Who we could have been

A short story I wrote several years ago at about three in the morning after several excursions into a bottle of wine which I probably meant to be a look into the possibilities and outcomes in life.

The tiles on the floor seemed to shift slightly as I walked through the hallway. The large, square, faux-mosaic I'm sure was meant to seem impressive to those who entered the great glass building through which I shuffled. But I focused on the individual tiles. Tiny squares chipped out of great slabs of marble, chiselled and filed and sanded and buffed down to these seemingly insignificant pieces which come together to form a greater whole that I'm sure had some great and unique property to the company that had built them but to me right then I couldn't help but focus on the insignificant individual. 

Something touched my arm and I looked up, a face asked me if I was OK, I smiled and nodded, awkwardly signalling that I was indeed OK, although the last thing I was was that. The tiles slid past, creating their shapes, morphing into some gaudy diagram as I stepped one foot over the other across the oversized entrance hall which was probably supposed to impress. My small group stopped in front of a pair of large, cold sliding doors at the edge of the tiles and another face asked me if I had any items on me I wished to deposit. I smiled again and said no. We moved through the doors, their mechanical whirr and obnoxious sigh seemed deafening over the melodic footsteps that filled the tiled floor-space in which our sorry looking gathering stood. They were sorry. I saw that. The faces around me were all very sorry, and I looked at them with what I felt must have been to be a reassuring smile, which some returned to me in kind and others looked away from. It was all a great theatre. Nobody was comforting, nobody was sorry. They were doing what had been expected of them, the faces were telling one story whilst the minds were saying another. No-one wanted to be here, and I really couldn't blame them. The last place on this gorgeously imperfect planet I wanted to be was walking across that horrific, ostentatiously oversized, tiled hallway and through those damned doors, barriers to the rest of the world. 

I closed my eyes. I could have been anywhere.

The river wound past the window of the hotel, gently swaying the boats that were gathered along the banks, advertising bars that were closed or shops that had yet to open. The pale light of dawn lit the rooftops in a grey-scale and soft gold that created a feel of a sort of purgatory, not yet light, but more than dark, as if the city waited for something to emerge, the gentle inhale before an exalted sigh of release. The orange and yellow streaks flung themselves across the sky with the first bolt of the morning sun reaching out to grasp the great domes and columns of the eternal city. They bounced across the balcony's ledge, painting the sky in a sudden myriad of colour, the cloudless grey-gold becoming now red and orange and blue. Rome rose out of the dawn light and I turned back into the room to watch him rise up with it from the covers, propping himself up on one elbow and gently blinking back the sleep from his eyes, before smiling and beckoning me over from where I stood on the balcony edge, wrapped up in the sheet. I smiled and thought how amazing it was to have been there with the sun, the city and with this beauty languishing before me.

A small child slid past me wearing a luminous green full body jumpsuit, with grace and ease that made me hate him immediately. He was probably French I thought. I stuck my poles into the thick powder and tried to steady myself as the boy arrogantly flicked his heels and disappeared around the approaching bend. I grimaced as I came to a slow and uneven stop, my skis bent into an ugly snowplough, white powder crunching and grinding under my braking manoeuvre. "Enjoying yourself there?" came a voice from above me, followed by an immediate flurry of powder aimed right at my head, as my brother flung himself in a tight loop around my position in the centre of the slope, his skis in an elegant parallel. I swore, loudly and colourfully at his helmeted face, which only made him throw back his head in rich laughter. "Come over here and say that" he ordered, sticking his tongue out at me as he twisted artfully and sped off down the mountain. Grimacing again I pushed off and followed him down for a good six feet before pitching head over heels to land with both feet pointing back up the way I had come. With a sigh I wondered why on earth I had ever agreed to this trip in the first place and spat a wad of snow out of my mouth.

The sun stroked the undulating horizon, glinting off the rising and falling of the sea as the far off waves rose and fell against the sky that was gently changing from a turquoise blue usually only found in gemstones or films of far off planets to a ever deepening pink, then red as the glare of sunlight slowly rode the crest of the waves, before quietly sinking beneath them and drowning itself in the dark azure of the Indian ocean. The sand enveloped my toes as I stood, gently massaging the soles of my feet as I wriggled them further down, watching the granules slowly pour over their sun browned tops. Each finely ground grain of that beach began life as a great cliff face, being weathered away by the relentless attrition of the sea as it lapped and drove, breaking off pieces, sinking them before chiselling and filing and buffing them down to these insignificant pieces that came together to form part of this warm and soft whole now cradling my well worn feet. I looked out at the waves wondering what I should like to have for that evening's meal as the smell of the ocean, that briny-fresh aroma, was gently overcome by the intricate spices being infused into one of the meals at the local restaurant. I thought then, where else could such a positive stimulation of all of the senses be found in the world, this beautiful and imperfect world. A bell rang and I hopped up, back to my shift on the little bar carving coconuts for tourists to pay through the nose for.

The doors sighed shut behind me, and a gentle shiver begun at the base of my spine, but I was able to stop it before it reached my shoulders. More faces smiled at me as I entered the long and skinny room. A single table spanned the length of it and an artistically designed, but functionally inappropriate catering display was in the centre. I smiled at the faces already there and they smiled back. Our minds presumably saying what words and facial expressions would not. 

I nodded at the few named faces I could place, then nodded at the rest because it would have been poor etiquette to not have pretended I could have labelled them. I thought at that moment how nice it would be to have been any one of those other faces at that moment, and instead of me standing here I could have been sitting there. 

I thought how nice it would have been to be anyone else.

The canopy rattled gently in the warm breeze. I stared out over the wide meander in the river below me, watching as it slowly ate its way through the surrounding dust, sand and vegetation. The sun had gone down around three hours ago, although that was hard to tell because we had no time pieces other than the stars themselves, and as I was  educated in the West I was of little use keeping time in this manner, I could have been there for ten minutes, I could have been there for ten hours. It interested me how I did not care either way. The eerie peace that emanated from the surrounding flora and fauna was both calming and haunting. It transfixed me and I was content to sit in the intense comfort provided by being out away from the usual hubbub and noise of life back at home. The ambient fear of being surrounded by howling snorting, screaming wild things under a ceiling of velvet black was freeing in a way no one could understand had they not experienced it themselves.  I looked over at the sleeping figures of my fellow adventurers, watching their chests rise and fall as we all inhaled and exhaled the cool, dry night air of the Savannah. The river made it's gentle gurgling sounds 50 feet below us as it lapped calmly against the cliff's foot. I closed my eyes and sighed, leaning back against the base of the gnarled, rough old tree behind me, with its peeling bark and low sweeping leaves and let the darkness cradle me a while before it was time to wake the next watchman.

I woke up from my small bed, promptly banging my head on a low hanging ceiling beam as my heart raced at a terrified pace. Sitting there in sweat drenched sheets I attempted to gather my mind, to focus on what was happening and kick myself from my fearful state. After a while it happened and in a rush of quelling panic I remembered where I was. Slumping back down into the hard school bed, I kicked open the window with the toes of my left foot and lazily , blindly reached out for a cigarette and it's lighter I had left on the windowsill next to me a few hours before. The little orange flame illuminated the closer portion my dingy dorm room for a brief instant before going out again and leaving behind the melancholy glowing tip of the lit cigarette. The smoke spun and swirled and chased itself out of the window, eviscerating on the converging air currents between my warm small dorm room and the cold January night air. I shivered a little as the nicotine hit my system, the warm tingle creeping its way from the base of my spine, up my lower back, through my central organs to end rolling its way around my shoulders. I finished the cigarette and expertly flicked it from my reclined position out of the window, to land three stories down near a set of kitchen bins I knew the cleaners tended to frequent for their smoke breaks. The small cloud of sparks from the flick hung in the air for a second, providing the last traces of illumination before extinguishing, leaving nothing but the flecks of lighter ash to drift gently down to the dorm room floor. Lying back I fought to settle back to sleep, knowing that it wouldn't come for a while but content to give it my best try anyway.

I scraped the hoe through the ground one last time, watching the soft black mud roll through over the drier topsoil before stretching up, feeling something crack slightly ominously in my lower back as I raised my hands to the sky and let out a terrific yawn from the depths of my stomach. My son giggled at that so I went to give him a light cuff to the back of the head but he expertly ducked it and skipped away with a cheeky grin and boyish laugh, swinging his bag of seed gently with him, protecting it from spilling as had been drilled into him at a young age. I shook my head but let him go, hiding a wry smile as I turned away in false disdain. I was content. The field was sown well ahead of my earlier predictions and the barest wisps of vapour were beginning to show hanging over the hill, probably invisible to the untrained eye but clearly showing me that rains would fall tonight, or perhaps tomorrow. I surveyed the surrounding country, the rolling hills a splash of cobalt blue and deep green against the backdrop of a setting sun which cut the sky into a neat pallet of colours stretching from light reds and yellows in the west through the spectrum to deep violet and navy blue to the east behind me. The hills gave way in the distance to the little subsistence farmsteads of my local village which spread out over the grasslands in an idyllic tranquillity which lent an atmosphere of contentment, as though they had been there a thousand years and really wouldn't mind if they remained for a thousand more.

I sat down at the table and smiled gently as the faces all around me nervously watched their hands, the food, each other and not me. I probably thought that that was a little rude, but I couldn't be sure as I wasn't really thinking of much by this point. There was a small painting on the wall opposite me, and although a great number of other paintings and prints and photos occupied the encasing walls, this one in particular caught my eye. It was a simple schematic of the building in which I was sitting. 

Again I thought how interesting this was, thinking anything I could but what I should. I thought again I could have been anywhere, been anyone, and yet here I was, within the confines of that six inch by eight inch diagram, at a table with perhaps twenty faces looking at me, perhaps twenty minds screaming at each other, at me. The cacophony of thoughts tore away my smile leaving nothing but yet another empty face at a table. Someone touched my arm. Someone looked me in the eyes and asked me if I was OK. I couldn't smile then and someone turned to the other faces and said that it was time to begin. Six inches by Eight inches. Twenty faces. 

Author's Note

I'd love to hear all comments, particularly on what you interpret from it. Also what is your favourite red wine to drink too much of whilst you write?

Reviews

[Sara Lufrano]

You're writing is beautiful. Your word choice is spot on all the time, very descriptive and accurate.

I'm not sure why, maybe a country thing, but I don't get the point of the story and I can only guess at what the building is that they are in. I understand that these are different times and choices of the people's lives and like the title says "who we could have been" but why?

How does the one that's always OK feel? Do the people in the scenes feel anything for any specific reason? How and why are they are tied together? Are they different time frames in the one that's always OK's life but lived through different people and do they have some longing that is never fulfilled that caused the one that's always OK to do what he did?

Overall, very nice writing. Thank you for the read!

[Karim A]

Nice! I liked the description and style it was written in.-