A Sense of Dark
Chapter Seven
by PenguinKye
October 12, 199X—4:00 PM
I would've sworn I'd gone nuts and imagined everything if I hadn't known already that Schu was the best actor I'd ever met.
I was sitting under the table (which is the best place to read), wishing we had an animal in the house that wasn't an insect. It was always cold there (in our house), even when it was warm. No matter how much we liked each other, no matter how much time we spent working together and no matter how many times Schu rummaged in my head, I always felt like there was this little layer of ice between each of us and everything. I would have liked to have something furry, something that didn't notice the ice and walked right through it.
Also, being under the table is good for reading, but it's very lonely. And anyway, I was being pensive.
But to Schu . He walked in on me, not even realizing I was there (which should have been a clue by itself, shouldn't it?), and acting like anything as thought there weren't a problem in the world.
I had seen him. They'd had him there, in their basement, and they'd done things even we would never do (just because we're evil doesn't mean we're that evil). They'd done stuff that made the least afraid person in the world almost be afraid. Not Schu, of course. He's always afraid. But it was him they'd done it to, him that had been frightening to the unfrightenable.
I had felt him. He had been someone else, someone who hurt my mind when he was in it, like poison, like malice, like fever. He had come home from Weiß, from torture, and at home, something as terrible as torture had happened. But he was rummaging in the fridge a few hours later, ignoring his horrible wounds as easily as Farf would, ignoring the anomale as though it hadn't happened.
But I knew he was a good actor. So I didn't believe it, did I?
I almost did.
What else are you going to do? When everything goes wrong all at once, a smile's a welcome thing. When no one could possibly be happy, you listen for a happy whistle. You're most optimistic when there's nothing to be optimistic about. So when you see it, you believe it, don't you? Even if you know how much they lie through their teeth. Even when everything they do is make people believe things that aren't true. You accept it, don't you? You have to be able to believe in something good. You have to believe them. Right?
I almost did.
I didn't breathe. He didn't see me, and I was already hiding, and I couldn't come out of hiding once I was there. I didn't make a sound. It's like a game, to hide, but not a fun game; you can't ever give yourself away, because something terrible will happen. So I didn't make a sound, didn't move an inch, just watched Schu's legs from under the table.
The fridge door stayed open for a long time. The cold air sifted out and sank to meet me on the floor and made our cold house even colder. I tried not to shiver. It would have been enough, a shiver. It would have been enough for him to notice.
The door shut at last, and I thought I would be able to breathe again in a couple seconds. But Schu didn't leave. He stood where he was, facing the table, his back to the fridge, and swiveled from his ankles up. Looking for us. To make sure we weren't there.
He didn't know I could see him. I knew he thought he was alone, and now that he thought he was alone, wanted to be alone on purpose, I couldn't come out. I couldn't let him know that I'd seen him check, seen him make sure I wasn't there. I couldn't let him know I'd seen him when he wasn't acting.
I should have.
He knew he was alone, so he could stop behaving like he wasn't. He made an awful sound (it was quiet but it was awful). Then he began to sink to the floor, and I was panicked, because he was going to see me, was going to come face to face with me, and I wasn't supposed to be there, so it was almost like I was betraying him. So he was sinking, further and further down, and coming closer and closer, and even though it seemed to take forever, it was all in one moment.
One moment was all it took for me to go from not there at all to the center of everything. One moment was all it took for his bravery to slip and his pain to shine. One moment, and he saw me, and I saw him, and I must have been as open a book as he was, because I was afraid. So he saw me. And I saw him. And for that one moment, we saw each other, and it was the worst thing that had ever happened.
You're here, he said, not with his mind, but with his face, and I couldn't even answer. That one look was all there was before he struggled up, ungainly, and staggered off to his room. That one look, as it went from open to shocked to angry, before it was swept back into the air with the unbending of a knee, away from me, closed again.
I noticed that there wasn't any food in his hands.
Nothing hurts a person walking the blade of a knife like a shove off the edge. It cuts. You can walk balanced, if you can only be let to know the things you want to know, and not always be told the things that are true. You can walk forever, as long as they let you see a few good things, no matter how tiny. You can practically dance that thin line, as long as you choose the perception. You can do it; you can do it, if you can believe.
I almost did.