nothing about him was real. but she didn’t know that at first. at first, he was fascinating in the way loosely-bound wrappers of fiction are; stranger than life and bigger, too, until you looked closer. when you looked closer, you could see the gaps between reality and make-believe; they hung all blown out, loose, and flappy in the wind of reason.
she used to read his history, the collection of fiction presented as facts and thought he led such an amazing and talented life. for a time, she was both admiring and envious because so much about him seemed to point to the possibility that it was possible to actually live like that… free and creative and unconstrained.
the wrappers crackled a lot though, and even as she didn’t realize what the sound was, something of her knew what it meant. as her questions and curious ways dug deeper, he withdrew. only appropriate, really, after all it wouldn’t do to be known or too clearly seen.
she used to love the way he spoke about himself and his dreams for life. it was never other than grandiose and astonishing. ‘my life work…’ he would say, speaking of odd images drawn in margins and strange combinations of letters that he insisted were language. he always got so angry when she pointed out that language requires history to be real.
for all he would talk about his amazing life, he never managed to deliver the details. so she began looking for them herself. the crackling sounds of all the things he never said led her to the places where the spaces could be seen.
it was in that time that she discovered the truth, or maybe it was just another view on things. you ever notice how it’s hard to actually know? all the same, she found the things missing inbetween the disjointed story.
she remembered how he once said he needed her to be distant, unreal, imaginary. untouchable, even, and the thought made her sad because the first contradiction is always a sad thing. in a life story of connectedness and closeness, when it came down to it, he wanted most of all fantasy, illusion, holograms and dreams… things that could only exist whatever in the spaces inbetween.
over time, she realized the crackling noises were his voice, his speaking, his words. first came the story, then the denial of the story, then the annoyance for there being any difference, then the anger for her daring to notice there was one… and ask of it.
the moment he told her that he needed her to be unreal was the moment she became so, of course. from that pinpoint instant forward, for all her reality, he created what he needed and she did, in fact, become unreal for him.
long months thereafter, she has returned to reading more frequently and because of it, despite herself, she finds the spaces between… the truths and the lies. she collects nothing anymore…. the effort to collects all the slivers of memory of his many wrappers are strewn to the winds and lost utterly. but, regardless her profound disinterest, the spaces between keep parading by… showing themselves openly, perhaps proudly. if emptiness can be proud.
the old mailing list. the aelph. the many fictions of fixion. the dirt in which scrytch was crudely scrawled. the chinese singer in love with the virtual celebrity. rez. roi toei. like a strange virus of the mind, all the careful slivers pocketed in kelptomanic compulsion and massaged in a vat of psychological brine to make these organic papers that rustle and whisper.
she carefully untied the cord holding them together last autumn. they scattered in all directions almost as if they had life. reluctant parchment swirling in acid rain, falling apart slowly until returning at last to pulpy, ignoble nothingness… just old fibers losing cohesion.
he hated her for it of course. he who dreams and calls it life’s work as if there is anything of life or work possible in dreams. careful script in moleskin notebooks, slow steps along an infinite spiral, and unfocused eyes that could look upon anything so long as it kept a safe distance.
she idly stubs a toe in the now unidentifiable glop of material that hangs in the gutter grate. for a moment, she contemplates the magical alternate universe that lives just under the street… where this poor, biodegradable mess will somehow shift once out of sight and be more than recycled, more than decaying, somehow permanent.
as it lands with a soft, wet squish… out of sight and out of mind, she remembers how it feels to forget and sets a single dot onto the page.