Make Light For Beautiful Dark

A Story by Mad Mezi

and its friends

“Look at that, Jerry. Look--it’s going away!” she said to me. I looked but I honestly couldn’t see what it was she was looking at. “What, woman? What are you looking at?”

“Oh, Dale, you were too slow. It’s gone.” she said to me. I looked at her with a kind of kind grimace, and said, “Who’s Dale”?

She looked at me all flustered, and said, “You didn’t look, Jerry. You didn’t look, now it’s gone.”

She’s a f*****g loon, that woman.

The sky was gray and the evening was coming. I had awoken at a few hours after noon. I didn’t eat breakfast, but I did find some time to masturbate. Afterward, I felt like everything had died or gone away; that the whole world was gone without me, that I was left behind by it.

Sure, I could look out my window and see that the world was still there, but that didn’t mean I could step out of my apartment and actually go out there.

So, in a way, I left the world behind. I’m the one that went away. That’s what she was talking about. She was looking at me go away, and she cried like a child for days after I went.

I came back, of course. Just in time for bed. “What a waste of a day, Jerry--tomorrow you really should do something productive,” she said to me.

I nodded and yawned and went off to bed, but didn’t sleep.

No.

Instead I lay awake in the darkness looking out the window to a city also not sleeping, wondering when the exact moment will be where the city leaves me or I leave the city. Maybe I can avoid it if I stay awake and wait for it, then when it finally comes, I’ll get rid of it. I’ll leave behind the feeling of leaving behind something.

But, as it was, through all the night and half the day, nothing came, so I got out of bed. No breakfast today. I masturbated again and afterward I felt like slitting my wrists so my arms would never be strong enough to wring out my loneliness again.

“Oh, Jerry, look at that. Isn’t that beautiful?” she said to me.

And all I could do was cry a little, because I knew I could not see what everyone was looking at, and even sadder that she did not know that I couldn’t.

So, she kept pointing and patting my shoulder, saying “look, look, there it is again, look at it go!”

What a b***h of a woman. “Why are you crying, Jerry?”

“Just some fuzz that went up my nose. I’ll sneeze it out.”

There’s a girl down at the edge of my dreams. She lives in the darkness. She’s beautiful and lonely. I don’t know her name but a girl like that doesn’t really need a name.

One time I met her, when I was just drunk enough to think my mind was everything. She’s really quite nice. I was shy, though--embarrassed--but I don’t think she cared or even noticed.

We talked about those nights when every sound sounds like a funeral bell.

“Look at that, Jerry. It’s going away.” she said to me.

Not you too, I thought. Not you too…