Two Truths and a Liar

I • The Unlucky

Leon

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I met death once.

It was a cold night in early November, the full moon above seeping pale light through bare, skeletal branches onto the pavement below.

I hadn't known what I felt. Maybe it was paranoia, maybe it was my senses picking up on what I hadn't seen. All I knew was that there was something in me, something so cold and deep that it consumed all else. It spun, stretched, tightened its grip around my heart, and when it melted it ran down my spine in an icy shiver and the whispered name of fear.

I walked, alone and uneasy. There wasn't anything to run from but the darkness lurking behind dim street lights behind. The shadowed path ahead. The vacant road beside.

At first, I didn't think about it. Didn't wonder why I was afraid, or why the shadows trailing behind seemed like hundreds, or why it seemed that the night itself wasn't escaping the light. It was some kind of living thing itself, snuffing out any patch of glow and becoming a sea of darkness swallowed in my wake.

I just walked.

My watch cried out that it was past curfew and I was late. I shouldn't have been concerned about that, any excuse would please my mother who was too proud of her perfect son. Practice ran longer today, I'd tell her. After the best win of the season, the Deadwood high football team was still celebrating even three weeks after. We went out, I lost track of time. "Okay, okay," she'd say. "Don't worry about it. Just make sure your homework is done." she was good like that.

But the coach never keeps us past seven, and the abandoned bud light cans scattered along forested campsites by the canal could testify my lies.

I didn't drink, but one of my teammates Kyle had slipped up after his third, and after tripping over his own feet I was drenched. I could still smell it, despite the desperate attempts to wring out my t-shirt in the freezing river water chilled by autumn sleet and yesterday's rain. If I was lucky, mom wouldn't notice. If I was a little less lucky, she wouldn't say anything about it. When you have such praiseworthy kids, certain things slide. If comes up, I thought, I'll tell her some drunk spilled beer on me as I was leaving. That was only half a lie.

The soles of my shoes hit harder with every rattling breath that escaped my lips, my backpack growing heavier on my shoulders, and the pinpricks of biting wind snapped my hair into my eyes and stabbed into my skin. I readjusted the straps, unaware for a split second, and stumbled.

I fell.

That's when I noticed.

As my knees hit concrete and my hands just caught myself, wincing from the pain shooting up like fireworks through my arms and legs, I broke from my thoughts. Breathing. Realizing where I was. The breeze stopped short, and the ground almost rose and fell with uneven breaths.

I was swimming in my delusions, wondering if I'd drunk after all.

Of course not, I shook my hair from my face, feeling my hot breath hit the sidewalk. I don't drink.

I blinked, sitting up on my knees and closing my stinging eyes to clear my head. The fear grew, and the hairs at the back of my neck bristled. Something was behind me, someone. I knew it. I could feel it.

I whipped around to look, not bothering to get up from my crouched stance on the sidewalk. Nothing but darkness. Nothing but cold.

But I knew they were there. I felt it, the figure not far buried into the shadows behind. The gaze that I couldn't see.