2

Essette Lance

  Lance recalled with impeccable clarity. Eyes fell upon Sgt. Ditty as he walked the bus’s length. Whereupon boarding, the bus had been alive with friendly chatter, the atmosphere now ran afoul some unspoken taboo where beneath the heavy blanket of social pressure one could hardly breathe.

  It was as if he were a God, or a Devil. Nothing in his gait or posture said this, nor was it the silent way he spoke. He was followed by shadows—damp absences of light and color which peeled like sticky tape from every surface. When he moved, something pale moved with him. Always, his attention seemed to be accompanied by the attention of some other.

  Now, their attention was on Pvt. Lance.

  Sat in seats opposite and facing each other, they seemed to play a staring game. It was a game of awareness, to stare without use of one’s eyes. If indeed it was a game at all, Lance could not be sure.

  Nevertheless compelled by some primal impetus, Lance participated. Perhaps it was his nature to. Yet, the game came so easily to him. As if he had played sometime before, he pushed his consciousness outward, like blowing into a balloon until—reaching Sgt. Ditty—it burst; and all that was inside him escaped like gas into the bus.

  Slumping into the chair, Lance felt empty. He felt faint.

  “Have I lost?” he wondered. “Am I dying?”

  Fear invaded his emptiness, filling him with mortal dread. He did not know what it was that compelled him to look up, but when he did, he met eyes with what frightened him.

  He had seen those eyes before, beneath the docks, where the gulls gathered each night to peck and scream. Severed heads bloodied the sands; all were fish but one. One was a man whose eyes gazed unblinking, silent and untethered from time, at the ocean.

  What fantasy does belie the divide of ocean and sky, Lance would never unsee. For, like the tide, it would pull at his moored-ness until, loosed from earthly knots, the boatman ferried his future.

  Suddenly, it was all too much for the private. When next the bus stopped, he fled.

* * *

  Like listening to silence, it was a strange experience. As though his sense for it had not fully developed and relied on other senses to make itself understood, the feeling expressed itself as an overwhelming synesthesia. His head was still swimming, and reality had assumed a wrongness which he could not ignore.

  He had tried to collect himself, but every time he felt close, the silence lept out at him. Like a child alone in a dark room, he was beset by the uncanny: Shadows too thin. Colors too deep. Shapes too tall. Pins and needles on hot and cold skin; and smells which reminded of anything.

  It was some time later that Lance found himself sitting in an abandoned WacDonalds booth. His mind was still in shambles, and he had not the faintest idea why. He decided not to worry about it, and eventually, he fell asleep.