Sketches in Words

"The unfinished story is the most promising, for it holds all the mystery and excitement in its potential."

"I come out of the shadows, into the world."

The Long Red Line

I remember a long red line extending without end on a background of white; blurred but certain in its relentless continuity. I remember faces, too. Indistinct, stretching to infinity as they merged with one another. And sounds. People talking in muffled voices, in familiar sounding words that I could not quite comprehend. They could be whispering in my ear or screaming somewhere afar. But I was not confused. I knew exactly what was happening. I knew. And I felt many sensations. I felt like many people. Different people, but all me, all the same.

That was a long time ago. But still, I remember..

Small Things

Big things happen because of small things. You look right instead of left just for a second and your whole life changes its course forever. You may get killed. Or you kill somebody. And the worst thing is, there’s no rewind button. What’s done is done. So that’s how it was with me. I looked right. And I killed somebody. Not then, not that day, but later. And perhaps, inevitably. So it was that moment that changed my life forever. I looked right for a mere flash of a second and I saw something. What I saw forcefully ejected me from my life’s path that I had been following until that moment and landed me where I am right now. That’s why I’m sitting in this prison cell serving life without parole. And you see, there’s not much life to speak of for me anymore. You could say I’m a ruined man. But it was not for nothing. My life changed at that moment, but so did the lives of many others. You’ll see. I’ll write it all down. I’ve got time. I don’t have much else, but I’ve got time. Lots of it.

My life has three chapters. That’s how I see it. The first chapter is pretty ordinary. Middle-class parents, good education, a white-collar job, wife, mortgage, divorce, no kids. Ups and downs for sure, but nothing out of the ordinary. And I was OK. Really OK. All that changed when I turned my head that day one way rather than the other. It is then that the second chapter of my life began. That was the exciting part. It was also the shortest, but more things happened to me in the following two months that don’t happen to most people in the whole of their lives. And it ended me here. This is my third chapter. This is the part when I do the thinking, the analysis. This can potentially be the longest chapter, too. But that won’t happen. I know that. And you’ll know, too. I am going to tell you why.

Melissa and the Handmaker

And it is here that I must end my story, for I never saw them again. I returned home the next morning and silently slipped back into the patterns of my former routine; that insignificant existence we call everyday life.

It is through the eyes of an ordinary man living a quiet life now that I realize the events of those three days were so bizarre, so extraordinary. And so wonderful. I know also that it all sounds so incredibly fantastic. And yet, this is the true course of events as I have experienced them, without adding or subtracting anything.

I have not kept in contact with the characters after the events, but I know through other people that the Handmaker is still somewhere in the city, living a quieter life now and not getting himself in trouble anymore; or at least none that I’ve heard of. As for Melissa, she was never seen again, but I've heard that she moved out of the country; where, I do not know. 

Maybe one day our paths will cross again, somewhere. I sure hope the circumstances will be different..