Sunset Tsunami – Issac Freeman
In Absence
Ethan MacLaren
Sea, Swallow Me.
— Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd)
My last memory before dying was escaping the wretched walls of my asylum. My life ended about a week ago– or at least that’s what the sun suggests. Orion, a stranger whom I only discovered a day or so before my demise, led me to my liberation. I first met him waiting at the bus stop.
********
I rest my head in mourning against the glass pane littered with advertisements for local events and worthless products. I hate the ingenuousness of it all; no one sincerely grins like that while volunteering at a recycling center. The people displayed in these posters only offered the act of a smile, a pose– not a smile from witnessing the birth of your child or the embrace of your lover. Despite this, I promise that my thoughts usually do not bear this weight of insufferable cynicism. The truth is, my emotions have been inflamed since the tragedy last month.
I lost the woman with whom I had searched our souls. Together, we found that no other piece of the Earth held the same vivid depths as our love. In our hearts, we shared a fire, and in her absence, I feel the flames consuming me. Only the aqueous tears that stream down my face and land on my chest keep the inferno at bay.
My watery eyes remind me of the first time we met by Lake Grandeur. The professor of our shared American Literature course had taken us to view the unending horizon above the water, a lesson on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalist philosophy. I liked the idea of finding oneself by embracing nature, and it was by this lake, mulling over Emerson’s texts, that my sublime lover revealed herself to me. With our class scattered around the water’s perimeter to observe it in all its glory, I chose to stand upon a hidden ledge that put me about a foot and a half closer to the lake than the rest of my peers. I stood with my legs stretched into a triangular shape for a stable base, tall and proud of my achievement. I felt that the lake knew my name, as though I alone stood close enough to cross the barrier between mortals and nature, sharing a deadly knowledge only we could bear. But then she came up behind me, wanting a clearer look, and I obstructed her view. Out of courtesy, I stepped aside to make room. As she approached, I had the sudden urge to warn her not to get any closer, for her mind could shatter with the knowledge upon the ledge. In a flash, however, her body moved more swiftly than my mouth, and I blinked in awe as she seemed to know the lake even better than I did.
Her eyes boasted a shimmering metallic texture, and my instincts told me the lake’s secrets lay within them.
“I wonder where it ends?” she asked regarding the infinite basin.
Slightly taken aback by the soothing frigidness of her voice, I responded, “Perhaps it never does.” She glanced at me, smirked, and returned her eyes to the water.
“I wish we had more nature on campus. For every brick building, we could probably fit about a hundred trees.” She replied.
“Yeah and if only they could fit a whole lake as well.” I noticed she smiled again, though this time maintained her gaze on the water.
For the next minute, we stood in perfect silence and listened to the speech of the waves. Closer to the lake than the rest of our class, we became the King and Queen of the wind, water, and shore.
We sat together on the bus back to campus. The students around us had already moved on from the lake, returning to their mortal lives to gossip about their exes and exchange addresses for parties. Even our professor was wholly occupied directing the bus driver who hadn’t the slightest clue of the route back home. Only the girl and I, who had become bonded by Earth’s will, seemed to remember ever having been at the lake. Our vision collectively metamorphosed; nature now always imposed itself to the foreground. As the world raced by through the window, we couldn’t help but capture every tree, cloud, and pebble. During our daily walks across campus together, we heard car’s engines humming like rustling leaves, the voices of students washed over us like waves, and her metallic eyes still shimmered like the sun over the lake’s surface. Years later, nature drew us back to Lake Grandeur, calling for us to host our wedding along its shore. In the same words that we spoke our vows, we worshiped and gave our prayers to the sublime.
Nature’s sublimity has died with her– the sky is no longer an open field, but a cage that constrains me; trees now stand too straight like a child’s Crayon drawing on a disposable menu; the birds sing a song meant to succeed on the radio, not fill the soul.
While lamenting the loss of my lover and the betrayal of nature, I soon find that I shared the bus bench with another man. I swiftly straighten my body and subtly wipe my tears. Despite attempting to avoid eye contact, I sense the man’s eyes fixed on me. Embarrassed and dreading conversation, I glance back to the advertising posters, locking eyes with a model for some roofing company. However, now, in the model’s phony smile, I perceive an impression of death, as though their eyes glare at me full of emptiness. I have to choose to either look at the model or the man and in my flared emotional state, spiteful of the model’s white teeth and perfectly tiled roofing, I twist my body around to witness the gazing entity.
The man bears silver hair, much too gray for the age I discern from his face. A thin beard of the same hue lines his jaw, complementing his metallic eyes that possess a haunting likeness to those of my lost lover. Engulfed by this discovery and pleading that I had found some remnant of her, I clutch the man’s eyes with my own, feeling as though Lake Grandeur shimmers once more. Under the false sky and between the artificial trees, my role with the man quickly reverses as I become the bizarre one staring at the other. Finally, he speaks, releasing me from his trance.
He introduces himself as Orion, and I respond as Julian.
********
I’ve yet to reach any afterlife during death. I suppose my persisting consciousness is an afterlife, but the only thing here is a black abyss. No god, devil, or spirits have presented themselves to me, only an infinite basin of shadows. My life was a short period of my existence, as only the eternal abyss lies ahead of me now.
Floating through the dark abyss, I have discovered that for a few hours at a time, I can leave and roam the Earth as a wisp of a creature floating through the air and passing through walls; no one sees me and I can not interact with the physical world, like a ghost. However, I have only a limited time on Earth each day. Once my few hours are up, the abyss grabs me by my neck and reels me back in. Every day since dying, the abyss offers fewer hours to spend among the living. Today, I had just under thirty minutes, tomorrow I suspect hardly even ten. I spend every precious second hoping to find her ghost roaming around. I have visited our home, her grave, and even Orion’s bus bench, but since I haven’t reached her yet, I suppose she has used up all her time allowed on Earth.
********
I feel egregiously embarrassed after crying in front of a stranger, but Orion drew no attention to my weeping. Half-joking, he asked, “How delayed do you think this bus is gonna be, Julian?”
I check my watch but can hardly calculate its tardiness with my lover’s eyes inserted on his face and muffling my thoughts. He seems like a reflection of my lost lover; I want to take his hand to check if he also shares the softness of her skin, smell his hair to see if he used the same shampoo, but I restrain my urges and simply reply, “No clue, but the damn thing is always running late.”
I don’t mind the bus’s tardiness this time though. Every second spent inside our house constantly reminds me of her absence. While my soul has torn in two, so has the rest of our home. Since her funeral, my dishes pile up in the sink half as fast, laundry clutters the floor twice as slow, and the water bills have decreased considerably. I had forgotten the ease of living alone, and remembering tortured me like a nightmare. My chores have become less onerous upon my body, but my heart aches tenfold. No other tasks in the world could have satisfied me more than making dinner for the two of us or ironing her work clothes for the next week.
For her job, she had a home office secluded from the rest of the house. Positioned in the corner, her prized rustic cocobolo desk spread across half that room– while hardly large enough to fit all of her notes and sketches, she wouldn’t have traded that desk for any other in the world. I haven’t worked up the courage to clear it out yet. Keeping her desk cluttered means there’s another task for me to complete, a chore that should have been taken up by her.
“You going home from work?” Orion inquires.
I respond yes and ask the same of him.
“No, I haven’t worked in years. I don’t think I would last another second in an office. The whole atmosphere of an office is poisoned, you feel? It’s all filtered through the dusty AC system, and the dead paint on all the walls seeps into the air.”
“Why not apply for a job outside an office? There’s plenty of opportunities around this town.” I suggest.
“You see, the thing is that the whole world’s been infected. The poisoned air doesn’t just stay in the buildings, it spills out into the parking lots, goes down the roads, ruins our parks, and even intrudes into our own homes.” Orion’s articulation becomes increasingly enthusiastic the longer he rants.
At the same time, he speaks to me with the ease of talking to an old friend. I don’t respond with much, but repeatedly nod so he knows he has my attention. Finally, after telling me how humans have turned the planet into a devilish creature, he ends his long tangent. During a slight pause, he studies my face, waiting for a response.
“How long has it been?” Orion starts after I fail to speak.
“Well I’ve been waiting here for about 15 minutes, and the bus was supposed-”
“Not that, how long since the funeral?”
Nausea settles into my bones. Orion’s words strike my chest like a lion’s claws digging into a sick antelope. How could he have known about her? Is he a supernatural creature that can read minds? A scam artist trained to exploit the mourning? An obsessed serial stalker who has assumed the characteristics of my lover and now awaits my affection? Or perhaps he is simply God?
“I don’t mean to frighten you, as your eyes just dilated to the size of the sun, but I’ve been in your position before. There’s a certain viscosity and contour to the tears of a loved one.”
He waits for a response. I remain silent.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to intrude on your personal life, but I know how helpful it can be to talk to someone about it. Especially a stranger you never have to see again.”
I should be furious that this man wants me to tell him about my deceased wife. My self-respect should have me jump out of my seat and release a series of rageful obscenities to scold him for his inappropriate behavior. I even catch the perpetually grinning actors sorting trash and roofing tiles cocking back their arms to reach out their posters and slap him across the face. Despite every force of nature willing me to detest his speech, I regrettably blurt out, “You have her eyes.”
Before I can feel the full wave of my impending embarrassment, Orion grins and responds without calling attention to the absurdity of my words.
“You can’t lose your mind over it, Julian. This world doesn’t deserve our emotions. It tears at our hearts when we’re already down, and then walks over us when we need help. Not even the air helps us breathe anymore.”
Orion’s words struck me like sublimity’s death and nature’s falseness. The sky, now a soft pink with streaks of orange, mocks me in my mourning; though colorful, in her absence, it merely looks like a photographed sunset glued to a canvas above.
“I get that. The world seems bleaker after it all happened, but I still want to appreciate the air and everything else in nature.” I offer.
“You’re right, Julian, and I believe nature deserves our appreciation. But we live in an asylum, and true nature exists beyond the walls that confine us.” Just as Orion finishes his sentence, the bus arrives.
“I want to give you this. I know the feelings haunting you now, and this helped me through my challenges.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a business card.
“Here’s a group I’ve been going to for a few years. Come around when you’re ready. The air’s clean in this place.”
I take the card and swiftly follow Orion onto the bus. I hardly fit with the passengers shoulder to shoulder, so I squeeze myself between the crowd and suck my stomach in as the door closes. Though Orion stands behind me, the crowd restricts my body from turning to face him. Of the unsynchronized breaths warming up my neck, I try recognizing Orion’s; the slow and heavy breath to my left must come from a much stouter man; the quick wheezing blowing across the top of my head from someone taller; the loud airy gasping from a man who works in an office. I start wondering whether Orion had any breath at all.
The bus arrives at my stop and I look back into the crowd as I descend, expecting to see Orion behind where I stood, but only witnessing a sea of unknown faces. I can’t imagine where he went considering the dense crowd. Before I have any time to catch a glimpse of the people behind the front row, the bus departs and leaves me alone on the curb. I quickly forget about Orion’s ghost-like disappearance and make my way down to the house.
********
Only one day remained for me after the initial encounter with Orion. I never completely solved his disappearance on the bus, but I begin to doubt if he ever even stepped on at all.
********
As I walk back to the house, under the artificial sky, I inspect the card Orion handed me. On the front, bold green text spells out the phrase, “Healing Circle” overlaying a photo of a group gathered around in chairs. On the back, I find their address and phone number. I immediately recognize the street; we used to walk it every other Friday night to go to Cafe Vert and listen to their live music. She reeled me into this routine because she adored their performances and fussed whenever we had to miss them. I teased her for her obsession, but the music spoke to her in a language I never understood. She had a particular fondness for the piano lady, though we only knew her as Li because of her hat with the letters embroidered onto it.
Before the cafe at the corner of the street, I remember a building established inconspicuously among the retail stores with a green sign hanging over the sidewalk. Though I never paid much attention to it, I realize now that the sign read, “The Healing Circle”. It was a support group for mental health, and not once passing it with my hands intertwined in hers did I ever consider attending it myself.
As I reach our house and enter through the side door, I imagine her face lighting up as Li dances her fingers along the piano keys. I switch on the lights, half expecting to see her lying on the couch with eyes full of music, but I come upon the room too clean and quiet. The only mess left in the house presides in the office across her cocobolo desk. She got the desk through a bitter argument with Mr. Goursuch, the owner of our local butcher shop just a few blocks from Cafe Vert. After failing to prepare her prepaid catering order of enough sausages and chicken thighs to feed her entire work building, Mr. Goursuch only offered 30 bucks to our $450 payment. While my lover usually flowed calmly like the runoff of rainfall, at a moment’s notice she could turn her shimmering eyes into bitter ice and orate with a sharp frigidovertone sitting at the tip of her tongue. Against my lover’s verbal assault, Mr. Goursuch initially stood his ground like a stubborn mountain, but she eventually iced him out. She hung his pride in the freezer next to the rest of his livestock and forced him to concede his autonomy. While she ended up delivering a full catering order to her colleagues, she also managed to negotiate taking the desk sitting behind his counter, a wholly unnecessary prize that she kept as a glistening trophy holed up in her office. Partly in awe, partly in fear, I tried my best to remain in her good graces. Luckily, I experienced the warmth of sitting together on the couch far more than her glacial bitterness.
I lay across our couch and imagine the cushions as her arms and the pillows as her torso. I let out a sigh as I stretch across the furniture and reflect on Orion’s words from the bus bench. I can’t help but suffocate in my own house now, feeling the dust settle at the bottom of my lungs from the AC-filtered oxygen. The only mercy I am offered is when I eat dinner, the same meal I’ve had for a month. Though every bite of my unseasoned chicken and square potatoes tastes the same, the act of chewing and swallowing monetarily spares me from having to breathe the air. Even when I wash my food down with a drink, the water blocks any oxygen from poisoning me. During my shower, I hold my breath and put my face under the running water, but the pattering drops aren’t enough. I prepare a bath and submerge my torso. Under the water, I breathe clearer than ever, and after a couple of minutes, when I come back up, I drown in the air. The merciful water reminds me of Orion. His presence washed over my body like waves creeping up on the beach shore; the waves only meet the shore for a short while, but they cool them from the scorching sun. Yearning for his cool presence once more, I decide to attend the Healing Circle.
********
I am visiting our home in the short eight minutes the Abyss offers today. The house is neither mine nor my lovers anymore, but I find it occupied by a half dozen police officers investigating my disappearance. They scour every crevice in every room, searching between the couch cushions, the bathtub, and even my microwave. They find no leads to my whereabouts, but just the remnants of two lovers separated by a month. The only evidence of life is my unfinished draft proposal and the mess she left across her grainy cocobolo desk. Sketches of submarine frames lay scattered on top of notes recording pressure calculations and oxygen tanks. She took great care in her voyaging torpedoes of the ocean, measuring every metal plate out to the exact quarter inch and the density of every nut and bolt with perfect precision. In the closet of her office, the police find the empty box of her scuba gear with extra oxygen tanks surrounding it.
My vision is starting to become hazy with black spots obscuring my eyes, a sign that the abyss has its fingers wrapped around my neck to reel me back in. With time fleeting, I scramble to capture the clearest image of our old house in my mind, hoping to remember every corner and divot once I’m completely cut off from the Earth. I don’t know if the abyss will offer more time tomorrow, but in my desperate final moments, I hear the police speaking on the phone– something about my corpse.
********
I get up slowly this Saturday morning. I left the only work I have today on the kitchen counter: drafting a proposal for the company’s new Outreach Program. Usually, I would have completed it during the week, but my efforts have been lazier ever since she died. I returned to work a day after the funeral, and the bosses noticed my sluggish arrival and unkempt look–I had grown uneven stubble and long hair disheveled. Though sympathetic to my trauma, they needed me at my best during their critical relaunch period. Since I could hardly finish my work, much less with any competency, they threatened to suspend or replace me entirely; grief had no place in their corporation.
I make a late breakfast, the same as every day before, composed of eggs, sausage, and a cup of fruit. I grudgingly start writing my draft as I wait for my food to cool down. With my pen in hand and the eggshell-colored paper beneath it, I feel transported back into the office. Long fluorescent lights buzz above my head and dusty air spins around the room from the AC’s current. The decorations on my wall seem to disappear and only a dead blank surface remains. I can’t tell whether I’m in an office or a hospital. I become nauseated and drop my pen into my fruit cup. I nearly collapse into my eggs and sausages but catch myself. I can’t bear to look at the draft any longer, so I get up and start a cold bath.
The water soothes me, bringing my mind to a calm land. During my spell of clarity, I decide that I must quit my job before it kills me, so on a new sheet of paper, I write a letter of resignation. I should give it to my bosses on Monday, but I fear my judgment may change if I wait the whole weekend. To ease my nerves, I seal the letter into an envelope and mail it to the office. I feel immoral leaving the company high and dry without notice, but I reason that they already planned on firing me.
I spend the rest of the daylight thinking about Orion. The Healing Circle has a meeting tonight, and my only motivation for going is to see him again. I am not sure if I wish to see him out of desire or resentment. His eyes match my lovers, and they both can peer into the same parts of my soul, but Orion’s revelation of the air’s impurity has suffocated me all last night. His doctrine has caused a fog to reside in my brain, leaving me unemployed and unable to firmly grip a pen. When I see him at the Healing Circle, I will demand that he relieve me of this spell.
I never noticed the graffiti over their hanging green sign. A smiley face had been boldly drawn at the bottom of the text, and next to it, a faint frowning face had been rubbed out. I debate going down the street to listen to the Vert Cafe’s weekend jazz show, but through the glass pane of the Healing Circle, I see Orion standing amongst a sea of people.
As I walk in, I enter a jungle. Artificial grass covers the entire floor and huge photos of woodlands decorate the walls. From the ceiling, vines crawl around and obscure the grey square tiles over the air ducts. Small groups of people stand scattered around the room in front of a circle of chairs. They all seemingly wait for the session to get started. Orion stands alone, by the portion of the wall displaying a picture of a raging river. The photo is intimate, personal to the water as if you can feel its power emanating through the wall. The photographer must have felt its pellets of water-like bullets against his face as he knelt and waited for the waves to crash into the jagged rocks, boasting the perfect photo. Occupied by the river, Orion hasn’t noticed me yet. I start walking over to say hello, but before I reach him, the loud voice of a woman spreads across the room like the potent river. She calls the session to begin and everyone takes their seat around the circle.
I try sitting next to Orion, but the chairs fill up too quickly. I end up across from him and next to strangers. Though I should consider Orion a stranger as well, I feel like I’ve known him for much longer. The session starts but the lead woman forgoes any introductions, I suppose most of these people come here regularly as they all seem to have a small group to talk among. Throughout the session, I quickly pick up on the tragedies that bring everyone in. A few seats to my left, a young man in his early 20s spoke of a fatal car crash with his parents, killing both of them instantly. Now, he grapples with the guilt of receiving what they left to him in their will. A woman in a turquoise jacket across from me told the group of her cancer diagnosis– though her jacket masked the drained color from her face. Sitting among this group, I feel like a criminal. I have no intention of gaining any support during my time here, I merely want to see Orion who doesn’t speak a single word the entire time. It occurs to me that I have no clue what tragedy haunts his past, only that he had the supernatural ability to understand my own trauma.
Once the session ends, I rush over to finally greet him. In the supportive atmosphere of the room, I forget my resentment against him. He smiles and exclaims in delight that I made it.
“You were right about the air in here, Orion. It feels much cleaner.”
“Oh yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah, but I’m just curious as to why?”
Orion chuckles before responding. “I don’t know Julian, can you tell me what you think?”
Though slightly annoyed at his leading question, I gather my thoughts and give it my best shot.
“I was thinking maybe the green around the room offers a strong enough illusion of nature. It could also be tears dripping from everyone’s eyes that filter the dusty air.”
“Tears, you think? How do you figure that?”
“Well I’m not entirely sure, it’s more of a gut feeling.”
He stares at me, unsatisfied with my answer, so I continue, “After I thought a lot about what you said to me yesterday on the bus bench, about the air being poisoned and all, I couldn’t even appreciate the sky or trees the same way while walking home. But then, when I took a bath last night, after plunging my head into the water, I felt free from the world. It’s the most calm I’ve felt since she died.”
Orion, intrigued, asked “And you think the tears are similar to your bath?”
“It could be,” I reply.
“Well, to be honest with you, Julian, I only said that to get you to come here.”
“What? About the poisonous air?” I fear I’ve quit my job over nothing.
“No, that part remains true, Julian. I meant telling you that the air in here is any better than outside.”
My fear shifts from my unemployment to Orion’s motives, “So why do you want me here at all?”
“Few people ever learn the truth about our world, much less the path to escaping it. The fact you’ve discovered the true nature of water in a single night tells me everything I need to know about you, Julian.”
“What are you talking about? We met yesterday, you don’t know me, and I don’t know any truth about the world or any escape from it.” My fear presents as anger. The room starts eyeing us, so Orion deescalates my nerves.
“Look, I don’t mean to upset you. I can tell you more, but not here. We have to go somewhere else for that.”
I scoff and stagger backward. A magnetic force pulls my body towards the exit, a sign that I should leave the Healing Circle and never return.
“I’ve only known you for a day and I have no reason to follow you anywhere. It’s not like I just came here for you” I lie.
“Of course not Julian. You’re here because of her.”
“Don’t speak of her and my loss like you know me. You don’t even know her name.”
“And do you?” Orion’s challenge causes my head to spin.
I stare into his eyes to view Lake Grandeur shimmering, hoping to find her name within them, but it is lost to me. My heart falters and the artificial grass under my feet begins dragging me down.
Orion catches me when I fall and he insists, “Julian, if you follow me to escape this false world, we will find her name together”
In my desperate deliberation, while looking up at his metallic eyes, I notice a miniscule imperfection under his thin beard: a brown birthmark on the edge of his chin, the same as my lover. At this moment, I denounce nature and pledge my allegiance to him. I know the only way to find her name again is to follow him to the ends of the Earth.
He smiles and gestures to the river on the wall.
“We will escape there and find her name as well.”
I climb into his passenger seat to drive with him. I’ve lost autonomy over my body, and the car carries me like a hospital bed. The night sky looms over us, but now I can see the true asylum ceiling hanging behind the stars. Orion runs off the main road and drives along a dirt path through the woods. The trees no longer fool me, for I notice the glue that sticks them to the walls. We finally reach our destination: a lake much smaller than Grandeur but large enough to lose a pair of goggles in. The car’s fluorescent headlights, pointing into the river and reflecting off the misty air, provide the only light. We exit the vehicle and sit among the rocks on the shore.
“Her name lies here, under the surface, in the infinite basin.” Orion’s voice matches the chill of the night.
“I have to get out of the asylum, Orion. It’s taken my lover’s name from me.” My lips remain stagnant, but Orion hears every word.
“Follow me, for she awaits you in the depths.” Orion stands up, inches towards the shore’s edge, and descends into the lake.
I follow suit. With every step into the frigid water, my body slowly fades away, and soon, only my head remains dry. As my eyes peak above the surface, I take a large breath and catch a last glimpse of the Earth; beneath, the boundless abyss swallows me. Finally, my body vanishes from the Earth, and I have escaped the poisoned world.
I feel the ground under my feet fall away, and the liquid surges through my veins up to my brain. I release my final breath of air from my lungs and breathe in peace under the water. I hear my lover’s voice call my name, but I wish she would yell out her own. I try remembering it, but her name floats through the infinite basin. I float as well, and I soon enter the abyss.
********
I have no time left on Earth. The abyss offered my last three minutes today, and I’ve already used them all up. During my last minutes today, I visited my body in the morgue located in the basement of the hospital’s psychiatric wing. They had shaved my stubble and trimmed my hair to make me look more presentable, as requested by my family. The police had reported my disappearance to my parents and notified them immediately after finding my corpse in the lake during a long and thorough search, the only body they ever found.
If I am to glimpse the Earth again, I must find my lover, for the only remnant of the planet lies within her metallic eyes that boast the shimmering Lake Grandeur. I have an eternity ahead of me, and an eternity I shall spend searching for her so I can relearn her name and tend to the fire in our hearts. I will swim to every corner of infinity until I find the submarines she sketched across her desk; once I knock on its glass window, she will open the hatch and embrace each other’s grace. Finally, during our remaining eternity together, we shall explore every depth of the sea.