Two hours, Life said. No matter what happens, you can only stay for two hours. I do not want a repeat of last time—are you listening?
I wasn’t. If Life wanted its words to be heard, it should have shared them before my feet crossed the threshold into somewhere they could not reach. My socked feet danced across the wooden floor, pushing Life and its excess far, far away until I could no longer be sure it even existed.
When I am in the space, I belong to the space, and the space belongs to me.
“Good evening,” I said and breathed in, stretching my hands high above my head. The rest of my body came with them. I am taller in the space.
Good evening, said the space, its four walls wrapping around me in a strong, loving embrace. The fit is snug but steadying, and I can breathe for the first time in what feels like months.
Others enter after settling affairs with their own Lives. We stretch together, talk, love, and play. What Life doesn’t understand is that it’s lovely in the space. Time flows differently, and never in any meaningful way. We are comfortable here, safe even.
Two hours go by, and when Life returns to pick me up, I feel the cold air outside. I feel Life bearing down on my shoulders.
“I could have gone longer,” I say, but Life shakes its head.
You could have been lost, says Life. I do not want to lose you.
I tell Life not to worry, but I know that it will.
Every day it gets harder and harder to leave the space. With Life I am dry, professional, and habitual. In the space I am action-oriented, spontaneous, and unafraid. Life can’t help but notice that the space is all I talk about, all I think about. Life is disappointed but not surprised.
The space begins to demand more and more of us. We stretch and talk and play, but we build and fight and work. Life waits at the door after the second hour, but I tell it to go wait at the bar around the corner as two hours turns to four.
One day I spend twelve hours in the space. When Life arrives to collect its due, it wrenches me away with such force that I wonder what it’s really after.
“If you toned it down, there’d be no problem with me spending so much time away,” I tell Life.
That’s when I learn Life does not like it when you tell it to “tone it down.”
It’s a rage I’ve never known, railing against me. Life pricks at my heart and fills my body with tears. It rolls on like the waves of a storm, tossing me around like a fishing boat. I have no choice. I run to the only place I can to take shelter.
I run to the space.
This is home, says the space. These are your people. There is work to be done. There is something to build here. There is nothing Life can give you that we cannot make for ourselves, in these four walls.
So I build. I work. I love. I pray.
Life knocks at the door, but we keep it locked. Life sends me a text message, but I don’t open it.
You don’t leave Life on read.
What we build is beautiful, and the space is right. It is every bit what Life can provide: all of its joys and sorrows together, felt and endured and shared in a way that feels so real—at least for a few nights.
When I’ve built it all, I go home to rest. And when I come back the next day, nothing is there.
Everything I’ve worked on, gone. Every sacrifice I’ve made has amounted to three nights of false living followed by four bare walls and an empty floor. There is nothing left.
I ask the space where is the home we have built together.
I do not know what you are talking about, says the space. I do not recognize you. Go home; you should not be here.
I go to the bar around the corner where I asked Life to wait up for me, hoping it’s still there. And sure enough it is, with a vodka soda.
“I should have known better,” I say to Life. “I won’t do that again.”
That’s what you said the last time, Life says to me. Life hasn’t shaved in a month. It needs to shower and maybe do a load or two of laundry.
But instead of doing those things, I sit down and order a vodka soda. I owe Life some quality time before I go and do it again.
Flash Fiction February is hosted by Ashley Warren of Scribemind. The challenge is to write one complete story in under 1500 words every day this month.
Recent Comments