A VOID IS A VOID
Ryan Schiff

I wish that my story started in an interesting way, I really do, because the rest of the story is really good and a lot of interesting things happen. I wish I could start it with a car chase or a seedy bar or a stare-down between a pair of gunmen on the American frontier. I'd even be okay if it all started on a fishing boat, but such is not the case. This story starts on the thirty-second floor of the library at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and it begins with a text message.

I was looking out the window of the thirty-second story of the U-Mass library building when my protagonist heard a familiar beeping. The text message music for his cellular telephone was playing, echoing through the seemingly empty rows and rows of research texts. The music was, however, not coming from the pocket of the brown bomber jacket hanging on the chair behind him. Somewhere else on the floor, however, I heard a click of a phone opening, a girlish laugh, some rapid beeping, and the elevator door sliding open. Coincidence, perhaps, that someone with the same cellular telephone was on the same floor as Chris had randomly selected on the elevator panel.

A book on Marine Biology lay open on the desk, open to a page on Angler fish. He was reading it mostly out of boredom, because he was waiting. “She’s always late. What the fuck. If she stands me up… Fuck. I don't have time for this shit,” he said to the empty floor.

He spent the next few minutes muttering along the same lines, but I couldn’t make out what he said, until the elevator pinged as it returned to the thirty-second floor. Footsteps followed, and then a female voice from behind him said, “What made you choose thirty-two?”

I’d have to guess it was her best attempt at an ice breaker, but she may have meant something else by it. I’ve got no idea. I’m not in her head, after all.

“It's nice.”

The guy nodded, doing his best to not catch her reflection in his glasses.

“You know.”

Another nod.

“Why did you want to meet here?” She sounded meek and panicked, like a child in the back of a van after a forty-something in dark shades offered her candy she if she helped him look for his puppy.

“Random,” he said. His voice was quiet, his tones measured, dull, and cutting cold. In retrospect, I’d have to say that this statement was the truest thing he had said since “I love you” one afternoon in early summer on her bedroom floor.

Thing is, I’ve been following this guy around for years now, and I think he’s just starting to notice me.

“I'm leaving,” she said. “You already know that, though, don’t you.”

He shrugged and feigned indifference and walked to the elevator. He had thirty-one floors to try to swallow the growing lump in his throat.

If you're wondering who the girl is, or even who that guy is, that's good. I’m afraid I can’t tell you. It's all because of an unfortunate trick of point of view.

I am limited to only the things that our main character, that guy, knows, or is willing to think about. Instead of thinking about her, a void filled his head, and her last two words echoed in that void, screaming like the feedback of a microphone plugged into a wah-wah peddle plugged into a 40 pound amp with internal distortion being waved around next to the speaker. It's a cool sound, but only for a few seconds.

The guy left, and I with him. We left the school, we left the state of Massachusetts, we left New England. If it weren't for the flat tire in a small town in Georgia, and we probably would have left for Mexico and from there to the nearest nation where he would never again have to hear English. I think he was just trying to get as far away from those words as he could. When the opportunity to be stranded in a small town in northern Georgia occurred to him, however, he did the most obvious thing he could think of. He went to Atlanta, got on an airplane, and left.

I think he’s dead now.

This is a new feeling, there's something down my throat. And it's all very clean and white in all the places that it isn't black. Am I dead? No, I can't be dead. I just said that.

Damn, I aught to pay better attention to plot structure.

Is there even a plot structure anymore? Lady's voices in the background are coming in strong now. Something is making me breathe? Breathe? I never had to do that before.

It feels weird. What is happening here? It's cold. I've failed. My story is over. I think I'm dying.

Worse yet, I think I might be alive.

The room, the nurses, the doctor, the machine that’s breathing for me, all things I can see or feel. My face hurts. Everything hurts. I can see my skin, or bandages covering me. I should be dead.

I wasn't on a plane, I was observing a plane. Now I seem to be observing a comatose burn victim. Or is that me?

“Aaagrrrgl-” is all I can say, or try to say. I meant to say the word ‘alive’ but there was a pipe blocking most if not all of my ability to speak. The nurses seem to have taken it as a good sign, because they're gibbering now and rushing about. I think they're going to go get a doctor. That'd be nice.

Something jarred me. A zillion gigajoules of pain shot through every cell of my skin and I took a very long impromptu nap from which I did not want to awaken.