The week passes with a slow crawl that makes my head ache and my nervous hands shake.
It’s time for me to meet the curly haired man, so I get on the bus and ride it until my stomach feels nauseated and weak. There’s nothing better to do than to listen to the chatter of other people. Unfortunately I’m having a hard time filtering the words around me. The world sounds like a mess.
My foot taps against the floor until a blister begins to swell.
My nerves won’t let me go.
She’s going to die.
She was going to die.
Evaline is burning down the city.
Building by building.
She is tearing down all that is old.
I begin piecing things together.
I look at my hands.
I’m over two thousand years old.
I’m starting to feel it.
The bus stops.
The man, the one with curly hair. He gets on. Our eyes meet. He walks to the back of the bus. My vision starts to go blurry. My right side goes numb. My eyes roll to the back of my head and my body starts to shake. I can feel my heartbeat in my head.
Everything goes black like a moonless night. And while I can feel my breath escaping from my lungs, there isn’t much else that I do feel.
When I open my eyes I’m no longer on the bus.
When I open my eyes I’m no longer with the curly haired man.
I’m on a couch. My old couch. I’m in my old apartment. I sit up. I look over. Evaline is walking through the door.
Part III
Someone once told me something profound. He told me of a saying by the Australian Aboriginals. It’s short and sweet and goes like this:
‘I’m surprised that you do not spin off the Earth in your loneliness.’
What he meant was not what I had perceived.
The Aboriginals do not think in the way that most westerners do. They have many voices in their heads, the voices of their ancestors and their family. They are constantly speaking with friends and people they care about. Within their head exists a multitude of consciousness.
‘I’m surprised that you do not spin off the Earth in your loneliness.’
They felt we were insane for only having one voice in our head.
Sometimes I wonder if they’re right.
I should know who I am by now.
2000 and some years old and I don’t even know when I am.
I look at Evaline sitting next to me. I begin to wonder if this is another hallucination. I begin to wonder if she’s anymore real than the Evaline I’ve been staying with these last few weeks.
The doctor told me that things would get worse. That my brain would start to cause me more and more problems. The drugs, they’ve starting eating away at my memory. They’ve started mixing things up.
Evaline looks upset. This moment is familiar. I’ve lived it before.
I ask what’s wrong.
She starts to shake. She buries her head into my arm. Her shoulders clench.
Her body quivers in a rhythmic way.
I’d hold her eyes if she cried them out.
She tells me that she’s been cheating on me. She tells me that she has been seeing another man.
And then it all clicks. I had forgotten about this. It happened over a thousand years ago. We moved past it. I think. She cheated on me and I got upset. We almost broke up for good. Then for some stupid reason, we ended up back together.
And I want to tell her things will be ok, that she doesn’t need to cry. That I love her and want to work through all of this. I just want to be with her. But those words, those words that lay on the tip of my tongue; they never bother spilling out into the air around me.
It’s like a dream.
Because all I want to do is love her but all I can seem to do is yell.
She’s crying.
I’m furious.
Red faced.
Shaking.
‘Who was it?’
And she doesn’t answer.
And I already know who it was. I know because I’ve lived through this moment before. The answer, it’s stuck in my head. It was just some guy. Someone I never knew. Someone she knew from work. Inconsequential from start to finish.
‘Was it Franklin?’
I have no control over my mouth or the words that seem to be forming within it. I feel possessed. And this, this is my seance. This is where I call upon the dead to inform the present.
I’d say that this was a dream, but I know that it’s not. It’s too real. It’s too tangible. I’m too in the moment.
And Evaline. She won’t even look at me.
I want to tell her that it’s ok, because I love her and that love means that I’m going to try to make things work.
Regardless of the emotions that I feel at the moment, I will try.
And Evaline. She starts to walk away. She tells me she needs to be alone. She tells me not to follow her.
She walks into the next room.
I follow.
She’s on the phone. She’s trying to call someone. Trying to have someone make her feel ok.
I want to hug her but instead I pull the phone from her hand and throw it to the floor.
I know that this is what I did before, but it all feels wrong now.
And perhaps I’ve grown more than I realize.
Evaline picks up the phone and starts dialing again.
‘Leave me alone you fucking asshole.’
‘You need to stop running from this goddamned situation. You need to answer my questions and at least give me an iota of respect.’
‘Go away. Just go the fuck away. You’re a fucking asshole. I cheated on you because you don’t even respect me as a person. You treat me like shit. You’re selfish, self centered and manipulative.’
This is the part where I fall apart.
This is the part where things go black.
And as my chest raises and my lungs fill with air, all I can feel is my body deflating.
My face goes pale.
