Last Writes

The old man sat alone in his room, feeling its emptiness around him. They were all gone, now, and only he was left. There was nothing but silence; he had never realized quite how she'd affected her surroundings. Wherever she went, it seemed, was alive; colors were richer, music was sweeter. Everything seemed to be more than itself. And now she was gone, and there was only emptiness, and silence.

He had gotten up as usual, washed, dressed in his clean blue suit out of habit more than anything else, and had more or less spent the entire day sitting in the oppressive silence of a house suddenly too large for him, moving from room to silent room without thought or purpose. For the last hour he had sat at the edge of the bed – their bed – and lost himself in thought.

His gaze, quite by accident, fell on a modest shelf over his desk. He smiled faintly to himself, reading over the titles, remembering each one. She had called them "his children,” but they were really just as much hers; now that she was gone, he knew he couldn't write another. The energy that they'd had was a shared one, and by himself he quite simply didn't have the ability. Besides, his heart wasn't in it. His thoughts drifted back to her, and the many hours she'd spend just watching him, sometimes offering a word or helping through an awkward bit of phrasing, but usually just sitting quietly by his side, knitting or reading or perhaps just being there, his own muse. He remembered her there, the daylight from the window turning her red hair into a blazing corona, occasionally looking up at him, her gaze brushing lightly across his face...

He moved to the desk. The old Selectric was still there, but he pushed it gently aside. Not this time. He picked up his old fountain pen, drew some ink. There was nearly a whole ream of paper still at the side. He pulled a leaf off the top, and began to write.

He wrote slowly, starting with her hair. It had always been her best feature – her crowning glory, really. He described its shape, the fine rolling waves cascading over her shoulders; the color, the deep reds and browns, how it looked when the light hit it in just that certain way. He wrote about her voice, the way she moved herself; everything he could remember about her he set to paper, omitting nothing, recalling every precious detail.

He wrote about the day they met, the days of courting, the wedding, all of it. He plunged deeper and deeper into his memories, writing from his heart straight to the paper. He found himself in a place where words were inadequate, so he went on without them, pushing away the barrier of language and syntax, distilling pure memory on paper, pulling everything that had made her, that had been part of her at all, giving it ink and paper where blood and bone were no longer. The inkwell had to be refilled, and again, then another ream of paper retrieved. He kept on, nonstop, beyond conscious thought, letting his love for her move the pen, drawing on an alchemy he had never even imagined and could not begin to understand.

Perhaps only hours went by, perhaps days. The paper started to mount up, his hand felt tight, cramped. No matter. Keep going. He was getting closer now (closer? To what? Never mind. Keep going.), not daring to think, watching the words-that-were-not-words flood page after page...

He didn't remember falling asleep, and yet he awoke, lifting his head from the desk, his fingers still twitching fitfully. She looked up from her knitting, and smiled at him. “Hello.”

After a few weeks, a concerned neighbor called the police. When they broke in and searched the place, they found his body slumped over the desk, pen still in hand. The room was littered with page after page of writing, all in haphazard piles stacked on every surface. He must have been pleased with what he wrote, as there was still a blissful smile on his face, but what it could been no one could guess; after one got past the first several pages, the words turned to signs, writing into painting with only the tantalizing hint of order.

A desultory effort was made among local linguists, but none could identify it, and it was generally judged the final tragic failing of a once formidable mind.