??? POV

~Sometime

It’s dark. It’s cold. This feeling is all too familiar, as I’m reminded of how things were in the beginning. Back then this bleakness… this total and complete lack of comfort, of substance… it’s all we knew. Joy and revelry have spoiled me and now, in the absence of any reason to be jubilant, or even content, I’m left sitting in the shadow of a memory I thought I had purged.

There’s a knock at my door and I pull the covers tighter around myself. I know who it is and I refuse to answer her right now. I deserve to be seen, to be judged and admonished… but the childish side of me that clings to fear over justice resists the urge to let her in.

I messed up… I messed up badly. Two people who believed in me… I led them astray. I failed them so completely… and now…

A weak voice calls out from behind the door and I can’t help but choke out a sob. “Elly… please let me in.” From her voice, it’s easy to tell that she’s been crying. She’s in pain too, and that revelation is enough to get me to finally move.

With great purpose and heroic determination, I force my body along, shambling at a pace snails would scoff at, until I reach the locked wooden door. “Lia…” I answer her, in a voice too pathetic to describe. “I–”

“I know,” she interrupts, mercifully removing the burden of having to face my failure by recounting it once again. “Can I come in?”

All I want in this world is to seize the handle, throw open this door, and let my love’s presence wash over me, cleansing me of the unbearable filth I’ve rolled in like a hog. I want her to hold me. I want the warmth of her fingers to trace the cold crater in my chest where my heart has frozen, and to thaw me like the spring of mercy I’ve always known her to be. I want it… I want her… but…

“I’m sorry.” My words are as fragile as my resolve. They beg Lianna to shatter them both with one final request. One last plea to not give up on me despite my inability to do so myself. There’s no response at first, or at second… after a solid few minutes, I’ve all but given up hope. Then I hear her footsteps retreating, and I know that I am alone.

My feet act of their own will, taking me back to bed. Every muscle of mine goes slack, allowing my body to ragdoll onto the mattress in an inelegant heap of dismay. It’s for the best. This is what I des–

“Elly… please answer me.” Once again, I hear an angelic voice just beyond my walls. I keep them up and keep her out.

“Lia–”

“Oh, good, you’re away from the door.” What? Seconds after that odd statement, a loud crack blasts my eardrums as my bedroom door starts splintering.

“Holy fucking shit!” I scream as more of my door is chunked away by the blunt head of a sledgehammer. “Lia… what the hell!?” A gentle hand snakes through the gaping hole, christened by a much less gentle show of force seconds ago, as Lianna unlocks my room.

My eyes burn as the light of the hallway invades my once perfectly darkened refuge. Standing in the now wide-open doorway is a striking silhouette of a madwoman with a well-used sledgehammer hefted over a broad shoulder. That shouldn’t be as hot as it is to me.

The woman casually tosses the hammer aside causing a loud crash and unknown damages elsewhere as she walks into my room. At this point, the only sounds I’m capable of making are “wha–” “huh” and “umm” as the woman I adore, who cost me a door, approaches. Before coherence returns to my speech, two powerful arms wrap around me with a tenderness that should be impossible given their destructive prowess. She doesn’t say anything. She knows she doesn’t have to, that words would somehow undercut the needed moment of respite I find in her warmth.

“Lia, I fucked up…” When I’m finally ready to face the music, I lead in with a percussion of self-flagellation and a few beats rest. “I got it wrong and now she’s… how did I get it so wrong?”

My face burrows into her bare shoulder, the taut tension of her muscle massaging my cheek as I’m pulled tighter into Lianna’s arms. “Yes… you made a mistake. I’m not going to lie and say that everything is fine. I won’t insult you like that. There’s no fixing this.” I shrivel at her words, knowing she’s right. “But… you can’t beat yourself up over it either. You can’t be expected to be perfect.”

I try to pull away but find myself unable to escape her grasp. “What!? Of course I should be. To err is human, and I am not! I shouldn’t make mistakes like this. It shouldn’t be possible.”

“Divinity or not, you can’t hold yourself to an impossible standard!” Lianna pleads.

“Why shouldn’t I? I’m an impossible existence. I am the pillar that keeps billions of people connected. If I can give so many people their happy endings… how is it fair if I fail for others? That’s not right!” My voice quickly morphs from a paragon of conviction to a blubbering mess. 

The love of my life softly pushes me by my shoulders, away from the embrace I already miss in order to look me in the eyes. “It’s not fair, love. The world isn’t fair. This life is filled with so much pain, and strife, and not everybody finds the happiness they deserve. But it’s not on you to ensure every individual who’s capable of love finds it. That’s way too much to expect of yourself. If you’ve succeeded millions of times and failed once… I think you’re doing a pretty fucking amazing job. Please… don’t let the pressure of perfection crush you.”

“But–” A single slender finger halts my attempt to argue.

“No. You’re going to listen to your incredibly beautiful girlfriend, who’s right about everything all the time, and you’re going to move past this. You don’t need to forget it, you don’t need to be happy about it, but you need to accept it. There’s nothing more to be done. It’s in the past now. You're still here. You're still my radiant Elly, my miraculous love.” Her words, though pleasant, don’t magically heal the wound, they don’t even stop the bleeding. No words possibly could. However, the simple act of her trying so hard washes away the self-pitying side of the pain. She is still here. She still wants to be here, with me. Despite my shortcomings and my failures, I haven't lost the only irreplaceable aspect of my life.

Right there, staring into the crystal blue eyes of my lover, with the broken remnants of my door loosely hanging on slightly warped hinges in the background… I truly learn the meaning of my domain. Don’t get me wrong, I've loved Lianna from the moment I met her. For the entire time we’ve been together, I’ve hung on every word she’s said. I’ve savored every insignificant gesture from the quirk of an eyebrow to the twitch of her arms before they move. Every single facet of her is perfection and always has been. Yet in this single moment, she has forever changed my understanding of love.

Love… is affection beyond the limits of reason. It defies logic and screams in the face of normalcy. To love is to feel in excess and to channel that feeling into sublime, chaotic action. Love is learning to play the guitar, just to serenade a sweetheart. Love is cooking an eight-course meal on a hot plate because your roommate is homesick and you want to bring some of their culture back to them. Love is caving in a door with an instrument of demolition because you know that the person on the other side is spiraling out of control. Love demands that you do the unthinkable, the ridiculous, the maddeningly outlandish because it’s in these moments of resistance against the withering tide of the mundane that we define our life and who we are beyond its draining grasp.

***

Eric’s POV

~Present Day

Waking up in my apartment from an unfamiliar dream, I feel… strange. In all my years of vivid, painful dreams, nothing has ever felt so real. It didn’t even feel like a memory, more like an experience through the eyes of someone else. The names spoken elude me as I try to hold onto the collapsing fragments of sights and sounds through the fade that consciousness drapes over the visions of sleep. Whatever I just witnessed, it feels too intimate, too precious to have been shared. Yet, I get the feeling I'm meant to know something, to gain some understanding.

Fuck, it is way too early for introspection, and I need my fix of caffeine.

Walking to my usual coffee shop, I think about my encounter with Ms. S&B. I’ve gotten jack shit done since our little mission at my mother’s home. My inaction, I believe, should be heavily attributed to the envelope I’ve had on my bedside table since its discovery. I haven’t opened it, haven’t even gone to the return address to investigate… I think--No, I know that I’m too afraid of what I’ll find. Afraid that my instincts are correct. Afraid of the implications a missing red line would mean for everything I’ve done.. and everything done to me.

Speaking of the night of my greatest loss… I still haven’t looked up the name I found in the logs either, though it has haunted my thoughts during every waking moment of my life. Selene Himmel. With a name, I might be able to find her… but I’m not even the person she’s meant to be with. Not really. It was that other name listed in the log. A name I have no right to claim as my own.

I walk into The Coffee Shop and notice a new barista working behind the cash register. “What’s up, dude!” He calls to me, nodding along with a goofy grin. “I was wondering when you’d come in!”

“Oh?” I ask, a bit put off by this complete stranger's familiarity. “Do I know you?”

The man giving off major “I took this job because they don’t drug test” energy, nods his head violently, causing his long hair to almost whip me in the face. “Nah bro, and I don’t know you. But here you are! How sick is that!?” This man is clearly on a completely different planet right now. “Anyway, here my dude, have a complimentary fortune cookie. It’s on the house and free and stuff!” The man tosses me a fortune cookie wrapped in plastic and waves. “Have a splendiferous day mi amigo!”

“But… I haven’t ordered any coffee yet…”

After a few seconds of processing, the guy smiles widely again. “Oh shit, you’re right! How may I grant you service today?”

I leave the coffee shop, oversized beverage in one hand, mysterious, possibly laced with a controlled substance fortune cookie in the other. What? Am I supposed to not trust a free dessert? Sitting on a nearby bench, I sip my coffee and pop open the plastic wrap. I sniff the cookie, not knowing what I’m expecting, aside from the familiar aroma of a wafer cookie. Cracking open the shell, I find the dish-defining slip of paper with what I’m assuming will be a painfully generic fort–

O’Halligan’s
10:47 PM
S.O.S.

Well… I didn’t expect that.