Hello Darkness, excerpt two

He is in his room, it's neat and organized. He loads cell pics into his laptop and one-by-one, alters each, taking out the vibrant hues until they are nearly colorless. He prints his favorite ones, small perfectly cropped images, adding them to a collage on the wall above his desk. A neatly arranged capsule of how he sees his world every day, reduced to an opacity that reflects his self-image.

Time passes. He is on the internet, researching caterpillars and their proper care. The search logically leads to chrysalis – the metamorphosis from cocoon to butterfly. He doesn't want to be interested in this part of it, he only wants to know how to feed and care for his fuzzy black friend. Yet, he returns to the images over and again. The caterpillar is still in its jar. It will need a better home. He looks at it.

“You need a name. I'm gonna call you Darkness. Because you're so black.”

A soft ping comes from his laptop. It's his messenger.

She stayed in her room. She got her first tattoo. And then she got another, She kept them hidden because she didn't want to fit in with other girls who were shunned and alienated. She put earbuds in and listened to music that didn't sound like music. She began to like the sound of objects hitting other objects and strange electrical buzzings. She took a lot of her mother's pills and went to the hospital. She managed to graduate from high school. She didn't go to any after parties.

He likes to read in short segments. He enjoys community classifieds, restaurant reviews, political headlines cut into easy to chew pieces, weather reports on his cell phone. Internet relationships can be exciting at first because they never lead anywhere and they never last and he likes it best that way he thinks. He tells himself that they never lead anywhere because he's so ordinary that it has now seeped into ever known crevice including cyberspace. Soon his ordinariness will be so complete that he will be absolutely invisible. He will have taken ever pixel of color out. A soft ping comes again from his messenger. Shit. He looks over at the glass jar. He just wanted to find a larger container. He just wanted to stare at Darkness for a really long time tonight. His laptop pings again. He sighs and glances at the screen. A series of brief persistent queries, separated by a minute or less.

hey

hey where are you?

are you there??

He stares at his screen for a while. The words are in a little box. He rolls his neck, it makes a loud pop. He wishes he had time to go to the kitchen and get a cold bottle of water or some juice and a snack. He doesn't think he has time though. He could just ignore her. But he doesn't.

hey. sorry about that

I didn't know if you were there

He tells a small lie.

I was just in the kitchen getting some water

are you cool now? You got ur water?

yeah, I'm good

I'm having a lousy night

I'm sorry.

Mmmm. Don't be

what's wrong?

just shit. how was your day?

haha. I brought a caterpillar home

really? are you gonna send me a pic?

sure if you want

do it now

OK hang on

He emails a pic he took earlier. Sending a pic of a fuzzy black caterpillar to a girl he met through a worldwide community newspaper. But it's a small world, it's broken into small convenient pieces for you if you believe the one on the other end. She could be in Russia, you don't know. But you take it on trust, maybe.

it's cute. what do they eat?

grass and leaves and stuff like that

do you have a name for it?

Sure

what is it dork?

Darkness

that's a great name

thank you

that made me feel a little bit better!

good I'm glad

not enough but it was almost enough

what do you mean?

I'm done

what do you mean??

He doesn't understand if she's angry at him or angry at something else. They haven't used fake names. At least he hasn't used a fake name. She's told him about things that she's gone through, about shit in high school. Now she says she's taking some classes. She seems real unhappy. He's not unhappy, he just doesn't want to be noticed. He waits a few minutes. He goes to the kitchen and gets some water and comes back. She still hasn't responded.

hey are you still there?

Minutes have passed, he's not sure where to be annoyed or concerned. He tries again.

hey Sara? Are you there??

Mmmmmm?

hey you're there. I was worried. you okay?

no, dork

haha.

I lit some candles

okay? that's cool. I guess.

I'm pouring a bath

don't let me stop you

okay. it's been nice. you're sweet

I'll be around later, after you finish your bath.

I won't

what do you mean?

I told you. I'm done

what do you mean?

There's no answer back. He gives it some time, she's taking a bath. He hasn't seen a picture of her yet but she's described some things she's gone through. He doesn't think people should hurt themselves, he does some class work, he thinks about things like unique IP addresses and paramedics and being noticed. He wonders if being ordinary takes too much work. He worries. He turns off everything in his room and when it's completely dark he sleeps and dreams.

Warm sand, soft with bits of seaweed and shell fragments, small stones. An ocean mist blows offshore and not far away, clothes that have been washed and rinsed in a pail, wrung out and hanging on a tie strap that runs a short distance from one scrubby tree branch to another. The car parked in the dirt, a plastic ice chest. A fire pit and charred remnants of wood and coarse beach blankets. But it is the breeze and the smell of sea that relaxes, never known before but familial somehow. Hair touched by a million microscopic salt crystals. The wash sound of surf never ending.

As his faithful cell device predicted, the morning is dull, gray, wet. Nat wakes up in a funk, dresses in his usual anonymous clothes, sulks downstairs. Laura is in the kitchen, cracking eggs, mixing flour and other ingredients that never fail to brighten Nat's day, at least a little. There's something else on the kitchen table, square, glass and familiar. She turns to him with a sunny smile.

“I found your old terrarium in the garage. I cleaned it for you, for your caterpillar!”

He smiles just a little. She didn't have to do that. If there is a golden thread that keeps him connected to the world as everyone else knows it, his mom would have the other end firmly in hand.

She couldn't help but notice his cloudy expression when he passed through the kitchen entryway. “Did you sleep alright last night?”

He shrugs, doesn't respond, trails a finger along the seams of the terrarium.

She smiles that sad beautiful smile, walks over, bends and hugs him. “Don't ever disappear all the way on me, okay Nat?”

Torrential rains with potential for flooding expected to last through Thursday, accompanied by high winds and near-freezing temperatures. Brought to you by der Weinerschnitzel.

The owner had agreed to lop a couple hundred off the sweet Cutlass Ciera and it functioned fully as advertised until the little bit of oil burn became a lot of oil burn and the chilly air lost its chill. Nat works twenty hours a week at Dilmore's Hardware doing inventory and trying to avoid customers. Plus a little online trading in his room – he isn't bad with numbers. And so a brake job and tires were followed by a head gasket and refrigerant. The Ciera was a dull white and the color suited him just fine and it wasn't a bad ride apart from the fact that the V-6 tended to work more like a V-5 at times which meant leisurely merging speeds on local on-ramps.

Nat had taken a lot of courses over the past three years at a two-year college. The idea was to get general required subjects out of the way, the idea was to save a little money before transferring to a state college. This was Nat's idea, not Del or Laura's. They had saved faithfully, believed in the value of a good education, had sent away for college brochures from across the country. They convinced themselves through long conversations that their son would eventually snap out of it – that some epiphany would succeed where their own earnest suggestions had not, that teachers, counselors, classmates, anyone would finally break the logjam, that Nathaniel would become excited about the glossy brochures, that he would leave his minimalist room and discover who he really was at school, that he would meet a girl and fall in love and study hard and party with friends, he'd discover classes that inspired and excited him. He would write letters or call home and ultimately graduate and move on to life and a career and a family and finally, stories about the lost years that would become amusing memories to shake rueful heads over. Nat had listened, smiled slightly, looked at the glossy brochures and enrolled in classes at the community college that served no purpose whatsoever except as a means to pile up credits. Lately, even the credits were becoming meaningless, unless his goal was to major in general coursework.

The earlier rain has abated a little, still drizzling down, dripping off the trees, little pings off small metal tables outside the dining hall. Nobody would want to be sitting there on a raw and miserable day, just students hustling past to get from one place to another, some laughing and talking quickly with friends, others hiding inside their hoodies and coats. But one lone figure, ignored and off to the side, partially under a tree that is doing little to offset one hundred percent humidity and tugging wind. Nat himself might have missed her but for a sidelong glance.

She has choppy hair dyed different shades of red and blondish red, currently wet and screwed down with water dripping down the ends. A soaked white long-sleeved thermal shirt made nearly transparent with a black bra showing through, the swell of breasts and bits of other color here and there – tattoos bleeding through the cotton and something else at the edges of the sleeves, the hint of gauze-wrapped wrists and then below, long wet legs in incongruous cut-off jean shorts with fringed ends on a cold wet day like this, shivering, earbuds in, rocking back and forth slightly to the unheard music, an expression somewhere between cold and wet and pissed-off and lost in a song on a cold wet day.

There is something about her that seems familiar to Nat and he approaches tentatively. She scowls up, a few blemishes and freckles accentuated by the harshness of the day. She might have been pretty and popular once, there's still an element of beauty along with non-weatherproofed mascara.

“Is your name Sara?”

She can't hear him, takes out her earbuds. The traces of a recognizable song intermingles with raindrops bouncing off the small iron-grate table. “What, I couldn't hear you.”

“Your name, is it Sara?”

“Why? Do I know you?” Suspicious, wondering why a wet, ordinary kid in a gray hoodie is taking time to ask her name. Ordinary. Wet brown hair under the hood. Tiny synapses misfiring. Her wrists start throbbing like a motherfucker.

“My name is Nat. I'm probably wrong. I'm sorry I bothered you.”

“Nat? Online Nat?” A smile starts leaking through the water.

“Yup it's me. I didn't know you went here. What are you listening to?”

She smiles and holds out the thin black wires and tiny wet earbuds. He bends down, careful not to let his backpack swing around and wreak havoc on the chance meeting. Music and words.

But a vision softly creeping. Left its seeds while I was sleeping.

They smile at each other. Sometimes chance steps in.