Short Story part 1

I continued to run although I did not know who or what my pursuer was. Nor, really if I was being chased at all. I had decided to run a short while ago I assume it was just the overwhelming paranoid feelings of being watched that spurred me to run in the first place. I still cannot be certain, so still I run.
As I have mentioned, the reason for my haste has been forever lost. Although I do not know why I have found myself running, I know that if I should ever stop that I will fall into hateful hands. The horrid feeling that my pursuer wishes me harm is the only reason I continue to run.
Sometime ago, near the beginning of my chase, I chanced a look behind. What I saw frightened me and almost caused me to trip. I returned to face forward without hesitation and I felt the dread boil up from the back of my gut. What I had just seen could not be described in words. At least not spoken words that I had heard. My inner descriptions of the entity that was my hunter were more feelings than adjectives.
As it was that I came to understand the unknown feeling. And while it is true that there are no words to describe this feeling there are many that do not. One of these such words is desirable. This unnamed feeling was quite possibly the nexus of love and hate. The very point where the two begin…or end.
And as neither of the two were quite desirable at that time I elected to continue the chase. I knew that somewhere, in the deepest, dankest corridors of my mind that I could not escape the unnamed feeling.
I ran on for what seemed like days, weeks, years even. I ran until all that was left of my energy was sapped and I was forced to sink to my knees. I turned to face my former pursuer and future consumer and I stared aghast.
Not only had the unnamed feeling disappeared, but it had been replaced by an ancient man in white robes, almost radiant. The man was small in his visible state only, for his consciousness was far beyond my own comprehension. For some reason I felt akin to the odd old man. It might well have been his warm paternal gaze, or his friendly and comically round face.
The man smiled very broadly all of the sudden and I laughed in spite of my current situation. The man made a low humming noise and he appeared to be making an important mental note. When I noticed this my laughing came to an abrupt and uncomfortable end. The man made a new, slightly different humming noise and made the same facial expression of focus. His eyes never left my own.
It wasn’t long until I realized, through a tedious and difficult process of elimination, that the man was making notes of everything that I did. It was almost as if he were studying me as if I were some bizarre large-scale biology experiment. He watched me as if it were the first time he had seen another human being, if in fact that is what he was.
Then it was that he spoke. He told me that my suspicions were indeed correct. He was studying me. Although he said that he was me. I did not seen this proclamation as odd at the time, it just felt as if it were true, like I wanted it to be true. At the time, I recall, I felt quite comfortable indeed among this odd old man.
It wasn’t until later, back in my study, while sitting in my chair that I asked myself the obvious questions. Still I cannot answer many of them and there is still a gap in my memory for much of the time I was in the odd old man’s, I mean my own, presence. Still no more word on that unnamed feeling. I must have just been confused.



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This day began just as those many restless ones past. I woke up to the same pang of regret, the same burn of sadness. The same reminder of chances blown and opportunities missed. The cold, stale tears still present on my face, I walked to the bathroom heedless of my inner torment.
When my dark, sunken eyes chanced upon the very reflection of my face I shuddered with remembrance. It was at that moment when I awoke to see that I was indeed my own worst enemy. My extreme pessimistic outlook and my lack of self-confidence had finally taken it’s toll. The price I had paid was severe due to what little I had gotten in return.
Not much time has passed, I suppose, since the date on which my fate was forever set in stone. I soon became disgusted with my reflection and forced myself to look away. What had I become? Never again will I bask in the sweet sun which is the ever-pulsing heart of opportunity. I have lost my chance and chance, like so many other things, can never be reclaimed once lost.
So, as it turns out, all I have left are my tears. They are not true tears of sadness, yet those of pain, deep emotional pain. Pain and regret for the many times I have failed to keep my promises…even those I have made to myself. I felt the cold drops of tears on my face transform into streams, rivers of warm regret.
The temperature of my regret soon became unbearable, I panicked. I saw no easy way out. The warm tears of regret I noticed had turned into rivers of red down my face. I cried out with as much confusion as fear. I wiped the very blood from my eyes screaming all the while.
Crying as I was, I soon came to the realization that the blood that was upon my face and hands belonged to the very heart of opportunity itself. I mentally slapped myself back into the world of the living, yet even as I did I realized that I was dead.
There was no solace as it became clear that I was not my only enemy. I also had opportunity and life opposing me. I sank back down into my teary stupor as I realized that nothing else matters. So many forces it seemed, were against me. The afore mentioned along with peace, circumstance, and love. All of which, I suppose had a fair hand in my most unfortunate demise.
I cleared my head and elected to, instead of being immensely crestfallen, be quite up spirited about the whole deal. I smiled a defiant sneer in the face of my tormentors and soon realized that these seemingly abstract concepts had began to materialize. The had decided to command the shapes that my mind had associated with these feeling. I continued my mindless smile perhaps somewhat ignorant of the harm they meant me.
But perhaps not, was it not true that I was already dead? Yes, that must be true, I thought. I have sipped the last drops from my cup of mortality. Even then, at my greatest moment of despair I felt a tingling sensation the likes of which I had felt only once before. The feeling had often been associated with opportunity. The feeling of complete incompleteness.
And it was then, as I was filled with emptiness, that I hazarded a guess of a new theology. This feeling was not opportunity, but love incarnate. As the vision of my lost one filled the void inside me it felt as if I were almost alive.
But as is common, the feeling of being alive was quite fleeting. And as I anticipated it’s eventual revocation, I had breathed in my last breath.



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Tragic it seems that my journey was forced to a quite sudden and regrettable end. This is then, perhaps, the final chapter in the tale of my explorations, however, it also may very well be the most interesting.
The day, much like the many dreary and painful past, began with an odd realization. I found myself completely unable to speak. And as I arose I found myself in the center of the greatest and most beautiful city ever imaginable by the human mind. The city’s vast size was nearly incomprehensible to my somewhat jumbled mind.
Frantically my mind searched for the word to describe this wondrous place I had awoken in. Only two came to mind: heaven and, at the same time, hell. This realization brought nearly the same reaction as the city itself first inspired. This realization brought about one other thing: panic.
Panic because, if I was right I must be dead, and on top of that, out of luck. For even if this was heaven I was only there for a brutal and heart-breaking tongue-lashing from the creator himself. But if it was truly hell I was in lesser peril, but only lesser by a hair.
The only thing I have ever truly feared is being alone, truly alone. Not just being alone, but knowing that I would never again be otherwise. Frantically I searched around for signs of other life, but even the once beautiful moss and formerly pretty flowers were long dead.
Despairingly I dropped to my knees and began to cry, once again I realized that I could make no sound. The tears that ran down my face dripped in seemingly slow motion from my face as if, when they did fall, they would re-hydrate this vast and long dead city.
As the first tear dropped, my hopes dropped with it. The miraculous rebirth of the city did not take place, the drop evaporated seconds after it reached the ground.
I smiled like a man who had recently lost his mind and began the unsteady, cruel laughter that was both endemic and epidemic of one of that sort. The laughter of course was just a silent mime of what it should have been, for sound was still beyond my abilities.
Frustrated with my inability to speak I began to run. I ran for what seemed like hours. It wasn’t long before I became completely exhausted and once more sunk to my knees. I picked up a stone and threw it at the nearest wall, and was not surprised at all when no sound was produced. I glared at the wall furiously shouting at it with all the air in my lungs. With air that had no potential to become sound. It was, at that depressing point that I became aware of a color other than that of dust. I saw green.
There was a dead vine snaking it’s way up a natural lattice of a wall that likely formerly housed a happy family that was not alone. At the top of this vine there was a flower. Not an average flower by any means. Although it’s only color was green, and a sickly shade of green at that, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Beautiful as it was, just as all I had ever wanted in life, it was impossibly unattainable. The flower sat at the top of the wall calling me, taunting me. Still I smiled up at it reasoning that at least the sight and proximity of the flower was better than nothing. I now realize that I have never been more incorrect or unreal in any in any conscious decision I had ever made.
Everything in me and everything around me told me to forsake the flower and pursue a path out of the desolate labyrinth that was my prison. But my heart, being romantic in nature, compelled me to do on with my worship. That flower was the last remnant of the world from which I had been ripped.
Minutes, hours, days it must have been that I stared at the flower, half-expecting that the vine would lower allowing me my much needed contact with the flower. It wasn’t long at all that I grew bored with my worship of the green flower, and began to take it’s radiance for granted. Through the snow of two winters I stared at the flower but still no way presented itself for me to relinquish the precious bud.
There were times when I swore I saw the vine give as if to produce enough slack for me to pull it down. As the days passed into weeks I found my hallucinations proven, the flower was coming down! Not long now until my goal is in reach, I thought. Once again wrong.
Snow was still present on the wall’s ledge where I patiently stared when the greatest catastrophe of all my travels took place. I remember clearly now, it was the day the sun rose black. I paid no heed to the odd solar behavior. I was too entranced by the flower, which was now within my reach. I smiled and vowed to savor this moment of my victory. Perhaps sensing my hesitation, a jet black raven dived down from the odd purple-colored sky and plucked my flower from the wall and flew off into the wild purple never to return.
I still feel no ill will toward my winged assailant, quite the contrary, I feel grateful that once the bird was gone I felt relieved. That relief was due to the chain of events that were quite possibly caused by the raven itself.
Once the flower had been separated from it’s stem in a crisp echoing snap, the mere memory of which sound still makes me cringe, the vines began to spread. They spread over the top of the wall and I ran to the back to watch them spread rapidly and rampantly through the ruins of the curséd city. At seemingly random intervals, flowers began to bud out.
Not in the familiar green however, at least not all of them, but in every imaginable hue. Each one was different, ant there were at least a million flowers at this point, and still spreading. It was then, for the first time, that I was truly happy. I had seen what I thought I wanted only to discover many millions just like it, and many, many times more beautiful.
Then, once again, I felt the all-to-familiar pain of the awakening, but there was something different this time, something stronger, more painful. I watched what one who theoretically experienced at their time of death. I watched my memories slide by. It was then that I realized that I was, in fact, dead. Regret surged through me as I saw all of the chances I had missed, all the opportunities ignored, all of the time I had wasted; and I knew at that moment that not only was I dead, but I was not the path to something pleasant.


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