by Alden, Luke
I don’t have a car.
There are no reliable means of transportation.
So I go to Franklin.
Three knocks and he opens the door.
‘What happened to your fa…’
I push him inside and close the door behind us. He looks confused.
‘I’m going to find Evaline, either you come with me or you give me your car.’
And Franklin, he’s looking at me with big stupid eyes that betray a confusion that I don’t care to explore. All I want is to get where I need to be.
And Franklin starts to open his mouth.
8
Time passes as if it’s going somewhere. It keeps moving as if there’s an end destination. There isn’t.
No change.
No progress.
9
I’m driving Franklin’s car.
Moving down a city street at a slow pace. Franklin, he elected to stay at home. Told me that he wanted the car back by the end of the week. I have five days.
Evaline, she’s my passenger.
She’s my illusion.
She’s my purpose.
And I’m driving as if I know where I’m going. The problem is that I don’t. There is no set path. I don’t know where to start.
I only know where I want things to end.
And Evaline, she smiles.
And I pull into a gas station.
The car rolls to a stop and it feels good to be mobile. It feels good not to be trapped on a bus and faking conversations with strangers as if they had some sort of relevance in my life.
I park.
Kill the engine.
Stare out the window.
I’m not sure what I’m doing.
I’d ask for directions if I weren’t so aimless.
I’m like a shotgun spraying the canvas of this city until I finally hit some vague semblance of a target.
And so goes my life.
My chest aches.
I look at Evaline.
I go to hold her hand as if that will dull the feeling that reminds me of something I never realized I had. I stop short. Pause and look down. Her wrist is frail and she’s wearing a bracelet that I bought her for an anniversary that I never truly appreciated. She always wore that bracelet.
I get out of the car.
Breathe in the air around me. It fills my lungs and I smile and I walk and pause and look at the car. I look at Evaline. She smiles at me. She waves.
I walk through the gas station door.
I hear a chime.
Then things move sideways.
I’m with Evaline.
In our old apartment.
We’re naked.
10
And someone once told me that love will find a way.
Someone once told me that love wins.
People tell me that love can do a lot of things.
Right now it provides me with a sweaty fuck that makes my eyebrows curl and my jaw ache.
Right now I’m with Evaline.
In our old bed.
Remembering.
Existing.
And I would say that we’re both younger, but youth has no meaning when there is no such thing as ‘old’.
We kiss.
Our lips hover and lock.
My veins feel as if they’re tangling with her heartstrings and my hands feel as if they’ll never be able to let go of what they think they have.
I whisper.
‘Stay.’
She moans.
She kisses my cheek.
And I wish I could express what this means to me. The chance to be who I was. The chance to live what I’ve already had.
There are moments in my head where all is lost to hopeless romanticism. There are moments in my heart where nothing exists but the passion of a love that can only be imagined.
At least these are the things I’ve told myself in the past. In the days where I didn’t doubt the emotions that I thought existed in my body.
I kiss Evaline.
Her sweat lingers on me.
It isn’t real.
It’s a memory.
I think it’s a memory.
It has to be a memory.
My head is beyond messed up.
And Evaline kisses hard and shoves her tongue deep into me. Her back arches and her fingers lock and she lets out the smallest of sounds as our love and lust mix up and become confused in the most physical of their representations.
She lays next to me.
We’re sweating.
Soaking the bed.
Both of us breathe heavily as if the oxygen we suck in can somehow replace the pieces of our souls that we give to each other.
She tells me that she loves me.
I open my mouth to tell her the same.
My eyes are closed.
I suck in the air and the words come out and my eyes open and my hands are on the steering wheel of Franklin’s car and we’re somewhere in the city.
I don’t know what’s going on.
And as the words escape my lips, they start to feel hollow. The start to feel used and bored.
Imaginary-Evaline, she looks at me and smiles. She tells me that she loves me back.
I pull over.
Get out and start to walk as if I know where I’m going.
All I know is that I’m going somewhere. And my feet start to ache and my body starts to sweat and I realize that I’ve just walked to our old apartment.
I sit on the front steps.
I’d say that it brings back memories but all it does is cause me to lose my breath. I’m tired of remembering.
All that I want is to be.
Then I realize that Evaline, the imaginary one, she didn’t follow me.
And I’m feeling that much lonelier.
11
When you’re infinite, you don’t think of the future. Yet, somehow, all you ever manage to do is reminisce about the past.
12
I fell asleep on the stoop where we spent so many good years. Curled up and aching on the concrete of this city.
I’m trying to find something, I’m just not sure what it is anymore.
I’m not sure what’s compelling me. I’m not sure why my feet move in the circles that they do.
There aren’t many things I’m too sure of at this point.
And so I’m rubbing sleep out of my eyes.
I can’t see straight. I can’t seem to move in a line that resembles progress. The present folds into the past and all I can do is experience the cruelty that yesterday provides when shown in the context of today.
There are moments when I believe that she is through with me.
There are times when I think that all I ever worked for was irrelevant.
And then I realize that I never knew what I had.
I realize that I’ve never felt what it really was.
And maybe there aren’t any goodbyes when it comes to infinity.
And maybe I’ll be able to feel something that I’ve never felt.
Maybe I’ll begin to realize what I had.
Maybe I’ll appreciate what I have.
I stretch and yawn and I look at the sun as it moves away from the sky and back to the Earth.
I look at the city around me; it feels like things are closing in.
I close my eyes and I feel that familiar sensation.
My lungs twist inside my body.
My mouth goes dry.
13
It’s a strange ache that crushes my heart until the beating crawls to a near stop.
Evaline is leaving me.
I had forgotten.
And it’s a full body shake as she walks out the door. I can’t quite make sense of the feeling. It’s a sadness, I’m aware of this, it’s just… deeper.
‘You know, we could have made this work.’
And I’m struggling for words. It’s like gasping for air.
And the me of now, I’d like to tell her she’s beautiful. Tha
t she’s the chorus to my verse.
Instead it’s:
A pause.
A breath.
A nervous twisting of nervous fingers.
And she’s waiting for me to say something. To make her want to stay with me. I don’t have language for the way I feel. My love is in the shaking of my hands and the weight in my chest. And for all I’m worth, I can’t seem to translate the beats of my heart.
My mouth won’t open.
My lips won’t part.
She leaves. She leaves me with glassy eyes. She’s leaving with a friend.
Packed bags and a sense of purpose.
The me of now; I know she’ll come back. Yet, the melancholy gravity I feel, it betrays otherwise.
Does she know what she means?
What she means to me?
And so I sit.
Alone.
The sun creeps through the window and I watch it crawl along the floor. There’s a static feel in the air.
There are moments where I glance at the door, half expecting her to walk back through. It’s a hope that keeps me going.
I had forgotten this feeling.
Perhaps I had blocked it out.
Perhaps my brain wanted to spare me.
I’ve been left by many women, and while I’d deceived myself into believing that I’d toughened, and that I was strong; it’s now obvious that was a ruse.
And so I sit.
Shallow breathes.
I’m waiting for something to happen.
For Evaline to come back.
For my heart to be content.
The sun disappears and moonlight shines through the window and into my apartment.
It feels nice to watch the stars come out. It’s nice to feel as if I am of no consequence. To feel that the moon and the stars will exist without my regard.
And still I live.
Stars keep disappearing from the sky.
The sun keeps aging.
Everything keeps moving.
Here in the past, waiting for Evaline, I know that she won’t come back for quite sometime. But somehow I’m finding a comfort in knowing that she will indeed be back.
Someday.
And my eyes grow heavy.
I sink into my old chair.
I flutter in and out.
And then it’s no longer yesterday.
But I’m still in my apartment.
14
My head feels like it’s going to split open at any second. My eyes slow to a dizzy sort of spin that seems to tell my body that everything is not going to be all right.
Because this isn’t my home.
Because this, at one point and time, it was my home.
And there’s a shaking to my gut as I see my old place worn down by someone else’s life.
My initial thought is to panic. To Run. To leave it behind.
But I don’t.
I sit down on a couch that I never would have bought and I think about how things used to be.
They’re thoughts I can never seem to escape.
It seems that all I do is exist within my yesterdays.
And the sound of my feet tapping the floor reminds me of the loneliness I would feel. Sitting next to Evaline. Watching TV. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for my heart to explode.
But I wasn’t lonely, was I?
We fought and fucked through every inch of this place. For hundreds of years we wore this place to the bone. And then we would rebuild.
We would always rebuild.
I miss her.
Her memory.
Her skin.
Her way of existing.
And I know it’s locked in my head.
But somehow that’s never going to be good enough.
I miss feeling frustrated to the point where I’d jerk off into the toilet and go to sleep early because all I wanted was to feel her skin against my skin but all I ever got was a shove and a dirty look.
It wasn’t like that, was it?
A pause.
A breathe.
I’m waiting for something to happen.
Nothing happens.
And so it’s a nervous twisting of nervous fingers, because I want to remember her for all that is good. And suddenly, I feel like I’m remembering her for all that really was.
My head hurts.
I’ve got fingers that try to shake their way off my hands.
I need to walk.
I need to get up and out of here. Away from all that this is, or was.
And my heart is beating up my Adams apple as I stand to go.
I pause and there’s a feel of static.
Evaline comes and goes from my vision.
I shake my head.
Blink.
Try to stay in this moment and out of that moment.
I start towards the door.
Look back.
Look to the spot where she first told me that she was going to die. I was so disinterested. I didn’t know.
I didn’t understand.
I still don’t know what it means.
To die.
To lose someone.
And as I stand there lost within my wreck of a brain, I hear a jingle outside.
Keys.
A voice.
Another voice.
Feet shuffle.
The doorknob turns.
15
Someone once told me that 99% of our actions are based on fear.
Fear of love.
Of losing love.
Of living.
Of not living.
16
The door opens. The couple, the tanned, pulled and peeled couple with skin that looks like plastic hanging off a skeleton; they pause when they see me.
They’re unsure of how to process what they see.
Me.
A stranger in their house.
In their living room.
This doesn’t happen.
This shouldn’t be happening.
I’m just as shocked to see them. Because they look like we did. Like Evaline and I. When we were together. When nothing was changing. When everything was comfortably the same.
They look like Evaline and I when things were nice.
And then the lady, her face pulls and shifts. It bunches and twists. I watch it change in a surreal sort of fashion. And now she’s looking like Evaline.
She is Evaline.
Though I know she’s not.
The man next to her. He remains the same. Staring at me with a slack jaw.
I’m staring back.
My head starts to hurt.
And Evaline, she says:
‘Who the fuck are you?’
And me, I know it’s not her. I know this, but still I say:
‘Evaline, It’s me…’
I pause.
Breathe.
Everything feels muted and gray. Everything seems slightly darker. Everything feels as if it’s shifted.
‘It’s Ellis. I miss you…’
And my words come out in an unsure croak that lets me know that my body and mind aren’t going to be getting along.
‘Who the fuck is Evaline?’
And I watch her face change again. Back to someone that I don’t know.
I stutter and stammer until words fail me and the man in front opens his mouth.
‘Jackie, call the police.’
And he’s calm and collected. He’s not bothered. There’s no reason. Things like this, they don’t happen. The routine is complacency. The challenge is in knowing how to react to anything that challenges this.
And Jackie, the girl who would’ve been Evaline. She’s got a flippant attitude and a puzzled voice as she asks what the number for the police is.
Because sometimes it’s easy to forget that the police even exist.
And I’ve got a full body panic as my guts start shaking and my head starts aching.
My hands sweat.
And the man who actually lives here; he’s
telling me to stay put. He’s still scrambling to get the police on the phone.
My feet feel antsy and I start to wind up.
I need to leave.
And the man’s face, it pulls back. Further. Tighter. Higher. And then he’s Franklin.
And I’m not sure what to do.
‘Franklin?’
My eyes are wide.
My skin fills strange.
I keep searching for air. For oxygen. For something to keep me going.
I know this isn’t Franklin.
My eyes squeeze shut and then pull back open.
And it’s the stranger and his wife. But the apartment, it’s changed. It’s decorated.
The apartment is now the one that I lived in.
The decoration is all there.
And my body goes sick.
Spinning.
Aching.
Sweating.
This doesn’t make sense.
I just want Evaline.
And then she’s standing next to both of them.
Evaline and this strange couple. Suddenly yesterday and today don’t seem all that different.
I feel the panic in my gut begin to boil until I’m able to articulate the sensation with a primal sort of yelling.
‘Fuck.’
And I run.
The man, he tries to grab me. But he’s weak and scared and really doesn’t know much of what to do. This might as well be a movie to him. This might as well be the eight hundredth sequel to the same action franchise that he’s been watching since his childhood.
I move right past him with a shake and a twist.
To the door.
My hands fumble.
I slow down.
Grab the knob.
I’m out.
My feet hit the sidewalk and there’s a distant yelling as I tear out as fast as I can. Until every part of my body feels like it’s on fire.
My nerves are spastic.
I stop.
My hands go to my knees and my back arches.
I throw up.
It burns.
Everything burns.
My mind races and my eyes light up.
My head spins and my thoughts combust.
I think of the tape. The one with Evaline and the stranger. Lighting fires. Destroying old buildings.
Burning down yesterday.
Burning everything.
And my body is electric. Everything burns.
And then I hear a siren.
