Tragic Hero - Short Story Excerpt Three

The next couple weeks I found it real hard to focus at work. I would be writing a story, or interviewing some person, and Maggie would just pop into my head. I'd think of something she said, or some funny look she gave me, and I'd lose whatever was happening in front of me.

Not like I minded though. Sometimes I liked thinking about someone new, the break it gave my mind from everything familiar.

Familiarity will kill a man quicker than cancer, believe me.

Caught In The Wires

Falling's not the problem,
When I'm falling I'm free,
It's only when I hit the ground that it causes all the grief.

...

She lived like a bird in his chest. His bones were a cage, his skin was the door, his heart was her food.

"Let me out of here. Let me out. Let me go. It's too small in here. Why won't you let me go? Please let me go."

He felt her wings stuck inside. The feathers made him itchy. He sensed her eyes that couldn't see all around, only straight-ahead and colourblind, the beak she thought was ugly, how it made her sad.

"Please, let me out of here. I want to go I just don't know how. You don't want me here, either. I can tell. Can you hear me?"

He heard her all day. He tried to silence her, to convince himself that the singing he heard wasn't hers but the birds outside his window, to only listen when he really had to, to ignore what he could.

"Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Tell me that you can hear me. Can you hear me?"

She always broke through.

"Stop," he said finally, so loud that even the North Pole could hear.

"Why?"

"You're giving me heartburn."

The Sun Also Rises

“Oh, Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together."

"Yes...isn't it pretty to think so?”

..

History is strange, like a web. People get caught, stuck in patterns, lost in ideas about each other, tangled in spider's silk of the past. Things are different but who wants to show it? Who wants to see it? So you continue on, never being who you’ve become, trying hard not to forget who you were.

Love isn't real if it isn't scary. Feelings are, by definition, disturbing. Experience is not what happens to you, but how you wear it. Art was always more important than love. That's still true, but now, I feel them stitched together. Now, it's all one thing. It's a two-way addiction. He shook me to my shadow and it doesn't get easier, does it?

"It might. In time, I think it will."

"Yeah."

"Life is weird, isn't it?"

"But wonderful. Also wonderful. This is wonderful."

"You look touched."

"I am."

When someone can feel that place, that place you can't communicate, it breaks something inside you but it heals things, too. I walk around and I think the whole world can see the broken change; painted on my face, bleeding out of fingers, across a screen, on a page.

And that's how I fell in love and lost all control on the same day.

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right.

My mom would drive. My Dad would sit in the passenger side. Once we’d been going for awhile, he would put his arm around the back of her seat, how a kid moves closer to his girlfriend in the movie theatre.

His arm was always two shades darker than the rest of him, speckled with sun spots. It looked very strong. Father's always look strong when you're little, I guess. His skin was dry. Sometimes, there would be paint on it, little pieces of white paint that he couldn't get off, not with all the soap in the world. I would see my Dad’s hand, the one thick vein that ran up his arm and a leather seat.

I don’t know why, but lately, I can’t get that image out of my head. It’s tattooed in my eyelids. It’s there every time I blink.

Trust me. They loved each other. They can remember it as bad if they want to. I know the truth. They loved each other.

As a child, I was the third-party in their marriage, a silent observer. My point of view was informed by theirs, but also, created in spite of it. My version of them is a patchwork quilt of their memories. A piece of her, a square of him, sewn together how I think looks prettiest.

It's one of the great tragedies of contemporary life, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common.

I’ll never see my Dad’s arm on my Mom’s seat ever again. He’s like me. When he feels he’s been pushed away, he runs for the hills. He hides in the corner, disappearing in shadows, fading into the walls. He'll never reach out to her.

Now, I wonder if my Mom ever saw his arm. If she knew it was there. He wasn’t touching her, he was touching the seat.

It's not like she would have felt him.

I Wish That You Knew The Truth.

Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you. The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places, and those who don't believe in magic will never find them at all.

The Nature of Daylight

People are settling into their seats. I hear voices. I can't make out what's being said. I can feel my heart beating in my feet. I can see the space between everything, the negative space. Colour leaves.

Just think of gray. Focus on the gray.

Voices get louder and suddenly, they leave. My eyes get tighter. I can see molecules in the air. My lungs laugh and my eyes act like uncertain curtains covering broken windows. I see myself in the form of a wolf; two people, one animal.

Under the lights, everything is black and white.

Let the love blaze like fire.

I don't see colour until I'm just one person again. Until they've left.