And I don’t know if anyone would believe it.
But when the day turns to night
And all I see is a speck of light
Darker shades come out to take my soul away.
His words literally take my breath away. Not only because of their eloquence, but because they are so completely apt to what I am going through right now. Seeing and knowing things that other people can’t. My heart hurts to wonder what it was he was feeling when he wrote this. What had been happening in his life? And was it happening when I was with him? I read the second and final verse, which is shorter than the first, only two lines:
So if I should act a little strange today,
Well you should know that I cannot control these mysterious ways.
I would kill to know what had been going on in his head. What kind of demons had been whispering in his ear? I touch my finger to the page, and let it drift over the indentations made from his pen. Matthew’s hand had created those marks, had written those words on this paper. His heart had still been beating in his chest, he had been breathing in air, and he had been living. Sometimes my brain hurts as I will it to be so again. Will him back to life.
I hesitate before turning the page, and then falter, my hand falling to my side. I don?
??t want to read this notepad full of words all at once. If I can drag out my consumption of his poems it will feel as though I still have some essential thing left of him. Something new. Something I have not yet discovered about him. I flick the thick set of pages with my thumb, wondering how many there are, two-hundred perhaps. Does that mean I have two-hundred more instances whereby I can experience his existence? Two-hundred completely unknown things about a man who is gone from this earth. I determine to make them last as long as I possibly can. Because once they are gone, he will be gone as well. Never ever to be new again.
I close the book over and place it back in the shoe box. I don’t dare to touch his last note. The very last thing he had written. It’s wrapped in some shell paper and I look at it for a long moment before dragging myself out of my trance. Carefully, so as not to damage a thing, I place the box back inside the drawer and close it over, handling it as one would a new born baby, with a mixture of love and fear.
On Sunday I wake up to the sound of my phone ringing, but I simply put my pillow over my head and refuse to answer it. That’s basically the pattern of the entire day. My phone rings and I ignore it. Again and again. There are knocks on my front door on at least two occasions but I ignore those too. My body is lethargic and my mind is comatose. I might be suffering from some kind of delayed shock, because I feel as though I’m in a waking coma. But I’m also being stubborn, seeing as I’m determined to ignore the vampires and the slayers until they fade away.
It’s not until nine o’clock that night that I finally bring myself to get out of bed, and that’s only because my stomach is screaming out for sustenance. I stumble into the kitchen and put a ready meal in the microwave, which is probably one of the single most depressing things a person can do in life. Such living dead that you cannot even bear to enter into anything more complicated when it comes to food preparation than to stick a box into another box and then hit a few buttons.
Standing there, watching the food spin around and around inside of the microwave, I regret having spent all day sleeping and wallowing in my own self-pity. My hips are as stiff as a board and my left arm has a perpetual ache because I’d been sleeping on it. When I hear the beep I retrieve my irradiated food, grab a fork and sit down in front of the television. The only halfway decent thing on is Murder She Wrote so I settle for the adventures of Angela Lansbury. She’s on the set of some music video shoot where somebody I’m guessing is going to get shot or stabbed or murdered in some way.
I know, I know, what a God-awful way to spend an evening. Eating a ready meal and watching a murder mystery re-run from the eighties. Jesus, even hanging out with the vampires would be better than this. I mean, some horror fans would even be ecstatic to discover that the mysterious beings actually exist.
When I’m finished eating I go to my room to get my phone and check if any of the people who called me today left messages. There are two. The first is from my dad, and he sounds tired and regretful. I sit back and listen to his pre-recorded voice speak to me.
“Hi honey, listen I’m not sure I dealt with things properly the last time we spoke. Please give me a call when you get this so we can hash things out. Talk to you then.” Then the message cuts off. The second is from Nicky. “Hey Tegan, answer your bloody phone would you! My God, I’ve called like twenty times. Anyways, Amanda tells me the two of you have been hanging out, I hope I’m not being replaced? Only joking. Right well call me. Bu-Bye!”
First I call my dad, but it only rings out twice with no answer so I give up, almost relieved not to have to speak to him. I leave a message on his voice mail instead, doing my best to sound cheery and stable, and not like my entire life and perception of reality has just been ripped out from under me.
“Hi Dad, I got your message. I’m just calling to let you know that I found a job, so you can rest easy in the knowledge that I’m not going to starve or be kicked out of my apartment. And about the whole college thing, well, I am going to go back, I’ll probably repeat in September. I don’t know. I need to figure this out for myself. Please don’t worry about me, I’m fine,” I laugh and try to sound light-hearted, “or maybe I’m just going through some kind of quarter life crisis, who knows. Anyway, I love you. Talk soon.”
Then I hang up and sit silently for a moment, thinking about my dad, and hoping he isn’t lonely living in our house all by himself. I call Nicky shortly thereafter. We talk and talk for a long while, saying so much but at the same time absolutely nothing at all.
On Monday morning I get up and set out for work, despite tossing and turning all night, trying to decide whether I should or shouldn’t quit my job at Indigo. Most people think there is something sinister about their boss at one stage or another, but it’s a whole other matter when you know for a fact that yours is a warlock. On Saturday I’d been excited to discover that there had been a real spell cast on me and that Marcel and Gabriel were going to discover what it is. But the more I think about the whole situation, the more hesitant I am for them to unravel the magic within me. It feels sort of invasive, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with two men I barely know using powers on me I have no chance in hell of understanding. Delving into places inside of me that I don’t even know about myself.
As I arrive at the shop I bump into Gabriel who is just leaving. He informs me that he and Marcel will be out all morning and that I’ll have to take care of things until they get back. I nod and smile, while secretly I’m terrified something will come up that I don’t know how to deal with. Like a customer wanting something important from that back room, for instance. And what if that happens? All I’ll be able to do is stand stock still and stare at said customer wondering what they are, and what they need those specialist back of the shop things for.
I spend some time fixing up the bookshelves, which have clearly not been sorted in quite some time. Later on, I’m sitting at the register painting my nails an ever so pleasant shade of blue black when the last person I want to see enters the store. Rita. After the way she treated me before, I don’t exactly have very many warm and fuzzy feelings towards her. In fact, warm and fuzzy are probably the last two words I would use to describe this girl.
She’s got a sleeveless, knee length black dress on, with bare gaps on either side where the front of the garment is secured to the back via long rows of safety pins. Her hair is a mess, but that’s clearly intentional, and she’s wearing her New Rock boots again.
Chewing on a wooden toothpick, she steps up to me, then leans back against one of the display shelves. Her black rimmed eyes watch me for a moment before she asks, “So, are Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee not around today then?”
“Huh?” I say, my vocabulary astounds me sometimes. Then a second later, after she’s raised her eyebrows at my slowness, I get what she means.
“Oh, Marcel and Gabriel, you mean? No they aren’t in.” I tell her and then continue painting my nails.
She grins, making her way towards the staff door. “Right well, um, I’ll just be in the back then.”
“Hey,” I call. “Are you allowed to go in there?”
Rita doesn’t answer, probably pretending she hasn’t heard me, and disappears through the door. I get up and follow her, finding her in the “special” back room, rifling through a chest of drawers.