The bar I frequent isn’t the type of place that you would find in a travel brochure, or even in a AAA book. It was a non-descript building sitting at the edge of a city that people’d rather forget about. It was on the border of the nice neighborhoods where young kids ran around killing each other, and the worst part of the city, but by God’s grace, I make it here ever night.
There’s a fireplace with a boars head hanging on the mantle, glass eyes reflecting the flame, the passion that it used to have. You know, before it’s head was cut off and put on press-board.
It’s the only surviving item of the fire, the inferno that raged through the building during segregation. The bar was run by a black man named Tom, and people didn’t take kindly to having a negro run a legitimate business establishment. He was killed in the fire, but we have a picture hanging over the bar to honor him.
That’s the thing about the bar that was so great. There were so many stories behind it, happy, sad, funny… If you wanted a story, you could find it here.
The bar had lock-ins. If you were out too late, it was considered dangerous to go out, they asked you to stay, and you usually obliged. Beer’s price was cut, same with most hard liquors. Only a few bar-bums would stay, but they were the one’s worth listening to. Some stories you can hear again and again without ever tiring of them.
As I sit, gang-warfare carrying on right outside the window, Robert McCoy is sipping on a scotch at the far end of the bar, clearing his throat, ready to tell a story. It’s one I’ve never heard before, but the bartender seems familiar. He settles down, pouring himself a shot.
Rob’s voice is rough, like sandpaper, but he starts, and I listen.
Gary wasn’t the normal friend you would invite over for Sunday dinner with your mother. Don’t make that mistake, or if you do, don’t do it twice. Gary was the type of guy you hung out with when you’re sad; he was always a little vulgar but just what the doctor ordered to bring you out of any slump that you could or would be in.
Gary was considered by many to be my best friend, although I don’t really keep track of things like that. He was really more of a business associate; whenever I was down, Gary would come by, and I would end up spending money on him, and we would go out to bars, pick up chicks, and swing me out of whatever funk I was in.
Now, I did make the mistake of bringing Gary over to meet my mother for Sunday dinner on one occasion. He was very polite, greeted her in French, kissed her hand, and then went on to make a huge line of Pollack jokes. My mother was a Pole. Still is.
Needless to say, I learned my lesson and Gary wasn’t invited back.
-
Outside of the normal behavior he exhibited that was by itself strange, it was also strange to see the odd look of solemnity flash over his face. No matter how brief it was (often times, less than a second) it was always chilling to wonder what he was thinking about. It was in those seconds that it was like you got a glimpse into the real Gary, the one that had a lot going on behind the bright, coke-bottle glasses. The one whose father died in a fire, whose friends had a nasty habit of using him. I was guilty of that. Not anymore, though.
When Gary got quiet, you got quiet too. If there were more people in the room, they would get quiet. When Gary died down, the room died down, as if being pulled into the dark ocean by a vicious rip-tide. You couldn’t swim parallel to the shore; all you could do is stare and wonder what exactly he was thinking about.
It wasn’t suicide, it wasn’t murder… But I don’t think anyone really knew what he was thinking.
Except me.
-
Gary, in exchange for being my Zoloft, used me as kind of a memory bank. I found out in short order after knowing him for little over a week that his father died in a building fire set by his mother. His mother was literally insane, setting fire to a rag to try and kill a roach that ran into a gas canister. Well, that’s at least what she said.
He was an only child, just sitting in his Government Assisted Living apartment, trying to figure out what exactly he could expect out of life. No matter how much he put in, he didn’t get much back. It was a universal law that everyone else had a better time than Gary, even if Gary was used to have the good time.
“Rob, I just don’t belong here,” he told me one day, sitting on the stoop to his building.
“Well, what do you mean?”
“I don’t belong here.”
“Like, in the city?”
“No, in this time.”
Gary fancied wearing a suit of armor, riding around the country, slaying dragons and helping people that needed help, not just wanted help. As he so eloquently put it, “I just wasn’t made for these times.”
He wanted to be something he couldn’t. It was a rare occasion that I would ever see him happy, which is why the week leading up to his disappearance, I was very, very surprised to see him with a smile on his face.
“Rob, I figured it out.”
“What did you figure out, Gary?”
He tilted his head, squinting at the sun, before looking back at me. “How to change it. How to change my life.”
“What do –“
“How to disappear completely.”
-
Of course, I was curious, but he was late for a bus. I spent the next few days wondering what the hell he meant, exactly, by “disappearing completely.” I know there are some drugs that’ll knock you out for a while, make you trip the light fantastic for what seems like years, but Gary was never the one to do that. He considered himself not above it, but indifferent to the existence of drugs.
My thoughts also turned to the noose, the knife, the gun, the pill. The grisly thought of suicide, of life, self ended. I wondered if he was having flexible morals again, walking the double sided blade of religion and self-enjoyment. Would he really damn himself and step off the board or keep slugging along? I highly doubted that he would, but I still called him, just in case.
“Hey, Gary, this is Rob. I just wanted you to know that really, you’re a good friend and there are a lot of people out there that really like you, so… Just… Hang in there. Times are tough, just don’t do anything drastic. You know what? This was stupid. I have to go.”
When I got off work the following day, I had a single voice-mail from Gary.
“You’re goddamn right it’s stupid. I’m coming over.”
As soon as the last “r” was out of the machine, there was a knock on the door. It was impeccable timing, I’ll hand it to him. Did he time it out like that, or was it fate?
He stepped in, making the room his own. He moved over to the sofa, sat down, and stared out the window, Magic Hour Red coming in through the blinds. It covered his face in a light crimson, his face slightly contorted behind the glow.
“Alright, Rob, are you ready?”
I nodded.
“I was walking home from work the other day –“ He found a job within a mile of his apartment. He saved over $300 monthly on gas, and wouldn’t let us forget it. “And I was walking past that weird metal fence. Well, the sun was going down, so it was behind the building, but the sun was still peaking through the chain-link.
“You know that problem I’ve had for a while?”
Yeah, I did. He had told me about it; the first time he ever seized up, he was playing an arcade game. Something weird by Sega, and he had been kicking ass and taking names. When he reached the final stage, he said, the flashing lights got to be too much. The cabinet was too small for a man his height, and he was hunched against the screen. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, the manager standing over him.
“Sir, are you dead?”
He only managed to get out “No,” before rolling on his side and expelling his lunch onto the carpet.
“Yeah. You’re epileptic.”
“Kind of. Only to a degree. Like, the time at the arcade. But what I felt out there, that was something… Something else. The sun was coming in through the links, and I closed my eyes. It was kind of like watching a choppy movie; the little globs that move around back there, they were getting hit with the light, and my pupils were huge because my eyes were closed… So when the sun went through my lids, it must have hit my brain quick, with an alternating rhythm that corresponded with link.
“Before I knew what was happening, I was sitting at a counter. I was having a milk-shake, staring over at a girl that I used to have a thing for. She was smiling. And the man, the man behind the counter was one of my old mentors. The go-to guy for when things got rough. And the picture didn’t change. He was smiling, she was smiling, I was enjoying my shake… For about… An hour.”
His eyes glazed over, and he fiddled with his watch, taking it off and setting it down on the arm of the chair.
“And when I finally opened my eyes, I was back in the city, taking one step forward from where I was. It felt like an hour went by, Rob. It really, really did. I had no idea I even lived in a city when I was sitting at that counter. I had completely forgotten. Do you know how amazing that felt?”
“Gary… You gave yourself a seizure?”
He smiled, leaning forward and out of the light.
“No. I think it was something else. But I have to go; LOST is coming on.”
I had never taken the time to get drawn into a show as complex as that. But I understood the craze behind it; it was a legitimate thing. He did have to go.
When the door slammed, I sat back, picking up his watch.
The hands weren’t moving.
It had stopped at 6:03.
-
Gary ran into my apartment without knocking a few days later, as I was throwing a sweater on. It was getting unseasonably cool. Blame it on the government, or global warming, or green-house gas emissions. Whatever it was, it was making me wear my damned sweater in April.
“Rob, Rob, stop man. We gotta talk.”
He sat down, in the same chair, looking back at me.
“Hey, is that my watch?”
“Yeah, man, but it’s broken.”
“Never mind. I did it again today, man. I did it.”
“You gave yourself another seizure?”
“No, man! Jesus, it’s something more than that. I did it again. I walked by the same fence, at the same time, closed my eyes, and before I could open them, I was somewhere else. I was on a horse somewhere. I’ve never ridden a horse before, Rob, I’ve never even had a foot in a saddle, but I was riding. I was riding over some countryside, the wind whipping through my hair – my hair was long, Rob – and I had a banner flying over my shoulder.
“I crested a hill and rode up to a castle, and the huge portcullis came down. It was amazing; the guards treated me like royalty. They took the horse and I walked into one of the left-most rooms of the castle, and I was back at the counter, with the milkshake and my mentor, and my girl. They were talking this time, something about ‘Tripping the light fantastic.’ They seemed really engaged in conversation; I didn’t want to stop them, so I kept on.
“The best part, Rob, was that there was a queen. I was married, and she was beautiful. But before I could touch her, I was pulled back again. But it felt longer this time. Like… Two hours.”
“Jesus, Gary, this isn’t healthy, man! You’re giving yourself epileptic fits!”
“Rob, if I was having a fit, how come when I get back from… Wherever it is, I’m always in stride? I’m not on the ground, I’m not twitching. I just am. But something was different this time, Rob.”
“What?”
“When I took my next step, the sun was gone down a little more. I couldn’t trip myself again, because the sun was at the wrong angle. It was like I was out for ten minutes or so.”
I had to sit back. He had stood there, eyes closed, asleep, standing, for ten minutes? And then, out of nowhere, he just came back, stride in place?
“Did anyone see you?”
“Hell if I know. Why?”
“Because, because, I want to watch you do this tomorrow. You know, to decide if it’s medically safe.”
“Since when were you a doctor?”
“Since when were you a… Shut up.”
He laughed, and darted from his seat, grabbing his watch and slamming the door.
-
The next day, we were standing in front of the fence, impeding pedestrian traffic to a slight degree. I was standing with a stop-watch in hand, he had a cheap-rolex over his wrist, and I had a head-band on for no other reason than to make the picture slightly more colorful, in case a photographer was looking for a cute photo-op.
Gary closed his eyes, took three steps forward, and froze.
I pulled out my phone, ready to call an ambulance, when I noticed something.
He wasn’t casting a shadow.
And as I watched, he disappeared.
And I felt my cheeks loosen.
-
I had waited for about twenty minutes, sick to my core, with the stopwatch running. The people all around hadn’t seem to notice, although they might have noticed something if they saw the amount of perspiration on my forehead. I turned to leave, taking a step, when I the shadow descended from nowhere, behind me.
Perfectly in step, Gary walked out.
“See? Nothing to it, Rob.”
“Gary, you have no idea.”
As we walked back to my apartment, I tried to explain to him in the calmest voice possible that he had, literally disappeared in front of my eyes, but all he could do was focus on the building in the distance, nodding at every other word.
“Snap back to it, Gary. What the hell happened?”
“I went back, again.”
“Went back? Do you know where you’re going?”
“No, Rob, but I like it. I like it more than here. I met the queen this time; she’s not my wife. She’s my mother. I’m some kind of Prince over there. And the girl at the counter, and my mentor… They’re both royal members of the court. You have no idea how… It’s just…”
“How long where you… ‘there’ this time?”
“Felt longer. Maybe two and a half hours?”
“You were gone from here for twenty minutes.”
“I know. It’s fantastic, Rob.”
And that was the last time, for a week, that I saw Gary.
-
Gary came back into my life running through the door, excited about something. I hadn’t seen him that excited in a while.
“Rob, I’ve been getting to spend more and more time there. I spent twelve hours yesterday. Twelve.”
“That means you were gone for like, an hour, doesn’t it?”
“Or twelve. You have to ask yourself, do I really care? I have to take advantage of this while the sun is still where it is. It’ll give me something to look forward to every year, if I could trip myself like that. Spring forward.”
I frowned.
Gary excused himself.
-
A year passed before I heard from him again. The hairs on my head were beginning to go gray, but Gary seemed as fresh as the day I saw him last.
There was a queen, there was a dragon, there was a princess, he had a father, his mother was sane, there were fields, and cows, and flowers.
And I didn’t see him for another three.
-
That brings me to the present. Gary ran through the door, giddy as a kid again. My arthritis was flaring up. He barely recognized me, thought he had run into the wrong apartment. I hadn’t the heart to tell him last time that he wasn’t aging like the rest of us. Every time he disappeared, he disappeared in his same state.
At this rate, he would live forever.
He told me he killed a dragon, and that there was a celebration. He actually seemed younger, happier, like he was getting to live a childhood he’d never had in a land of make-believe and hokum.
But, sadly, the sun was setting. I could have spent all night catching up to him, but when the sun began to set, Gary excused himself.
I’m probably going to be long in the ground the next time he makes it back, but he seems happy.
I didn’t believe him when he ran through the door, but he really did figure it out. He beat the rat-race, the old age, the pain of watching loved ones die. He fell into another world, one made from his memories and his dreams.
He tripped himself and disappeared completely.
There’s a fireplace with a boars head hanging on the mantle, glass eyes reflecting the flame, the passion that it used to have. You know, before it’s head was cut off and put on press-board.
It’s the only surviving item of the fire, the inferno that raged through the building during segregation. The bar was run by a black man named Tom, and people didn’t take kindly to having a negro run a legitimate business establishment. He was killed in the fire, but we have a picture hanging over the bar to honor him.
That’s the thing about the bar that was so great. There were so many stories behind it, happy, sad, funny… If you wanted a story, you could find it here.
The bar had lock-ins. If you were out too late, it was considered dangerous to go out, they asked you to stay, and you usually obliged. Beer’s price was cut, same with most hard liquors. Only a few bar-bums would stay, but they were the one’s worth listening to. Some stories you can hear again and again without ever tiring of them.
As I sit, gang-warfare carrying on right outside the window, Robert McCoy is sipping on a scotch at the far end of the bar, clearing his throat, ready to tell a story. It’s one I’ve never heard before, but the bartender seems familiar. He settles down, pouring himself a shot.
Rob’s voice is rough, like sandpaper, but he starts, and I listen.
Bar Story 1:
How To Disappear Completely
How To Disappear Completely
Gary wasn’t the normal friend you would invite over for Sunday dinner with your mother. Don’t make that mistake, or if you do, don’t do it twice. Gary was the type of guy you hung out with when you’re sad; he was always a little vulgar but just what the doctor ordered to bring you out of any slump that you could or would be in.
Gary was considered by many to be my best friend, although I don’t really keep track of things like that. He was really more of a business associate; whenever I was down, Gary would come by, and I would end up spending money on him, and we would go out to bars, pick up chicks, and swing me out of whatever funk I was in.
Now, I did make the mistake of bringing Gary over to meet my mother for Sunday dinner on one occasion. He was very polite, greeted her in French, kissed her hand, and then went on to make a huge line of Pollack jokes. My mother was a Pole. Still is.
Needless to say, I learned my lesson and Gary wasn’t invited back.
-
Outside of the normal behavior he exhibited that was by itself strange, it was also strange to see the odd look of solemnity flash over his face. No matter how brief it was (often times, less than a second) it was always chilling to wonder what he was thinking about. It was in those seconds that it was like you got a glimpse into the real Gary, the one that had a lot going on behind the bright, coke-bottle glasses. The one whose father died in a fire, whose friends had a nasty habit of using him. I was guilty of that. Not anymore, though.
When Gary got quiet, you got quiet too. If there were more people in the room, they would get quiet. When Gary died down, the room died down, as if being pulled into the dark ocean by a vicious rip-tide. You couldn’t swim parallel to the shore; all you could do is stare and wonder what exactly he was thinking about.
It wasn’t suicide, it wasn’t murder… But I don’t think anyone really knew what he was thinking.
Except me.
-
Gary, in exchange for being my Zoloft, used me as kind of a memory bank. I found out in short order after knowing him for little over a week that his father died in a building fire set by his mother. His mother was literally insane, setting fire to a rag to try and kill a roach that ran into a gas canister. Well, that’s at least what she said.
He was an only child, just sitting in his Government Assisted Living apartment, trying to figure out what exactly he could expect out of life. No matter how much he put in, he didn’t get much back. It was a universal law that everyone else had a better time than Gary, even if Gary was used to have the good time.
“Rob, I just don’t belong here,” he told me one day, sitting on the stoop to his building.
“Well, what do you mean?”
“I don’t belong here.”
“Like, in the city?”
“No, in this time.”
Gary fancied wearing a suit of armor, riding around the country, slaying dragons and helping people that needed help, not just wanted help. As he so eloquently put it, “I just wasn’t made for these times.”
He wanted to be something he couldn’t. It was a rare occasion that I would ever see him happy, which is why the week leading up to his disappearance, I was very, very surprised to see him with a smile on his face.
“Rob, I figured it out.”
“What did you figure out, Gary?”
He tilted his head, squinting at the sun, before looking back at me. “How to change it. How to change my life.”
“What do –“
“How to disappear completely.”
-
Of course, I was curious, but he was late for a bus. I spent the next few days wondering what the hell he meant, exactly, by “disappearing completely.” I know there are some drugs that’ll knock you out for a while, make you trip the light fantastic for what seems like years, but Gary was never the one to do that. He considered himself not above it, but indifferent to the existence of drugs.
My thoughts also turned to the noose, the knife, the gun, the pill. The grisly thought of suicide, of life, self ended. I wondered if he was having flexible morals again, walking the double sided blade of religion and self-enjoyment. Would he really damn himself and step off the board or keep slugging along? I highly doubted that he would, but I still called him, just in case.
“Hey, Gary, this is Rob. I just wanted you to know that really, you’re a good friend and there are a lot of people out there that really like you, so… Just… Hang in there. Times are tough, just don’t do anything drastic. You know what? This was stupid. I have to go.”
When I got off work the following day, I had a single voice-mail from Gary.
“You’re goddamn right it’s stupid. I’m coming over.”
As soon as the last “r” was out of the machine, there was a knock on the door. It was impeccable timing, I’ll hand it to him. Did he time it out like that, or was it fate?
He stepped in, making the room his own. He moved over to the sofa, sat down, and stared out the window, Magic Hour Red coming in through the blinds. It covered his face in a light crimson, his face slightly contorted behind the glow.
“Alright, Rob, are you ready?”
I nodded.
“I was walking home from work the other day –“ He found a job within a mile of his apartment. He saved over $300 monthly on gas, and wouldn’t let us forget it. “And I was walking past that weird metal fence. Well, the sun was going down, so it was behind the building, but the sun was still peaking through the chain-link.
“You know that problem I’ve had for a while?”
Yeah, I did. He had told me about it; the first time he ever seized up, he was playing an arcade game. Something weird by Sega, and he had been kicking ass and taking names. When he reached the final stage, he said, the flashing lights got to be too much. The cabinet was too small for a man his height, and he was hunched against the screen. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, the manager standing over him.
“Sir, are you dead?”
He only managed to get out “No,” before rolling on his side and expelling his lunch onto the carpet.
“Yeah. You’re epileptic.”
“Kind of. Only to a degree. Like, the time at the arcade. But what I felt out there, that was something… Something else. The sun was coming in through the links, and I closed my eyes. It was kind of like watching a choppy movie; the little globs that move around back there, they were getting hit with the light, and my pupils were huge because my eyes were closed… So when the sun went through my lids, it must have hit my brain quick, with an alternating rhythm that corresponded with link.
“Before I knew what was happening, I was sitting at a counter. I was having a milk-shake, staring over at a girl that I used to have a thing for. She was smiling. And the man, the man behind the counter was one of my old mentors. The go-to guy for when things got rough. And the picture didn’t change. He was smiling, she was smiling, I was enjoying my shake… For about… An hour.”
His eyes glazed over, and he fiddled with his watch, taking it off and setting it down on the arm of the chair.
“And when I finally opened my eyes, I was back in the city, taking one step forward from where I was. It felt like an hour went by, Rob. It really, really did. I had no idea I even lived in a city when I was sitting at that counter. I had completely forgotten. Do you know how amazing that felt?”
“Gary… You gave yourself a seizure?”
He smiled, leaning forward and out of the light.
“No. I think it was something else. But I have to go; LOST is coming on.”
I had never taken the time to get drawn into a show as complex as that. But I understood the craze behind it; it was a legitimate thing. He did have to go.
When the door slammed, I sat back, picking up his watch.
The hands weren’t moving.
It had stopped at 6:03.
-
Gary ran into my apartment without knocking a few days later, as I was throwing a sweater on. It was getting unseasonably cool. Blame it on the government, or global warming, or green-house gas emissions. Whatever it was, it was making me wear my damned sweater in April.
“Rob, Rob, stop man. We gotta talk.”
He sat down, in the same chair, looking back at me.
“Hey, is that my watch?”
“Yeah, man, but it’s broken.”
“Never mind. I did it again today, man. I did it.”
“You gave yourself another seizure?”
“No, man! Jesus, it’s something more than that. I did it again. I walked by the same fence, at the same time, closed my eyes, and before I could open them, I was somewhere else. I was on a horse somewhere. I’ve never ridden a horse before, Rob, I’ve never even had a foot in a saddle, but I was riding. I was riding over some countryside, the wind whipping through my hair – my hair was long, Rob – and I had a banner flying over my shoulder.
“I crested a hill and rode up to a castle, and the huge portcullis came down. It was amazing; the guards treated me like royalty. They took the horse and I walked into one of the left-most rooms of the castle, and I was back at the counter, with the milkshake and my mentor, and my girl. They were talking this time, something about ‘Tripping the light fantastic.’ They seemed really engaged in conversation; I didn’t want to stop them, so I kept on.
“The best part, Rob, was that there was a queen. I was married, and she was beautiful. But before I could touch her, I was pulled back again. But it felt longer this time. Like… Two hours.”
“Jesus, Gary, this isn’t healthy, man! You’re giving yourself epileptic fits!”
“Rob, if I was having a fit, how come when I get back from… Wherever it is, I’m always in stride? I’m not on the ground, I’m not twitching. I just am. But something was different this time, Rob.”
“What?”
“When I took my next step, the sun was gone down a little more. I couldn’t trip myself again, because the sun was at the wrong angle. It was like I was out for ten minutes or so.”
I had to sit back. He had stood there, eyes closed, asleep, standing, for ten minutes? And then, out of nowhere, he just came back, stride in place?
“Did anyone see you?”
“Hell if I know. Why?”
“Because, because, I want to watch you do this tomorrow. You know, to decide if it’s medically safe.”
“Since when were you a doctor?”
“Since when were you a… Shut up.”
He laughed, and darted from his seat, grabbing his watch and slamming the door.
-
The next day, we were standing in front of the fence, impeding pedestrian traffic to a slight degree. I was standing with a stop-watch in hand, he had a cheap-rolex over his wrist, and I had a head-band on for no other reason than to make the picture slightly more colorful, in case a photographer was looking for a cute photo-op.
Gary closed his eyes, took three steps forward, and froze.
I pulled out my phone, ready to call an ambulance, when I noticed something.
He wasn’t casting a shadow.
And as I watched, he disappeared.
And I felt my cheeks loosen.
-
I had waited for about twenty minutes, sick to my core, with the stopwatch running. The people all around hadn’t seem to notice, although they might have noticed something if they saw the amount of perspiration on my forehead. I turned to leave, taking a step, when I the shadow descended from nowhere, behind me.
Perfectly in step, Gary walked out.
“See? Nothing to it, Rob.”
“Gary, you have no idea.”
As we walked back to my apartment, I tried to explain to him in the calmest voice possible that he had, literally disappeared in front of my eyes, but all he could do was focus on the building in the distance, nodding at every other word.
“Snap back to it, Gary. What the hell happened?”
“I went back, again.”
“Went back? Do you know where you’re going?”
“No, Rob, but I like it. I like it more than here. I met the queen this time; she’s not my wife. She’s my mother. I’m some kind of Prince over there. And the girl at the counter, and my mentor… They’re both royal members of the court. You have no idea how… It’s just…”
“How long where you… ‘there’ this time?”
“Felt longer. Maybe two and a half hours?”
“You were gone from here for twenty minutes.”
“I know. It’s fantastic, Rob.”
And that was the last time, for a week, that I saw Gary.
-
Gary came back into my life running through the door, excited about something. I hadn’t seen him that excited in a while.
“Rob, I’ve been getting to spend more and more time there. I spent twelve hours yesterday. Twelve.”
“That means you were gone for like, an hour, doesn’t it?”
“Or twelve. You have to ask yourself, do I really care? I have to take advantage of this while the sun is still where it is. It’ll give me something to look forward to every year, if I could trip myself like that. Spring forward.”
I frowned.
Gary excused himself.
-
A year passed before I heard from him again. The hairs on my head were beginning to go gray, but Gary seemed as fresh as the day I saw him last.
There was a queen, there was a dragon, there was a princess, he had a father, his mother was sane, there were fields, and cows, and flowers.
And I didn’t see him for another three.
-
That brings me to the present. Gary ran through the door, giddy as a kid again. My arthritis was flaring up. He barely recognized me, thought he had run into the wrong apartment. I hadn’t the heart to tell him last time that he wasn’t aging like the rest of us. Every time he disappeared, he disappeared in his same state.
At this rate, he would live forever.
He told me he killed a dragon, and that there was a celebration. He actually seemed younger, happier, like he was getting to live a childhood he’d never had in a land of make-believe and hokum.
But, sadly, the sun was setting. I could have spent all night catching up to him, but when the sun began to set, Gary excused himself.
I’m probably going to be long in the ground the next time he makes it back, but he seems happy.
I didn’t believe him when he ran through the door, but he really did figure it out. He beat the rat-race, the old age, the pain of watching loved ones die. He fell into another world, one made from his memories and his dreams.
He tripped himself and disappeared completely.
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