Michael Seidlinger - The Fun We've Had

Touch being only touch, both of them imagining the warmth that would have been shared if their bodies had been bodies alive and still able to be repaired, they lay there like it might have been a bed rather than a coffin. The final end.

Not yet.

No.

Not yet, she fought the ghosts.

They reminded her. Tell him. Tell him.

She would tell him. Later.

“Later” arrived and left and returned once more. Still, she wouldn’t tell him. There would be no telling on her part.

That’s what these lines, these paragraphs, this tale, are for.

The fear lapsed for one loving stint until the sky became the top of the coffin, pressing down against it, the coffin buckling under the weight of the sky.

He tried, though he had no control, never any control, to strike the sky, as if there had been anything physical about this; instead, it was her turn.

This is her turn.

This is one of the first times she’ll ever listen.

She reached out and that’s all it took. The moon blinked to life and recreated the distance between sky and sea.

The air cooled. She could see what the rains had done to his body. The jellyfish covered most of him but underneath, she could see the sagging flesh, the bone, the would-be blood, and she felt sick. Felt sick because she felt responsible.

Fault. It is her fault.

The ghosts had warned her and yet again she ignored her fears rather than facing them. One look at him triggered a shiver from within that rippled from her body out onto the frozen ice.

It reached the sky and shook the moon free from its perch. It fell and shattered onto the ice. For once it was true:

This was her fault.

He saw the sum of his fears in the dead moon broken into pieces across the ice. Cracks formed in the ice. Shark fins continued to cut through, seemingly working to break apart the ice and let the moon sink to the bottommost ocean trenches.

Without the moon they had nothing left. The sun had been bad to them, but only as bad as it needed to be. He would never admit that they were bad to each other; more so, they were bad for each other. Much like if the moon had met the sun, the sun would engulf the moon. Only one could really survive.

This was happening, and is it not clear who is the sun and who is the moon?

And still he could not let the light go out.

With her in tow, he left the coffin but the coffin would not leave them. It floated behind, never more than a foot away from where he swam one-armed, a swim that would seem effortless compared to how difficult it would be for him to drown.

But for now he swam like he had been swimming all along.

She hid, holding back, but reached for the pieces of moon when they seemingly got close enough. Glowing brightly even in a fraction of its form, the moonlight acted like beacons bringing him exactly where he was made to go.

The horizon had turned dark.

She saw hers.

And then he saw his, but only the first letter, before losing control, something pulling him under, pulling him and therefore forcing his grip free.

It was his final turn, this: His last turn in the tale.

It ends here for him, who loses his grip on her.

She makes it back to the coffin. She is left alone, ultimately one with what she feared most.

However, he still fought. He could see the coffin just out of reach. Much like he had swum toward the shards, he swam so forcefully with both arms toward the coffin.

Though only a foot away, he couldn’t get close enough.

Something held him down. The shark fins appeared at his side; he felt their teeth bite into his ankle.

Almost registering was the thought of how painful it must be to be eaten by a shark. Make that half a dozen sharks.

He made it to a patch of ice and climbed aboard. Free for one moment, the cool waters quickened into a boil. The sheet, his one last hope, disappeared from under him and the rest will have to be told in her turns.

There was no more.

For him, it was his time to finally let go.

Her mom’s death might not have been her fault. In fact, it wasn’t her fault. It might make what comes next sound so much better. Her mom died of natural causes. However, it could only be her fault. Mom died because she died. Not suicide, not self-inflicted cause. The cause, it was her.

And now, she is the one that does this.

He swam for the both of them. She held onto one arm as he seemingly swam toward nothing.

Whatever it was, she could not see it. The moon had fallen and in its place she could only see the ghosts gathered where he would soon falter.

Tell him.

Tell him to turn around.

But she couldn’t. She had succumbed to her fears. Much like he had been consumed by an impossible goal, the hero protecting the good from the bad, she was consumed by the fear that kept her from speaking.

The ghosts wanted to see a hero win.

They cheered him on despite what they knew would happen; they cheered to force her to act.

She does this.

Her fault. She collected it all and feasted on it, which saved and doomed her as he was driven into the frigid waters.

She swam back to the coffin, watched from a safe place, as he faded into the darkness. He faded with the moonlight.

This is where he ends and she continues.

The tale goes on like this. Remarkably, she swam after him. All the self-loathing pushed her over the edge. She realized how big the coffin seemed when she was the only one to fill it. She swam but the ghosts had already departed.

They returned to their own coffins.

She would have to bury her own. She would have to bear the weight of losing the one she cared for most.

The hesitance became her only source of hope; she swam and swam until she stopped and discovered that she hadn’t gotten any closer to where he sank. She was right where she had begun, coffin floating behind her, hitting her in the arm.

She watched until the sharks showed her where he had ended. Picked apart he was now whole while she remained half.

The sea had settled into a boil. Worse, she felt it. The heat sent pain signals up and down her spine.

Her arms too short to paddle over in the coffin, she briefly wondered how he was able to do so back when they had been burrowed in each other’s bodies, back when a borrowed body had been necessary to remain in denial.

Staving off demise long after the will to do so, she closed her eyes. She waited one moment.

She closed her eyes. She would no longer need them.

Finally accepting what she must do, she jumped into the boiling water.

And then…

She imagines. It is important for her to continue to do so. She imagines because she still holds on. Without him here, it might be that something else holds onto her, preventing her from simply falling over the edge of the coffin.

Something won’t let her sink.

Something that is most dearly nothing.

But his turns continue because she chooses to imagine that he is still with her.

She does not embellish, she does not prefer or have any preferences. She imagines him as he would be, even though only the faintest image of him could be imagined.

She imagines the coffin and his sheltering embrace.

She imagines him as a hero, and plays out what would have been his hero’s end.

Not that he wasn’t a hero. She would consider him nothing less, and yet he was flawed for having found in her a strange partner. Would he call it significant, she can’t say.

But it was significant to her: His role in her life, death, and the roundabout end that this had become.