Karthmin
843 wordcount
Yes to critique results
from the short story Purple
author: Karthmin Aretani

At the far end of the tunnel is a light, literally just a pinprick against the black. Maybe it’s not a tunnel, because the ridged sides feel exactly like a huge drainage pipe. I hardly have to stoop, but I do it instinctively, not knowing what unseen razors might be hanging down to slice my scalp.

I want to be whole when I meet her again. It has been much too long, and it would not be nice for her to see me bloody and dirty at our reunion.

But still, the loneliness that normally afflicts me is gone. I know she is near. Waiting at the end of the tunnel. Her hands folded in her lap, like a gentle Madonna waiting at home for her little Jesus. Or pacing back and forth, begging to be allowed to run to me, to go into the tunnel to find me.
But they won’t allow it. The tunnel opens into the wall of a comfortably furnished bedroom. She could go in to meet me. But they said not to, so she won’t. There must be a reason, a bloody, awful reason they want her to wait.

Stooping, I run. The pipe must be new, because I don’t feel the grating of rust particles underfoot. A hollow echo follows me, running forward and backwards at many times my own speed.

I try not to look at the pinprick of light so I won’t be discouraged that it is only growing slowly. It is just barely enough to see the outline of the ridged pipe at my feet.

The faster I run, the more I feel her waiting presence at the end, the more I long for that first moment of recognition, for the sparkle in her eyes as she wraps her arms around me, as I hold her tight and kiss her.

A tear runs down my cheek. How long has it been? How long since we were together? Since we could look each other in the eyes and smile the world away – melding into a world of two?

Too long. Far too long.

I stop to rest my hands on my knees, panting. I raise my eyes and dare to look at the light. It is the size of a dime now. A smile breaks my face. The closer I get to the end, the faster the hole will grow – it’s exponential. So I must be halfway there!

Renewed, I begin running again. She is in a frenzy now, pounding on the walls, yelling.

“Why isn’t he coming? Let me go to him!”

A black figure in the corner laughs.

“Wait,” it says quietly. “All you can do is wait.”

She whirls on the figure. “Do you know what it is to love?” she yells, and throws a perfectly executed punch at the hooded figure’s face.

A gloved hand shoots from the figure’s side and grabs her forearm. The other arm snakes out and smashes the heel of its hand into her forehead. Her head snaps back and she screams, collapsing onto the floor. Her head hits the corner of the bed-frame.

She is silent.

Blood trickles onto the purple flowers on the carpet. I run faster. The light is the size of a tennis ball, and growing steadily. I’m three-quarters of the way there.

The only noises I hear are the thudding echoes of my footsteps, racing to keep up with me.

I’m coming, darling. Just a little longer. Please.

I am nearly to the end. There is a metal grating blocking the way. I run faster. I have to force through it.

I lean away from the jump so my feet will hit the grating first. The shock runs up to my knees, but I bend my body to absorb the rest.

The grating bursts apart, bending like a box of dynamite went off behind it. Momentarily I wonder how I caused so much damage. The bars are thick.
Then I land in a heap in the middle of an empty, white room. My right ankle twists under me, and I curse loudly.

I lay my head back on the ground.

She is not here. There is no bedroom, no shadow in the corner. They took it all away. I came too late.

A tear rolls from under my closed eyelids. I concentrate on the path it takes to reach the floor, not on the sudden empty pain that fills my stomach.

My heart thuds, slowing down as I lay unmoving. She was here, but I came too late. What is life but a disappointment?

My ankle throbs. I reach into my pocket. My fingers fumble around a cold square of metal. I pull it out to look at it.

It is plain. Simple. A quarter of an inch thick with infinitesimally small variations. Not a precise molding, but square nonetheless.

The metal reflects nothing. It sucks heat from my fingertips, light from the room, sound from my ears.

I put it back in my pocket.

Oh well.

There’s always a next time.

I might be able to find something somewhere. When do you need it?

The tavern door opened. I hardly noticed. I was in my corner, my nightly pint cupped close between my trembling palms.
Yet even though I hardly noticed, I still glanced up to see the man who had entered. I looked out of habit, out of the force of years of long-since-useless gestures given by myself to those around me, and by them to me. My world was as completely separate from this stranger’s world as mushrooms are from beer, so why should I even care about his presence?
Looking up – one of the last remnants of taking interest in another person’s world that I had not trained myself out of – looking up was a humiliation to me.
How often did I need to remind myself of the uselessness of such gestures? I could not possibly, even if I knew this man his whole life, understand him. I could not read his thoughts. Could never live in his world. Expressing passing interest in him at all was utterly useless.
It served no purpose. There was nothing to gain where there could be no real knowledge. The humiliation my engrained sense of manners brought upon me, the cringing depths my instincts drove my soul to, it was sometimes hard to believe, and yet I could not help but inflict that humiliation upon myself, because I knew better than to do such useless things.
I had learned, that dark night long ago. I had learned the futility of interacting with a hope for knowledge of another futile being.
But it was not just the futility that drove me to humiliation. It was the clear memory of utter ignorance – when I thought for years that there had been knowledge, real knowledge – the clear and bitter memory of that night of pain was what drove me to curse my own actions.
How then could I express interest in the fact that a man had entered the little tavern where I sit in my corner with my nightly pint cradled on my knees? What was I, a fool? A madman?
How dared I forget the harsh knowledge I had gained when my wife betrayed me for a friend? When he betrayed and killed her because I found them together? When he betrayed me by trying to kill me (still the scar aches in the nighttime)? I ought never to forget the memory of that stark revelation of my ignorance of their hearts. Bitterness at my forgetfulness ate like acid in my throat. To cool the burning I swallowed a mouthful of my beer.
I felt an eye on me.
So I set my beer down on my knees, kept my hands cradled safely around the heavy mug, and turned my head to see who it was. Not to take interest in them, but to find the source of their interest in me.
I met the man’s gaze with an unblinking stare. He was talking to the bartender, one elbow on the counter. He was middle-aged and speaking quietly, so I could not hear what he said.
There were tears in his eyes.
He was no threat to me. He was worth no further interest. I looked down at my beer and huddled over it.
+++
I glanced at the weathered sign. A frothing mug. It was the right place; he would be here.
But in what condition? She had said nothing more than that he was always here in the evenings. With a laugh almost of pity. He remembered every tone of his sister’s voice, almost too well. She wasn’t the same anymore.
Was he, too, changed? A helpless drunk fallen so low that he was harmless to anyone?
I pushed the door open, glanced around quickly, and entered the tavern.
An old man, huddled in a corner over a mug on his lap, caught my eye as I walked in. But he looked away quickly, as if embarrassed.
I walked on, looking around to see if I could find the man I searched for. There weren’t too many people in the place, but I didn’t see him. So when I got to the bar, I leaned against it until the bartender had time to talk with me.
“What’ll it be?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’m looking for… for my father.” I thought I recognized the bar-man’s face, but I wasn’t sure, so I decided to play it safe and say nothing.
“Father, eh? What’s the name?”
“Gisbertus,” I said.
“Gisber… – why Harry lad! Why didn’t ye say so at once? I couldn’t ‘a known you with that great beard on your face!”
I smiled. Now I remembered the man’s name, who he was, how we used to know each other. But inside I was still grim, searching.
“Ah, well,” I said. “Time enough for gab later. Right now, I want to find –”
“ – yer father’s right over there, Harry.” The man’s face and voice softened. A touch of pain creased his forehead.
“There in the corner by himself.”
I turned to look where the bartender had pointed. It was the old man who had looked at me as I came in… sitting just as he was when he turned away from our quick glance. Unmoved. Silent.
“He’s not exactly all the way together, Harry.”
As the man spoke, my father looked up at me. His eyes were blank, unseeing, uncaring. He probably saw me, but he did not know me.
I had finally found my father… and he was mad?
Tears filled my eyes. The old man – I could hardly think of that shriveled old simpleton as my father – looked away.
“I’m sorry, Harry lad. I’m sorry.”
I nodded absently and walked slowly to the little corner of the tavern.
I had found my father, and he was mad.

“Why are you fighting me?”
His foot was planted firmly on my fingers, the only thing holding me back from two thousand feet of unhindered gravity and unforgiving granite. My free hand still held my sword, but using it was useless. If I started any stroke, he would simply step away, and I would fall.
“Why?”
He ground his foot down harder, driving me to answer. I fought because he was undoing everything we had been taught to treasure, everything we had been told was right. Individuality and its expression is only just if it doesn’t impose on another’s expression of their individuality. Self is only attainable in a network, a community. The true source of power is unity... he was breaking all these. Imposing his will, breaking the community, shattering any unity there had been among the Avowal before he rebelled. How could he not know this?
Why was he asking?
I lifted my eyes to meet his and found my answer. He had always doubted. The stories were too vague; too simplified…he had never believed they were true. And because that foundation was cracked, the walls of doctrine that held me so tightly were invisible to him. He could not understand my resistance.
“I fight because your philosophy denies and will ultimately destroy the only way existence is possible.”
He smiled and let up some of the pressure on my hand. I felt each millimeter of raspy stone creep under the lacerations in my palm like a meter.
“How can that be when my existence is a reality apart from Ultimacy?”
It was as I thought. He denied Ultimacy and yet still existed in reality, so he disbelieved. But did he not see that there was no way out of the box? But how could he? They are unseen, the corners and the edges. What is more, the reality of Ultimacy is not dependent on any one person’s existence. Regardless of individual realities, Ultimacy exists. So why did he think he was any different? How could he believe that his reality affected anything ultimate? The very idea was laughable. The idea was…
“An idea, a thought, is as real as reality because it exists. And if it exists, it can become real.”
I was stunned for a moment at my own whispered words…memories of a sterile Avowal classroom so unlike the present civil war. Unity, disunity. Love, hate. Justice, injustice. Right, wrong…all of Ultimacy could be negated by one man’s idea – by his creation of a new reality – just by thinking. And he was making that thought a reality – through this war, through his denial of Ultimacy.
“Exactly,” he said. “It’s simple.” He put more weight on my fingers, grinding my slow slip to a halt.
It was too simple. His contrary reality presupposed the original... The only reality that his denial of Ultimacy could exist in, was a reality in which Ultimacy was a presupposed reality. It was self-defeating. In order to deny it, Ultimacy had to be present. And if Ultimacy was present as an idea, even in the denial of it, it was… a reality.
But his denial of Ultimacy was just as much reality, because it was just as much an idea – because it existed. And yet its existence required Ultimacy! So it couldn’t be a true reality. It couldn’t exist except as an idea. Because...
“You can deny the air you breathe,” I whispered, looking up again. “And that denial may be real for you, but it’s self-defeating. It exists, but it can’t be reality. Ultimacy is the only reality.”
He stepped back, his confidence weakened momentarily. A half-second later, I realized I was slipping. The gritty ledge loomed huge in my mind as my failing grip tightened around it, increasing the texture of the solid pain that drove into my hand with each tiny movement.
Desperate, I swung my sword arm up towards him – my enemy, my nemesis…and long ago my friend.
Another hand on the ledge, and I could pull myself up. And yet he had to be distracted, wounded, or I would be defenseless with both hands on the ledge.
The sword had to go, and it had to distract him. As the arc of my sword grew, I closed my eyes and focused on the picture of his unprotected chest and the course of my blade; and channeled every power of my aching arm into the bloody mass of fingers clinging to the ledge.
We Avowal never wore armor, and he wouldn’t be expecting this. It was my only choice, my only chance.
The picture lined up perfectly and I loosened my grip on the hilt. The precision I had achieved from hours of training with the Purge was still a marvel to me, and as I opened my eyes and dropped my good hand to the ledge and heaved my body upward, I could still see the picture as if my eyes were closed.
The point of my sword skewered through his shirt – cleanly cutting no more space for itself than was necessary – and continued its course.
Exhausted, I rolled away from the edge, listening intently as the man beside me gasped, staggered, and slowly fell.
+++
Desperation lends great power, but I had never seen it like this. I stood uncertainly beside his still form, just barely touching the pommel of the sword that was buried upright in his body.
“I fought because you were destroying the foundations of reality, denying the air you breathed and building an existence that could not stand without falling,” I sobbed. “I fought because you said there was no evil. Because your empire was based on a lie, and lived on falsehood.”
“The truth could not sustain your reality…and it has destroyed you.”
“I’m sorry, but… there was no other way.”
I leaned down and whispered into his lifeless ear, my tears splattering on the ground.
“I wish it didn’t end like this, brother.”

Something in my chest burns. It’s all happening again.
Why do I have to be this way?
I’m torn up enough that it doesn’t matter if I’m crying or not, because there will be tears. It’s not the type of pain that goes away. Not something you can cry out of you.
It’s a part of me. Tied up in who I am.
Loser. Heartbreaker. Destroyer.
I have to do something. Move. Punch something. Destroy. But there is it again. The cycle.
The only way to dislodge anything, cover it under action – is to hurt things. Myself, people maybe, on accident; but all another layer of failure.
I can’t escape me.
I drop my head forward onto the brick wall, all my weight leaning forward. Push the texture into my head. Something.
Pain to distract me.
I close my eyes, squeezing out a tear. What does it matter anyway? I don’t care anymore. Let the….
Gaahhh. I slam my open palm against the wall, welcoming the moment of distraction, wondering whether I actually hurt myself before the pain registers.
Nope. Not really. I’ll be sore for a while. But nothing broken.
I can’t let go of God. I know I need Him – I just can’t go to Him. Not now.
I’m not too messed up for Him – I know no one is too messed up for God. But yeah. I just can’t go there right now. Can’t let this be over. I’ve gotta pay with this pain.
I don’t know.
I just – I killed her. And then I hurt everyone else. Bad. Really bad. And the only….
“Hey.”
I jump. The running tingle of surprise takes a moment to wear off. I recognize her voice and know I don’t want to face this. Not now.
Not ever, really.
“Hey,” I mutter, just barely audible. I sound broken next to her soft apology of a voice. “Can you go? Please? All I’m gonna do is make it worse.”
She takes a breath. “Don’t say that. You’re not…”
“Heh. Yeah I am. Just don’t even try, okay? I’m not – I’m not worth you. Not worth anything.”
“James, stop it. That’s not gonna help you any.”
“I DON’T CARE, OKAY?” I whirl around. Her face is tear-stained. Great. More evidence that I was here.
“I’m tired of trying to help myself be something I’m not. It won’t work. Hurting is a part of me.”
She steps back and her eyebrows contract. Doesn’t know what to say. How to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
My point exactly.
And yet here I am, hurting her, because I’m making it impossible for her to do the one thing she wants to do. Help me.
“Just….you don’t know what it’s like to have everything you touch break. BECAUSE you touched it.”
She steps forward, to hug me.
I deliberately step away, ignoring the sparkle of the engagement ring I gave her – hating myself for hurting her again and again.
She just….needs to go. Somewhere I can’t hurt her.
Away from me.
“James, stop. Please.” She’s crying again. “Don’t think of yourself like that. That’s not you. You don’t break everything.”
“Just the things that matter. Like her. Like you. Like friendships. Brothers. Parents….”
“STOP, James.”
“But it’s true. Why else would I be hurting you right now? Not letting you help me? Because if I let you, I’ll just go right back. I just want it to stop. And the only way…”
“No! That’s not true. Look, I’m not good at saying things. I can’t put my heart into words like I want to but you’re not like that, okay?”
“SHE’S DEAD, ANNA. I KILLED HER.”
“I know she’s dead, James, but it wasn’t your fault.” Her eyes plead.
“No. No. I killed her. It’s my fault. I….I break things. That what I do.”
Again she tries to move closer but I step away.
“NO! DON’T DO THAT…. I can’t let myself hurt you anymore. Leave! Go!”
“Stop, James! Please!”
“JUST LISTEN TO ME AND GO.” I can’t hold it anymore and let a punch fly at the wall. Yeah, the brick wall. Probably break my fingers.
Hopefully.
But my hand hits something much softer than the bricks. Something cracks.
My hand hurts, bad.
And then she whimpers. In pain.
I open my eyes, unsure when I closed them. She’s holding her hand, cradling it in the palm of her other hand. She looks at me.
“Please, James. Just stop!”
I stare at her hand. She saw it coming.
She…put her hand out to save mine. And I repaid with destruction once again.
It all happens in a circle. Never breaking free of what I am.
But the way she looks at me. Afraid that I will do more – to myself, to others. Not thinking about what I did to her.
Not thinking once about herself.
In spite of the pain, the shock.
And I’m sitting here hating myself, hurting others, but always coming back to myself. Hating me, but never looking anywhere else.
Staring at myself.
I think I see the beginning of my cycle.