solarqueer

A short story

She finally texted me after weeks of silent treatment and I rushed over to her house. It was a cold, dark and foggy fall morning. I went there by bike to be faster, but about half way there I knew it was a bad idea. The muddy ground slowed me down drastically on the uphill parts and downhill I had to break constantly to avoid skidding. When I arrived I was splattered with sludge all over. I tried to clean myself up a little as I ascended to the doorway. The sun was coming up and the fog started to lift. The sunshine lifted my spirit. I had started developing a fall depression over the last weeks – partly because of the weather, partly because she had left for a vacation with her family and we had no contact. When she had texted me “Can you come over? Now?” at 7 in the morning I knew it was something important she wanted to talk to me about. I hoped maybe she would… no, I tried not to go there. If I didn’t get my hopes up I couldn’t get that disappointed. I texted her: “I’m here. Came by bike, too dirty to come in” and waited. With every heartbeat the fog lifted up higher revealing more and more of the beautiful view of the city. One of the countless reasons I loved to come here – one of the few that weren’t her.

She opened the door – still in her pajamas. “Wait there, I’ll just get dressed real quick.” She just put on a jacket and boots, but still I felt kinda naughty watching her through the door. “Come with me” she said and led the way into the forest. I knew this trail better than my own street. She often took me here for deep conversations. This is where she took me whenever she wanted to talk about troubles she had with her family, at school, with friends or with her boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend now. It’s also where she always asked me about me and wanted me to open up, but that was never very fruitful. I just didn’t think I had much worth talking about and when I did it took me only a few words. Today she had quite an impressive walking speed, but she didn’t seem to be in a hurry with starting to speak. We were already walking for about 10 minutes and the sun was up. It turned out to be a very beautiful morning. The trees glowed in colors from green to red and the ground was covered in a deep layer of foliage. It felt like walking on clouds, but speed-walking trough it was quite exhausting. I was panting quite hard, but it couldn’t be heard over the loud wind. I caught up with her and touched her on the shoulder. “Could you slow down a bit?” I asked. “Oh, sure.” she said and we walked on side by side.

I knew she had something she wanted to get off her chest, but whenever I saw her mouth open as I glanced over to her she stopped herself before uttering a sound. Or maybe she did make a sound and I just didn’t hear it? Since I was still waiting for her to finally tell me whats going on and I didn’t know anything better to pass the time I tried to experiment with how loud I could hum without her hearing me over the wind. I barely heard myself at first, then I turned up the volume. “Huh?” “What?” “Did you say something?” “No I was just...” The last word actually got swallowed by the wind. “But there is something you want to talk about, right?” The droning sound of the wind swelled up in my ears as the suspense rose. I could no longer hold back my deepest hopes and gave in to a part of me that believed in magic and miracles. If I’d just wish for it hard enough she would ask me to go with her right now. In the few seconds that felt like hours as I waited for her response I lived through the rise and fall of this hopeful part of me. As it rose to power the rest of my existence teamed up to form a resistance. The motto of the resistance movement was “I’m never going to have a girlfriend – the whole concept is ridiculous”. This part of me felt so much more real to me so it took over pretty fast. I considered myself a hopeless romantic – literally. Romance was a big part of my interior life, but it was always just fantasy and probably wouldn’t ever be more than that. So like most of the times when I let myself hope for a moment that glorious moment was short and followed by a much stronger feeling of defeat – and she still hadn’t even said the first word.

“I..” she said and paused. My heart suddenly weighed a hundred pounds and sunk to my feet ripping a hole through my body on the way down. My brain went to overdrive and bombarded me with all the possible ways to end this sentence – well only the possibilities that fit the pitiful expression on her face. I don’t like you anymore. I am going to move. I have a new boyfriend. I know about your disgusting secrets. I have cancer and only two more weeks to live. “My...”, she started a new sentence and paused again, throwing my brain completely off. My mothership is going to pick me up in a few minutes taking me back to my home planet where I’ll deliver my report saying that this planet is not worth saving. “My dad says we can’t hang out anymore.”

My hundred pounds heavy heart suddenly got magnetically attracted by the earth’s core and ripped a hole through the planet on its way further down than rock bottom. Only a shell of me was left. Since the shell was no living being it didn’t have to breath to prevail and it didn’t have to tense it’s muscular system to stand still. It also didn’t have a lot of senses. One – I don’t know which one it was – noticed that she started tearing up. Since my shell wasn’t capable of it’s own feelings it showed compassion for hers and put an arm around her to comfort her. Her touch changed things. Her warmth filled my shell back with life and her heartbeat drew my heart back from the earths core into my chest in a second. I could feel my heart hammer against my ribcage like it wanted to melt with hers as I proceeded to embrace her. She turned her head to my shoulder and started crying heavily. In small waves my brain started working again. Lead by a single feeling occupying my whole being that I couldn’t label at the moment the autonomous part of my brain sent unfiltered words to my mouth, leaving the bit of consciousness that had returned out of the game: “Did he say why?”

Tags:

#love #romance #depression #ShortStory #LoveSickness