make my way to where I used to work. My heart is beating a confused beat.

I am overwhelmed.

And when I think of the fact that Franklin is dead, I can almost wrap my head around it. It means something to me.

And the sadness that I feel from this loss, it makes it hard to move.

Gravity slows me to a crawl.

And my movements make me feel as if I will never get to my old office.

As if I will never get anywhere.

As if I knew where anywhere was.

I don’t even know when I am.

I don’t even know how old I am.

And I think back to everything that has been happening to me. I think back to everything that I’ve gone through since Evaline disappeared. And now I’m wondering if she isn’t already dead.

I remember when she first left.

I didn’t understand.

And as things moved forward, I had hoped things had changed.

But I don’t even know if I’ve been moving forward. Maybe all I’ve done is gone back.

I look to my right.

There’s a field.

There’s a house in the distance.

It looks old and worn down.

It reminds me of something that seems like ancient history.

It reminds me of a time before the endless process that is staying alive. It reminds of when I was still in the double digits of age.

I had gotten lost while camping with my friends. Jim. Dave. People who I have forgotten about over the years.

I ended up in an old abandoned field.

I was lost and scared and confused.

No one was home and I broke in.

I found dead bodies.

That was the only time I had seen someone who was dead. I had forgotten about it until now. And I’m not sure why I’m now remembering it, but I suspect it’s because of Franklin. Because death has come back to my life after so many years.

I feel sick.

I keep walking.

Hands in pocket.

Head down.

And with each step, I try not to think about what has happened and what I can no longer remember or what I don’t realize that I am remembering. I’m simply trying to move forward.

When I get to the old office building I don’t waste any time.

I don’t stand and stare at the door.

I just walk in.

It’s no longer dusty.

It’s cleaned and it’s polished and it doesn’t feel abandoned like it once was. I start to wonder when I am, I think for a moment and I decide that I don’t care.

I walk up the stairs.

To the old conference room that I had been taken hostage in.

I walk in.

It’s empty.

I go back downstairs.

Stand in the lobby.

I hear a clicking of feet.

I don’t run.

I don’t move.

I don’t care if it’s a security guard. It doesn’t matter at this point.

They’re coming up behind me.

I turn around.

It’s Evaline.

Her skin is wrinkling and being dragged down by the gravity of time.

Her eyes look weathered.

She smiles.

She’s not how I remembered her and for me, that means the world.

I run to her.

We kiss.

It feels right.

And time has passed me by.

Years fade in and out.

Someone whispers: ‘Watching you rewrite who you are is like watching a poem fall apart.’

And I’m at home. With Evaline.

She’s dying.

She’s leaving me for good.

And I don’t remember how I got here, but when did that ever matter to me?

Her body looks frail and her hands are wrinkled. She’s lying in bed and staring at the ceiling.

The skin that drapes her body is loose and marked by years of cheating nature.

The sun is bright as it pushes into the room.

I’m sitting at the edge of the bed and I’ve got my head in my hands.

‘So what are we going to do today?’

I ask this with a voice that drags itself from my body against all the weight of my years on this planet.

She smiles a half smile and she opens her mouth.

‘I don’t know. Maybe we can stay in bed?’

‘You need to eat.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘But you need to eat. You’re so skinny. You don’t have any fat at all.’

And it’s true. Her body has begun to collapse in on itself. Her cheeks are sunken and so are her eyes. It’s a strange thing for me to see, but that makes it all the more amazing. She’s changed and that’s something that I haven’t seen a lot of.