Chapter 33

33

What a time to become completely disconnected from myself.

My thoughts are at war with one another, a civil war, my left lobe against my right. Brothers fall from their brother's arms and cannon shots decimate the infrastructure.

I hear a thought rustle behind me, calling to me amidst the chaos. I turn to see her face, a face I've all but forgotten.

She speaks to me slowly, cautiously, warning me of impending danger. Her breath rises with the words, chilled with the afternoon air.

"I loved you so much," she fires at me. "But I could never compete with these thoughts. I could never defeat your soldiers of negativity."

And within these words I see an alternate ending, a Tennessee Williams drama rewritten for mass consumption. The first act opens and I am destroying myself systematically, the clacking of a typewriter slowly tapering off. She enters, stage left, through the office door. She wears a soft blue robe, her hair still wet from the shower.

No words pass between us as my siren makes her way across the room. I am mesmerized by her beauty, unable to move, so she takes my hand, gently, and pulls me from my chair.

*Curtain*

Act Two. The sun has made its way behind the mountains and night falls quickly. There is no dialogue as we walk through the house turning off every light. No conversation emerges as she strikes a match and begins to burn the mantle candle. The smell of sulfur dissipates into the audience.

In a pile lying center stage are my novels, hardback tombs that case my soul. With a snap of her fingers they ignite, and, noticing the look of horror on my face, she softly says to me, "You don't need those anymore, Richard."

She is right.

With every page that burns, a weight is lifted from my shoulders. The burden eases with every ashy ember.

*Curtain*

Act Three. She has led me outside where the full moon against the snow makes the evening resemble mid-morning. This is the re-write as snow begins to fall from a cloudless sky. This is what she wanted me to see, but I refused to leave the books to burn. I chose dying words over a living love and it destroyed me.

The thought, standing among the corpses of all that came before her, turns, leaving her brunette hair to follow behind. And as she begins to walk away, leaving a broken man to smolder the fire, I hear the sound of reality coming down upon her like a shell fired from a canon. As the explosion subsides and the dust settles, I wonder if she was ever really there at all.