VACILANDO

...part one...

Intro

·

For as far back as he could remember, Farmer had only been afraid three times. Re-phrased; Farmer had only been afraid every time someone’s life became his responsibility. His youngest sister was number three, comatose in front of him, totally unaware of how he felt.

Her eyelids had the color of marble after being blown lightly with dry, crushed blue chalk; her lips like a lake during drought, with a shining, wet core and fissured, desert shoreline. Her hands were so tiny, the skin on them practically transparent, and she had bones as papery as her skin.

“My sister,” said Farmer lovingly, reassuring himself.

How ironic that Alyssa’s accident occurred in the middle of what Farmer considered to be the most positive vicissitude that he had ever experienced! It really brought out his repressed hatred of her. Right when he was finally getting things evened out, right when he finally started to figure out what his top priorities were (or should be) in his life, Alyssa had to get ‘sick’.

Like blue and yellow makes green, love and hate equals guilt. “Alyssa,” said Farmer, trying to calm his nerves. She didn’t make a single move. Her pre-pubescent chest was just barely rising up and down, and her breathing made no noise to the casual observer. ‘Is she even alive?’ wondered Farmer. A million other thoughts ate at his skull. But there was something there to help him, that had been there for a very long time, even when Farmer hadn’t noticed it.

The Dark was there. The Dark was omnipresent, and through guilt and fear and love and hate, Farmer could find solace when wrapped in The Dark’s aura.

WHAT IS YOUR CHOICE? The Dark said in its ubiquitous, silent voice.

Sweat came in waves on his forehead.

“I...”

IT IS IRREVERSIBLE. SHE WILL NOT REMEMBER YOU. YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER YOURSELF.

Farmer didn’t even know what that meant.

“She deserves life more than I do,” he said, and he knew this logic was true. But his heart screamed ‘Regret! Regret! Regret!’, while his mouth took orders from upstairs, where he was still trying to weigh both sides of the situation.

YOUR CHOICE, The Dark demanded, as if impatient. Farmer took the course of impulse, which had been healthfully avoided for over a year, and said quietly (though he wanted to yell)

“Yes.”

The presence of The Dark became heavier until it suffocated him, and it crawled into his throat and ate what few words he had left. Farmer felt sadness being pulled out of him to make more room for The Dark, and he could feel guilt leaving too, and everything else until all that was left of him was the simple function and complex idea of Love and all of Love’s different forms, for friends and lovers and strangers and the natural world and favorite TV shows and his sister.

Farmer was also left with his hate, but it wasn’t a big deal. Hate is only love on fire.

His head was calm, his heart thudding out a roborant, resonant beat that sounded like it had a double; his sister’s. They were linked now. Farmer realized that though she was asleep and her thoughts dormant, Alyssa’s feelings were as strong as their dual heartbeats.

Farmer’s Love was taken away from him, his hate stolen as well. Something unfathomable inside him protested The Dark’s strange, formless ‘lips’ sucking these feelings away, but that tiny little voice was silent as Farmer’s eyes shot toward his sister. Her eyes sharply opened, and her mouth gaped for her first real, conscious breath.

She was being born again. It could have been an emotional event, because Farmer didn’t see Alyssa being born the first time around, yet he was unable to celebrate. He could move, yet was soulless, his entire identity and self in a river flowing into Alyssa. His mind was caught in an azoic period. While he felt like he was being eaten, it was apparent that Alyssa was becoming renewed. The pulse of life in her eyes and skin returned, and youth made an instantaneous flush of color throughout her cheeks.

The Dark’s lips pulled off of Farmer, softly. He could not feel now. He could only sense. In the blank, fluorescent room he could only see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. When he saw Alyssa’s face, Farmer had to comb his weary memory (it had just been combed free of emotion) for something to associate her look with. Alyssa was smiling. But what was smiling? She was happy. But why?

‘Because she is seeing her older brother for the last time,’ thought Farmer.

SHE WILL NOT REMEMBER, said The Dark, AND NEITHER WILL YOU. Instead of locking its lips on Farmer again, like it had before to ‘kiss’ his empathy (and sympathy) away, all of his memories simply fell out of a void that The Dark left behind. Farmer was nobody now. Who was Farmer?

Alyssa’s expression went from a smile (i.e. happiness) to a furrowed brow and slightly downturned lips (i.e. confusion, fear). Farmer knew who she was. ‘My sister,’ he remembered vacantly, and said, for confirmation, “Alyssa.”

Her eyes widened. It was obvious that Alyssa didn’t know who he was, and now, neither did he. Farmer heard her ask something, but he fell down and shut his eyes to the pain.

-

AN: Yeah, pretty dark, but this is sort of my alternative to poetry...be thankful that I didn't sit down today and decide, "Hey, I'm gonna be the next Poe/Dickinson/Shakespeare!" before getting in front of the most obsolete wordprocessor there is today (notepad) and tapping out some pretentious dribble of a sonnet or epic or whatever...you know, I'd probably title said pretentious dribble like 'The Dark Within' or something along that faggy line. We've all been there.

So I wrote Vacilando instead. This one I'm not gonna take off the ol' profile, no matter how poorly it's recieved (one of my few stories that won't be put in my established headquarters of YA) and how few hits/reviews it gets. Actually I'm sort of just talking out of my ass. Reviews really would be appreciated.