December 11, 2020
We are playing.
A little girl is running ahead of me. I am running ahead of me. I remember hating that dress I’m in. The puffy sleeves were itchy and tight. At least I managed to pull my hair loose so it tumbled as I ran.
“Wait,” I called. The voice wasn’t mine. “Wait for me.”
And I did. Little me stopped.
She smiled with big and baby teeth, “Run faster.”
“What are we playing?”
“We’re not playing, we’re running.”
“I hate running.”
“No, I hate running. You love it.”
I looked down at this body. It wore a rusty red jacket. One very long white hood string was stuck to the fabric of the sleeve. The other me started to pout, “This was your game.”
“So it is a game?”
“It’s a race.” Her smile was so bright I blinked back small tears. I don’t remember ever smiling like that.
Little me turned on bent legs poised and ready to start. There was nothing before her, just shadows deep and uninviting.
“I don’t think we should go that way.” My nerves broke into ribbons and clawed their way up my body wrapping me in fear.
“But that’s where the finish line is, the end. Your end. And then mine.” She peaked over her shoulder at whoever I was. She looked around, eyebrows knitting together as confusion flooded her expression.
“Where did you go?” She called out. I called out.
“What do you mean? I’m still here.” This body reached out.
“You fell behind already?” She, I, asked as if she, I, could see this new body. Yet she looked around wildly.
“I haven’t moved at all!”
“Me neither.” She pouted.
“You heard me! You know I’m here.”
“That’s not the same thing at all.”
“I don’t get it. Just knock it off.” I flung an arm out to her. Yet just as I would have smacked her arm, she glitched, jumping ten feet back.
I noticed then, the background that started to fade, the park. We were in the park. Soon it would be gone. Soon it all would be gone.
“Don’t go.” Did I say that to little me or the rest of the world? “I don’t want you to go again.” Again?
“You went first. Why would you leave first?” She was going to cry. Her, my, grey eyes were glassy all over. She spun faster.
“Don’t be upset with me.” She looked right at me then, right into these new eyes.
“You wanna go but don’t want me to cry?”
“I don’t wanna go. I never wanna go.”
“But you went.”
These eyes burned. They clouded and stormed. Over their brims, I rained.
“I’ve been here this whole time.” I felt then, the greater me, that this body didn’t understand. It didn’t know if this whole time meant the dream or the reality. Dream, that's what this is. I thought about the jacket and the fading park. I thought about all the other times I had seen myself like this, so little. And I remembered. These new eyes of mine were His, Oliver’s.
“Neither of us are here. There is no here.” I, he, said.
In a blink, he was there in front of me. The rusty red sweater hung loosely around his tiny body. I was back in my own eyes. Staring straight into his.
Those eyes were more than blue. They were the sky. Clouded yet shining, his eyes contained Heaven.
“Is that where you are?”
“Where would I be?”
“Heaven. You should be in Heaven.”
“But I’m right here.” From within him, I felt more confusion than I could see. In fact, the tears that had spilled were dry. His freckled cheeks unmarred by water tracks. His skin was porcelain. A doll just for me to play with.
“You’re not you. Not really. Not like you were.”
“How am I not me when I’m right here?”
“This isn’t real. You are gone”
“Where did I go?”
“Paradise?”
“I’m in you.”
“In my dream.” Was he always in my mind? Floating on a life raft, I pictured Oliver overtaken by a wrathful sea.
“This is the only place we have left.”
“That’s not true. I see you in a lot of things”
“It’s the only place I can see you back.” If I leave, he’ll be here alone. “And you look just the same.”
I tugged at the elastic around my dress sleeves, they were chafing these little arms. He was right, even in my own body I still looked like I was eight years old. As if the last ten years didn’t happen. Did they?
“This is how I’ll always look,” I told him. “This was the last time I was me.”
“You’re still you. Out there. Much bigger than I will ever be.”
“I want to be big with you, but I’ll settle for being small all the same.”
“You can’t come back. I can’t go forward.”
“Why would you want to?” I should have given that more thought.
“Why would I want to be with you out there? Big. With my family.”
I opened my mouth to apologize but any sound vacuumed out of me. Out of everything. Oliver’s lips moved and I couldn’t hear him. Even here I could lose him.
He walked over to me then, took my hands in his. My ears popped.
“I said: you don’t understand. You’re not gone.”
“Not in the same way, no. But I am gone.”
“You can go back there. To the outside of this. You can see your family and mine.” He didn’t sound angry, only urgent. As if he knew just how lost I really was. But of course he does. This is my world after all.
My mouth wobbles with the weight of what I want.
“What do you want?” He asks, knowing already.
“I want to see you.” I am small. So incredibly small.
“You see me now. You’ll see me again.”
“But it’s not the same is it? Seeing you here versus wherever you might actually be”
“I don’t know.” Right.
“You’re not you.”
“I’m the me you know. I’m the me you have. Do you want me to go?” His bottom lip quivered. I’d seen this face so many times growing up with him. It was his face. Real as I could make it. Even if it just mirrored mine.
“Please don’t go.”
“Let’s play a new game.” He squeezed my hand tighter, anchoring me as the world began to blur and warp.
“What kind of game?” I looked around watching the kaleidoscope form and dissolve around us. Colors, so many colors.
“How about a puzzle?” The picture around us solidified. Brown wood and white snow and green trees and yellow straw maybe? I knew this place. Dread and horror rose in me as the Archery range became fully realized. Oliver still held my hand.
“I don’t want to be here. You definitely shouldn’t be here. Take us back.” I pulled him closer, begging. Our clasped hands came up to my face and I could smell chocolate on him. There, under his fingernails. Just where the police found it. My eyes shot up to find sweet brown smudges around his mouth too.
“Stop, stop!” I cried. “Why would you bring us here?”
“I didn’t bring us here. You did.”
Falling to my knees, I sobbed. The background grew, distorting proper proportions. Everything was so big, too big. We were too small.
“Tell me,” He continued. “what do you know?”
“You were killed here.”
“By who?”
“I don’t know!”
“Think.”
“Do I— do—” I started to sputter, stutter and start my question over, “Do I know?’
“You must.” The world warped again, spinning soaked and dripping color.
We became the center of the puzzle.
Misshapen images fit in together like shards of stained glass. I saw a sliver of a candy shop, a fragment of my childhood bedroom. There off to the side was Oliver’s bedroom, his backyard. I saw our preschool playground, the elementary school classroom. I saw pieces of our lives, the places we overlapped. Diner, corner store, grocery market, playground, arcade, movie theatre, laundry mat. Tiny images of the whole town. We went everywhere together.
“What do you see?” One last question. I could feel myself waking up.
“I see everything.” But, I didn’t really.
Not until the last moment.
Tucked into all of these places was a shadow. One that dwarfed the darkness at the end of our foot race. This shadow was just slim enough to miss. It was tucked in corners and behind many other things. It had its own shape and life. Not a shadow at all, but a silhouette.
Watching us. In every place we went.
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