A/N: This was heavily influenced by "The Matrix" and American Gods, as can be seen in the various references in the story. Blame the teachers~
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Dearest
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"She's a myth that I have to believe in; all I need to make it real is one more reason." – Vermilion, Pt. II; Slipknot.
"All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end." – American Gods, Neil Gaiman.
He looked down from the roof towards the world below, barefoot and white-garbed. He was cold, and hungry, and wished that he did not care.
The mellow town lights twinkled back at him; sometimes he thought the stars themselves were brighter—even just hanging there, millions of light-years away—than the town itself. With its many bizarre happenings and strange residents… he smiled despite the cold, and thought it wouldn't be exactly weird if these things would still exist here even when the rest of the world crumbled away. Yet alien rectal probes couldn't get any more fucked up than what he was feeling right now.
He remembered the time they drove to the Oregon coast on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, and she was as relentlessly beautiful as anything he'd ever seen. They had sat on top of the minivan that night, counting the stars and listening to the waves crashing ashore. She'd called him a real romantic that night, and he'd smiled back, not sober but yet to be drunk. An hour later they were rolling in the sand, happy and ignorant and buried alive by love. The softness of her skin and a lingering scent of lavender were still imprinted in his senses even now, and he could feel that he was still living there, in a life that she'd left behind.
Imperceptibly, the wind sighed with him, whispered in his mind that he was a fucking pussy, that it was time to move on, get out of this life. She isn't worth it, its hollow voice slithered in and out of his ear, dissatisfied. Stupid little cunt. Stop thinking about her.
"Shut up," he whispered, tugging at the sleeves of his shirt. "You don't know anything."
And you think you know?
The dark blue of his eyes flashed, fleeting memories of yesterday running across his mind; phantasmagoric, as if trapped forever in a kaleidoscope. Eventually they would find them here, frozen in a ghastly white, if he did not stop… and what did it matter, to him or to anyone? He'd seen too much shit happen precisely because of this reason, remembering the time when Kenny had acted the time he was with Tammy Warner. Stan had thought him a stupid asshole for liking that whore; now, as his lips twisted into a wry smile, fate had dealt him yet another irony. It was not as if his friends talked in front of him, or had begun ostracizing him, but he could still feel the disappointment in their eyes, boring millions of tiny holes into him, exposing a strange nakedness.
It always ends like this, in those movies. He sighed, again. Maybe Kyle had been right. They really needed to spend more time in the arcade or even having study sessions with their friends rather than walking their feet off in a mall.
Love is a disease. Where had he heard that before? It made sense, just like life being a virus and the human race a fucking epidemic. Always fatal in the end, and nobody could escape it.
Reality, he mused absently, seemed nonexistent here; people just walked around not knowing day from night, sleeping while they talked and walked and shit and ate. Everything seemed to exist at once and never do; but he could still feel, still know, still watch her long hair bounce off her back as she walked away from him into the distance—two trails of wet dew lingering in her wake, like the lines in the sky when airplanes passed by. He did not want to believe, did not want to see, but it had happened, and who could really know in the end if what had happened was a lie? The senses can be fooled; it was hard to do, but possible.
Wake up, he told himself. Wake the fucking hell up.
And if she were a dream, what was he? He supposed, not entirely without a sardonic tint, that he could be one, as well. All the world's a stage, Shakespeare had written—and damn, he wouldn't have remembered that if he hadn't been forced to play Jaques during the tenth grade production—but did anyone know where the actors go, when they are offstage? Or do they never go, but stay; acting out forever the parts already written and approved, without reprieve?
Pathetic.
He picked up his cellphone and dialed.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Kyle."
"Stan, is that you? I can't really hear, there's this noise going on in the background… where are you?"
"Doesn't matter. I was wondering if you…" At the other end of the line, Kyle made a noise that landed somewhere between disgust and frustration.
"Fuck, dude, you haven't called me up for ages and now you're asking this? Man, I don't know what's gotten into you, but… this isn't right. She's gone, alright? You won't find her anywhere, and this isn't just me saying so, we all know so. You can't just go looking for her on a wild goose chase; she might be just about anywhere between here and Siberia…"
"Kyle, I…" He sighed. "I don't know either, and well I guess… I'm sorry. But dude, you ever get that feeling, when you wake up on some morning and suddenly feel that 'No, this isn't real at all' or something? I keep thinking about that, and it doesn't feel like she's… gone. I keep thinking she's out there, somewhere, maybe not really gone at all but waiting."
"Waiting… for what? Stan, look, I don't think—"
"It's not a matter of that, Kyle… it's just… I can't explain it. You know sometimes when you feel something strongly, but you just don't know how to put it in words?"
"Intuition?"
"Something like that. Well, shit, I guess I'll just think 'bout it. I'll hang up now."
"Stan, you sure you're alright?"
"Yeah, man. I'm fine. Really."
"…Okay, then. But seriously, though… tell me if anything goes wrong, okay? We need to stay in touch, dude."
"I will."
"You know, I've heard someone say before, that stuff like this, you have to go find them on your own, 'cause it's in your own consciousness or some shit like that. Remember the Hidden Indian pictures they used to make us look at during kindergarten?"
"The one Kenny drew three dicks on?"
"Yeah, that one. Shit, I don't even know why I mentioned that, it just seemed relevant. Like looking at the big picture. Good luck, dude. You're going to need it, I suppose. And bye, Ike's whining for the phone."
"Thanks."
Click.
He thought he could hear footsteps, far away but constant, plodding through the mountains towards the heart of everything.
I'd see you, and come back. Wherever you are.
"I'm here," he said loudly, surprising himself. "I'm fucking here and I don't believe this. I don't believe my girlfriend's up and disappeared, or died, or whatever. I don't know how to believe. How can I believe that I'm not real? How am I supposed to tell you I think this is a crock of shit? Yeah, sure, it's all a matter of fucking perspective, God fucking damn it, Wendy. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? How the hell am I supposed to find you?"
The wind screamed at him, taking his words with it. Believe, it said.
"…In…what?" He stood once more, feeling the ripples of the soft fabric around his body, and something was disturbed, a profound feeling of rawness below that. Everything would be fine. Eventually, it always had to be. "And will I know, will she be worth it, in the end?"
Or how would anything good happen in this world, with its countless and constant murders and bank robberies and car accidents? I'm not a fucking philosopher, oh puh-leeze. But what the hell am I supposed to become, for you?
"Yourself. You can't become. You can only be.
"I missed you."
"Damn straight, right there." Stan could not bring himself to turn around, strangely aware of the eeriness but needing of his privacy at the same time. "Are you ready to tell me what the fuck you're doing here now, of all times? And what exactly is going on?"
Her gaze was steady, and comforting. "Some people lead paths. Others walk them. Can't you see?"
"Can't you stop talking in metaphors for once?"
"Only when you know." A hand touched his shoulder; it was warm, and felt unlike any other time she had touched him before, in a life that was lived ages ago by someone else. "I love you, Stan. But not like this."
He looked towards the lights, the suddenly blurring, luminescent streetlights that now had a kind of pixel-like quality to it. Like little pearls of color rather than one whole. Hidden Indians.
"Oh, shit." It was crowded up to his face, filling his vision with an endless spectrum of color and writing and song. And were they all different, or one?
"I had to leave."
He patted her hand. "I'm sorry."
Sometimes there's no need. "I've known stranger things, you know."
"Not as bad as this. Show me?" Weird, Stan thought, he could just about swear he could see her now, an exact representation of every girl he'd ever dreamed about before, in one of the millions of his lives. And then he realized, Jesus, that that was it. And like everything there was that existed must come to an ending, for a cycle of life could not be complete without a cycle of death, he watched his lives slip away from him, the lies stripped naked to the core. He wondered if this was what people would feel when they come before God Himself at the Day of Judgment.
"Like this."
He watched her graceful steps glide towards the edge. Come on, the wind whispered in her wake. You can do it.
"Let me wake up," he said. "Fuck you, world."
And he did so.
Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come. – Tagore.