Three Tethers Left
written by: Wade Goff
The dusty room was rife with bliss and beckoning radiance, a kind that Robert had not felt in a long time. Everything seemed alive in a strange way. Such an engaging airy joy, it was almost desperate, seeped out of every wall, chair, table, knick-knack, and lamp, that he could not help but beam at their welcoming invitation, wanting to be touched, played with, sat in…used.
The books above all else were smiling at him from his floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Robert softly smiled back at them. He smiled at the mundaneness. He smiled at the memories. Smiled at the absurdity and mystery. Smiled at the seemingly innocuous series of events that had led him to stand there, in that exact spot, on that exact date, at that exact time.
It all seemed preordained in some way. Like life was one grand song, the scoresheet playing invisibly in the sky, melodious, magnetic, and heavenly, pushing and pulling him along to the timing of the conductor’s wand. Unbeknownst to the greater forces at work under the table and behind the scenes. Thoughts, emotions, pain, pleasure. All these invisible yet very real things shaping the entirety of our whole lives. So much so that the body may very well be a product of the invisible and not the other way around. “Which did come first: the chicken or the egg?”
“Who knows anything for certain, right,” Robert thought, scanning the book titles, eyes drawn to a philosophy book on the Socratic Method whose cover depicted The School of Athens painting except with Plato and Aristotle’s heads replaced by an elephant and a horse, though with one still pointing up to heaven and the other indicating earth is where our thoughts should be bent.
Robert stared abstractly at the chess board beneath their feet and mused further on his favorite Socrates quote, slightly drooling in his inward reverie. With a sniff, he wiped his mouth with the hand that held the gun, careful even in his cloudy bliss to use the back of his sleeve and keep the barrel pointed away from him and at the ground like he was blaming the world and not God for all his problems. “The only thing I know for certain, is that I truly know nothing for certain.”
Robert’s soft smile stretched into a grin, permanently plastered onto his face like a smeared smack of spackle on a blank wall. He ran his fingers along the outer-facing spines of his many books. Tapping and caressing them gently like they were the keys of a piano and if he played the exact right heartfelt tune a hidden door behind his bookcase would reveal itself and open a portal to take him somewhere far away, somewhere away from all his problems and worries. He pulled down a book, though no latch clicked, and his bookcase did not spring open, not that he expected it to. It was just another flighty fantastical thread that his mind loved to pluck and follow into the absurd.
As Robert lovingly held the book, he tilted his head to one side and stared off at nothing, eyes wide, outer sight fogging over in profound thought. “And yet…” he philosophized, “books in themselves are a type of portal…And even further still…so is this gun,” Robert continued, the thread winding and curving in the ether, weighing both the gun and the book, one in each hand like Themis’ scales of justice had begun playing on the scoresheet in the sky.
The book was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Its cover had a large kite on it with little pink ribbons tied to the tail. The other corner of Robert’s mouth turned up, his grin becoming a genuine smile, almost winking with both eyes, staring at this book that was like an old friend as forgotten things came flooding back. He was not staring particularly at the kite but inwards, into remembrance. The kite was merely the catalytic entry point, transporting him into the story, as he flitted back through the many, many hours he had spent hunched over this beautiful masterpiece. Read and read and reread again and again. In full, straight through, entirely mesmerized from cover to cover. In monthly sectioned installments like how Dicken’s originally published his work. And more times than not, just dipping in a single toe for a brief submersion into one of his favorite fictional worlds.
In hindsight, and from an outsider’s aerial view, it was easy to see and critique and enjoy the long stretching coming-of-age story. From Pip being brought up by hand, his fateful meeting in the church graveyard, working in Joe’s humble blacksmith shop to fist fighting in Mrs. Havisham’s abandoned brewery, wrestling with love, being pimped out for amusement’s sake in front of Estella. Then growing up, learning the gritty ways of Victorian London, money woes and marriage bonds, longing, and loss. Waxing and waning in the melancholies of adulthood, trying to find some semblance of the home he had lost along the way.
Robert breathed out a longing sigh, feeling Pip’s plight was not unlike his own. “It’s the simple things,” Robert whispered to his old friend, flipping through the pages, the gun covered, feeling the gentle breeze and smelling the faint whiff of paper and long-dried sweat that had stained the bottom corners of every page. His own added adornment of gilded edge from excited and heart-wrenching sweat that had leaked out through his palms while diving full on into its sea of tiny text.
“Everything has a price,” Robert waxed, fully opening the book, somewhere in the middle, that proudly displayed an old coffee stain like a hard-earned medal of merit, somehow saying “You did it! I’m in your possession. You’re a part of me as much as I’m a part of you.”
“I poured some of myself into it and in turn, Dickens shared some of his genius with me…in words, in wisdom, in spirit.” Focusing his eyes onto the page, the phrase “height of our enjoyment” jumped out at Robert first, and then magnetically flitted to “Devil,” and then “by the influence of Woman.”
Robert tried not to let these few, seemingly random, phrases affect him. Acting as a sort of divine tarot reading on him, but it was impossible not to feel like they were meant entirely for him, at that exact moment, mirroring some insight into his present situation like he had glimpsed beyond the veil and God was softly whispering to him. Both shoulders occupied, both ears bent by different-headed angels. He was reminded of that song “You’re so Vain” by Carly something or another.
Robert steadied himself with a slow deep breath, counting to four in Japanese. “Although…they do say God is in the details…or was it the devil,” Robert mused, giving a huffing laugh through his nose as he caught the irony, but then severed the thread before he followed it too far and went blind with confusion, closing the book with an inhaling sighing huff.
Somewhat mournfully, he set his old friend back on the shelf, but not in its original spot, isolated and out of place now, lying on the eggshell white shelf in front of the other neatly lined vertical books. It could have been dunce OR teacher’s pet, standing alone in front of the onlooking class.
Robert squinted, sensing something in his bones. He took a step back, metaphorical eggshells crunching beneath his feet, unavoidably reeling at Themis’s blind justice being oracle’d in real time through such mundane and simple mediums. The line of organized books now showcased a vacant gap like an adult tooth had been pulled, never to be organically replaced.
His gaze was swallowed by its emptiness. And like Pip, this too resonated with him deeply. For some strange reason, the book had not fit in the empty hole it had been plucked from. He had tried, fumbling with his gun hand, prying back the other slumped books, the barrel inverted and its sights casually sweeping over Robert’s distracted face, finally pointing at the true cause of his problems. He had tried to force the puzzle piece to fit…but to no avail. The space was now too small, or the book too thick, too heavy, like the little attention he had just paid to it had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. His single toe just dipped in making it too bloated with the stains of himself to ever fit seamlessly back into its structured place on the shelf. Outcast or outlier. Trailblazer or lapped racer. One running and bounding ahead of the pack, the other falling hopelessly behind.
Was there even a difference between the two? Did it really even matter? Weren’t they the same when viewed from an outsider’s aerial standpoint in a far-removed time where hindsight and ignorance gloss over all the gritty gruesome meticulous details that truly define something or someone or someplace? Like if someone clicked on the TV and started watching a NASCAR race in the middle, all the cars huddled together, racing around and around. And without knowledge of the leaderboard, for the briefest of moments, that lapped racer that the field had just caught back up with would appear to be in first.
Robert stiffened, feeling constrained, bound by his limited knowledge and awareness, drowning in the strong vertigo of isolation on the stagnating sinking island he found himself. It felt like he was falling through the floor like Robin Williams in Jumanji after a bad roll of the dice, everything turned to quicksand as giant spiders spun webs of confusion around his heart and mind. It was a fast-paced onslaught of emotional continental drift. Where he buoyed in the rolling waves of the mighty ocean and thrashed in the tempestuous winds like a flimsy kite, so far removed from the mainland, adrift and aloft, that the motivating score singing in the sky barely reached him anymore. The conductor’s wand gone still, stuck in the muddy floor. So lost, so detached that every move felt wrong and out of the grand song’s harmonic alignment.
Robert could feel the room breathing around him. Humming and pulsing. Its walls slowly cranking in closer and closer like the pulled book had triggered some hidden boobie trap, now caught with Indiana Jones after delving too deep into dark caves for ancient treasure. Suffocating and humid and heavy. That strange sense of inviting sentience coming from his possessions now turning sinister and intrusive and mocking.
Perhaps this was why his book no longer fit in its proper place. Everything was shrinking, dissolving away little by little, turning back into the stardust that powered the grand scoresheet in the sky and breathed life into every lung. That synchronized beating Da-dup, da-dup of chained hearts all in perfect harmony, together becoming amplified ripples generating large enough waves to change the physical world.
The wax wings of Robert’s previous lofty uncaring distant thoughts had melted, causing him to spiral and come crashing down onto the hard unforgiving earth, reality setting in, disillusioned from his escapist fantasies, his wild and fickle emotions back in chaotic control.
Robert wheezed, struggling to breathe, beginning to spiral inwards. Encroaching shadows and sparkling flickers of light danced and fluxed in front of his eyes. The room tilted and spun away. But the weight of the gun anchored him in place. The weight of the gun in his hand had tripled, tugging and wrenching on the chains that his soul dragged in its wake, keeping his soul tethered to his body, to the earth, possibly wanting him to finish something.
“Whatever gets the job done, whatever gives you powerful reason to carry on,” a voice from nowhere whispered in his head, sounding as if it had come from deep inside him, or possibly from somewhere far away and across the great oceans of dimensions.
With jittering hands, Robert switched the gun from his right hand to his left, tearing into his pants pocket. He rifled around his keys, crumpled ones, and fives that were his change from the gas station, hastily and nervously crammed as the waiting customer’s presence loomed behind him, clicking his tongue like a ticking time bomb. The shadows in his eyes were overtaking the glittering specks, fading, fading into oblivion, rearing warped undefined heads of gnawing shadow.
Finally, he found the little snapping metal pill box that looked like a silver pocket watch, inside full of bright blue pills. This was one of the few things of his brother Mark’s that he had found in the old cigar box behind the refrigerator. Cozily nestled against the gun like they were a matching pair, neatly folded in a navy-blue bandana with white Yang signs on it.
Painstakingly, Robert’s numbed, cold, red-tipped fingers, drained by anxious blood, thumbed open the pill box. He had lost the composure to carry out the usual calm and serene ritual of taking a pill. Normally wanting to make a scene out of it, holding them in his open palm while filling a glass of water from the fridge’s spout then swallowing them one by one. Careful and measured. Calm and safe. The process just as relaxing as the pill’s effects in a way. One of life’s weird ritualistic placebo effects he always thought. Like brushing your teeth to kickstart your day even if you’re missing a few.
In his frantic haste, unable to pinch and pluck out the small oval footballs with his large fingers, Robert dumped all the pills into his hand. And, refusing to set the gun down, fearing that to do so would cause Atropos to severe his thread, he shook them around like dice, maneuvering two or three with his thumb into the crook of his index finger, dropping as many on the floor as he did manage to trap under thumb and knuckle. The fumbled footballs popped and crackled and snapped atop the hardwood floor like Rice Crispies in milk. Each an anvil grain of sand falling in his hourglass of frozen paranoid time.
Unconcerned and without hesitation, Robert popped the pills still in his hand back like he was flicking mentos into his mouth from the roll. Ichi, Ni, San. Three flicking thumbs-ups, dry swallowing them all down at once with only his spit and the force of an audible nervous gulp.
Even outside the confines of the normal ritualistic process, Robert immediately felt a rush of relief. Just knowing they would soon kick in and gloss over all his worries calmed him immensely. Soon his wax wings would resolidify, and he would be back soaring among the clouds.
“Funny how thoughts and emotions alone can calm the physical body or send it into overdrive,” he thought, breathing out an exaggerated sighing breath and shaking his head from side to side like he had just stepped off a roller coaster and was reacclimating his balance.
Consciously controlling his breathing, Robert knelt down on one knee, minutely found and picked up every dropped pill, placing them all back inside his pill box. He never let go of the gun, because to him, with the pills, it tethered him to life, keeping his thread golden like Hercules’ for at least a little longer. Robert closed the lid with a satisfying snap and tucked it safely back inside his pocket, double-patting it like it was a spell of protection and comfort, completing the rushed ritual.
Already beginning to feel the pill’s effects, having skipped lunch, he stood back up, the room righted and level, no longer bobbing and weaving through shifting shadows and glimmers of fairy dust trying to cast their own spells of hyperventilation or possibly revealing Peter Pan’s journey home through the stars. “It’s the second star to the right and straight on through till morning,” Tinkerbell had whispered from out of his childhood memories.
Robert turned away from the bookshelf and cast a focused gaze out of his tall balcony windows that overlooked the city. A bird whipped past as Robert’s phone vibrated in his back pants pocket. It was Angela. His main earthly tether. She was texting to tell him she was just leaving work and would be there soon. Robert texted back, “Sounds good, just need to take care of one thing then I’ll meet u there.”
He watched his phone click to black then tucked it back in his pocket, feeling heavy in body but airy in mind. The weight of duality grinding against him in real time. He took one determined inhalation and exhalation then started towards the door but stopped abruptly. He paused for a beat, contemplating the gun. He held it gingerly with his still clammy hands. He brought both hands together, holding it with reverence but with a different kind of reverence than he had held the book with, but respectful reverence none the less even if one born from the fear of its violent capabilities. He eyed its cold metal merciless form, firming up his resolve.
Resolve acquired, Robert tucked the gun into his front waistband, covered it with his shirt, and walked out of his kicked-in front door that could no longer be locked or closed.
- Three Tethers Left - August 29, 2024
