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[storiesby-rahmankhan]

The Portrait in the Empty Canvas

Colour has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever… Colour and I are one. I am a painter. – Paul Klee It’s been two weeks since I saw my wife. She died in the car accident after the truck hit us from the passenger side on a bright Tuesday morning. God doesn’t even give me the chance to use pathetic fallacy, seems like he doesn’t have even that much mercy on me. It’s funny, we are with our loved ones nearly all the time, yet we only manage to say the things we really mean when there isn’t any time to say it, we always have time to scream and shout at each other, to point out each other’s flaws and to swear at each other. It’s only when we are in pain, or when time is our enemy that our true feelings come into play. But none of that matters does it? I mean, we are with those people because we know we love them, we don’t need to remind them all the time that we love them, in fact, it makes it worse when they tell us at the last minute; we will never have a chance to tell them again, or to hear it from their lips, they just fade into a memory for us to reminisce over a drink. Here I am then, sitting alone in my house with paint brushes and paints all around me. I’ve locked myself away from the world, I’m here to search for my own, I want to know life is worth the trouble. If I want to be melodramatic about the whole thing; I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be alive. Someone once told me that ‘every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity’. So, to that effect, I paint. I paint the walls till there’s not one blank spot left. I paint the ceiling until I can look up and create a new sky. I paint the floor till I’m higher than heaven. I paint till I get away from it all. I paint. I paint a picture of my wife on a hill staring down onto a village drenched in sunlight over a night sky, because no matter how dark the nights are, morning will always come, and a new beginning will ensue. I paint a bird with wings of fire flying over an ocean. I paint a tree in the middle of lonely field. I paint Atlas carrying my car on his shoulders. I paint a crowd of people with the same expressions in the middle of a busy town centre with a woman with a smile on her face in the middle. I paint. The next morning, the doorbell rings. It’s my older sister Aysha. I let her in, that’s a lie, and she lets herself in. She walks in the front room. She notices the paintings, everywhere. ‘Looks like you haven’t been wasting your time.’ She says to me, she sounds like a fucking child psychologist looking over the assignments she’d set me that are meant to “curb my anger”. ‘Yeah, thought to myself, no point drowning myself in alcohol, might as well do it in paint’. ‘Good thinking’ she tells me sarcastically, ‘get dressed and let’s go.’ ‘Go where?’ ‘I’m taking you out tonight; you’ve been stuck in here for too long, you know?’ ‘I think I’m fine here.’ ‘Ah come on, don’t you remember that party I had last week? With you and Rachel, you guys had fun, right?’ I don’t know what it is about her; she won’t leave me the fuck alone. I’m happy here, in my own world. I created this place to rid myself of memories, emotions; in here there is no future, which means there will be no past. No pain. Last week I let her take me to a party back in her flat, I went with my friend Rachel she’s one of those best friends you can get as close as you want and not be afraid of falling in love with her due to the fact that she’s a lesbian. We got there and got drunk till our heads were spinning, the blues, purples and blacks of the walls began to pop out and the smell of the room went into my lungs like the smoke of a cigar for the first time. I managed to break my sister’s friend’s nose and twist his arm so far to the point where he can’t use it anymore. He thought it was funny to make a joke about my dead wife, thing was, it wasn’t funny. ‘I wouldn’t say it was the best fun I’ve had.’ I say to her. ‘Oh he had it coming anyway, he was being a dick.’ ‘Regardless, I don’t want to go out there again!’ ‘Wait…what do you mean, “out there”?’ ‘Nothing, it meant nothing. Look, I’m kinda busy, call me later if you want.’ She leaves without saying a word. I walk into the kitchen and try to find a drink, fuck, I haven’t got anything here. Shit, I gotta go out to the shop. I’ll go in the morning. I go to bed and close my eyes. I open my eyes and I see my wife’s favourite red scarf. I get up and pick it up; the room begins to glow in a shade of red. The walls I’ve painted begin to move like an ocean. I rub my eyes and they stop. I’m back in my bed. It was only a dream. I turn over and face the wall towards the wardrobe, the scarf is hanging out of the door. I wake the next morning and get dressed. I go for a drive to do some shopping. I drive intoLondon to kill some time and look out at the world, to see how it’s doing. People going about their lives were something that my wife appreciated, she always told me to look out for the little things, I always thought they were trivial. But nothing ever was to her. I drive towards Hyde Park, our favourite spot. Group of kids crowding around together taunting an old couple, drunk fucks walking out of the pub, fuck, it’s not even evening and their walking out already. I sit down on a bench in the park and take my phone out, I need to talk to someone, I gotta try communicating again, I move down the list in my phone book and call Rachel. ‘Hello?’ she says on the other line. ‘Hey…’ ‘Oh hey Ray, how it’s going?’ she seems cheerful for some reason. ‘I’m ok…thought I’d call, I came out here and-‘ ‘Sorry, one second, Ray, something’s up with the phone’, she tells, what’s happening? I just wanted to talk to her. ‘Yeah, sorry, what were you saying?’ ‘Nothing…it was nothing’. ‘I’ll come and see you later?’ I hang up before she could finish the sentence. I’m driving towards Stratford station, its one long drive, my Oyster should still work, I get out the car and get on the train. I always came on here with my wife, we’d sit on the train for hours and stare outside the window, it was like out little getaway, the sunsets and I do nothing but stare at the sun pierce into the horizon. The orange sky blankets the world below it, its safe here. What the fuck? Fucking kids trying to be gangster get on the train and make a ruckus, I feel like punching their fucking heads in.  By the time the sun sets the moon rises, I get back to my car and drive home. I see my best friend, Rachel, sitting in her car, waiting for me. Fuck, what the fuck does she want? I pull up the car on the drive way and turn the engine off. I stare out the windscreen at Rachel who just stares back at me, waiting for me. She’s like those annoying relatives who’ll keep bugging you to see if you’re doing ok because apparently that’s the right thing to do. ‘Hello’, she says to me in a sombre tone, like I’m a stranger to her to now, mind you, she’s the one who’s visiting me. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘I came to see how you’re doing; it’s been a while since I saw you, and that call got me worried.’’ ‘Yeah, it’s been a week, not like you haven’t seen me in a lifetime.’ That came out ruder than I expected it to be, but fuck if I care. ‘Can I come in?’ she ignores that comment, I put them in the hole and open the door, she walks in as if she still lives here. Shit. That’s bad narration; Rachel lived with me after the death of my wife to make sure I was ok, which eventually led to my depression getting the best of me and forcing her to move out. Now that I’ve got the pointless exposition out the way, I get back to my story. She helps me carry my shopping bags earlier. ‘I just wanted to know how you’re doing, your call earlier got me a little worried…where do you want me to put these bags?’ I tell her to put them in the kitchen, which she does. She stops and looks around the place, and smells the paint. ‘Ray, what’s that smell?’ ‘Nothing, just some paint, I did paintings the other night’ I tell her. All my doors are closed, I don’t want her to see them, I don’t want her to see my world. But she walks towards the bedroom door. And opens the door. ‘Ray…what the fuck?’ I don’t know what to say to her. ‘Ray, talk to me!’ ‘I miss her, Rachel, I miss her.’ I eventually say after a long silence. ‘What the fuck is this?’ She sees the paintings of my wife, but they have no face, she sees the walls, ceilings, and the floor covered with paint. She’s floating in the air of my new world, a place where she can’t move forward to stop her from regaining any lost memories. I grab the scarf out of the wardrobe and clench it to my heart. ‘Ray, what the fuck are you doing? Why have you done this?’ ‘This is my home now…I feel safe in this place.’ ‘This isn’t a home! This is just paint, you can’t live in these conditions, what’s with you?!’ ‘Just go.’ ‘I’m not leaving until you come to your fucking senses, you’ve fucking lost it! What is with you?’ ‘I’m happy here, I don’t need you, people, anymore, I’m happy in this place, I have everything I need, my wife is always smiling now, and we don’t need to move forward in time.’ She walks up to his paintings of his wife, and she begins to destroy them one by one, what the fuck is she doing? ‘Rachel! Stop this!’ I run up to her to grab her, but she keeps doing it, she dodges me and knocks down each painting and tramples on them, rips them, destroying my life. She keeps doing it, why is she doing this? My wife, she’s being destroyed, there was meant to be no pain in this place, I was meant to be free. Every painting she destroys is another car accident in my mind. I fall to my knees. ‘I wanna go home’ I mutter. Rachel slowly walks up to me, she pities me as she did at the funeral, why didn’t I stop her? I let her destroy this place. I wanna go home. ‘I’ll take you’, she whispers into my ear. ‘Let it go.’ She tells me. I look at the scarf, I think of my wife, can I do this? Am I capable of this? I don’t know, I guess there is only one way to find out. I loosen the grip of the scarf until eventually, it falls to the ground. She puts her arms around me, I let her hold me. ‘Let’s go home’ she whispers into my ear.

[storiesby-rahmankhan]

The Woman in the Blue Dress

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet. - Charles Caleb Colton

One day I was walking through a field, it was empty. Snow was falling softly from the sky, but it fell with a purpose, it wanted to land and settle on the grass. Each step I took cracked the ice covering each blade; my feet hit the snow with ease and sunk in. Time stopped for me as I walked along the path around this field. I felt safe. Of course you’re safe, you’re home a voice would say to me. A woman’s voice pressed along the cool wind. I look to the distance and see a lone tree in the middle of this white field. It’s a large tree, but it casts a shadow towards the west, over in the distance, hills as far as the eyes can see are scattered across, the sun rises from between the gaps, rays of light hit the ground, growing along the ground.

The light hits a shoe worn by a woman, blue shoes. I notice a woman in a blue dress sitting under this tree; she is holding a book with no title in her hand, reading it with much intensity. Her face is lost between the lies, as if she is looking for an answer to something; or maybe perhaps she was looking for nothing, and just wanted to be trapped in the words, away from the reality around her. She turns the page slowly, making sure she takes the last few words of the page carefully. She smiles as she reads. Her shoulder-length hair brushes against the blue strap of her dress. She doesn’t seem to notice I’m watching her, her every movement is precise, even as she stretches her feet into the snow to allow a little air to pass through. She finishes a chapter and looks over to the east, smiling as the sun soaks her face. The cool wind blows a few strands of her hair across her face, using two fingers she picks them up and combs them back to their rightful place, and she continues to read. Her silky blue dress shines as the sun comes up, the sun rises slowly, as if it is stuck in eternity. As I try to get closer to the lady in the blue dress.

All of a sudden, a flash lights up the sky, a bright white late blinds my eyes to the point where even my eyes lids closed are no help, a fire burns right through them. I’m forced to look at the burning white light all around. The woman in the blue dress continues to read, even when all around her is on fire.

I wake up.

I’ve lost count on what the date is. All I know is that on April 13th, 2036, my crew and I failed to save earth.

We were trained and set out to destroy the meteor Apophis, but we didn’t make it in time, and it destroyed the Earth. The impact was worse than what the scientists had predicted. After we watched our home get shattered, many of the crew killed themselves. Others just succumbed to hunger or lack of oxygen and died. Now and I am the only one left. I keep fading in and out of consciousness, I probably only have a few hours left.

–

In school, they’d teach us that in stories, the sky represented freedom; when birds spread their wings and fly away at the pivotal moment of a story, the character was free. But I always saw the reality of it all, the bird was free, the character was still standing on the ground. But that’s not really my point, my point is that the sky means more than just freedom for someone to get away from something. For me, the sky meant something else entirely, something I don’t know how to explain, I always felt as if, if I could walk on clouds, if I could just stand on the white ground in sky, and look down on the earth, I could do something more than just be free, I could live.

That’s what I miss about the stories and fairy tales, we all learn about how they managed to save the day, or why they saved the world. But we never learn about how they lived after. Did they regret saving the world? Did they think that maybe they made a mistake? Did they miss something out? Do the man and woman who live happily ever after, actually do live happily ever after? Was I just a stupid little kid who questioned everything? I don’t know, my mother always thought it was cute of me to do so, my dad thought the same, though he’d try to be more manly about it and tell me that I shouldn’t really waste my time on my imagination and dreams and questions, but to get down and dirty with the books and just to deal with my dreams when I’m older. And now that I am older, I discovered certain things about me, and now I can’t chase those dreams.

My life was a lonely one. I had friends, but I was only as good as the favours that I did for them. Family life wasn’t really a family life, not in the typical sense.  My birthdays always begin and end the same; alone. I even bought my own birthday cakes. I hated my birthday. I hated everything about it, when I would tell people that I’m doing anything for celebrations, I’d get the same response “but it’s your birthday, you HAVE to do something!” You don’t fucking think I know it’s my birthday? You think my fucking perspective of everything is going to change just because you fucking said that to me? I make efforts for people birthdays, because I don’t like it when someone is upset on that day, not that that should be on other days, but that’s the one day someone actually faces their mortality; and I don’t like the idea that even if it’s just a simple gift, or knocking on their door to say “happy birthday!”, I like to think it makes people happy. Irony is a slap on the face when I’m the one hoping I have someone coming to my house, Facebook reminds everyone for a second, and then they forget. Loneliness in a normal life is a fucking joke. No one is ever alone.

All these points seem trivial after looking back at the remains of my home planet. I miss those friends, I miss the people I had around me. I am the last surviving member of the human race. I am the only one left. All those philosophers and theorists and writers who would ask What does it mean to be human? Well, here it is. Ask that question now when you’re the last one left. What does it really mean? Is it the question of existence? Because mine will end soon. Is it the question of purpose? Because I failed at mine. Is it the question of what comes after? Because I will find out soon, which pretty much invalidates the previous two questions. What the fuck does anything matter or mean anymore? Is there even a God I can pray to? Because whenever I do. All I think about are the faces of the people I knew back on Earth, smiling faces, crying faces, the sound of running water from a tap, the noise from the TV, the sound of music, violins, guitars and pianos. All gone. A civilisation is gone.

All that is left is this ship. And one body. Mine. I threw the other bodies out into space so not to get any diseases, which, in retrospect was a stupid idea as I’m going to die anyway; but I didn’t want to die smelling something awful. The beeps and sounds of machines running are still in the background. I’m sitting by a window on the side of the ship look at the distant stars. A lot of people don’t realise, but many of the stars we see are probably already dead, but the light they shone is still travelling through space. Even after death they shine and tend to give people hope. I am afraid of death.

–

“Why are you afraid?” A woman’s voice asks me. It’s the woman in the blue dress. The snow is falling softly from the sky again. The white flash has left no mark from before. She does not look at me when she talks, her face is buried in the book in her hand. The wind blows random strands of hair into her face.

“I’m afraid because…” And I don’t have an answer for her. I don’t know what to say.

“What is so scary about death?” Her soft voice asks me. Her intonation calms me.

“What should I do? My life wasn’t worth all this. I don’t want to die yet.”

“What does it matter? The world you lived for is gone. Deal with it.” She tells me coldly, but she seems to only care about her book. She doesn’t look at me once.

I turn around and I look out the observation window; it starts to rain, in the distance I can see the cat eye nebula. Have I really come this far? I can’t have…

The rain drops are blues and greens, hitting the window, they roll down the screen and stars in the distance begin to shine and hit me in the face. I want to be in that rain. I film I once watched reminded me of the things I could reminisce about. For example, things like summer, clouds and like cold rain, things like the smell of a fall breeze. Like the sound of rain drops hitting an umbrella, like the softness of spring soil, like the feeling of peace at the convenience store in the middle of the night and then, like the sound of a truck passing by in the middle of the night, like the smell of asphalt in the rain.

I hate myself, sitting here. I’m finally in a sky far from the world, I’m free. And yet I’m scared of what comes next. Maybe that’s why we never learn about the aftermath of stories. Of why they did certain things, or if they felt they made mistakes. Because that’s what made them human. We don’t need that in stories. We need heroes. Heroes we can imagine being happy in life and not looking back. The ones who stay on the ground and look at the sky, rather than being in it. Why the fuck am I scared?

“You finally came this far, didn’t you?” She tells me. I see her smile. Her voice calms me.

“I feel safe here.” I say to her. I want to stay here and not on my ship, I don’t want to look at the vast emptiness of space. I don’t want to sit there waiting for death to come knocking on my door. I don’t want to remember the faces of my dead loved ones.

“Why are you afraid? If death was just leaving the stage and coming back as another character, would you want to slow down or speed up?” Her face ever smiling in her book.

–

I sit alone in the ship, the sounds of the ship beep in the distance, in the dark and long corridors. I run my hands through my hair. I can’t take it being like this. I want this all to end. Why was I sent to destroy that fucking meteor? Why can’t I have been sitting at home with my wife, eating a cold pizza, watching a movie with my daughter sleeping my lap?

These thoughts drift through my mind as I sit here. The ship floats through space. The last vessel of mankind.

I close my eyes. And I stare into the smile of the woman in the blue dress.

[storiesby-rahmankhan]

Miles (Unfinished)

So I had started writing a story a while ago, it’s not finished and it won’t ever be finished. To be fair, it’s too hard for me to finish because it’s based on a true story and about someone I know. So I can’t really find a fitting ending, I can’t fill in the gaps and I can’t just write it any more. So here it is, in it’s unfinished glory. There are some notes on what would have gone in the gaps, but nothing too detailed.

It’s not much, but I haven’t put up my writing in a long time.

Miles.

A Story by Rahman Khan

“Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

This is the story of how two souls are connected despite the fact they are thousands of miles apart from each other.  People tend to make fun out of the fact that someone can develop feelings for someone else over the internet. Making jokes that the other person is just a fat man living in his parent’s basement looking for some young to have his way with.

What most people don’t realise is that they’ll make fun of something they have never had the pleasure of experiencing themselves.

I am one of the two souls. Through some sort of strange twist of fate and irony the one place that two souls seems to have connected was on the internet.

I’ve always liked the idea of friends. It just so happened that I hated my friends.

Growing up, I had very few friends. My best friend was murdered. My girlfriend killed herself. I never really got close to anyone after that, I just didn’t want to get hurt from all the pain. Friends for me…were people who I just had acquaintances with, nothing too personal, just keeping it casual, meet for a drink, or just talk online when we’re bored. Nothing too stressful.

I didn’t really have much of a family either. The only time I see or talk to my family is when we have dinner. My father’s disappointment in me, my mother’s lack of respect pushed me away.

It was through all this that I lost myself to my own depression; I fell into a void of unhappiness and dug a hole for myself. For years I stayed to myself, the two people I had cared about died; my best friend was murdered and my girlfriend died in a car crash. I tried my best to compensate from my sins, but I couldn’t help but realise that I just hate myself for everything that I’ve done, I can’t forgive myself for those things. I shut myself away from the world, I stayed in my room and only left to go to my lessons at school and then again at university, I could hardly make any friends. I was introverted and I didn’t want to change in the danger of actually hurting someone else. So I stayed to myself. But it’s not like I didn’t make friends, I had people I would talk to in the school and university; people to pass time with, but outside of those places, I was alone.

My time at university wasn’t the typical UK university experience. I never had a Freshers Week, I never had those late nights with roommates, late night cramming sessions and hung over mornings. I was alone in my room, watching movies, downloading TV shows, doing my work, hitting those dead lines early; the boring student.

My life has always been secluded. But not to the point where I’d be Boo Radley and not interact with anyone or anything; I went to school, university, all that, I made friends and went to parties. But something was missing; maybe it was love, maybe it was a family member I never had, maybe it was just having an actual friend that I could talk to.

I always had trouble talking to anyone on a more open level. I never explained my sadness, never explained why I was angry, or just didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I’m not sure what it was, I just felt like there was no one around me in this city that I could feel connected to. My days were spent listening to music alone in my room, I would listen to all kinds of music from all sorts of artists; Japanese artists like The GazettE, Dir en Grey, High and Mighty Color; I only knew a handful of Japanese, but something about the voices in these songs managed to calm me down at times when I needed them. They represented a life I could never have, somewhere far away on the other side of the world, far from my family, far from whatever the people I hang around with are, far from my past. French rap managed to capture my soul in a way I could never explain in words to anyone; the beats, the bass, the artists rapping away, it felt…surreal to know that this music connects me to them. Bands like Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros, Mogwai…their unique way to portray music managed to express feeling I could never express. I don’t know, music is just a way for people to escape their own troubles; lyrics guide us on a path to a sense of strange enlightenment.

One Sunday morning, I decided that I was going to leave the house and just for a walk around the city. I take a long, warm shower, I rest my arms against the cold marble walls; the feeling of the cool, tingling marble battled the feeling of warm water falling from the showerhead onto my skin. Music runs through my head. I usually think of nothing in the shower, there’s nothing really to think about, is there? Most of the time you just jump in, clean yourself, jump out. Simple. Why complicate something so simple. I think it’s why I love taking a shower; it’s one of those cocoons that I can crawl into and think of absolutely nothing. My life doesn’t matter in there; all I need to concentrate on is getting every nook and cranny and being as clean as possible.

I decide I want to take the train and go somewhere where I know I won’t run into anyone. I take the underground into the city and head to the park; most of my friends live on the far edges of the city, so I know I won’t see them. I don’t want to see them. I just want to be able to walk around a huge, open space and know that I’m alive. I want the cold air to hit my face, make the blood rush to my cheeks, brightening them up red. In winter, my nose always lights up like Rudolf, you can always tell I’m cold if my nose is bright red once I’m inside. But I love the winter. I love everything about it. I love the first touch of snow to the ground, it’s softer than a leaf falling in autumn, I love watching grey clouds cover the blue sky, hiding away the beauty. It reminds that something if something so sinister can hide something so beautiful, then there must be some kind of hope. Something waiting beyond all the mess and the pain.

Eventually, I manage to get to the park, and it’s empty. There’s no one around as far as my eyes can see. Snow fell the night before and it’s been blanketed across the fields. There are no footsteps, no car tracks; leaves have fallen softly onto the ground. I step into a virgin patch of snow; it feel comforting to know I’m leaving a mark on this world, even it’s temporary, I’ll know I’m the reason it’s there.

I take out my camera and I begin to take pictures. I only just bought this a few months ago and decided to start using it. I’ve always been interested in photography.  I’ve gone through shit in my life that I’ll never talk about, seen stuff I’ll never describe, done things I wish I hadn’t, I don’t talk about my problems, I never will. But when I’m behind that viewfinder, with nothing but what’s in front of me, the sounds of the world around me, or sometimes the tunes of my headphones, I’m no longer part of the world that makes me what to kill myself, no longer part of the world that makes me regret waking up in the morning, I feel different, I’m free. I feel the safest I have ever felt behind that viewfinder, because I’m surrounded by the edges of what I see, not what’s behind me, or to the side, just what’s ahead. It doesn’t matter if the picture doesn’t come out good, or if it’s blurred or over exposed, just the fact that I can sit there, safely and snap away…liberates me in a way in more ways than I can describe.

Photography is my way out of my shitty world and allows me to remember that maybe there is a God, and that there is a world out there, even if my hate blinds me from it sometimes. I don’t think I’ll understand the power of this new art form, but I know I love it.

One day, I found a website; I started a blog and started to share my photography. I wanted to post everything I snap away and just put it out there for people to see. I wanted to let people know if even if they’re feeling like a piece of shit, even if they’re feeling like they want to die, there’s always going to be something out there for them. I thought maybe my photography can help them realise that there is more to life than just waiting around for something to take us away. I don’t know, for the first time in my life, I felt like I had a purpose. But I still felt like I was missing something.

>> BLOGGING <<

It just so happened, one day through this blog, someone messaged me. I checked out her page and she seemed like a cool person, so I started to follow her. We indirectly spoke through our blogs, reblogging stuff liked from each other, liking and commenting on posts. This eventually led to us adding eachother on an instant messenger and we instantly became friends.

Her: Hi!

Me: Hey hey

Her: How are u?

Me: I’m doing good, how are you?

Her: im fine (:

…

We had those awkward silences that aren’t really silences since it’s online, but you knew If this was a conversation in person it’d just be way too awkward to continue.

Her: So what u upto?

Me: Oh, sorry, nothing much, I was playing a game

Her: wat game?

Me: Some zombie game, haha, I felt like shooting some shit up.

Her: I used to play by Nintendo all the time. did u ever play Zelda?

Me: FUCK YES. That was the shit

Her: OMG I KNO RIGHT

Me: I was a Street Fighter kid too

Her: AKUMA!

Me: RYU!

Her: Haha OMG did u ever play cloud?

Me: Cloud? Do you mean Final Fantasy 7? Lol

Her: LOOOL did I just say cloud?

Her: YES! FINAL FANTASY

Me: I’m pretty sure I want to marry you now.

We hit it off instantly. She was perfect. We had so much in common it was uncanny. We loved and played the same games as kids. We both watched the same TV shows. We both had the same interests in fashion. We loved the same movies and had an undying love for classical Hollywood. She was perfect. Despite the fact she lived half way around the world.

We would talk for hours on end on endless shit no one probably would give a crap about; but it was our friendship, this was us.

Her: <3 ive missed you.

Me: not as much as I have, I kept thinking about you all day! haha

Her: how was ur day?

Me: it was alright, i had to do the shopping, driving is a pain when it rains over here o.O

Her: aw, u hate driving?

Me: Ehh, its ok. i dont see the whole excitement about it…its like youre driving a large go-kart that can kill you.

Her: LOL

Her: i like driving, but not in the city. I like driving out by the country

Me:  I’ve never been outside of the city for more than a few hours. I’ve always been the passenger on trips.

Her: u need to try it and just drive

Me: Maybe.

It doesn’t seem like much, but every conversation we have just means something. It gives me the snippets of her life that I couldn’t see in the people I met in person. She learnt more about me than anyone else I knew in person. She had a special place in my heart, even though I never knew her in person. My loneliness disappeared whenever I got the chance to speak to her.

Whenever I took a walk, read a book, listened to music, watched a movie, I always imagined she’d be doing the same. Whenever I would picture Her in my mind, she’d be alone for some reason, with no one around her. A sense of loneliness always befell her in my cruel mind. A sense of loneliness only I could repair. I wanted to be there for her, I wanted to be the one to call her on the phone, or to send her a text message to brighten her day. Knowing I wasn’t there to be with her in person hurt me to the point where I’d just feel sad, as if I’ve lost a friend I’ve grown up with. It’s embarrassing to even admit that to friends, it’d be weird for me to tell them I’m close to a girl I’ve met online. Most of the time it’s ridiculed that you can’t even make friends in person, so you need to retreat behind a screen. Which really isn’t the case, I have friends in person; people I hang out with on a daily basis. But it’s with Her that I managed to actually connect to someone on a level beyond the “How’s u?” “Fine” “…” and then nothing. With Her, I felt like I was a real person, with interests that not only excited me, but her as well.  

One night, I have dinner with a friend, she goes on and on about her mundane life, how she’s stressing over an exam, or how she’s scared of looking for a job, that her cat needs surgery. In the back of my head, I’m just thinking “what is She doing? It must be like 12pm there, she’s probably just getting up right now, brushing her teeth, maybe having breakfast, getting ready to go to her lessons…” It was unhealthy how my thoughts of this one girl I’ve never met, and probably will never meet clouded my mind.

Me: Hey

Her: hi!

Me: wassup?

Her: nm

This was the first time she didn’t really talk.

Me: Are you ok?

Her: im fine

Me: Are you sure?

Her: yep

Me: No you’re not.

Her: How do you know?

Me: Because you’re not talking away like a soap opera

Her: LOL

Me: What’s wrong?

Her: I’m just stressed. I’ve got too much going on right now

Me: Do you want to talk about tit?

Me: NOT TIT. IT*

Her: LOLOLOL

Me: …yeah, so wanna talk?

Her:  Well..

We spoke for hours on her life. How she is stressed at her university, how life at home is hectic, how stuff with her boyfriend isn’t going so well; I knew she was in pain, and it ached me in a way that I’ve never felt before when I knew I could do nothing but type away things that I hoped would help her. I just wanted to jump through the screen and hold her, I wanted to be her best friend. In the back of my head, for one reason or another, she felt like the one thing that was missing in my life, maybe she was the 1 in 6 billion, maybe she was the perfect girl for me. But I had no chance; all I could do was to be there for her right now.

Whenever she spoke about her boyfriend, I felt jealous, and I felt angry that he wasn’t treating her right. I wanted to be that person. I wanted to be the one she loved.

I told her to get some sleep. I had stayed up all night with her; it was around 11pm for her, and morning for me, I told her to try to sleep and I’ll talk to her the next day.

Her: thank you <3

Me: It’s alright.

Her: Can I tell you something?

Me: You can tell me anything.

Her: I’m glad i met you, im glad we’re friends. you’ve brought this positive energy into my life that i needed and im glad its you. Thank you so much

That morning, I didn’t sleep, I just stayed up, hoping she was OK.

>>> GIRLS STORY HERE <<<

My life outside of my internet life was seemingly normal. I was still dealing with my past.

I graduated university with a typical 2:1 degree, I was then thrown out into the grown up world. A world no one warned me about. A world where I had no preparation, and wasn’t ready to face. I was just another 20 year old something with a CV who didn’t know what he wanted to be. Originality was scarce. I felt like I just wanted to tell someone I was scared. I wanted tell someone I wasn’t ready for all this responsibility and that I just wanted to keep living young. I never knew getting pushed out onto your own two feet was going to be this hard. People said shit won’t be easy, but they never told me it’d be this hard. I told a couple of my friends, but they seemed busy with their own problems, so I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

I managed to get a job, I started working 40 hour weeks, updating my blog seemed like a chore, but I still did it, after getting over 1,000 followers, you seem to feel like you have some sort of obligation to keep posting, since so many people want to see what you do. I refrained from answering anymore messages and only really kept in contact with people I seemed to have spoken to before. I even had a girlfriend. Somehow, using the internet and talking to Her; helped me get out of this unsociable shell I was in, and it felt good. It felt good knowing I wasn’t entirely alone in the world.

But this girlfriend of mine, every time I saw her, all I could think of is you’re not her. She wasn’t her her. I wanted her. The perfect girl. Sure, she had imperfections and sure she had her problems, but that’s what made her who she is. I wanted to be a part of that and I wanted to be in her life. I had never met this girl in my life and I fell in love with who is she and I wanted her.

And then one day…nothing. I never heard from her again. Her blog page was gone, she never came back online, we never spoke again. It was as if she disappeared into thin air, or maybe that she never existed.

It felt like a stab in something that I had never felt before, knowing that befriending someone I never met could affect me in such a way was an eye opener for me. Human loneliness can stretch for miles and connect with someone so far away, that the only way to keep them close is to hold them in your heart. But it hurts that much more when you find out they never did the same for you. But she left something. There’s something inside of me now, ever since I met her; she put a fire inside of me. She’s put that little ounce of hope that I never knew existed inside of me.

I had written her a letter in my journal, something I want to give her but now I can’t. Words I’ve wanted to say to her but too afraid to. I wanted to tell her she made me happier than what I thought was possible. That I want to be in her life and that I considered her my best friend and that even though we had never met, I still miss her more than anyone. I told her that I would never leave her and in a way, I haven’t. I just hope she never forgets that.

[storiesby-rahmankhan]

First Breath After Coma

I like the grey, cold winter days. Days like these let you savour a bad mood. I think most people don’t appreciate the bad days, I prefer them over the good days every so often have. Why? Simple: you always remember the bad times. I prefer winter when you can feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. But I guess to appreciate the story behind anything, you need to know your own story, if you don’t know where you’re coming from, how would you know where you’re going and what you’re looking at? I guess that’s what I’m lacking. That sense of belonging in something greater than I what thought could be possible. I can’t even remember the last time I gave a smile when I saw something worth smiling at. It’s like there’s a void somewhere in my body that’s constantly lacking something.

I always said to myself that I wouldn’t go back to my past, that I would never look back and wonder “what if?” to everything that has happened to me, or to the people around me. I decided to stay in one place and not progress in anything, not looking back in anger, and not moving forward in fear. I ran away from my life and everything else in between. A lot of people would think that I found what I was looking for if I didn’t return, but the truth is, I didn’t; I just found a way to live with myself. Whether or not I was happy, or if I had found whatever it was I was looking for, was an entirely different question.

The first thirteen or so years of my life were great, they were the years where you didn’t have a care in the world and you would run in a field of happiness in your soul and let the wind of your dreams brush across your face with a smile as wide as the sky. That’s what it meant to be a kid, to be free. And that is what I miss most of all – the fact that I’m not free, even though, in a sense I am. I am a prisoner to myself, but I’ve covered everything up in anger and hatred for myself that the bars don’t exist, they don’t even need to be there because everywhere I turn, I see the faces of the fears that bring me back to what I am. I am a monster. And not that monster, it’s not like people run away from me screaming to the heavens, I am the kind of monster that is alienated because he isn’t understood, but the only thing I can’t understand it myself, so I am the monster only to myself. People know me as what I am to them in their eyes. They smile and bow, they say “happy birthday!” every year to me, they come to me for advice when they are depressed and need some comfort, they let me use their pens when I can’t find mine, they give me a glass of water when I am thirsty, they let me into their homes and sit on their sofas and they talk to me as if I were family. They are for all intents and purposes, friends. But I don’t know who they are. And they don’t know me. And that is why I have lasted this long in this place. I ran away from my home and I don’t intend to go back, I’ve made mistakes and hurt the people close to me; some even died because of me. They died because of me and it was my fault. The only way to stop myself from hurting people and causing trouble for people was to pack up my stuff and leave and go to a place where they don’t know me. And I’ve discovered I’ve digressed, the opening line of this paragraph was “The first thirteen or so years of my life…”, what a good narration that was.

So, the first thirteen years of my life, the happy childhood that I had. I grew up next door to a Japanese girl who I spent most of my days with, she was born in the same hospital with me, her mother was next to my mother in the hospital, and in turn, I was next to her when we were growing up. We spent our time telling each other stories of what we want to do when we’re older, and when we grow up how we want to become superstars, actors, writers, astronauts, models, photographers, scientists, superheroes and everything else we could think of (or whatever was on the TV and we had an urge to copy). We loved the time we spent together. One day, our parents to us to the park, and not just any park, it was one of the biggest parks in the city, so big, it felt like a whole new world to us, there we were in the middle of this large field, no cars in sight, just the buildings in the distant, people rollerblading down the pathways, people riding horses. It was an open field where we were free to do anything we wanted.

And this is one of my fondest memories, if anything, it will mean nothing to you, but to me, to me, it meant a lot more than just a day out- maybe back then it was just another day, but now it’s something that I hold with high esteem, I guess memories have that way with people; they change certain things to make them more special to us.

-

I was 9 years old; our parents were taking us to the park, it was a cold, winters day, I think it towards the end of November. Our parents didn’t want to bring us to the park on such a day, but we kept pestering them and they just caved in like they always do, so they took us in the red car I always used to remember. On the way we sat together looking out the same window, blowing our breaths on the window and writing our names on it, drawing funny faces, and putting out noses against the window, before taking them off because of the cold. I remember this car ride because she held my hand for the first time. We were only kids so we didn’t know what the hell we were doing, all I remember was the warmth of her hand taking mine as we drove past homes and peoples and dogs and cats. The whole world seemed to shrink and there was just us. It wasn’t until I was older that I realised that the world didn’t get smaller, there was just less in it. But that’s beside the point, at that time the world so big we could travel around it a hundred times and still find something new to explore; the magic of being a kid, finding new things in the old corners of the world; it’s what drives us as humans and growing up as children. That’s all I remember of the day, not the park, or the weather, the brightness of the sun, the sound of the birds or the size of trees. But it doesn’t matter, what mattered was that I remembered what happened on the way there, because most of time, if not all the time, the journey is more important than the end or the start.

I remember her face clearly, her light coloured skin, short hair up to her hairs, hair that went just below her shoulders, her natural black hair which was always straight, it was always shining like those God-awful shampoo commercials, brown eyes, she had a slight smile o her face all the time, it wasn’t big, nor was it small, her lips gently parted revealing her white teeth slightly. She was a small girl in figure but she was strong hearted, even at a young age, I could remember her taking my breath away.

When I was 5 I met this boy in school, he seemed pretty cool and we started hanging out, and from that day he was pretty much my best friend along with the girl. He was a good friend, well at 5 you could never know, but he never said anything bad about, we always got into trouble together. When we were 14 we got into our first fight and be backed me up, he’d say to me, you and me? We’re here for a while, so we’re gonna stick together like brothers. And for a while, I believed that. It was a great friendship, for years and years we stuck together, we ran together, we played together, we made of each other. We’re brothers he’d keep telling me. I remember one day where we were playing in the park, we were about 12, maybe 13, I can’t remember, but that doesn’t matter, we were in the park playing cricket, I was bowling and he was batting, he would always slug the ball and get a six or a four, he’d hit them and always get the runs. After 2 hours of being the guy who kept bowling like shit, I took a run up and bowled as fast as I could, I ran and let go of the bowl. The middle wicket smacks and gets forced out of its hole and he got pissed and threw the bat at me. I don’t know why I remember that; we just kept laughing about that for days, it’s like I was a hero to myself and realised I could overcome anything. And then I realised, I should tell her what I really think of her.

By the time we were 13, we had pretty much fallen in love and I told her how much I liked her. And she told me how much she liked me too. We kissed for the first time a few weeks after we told each other this, and it wasn’t even a romantic kiss, or even one that could win an Oscar, but it was a kiss, and my first kiss, and with her; that’s all that mattered and that’s all that ever matters.  We we’re at my house playing some video game; must have been Street Fighter or something like that, my parents were home; and they didn’t know that we were in ‘love’. Being the kind of person I am, I let her win one round and I pretended to be upset, she starting teasing me, pushing me and rubbing it in my face. After a while she just stopped, and looked at me, when I looked at her, into her eyes, she came forward and kissed me on the lips, it must’ve lasted for like three seconds, but to me, it could’ve lasted three hours. It was a strange feeling having a girl’s lips on yours, they were soft, they weren’t warm as some romance novels will have you believe, but they weren’t cold either, they were…they were just right. After she kissed me, she didn’t say anything, she just smile and we started to play the game again. It’s like it didn’t happen for a while, but it did, I think it must’ve scared her like it did me but I guess we both knew it was coming, so we just smiled along the way. After this, we started kissing alot; we would kiss whenever we had the chance behind our parent’s backs and it never got old. And I guess, we were happy.

One Halloween night, my best friend said to me to come out with him and a couple of other guys for trick or treating, I never had done it before, and it would be the first time I went out in my life at night. And so I agreed, I thought it would be cool going out, I remember having some money I needed to give so I took that with me and forced him to take it. The night was pretty calm for a Halloween night; I guess it’s an American thing. But there still were a few people here and there doing what they do, trying to get some chocolate or whatever. We didn’t really get anything, but we were having fun hanging out. We jumped in trolleys and started pushing each other down hills and across roads, nearly hitting traffic, great fun it was. We’d go into the city and be flaneurs for a while, just taking everything in, the lights were bright, we’d pretend that we could see the stars; we had this fascination with them. We did a lot that night, but it was the last night I ever saw my best friend. He was murdered in front of me not long after I dodged traffic in a trolley. There were three of them, and they were just looking to steal something from us, nothing else. We’re gonna ask once, have you got anything? One of them said to each of us, we told them we did and gave them our phones and money. They went to my best friend, this guy got anything? One of them asked me, I said he didn’t. They searched him and found the money I gave him earlier, they looked at me and just said, this is for your lie. And they stabbed in 3 times in the chest and ran away. I ran to help him and held him. He died in my arms.

After a while, my girlfriend started to look at the future, she wanted to do something with her life, I think after watching a film she realised the importance of living and how we need to keep looking around ourselves and realise we’re human and we need to do something meaningful to prove our existence. She could never decide what she wanted to do when she grew up, naturally. She kept changing her mind, but one thing was sure, she wanted to help people. After the murder, I fell into a state of depression, she always tried her best to get me back on my feet when I fell down and it always seemed to work, she realised this was something she wanted to do, to help.

I’m just here for the time being and when I’m gone, you’ll remember me as that one girl who thought she could make a difference in the world. A difference to you.

That’s what she said to me, and it’s stuck with me since. She’d try her best to get me better, she’d be with me for hours each day and helping me out, and in return, I’d love her with everything I have to give. But it wasn’t one-sided, it’s not like she’d never had bad days and I’d be selfish and stay in a pool of self-pity, I’d give her advice all the time, she would be upset that her dad is sick, or that she’s an only child and never knew what it was like to have a brother or sister, and she’d cry because she felt alone. I held her once to remind her that she’s not alone, and loneliness doesn’t exist with us because we completed each other. To me, there are two types of people, people who have a void and want to completed, and the other type of people are the ones who complete them. And that’s what we had together, at times I completed her, and she completed me, it was that simple and nothing else mattered to us. We’d watch films to cheer each other up, we would sit down and watch The Lion King; Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring; Vanilla Sky, Dreams, Ikiru – the last being Kurosawa movies, seeing as he was her favourite director. Those are movies that really changed our perspective of what we can do in our lives, and what we can achieve through the choices we make. I guess that’s something most people don’t appreciate, the power of choice. One thing can make a difference to the course of our lives. What is happiness to you? She’d ask every time we would see a film, copying the lines from Abre Los Ojos and Vanilla Sky, I’d tell her, Look inside yourself. You are more than what you have become. This never got old.

Then one day we were watching a film together one night and it got late. She asked me she should call her dad since it was getting late, I agreed. After which it started raining, her father came and picked her and took her home, though they never made it. They were on a crossroad, and their light turned green, but a truck didn’t care and it sped down the road, colliding with their car in the middle. She died along with her father. It wasn’t until I was older that I realised that she asked me if she should call her dad because she wanted me to say no and suggest her to stay here. No, it’s ok, you can stay here tonight, I know my mum won’t mind is what I should’ve said to her, but no. I told her to call her and dad and because of that she died. It was my fault that she’s dead. I’m just here for the time being she said, and she was right.

After this, I lost myself in my own depression; I fell into a void of unhappiness and dug a hole for myself. For years I stayed to myself, the two people I had cared about died and it was my fault, one died because of a lie, and one died because of my ignorance. I tried my best to compensate from my sins, but I couldn’t help but realise that I just hate myself for everything that I’ve done, I can’t forgive myself for those things. I shut myself away from the world, I stayed in my room and only left to go to my lessons at school and then again at university, I could hardly make any friends. I was introverted and I didn’t want to change in the danger of actually hurting someone else. So I stayed to myself. But it’s not like I didn’t make friends, I had people I would talk to in the school and university; people to pass time with, but outside of those places, I was alone.

During my time at university, I met a girl who seemed to take an interest in me, I never knew why, but she would always say There’s something about you that’s different, something that I like, you’re not like everyone else. And that’s all she’d say about why she would want to talk to me. Her name was Miki, and she was beautiful, the first girl I could look at and feel something, a girl I could talk to and know for a few minutes that maybe, I wasn’t alone. She was also Japanese, she had short hair with a fringe going from left to right just above her eyes, purple highlights, small eyes, and like her, she had a slight smile, she was beautiful but you could tell her wouldn’t try to exploit this. Her teeth were bright white and she would laugh, she would laugh with a passion, I don’t laugh often, especially during the times I should’ve, so when I do laugh, I try to catch up with the moments with my life, she’d tell me. She closes her eyes and opened her mouth when she did laugh, it was cute. I guess I saw something of her in Miki. And for the first time in a very long time, I could be open to someone. Miki was kind to me, she saw that I had trouble with communicating to people, or to even be a human being and that I’d stay in loneliness, The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being, she’d say to me, and then she wouldn’t shut up about her day. Or her life. Or what she wants to do in her life tomorrow, but I didn’t care, I liked her voice, it made me calm. I could talk to her about anything, I told her about a place that I’d want to live if I ever got the chance, what I wanted to be when I grew up, who my childhood friends were and what they meant to me…what they mean to me. She knew my story, and she still liked me for who I was. This was someone I never thought I’d meet, and for a while, I thought I could finally see myself moving from everything. We went to the coffee shop near our university and began to talk about what we want from our lives, what is happiness to you? She once asked me. I don’t know, happiness is just a word made by man to acknowledge his own dreams, and I don’t have any dreams left I said to her. Even when I was at my worst she would look at me with a smile, it sometimes scared me that she stuck with me after so long, this was going to well and I was scared that I’d do something to destroy it. And I wouldn’t want to live with that. Sometimes we’d go for long walks at night and look at the city lights, watch the people go by and have dinner in a different place all the time. She would always smile and try to keep my smiling. On the days she couldn’t smile, I’d be there to comfort her and she would place her head in my chest, hold me tight and tell me how much of a great friend I am. I never judged her, and she didn’t judge me. She told me how she stole money from her mother, or she hated her father so much she dreams of killing him constantly; she let everything out with me, and remained human. I think that’s what made her the person she is, letting out everything and being able to get on with life.

At this point in life, I wasn’t particularly unhappy; I found my life tolerable and was able to get on with everything. While I was with Miki and found myself able to breathe again, it was like my first breath after a coma. We spent our time talking about everything our minds could conjure up; we’d try to go somewhere quiet to talk about those things, sometimes we’d go into a park and sit under a tree in summer, sometimes we’d sit under that tree and watch the leaves drop and pretend we were falling in time and allowing ourselves to be whatever wanted to be in those few minutes, the leave would fall on us and we were part of this world. The whole time we felt as if we were stuck in an eternal sunrise, frozen in time, looking at the horizon knowing that the day is always at the beginning and we don’t have to move forward, the perfect sunrise.

It goes without saying that we became a couple during this time, she kissed me one night after dinner and she told me she loved me. But I felt bad for going into it, I never even told her I loved her, I just smiled and held her when she confessed to me, the whole time she knew I wasn’t really looking at her when we were together, my gaze was fixed elsewhere.  My love for her felt like my heart was screaming out an everlasting song of promises to her, promises I knew I couldn’t keep, but like most people, I just lied to myself thinking that maybe, just maybe I could do these things. I guess in the end it’s the emotion that made me forward; my heart was too fast for my head to keep up.

Sometimes she’d look at me and my mind would be drifting along a wind of memories and dreams, landing nowhere. What are you thinking about? She asked me, and I didn’t have an answer, I never knew what I was thinking about, sometimes she’d ask What dreams do you have? What do you want to do with your life? Her attempts in trying to get me open up to her about my past, what I was afraid of, I never really answered, I’d make a joke and change the subject. The honest answer is the fact that any dreams I ever had, were gone, the dream on the horizon became yesterday and was lost. She knew this, she knew I always lied, I see it on your face, you’re lying to me…I don’t understand why, what are you afraid of? When she asked me this, I had only one answer.

What am I afraid of? I’m afraid of actually thinking that I’m happy for once in my life and losing everything all over again, I’m afraid that if I try one attempt to be a normal person, I’ll fail. I’m afraid the day I finally figure out that I love you will be the day I lose you like everyone else in my fucking pathetic excuse of a life and I wish I wasn’t alive. I wish I was dead. I wish things never went this way and I wish no one died, I hate God, I hate you, I hate people, I’ve lost faith in everything I ever believed in and I’m walking this earth blind, deaf and dumb heading into a tunnel of eternal nothingness. That’s what I’m afraid of, I’m afraid of looking myself in the mirror because I’ll just break down and cry, I look at old photos and I hurt myself knowing I’ve turned into a fucking monster.

And after that, I finally left.

I graduated and got my 2:1 in my degree, I left. I packed my bags; left my ‘home’ and I left Miki and I didn’t look back. I left without a word. I settled down in a small town in a far away country and still stayed to myself; I don’t why I left, I’m still the same person I was back home, I’m introverted and only have a handful of people I talk to here and there. I guess I left because I wanted to leave all my memories behind, all those places of my childhood are still there and I didn’t want to walk through them remembering everything. I don’t want to remember all these things, I want to live them. And I can’t do that and that kills me every time I think of it. But even once I left, and here in this place, I can’t help but thinking of those places and I’m stuck. I haven’t found what I was looking for in this place, but I guess I managed to find a way to live with myself, and for that much, I’ll stay and I’ll never go back.

–

So here I am living alone in this small town, the type of home you’d think only existed in dreams and movies and paintings, looking down on a canal, near the forest on one end towards the back, and a view of the town from the front. The view from the back was like a totally different world, you can see mountains in the distance; a lot of people compare the forest to that of the Kashima Jingu, which isn’t that far from here, so sometimes I tend to go see it and lose myself in it. She would always talk about it to me, and how her parents met there before they moved.

I feel like I’m home in this place, but there’s something missing, there’s always something missing, why can’t I just live? I don’t get it. There’s a faint smell of jasmine in the air, it captures me and I close my eyes. I don’t understand why I’m unhappy here, I’ve left everything behind, I started again, I have a good job, I have people I talk to, I don’t have a girlfriend, but that doesn’t matter, I’m making good money and I can sleep at night. But despite all this, there’s a hole in my heart that can’t be filled, I don’t understand why. I guess there’s a part of me that wishes I never left Miki, but she was a reminder of all that I had lost. I live in a paradox, a place that I’ve always wanted to live, which was influenced by her, it’s near where her parents used to live, so anywhere I look I see her, I’ve fallen into my own trap; I am everything I never wanted to be, and everything I wished I was when I was a kid. I’m a drifting shadow without a body to call my own; I wake up, wash my face, have breakfast; 2 eggs, some cereal, milk, and a glass of water; I take a shower, walk outside and head to work, I come back alone, stop at a bar and drink alone, I come back and fall asleep. The cycle repeats Monday to Friday, and the weekends I keep to myself and watch the world run across my eyes. I tend to travel a lot, going up north to see the mountains, the rivers to the west near Ishikawa, the coasts towards the south; I try to take it all in whenever I can. It’s been five years since I left.

The winter comes and the silent pain of the snow settling in the gardens covers me like a duvet, I tend to listen to a lot of music during the winter and allow myself to lock myself in a cocoon of music. Bands like Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai and Hisato Higuchi, they speak to me in their music and I entrap myself, allowing myself to fall in a pit I never want to break out of. I like the feel of the cold wind against my skin as I sit outside, my eyes closed, covered in layers of clothes, this is humanity at its best.

The door bell rings.

I get dislodged from my cavern and open the door, it’s my neighbour.

“Good afternoon!” She says. “Hi…how are you?” I reply back, agitated that I had to move, but I try to hide that from her. She was the first person I met when I moved here she’s a nice person, she made me dinner when I had nothing in my kitchen. For a while I thought that she wanted to sleep with me, but I never really felt attracted to her. She’s not an ugly person, she’s rather quite a pretty, and that’s what I disliked, she was the girl you would pass by on the street and stop and stare at her, and she would know and like this. I never liked that in women, I like the girls that are noticed, the ones who hide behind their beauty and try to get on by. “I’m very well, thank you, may I come in?” I let her in, and offer her a seat in my living room, she looked around taking a deep breath as she removed her coat and sat down, she was acting like she was in a meadow; I do keep it clean, but the walls were plain white, no pictures, no clocks, just plain white, with the odd black pattern running up the walls like vines, I think she found it peaceful. “So what’s up?” I ask her, trying to get to the point, I walk to my window and I notice the snow is falling again. “I wanted to ask you something.” She retorts, I knew she came here for a reason. She had that look on her face. “Sure, what is it?” “Well, the thing is, you’ve lived her a long time now, and we often meet and we talk as we pass by each other, and you know quite a lot about me, but I know nothing about you.” I can see where this is going. “What’s your point? Why are you asking me this?” I ask her, I can feel the cold chill down my spine, my past is creeping up to me, I need to stop this conversation soon. “I ran into a woman on the street the other day and she asked me if I knew someone, and she described you exactly.” “Who was she?” “I’m not sure, she wouldn’t say her name, she just said that she’s been waiting for you a long time and she’s tired of waiting around.” Miki, it must be. “You haven’t asked your question.” “Ok…my question is…what are you afraid of?” What are you afraid of? Miki told her to say this, my head runs wild, and the pain of memories scratching my inner skull, a deep silence takes a hold of me. “Have I offended you? I was told to ask you this.” She tells me, trying to make an excuse; she can see she has upset me. I say nothing and go into the kitchen and pour myself a drink of whiskey. She doesn’t say anything, upset; she gets up and sees herself out.

Did that really happen? Or was I dreaming in my state of musical hibernation? Three days later, I got my answer.

I’m on my way home from work, all suited up, my skinny black tie loose, my t-shirt hanging out, I hadn’t shaved in a few days either, you’d think I was working hard day and night, but the fact was that I just couldn’t be bothered shaving, I didn’t sleep much and I’ve been drinking quite a bit, I’m surprised I’m still standing. The snow is falling again, it’s soothing and it looks like the canvas I’ve wanted to paint for a long, my own canvas, painting my own portrait in the empty canvas that is my heart. I turn the corner to get to my home and then I see her. Miki.

Her hair is longer, but she still has the purple highlights, she’s smiling, it’s as if she didn’t hate me for leaving her. She’s standing there in a long grey coat that covers from above her knees up to the top of the neck, the top of the coat is open revealing a pink scarf, denim jeans and white trainers, she looks like someone who's lived her a while. I stop walking in shock, but not surprised, she approaches me.

“You know, for someone who ran away, you’re not that hard to find, you know that?” She tells me, smiling and giggling. “How did you know I was here?” “You never stopped talking about ‘the place I want to be’, it wasn’t hard to figure out once you left.” I think I was too open with this girl. “What are you doing here?” I get to the point, as I always do. “You’re not even going to say ‘how are you?’ or a ‘you look good!’ or anything like that?” “I would if I wanted to see you.” “So I should just go?” I think for a while. She looks at me. “Fine.” She tells me before walking away. “No. Wait,” I say behind her, she stops, maybe to smile; she knows me to well, she turns around. “This isn’t a big place, I just asked a few people and narrowed my search, besides, as a foreigner you do stick out like a sore thumb.” “That is true.” “So, take me to your place, it’s cold here.” I take her back to my place and she checks out my home, she’s impressed, as if I was trying to impress her. She sees the view from the kitchen. “Just like you dreamed about…” she tells me, her words drifting slowly in the air. “Almost.” “What’s different?” “Nothing, that’s the thing.” I’ve never spoken like this to anyone, her presence is something that brings my honest out in me. “Then why are you here?” “Is that why you’re here? To question my purpose?” “It is, so tell me, why did you leave?” “Five years, and we’re already delving into this? No catch-up sessions, not even a hug or a kiss?” “You left without anything, so here I am with nothing but words.” “And what do you think you’ll achieve from that?” “I want to take you back and help you.” “Why can’t you help me here? “Because you’re not facing anything here, you’re running away for no reason,” I say nothing. I just watch the snow fall behind her in my garden. “You stay here because no one asks you anything, you think you’re happy because these people know nothing about you and you think you can live a life like this? This isn’t a life, why the fuck are you here?” She tells me. I don’t know what is happening, it’s been five years, I managed to get away from everything.

“Why?” I ask her, that’s all I can say, after everything, why now? Why me? Why her? Why? “I don’t know, I can’t answer that, we had a connection, I knew there were things that disturbed you, and I knew you needed someone in your life, and I want to be that person.” Again, I ask “Why?” “Because I love you. There, I’ve said it, I’ve loved you since I met you and I loved you when you left and I love you now. It’ll be OK, trust me.” “What are you talking about? How can this be love? How you can just say that and pretend I’m gonna welcome you with open arms? You can’t just say you’re in love and think everything will work out!” “Why not?” She says to me, like a whisper, like a child questioning her elders, she’s genuinely confused and I didn’t have an answer for her. She looks at me, searching my eyes for an answer, and she found one. I loved her too. “You’ve spent too long hiding from everything, I know you don’t want to tell me everything, but that doesn’t matter, I just want to be in the part of the life that starts from now, not the past.” “I don’t want to lose you because of that.” “I know. But you won’t.” “How do you know?” “I don’t.”

The whole time she looked at me, my eyes nearly flooded with tears, my hands shaking, the whole time I think of snow and music, a calm serene space. I’m on my own two feet, her presence disappears from me, the room fades away. I feel nothing, I feel everything. I can feel a warm chill in my bones that make them shake. I see her and I see him, they stand in front of me and they’re smiling, he gives me a nod and they begin to walk towards me, they both tap me on the shoulder, I fall to my knees and break down, I cry, I scream their names, my wall of nightmares surround me and I suffocate on my own sorrows. Everything I’ve ever locked away comes out and all it took was Miki, I can explain why this way, and I can’t explain why in this one small conversation my life changes, it’s like what someone once said, Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around, all the friends in the world couldn’t bring me to my knees and all it took was this one girl who nearly changed my life.

For a while I thought of snow and music, I saw footprints in the snow, two pairs, were they mine and Miki’s? Or where they theirs? The entire time I stood motionless, the snow falling around me. For a while, I thought of music and snow, then someone touched my hand.

[storiesby-rahmankhan]

(Cradle to Alpha)

Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there. - Otomo No Yakamochi

Love is the greatest human emotion any one person can feel, there’s always talk of that ‘one’ person for each of us. There are six billion people on the planet, six billion imaginations. But how many possibilities are there? London, England. 0830, Monday 16th November.

You wake up one morning and it’s a beautiful day. Even in this fucking cold you can’t wait till you step outside the house and have the sun hit your face in the cold wind. It’s gonna be a good day. A beautiful day.

In this cold London morning lies Ray, twenty years of age and in his second year of university studying English Literature, he lives alone in a flat in the Docklands area near Canary Wharf. I guess there’s nothing much more you need know about him, aside from the fact he lives alone, he’s an orphan of two wealthy parents which pretty much gives him that clichéd ‘well-off’ and spoiled child, but he’s not. He’s just like any other university student – trying hard to get his degree.

He wakes up alone, goes to university and attends his lectures, seminars, has lunch with a couple of people from his class, hands in work on time and gets the grades. At the end of the day he heads home alone, watches a bit of T.V, maybe play a couple of videogames, goes out for a walk by the Thames River, alone. He goes to bed at midnight to repeat the cycle for the following day. This is his life; this is what it has been for twenty years, four months and twelve days.

Tokyo, Japan. 1730, Monday 13th April.

Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence, but what about during the springtime? She keeps asking herself, what can someone do during the spring?

As with Ray, there’s not much to tell about Chihiro, she’s your typical Japanese girl living with her roommate Ai in Shinjuku-ku. She’s twenty-one and works at the 7Eleven part time while studying Mathematical Science at the University of Tokyo. Her roommate is working at a Law firm and is usually never home, so Chihiro gets up to an empty apartment, takes the Metro to university alone, finishes the day and heads off to work at the end of the lectures and has the rest of the night to herself where she tends to walk around the Shibuya-ku area, alone. Her parents live in Osaka in a small house by the coast and she visits them every summer for a family gathering.

Spring is Chihiro’s favourite time of the year, it’s when the Cherry Blossoms are in full bloom, and she would sit under one alone while staring out into the world while the sun sets, with nothing but one question playing on her mind, “When?”.

It’s a beautiful day, and it’s going to be a magnificent night.

--

As with all human beings, there is one thing Ray and Chihiro strive for, despite being three thousand miles apart, there’s one thing that connects them and that is the quest of love, and having a sense of belonging in the world. What most people do not understand is that the human spirit is a fragile item, it can take years to build a spirit and to get used to the world around us, taking its punches and not letting anything or anyone grind us down, but in only a split second can the spirit be shattered into a million pieces, but like the first snow to fall in winter, we cover these pieces with something beautiful for others to see, but the pieces are still there.

London.

Ray gets shaken by the alarm on his phone, he struggles to reach it and turn it off, and it’s another day in his life. Two lectures and a seminar, 4:00pm finish, it’s going to be a long one.

He enters the bathroom and turns the hot water on in the sink, his hands rest under the tap and he lets the water run between his fingers, across his palms, feeling the warmth cover his hands. His eyes close as he feels the warmth trickle up his arm like a vine plant growing on a wall. He retracts his hands as the water starts to scold him, he stares at them and watches the smoke rise from his knuckles and fingers, like a glove made of fire wrapping his hands, it’s this feeling that’s missing from the palm of his hand, a certain warmth wrapping it. He gets dressed and walks out the door, taking the train to university.

Today is a special day, so he decides to take the slow train, he decides to take the DLR line to get to his university, even if it means missing his first lecture, he doesn’t care, for once in his life he’s going to take his life slowly. He takes out his journal from his bag, and begins to write.

There are people you have a crush on, people you meet and go on dates with, people you’re friends with, and then there’s that one in six billion. Is this worth it? I dont care I cant i want this.

His pen digs into the page like a shovel in a grave burying a loved one, it’s as if he’ll never look at these words again, he’ll close the book and never go back. He looks up from his pages and notices the people around him, workers heading to their common jobs, other university students, and children heading to school, all with their friends and family, and here sits Ray, leaning against the window with nothing but a cold notebook in his hand.

I cant handle being alone like this. I just want to be accepted for once i want to hold a hand in mine and look into a smile and see what it means to be alive. i will give anything to see the face of true beauty.

He writes on the edges of the page, he scribbles in the middle and doodles tiny pictures of people and flowers.

Happiness isn't the destination, but the flowers you smell along the way.

He tries to write whatever he can on the pages before he arrives at his station. An old couple enters the train, the pen's ink is drained into the page, leaving an imprint of his mind stamped across an ocean of dreams. He turns the page

I want flowers to smell. i dont care about anything else, what else is there? we all go from one place to another hoping to find something in life. some leave the country and go travelling to find themselves why dont i do that?

maybe because you dont have to go anywhere to be somewhere.

The train comes to a stop, he looks at the sign, it's his stop, he closes the book and shoves into his bag like a common library book, for now, he’s filing his imagination and going back into reality. He realises the paradox in taking life slowly on this day, yet rushing out of the train. He continues to walk.

Tokyo.

“Arigatou gozaimasu.” Chihiro says for the hundredth time in nearly an hour of starting work, it’s going to be a long day for her and she knows it. But it’ll be worth in the end. “Why do we have to be so polite?” she whispers to the girl working next to her, she doesn’t respond, she continues to smile politely at the customers in the line waiting to be served. Chihiro still wonders why.

4:00pm – She gets a 20-minute break from work, she steps outside in the designated smoking area near the store and takes out a cigarette.  

“I should really stop smoking,” she thinks to herself “someone should really help me stop, but who really gives a shit about me and my smoking?” She takes another blow of the cigarette and watches the smoke rise from her mouth into the air around her. Schools are over and kids from elementary and high school group together and head for the buses, bikes and cars and go off home. Looking at them, Chihiro can’t help but feel nothing but jealousy and sorrow for the children. She stands there in her uniform in the warm sun, filling her lungs with nicotine reminiscing about the days of high school. Chihiro wasn’t one of those lonely girls everyone would be calling weird or a loner, in fact, she was one of the most popular kids in her high school; she was part of a clique that all the guys would fall in love with, but be afraid to approach them. She’d do her work and get good grades, but at night she’d be going to clubs, getting drunk and waking up hung over – you wouldn’t think this is the kind of girl who’d get good grades. But in the end, she gets into the University of Tokyo and studies a relatively hard subject, but like most undergraduates in university, she’s not sure if the degree she chose was the one right for her.

Now when people see her, she’s the geek, not that girl everyone would fall in love with, but she doesn’t care, even from the hundreds of guys to ask her out on a date in high school and the first few months of university, she always said “no.” and the reason being was due to the fact that those guys had only wanted one thing, her pussy. Nothing else mattered to them, so she didn’t even bother, she decides to wait for the right guy to come into her life, and she’s been waiting for a very long time. She stands on the street smoking her cigarette and begins to wonder the same thing she always does when her mind is free to wonder.

When? When will I meet a guy who is different from all the rest? God, I sound like a typical girl waiting for my knight in shining armour to whisk me off my feet, I don’t understand, no one ever talks to me anymore, no man wants to know me, why? The gaijins are too scared to even approach me. But who would want to? I’m not that pretty, I’m not beautiful, I don’t understand. Who am I kidding? I don’t have time for a relationship anyway, I have university, I have a job to maintain, there’s no point, and no guy would ever understand that.

Despite what she constantly thinks, like Ray, she knows it’s going to be a good day.

Maybe tonight things will be different. Maybe tonight I’ll know what it’s really like to have a presence near you. Having a warmth around you. There are six billion on the planet; there must be one fucking person out there.

Her thoughts slice her mind at the very image of a man walking into her life, she knows that love is one thing in this world that no one can take away from you, because it’s something that ventures through the abyss of one’s mind till it culminates into a vast field of dreams and imaginations, allowing one to firmly realise that you don’t have to go anywhere to be somewhere. She’s tired of sunsets and just for once, wants a sunrise.

Every time I see the cherry blossoms, I turn hoping for someone to be next to me so I can say “Isn’t that beautiful?” But no, no one is there.

She looks at her phone and gives a slight smile. It’s going to be a good day, hell, it’s going to be a good week.

For both of them.

London.

Ray sits at the back of the lecture hall listening to the lecturer go on and on about stuff he already knows about, why is he even in this lecture? He knows what to do, he knows his stuff on the degree, he just wants the fucking exam and get this all over and done with. His friend Guy is sitting next him, desperately trying hard to not fall asleep and making as many notes as he can.

“What the fuck is this bullshit?” Guy finally whispers to Ray “Hell if I know, man. I feel robbed of my £3000!” “What you doing tomorrow night?” “Not sure yet, I haven’t made any plans, why?” “Come out, we’re going to the club” Guy tells him, Ray wonders if it’s worth going out. He woke this morning thinking there was something great at work, something different in the air when he breathes. Could this be the reason why? Is today the day? “Sure, why not?” He finally replies.

The lecture is over, and everyone leaves as if they just left a funeral, drained from energy, they all slump away to the lunch and their next lectures or seminars. Ray and Guy walk out of the lecture hall last, waiting for everyone to leave, instead of getting rammed by the doors.

“You started the essay?” Guy asks. “Nah man, not yet, been busy, I haven’t even done the fucking reading, have you?” “Not yet.” He laughs; Ray doesn’t seem to understand why that’s funny. “What has the great Ray been busy with? All you ever do is work!” he continues. “Nothing man, just, you know, had a lot of stuff going on.” Ray tells him, trying to give him excuses. “You’ve got a girlfriend!” “What?!” Ray exclaims, acting as if it’s a taboo subject. “Bruv, who is she?” “I don’t have a girlfriend, man, what’s wrong with you?” Ray asks trying to drop the subject. “You know you can’t hide this kinda stuff from me, bruv. So tell me, who is she?” Guy asks again, waiting patiently for his answer. Ray sits silently thinking of what to say to him. What is he going to say? He quickly runs through his mind trying to come up with something, until eventually he just gives him the answer. “I don’t have a girlfriend, man. I don’t” he says with all certainty to his friends face.

Tokyo.

It’s 6:00pm and the sun is starting to set in Tokyo, Chihiro enters her apartment and sets her bag down by the door, removes her shoes and falls onto the bed, still her in working uniform and listening to her iPod, she closes her eyes and tries to sleep.

For a few seconds, her body feels light, as if being carried in a draft on feathers against the wind. She falls into a dreamlike state, and then her iPod headphones are pulled out.

“Hey you!” it’s Ai, Chihiro’s roommate, she’s never home this early. “What are you doing home so early?” Chihiro says with a smile, it’s a welcomed surprise. “My boss let me go home early tonight, there wasn’t anything interesting going on in the office!” she joked, it’s already a great night for Chihiro. “That’s great!” Chihiro happily replies, “What have you got planned?” “I was thinking we could go Shibuya-ku or Roppongi and grab a drink? Fuck it, let’s do both!” She’s over excited at the prospect of not working late tonight, “And the best thing is, I have tomorrow off too! My boss was being so nice to me!” “He’s never been this nice to you, what made him have a change of heart all of a sudden?” Chihiro wonders. Ai stays silent for a while, smiling, as if she has a secret to tell. “I gave him a blowjob.”

Chihiro’s silent and stunned, she has no words to say as Ai sits in front of her telling her she had her bosses…she doesn’t even want to think about it.

“Shut up. No you didn’t!” She just can’t believe the words that have come out her friend’s mouth. “I know, I didn’t, but I just wanted to see your face!” Ai tells a slightly relieved Chihiro. She grabs a pillow and swings it towards her face. “That’s disgusting!” She exclaims trying her best not fall into tears laughing. She drops the pillow on the floor, and Ai notices a small notebook that was under Chihiro’s pillow. “What’s that?” She asks, going in to grab it. “Nothing!” Chihiro quickly grabs it and holds on to it. “Oh come on! We promised no secrets, remember?!” “It’s nothing really, just random thoughts about-”, she stops talking realising she’ll give away something, she’s going to regret saying these things. “About what? Or Who?” Ai starts to wonder. “Is it about a guy? Have you finally found a guy, Chihiro?!”

Chihiro begins to think to herself, wondering whether or not to tell her.

“Yes, I have a boyfriend now.” “Really?! I’m so happy for you Chihiro! Who is he? What’s his name? Where is he from?” Ai becomes a twenty-one questions machine popping questions one after the other. “It’s nothing, really, it’s nothing, c’mon, let’s go out, you’re never around!” “Bring your boyfriend, too! I want to meet him!” “He’s not around, I’m seeing him tomorrow night, you can see him then.” But the truth was, she didn’t have a boyfriend, she couldn’t stand another ‘you’ll find the right one’ speeches from her friend, it breaks her heart every time.

I hate being alone, I hate going around this place every day watching people fall in love and hold each other, when will I get that? Even the ugliest people out there get a chance to find someone, why not me? I hate listening to Ai patronise me every single time about this, it’s easy for her to say she has a fucking boyfriend. But she doesn’t care about that, I always tell her not to flirt with other guys, but she doesn’t ever listen. I wish someone would just listen to me and take my advice for once.

She smiles at Ai, almost ready to fall into tears.

“Come on, let’s go out.” Ai says to her.

Chihiro and Ai get themselves ready and walk out the door for a night out, they walk out the apartment block and head for the train station and enter a crowded Metro carriage.

London.

Night has fallen in London, the cold air covers the thousands of people going to and fro around the city. Ray is on DLR line and heads towards Canary Wharf, for a usual walk around Canada Water, the height of the buildings and the atmosphere calms his mind when he passes through. The business men and women walk by him as if he wasn’t there, but he doesn’t care, he keeps on walking with his head staring up at the empty night sky as if the billions of stars are looking down on him behind a painted veil.

As he gets to the centre of the area, he stands and looks up at Canary Wharf, watching the light blip at the very top of the building, going on and off, Ray finds a sense of peace of mind, he notices a train go by in the corner of his eye, and the moon begins to shine into the water fountain by the car park, a breath of air exhales out of his mouth as he takes a long deep breath.

“That’s beautiful” he whispers to himself. “It is, isn’t it?” a girl says standing next to him replies back.

He turns to look at the girl. It’s Chihiro standing in front of him wearing a short black jacket over a pink hoody, denim jeans tucked into boots, with a bag over her left shoulder and wearing a smile as long as the River Thames.

“Hi.” She says softly. “Hey.” Ray replies as his breath is taken away by the beauty standing in front of him, he can’t think of the words to say, his heartbeat gets louder, the sound of the area around him gets louder, but quieter at the same time. “I’m Chihiro” she tells him. But for some reason, he felt as if he already knew that. “Ray…my name is Ray.” He says nervously, choking on his words.

There’s a long silence as the two stare at each other like two cats.

“You wanna go for a walk or something? I’m getting kinda cold just standing here” Chihiro jokes, smiling and looking at Ray in the eye, she seems lost, but found in the warmth of his sight. “Yeah.” He says with a confused, yet worried look on his face, but his words full of determination in the next step he takes. They begin to walk under the brightly lit skyscrapers. “You don’t talk much at things like these do you?” she asks. “Things like what?” he wonders. “Dates.” “Date? This is a date?” He laughs to himself, she just stares back at him smiling.

I don’t know who this girl is, but I’m into her. I really am.

They get onto a train and get off at Leicester Square, they go into the square and find a small café that’s open. They take their order and sit at a table.

“So who are you?” Ray asks her. “Someone you wished you had met a long time ago” she retorts, laughing at her own joke. “I feel like I’ve known you for a long time.” Ray tells her. Trying to piece together where he’s met her before, if he even did. “I guess that goes to show how much you like me.” She smiles back. “It does?” Ray says, grinning at her, pretending not to get the innuendo. He thinks it makes him look cute and naïve, he knows it doesn’t.

The waitress comes and gives Ray a hot chocolate. He takes a sip, Chihiro stares at Ray while he looks into his cup, lost in his thoughts.  

“What are you thinking about?” She asks. “What? Oh nothing, I do that sometimes, I just go off and play this inner monologue through my head.” “That’s…weird.” She says giggling. “I know, but that’s just me I guess.” He replies, taking another sip of his hot chocolate, holding his cup from the sides and running his fingers through the handle, keeping his hand warm. “How come you didn’t order anything?” he asks her. “Ah, I’m not in the mood for hot drink I guess, I have a water bottle in bag so I’m safe.”

She’s always smiling at me; I don’t think I’ve seen her without a smile on her face. She’s beautiful.

“So what do you do?” Ray asks her. “I’m travelling. I’ve taken a few years off, saved up all my money and just decided to go from place to place. Be free.” She replies back. “This is my first time in London.” “When did you get here?” Ray asks her. “I got here last night.” She says after a long pause thinking. “Are you on your own?” “Yeah, my parents are too much set in their place in Japan, it’s as if the world doesn’t exist to them.” She tells him. “That’s really cool, I wish I could that do that, just let go everything and go around and see the world.” “Why don’t you?” she asks as him as if it’s something you would do without any thought. “I can’t.” Ray tells her. “Why not?” She asks again. “Because…I just can’t, I’ve got university to finish, and my life is here, it’s set in stone, I don’t think I can ever leave this place, it’ll be too hard, you know?” “It’s not hard leaving; the hardest part is turning back. You can leave; you just choose to believe you can’t.”

Ray stays silent at her words.

“It’s getting late, you wanna head off?” He says. “Sure.” She says, they both grab their stuff, Ray takes one last gulp of his hot chocolate and they walk towards the station.

The night is cold, and the lights are shining brightly. The wind whistles through the trees in the square, cinema-goers flock out of the theatre watching the latest movie, couples holding each other, Ray and Chihiro walking side by side. Chihiro has her arms folded while Ray walks with his hands in his jacket pockets, they talk quietly to each other while they look at all the people, they turn down the road and instead of going to the station, they walk down the road further, going into Trafalgar Square and sit by the fountains. They look around London and stare at the lights on around the surrounding buildings like stars in the sky, the yellow glow of the street lamps are brushed against this painting, a vanilla veil around the city of London. Chihiro puts her head on Ray’s shoulder. It’s not cold anymore, not for them.

Tokyo.

The neon lights smack you in the face like a swarm of fireflies. Wave after wave of people will walk past you as if you weren’t there. The intersection in front of Shibuya station full of people trying to get to their trains on time from the main shopping area, it’s amazing how so many people can find their way through that labyrinth. Like a palimpsest the conversations of the thousands of people in that small area crawl over each other, wrapped in the blankets of the bright lights. Cars driving pass you as you stand by the traffic lights counting the heads behind you as the people wait for the light to green for them. Like a flock of birds on all sides of the roads going in one direction waiting to merge in the middle, the light goes green for the people and they take their steps to go the other side of the street.

Chihiro walks out of Shibuya station and looks at all the people around her, despite having thousands of people walk around her; it’s not that hard to feel alone. She walks towards the statue of Hachikō and sits on the bench behind it. Sometimes she can sit here for hours and come up with a story for each person that walks past her. Sometimes she imagines a single mother trying to get money for her kids. Other times she thinks there’s a teacher whose secretly meeting one of his students for sex, her mind wanders. At other times she believes she’s seen samurai like her grandmother would talk about, but it usually turned out to be an ordinary person in costume for a play or something, Chihiro was always disappointed with the outcomes of her stories, it’s as if there’s nothing interesting going on in this city, despite the thousands of people she sees, there’s not a story worth telling. She looks up at the neon signs and advertisements, her eyes glare in the bright lights, and in the distance can hear the electronic markets, the advertisements trying to sell the products, the beeps and bangs of technology everywhere, cars driving past, the occasional police siren, she stands up and walks towards the crossing and looks towards the Shibuya centre, a smile on her face.

And then something happens, something she didn’t expect to happen, ever. She begins to feel sad, yet joyful at the same time, this paradox takes her heart and she comes to a realisation that she never thought was possible, despite being in an adventure less life, she knows one thing in her heart to be true. She looks up at the sky, the sun has fully set, the oranges, purples and blues paint the large canvas, she walks in to the shopping market and listens to the people go about their business, the smell of noodles and sushi tucked into her nose, cell phones going off and camera flashes of the tourists.

I love this city.

She walks into the arcade and notices the unhealthy amount of couples around her, she seems displaced.

But I wish I had someone to share this love with.

It was at this moment that she saw a figure standing by a music store, someone she thought she might know. She walks towards it and then suddenly gets pulled into another direction, Ai is standing in front of her. Dressed up for a night out.

“Where the hell did you run off to?” she exclaims. “Um, nowhere, I was just…walking…I thought you were behind me.” Chihiro replies struggling to find her words, she walked off without Ai outside the station. “You gave me a heart attack, I thought I had lost you!” Ai tells her. “Lost me? We live 2 stations away, it’s not like neither of us can get back home.” “Still, just stay with me, OK? I don’t like being left on my own.” “You little baby” Chihiro says jokingly. “Come on then, let’s go.”

They walk towards Club Pure, and pay the fee and enter.

The music is shoved into their faces as they try to make it pass everyone and get to a table. As they reach the table they sit down and order a few drinks and start their night. Ai begins to talk to a couple of guys that buy them drinks. While Chihiro sits quietly playing with her drink, still, among these people, she feels alone. Even while a guy is sitting talking to her, she doesn’t notice him, her mind is wandering off.

She notices someone at the bar, the figure from the shopping market, she touches Ai’s shoulders to tell her she’s going, Ai doesn’t seem to care, despite the fact she has a boyfriend she still flirts with the guys and Chihiro leaves her with them, she approaches the figure at the bar. She gets closer, dodging the girl running to the bathroom to vomit, and walking over a guy who just decided to pass out from having too much to drink. She’s right behind the person, and taps him on the shoulder. He turns around, and Ray is facing her.

“Hey.” He says to her. “Hey.” She says back in shock. “Surprise seeing you here!” He says to her smiling. “It’s a surprise seeing you, Ray!” She says jumping on him and giving him a hug, the girl next to Ray gives them a strange look. “What are you doing here?” “I decided to take your advice and just start travelling, I thought I’d start in Japan.” He tells her, she smiles back at him not saying a word. “In all honesty, I actually hoped to maybe by some slight chance run into you, I remember you telling me this was your favourite club to come to. I went to your flat but you weren’t there, so I came here” He says embarrassingly. “I’m just really happy you’re here, I never thought I’d get to see you again.” She tells him, in slight tears looking at him, she hugs him again as holds onto him as if he’ll disappear, like a wife holding a husband for the first time, she doesn’t want him to let go, and neither will she. “How have you been?” Ray asks her. “I’ve been OK…” she says loosely, barely finishing the sentence. “No you haven’t.” He says to her smiling, she looks back to him and grabs his hand. “Come on, let’s dance.” She tells him. “Ah, I don’t know, I can’t dance.” “Neither can I, it’ll be fine.” She pulls him and they go towards the dance floor, she starts to dance around Ray, as she told him, she’s not the best dancer in the world, but people are looking at her, she’s making eyes turn as Ray looks embarrassed to be there, but still happy with Chihiro there with him.

They finish dancing and they head back to the bar and have more drinks, they begin to laugh at each other as Chihiro tries to teach Ray some Japanese, getting everything wrong in a drunken mess. More eyes are turned as they laugh till their lungs begin to puncture, and then they laugh some more. They walk outside and sit on a bench near the club, she puts her head on his shoulders and slumps down on his body. She gets out a cigarette and lights it up. Before taking one blow, Ray takes the cigarette out of her hand and puts it out without saying a word. Chihiro smiles.

London. 4 days later.

The day after spending another night out with Chihiro, Ray wakes up, he takes a shower, gets dressed and has breakfast; he goes back into his room to grab his bag and walks out the apartment block. He notices Chihiro standing on the other side of the road. He walks over to her, looking slightly tired.

“Hello again!” Chihiro says cheerfully, noticing Ray is tired. “What happened to you?” She asks him. “Hey, oh nothing, I just didn’t sleep that’s all . How are you?” “I’m very well, thank you.” She smiles back.“Even at this ungodly hour you’re still smiling?” He says in a pessimistic tone.

This girl is disgustingly optimistic. But I like it.

“There’s no point frowning all the time, is there?” she asks him. “No, I guess not.” He says in a way of realisation, those simple, clichéd words are probably the best words he’s ever heard in his life. “Where are you off to?” “University, unfortunately.” He says. “You should take my advice, take some time off, and just see the world!” She tells him, hitting his shoulders. “I can’t! We had this conversation last night didn’t we? Come on, walk with me.” They start to walk down the road, by the river.

There’s a small, comfortable silence between them as they proceed towards a station filled with early morning commuters.

“When do you think you’ll be leaving?” Ray asks, breaking the silence. “Tonight.” She tells him, she says it as if she is regretting it, as if she didn’t mean to do something, like a daughter talking to a father, or a girlfriend trying to explain something to a boyfriend, something she wishes that had never happened. “Oh.” Ray says, not knowing what to say to her. “So I guess I won’t be seeing you.” There’s an echo of silence as the two begin to think about each other, the silences are even longer than the conversation, it’s in these silences that’s they really start to talk to each other, it’s the look in the eyes and lack of words which give the truth.

“I guess not.” She says, nearly in tears. “I can see you after university if you want?” “Yeah, that’ll be great.” There’s yet another silence as they reach the station, they look at each other. “You can stay if you want.” “What?” she asks in surprise. “Stay here with me, the past few days have been great, just stay with me.” “You know I can’t, we’ll see each other again, won’t we?” “I hope so.” Ray says. Not wanting this conversation to end, he knows she won’t be there when he finishes his day.

“I’ll miss you.” She says softly into the air.

“I’ll miss you too.” He replies back. They hug each other and walk their separate ways, Chihiro wipes her face. Ray turns around and watches her walk.

Tokyo.

Chihiro is fast asleep outside the club, she has her head rested in Ray’s lap, she feels safe. She feels warm.

“Chihiro!” Someone shouts, Chihiro is shaken, and wakes up next to no one, Ray isn’t there. She looks around worried. “Chihiro! What happened? People said you came out here alone looking weird, what’s wrong?” “W-where is he? Where is Ray?” she asks, shaking, worried about him. “Who? Chihiro, there was no one with you.” “I walked out with somebody! Didn’t you see him, we were dancing and laughing and having a good time! Where is he!?” She screams. “Chihiro, listen to me.” Ai says patronisingly as if she were a child. “There was no one with you. Come on, let’s go home. You’ve had too much to drink. I’ll go get our jackets.

London and Tokyo.

Ray finishes his day at university and Chihiro is nowhere to be found, he feels a pain in his head and heart that he can’t seem to stop, he’s been alone all his life, but it wasn’t until he had something to lose, did he know the true meaning of loneliness. He goes back inside and goes into the toilets, washes his face, and turns the hot water on, and lets his hands rest under the tap, letting the heat cover his hands, his face nearly broken in tears.

Maybe there is one person in the seven billion for us all.

He walks back out; stopping his tears from breaking their barriers, and goes to the train station and sits on the train. He takes his book out and begins to write in it again. He looks out the window and remembers his week. A piece of paper slips from his bag, it’s Chihiro’s number and address, also a name of a club, he takes it, smiles and puts it back into his bag. He looks out the window for a few seconds and begins to write.

Chihiro sits alone on the bench outside the club, alone. Remembering the one week she had with him. Next to her Ray appears, sitting next to her holding his book and writing in it just like in the train.

Ray, sitting on his journey home sits next to Chihiro dressed for her night out on the bench, looking at what he’s writing. The imagination of one person is a powerful thing, two imaginations are something that can bring people together. It’s a strange thing, the mind, at times it will only show you what you think you want, and other times it will give you want you to want. But after all, it isn’t real; we need to make sure we don’t let that get the best of us. Love is a powerful thing to grasp, and it cannot be done by just one person, that’s too much to ask of them. If left alone, they will do anything to be together again, even if it means sacrificing their own realities to feel some sort of passion and acceptance.

I guess, in the end, when you meet that one person, you shouldn’t let go of that chance, because if you do, you’ll be sitting alone remembering that one night where true love seemed possible.

As Ray puts his book away, he leans his head against the window. Chihiro places her head on his shoulders.

Like us.  

[storiesby-rahmankhan]

Snow

I’m looking up at the sky, the clouds are grey and the snow is falling very slowly, it falls so slow you’d think you’re trapped in some time machine. Looking out into the distance, all I see is a white blanket covering the ground and the trees in the distance, surrounding this large mountain in the middle of this huge field. It’s been 5 days since we’ve been on this mountain, trying to figure out whether or not we really are meant to be together. And by ‘we’, I mean me forcing the woman that I think I love to come to this mountain which will probably kill her in 2 days time. But I have a feeling she won’t; I know she won’t because I love her.

I never did understand the concept of ‘love’. It’s just a word, but a word with so much meaning people would do crazy things because they believe in it. It’s like the word ‘God’, God is only a word, but it’s given meaning through the power of that word; it’s not what the word means, or how it’s spelt, but what the word entails. I don’t know, I never did understand the power behind words, everything that can be said can be said in a different way, in a different light, destroying all meaning. Or you can say something wrong and ruin a wonderful moment. Why must we put so much faith in the power of words? Why must we as humans have faith in things we made ourselves? We build bridges in faith that it will hold us as we go across. We build houses in faith that they will protect us. We write and speak words in faith that we can convey our emotions, bring meaning into someone’s life. And just as easily, bridges can be burnt, houses can be robbed, words can be silenced.

When I was a child, I used to live with my older sister, our parents had died a while back and she was old enough to take care of me. And one night I would ask her how our parents met; she would then tell me the story of this lonely mountain in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees that protect it. It was said that this mountain was where ‘love’ had all begun, that this mountain had a special power to it. It was said that if a man or woman brought someone they loved to this mountain, camped climbing as high as they could for 7 days, the mountain would kill the one they loved if they weren’t really in love, and would spare them if they were right for each other. Many couples had tried this but the mountain had taken so many lives that people began to fear the mountain, and it became so lonely, it shut itself away from the world. Many years had passed and the trees would eventually close off the paths to the mountains. But my father found the mountain after discovering an old parchment, and took my mother; they survived the 7 days and told the world about it. This sparked interest in the mountain all over again. But again, the mountain claimed more lives than sparing it.

And so I grew up fearing to love anyone. How could I love anyone? Many people have died on the mountain after claiming they loved the person they have lost, what makes believe that I would find the person that’s right for me? Albeit it’s not necessary for me to take someone to that mountain, but I would want to, there’s a force driving me to go towards it. A rite of passage. I went through primary school, high school and 6th form fearing the opposite sex, a lot of people gathered that I might have been gay, which wasn’t the case. Sure, there were girls I had a crush on, girls I’ve gone on a couple of dates with, and girls I’ve slept with. But none of these girls were the ones I knew I loved, the ones I thought would make a difference in my life. For the most part of my life, I was lonely. I felt like everything I ever tried was for nothing, people I met were just ghosts that walked through me, friends I made were just those distant phones that start off with an elegant “Oh my God! I haven’t spoken to you in ages!”. It wasn’t a hard life, far from it; it was just a life that had no meaning to it. University came and I started to find myself more and more distant from people I had already felt distant toward. The life I lead from day to day was just another life that wouldn’t have made a difference to anyone. I would sit at home starting jigsaw puzzles and never finish them, sit in the dark and watch movies all night, or lie down on my bed and listen to music while writing words that meant nothing to no one. While at the same time, people I knew would think I’m off happy somewhere, smiling it away like I always do. Little did they know that I was in pain, I had no mother to comfort me. Sure, I saw my sister once every 2 weeks in Neal’s Place in the city and meet for a coffee or something, we’d catch up, and I’d lie and say I’m doing fine and blah. She’d tell me about her husband, and that they’re thinking about kids, buying a new place outside the city, going on holidays together. Together.

So time went on, I was just about to finish university when I had met a girl. A beautiful girl at that, and she had taken an interest in me (though for the life of me, I don’t know why), and after graduating we decided to meet a couple of times and from then on we were in a relationship. She opened me up to a world I never knew, I could leave my house and go somewhere, and no matter where I was, as long as I was with her, I was safe. We spoke about the little things, and the big things, and then the little things. We would watch movies and go to plays together. We would have dinner and laugh our asses off till we couldn’t laugh anymore, and then we’d laugh again. We’d start jigsaw puzzles and actually finish them for once. I was happy. After a while, I would tell her about the story of the mountain and how it would claim the lives of so-called lovers, for some strange reason she had found it oddly romantic and wanted me to take her there. I had warned her that if I was the one taking her, she is putting her life at risk. I don’t think she believed the stories too much, as she knew my parents survived, as well as other couples, and so, here we are, on this mountain, it’s the middle of the fifth day, and we’re getting through it quite easily.

The first few days were pretty hard; we had never climbed a mountain before, so it was pretty exhausting going up. The snow was hard and would hit us in the face like I an iron slap. On the fifth night, I decided to sit outside in the snow and look up at the stars. Lying down in this blanket of pure white, I think about why the hell I am here, on this mountain. Whenever my hand touches the snow, I think about the hard rock underneath it all. Behind this beautiful veil lies a grey, hard rock that cannot be moved, wearing this mask to make people think it really is beautiful. Is that what I’m doing? I am here because I think I am in love? Wearing her as my blanket to show the world that I really am ok with who I am?

The sixth day was like any other on this mountain; harsh snow, hard rock, a steep climb. The snow kept falling like it always did, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading in the distance. It was a weird feeling being so high up, I felt like I was in an eternal fall, or maybe stuck in a well somewhere, either way, it was like I was trapped, given time to think about everything that had led to me this point. My sister, my lonely life, the girl of my dreams standing next to me, a build-up of memories being unloaded in this place, I felt uneasy about everything. But she’d hold my hand and let me know it was all ok, like a mother caring for a child, the thought of which made me uneasy all over again. So far so good, I’m not dead yet she’d say now and then, joking around with me. So what are we gonna do when we get back? She’d ask me, trying to make small talk. These conversations went on for the next two days.

The night of the seventh day came, we spent the entire day talking, we didn’t want to climb up any further, and we had enough of this mountain. Why do we need to prove to anyone we were meant for each other? It took us seven days to figure that out. We decided to leave the mountain in the morning, knowing that we really were meant for each other. I guess this is what my parents felt before they left the mountain. But at the end of the day, she was fast asleep and I was holding her, we were inside the tent trying to keep warm. I tried to stay awake as much as I could, but sleep came and I was out.

The next morning I opened my eyes. The sky was blue, the snow was no longer falling, and the wind was cool and calm. I looked to my side and she hadn’t gotten up yet. She must be tired, it’s been a long week. I think I’ll let her sleep a little while longer.