Anew
"Are you sure?"
"Can it, Ford. We don't have all day."
They shed different jackets, but their grimaces are mirrors of each other. It was equal idiocy to put them both here, to fit uneasily in clothes which are not theirs. It never used to be so hard – it's been too long since the times when they shared everything.
In the act of unbuttoning his shirt, Stan sees the image of two boys, deeply engrossed in the very same task. They giggle, exchanging endless conspiratorial looks. There is no anguish in their eyes, not yet – at their age, it's all for kicks and laughs. They will walk out their door, hands behind their back, and drive half the neighbourhood mad with their impressions.
It's good they practiced so much back then. He'd never have imagined that, someday, so many lives would depend on it.
Ford's coat weighs heavily on his shoulders. He would not speak differently of his gaze – it runs over him with a slowness he cannot help, aggravated by sheer terror and grief. Despite the moment, Stan is caught by surprise. The years which stretched between them had convinced him by now; his brother would never care about him again.
He accepts the feeling as a quiet wave on a shore, the last strand of a life he fixed as he could. At the very least, no one will tell him he never accomplished anything. The size of his responsibility presses against his lungs, swollen by love and anxiety.
He is not useless anymore. The voices of countless people, long gone with the flow of time, crash against that certainty.
Stan pictures their faces in a slow procession. He lets them come to him, without resistance, as they rehearse the little fight they'll put up. They blink in and out of existence, leaving, to fill the blanks, nothing and no one but Ford. He is confronted by the echo of two arguments – but those were real, harsh and life-changing. Maybe, just maybe, they hurt more than this.
He should try to stay, to keep his focus on the grim gifts of their present. Even so, he cannot ignore his memories. Bad or good, he'll let them run loose – he hasn't got much time left to enjoy their presence.
In any case, even if he tried, there would be no escape. Just like his long road taught him, they lie in the smallest things. They even come to him alongside Ford's fingers, as they straighten his hair to give him his bangs. He sees a mirror and a closet, worn by years of work – the hours he spent to look sharp and appealing, for an ever growing public of bored souls.
For all of Stan's cheating, his face was the best scam of his life. He wishes the two of them could both have stayed themselves, all the way through.
But none of it counts, at this point. It doesn't matter that, when they pretend to argue, Ford's grip is trembling, and it almost ends in a minute-long embrace. They wasted so much of one another – a few moments will never make a difference.
Because if this works out – if their plan really ends in a blank slate – his brain will go back to a crisp white page, ready for the handful of years he has left to write on. He will throw away the garbage, the mistakes and the failures, to start over in a complete wonder of a world. He will be reborn.
After all, the good thing with memories is that you can always make new ones.
If he takes it this way, Stan cannot regret a thing. Better to be alive and have someone than to remember all a man has lost. If he keeps the idea fixed in his mind, the knot in his throat goes down like fluid medicine, and the grip on his fist, the burn in his head – oh no, not that,but he will survive. He must.
He will smash the sucker out of existence. Erased or not, he is coming out of this mess alive. For the sake of what may be next.
In the final quiet moments of his mind, he fills it with the dream of a solitary ship, lulled by the swelling moves of the ocean.
It is the last thing he sees. Then, the door creaks open.
"You are our hero, Stanley."
He wonders why those words sound so familiar, but the voice doesn't.