Work Text:
Restless dreams of Faraway
The car came to a gradual stop at the gas pump. Hero pulled out the keys as the dim red of the speedometer and tachometer faded to matte black, putting on his sneakers and stretching sore legs. The click of an open car door, the soft sound of rubber sole on grimy asphalt. Hues of green on wilting trees peeking meekly out of the evening darkness into weak halogen lights. Smell of fresh pine and of fresh wind rustling unattended leaves across the parking space – it was empty. He really didn’t even lock the car. No one would bother stealing it in the middle of nowhere.
He reached for the door and heard the clink of a little bell – the half-asleep clerk leaning on the counter raised his head and simply gave him a stare. Hero’s eyes glazed over as he looked at the scarce assortment of overpriced snacks and drinks – and registered that instead of feeling hungry or thirsty, he wasn’t really feeling anything at all. Maybe a little water still wouldn’t hurt. He came over to the counter. The clerk, a scrawny, acne-stricken redhead, leaned back in his chair and rubbed his reddened eyes.
“What’s your, uh, pump again?”
“…what?” Hero stared for a moment, as if woken from a daze.
“Your pump, dude. You like, came here in a car. Right?”
“Ah.” Hero mechanically turned his head right. “Number 2. Full tank. And the water too.”
“Coool. That’ll be, uh, fifty.”
“Here you go.”
Hero put the wallet down on the counter and picked out a banknote while the clerk pulled something from under the counter.
“You want one?” he gestured with a rolled-up map.
“Huh?”
“Just a map of Faraway,” he unveiled it, revealing a sepia tint and faded markings. “Giving these away for disaster tourists and shit. It’s like, the tip of the Rust Belt after all. They imagine it’d be some grand pilgrimage spot, but, nah, just Faraway.”
“Sure. Why not,” he shrugged, taking it and feeling the brittle, thin paper creak in his fingers.
The clerk put the bill in and closed the register, leaning a bit closer to Hero’s wallet and peeking inside.
“She looks cute. Sister? Girlfriend?”
“What?”
“The pic in your wallet, dude. Kinda seems familiar too,” the clerk vaguely pointed at him.
Hero raised his wallet and looked at the photo. Mari, smiling, as they stood together, her hand on his and his hand on her shoulder, with some park behind them. It was a sunny day.
“Oh. That, yeah. It’s Mari.”
The clerk raised an eyebrow, as he looked Hero top to bottom.
“Not a usual name for the place. I only heard of one Mari, and well… yeah. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s a small world.”
Hero stared blankly, back upright and shoulders slouched.
“How?”
“I’m, uh, just saying…” the clerk laughed awkwardly. “Just saying. Born and raised Faraway, small town, she was, uh, in my class, everyone knows everyone, news get around, all that… Shit, I think her mom gave me a ride from school once. Odd lady, but, hey. It was a ride from school…”
Hero kept staring.
“Just, uh, don’t mind me. Just recounting memories and shit. Faraway isn’t really much of anything anymore.”
Hero still stared.
“She wrote a letter to me,” he muttered in a neutral tone.
The clerk’s forced smile faded as he gave Hero a long look.
“Uh… Uh-ha, right.”
“It was her handwriting,” Hero continued, “I know what I saw.”
“I’m not arguing, man,” the clerk raised his hands. “Ain’t want no trouble.”
Hero blinked and slowly turned to leave. He once again heard the clink of the little bell as he opened the door.
“Hey, uh, be careful on the road, also, lot of fog in the area.”
He briefly turned and peered at him with the same empty expression, and left.
“So, uh, for the evening show, we got doctor Purnell-”
“Oh, please,” an audible blush. “Call me Dane.”
“Yeah, hi, Dane. Good to have you here. It’s gonna be a year in a few months, huh?”
“Quite. Now you’re putting me on the spot, I was supposed to introduce that more subtly, but… well, no other way to talk about it other than directly.”
Vague voices fought through interference and static to be heard. The sundown wasn’t heralded by soft rays peeking through the forest – just by the clouds and fog becoming more dark grey. Wooden crosses of electric poles lined his path as he drove down the straight road. He took the northern route, passing by one of the rivers from lake Erie – he’d been told it’s the one best maintained. Embers of rusting industry lined his road – shut down factories, vague silhouettes of stray dogs. Traversing the sea of grey hues and dead trees with scant newborn leaves, Hero gripped the steering wheel hard as he thought again on where he was going and what he was doing. Mari couldn’t have sent that letter. Could she? She was dead, long since. He saw her lowered into the ground, closed casket. He heard how her father left promptly afterwards. And then, he… confessed to it all.
He remembered the day bright as day. Alabaster-white sterility of the room, bruised and cut Basil in the ER, the polite silence of a hospital, unmoved by the utter weight of the revelation Sunny told them. After that, they found Hero on the balcony, staring at the horizon where the sun rose, unblinking. He didn’t speak or eat or sleep for a day or two.
Every time he thought of Mari, there was the feeling of mellow love – and a rising volatile anger in his chest when he thought further. His therapist recommended punching a pillow whenever he felt it, and without fail, he always grabbed it with both hands and imagined the pallid and lifeless face of Sunny, life choked out of him. He once took a knife from his kitchen counter and found himself and his bed covered with cheap pillow-filling minutes later.
His hands began to hurt from his hard grip. The car slowly and politely cruised on as he shook his head, swallowed, and looked around. The fog had grown thicker – was harder to see further than his headlights went. How could she send that letter? The voices in the radio became yet vaguer, but still audible.
“…it’s not exactly how anyone expected to meet the new millennium, let’s put it that way. Many of us, those most close and affected especially, they’ve been exhibiting of what’s been entered into the DSM-IV – that’s, uh, the big book for mental disorders, – as ‘complicated grief’.”
“In what ways, say?”
“Some told me they still go where they last saw their lost relative, friend, et cetera. Think back on them a lot, well, a lot more than should be in a normal grieving process.”
“Aha…”
“And for everyone it manifests differently. Some try to distract themselves, some become quiet and regress into themselves, some try pretending nothing’s wrong, but some… start getting very, very bitter, and hide it deep inside them. They smile on the outside and do their best, but it eats away at them, chewing through their innards until they get to the bone. Turn around. You don’t want to go where you’re going. It won’t end well for you.”
Hero realised he zoned out and shook his head, giving a scant glance at the radio.
“Thank you, doctor.. ah, I meant Dane. Well, time to get some music on the show, any listener requests?”
The radio faded into static completely. He accelerated slightly, until a white and red road sign barred his path.
ROAD
CLOSED
And right beside it, a town limits sign: “Welcome to FARAWAY!” Underneath it was the motto, painted over by graffiti: “The future IS GONE.” It seemed like it no longer “belonged to the dreamers”. As he pulled out the car keys, the headlights went out and he emerged out of the car to the sound of creaking leather. He stood there for a bit. He didn’t quite recognise where he was – he hadn’t been there for, how long? He did remember that the northern road had a small outlook on the river, so maybe it was worth stopping by there, just to get his bearings. How could she send that letter?
Having washed his hands, Hero found himself gripping the sink and staring into the mirror, alit by dim flickering light. Spraying cold water on his face and rubbing his eyes, he held his hands in front of him, turning palm to backside, studying each little crease and how his fingers bent, until gradually lowering his arms. He felt like he had to remember what he looked like. What hands did. That he controlled them. Lowering them, he saw his full reflection – eyebags and unkempt hair, olive jacket and muted jeans. Making slow steps backwards, not turning to his reflection like it would pounce on him, he made his way outside the roadside bathroom.
Across the empty parking space, he seated himself at an old wooden table and rolled out the old map. He scanned the black rectangles, placenames and yellow lines on the streets, the streaks of blue to the north above a parking lot. He deduced where he was, but it didn’t make things much clearer. He’d remembered this place in some faraway memory – catching the last of the evening sun as they parked for a congratulatory rest after that interstate trip. Sun drooping below the horizon, zigzags of lightning on the coming stormfront – an aroma of ozone and woody freshness. Dad standing by the ledge, fiddling with his Polaroid, Kel’s attempts at a photobomb that nearly made landed him into the ditch below, Mom quietly sipping out of a thermos and looking at the scene. Eventually he and Kel got their photo, but Dad messed up the exposure so they were just two dark silhouettes before a blinding sun. They eventually did drive back, ambushed by a surprise party and subsequent sleepover with Aubrey, Mari and… he cut the thought off.
He was sitting at the same table Mom was then. He raised his head and looked at the same place Dad stood all those years ago – there was nothing beyond the ledge but fog and a vague suggestion of a forest somewhere in it. He looked at where Kel almost fell and where they got their photo, standing up and slowly ambling towards it. Laying his arms onto the railing, he leaned forward and stared.
This was the same place as that memory. It had the same bricks, tables, roadside bathroom, view – it was all the same. But none of it was. There was no-one else with him, no-one else waiting for him. He stood for a bit longer.
He was alone.
As he was making his way to the map, his phone rang. He knew there was no good service for miles – but maybe a call just about managed to get through.
It was Kel – and still, the service bars were completely grey. He warily picked it up.
“Kel?” he muttered.
“Ay, Hero! Glad to hear you,” his brother’s voice barely made it through.
“Uh, why are you calling? I mean- is everything good?”
“Well, yeah. It’s just that, you kinda… disappeared, man. I know it’s, uh… an important date today. I was just a bit worried, is all.”
“Oh, uh…” he stiffly stood in place, unsure what to do with himself. “I’m, uh… thanks.”
“Boy, you’re a real talker today. Looks like you got a lot on that mind of yours so I’ll leave you to it!”
“Thanks, Kel,” he muttered.
“Also, Mom and Dad, uh…” Hero could hear the slight hesitation. “Say hi to Mari and hope her place is clean and well.”
“Thanks.”
“…right, bye!”
“Bye,” Hero sighed to himself.
The beep of a finished call came a few awkward seconds later. Hero stared at his phone, noting for a second that the call didn’t seem to register in his phone log. The service bars were still all grey.
He ambled forward and picked the map up while passing by, stretching it before himself without stopping. What the map depicted still felt alien and, well, far away. He hadn’t been in Faraway for, how long? It had been an eternity of two years since he last saw this place and the massive constructions planned, just before the recession hit. He couldn’t come earlier because of exams, but now seemed like a good opportunity for a literal trip to Memory Lane. The plaza seemed like a good place to start.
It was a short walk away from the northern outlook to the plaza, along the pothole-riddled and trash-covered road. Beer cans thrown out of cars, sullied newspapers flying leaf-like in the wind – it wasn’t even worth looking at them, nothing they contained was good news. Such were the times.
Gradually, the faded markings of an expanded Othermart parking lot formed from the fog, leading into the store itself, now a lurid and bloated mass of a store. One of the last-ditch efforts to revive the area, now just another dead mall in the growing death toll. A floor of clean faux-marble, benches, a broken escalator from which the handrail-straps had slid off, an American flag just barely hanging on one hinge. At least there were the few mainstays, Gino’s, Hobbeez, and Fix-It, just barely eking out a place among the new franchise stores – well, the places reserved for them anyway. Only a few were ever built, and promptly abandoned. They didn’t even bother putting down the signs.
Hero paced slowly through the mall’s carcass. Faraway memories came once again, of a smaller place. A downpour, oversized yellow rain caps adorning oversized yellow raincoats, small hands holding small hands – Hero and Mari ran together, while Kel tried to catch the rain with his mouth and Aubrey hopped from puddle to puddle. There was a hole in the memory in the shape of two other people. Hero didn’t want to fill them.
Rushing into Othermart to hide from the elements. The sharpness of cold autumn air and the dripping of raindrops on their faces, the welcome and boring dryness of the inside. He thought he remembered an older lady calling them “little ducklings”. Dinner at Gino’s – it felt like it lasted forever.
Once again, same place, same him – but the mismatch was violent. The humid scent of moss and mildew wafted through the stale air, the place itself was only nominally what it was in the memory. And once again, there was no-one else with him, no-one else waiting for him.
He was alone.
The rusted swings of Faraway Park’s playground squeaked on their hinges as the wind rattled by, passing through an old unused slide and monkey bars. The big yellow plastic cat was pallid and covered with bird droppings, scratches and holes – someone graffitied tears under its faded eyes and a frown over its mouth. In the park, more of the same – faded markings on the pavement of the sportsground, litter and trash, unkempt benches.
Hero was, however, surprised to see the woods to the north cleared out and leading to a pier. The park had encroached on their old hangout spot. As he came closer, he saw railings on the pier – and a vague shape of a person at the far end, leaning on them. She had long, flowing hair which she ruffled with her hand – Hero was punched from his numbness. He stood irresolutely, blinking with a slightly open mouth – it was the first time he had seen anyone else here, and could it..?
“Mari?” the question escaped his lips before he even thought about it.
The shape turned – not startled, taken aback more by the question than the fact he was there. He came closer and saw her fully.
“Do I really look like Mari?” said Aubrey.
She turned to face him, elbows perched on the railing behind her and legs crossed at the ankles. Pink bangs and the sides of her open jacket fluttering in the wind. She studied him as he approached, and turned her back to him when he came closer, tapping the empty space beside her. Hero now stood parallel to her, filling said space, and looking into the fog over the lake. He looked at her with a tilted head.
“Aubrey, what are you doing here?”
“A ‘hello’ would be good, college boy,” she smirked. “Haven’t seen you in long. Studying hard, I imagine?”
“Uh, well… yeah. I’m on break right now.”
“Until?”
“Uh, just this week. What about you?”
“Retook some grades, gonna properly graduate this time.”
“Yeah. That’s good.”
An awkward silence. They stared forward, elbows on the railing and heads on their hands. Aubrey reached for her pocket and pulled out an untouched pack, extracting a cigarette and a lighter.
“You smoke,” Hero observed.
“Don’t sound too surprised, do you.”
Hero shrugged vaguely. She placed the cigarette in her mouth and held the pack – it was freshly bought and full, safe for the one she pulled out. The silence broke with the clicking of spark wheel on stone, a few scant sparks flying out. She took a drag and coughed – it was clear she was inexperienced. Hero wondered if she really did smoke or was just trying to pretend that she did.
“I get returning to the humble little places where you’re from,” she said afterward, “but, sheesh… what’s there to return to here?”
“I, uh, well… you know what date it is today?”
She held his gaze before turning to the lake of fog, looking down into the little murky water they could see from the pier. A bit of ash fell off – it seemed she had forgotten about the cigarette.
“She would have been twenty-one today.”
A heavy silence hung in the air.
“She wrote a letter to me.”
Aubrey’s head twitched to face him, brows furrowed.
“What..?”
“I don’t know how, but she did.”
“There is no way in hell that was her,” she began to stammer, her hands shook. We… we all saw… We know that she… that he…”
“I know. I thought that it could have been some prank. But… it was her handwriting. It was addressed to me… I know I sound insane, but…”
The volatile tension in Aubrey’s face gradually turned to some mix of disbelief and deep concern. She tilted her head and drew air through gritted teeth.
“But… but there’s…” her eyes shifted from the floor to him. “Jesus Christ, I… can’t believe someone would… Someone would have to know that both you and her… hell, someone would have to know both of you. What was the address?”
“Mari, 13 Lighthouse St, Faraway, PA 16404,” he said it by heart.
“Fuck…” she rubbed her temples as she turned away. “But… what are you doing out here?”
“I’ve not been here for two years. I guess I just… felt compelled to see things again. Reminisce,” he turned away, face in his hands. “But… None if it feels the same. It is, but… I barely recognise it. This can’t have been the town of my- our childhood, right?”
Aubrey sighed – meanwhile, about eighty percent of her cigarette had turned to ash and drooped down.
“I don’t get it either,” she sighed. “It’s either the rose-tinted glasses or just how long it’s been, but it’s not how we remember it, huh?”
She threw the cigarette butt away – it vanished in the water. She turned to face him, still leaned on the railing. He looked at her sidelong.
“I guess, just… that’s all we have left of this place. Memories and some ideas. And no matter how we try to go back, it really won’t ever be the same as then. It’s been… what, eight years? Half my life, almost. A lot of things change in that time.”
“I know. It’s just, that…”
“Doesn’t feel fair? Things go too fast? Good things don’t last?”
“Yeah.”
She sighed and closed her eyes.
“…yeah,” she muttered in response.
Silence. The rustling of dead trees, the trickling of the water below. The wind carrying the smell of pine and oak, the humid air of freshwater. A horizon of bleak water and blinding fog. Deep sighs.
“You’ve got some unfinished business, and I won’t mess with that,” Aubrey said after some time. “But, Hero… you can’t live the rest of your life bound to this town and everything in it. It’s had its place in your life, in your head, and, well… we’re never coming back to how it was. Not after… what I mean to say is, you’ll have to move on too. There’s nothing left for us here.”
He gave her a sidelong stare.
“I’m not sure there’s much of me left to move on,” he said, turning towards her. “Really, I don’t know why I’m here. Here in Faraway, that is. I know she couldn’t have written that letter. Maybe I’ve just come to see that all the symbols and joys of childhood are long since gone. I guess it doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
Her expression of melancholy turned to one of… pity? He couldn’t quite place the emotion – he was having difficulty understanding what he felt himself.
“You have some business to finish, Hero. Get through that first, and then see what matters or doesn’t matter.”
She pushed herself from the railing and walked away. He turned and saw that nothing had ever been there.
And just like that, he was alone again.
As he went down the crossroads, it had begun to rain. A weak drizzle darkened the pavement as rainwater filled the potholes. An overturned police cruiser, rusting and weathered and doors ajar, lied right in the middle of the road. Hero peeked inside – the glove compartment hung open, from which a snubnose revolver had fallen out of. He reached for it and broke it open – a single round in the cylinder. He didn’t much think as to how it was left there – negligence was the simplest and most straightforward response. The overturned cruiser also raised little suspicion or bewilderment – there was just this strange, muted contentment that the gun was there, and loaded. He placed into his pocket, zipping it up.
The rain had gotten stronger – weighty raindrops pattered on his shoulders and head. Beads of fresh water mixed with sweat and grease trickled down his face as his hair sagged and drooped. Soaked clothes clung uncomfortably to his skin, every movement a shift from the heat and wetness of his skin to the cold and humidity of his jacket and jeans. The side of the jacket where the gun was swung back and forth like a weighty pendulum, reminding him it was there with every step. He didn’t much know where to go now. He turned to Lighthouse Street, where he and Mari once lived – a section of the road had been devoured by a sinkhole. It was impassible, the width of the entire road and sidewalks. The street was encased in prison bars made of the quaint and usually waist-high picket fence, stretched impossibly tall – it was impossible to enter from the sides. So he went further down, to the street leading to the church.
The houses were all rundown, naturally, though, out of everyone’s houses, Aubrey’s didn’t seem much different compared to the past. Broken glass and litter, boarded doors and lightless interiors. Corpses of suburbia.
The church was close by. Weathered wood and broken windows, darkened cross above the slightly ajar entrance. The same stuffy smell of mildew and old wood. Planks shifting and creaking under his weight, a barely visible path lined by dust-covered pews. What little light came through the stained-glass windows shifted in colours, muted hues of red, green, purple and yellow. The rain had turned to a downpour – raindrops thrashed violently against the hole-filled ceiling, an unceasing low drumroll. He made his way to a door leading to the graveyard.
Fresh, humid air and wet soil, dark fog and a solid wall of droplets. Under a tree was a bench with a minute, umbrella-covered figure.
Basil leaned on a cane and slowly raised himself, hunched below his umbrella. He struggled to keep his back upright as he met Hero’s gaze – they stared at one another quietly. Basil just barely perceptibly shivered – he was too warmly dressed to be cold. Hero simply turned stiff and cliff-faced. A volatile heat built in his chest that he tried his best to ignore.
A minute must have passed by as both of them stood in the middle of the rain. At last, Hero broke the stare and just went forward with wide and fast strides.
“Hero…” a meek voice behind him.
Hero stopped dead in his tracks, and gave Basil a sidelong stare.
“I should’ve known you would turn up eventually, as well.”
“What do you mean?” Basil made a wary step forward, balancing on his cane.
“I saw Aubrey, too. Kel called me,” he turned to face him. “Either way, I hope I don’t see your little friend. For his sake.”
“He is here, too, then. Must be somewhere, if you’ve seen everyone else. And, well…” he looked down at his cane. “We’re not friends anymore. Not after… what happened.”
Hero remained silent and stared. Basil looked up to look him in the eyes.
“I feel like… way too much happened for us to be friends anymore. For… all of us, really. Not just me and Sunny,” he tried in vain to ignore Hero’s scowl at his mention; he began to stammer. “We smiled at one another when we saw each other, after it happened, but… we were just two kids happy to not have died. Things… things just couldn’t go on like they did. I was always so afraid of moving on. I couldn’t imagine life without my friends, or this place, or… everything I’d ever known. It was terrifying.”
Basil’s knees shook.
“And then, one day, it was all just… gone. There was nothing left to return to, here. Just a ghost town. And, us, it’s… there’s no coming back to how things were. It just… it just won’t happen. So, the only thing left to do was just… move on. We had our happy childhood for as long as we did, and I guess that’s that.”
The words felt forced – like he himself was yet to believe what he said. There was still that wistful yearning in his wet eyes as he spoke – Basil always wanted the good times to return.
“It’s… it’s not fair,” he sniffled. “None of it is. But I guess that, in the end, that’s just how it is. Good things don’t last, and when they end, you just have to look for other good things. The old good things just won’t ever be the same.”
Hero looked into Basil’s eyes. He remembered those same eyes, looking back at him when they were on a hike through the woods. Basil had fallen, leaving him with a small, bleeding scratch and on the verge of tears. He was terrified, stammering, shaking – what if it got infected? Everyone gathered around him and Basil as Hero placed his hand on Basil’s small shoulder and dabbed the wound with an alcohol-soaked gauze. He put a small band-aid on it – he remembered it had a little pastel-coloured bear giving a thumbs-up. All the while, Basil just stared at him in wonderment like he had saved his life. Everyone headed back home afterward for a sleepover – everyone called him “Doctor Hero” for the rest of the evening.
And there Basil stood before him, the same person that was in his memory. The same terrified little boy. And yet… too much had happened for him to really be the same exact person. He was still the one to whom those same things happened, but he ended up entirely different when all was said and done.
“I… I don’t know why you’re here, but…” Basil finally broke the silence. “But… this place isn’t good for you, Hero. I… I know just how scary it is to leave things behind, but… this place will just drag you down with it. I miss the time I had with you guys every day, but… but we just have to move on, too.”
“I loved her, Basil.”
Basil looked down at the ground.
“…she’s gone, Hero. You need to move on,” he just barely forced out of himself.
“She wrote me a letter, Basil.”
Basil sighed and meekly looked up at Hero again.
“But… she couldn’t…”
“It was her handwriting. It was for me. I know what I saw. Or… maybe I don’t, really. I know she couldn’t have written it. But it was addressed to her home. I… need to see what it is. I don’t know what, but… there has to be something, at the very least.”
Basil stood still and gazed at him.
“Just… promise me one thing. If you see… him… please, don’t do anything rash. Just, don’t hurt him. I know what he did to me, but, please don’t do anything.”
“I promise,” Hero lied.
“…thank you,” Basil bowed his head slightly. “Well… you have something to do here, so I won’t interfere. So… goodbye, Hero.”
Basil slowly turned and limped into the church. Hero was left alone again as he made his way across the neglected graves towards Mari’s. Wilted flowers lied at every weathered tombstone – and none were at Mari’s pristine grave.
He stood and stared, there at last. Two years since he had seen her. All this time, busy with exams and studies, but he could be with her at last.
“Hey. Mari,” he muttered with a weak smile.
The tombstone stood silently, saying the only thing it could.
“MARI, 1981-1996. THE SUN WAS BRIGHTER WHEN SHE WAS HERE.”
“The sun was brighter when you were here. And now, there’s no sun at all. Isn’t that a bummer?” he unzipped his jacket pocket.
“I wish things hadn’t gone this way, Mari. I love you, you loved me. Things could have been so perfect. But things just didn’t want to go that way,” he gripped the revolver and took it out.
“No other girl just really understands me, Mari. Every time I see one or talk to one, I just think about you. And none of them compare to you. I love you, and I’m all alone now without you. I’m… I’m lost, Mari.”
He cocked the hammer and pushed the barrel into the side of his head.
“But… hey, that won’t matter much now. I’ll be seeing you soon, right?”
The world grew mute – the loud and powerful rain grew to a muffled background drone. Every inch of his body turned numb. His eyes picked out the smallest details in the world around him, like the scattered gravel of the graveyard’s pathways, the weathering of the stones, the swaying of the branches – and the vase with a white egret orchid standing before a passageway, right behind Mari’s tombstone. His arms fell limp at his sides – he remembered the address on the letter. If the passageway led to her house, and he had already met Aubrey and Basil, then…
“I’ll… come back later. There’s something to do, still.”
“O Henry, my dearest Hero…”
Hero made his way through a thorny and branch-blocked passageway, climbing over, crawling under and pushing through, ignoring the scratches on his clothes and skin the thorns left.
“It’s been so long, and I missed you so much. And I’m all alone here, just waiting for you. I’m all alone, and everyone is gone.”
He grazed his bare hand on a sharp thorn – he ignored the bleeding.
“But I want you to know this, Hero. I’ll always love you. Even though our life together had to end like this, I still wouldn’t trade it for anything. We had some wonderful years together.”
He pushed through the last of the branches and emerged onto a small yard. There was a fallen treehouse behind him, broken apart, boards askew, old toys strewn around and forgotten.
“But there’s something left. My little brother, he… misses me so much. And I miss him oh-so-dearly. And he wants your help. He wants to see me again.”
He made wide, determined steps, averting his eyes from the cut-down tree in the yard.
“I think you know what to do.”
And there he stood, before the slightly open glass door of Mari’s house.
“Yours eternally…”
He went inside, revolver in hand.
“Mari.”
The house was sterile and picked clean – no furniture, no carpets, just the tabula rasa for a new family to come in and fill. But no-one ever did – so all that was left was a hollowed-out carcass. There was still the stain Kel left many years ago. There were still random flashes of memories of hangouts in this house that Hero tried to suppress. Cooking a nice dinner for everyone. A horror movie night when he sat held onto Mari for dear life. Crying over Mari’s piano when he was all alone at night at a sleepover. None of that mattered anymore. It was the past, and the past was sullied and dead. He was here to deal with the culprit of that.
The numbness of before had faded before an entirely new feeling. He was a puppet stuffed with pins and needles, with a volatile heat in his chest and stomach, tingling in his eerily steady hands. Each step was slow, determined and methodical. His breathing was even and relaxed. His grip on the gun was painfully strong.
All the pain of these six years had rested quite squarely on the tiny shoulders of Mari’s little brother, and with every step, Hero carried the scarring, burdenous weight of an entire fourth of his life, squandered and turned into torture. Not just his life; the lives of his friends… even Basil. All because of one, single person.
And he was right there, in the flesh, before him.
Emerging from the darkness was the minute, pallid figure of Sunny. Hands clasped together, elbows resting on his knees, seated on the staircase. Still in the very same clothes he always wore – khaki shorts, white polo and black vest. He still wore an eyepad after two years.
He slowly raised his head and regarded him with an empty expression, his remaining eye boring into Hero. The two stared at each other quietly, while Sunny’s eye drifted from his face, to his soaked clothes, to the gun resting in his hand. A silence hung in the air as the downpour grew stronger. Hero made a few wary steps forward as the deafening and quiet click of a cocked hammer echoed in the empty room.
“She wrote me a letter, Sunny,” Hero muttered.
Sunny just stared in response – he almost always did that.
“She said how lonely she is. How she’s just all alone, and everyone’s gone. And how much she misses you.”
Hero slowly raised the gun – the barrel pointed squarely at Sunny’s forehead.
“She wants my help, Sunny. She told me that ‘I know what to do’, and I do think that I do.”
Sunny slowly stood up – and remained where he was. His eye looked down.
“I loved her, Sunny. And no-one had ever loved me before or since, like she did. I would’ve been happy with her,” he started feeling hot as every breath became more taxing. “And you took everything away from me! From us! I thought you were like a little brother to me, but I realise all you were all this time was a fucking parasite!”
His hand had begun to shake, his breathing became ragged and quick.
“I should have killed you back then! At the very fucking place you stood when you told us everything! They should have gotten rid of you back in the fucking womb! Because if not for you, SHE’D STILL BE ALIVE!”
Hero made several steps forward, shaking gun still trained on Sunny. His forearms burned as the volatile heat got worse. The fuse was just about to blow – his finger was already resting on the trigger, lightly pulling it to see how much he could squeeze it before the bang.
“But that’s fine now, I’m here, and this can be all done away with now. I don’t believe in hell, but I hope there’s one just for you.”
He was a single step away from Sunny, grabbing him by the hair, pulling him forward and pushing the barrel into his head. Sunny was dead silent the entire time, simply closing his eye when he felt the cold steel rammed into his skin.
“…I wrote that letter,” Sunny finally said. His voice was like a faint whisper Hero wasn’t quite sure he heard.
Hero tilted his head.
“…what?”
“I… I wrote that letter. Everything in there was written by me. I want this. No-one ever prosecuted me, no-one ever punished me. You shouldn’t have been merciful to me back then,” he explained calmly, almost blasé. “Being left without friends is no punishment. I’ve gone through most of my life alone. What I need is a real punishment, and I’ve always been afraid to do it on my own. Please… pull it. I know you want to.”
“How the hell did you copy her handwriting!?”
“I… went through her old notes, her diary… I studied it and replicated it.”
A pounding headache had set on. Hero could hardly focus on anything but Sunny, the heat in his chest and head, Sunny’s strung hair in one hand and the warm plastic and cold steel of the revolver’s grip. He jerked his hand and threw Sunny down to the sound of a muted thud as he banged his head on the railing and slid down. Hero turned his back on him, making several hasty steps away. He grabbed his head and rubbed his temples.
“Fuck…” was all Hero could mutter to himself.
The headache was getting worse. He slowly turned around to see Sunny sprawled on the ground in the foetal position, grabbing the side of his head with both hands. Looking down only with his eyes, Hero aimed straight at Sunny’s head. His hand was no longer shaking. It was clear and simple, and easy as could be. He took in the sight of Sunny at the foot of the stairs, squirming in pain and fear.
But then, he raised his eyes just briefly, looking up and down the stairs – the figure at the bottom. A memory began to unfold in his mind, like vines of barbed wire snaking through soft flesh.
“I… she scared me so much… I’d never seen her like that before… I wanted to get away, but she just grabbed me…”
A terrified, fragile boy in a hospital gown. Shaking legs, wet remaining eye.
“So I… I pushed her… she fell…” he turned monosyllabic as tears streaked down his face and soaked the eyepad. “She fell… she was sprawled on the floor… she looked so horrible… she wasn’t responding…”
Kel’s eyes slowly widened as he blinked, mouth ajar. Aubrey balled her hands into fists and began to shake. Hero was… just standing there and listening.
“She grabbed her head… it was red… something was very, very wrong. She twitched… she didn’t move…”
Sunny dropped on his knees and hid his face in his hands – stick-thin, emaciated hands.
“I didn’t… I didn’t mean to… She looked so terrible… I didn’t want it… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… and Basil, he… covered it up… I’m so… sorry…”
Aubrey was just about to lunge at him when Hero almost mechanically laid a hand on her shoulder and led her outside. Kel lagged behind as always but followed them. The curled up and sobbing Sunny was left all alone in the quiet and sterile room.
Hero looked down again, at the curled up and sobbing boy at the bottom of the stairs, sprawled on the ground after someone threw him down. He, however, had done so violently and intentionally, he realised. He took a step back, and looked at the stairs again – and at Sunny. Mari must have lied just like him, thrown down the stairs and curled up into a foetal position. He tried to shake the thought out of his head and he raised the gun again, but his hand was shaking. He tried to get the finger into the trigger and pull it – but it just froze in place. No matter what he tried to do, it was as if his finger had ossified and refused to budge. Now not just his hand, but Hero in his entirety began to shake – the headache was unbearable now. Something wet slid down from his eye. He grit his teeth so hard he imagined cracks going through his jaws.
“God… fucking… DAMN IT!”
He threw the cocked revolver onto the ground – a deafening bang and a flash of ochre-red. Some pieces of broken ceiling drywall fell right before his face.
“God… fucking… damn it…” he sobbed.
He wiped his face with his rain-soaked sleeve as he turned away. He leaned on a wall just to not fall down – his legs were shaking. He briefly turned to Sunny – no movement, still breathing. Must have fainted. Hero’s ears still rung from the gunshot, an afterimage of the flash in his lower-left corner. The sting of burnt gunpowder. He focused on those as they were the most clear physical sensations he could feel – nothing else felt real. Not the cold drywall he leaned on, the soaked clothes clinging to him, his sore hands. He wasn’t sure if he heard something behind him when he finally did, after a minute or so of just standing there.
“Hey…” a young woman’s soft voice. It came from upstairs.
Feelings of unreality only grew worse when he turned around and looked up. A tall young woman, snow-white nightgown and flowing dark hair. She was leaning on the railing of the second floor, and she looked the way she would have if she had really turned twenty-one.
“…Mari.”
Hero said that to himself, just to reassure himself he did see what he saw. She tilted her head and smiled.
“What’s cooking, good looking?” she said, as she always did.
The unreality and sensory overload of the gunshot faded before a mellow contentment. His hands shook as he couldn’t help but smile and cry. She beckoned him as she turned away and entered a door. Hero followed promptly, stepping over Sunny and paying him no mind. His heart lunged at his chest as he scaled the stairs in a matter of seconds and threw the bedroom door open.
It looked the same way it had six years before, in one of his most treasured memories. Dim, warm lighting, a thunderstorm outside, the patter of rain. Mari’s bed in the corner, with her seated on it expectingly. She patted the side of the bed.
“It must’ve been a hard day, Hero.”
He stood in the doorway, tears in his eyes, nodding. A block had appeared in his throat – he couldn’t say anything.
“Just… come and lie down. You need to rest.”
She sat at the edge of the bed, leaving the corner spot free for him. He passed by a mirror as he limped towards her and filled the corner spot, falling like a log. She laid down beside him, placing him between her and the corner.
“Corner spot. Like you always liked.”
He took in every movement of her face, the shifting of her wrinkles, the smile and wink. It had been six years… She reached around him and encased him in a hug. The warmth of her hands radiated through the cold and soaked clothes as he reached forward and hugged her too. He had forgotten how any of it felt and remembered now why it was one of his most treasured memories.
“Mari… I…” he could barely manage a word as he held onto her.
“I know, I know. It had been so long,” she cooed.
“The letter… Sunny…”
“I know, dear. And I’m so sorry any of this had to happen,” she said. Hero held onto every word. “I never wanted this… I never wanted my little brother to do this. I never wanted you to hurt him, too.”
“But… Mari, he… he killed you.”
“He did, but he didn’t want to. And you almost killed him, Hero?”
“I wanted to avenge you. He wanted it himself, he wanted to be punished.”
“But did I ever say I wanted that vengeance, dear?”
Hero shifted back to look at her – she looked at him with the expression of a displeased but understanding mother.
“But… Mari… he ruined our childhoods. He ruined any memory we had of this town. It’s where we grew up.”
“Dear…” she ruffled his hair. “Is there anything to return to here, in Faraway? Is there anything to see but an old and neglected town?”
“But… Mari… the happiest I’d ever been was here. Here, with you. I can’t just… walk away from it all. I can’t just betray you like this.”
“And I was happy too, Henry. But time passes, things flow, change and end. There’s no coming back to how it was, dear. And, well… no coming back to me. I’m gone, Henry. And it pains me so much to see you out there, still hurting yourself by holding on,” she took his palm and scanned it with her finger. “I can just feel the scars and bruises that holding on left on you. You can’t go on like this.”
“But… but, how, Mari?” the tears flowed, the words just barely audible. “I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.”
“Shh,” she patted the back of his head and pushed him towards her, resting his head against her neck. “It’s alright. It, well… it’s just how life is, dear. Things happen, and sometimes they happen only once, never to return. But it doesn’t mean it never happened, right? I loved you till the very end, and nothing will ever change the fact that I did.”
He wrapped himself around her, unable to speak and shivering with every sob.
“But I’m gone, Henry. That won’t ever happen… with me. You’re still here. You can still love, dear. And everything that you did for me – the nice dinners, the cuddling, the movie nights – you can still do that with someone else. Just… not with me, Henry. I’m dead, long since.”
She raised his head to look him in the eyes.
“You managed to do it with me, and, well… nothing says you can’t find someone else, too. You have people that love you – and people who loved you. But you can’t go on loving a bygone thing – it’ll just pull you in and never let go.”
A kiss on the forehead.
“I loved you – and nothing will change that. Henry… you made me happy.”
He opened his eyes and found himself in a forgotten and dust-filled bedroom. He raised himself from the bed, noting the massive stain the clothes left, and leaned on the bedside table with the mirror on it. Bloodshot eyes emerging from pitch-black eyebags, sagged and greasy hair. Soaked and stained jacket, torn up. He raised his hands – calloused, stained, scratch-covered hands; there was still a red stain around one of the scratches. The imprint of the gun’s grip was still on his right palm.
What was it before him? How could this very same person have almost killed the little brother of his girlfriend… ex-girlfriend? How could this very same person say what he did to Sunny? How could he have done any of what he did?
A sinking feeling appeared at the bottom of his stomach, slowly worming itself through the rest of his body. He almost did the same thing that Sunny did, but intentionally and hatefully. He was a hypocrite. A horrid, self-righteous hypocrite.
Mari wouldn’t have wanted this. He himself wouldn’t have wanted this, in his better senses. He… couldn’t do this. And he couldn’t believe he almost did.
He limped out of the bedroom, just barely lifting his legs, and thudded downstairs. He knelt down and checked Sunny’s pulse – still there, just fainted. Putting him on his shoulder – he weighed almost nothing – Hero emerged into nightly Faraway.
As they drove off, the sign for Faraway disappeared in the darkness in the rearview mirror.