Read My Life in Darkness Online
Authors: Harrison Drake
My Life in Darkness (4 page)
At least I can hide soon, the sun is almost gone. They won’t be able to see me, the eclipse will keep me safe. I’ll be hidden from them for two minutes and thirteen-point-nine seconds. Just enough for me to put an end to them. I have to do it now, while they aren’t watching.
I have to.
Lena,
You have to get me out of here. I can’t handle this. The darkness, it’s too far away. Coquimbo, Chile… it’s so many thousands of kilometres from here.
I can’t live without my darkness.
I can feel myself slipping away.
Fuck off! I’m trying to write! Please, leave me alone. The ticking, the constant ticking.
I thought I’d stopped them, and now there’s nowhere I can hide.
Lena,
Back in Chile? Villarica this time. Next time Antarctica… can’t go, too much trouble. Last time, lot of work.
Sorry about the crayon. It’s all they’ll give me. Last time had a pen, started stabbing the walls. They can’t see them, don’t understand.
I’m not going to hurt myself, not until I can see you again.
Another one goes by without me there.
Does the darkness miss me?
Can it live without me?
APRIL 8, 2024
Lena,
Thanks for checking to see that I’m alright. I know, it’s been a long time. Almost seven years. I couldn’t tell you the truth, no matter how much I wanted to.
I spent six years in and out of psychiatric facilities. I burned my house down, with me inside. I don’t know how I survived—they pulled me out unharmed. I guess the only thing that saved me was how big the house was.
I was seeing things, things that weren’t there. I thought I could stop them, but it didn’t work. Even after that, they kept coming, they kept stalking me. I could hear them ticking in my head, little voices I couldn’t understand.
They’re gone now. They have been for a long time.
I’ve been through just about everything you can think of—medication, electroconvulsive therapy, sensory deprivation, and a lot of things I didn’t understand. The problem is no one knows what worked. Everything’s been fine for a year now. Hopefully it’s the medication keeping them at bay, the visions of them anyway.
I know they don’t exist, I think I even knew it then. But it seemed so real, so vivid.
I just hope they never come back.
I can’t believe how much your children have grown. They must be what, eight and twelve now? Something like that. They both look like you. Maybe I’m biased, but I don’t see any of him in them. Kari and Hans, nice names.
My mother didn’t come to the last two either. Maybe you noticed. She couldn’t go without me, said it just didn’t seem right. She visited me in the hospital around the time of the eclipses, but she wasn’t there when it would have been totality. I don’t know why, too hard for her maybe. Or maybe she thought it would be too hard for me.
I can’t believe I’m forty-five now. I look back on my life and I see so little. Just a business, that’s all I have. No kids, no dog or cat (I can’t even take care of myself… never even got a goldfish), no girlfriend. I’d be a virgin still if it wasn’t for that one time I paid for it. I shouldn’t have written that, it’s rude. I just wanted to know what it felt like, to feel loved and wanted and needed, to be touched.
Of course, it wasn’t like that. It was business. Like I said, that’s all I have. Business. At least I had someone running it for me while I was… indisposed. That’s an okay way of putting it, I guess. I don’t really do anything anymore, I just sit at home and talk to the partners by e-mail. I tell them what I want and they do it. It’s that simple. Hard to believe people are still playing games that old, but we’ve been updating them a lot as we go, made a couple of new ones, too.
I wonder what you’re doing now. Did you find a job as an architect? Or are you staying home to raise the kids? For some reason, I can’t see you doing just that. Too much fire, too much to give the world.
If I knew your last name I could search for you online, see what you’ve done. I imagine skyscrapers, towering over everyone, or buildings so beautiful and artistic they should never even be looked upon. Kind of like you. Maybe I never should’ve gazed upon you.
No. That would have just made things worse.
But I can see you, standing atop some building you designed, arms stretched wide. Like the world was made just for you. Like how I feel in the darkness. I can barely wait, even if it’s only a few minutes away. It’s been too long, far too long.
Three minutes and forty-seven seconds. The way I see it, it’s been well-earned.
AUGUST 12, 2026
Dear Lena,
I wish I knew what to do, things just keep getting more and more confusing. My mother is sick, really sick. That’s why she’s not here today. It’s cancer, but it seems it always is. I remember twenty years ago, they started thinking they were getting close to a cure. Now, I think they’re even further away.
Maybe it’s just part of being human, maybe it’s something we’ll never be able to cure or get rid of. God knows I’ve tried. We’ve tried everything. I’ve been pouring millions into research, taking her to every clinic we can find, trying every experimental procedure they have. But nothing can stop it. It just keeps going. It slows down at times, but it never stops completely.
It started last year, in her pancreas. And it’s been spreading ever since. The doctors have all been shocked at how fast it’s moving, they can’t believe it. It’s resisting everything.
She’s fighting though. She’s always been strong, always been the survivor. But I think there’s a part of her that wants to give up. I know she misses my father, even if I don’t.
Wow. It’s taken me a long time to get to that point. I don’t… I don’t miss him. There is nothing about him that I miss, well… except what could have been. I really wish things could have been different, but I know it was the only way. People don’t change, not people like him. He was so determined that I should be something I wasn’t that he destroyed any chance of us ever having a relationship.
I spent years replaying our past-my father’s and mine-to try to figure out where things went wrong or where it could have been made better. I lost my mind over it, blaming myself for his death, blaming myself for all of the problems between us. It made me sick, it made me hate myself, it made me try to kill myself on more than one occasion.
But now, I’ve come to terms with it. I’m just not sure my mother has and that hurts me more than anything. All I want is for her to be happy, all I want is peace for her. I feel like she doesn’t think she’ll find it anymore, not in this life anyway.
That’s another spot where we differ—she believes in an afterlife. It gives her strength to believe, to think that my father will be waiting for her—hopefully better than he was—and that I’ll join her again one day.
It’s a nice story, but I just don’t think it’s true. But it makes her happy. I wonder though if it’s enough. I worry that she’s ready to stop fighting, that she’s about to give up. I hope I’m wrong.
There’s so much left I wish I could say, so much I wish I could do—but nothing ever changes. I can’t even talk to her, not properly anyway. I get nervous talking to my own mother. How inept am I? I’ve heard of socially awkward, hell, I’ve met a lot of people like me. But to not be able to talk to your own mother, that just seems completely, well, fucked up, I guess.
I’m sorry. I’ve gone on and on about my own problems and now, it’s nearly too dark to write. I hope everything is well with you and your family. Two minutes and seven seconds. I wish I could pass on what I feel to my mother, maybe it would help her out, maybe it would give her strength.
I know she won’t, but I really hope she can last until the next one. I wanted her to come today, but she couldn’t. Maybe next time, maybe she’ll be strong enough. It’ll be amazing to see, over six minutes long and from the Valley of the Kings.
Once in a lifetime doesn’t begin to cover it. I can’t wait to see you again, to see you there.
VALLEY OF THE KINGS, LUXOR, EGYPT
AUGUST 2, 2027
Lena,
Here we stand, in a place first used over thirty-five hundred years ago. It’s humbling, really, to be here in the midst of so much history. The tombs that surround us, the hot sun burning down, I don’t know, it’s just… affecting me even more. It’s not just the darkness this time, it’s everything.
And of course, it helps that my mother is here. We finally found a treatment, although even still, it’s only going to buy her time. But she’s already outlasted the two months she was given before the last eclipse. I had to bring her, to see an eclipse here—it’ll be her last, we both know that—and for it to be here, it’s the culmination of a life’s dream for her. I was born in darkness, and she tells me that’s when her life truly began. She’s chased eclipses ever since.
She told me that just a couple of months ago, that it was when I was born that her life began. She’d always wanted to be a mother, and when they told her it was impossible, it almost killed her. But they tried and they tried, they spent thousands of dollars on treatments and nothing worked. It took eight years to conceive a child and she told me she couldn’t have been happier. My father was just as happy she said. But that was before he knew what he was getting.
I wasn’t sure before, but I don’t think she blames me anymore. The way she talks about him now, I know she blames him for everything—even if she can’t wait to see him again. All is forgiven, or so they say. I just doubt if and when I walk up to him at the Pearly Gates, that he’ll forgive me. All that I’ll get is a disapproving stare.
I have to stop, I’ve been told by so many therapists and psychiatrists not to focus on him. But it’s hard. Hitting him so many years ago, even after everything he did, that’s the biggest regret of my life. They tell me to focus on the positive, but I can’t. I’ve never really been able to. The negative is all I see, all that stays with me.
You look great though, and it seems your family is doing well too. The kids seem so big now. It’s kind of strange, watching them from afar once every year or more. It’s like seeing them in stop-motion or something.
And it was so nice of you to come over to see how my mom is doing. I know she looks so frail, but she’s still strong. I hired a medical team to travel with us, just in case, but so far she’s been fine on her own. I worry about her, but I guess I’m allowed to.
I would have liked to talk to you more, after, but—and I’m sure you understand—I didn’t want to leave her side. I’m trying to get every moment I can with her, maybe because I never did with my father.
There I go again, focusing on him and blaming myself.
The darkness comes, I can feel it coursing through me. Fortune is smiling on us with this one, not only are we here, we’re being treated to six minutes and twenty seconds. It’s the second longest one we’ve seen, not since Mexico in 1991. And I doubt we’ll live to see another one this long.
I’m going to drink it in, steal as much of the energy as I can and hopefully not let it go. Maybe it’ll make my mother stronger, too.
See you in Australia.
JULY 22, 2028
Dear Lena,
Thank you, your kind words meant so much to me. It’s been a hard three months since my mother passed away but I’ve been trying to stay strong. We shared some great times in her last year, and I know how much she loved me. Her last words to me were “it wasn’t your fault.” I’ve been hoping to hear her say that for so long, she’d implied it at times, but she never actually said it. It felt so good to hear it from her-that even after everything that happened she didn’t blame me.
Maybe it’s strange, but it almost made losing her easier, just because I knew. I knew that in her eyes I wasn’t a failure. I knew she didn’t blame me or hate me. And I knew she was still proud of me, I was still her little boy.
Funny how that works, I’m almost fifty years old and I still sometimes wish I could curl up in her arms and pretend that I’m a child again. I guess that’s how it is with mothers, it never changes. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be with fathers too, I just never had the chance to know. If I’d ever had kids, I would’ve done it differently.
My God, I still can’t help but stare at you sometimes. Sure, time has passed for both of us and maybe we aren’t quite as flawless as we—well, you—used to be, but you’re still so beautiful. Your porcelain skin and bright green eyes, that long blonde hair that first drew me to you—it’s shining in the dying light of the sun.
I’ll always be enamored by you, always in love. That will never change. I wish so many times that I could have talked to you, could’ve told you how I felt long ago. But maybe this is the way things are supposed to be. You wouldn’t have been happy with me, I know that. People usually aren’t. Nothing much has changed with me, I’m still the overweight, geeky person you met so long ago. Now I’ve just added more weight, wrinkles and some grey in my hair.
But even that, even if you could see past my appearance, and I know that you could-I can tell that about you-I don’t think you could get past the rest of me. I’m boring, afraid to talk to people, afraid to go out of the house much at all, far from mentally stable, I don’t know much about anything beyond computers and eclipses, I’m not funny, and I’m not romantic or suave or cool. You’d tire of me, I bet, and quickly, too.