METANOIA

DEATH

The two guys sat at a small table by the road outside the Kafka with their glasses of bourbon beer. Silas had turned his chair sideways and had his back turned to the road. Kafka deserved his attention more so than the pedestrians and drivers on the infamous High Street.

Through the glass in the cafe buzzed the news about a massive forest fire nearby. No one in the cafe took much interest in it.

Seth was toying with the beer in his hand. Silas was much better company than Barry; in fact, he did consider him a friend. Being a moderator was a messy job, and sometimes friends became enemies. He had a lot of regrets, but he was good at what he did. It was a selfless job. Not that he was free to do as he wished. He too had a script, something he dreaded as much as envied Silas for. "So, quite the trip you've had thus far."

Silas shifted his attention from the café to Seth, who looked a bit lost in thought. "I'm really not sure. I mean, I do have a lot of friends back home, but there's something about the friends I have made here that has always kept me grounded. I feel that in a lot of ways, I'm a little different, little more relaxed here. Don't get me wrong; there are a lot of things I do like about being back home, but there's something about the people here that I feel closer to."

Seth was somewhat bitter about the whole affair. He had always liked Silas, and he wanted to see a sign in his face to see Silas was aware of the damage he had caused, a spark of awareness for his destruction to be justifiable, "I have just one question."

Silas was intrigued, "Shoot sir, I'm always an open book."

Seth came across more direct than he had intended to be, but he was a slave to his own curiosity.

"Why did you go along with this trip?"

Silas was slightly taken aback, "What do you mean, sir?"

Seth laid down all his cards. "Why did you persist in coming here? Why the push? Pete told me about the lightning and the rain storms, the fight you guys got into. Didn't any of that make you wanna just give up? I would have given up. Why did you keep pushing?"

The question lingered in the air for what seemed an eternity. Why act in the face of all the odds?

Silas didn't exactly know why either. He toyed with the beer in his hand. He listened as the cars passed by while Seth waited patiently with the stamina of a priest administering the last rites.

Silas took his sweet time as he gathered his thoughts as the words trickled from his lips. His own honesty surprised him as he confessed to this long lost friend.

"My whole life had been about abandon. I don't expect you to understand this, but behind my happy go lucky facade, I don't really know what happiness is. Since I graduated, no, even before that; I've been drifting through life with almost no responsibility. Just letting things happen as they came. I thought that would somehow bring me some sort of relief. A justification for the fucked up life I have led thus far. A reason for all the pain that wasn't my doing. I wanted for things to be, shit, not because I fucked up, but rather because they were unavoidable."

He sighed before he continued.

"The decision to act is twofold. When you make a decision, you don't just choose what course to follow; that much is apparent. What we often fail to do is a secondary more elusive decision to act. That you have decided to 'act,' rather than 'let.' You make an exercise of will to change things around you. It is even in the language. When you tell someone 'I am leaving,' there are two verbs in there, 'I am' and 'leaving.'

I am."

He repeated to himself, "I am alive. The responsibility of being. Kundera was right in calling it The Unbearable Lightness of Being. That is the responsibility I have been avoiding. Most days, I feel beaten. I do want to point the finger and say someone robbed me of that strength, but it's not true. It was always me. I chose not to act."

He took a sip from his beer. Seth looked at him in awe as Silas cherished his awakening.

"Responsibility is a powerful thing, something I dreaded my entire life. There were many upsets throughout this trip, many points where I asked myself, 'Why are you going through with this, especially when everything in the universe is telling you to do otherwise?' My answer to that is, I don't care what someone or something wants. I acted in light of what I felt to be true." He paused.

"I chose.

It was my will, and I wanted to see it through. I didn't care what came my way."

Seth continued to stare at him. It was almost as if Silas was aware of the course of his actions, the path he had chosen. He thought it would ease the burden of his planned demise, but Seth only felt pain. He was taking part in the demise of a creature whose will outstretched his own. Ashamed, he wanted to change the subject.

"Who do you think you'll miss the most when you go back?"

Silas said, "Now for me, it's hard to know which of your friends are actually friends of your wallet sometimes. Here, hardly anyone thinks of me as an opportunity. I am just another 'dude' here."

Seth said, "Well, I for one am glad to count you amongst my friends."

Silas smiled, "Me too, it was amazing to see all of you guys, you, Anda, Corwin and especially...Lisa."

Seth laughed childishly, "Of course you wanted to see Lisa."

Silas smiled. His phone had become frantic in his pocket. The droplet was onto Seth's facade and true intentions. It was doing all in its power to warn Silas to walk away. He was annoyed, and just pulled it out and left it on the table. The warning was lost in translation.

"This phone, sir! It has been driving me insane. It works somehow, but keeps zapping me. Something about the battery is short circuiting."

Seth watched closely as Silas placed the phone on the table, severing his only lifeline. If there was a moment to strike, this was it. Regretfully, he reached into his own pocket, pulled out his own cell phone, and lazily thumbed a text message to Barry, sending him his own location.

The moment too was to be cut short by a girl in her twenties teaching a friend of hers about Chi Gong at the table beside them. The conversation seemed too out of place for them to not pay attention to it.

Silas and Seth were instinctively attentive to the impromptu Chi Gong lesson. Silas suggested Seth that they join the duo, as he knew Seth too would be into anything involving martial arts. The Chi Gong lesson they were receiving quickly lent itself to a Yoga class. When Silas urged Seth to join the girl, they hadn't expected much, but when their attention roused public interest, the quartet became a group of ten or fifteen people doing breathing exercises in the middle of High Street.

This was the thing Silas missed about Ohio. The randomness. In four days, he had been forced into a multitude of events that plunged him in many directions. In many ways, it mirrored the tone and the randomness of his life. He belonged here.

He closed his eyes for the last time...