It was, as I had suspected, one of those nights. One of those yelling, screaming, throwing nights. One of those climbing down the scaffolding in the dark and following a lunatic’s map to nowhere nights.
The wooden bars of the scaffolding gives a bit beneath my feet. It wasn’t meant for long term use. My fingers slip a little on the wood, still slick from the rain earlier that day. It is always this way, a tad unsteady, but stable enough that it continues to work for me. I follow the familiar, tedious process. Across, over, down.
I finger the note gently, the creases and tears comfortable against my palm. I carefully slip oit out of my pocket. It’s written was written in red, though has now faded to a comfortable shade of pinkish orange. The lines are emblazoned in my brain – it is not as though it is necessary for me to look – it’s deep within my memory, never to depart.
The wind blows gently, then more roughly, and the paper slips from my hand, taken with the wind. It feels as though I just died.
I chase after it as it blows down the sidewalk and into the street, then gently rests itself in the road. It slows, stops, stays, and yet the wind does not. It whips on mercilessly, blowing my hair around the face and filling my lungs a bit too quickly with it’s frightening breath.
And yet there the note rests, though it should be blown about wildly by the wind. It waits for me. I imagine that perhaps it has become as attached to me as I have to it. But then, no,m it's off again, and my hopes with it. Yet it goes against the wind and grain; purposeful and idealistic. It stays within it's own rights, unbending to nature or any demand of normalacy or nature. In fact, it seems to entirely have a mind of it's own. For as it blows, it is not random, it follows as though a course has been set for it. There seems to be a path chosen in advance for the map itself. And so I do the onbly thing that seems sensible to do at the time: I follow it.
Now far away, now close, but never quite within reach. It leads in front of me myseteriously. It occors to me that I may have finally lost my mind in full and fell to the path of insanity. Perhaps it was the note: perhaps it had found within itself the power to drive me to this point. Perhaps it was more than that, perhaps it was the will of that man himself, dying unknown and perhaps unlved, saved for me, the little girl who did not know his name. And perhpas with all his will and power and passion in those last few moments of his life, he was abkle to transmit a message beyond words, pictures, and maps. But perhaps the truth is that I really have crazked. Perhaps there really is nothing stable left in me.
Yet that is what I've always been: absolutely unstable. At every moment, any point, everything could crash. I just never thought that he would. And yet, there is a method to any method I may have, and the method has always been by the scarp of paper I now follow. See, this is likely what drives men mad, though, the method. The very method by which they live is the very thing that breaks them down.
So this is me breaking. Here, as I run, desperatrely out of shape and gasping for breath, running after some scrap of paper that I do not understand the meaning of. This is the part of my story where I finally lose my mind and reason and give it up for sonme fantasy that I wish were true. And here I remind mysaelf that it’s not, for it’s simply a scrap of paper from a man completely out of his senses.
I remind myself once again that I do not even know what I am chasing after. I do not know where I do not know anything about the rainbows I’ve been chasing, or where I think this should end. Maybe, all along, I have not been mad. Maybe I have grasped some sanity all along, as not to venture to believe that there could be a real, satisfactory ending to this story. Perhaps all along it really has been about the chase and the mysetery and distraction and then…
But now I believe that the soul of a dead msan is encased in a piece of paper. So forget how my life has gone up to thois poinmt. I really am insane, now. And it’s never mattered so much to me what happens to reach the end as the end itself does. This ending is not satisfactory.
I vagyely ponder the chance that I will get run over by a car. I’ll die in some of this madness, after all. And it would seem that the means hace found their desired end in finding my ending.
But perhaps it’s not really about what we meant to do or what is sane or correct or right, but maybe it is more about what actually comes to pass. And this is what is happening: I am frantically chasing after an old, sweat stained piece of paper.
Again it stops: waiting, longing. And I follow, as not to disappoint. For in my mind it has now become more than a thing, it has begun to take on a life and a personality that is unique of itself. It remains still, allowing me to collect it once again.
I look around, suddenly aware that I had no idea where I was, nor how far I had gone. Perhaps it should have been surprising, but I feel it altogether calming that I am at a spot very much like the one I found myself in that one mysterious night so many years ago. No, not like, but the very same. Perhaps by chance, and perhaps by design, I found myself standing in the exact same spot I’d stood so many years ago, the bloodstained sidewalk beneath my feet bearing evidence to the man that I sometimes wondered if he even existed. How many times had I been back to this place! How many times had I stood in this very spot, wishing, wondering, and perhaps even waiting. But waiting for what, as I am sure you wonder. And I ask myself the same. Yet it remains that I wait.
The paper fits itself perfectly into my hand, where it belongs. I sigh at the touch of the folds on my palm, the familiarity and comfort washing over me, and I realize how silly I was to ever think it could escape. No, me and him, we’re bound. It would not leave me now.
Yet as I hold it, it grows suddenly warm. Too warm to continue holding, and it falls from my clutch, continuing in it’s mad dance – now down an alleyway. It is dark. Too dark for caution to not warn me against. Yet I feel it would not lead me into danger, so I follow willingly, and without fear.
It was an alley I had not ever noticed before. Not that this is unusual, for I imagine there are many roads in this city that I have no knowledge of. Cities cling to the skin of your mind, and it is best to not become too familiar with one unless you intend to stay there, for it won’t ever leave you. And I was with no intention of keeping this city. Within mere weeks I could be gone. I had it counted out to the day. 56. 56 days and I could be gone from this city. That’s just eight weeks to the day.
It’s warm in the alley. And stuffy, less like an alley and more like a tunnel. Black like a tunnel. In fact, it is impossible to see even a few feet in front of me, much less one small slip of paper tossed about by the night. Yet I continue on anyways, and it grows warmer, much warmer, and turns into that unbearable sort of heat.
It vaguely dawns on me that it should not be this hot. However, it is one of those passing thoughts that we all have that, though it seems like maybe it is something that should be important to me, it just barely registers on the radius of my mind. And there it rests, and from there it flees, and I forget nearly everything except the one thing I’ve spent the past 5 years striving for. And I wish I could tell you what that is, but as you akready know, you may have a better guess than I do. I’m just looking for something that does not exist in this world.
But it becomes very evident that I am no longer in this world, but that I am somewhere else entirely. The heat has subsided and the air that was once thick and heavy, like the skies before a storm, has broken into some wonderful clarity. The air is gentle, and there’s wind again, but not a harsh, whipping wind like there had been before the alley. Instead it is soft, sweet, and caressing. I slowly become aware of a comforting light overtaking me. Perhaps it had been there for some time, but it is as though I had been asleep and not understood it at all.
And there rests the note – the map – quietly waiting for me on a patch of grass. Grass, yes, that is exactly what it is. But, of course, that is ridiculous, because there is no grass in the city. It’s a city of concrete and glass, any remnants of nature had been blotted out some time ago by construction workers and “city planners”, save for the few strategically placed trees. I had always wondered about those trees. Why were they there? What was their purpose? Were they simply to give us some last, lingering remnant of hope that some day we could be saved from a world of plastic and metal and thrust back into the place that these strange creatures called home?
It seems a strange and cruel fate to constantly be teased by something just out of reach. Nay, not just out of reach, but the very thing that we ourselves had eliminated all possibility of ever knowing again. But we held onto those last few trees, strategically placed throughout the city as milestones and landmarks and symbols of false hope, and perhaps we’re clinging to that idea. That one last rainbow worth chasing.
I pick the paper up gently, unsure of what to expect. Would it stay or would it go? For perhaps the first time since we had met, I wonder if it will actually leave me for good. But no, it rests comfortably in my palm.
“I wondered when you would get here,” a voice interrupts my reverie.
I glance up from the scrap of paper into the eyes of a young woman, perhaps my own age, and attempt to quizzically raise my eyebrows at her. I am not certain how well this plan works, though nonetheless she speaks.
“I’m Jaynie,” she says, as if this should explain everything. It doesn’t.
“I’m Anna,” I reply with a calculated amount of cautition.
“We wondered how long it might take you to arrive,” she states.
“Who is we?”
“The whole team, you will meet them soon enough. You’ll like them well enough, I think. We’ve been watching you for awhile, waiting for you to figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“The map. It was not a map at all, as I’m certain you already knew. You at least kinew it on some level, because if it were just a normal map, you would not have loved it like you did, nor would you have kept it so close to you. But it has been growing on your mind for years, has it not? You think of it more and more, and you feel more attached to it, and you can’t think of anything else, can you?”
I just stare blankly at her, waiting for some kind of explanation.
“It’s not a map at all, as I already said. It is more of a key type of thing, though that is not quite right, either. It is partially a key, and I suppose that is it’s main purpose, but it is more than that, too. And it is all very complicated to explain, so I won’t. You’ll figure it out on your own one day, and it will make much more sense then than it would by anything I can say or do to attempt to explain it.”
“It’s a piece of paper,” I state, suddenly realizing my need to get some grip on reality. See, I’m alright with being slightly mad, but this has gone far beyond the point of slightly and is bordering on entirely. Now, it would just be a shame if I were entirely mad. Schitzophrenia runs through my mind as a viable option at this point, and I quickly dismiss it in fabvor of a really bad drug trip. I don’t remember taking drugs, but that is usually how the worst trips are, you don’t even remember where you are or what happened.
I would be lying if I said it hadn’t gotten worse over the past few months. There was that day when my parents found the bag in my room. It was a bad day, but since then we have managed to just pretend that nothing at all happened. And so when you’re pretending nothing is going on, I’ve found it very likely that in reality everything is going on. But we are all very aware at this point that I don’t have the greatest grip on reality right now.
Pot isn’t this bad, though. I must have gotten into something harder somewhere along the way and not even realized it. Maybe someone slipped me something. Maybe right now I’m passed out at some party deep in the inner city. Everyone is going about their business and I’m just totally passed out on the floor, with everyone stepping around me, hokding drinks in their hands that might still be a little bit too old for them.
“Do you really believe it’s a mere piece of paper?”
She’s not asking what I know. Because I know that it is, in fact, very much a mere piece of paper, and nothing more than that. But what I believed? That was another story entirely. I believed it was the one thing I had wrapped my entire life around for so long, the only stability, the only resting place, the only home. And so I shake my head, though it’s hesitant. For I wonder if, since I know that I am absolutely and certifiably insane at this point, I really am all that crazy? Maybe I am just playing along, now. Maybe I’ve given up the fight.
“Of course you don’t believe that. It’s not true,” she pauses, studying me, “you’re thinking that you’re crazy. That’s okay, it’ll take a little bit to get over that feeling. You’ll be alright, though, I promise. See, that’s the problem with you humans. You like rules and limits and boundaries. And the truth is, in all this giant crazy universe, there isn’t anything that you can be certain of. You kind of just make some guesses and roll with whatever happens from there, because you are never going to get to the point where something happens and you think that it is absolutely normal. You see, this is because in reality there is nothing normal left in the universe. Everything is incredible and surprising and has a vast and infinite amount of details and stories that none of us will ever know. Even the slightest thing: a raindrop or a pig, is the most incredible orfascinating thing that has happened since the beginning of time itself. Though time, you see, is not much of a thing itself, but… well, you will learn all of that in time.”
I blink at her, not necessarily because I’m confused, because, strangely, I’m not. I simply feel that it is the most appropriate response I could have at this moment.
“Well then, why don’t you follow me and we will get going?”
“Where am I?” I find the words to say, somehow.
“Now that is perhaps the worst question you could have asked,” Jaynie pauses, bunching up her eyebrows as though in deep thought, “see, we are not really anywhere, and yet, at the same time, we are everywhere. This is not so much a place as it is a doorway or a beginning. See, you were given a key, just to breach the threshold with. Are you ready to go anywhere with that key? Perhaps so and perhaps not. This is just, say, a holding place within dimensions. And we are the ones who keep everything all in the correct order of space, time, the universe, and all of those things that no one ever really thinks about.”
“Okay,” I rub my fists over my eyes, silently vowing to quit anything I was on, just so that this never happens again. Talk about a bad trip.
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