by Andy Mandela
He continues to give me his straight stare, but saying nothing more. I turn around and walk fast to the door. I cannot get out of this building soon enough. I open the door, not looking back at Clyde, and go outside. The rain has stopped. In fact, it doesn’t even look like it’s been raining at all.
The streets are dry, and there are no clouds in the sky. I turn my head to see if Clyde is still positioned there in the lobby maintaining his stare. I don’t see him, instead I see something completely horrifying. The doors have been boarded up like an abandoned building. I’ve no way to describe what I’m seeing. I’m so shocked by what I see, I trip on the curb and fall into the street. Looking up, I see that I’m right. Most of the windows are boarded up and some are just broken and shattered. It doesn’t look like anyone has touched this building in years.
Chapter 20
None of this is adding up at all. Could it be that I’ve been sneaking into a deserted building for the past two and a half months. It doesn’t even look possible to enter the building at all because of the boards. I look around the streets to discover I am in the current year I should be. All seems normal, but then again, I don’t even know what normal is anymore.
A few letters from the word “Apartments” on the front of the building are missing, right under the word “Queens.” They are all rusted and tarnished. Slowly, I find myself back on my feet. I stumble to my car, refusing to look at the rotten building any longer. Where the hell is Karina?” And what the hell is going on?
I drive slow, not wanting to get worked up and drive recklessly and crash only blocks from my apartment. I manage to get home safely, but to be honest, I’m not sure if I’m dreaming or in a living nightmare. I walk like some kind of psycho killer with a thousand yard stare. At least my apartment building is normal. At the moment, things seem fine, but could just as easily go awfully wrong once again. I keep myself from imagining it and continue to walk up the stairs to my floor.
I see my door straight ahead, but look at it as if it’s foreign to me, though I know it’s not. It’s a normal door, and I’m standing in a normal hallway. Now I feel like I’m going crazy because nothing is out of the ordinary. I unlock my door, but take a deep breath before opening it.
My room is fine. Everything is in order. I walk forward and take off my jacket, throwing it on the couch. I empty my pockets and place everything on the coffee table. All I want to do now is get undressed and go to sleep. I can worry about everything else in the morning.
Wait a minute.
My lamp is on. My back is to my bedroom, and I’m afraid to turn around. I never turned my lamp on earlier before I left. There’s no reason it should be on. Slowly I turn, and see the figure of a woman lying on my bed, with her back to the headboard. Karina. She’s giving me a dark grin and seductive eyes. Silence.
Uncomfortable silence. I’m waiting for madness to consume me, when finally Karina says, “What took you so long?”
I return a dark look in my own eyes, slowly stepping towards her. “What are you doing here? I demand in a low key voice.
“Waiting for you.”
“How did you get in?” I question further.
“The door was unlocked,” she says, keeping that same maddening look on her face.
“Not it wasn’t,” I snap back.
“No, no it wasn’t,” she agrees.
“So why don’t you tell me what the hell you’re doing here,” I tell her.
Her head tilts back a little, her chin rising. “I’m sensing that there’s something you want to tell me,” she says.
“There is.”
“So say it.”
What is really frustrating me is how calm she is being. She looks like she’s trying to get inside my head. “There are two things,” I say. “One is a question, one is a statement. I’ll start with the statement.” I gather my thoughts from earlier, most of which have already escaped me. But I remember the gist of it. “I don’t want to date you anymore. I don’t want to place the fault on anyone, but I think it’s what’s right. And I’m sorry. I’ve found someone else.”
“Hannah,” she says, as if trying to remind me.
“Yes,” I say. Karina doesn’t even look the tiniest bit affected by what I’m saying, like it just passed through her ears and out the door. But she heard.
“So what’s the question?” she asks.
“The question is… who the hell are you?”
“Who am I?” she repeats, finally giving a different expression.
“Yes. Who are you? And what are you trying to do to me?” I demand.
She leans in, hands resting on the surface of the bed, and says, “I’m Karina, Luke. You know who I am. The love of your life.”
“Yea, well, lately I’ve been doubting that,” I respond.
“So why don’t you tell me who I am, or who you think I am,” she says, putting me the one under question.
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
“Look into my eyes, Luke. Look at my face. My hair. My body. Do I look familiar to you? Do I look like someone you might recognize?”
“You don’t look like anyone else,” I say, getting nervous.
The look in her eyes tells me she’s as aggravated as I am now. As she stands up from the bed and steps towards me, she exclaims, “Wrong, Luke! Wrong! Why don’t we go back in time about ten years? High school. What girl did you love more than any other? The one you told me about the first night we went out. What did she look like, huh? What did she look like?”
The memories are starting to rush back to me. I know who she’s talking about, but the memory is only fuzzy. But there is one important detail I am able to recall. The girl from long ago. It was Karina. Her name was Karina. I remember her. She was the girl I was never able to talk to. I was too shy, too unpopular. But now, somehow she is with me. Here.
“She looked like you, Karina. You’re her,” I say, overcome with emotion.
“And you wanna know something else?” she says, sounding less angry, and more like a friend. A friend helping another. “You don’t belong with me. You belong with Hannah. You understand? That’s why you’ve been going crazy. You can’t… be with me.”
I look at her like I’ve no idea what she’s talking about. What does she mean? What is really going on? Nothing makes sense anymore. I stare into Karina’s eyes, hoping she’ll take back what she just said. I want her to say that this has all been one massive joke. “What do you mean… that I can’t be with you?”
She maintains her empathetic look, and answers, “Because I’m not real.”
Those words feel like nails being hammered into my ears as I fail to hear anything else. They sink in while I begin to feel lightheaded. I don’t ask her to repeat what she said, because I heard it loud and clear. Plus, I don’t want to hear it again.
“What, what…” I mutter, before she says, “Karina? Karina is real. She’s out there living her life in the world. And she still probably has no idea who you are. You… created me. Who you’re seeing right now. Eventually you knew that you and the real Karina were never going to be together, so you just did the next best thing. You see, this is why none of your previous relationships never worked out. You couldn’t stand the thought of being with someone else, so you ended them. But when you decided to change, you needed help. That’s where I came in. I’m just a projection of the real Karina.”
My head is spinning. Dizziness becomes me. This is too much for me to take in all at once. But there’s another detail I’ve thought of. “Why couldn’t I have been with Hannah from the beginning? Why couldn’t I have been happy with her all along? Why did you have to come in?”
The way she’s looking at me. I know nothing is there, but Karina is all I see. I’m not staring into anyone’s eyes right now, but they look so real. “Because you sent her away, don’t you remember?” she reminds me. “You did so to give yourself time to get your life together. It was a good thing you did that, since that was the plan all along. Hannah is the one
girl who can make you happy, who you can really spend the rest of your life with. Think about it. If you had dated her from the beginning, everything that went through your mind while you were with me would have plagued your mind the entire time you’d be with her. All those feelings of keeping your past hidden. You told me. You don’t have any more guilt, Luke. If you had told Hannah all those things, there might be a chance that she wouldn’t forgive you. And that would make her just another ruined relationship. Now, you don’t have to say anything. Especially about me, which fortunately you haven’t done so far. You should be with her, Luke.”
I walk to the nearest wall and put my back to it. My back slides down the wall until I’m eventually sitting on the floor. I don’t feel like crying, but still remain overwhelmed. It’s hard for me to even put an expression on my face. “What about everything? The entire time we’ve been together? That was all just a fantasy? It was nothing more than my imagination.”
Karina comes closer and sits down on the floor right in front of me. “Everything is fine now, Luke. You wanted me to love you, and I did. But you knew that you couldn’t be with me forever. That’s why I suggested that we separate and see other people. That’s when you started being with Hannah. Subconsciously, you knew you didn’t need me anymore. That’s why I changed. And that’s why I tried to kill myself. But yet you just couldn’t let me go. All the bad things that’s happened, all the things you’ve been seeing, was just your mind trying to separate itself from me. You needed to figure out on your own that we were no good together. Unfortunately, it had to end like this, but it’s what needed to happen.”
I remain on the floor against the wall, so overwhelmed. Little by little, the pieces are putting themselves together. I continue to look Karina in the eyes. Oh, those beautiful green eyes. I am alone in this apartment, and I have been ever since I first began having insomnia. Was everything really necessary, and why couldn’t all of this just been easier?
“What about your apartment? What was going on?” I ask.
“There was nothing there,” she answers, “You imagined every bit of it. My supposed building had been condemned for years. Honestly, I don’t know how you never noticed that. “
“Oh, God,” I say to myself.
“You’re a good man, Luke. Coming from me, it might not be that significant anymore, but I mean it,” she says, attempting to comfort me.
“You want to know something crazy?” I ask her, as if things aren’t already at their craziest.
“What’s that?”
“You’ve been the best friend I’ve ever had. She only returns a smile and a pitiful look in her eyes. “So what now? Am I supposed to live happily ever after with Hannah?”
“If you can manage it,” she returns.
“And what about you? What happens with you now? Are you just going to go away?” I question.
“I’m afraid not,” she tells me. “Not until you get one last piece of closure.”
“What?” I ask.
“You need to find me. You need to get that burden from your chest before you can truly move on. Until then, you’re only going to go on feeling like you’re losing your mind.” She holds out her hands and says, “Just like right now.”
“How am I supposed to find you? You could be anywhere in the entire world,” I tell her.
“But more likely than not, I’m still here. Why don’t you try looking sometime? You’ll be bound to find me. And once you do, I think you’ll know what to say,” she says.
“Yeah,” I agree. I do know what to say, but how on Earth am I going to find her. With my luck, I’ll run into her the next time I go out somewhere.
“And if I had my own mind,” she says, “I’d still say that I love you.”
“And I would say the same.”
Karina leans forward and we share a final kiss. But I know she isn’t real, and that this whole time, I’ve been making love to no one. Finally, a tear rolls down my cheek as everything is put into perspective. When our kiss is over, I open my eyes. Karina is gone.
I let out a loud vocal full of grief, as if a loved one has just died. I fall forward and fall to the floor, still waiting for somebody to tell me that this has all been a joke. I shout into the floor, my voice muffled by the carpet. What am I supposed to believe now?
I do remember Karina. She was the girl I had a crush on in high school. But I never told her anything even to the day we graduated high school. I haven’t seen her in the past ten years. How am I supposed to find her? What if it’s impossible? I remember her so clearly now. She was one of the prettiest girls in school, no, the prettiest. I didn’t have an interest in anyone else but her. She was one of the nice girls, the kind who was always helping other people. But she was also popular and out of my league, which was the reason I never spoke to her. I never thought a girl like her would ever be interested in a guy like me. And my doubts have made that true. And instead of finding that out for sure, I chose to save her the trouble and reject myself for her. But that didn’t do anything, nothing at all.
It doesn’t change the way I feel and it doesn’t stop the dreaming. I gave up one small chance to live a life full of regret. That is how I have lived. When I finally started dating other girls, nothing seemed to satisfy. I didn’t love them the way I thought I did, the way I should have. My life of regret has forbidden me from moving on. Thinking about it now, it’s making more and more sense after every second. My life now is no different than how it was ten years ago. At least until I met… Karina. She changed me. I became a better man. Now I have the chance at something else. Someone real. Hannah. But nothing will stop unless I am able to make amends for the last time.
I loosen my tie, which feels like it’s choking me to death. I don’t even feel like getting myself off the floor. I feel too overcome with what’s happened to even move. However, in time, I calm down. My heart returns to normal, that sense of danger I keep feeling is gone. I feel okay now, so I pass out.
Chapter 21
I slept throughout the whole night, not waking up once. It’s morning now, and I’m still lying sprawled out on the floor. With the help of my bed, I stand up and clear my head. I don’t have any bad feelings right now, not like the room is about to explode. I can only hear silence. All what happened last night is cemented into my memory, it being the only thing I am able to think about. I feel so foolish, so crazy that I have been dating no one for all this time. How could I have never seen this, never been able to realize Karina wasn’t real?
But Karina was right. I am now ready to start a new relationship with someone who is right for me. That woman is Hannah. If I had tried to date her way back when we first met, we probably would not have lasted too long. All the emotions and struggles I felt when I thought I was with Karina would have happened to Hannah. She may not have forgiven me, and I would’ve had to start this entire process all over again.
Now I know why Karina came into my life. Everything she said was true. She changed me and helped me give up my previous unsatisfying life for her, but now I realize it was for Hannah. I can’t hate the way it all had to resolve itself, because it was all necessary. Everything I was seeing was designed to keep me away from Karina. I tried to kill her by making her commit suicide once I chose Hannah over her. But that didn’t work. All it did was make me descend further into madness. Is it wrong to still believe that I love Karina? Even though it wasn’t real? I was in love with a girl who I’ve never even spoken to. I was in love with who I wanted her to be. Oh, man. If I’ve ever had a reality check, this would be the time to say I have.
As I’m rubbing the sides of my forehead, I think about Hannah. What is the next thing I’m going to say to her? I have nothing. I am speechless right now, and she is nowhere around. But, just like clockwork, there is a knock at my door.
