Epic Short Stories

Light

It's never truly dark in the city. Inside skyscrapers, bleary-eyed mothers rock nocturnal babies under single burning bulbs. Underpaid insomniacs collapse in front of glowing TV's and commercials, unseen, dance across their eyelids. Even the concrete mazes beneath glow bright as metros speed through tunnels swathed in thin, eternal florescence. And in the streets, a ceaseless stream of drivers flood the air with harsh reds and blinding whites. No matter where you are, you can close your eyes and still see the glow.

This tiny back alley is no exception. Although neglected by the authorities, forgotten by the wandering homeless, and even ignored by the dealers of the city, somebody thought to provide this nook between the buildings with one singular street lamp. It's an anonymous act that I'll always be grateful for.

The lamp casts odd and beautiful shapes across the asphalt, giving the illusion that every piece of trash and every lonely rock is bowing down to its rusted metal frame. I let my fingers play in the dim light, wondering absently at their long, skeletal shadows. Every other part of my body has been made heavy by exhaustion. I've become one with the cold, pebbled road, letting it leave its imprints my limbs, my stomach, and the hand that supports my head. My nostrils are filled with the acidic stench of asphalt. Part of me wonders why I'm here, flopped on the side of the street like a wanderer. I could be at home and sleeping. But of course, it's for him. I do it for him.

The deck of his skateboard scrapes the pavement again, screaming like a war cry. I watch disinterestedly as he kicks off the curb, lands with a slap, and sweeps lazily towards me. The street lamp dapples him in gold and grey. Never once does he lose his easy skaters stance: narrow shoulders slumped, knees slightly bent, eyes half shut. His fingers are still clenching and unclenching subconsciously, but that's all that's left of today's anger and anxiety.

It's only when there's a board beneath his feet that he relaxes like this. He becomes a different person, somebody a few shades kinder and a whole lot happier. It's as though skating wipes away the mud that life has flung on him, mud dark with heartache, fear, and disappointment.

The skateboard skids to a stop right in front of my nose, sending fragments of asphalt into tiny frantic frenzies. I look up at his silhouette without moving and sigh. His eyes aren't on me, they are on the sky.

"Have you ever seen the stars?" He asks, running a hand through an unruly tousle of dark hair.

I don't answer that. He's not expecting me to. He knows my answer as well as he knows his own.

"Not on TV. Not in pictures," he continues.  I mean real ones. I mean, to just look up, and see them up there. Not an airplane or the satellites, the stars. Have you ever seen them, Lil?"

"Garret..." I start to speak, but am interrupted by an enormous yawn and a stretch that pumps air and energy to every part of my tired body. In one fluid motion, I hop to my feet, still blinking the exhaustion from my eyes. "Garret, let's go. I know you're tired."

He shakes his head slowly, angular features still aimed at the sky. But the shadows beneath his eyes betray him. I tap his shoulder gently. At my touch, Garret is pulled back into reality. I can almost see his mind returning to him as he looks at me. A face full of longing switches to his emotionless I'm-a-man-and-men-don't-dream face in mere seconds. And then he nods.

"You didn't have to follow me," he mutters. "You must be exhausted."

"I'm always exhausted," I dismiss his concerns. "Did it help, at least?"

He sighs deeply. "For now."

I nod, knowing that that's as good an answer as I will get tonight.

Before we leave the alley, I steal one last glance at the sky. The skyscrapers hide much of it, but the strip that I can see is unsettling, black, and utterly void.

This city may never be lightless, the night sky has never been anything but dark.