Michael J. Seidlinger

The Fun We've Had

PRAISE FOR THE FUN WE’VE HAD

“Michael Seidlinger is a homegrown Calvino, a humanist, and wise and darkly whimsical. His invisible cities are the spires of the sea where we all sail our coffins in search of our stories.”

— STEVE ERICKSON, author of Zeroville

“Melding the static, high-concept premise of two humans floating alone on a coffin in a sea devoid of all else with stark and meditative prose, The Fun We’ve Had evokes a highly unexpected experience, somewhere between Beckett’s most hopeless solipsists and the mysterious energy of a child’s Choose Your Own Adventure-era dream.”

— BLAKE BUTLER, author of There Is No Year and

Three Hundred Million

“Michael J Seidlinger writes with the kind of weird, wonderful, joyful abandon that reminds the reader that the world is still the great unknown. In The Fun We’ve Had, he examines the long blank space between life and death, fills it with love and loss and boats made of coffins, with people clinging to life and using the weight of the past as ballast. This is a fun read, true; but it’s also a true read, and that’s what makes it so beautifully sad.”

— AMBER SPARKS, author of The Desert Places and May We Shed These Human Bodies

“The best poets are writing poetry no matter what they are writing, creating entirely new and weird spaces. There is no doubt Seidlinger has made one of the weirdest spaces we will ever inhabit. In The Fun We’ve Had, every visible thing is a love of disturbing tremors, keeping ahead of our ever-curious eyes, hoping to savor every line. What a magnificent book.”

— CA CONRAD, author of The Book of Frank

“It is obvious that Michael J Seidlinger had a great deal of fun writing The Fun We’ve Had. What more could a reader ask for?”

— MICHAEL KIMBALL, author of Big Ray

“Seidlinger’s imagination is a sea unto itself, the reader riding these rollicking waves. This book will have you clutching pages as though they’re life vests. Fans of Calvino and Shelley Jackson will dig the slow submerge into this crazy romp.”

— JOSHUA MOHR, author of Damascus

“Ready for an analogy? Here goes: When you need to give a dog a pill, you don’t just jam it down his throat, you wrap that pill in something yummy, like, say, ham. Michael J Seidlinger understands that this principle extends to people and books. So he’s got this pill he wants you to swallow, right? That pill is the truth about love and death and strife and, more generally, the messy mysterious business of being human, and also of being nothingness. Pretty heavy, right? Big old horse pill. But then Seidlinger, no fool, wraps it in the yummy slow-smoked maple goodness of his humor. He obviously had a fine time writing this book, which is precisely the reason you’ll have a fine time reading it.”

— RON CURRIE JR., author of Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles

PRAISE FOR THE LAUGHTER OF STRANGERS

“The Laughter of Strangers delivers a combination of psychological horror and strangeness that would not be out of place in a David Lynch film. Seidlinger’s weird new fight fiction suggests that perhaps the best place for boxing contests isn’t in the ring but between the pages of a book.”

— THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

“Unexpectedly, Michael J Seidlinger has given us the boxing novel of the year. The Laughter of Strangers is a tough and gritty book that will challenge you page after page, but it is oh so worth it.”

— FLAVORWIRE

“Seidlinger’s stripped down prose resembles a boxer that possesses both graceful footwork and devastating power: it’s rough and fast, but given to bursts of eloquence, humor, and philosophy.”

— BOOKSLUT

“Michael J Seidlinger’s

The Laughter of Strangers

is vicious and unforgettable. Willem Floures’s search for meaning in a world that keeps knocking him off his feet is as gritty and enthralling as a fight.

The Laughter of Strangers

destroyed my expectations of what a boxing novel can be. Seidlinger is charting new narrative territory, and we should follow him wherever he goes.”

—

LAURA VAN DEN BERG

, author of

The Isle of Youth

“The bare-bones prose within The Laughter of Strangers is heartbreaking, bleak, and stays with you long after finishing the book. This one should not be ignored.”

— FRANK BILL, author of Donnybrook

OUR TURN

We were here before anywhere else, and it is why they returned to tempt the seas, swimming against the current, fighting the engulfing waves. Each wave is its own feeling, rhythmic crashing of those that resist the tides. We are all here, and it is only now that we understand.

The waves are hellos.

The incoming storm is the sincerest goodbye.

Like every single one of us, they held on.

We held on until we could no longer hide. No one can hide out at sea. The current felt is something that only the quickening heartbeat, the quick-to-react being, can adjust.

We go with the current.

We are the current.

We want to say hello.

One wave tapped the side of their coffin while another nearly tipped the coffin over. We were way too excited. We are always excited to greet new voices. Though we may shout, they can only hear the sound of water deepening their descent.

Some hold on longer than most.

She held onto her potbelly, trapped in that tired, middle-aged body. He tried his best to fight us, unaware of the fact that we are here to help. We directed them toward the calmest part of the sea. We brought them in so that we could rock them slowly to their final sleep. Ease them in…

Let go.

With each gulp of water they became more like us.

He wanted to fight us with one oar and the weak, frail body of a young girl. She was with us. She’s been with us for quite some time. He fought, wanting to hold on.

They were only harming themselves.

We are here, waiting for time to kick back in.

The ocean has no clear end. The waves push and pull as we do our best to remember who we once were.

Every single voice used to walk bodies across lands untold; each voice is a source of experience.

There’s no telling what kind of fun we’ve had.

But we try. If you can listen into the sound of the seas, calm and raging, a contradiction based on the billions that populate its depths, you’ll hear us shouting, doing our best to tell our stories.

Holding on, they believed they had a chance.

We push them toward the calmest part of the sea, beyond the dangerous waters, for the moment when they would sink.

Eventually we all sink.

If you choose to swim, you choose to drown.

DENIAL

HIS TURN

He rowed long before he realized what had happened. After he opened his eyes, really opened his eyes, he still found it difficult to see anything. The deep and dark depths of blue made it a desperate struggle to find north. Sense of direction shattered, he rowed in circles, wide enough circles to hide the fact that he had no idea where they were. Of course he only hid the truth from himself.

She sat slumped over, tired and defeated, toward the back of the coffin. He pretended that the coffin was a boat and they had simply gone sailing, one of their impulsive adventures, the kind that seemed to define their relationship.

Thrill seeking, the very act of embellishing every minute as something monumental. For every show of affection, they showered themselves in anxious energy.

Let’s go! He could still hear the enthusiasm in her voice. Genuine and true — nothing quite like new love.

And it was love.

He was sure of it.

As sure as he was now of where they had ended up. One oar, nothing more, did little to help him forget that these hands were not his own. These frail, thin arms couldn’t be his arms.

He looked over his shoulder, “Not much longer now!” That voice, high-pitched and youthful, wasn’t his voice.

And what did he mean? Not much longer now. Where had they been? Where were they going? Yet all questions were already answered. If he could listen to the ocean, he’d find all the information he’d ever need.

But confusion buoyed him, steering the coffin that would one day be his. Kept rowing in one inexact direction while he frequently turned to repeat the same phrase, “Not much longer now!”

Confusion is an entirely different kind of torturous wave, one that denial combats well during times of distress.

This was a time of distress. His first turn and all that could register was the denial of what had happened. Why they were here to begin with was without question the first and foremost item on his mind.

“We’re a little late but we’ll be okay. They won’t leave without us!”

He might have been confident if it weren’t for the tears running down his cheeks. He wiped them with those fragile little fingers, so frail they might break if he were to ball them up into a fist. Paleness of his palm as plain as everything he could not say, everything he might have wanted to say but when he opened his mouth to speak, what came out were old words, old statements, the filler and fodder of the life he left behind.

The life they left behind.

HER TURN

They were equals. From the beginning, they built their friendship and subsequent intimacy on the back-and-forth of good conversation. If he spoke, she would speak next; if she whispered, he would whisper the same number of words. Never a shout if they were going to make a real go of this.

They did. And it was love, some might say.

She used to count how many times they’d say, “I love you.” It wouldn’t have been too difficult to believe anything after it’s repeated enough times. She could count how many times he rowed using the one old, bent oar, but she couldn’t fight the current. The feeling of exhaustion weighed in deep, heavy, exacting.

She whispered, “Do you recognize this song?”

His predictable answer, “They played it on the radio three times in a row.”

It felt meaningless. The words passed by like the gentle waves: effortlessly.

Please, sit down next to me. Stop trying to row. Words that would never leave her lips, chapped and purple, lips matching the sagging facial features of someone having reached middle age. Forty plus years of stress and poor diet, the face fit well with the belly that made it impossible to see beyond the waist.

Ideally, she knew who this was. More so, she could feel the effects of a life on-edge. This body borrowed is the one hint she had to identify where they had gone. What they had done…

Where their actions led to depths beyond final breaths and final blinks.

“That silly hairdo isn’t you. It’s trendy!”

The nonsense of dead speech, of lines that had already left one’s lips long ago.

“If you miss the appointment you’ll have to reschedule.”

The back-and-forth of good conversation. She spoke out of context. He rowed with no clear concept of north.

When it was his turn to speak, she had already spoken. The voice that dribbled out of her lips was deep and hoarse, heaving with a lack of energy, complete exhaustion.

Though she may have wanted to help, she found it difficult to do much of anything but sit where she sat, watching as he repeated the same thing.

Repeated enough times and the present worries were subdued. Though displaced, cast to the borrowed bodies of familiar acquaintances, she couldn’t be helped. She couldn’t help herself, even if she tried. The belly so heavy weighed her down. The frantic, almost manic energy, that he displayed, alarmingly the image of a young girl, only weighed her down more.

If she still needed to breathe, her breaths would have been audible, anguished wheezing.

She didn’t notice the differences, how if she wanted to, she could look past him. Right through the tiny body. She could see through her body to the velvet texture of the coffin acting as the as-of-yet largely unnoticed destiny of him, her, of everyone.

The coffin floated, for now.

She sat, vaguely aware that she would be the one to recover her sense of direction. She would be the one to hear the voices trapped in the waves. She would see the hinges of the coffin and it would all come to her at once. Enough to send her into a coma until he caught up. Denied for as long as he could, she would rest, teetering in the nonexistence of this purgatorial sea.

The only way to rouse her would be to admit what they’d have to do.

“I love you,” in this case, meant letting go.

HIS TURN

“Are we having fun?”

The sun made its first appearance, long rays of light poking through the clouds, highlighting the area where they would soon drift. By the time he’d fight the current, not that he ever won, more like the ocean let him win every time, the light pulled a few feet forward.

Always out of reach.

He stationed himself at the front of the coffin, like a captain of a nameless and needless ship. He wanted to say everything to her but all that came out was the same question:

“Are we having fun?”

The question, at first directed to her overweight and overwrought frame, soon became his meaningless refrain.

Meaningless, because if he let himself understand the question he would have to admit to all that he fought so hard to deny.

Follow the light.

He began to see shapes and other apparitions in the rays. Excitedly, the rowing became his primary focus. He held the oar with both hands, leaning to either side as he lowered it into the water. It looked painful but he felt nothing.

He wasn’t at all sure this was excitement, but at least for now, the glimpsing of something else, something, anything, was enough to keep the momentum, the same momentum that seemed to outline his days. What might have been a lazy, relaxing Saturday became a cause for adventure, a curious matching between him and her, their search to be out, on the city, the town, so as to stave off being on the outs with each other.

That’s what it is, was, and will always be.

Nothing would change. Nothing is wrong.

This is just another adventure. New thrill.

“Are we having fun?”

Of course they were. When every feeling is time-stamped and the life you lead becomes the life you led, there cannot be a whole lot more to do except admit right from wrong. However, if he could see the look on that girlish face of his, it would tell a different story.

Keep rowing to the leaking of tears from bloodshot eyes. And yet there was a smile to accompany the act.

Beyond the beyond, he thought of a horizon, of an island they once pretended to exist. Desert island adventure.

What would you need to have fun?

Cheesy lines delivered—you.

You too—followed by a list of feelings, emotions, rather than material belongings.

To feel was all they wanted.

To feel alive.

Then what does this feel like?

“Are we having fun?”

HER TURN

She could never picture it in her mind despite saying that she could. A desert island? It’s rhetorical. Fictional. There isn’t a lot of space on earth; every corner and crevice is populated with life. If it’s deserted it might be death. Danger ahead. But that’s the way they liked it. Especially now, she felt it, everything from the emotional surfaces to the depths of childhood, leaving her for good. She succumbed to numbness. She felt nothing.

She wanted nothing.

She heard him. She always heard him, especially now. How obnoxious his voice seemed as he wore that smile while the rest of his face told a different story. Let’s go!

To that illuminated patch of water.

The sunshine duped him dozens of times. All she could do was sigh. The sigh never escaped her lips. Those lips began to stick, as if shut for good.

Her character flaw wasn’t that she denied herself what she felt. She fed on her emotions, listening to every single nudge and twitch, even if it ended tragically. Her character flaw, like there was ever only one per person, had more to do with an ever-present pessimism. It might have been good, what they had, but she second-guessed everything.

Here and now, she second-guessed the sea around her. Distantly her thoughts mimicked the time she made her way across the country. She might as well have been by herself because she pushed away the two friends that occupied the same journey. She doubted the cities they visited, claimed the caverns they found to be duplicates, fraudulent copies of the real thing.

Everything seemed smaller and disappointing.

She had that tendency to expect the great from the mundane, the gold from blemished copper.

The sea behind those old, tired brown eyes could be cut in half. She saw only what she wanted, and half the time it was the silhouette of a young girl, joyously optimistic to the point of mania, about a journey she could not remember ever taking.

This, the journey that takes all.

The journey across seas is nothing but blind faith until one recognizes that the sea has no end.

If she opened her mouth to speak, she might have told him, saved him from further effort; however, where they were, all effort had already been spent. The things they did now were mere residual effects of lives lived in rapid succession.

Everything around her muted, the stain after bloodletting.

No more feeling having felt all of it come to pass.

“I love you,” meant half as much after her breath had been taken away. The half that remained holds on by a string. The eyes shut themselves, already tired and bored.

Suppressed sigh. The denial is numbness, a temporary numbness, until she, too, gives in and recognizes the source, the owner of the body she borrowed.

“I should think not.”

HIS TURN

The sun wouldn’t stay even if it could. It teased him with the wonder of one clear direction until it left only the final few traces of light outlining the gentle waves, the ripple in the calm warm sea. Those young, eager eyes held back tears but the clouds that cast the sun out of this scene had already planned to do all the crying. First droplets could be seen dotting the ocean’s surface.

Surface turned murky, upsetting the balance, screaming out different voices, all of which, sounding together, from his ears could only sound like an incoming storm.

Shivering, he wanted to warn her, wanted to declare what would soon become a futile trek into treacherous waters. Where words should have saved, they splintered away. What he wanted to say had little to do with what could be said.

Everything had to do with the rainstorm.

The wind, the thunder, the waves crashing against the side of the coffin, spoke for the one part of him that needed to speak.

And yet he still rowed. He fought back what he should have felt. He forced back everything that might show weakness.

He turned a blind eye to what he looked like.

He could nearly see through the young girlish features to the inside of the coffin. He looked past the blonde, shoulder-length hair and paid no attention to how effortless it was to tie the hair into two perfect ponytails.

Over his shoulder, he saw not what should have been an unfamiliar face but rather her in fear, her drowning in the rainstorm. Over his shoulder, he wanted to warn her of the water pooling ankle-deep.

The feverish rowing continued until the oar wanted nothing more. It couldn’t have survived the storm and neither could they if they hadn’t already succumbed to prior demise.

Swallowing whole mouthfuls of rainwater did very little to displace doubt. He opened his mouth, wheezing out voiceless shouts, gesturing at her to help keep the coffin afloat.

It was taking on too much water way too quickly.

The storm worsened before it got any better.

Downpour reflected his every dying wish to have saved her from this demise. If he had said it before his last breaths, he might have been able to apologize.

It felt like the perfect moment, seeing her there, slumped over; the heavy rains pulled her into that obese belly. Her shape seemed to lose all definition. In the darkness of the storm, she looked like a blotch that he couldn’t quite reach.

Every attempt to get closer ended with a wave pushing the side of the coffin, the storm pushing him back.

Falling to one side, broken oar held in his hands, he let the splintered wood go, watched the broken pieces float toward her.

The rain was only rain until it became the only reason to keep them apart.

Wordlessly he watched the water rise and the coffin lower.

He was never any closer to giving in as he was right now.

Soon, he thought, the coffin would sink. They would have to swim. Maybe, he worried that he wouldn’t know how to swim when the time came. Maybe he’d sink to the bottom.

Who would sink first?

Him or her?

HER TURN

The rain stopped before she could notice that it had rained at all. When she stood up, the water in the coffin drained. Where she sat back down, the fabric never really dried.

She yawned.

Heavy eyelids she could not keep from closing. There, where he had always stood with some degree of confidence, she saw only the bluish-grey of a sky tired and dull.

Ready for whatever came next.

Eyes closed.

Eyes once again open. A yawn she could feel rising from somewhere deep within this aged body.

Looming threat being that the effort to keep those eyelids open lost against the will to keep them closed.

Blame… but who could she really blame?

She stepped over the same boundaries as he did. She barreled over the dangerous marks, blotted out the extensive disclaimers; the reach for demise outweighed the ridicule for having risked it all for just a taste.

“I could have been anything.”

It was a whisper, always a whisper.

She might have been someone.

She could have been someone to die for.

Certainly she did not die alone. He was there the same way he was there now, even though she couldn’t see him, he was there. Heavy eyelids concealed the fact that he fell into the water. He choked but was saved; she drained the coffin just in time.

He crawled toward her and sat to her right.

Heavy eyelids and dearly felt neglect. He might have tried to hold onto her; she might have reciprocated, but that’s the stuff of different stories, affection saved for the books that detail relationships set in the present tense.

A dead relationship carries on like a haunting, repeating the best far less than repeating the worst of times.

Eyes open, she leaned forward, looking down at those tattered shoes, disproportionate body acting as the simplest indication of neglected health. Mirror that with the quickest glimpse of what he looked like.

“She was just a simple, jaded girl.”

Just cause for tired eyelids.

Eyes closed.

If she had a heartbeat, if she needed to inhale, this would have been where she sighed, matched by the skipping of her heart. Enough of a skip and a sigh to be something of a reminder that the decision could be as simple as the flick of a light switch.

But to make this all possible, she needed to remain where she was, not tampering with a single thing.

That was his role.

She would sit until sitting no longer matched the momentum of the sea. The current had its way, each wave pushing and pulling, would-be directionless when it was clearly wind-swept intent. The tether was not yet severed between where they had been and where they would soon go.

She could feel sleep getting closer, the kind of sleep only the dead could experience.

HIS TURN

Rowing without oar, his arms were too frail and yet, because the sun, once again, met him in the middle, rays shone from directly above him, heating his skin, causing the little borrowed body to sweat and ache. He forced the most from each lean, felt arm dislodging from its socket.

He wasn’t just rowing for himself. He rowed for two.

He rowed for the relationship he would sooner cease to be than to lose. There’s some truth to that statement. The growing rumor was that it wasn’t so much a one-sided effort. More like it seems right to believe that it was mutual.

Believe what you want to believe. It was a mutual effort in the appeal of never losing interest.

In his mind there was only her.

In hers, he liked to think he sat among her favorites. If confidence rang high, he’d go so far as to say he was her reason to live. He was her reason to wake up in the morning.

In the very least, it was true for him, clear of the sort of affection he had always felt for her.

Waking up was so much easier if he knew she’d be there, the first thing he’d see.

And though he couldn’t be sure of where they were, or how they’d get out of this, he would at least make sure she was safe.

If this body were a body in the physical sense, it would have broken into pieces during the hundredth attempt to fight the current. However calm it now was, the sun proved to be far worse than any rain.

When he couldn’t seem to picture anything — nothing to see behind the sun’s glare, nothing to see on all sides of the horizon — he made up for in voice. Odd how the words arrived only when he had no other choice, when he had no clear place for them.

“Hey now.”

He paddled with the left arm.

That might be pain shooting up his spine, maybe.

“What I was going to say was…”

And he held onto those words, barely able to wrap his thin fingers around more than two at a time, and drowned them in the water, the water so warm.

Still the waves, the silent sea.

For the first but definitely not the last time, he looked, and really looked, at the body that he hadn’t realized he borrowed.

“Yes” followed by “No” followed by another “Yes.”

Pink shirt on grey pants.

What the hell.

And…

“That might not work for the best.”

Sweat dripped down his brow. Smell the sweat, the stench in no way the way his body should smell.

These eyes, these lips, this tongue couldn’t be his.

How could it only begin to register now?

And still, for this to work, he couldn’t see himself in the water, even when he freely chose to look into the water, hoping to see a reflection. He couldn’t kiss her because she wasn’t the same either. He couldn’t taste the sweat on his forearm without thinking that he had abandoned who he was for the role of an imposter, a role he hadn’t desired. Not even once.

That sort of bubbling confusion could only be fought by physical exertion. Default to the imperative, the lone need.

Because he couldn’t figure out where they were, it had to be dangerous waters. He half-expected to see enemy ships, sharks circling their little bit of help, this… coffin?

“This,” what he chose not to believe was a coffin.

Words rushed him now.

“The park is still open.”

Drowned the sentence with his frantic paddling, the skin on his arms wrinkling from saltwater.

“The squirrel we like needs to be fed.”

Whose words were these? He looked over his shoulder just in time to see her neck snap to one side.

If she wasn’t well, how could he be any better?

HER TURN

Because her neck snapped in such a way that couldn’t be anything but the final snap, the eyelids remained shut even as she tried to look, tried to give him her best sort of encouraging look.

Senses haven’t completely failed:

She could still hear him and everything he said. How couldn’t she hear that voice so loud, shrill, and terrified?

As her neck snapped, she gave in.

She gave up what she had fought without reason to keep. She no longer fought the basics. She no longer had reason to feel so numb and ineffectual.

It all had to do with denial. It had everything to do with what she felt was her fault.

The disease grabbed her as she reached in to take risk on full-throttle. Senselessly the source of their demise wouldn’t return to her. Everything before seeing her hand reach into a dark expanse of undefined space, she had nothing but him to fill the blankness that now blotted out her memories.

A new worry boiled in that potbelly of hers.

She couldn’t move.

Her neck had snapped. Could she remember?

She couldn’t move because she knew what this meant.

She wanted, at this very moment, even if it was in that gruff male voice, to tell him what she had told him more than anything else. She wanted to say, “I love you.”

Maybe it would sound wrong. Maybe it would fall flat upon her telling him, but then she would lean in, turning to the next sense, the sense of touch, and she would touch lips.

Her chapped, almost bleeding lips, touched his young red lips. Just imagine:

That body, the body that he borrowed. The body of someone she can almost remember, much like the body she borrowed seemed so familiar. But not yet.

For her to believe that her neck was really cracked and broken, none of this needed to work.

No lips touching.

No “I love you” declared.

For it to work, she needed to float in the only sort of sleep those floating toward demise could experience. It was the sort of sleep deemed half coma and half defeat.

It was a brand of sleep that wafted with no breeze, weighed down in the mild pain of dark, sunburned skin.

It was the sort of sleep that only she would experience.

She slept for the full-effect, until senses rose sharply up her spine and it was clear that dead bodies feed on dead thoughts; any pain or pleasure could only be drawn from the filed away mindset called the “past.”

Anything to be said or spoken had already been said.

By the look of the borrowed body, she was a middle-aged man, career-doomed and desperate for legacy.

HIS TURN

Those young impressionable eyes were incapable of holding back what he saw: Vacant seas, hidden depths, and the reflection cast on the calm waters, the one that eluded him strictly because he had wanted it to remain elusive. Blue eyes that saw for a dozen years, little more than that, could not blot out what he now knew, what he distantly held as true.

Look and, indeed, he looked.

Really looked, and what he gave was similar to what she gave. It would be right to say that he gave it all but nothing about what happens between these book covers is even remotely close to “right.” Him and her, a man that in his giving up, at least as much as is needed to admit that his body isn’t his, his body borrowed much like his breath ceases to exist, his name registered both here on the page and in his memory at the same time.

He couldn’t remember.

He couldn’t remember his name.

Perhaps he could remember if he tried to give a little bit more about himself but by all accounts it doesn’t look like he’ll be able to give much more if the name is as hopeless as the words he cannot help but speak.

This body of his, it looked so familiar.

“I know you.”

Three words dripped down those red lips, lips that should have never been his. Not with the kind of mouth he had, known to sprinkle language better left unsaid. Everything he said never really stained his white teeth, but a younger, more innocent body like this might turn into a monster based on his tendency to break free and tempt disaster. It’s why he got along so well with her.

Tempting a disease, it grabbed him as much as it grabbed her. Doubt is quite similar to denial as long as he desired something other than this. But enough about desire.

Desire is what got him here. Desire is what got her to dare in the first place. Enough about that.

For this to work, he needed to be aware. For this to really work, he needed to lower his face near the water and stare at what stared back at him. Various faces, gestures formed in hopes of turning that face into a frown. For this to work, he needed to feel empty. No matter what face he made, what looked back at him failed to look how he wanted it to look.

Mouth open, jaw hanging, he watched as a grin formed.

What was there to smile about?

By the look of the borrowed body, he was a girl, a life as-of-yet to design, a life already in decline.

HER TURN

She yawned and it was a yawn that shook free the very fact that, broken neck or not, she could move this body beyond any clear reason. She could crack the spine in five places. Bend an arm back in the wrong direction. She turned her neck one hundred and eighty degrees, stopping only when she saw him.

He could be found on the other side of the coffin, head hanging over the edge, dipped in as if drowning were still a probable means of demise.

Demise had passed them.

Past demise there is no clear direction, not if you are here, and hold on to what cannot be rightfully named.

At least not right now, though it might be obvious, in the grander scene, the scenario in its entirety, what must happen to see anything distinct on the horizon, to reach landfall.

So she was a middle-aged man.

So what?

Wishing it could have been that easy to dismiss.

Yet when she really looked at him, she saw past the young girl staring back with that grin across her face, with the opposite of what he must have felt; she saw through the borrowed body and it was enough for her to sit up, move her own borrowed body in a way that it hadn’t been moved in some time.

She sat forward, elbows on knees, and coughed. Or at least tried to cough.

The not coughing got his attention. She watched as he skipped toward her, tilting the entire coffin, nearly flipping it over. Maybe he wanted to breathe out, exhale, emphasizing that he was relieved, but instead jaw hung heavy when the breath did not come. Since he tried, her try couldn’t end in any other way than what she had witnessed.

She held her belly like a newborn child. Cradling it dearly, she looked around as he closed his eyes, hopeful and youthful despite what little could be seen.

He sat and she sat because what else could they do but sit side-by-side and stare out toward the ocean turning colors, red, green, orange, than black, before returning to blue? All colors in the spectrum but the one color they liked best. The one they would never admit, which is why they sit and why they continued to sit as day turned into night, night back into day, with the sun never lowering, not even once.

She pretended that she could still breathe; they both imagined that their hearts still beat.

Lips might have met each other if they could have correctly measured the distance between them; instead they kissed air, clumsily looking beyond their bodies, wanting to say everything yet couldn’t because they failed to ascertain what “everything” entailed.

Squinting, she hoped that seeing halfway would do what it had done before. Now that she needed to see half, it worked against her, forcing her to see in full.

“I said hello but it seems we never really met.”

A voice carried by the waves.

It didn’t take much to pretend that the gruff voice was his. But for that to work, there should have been a breeze. Instead there was nothing but low-hanging humidity, dread in layers made to keep her attuned to the conditions. Gripping her belly, she had trouble admitting that they looked like strangers.

She was supposed to feel something.

She was supposed to see him rather than seeing her, blue eyes and skin like porcelain.

Not beyond but underneath.

But she couldn’t.

He felt the same way about her, seeing him, belly, ugly visage, bags under the eyes.

This is the stuff that characters don’t get to see until enough lines have been laid out across the page. Characters are treated horribly when the narrative needs to be long enough to explore an ocean rather than a pond, a horizon rather than one shore. They sail the same sea. By wit’s end they grip with everything that occupies this coffin, be it themselves or something else.

You can’t just admit what doesn’t hurt. After admission, no believable character reverts to denial.

ANGER

HIS TURN

He could nearly remember the name. It was a name that fit the living but, for the dead, it looked out of place on a headstone. He sat holding onto the mimicry of deep thought, various threads looming from above. He knew he had to let go of his name if he wanted to keep himself from drowning. Sunlight bathed the coffin once, but now it excused itself from the scene so that he would have no excuse to keep his eyes closed. Those blue eyes were cautiously vacant, staring straight ahead, never more sure of the uncertainty in this tale. Every line cut short and hidden like the would-be wrinkles on the face of this foreign body.

But that part doesn’t yet matter. The part about looming pertained to the circumstances that have already passed both of them over, much like long-lost siblings might never recognize that they were switched at birth. It looms, the reality of the situation, no matter how unreal, no matter how obscure, no matter how masked it is due to the manner in which this is told.

Beyond any sense, it will be told.

Having sat where he normally would stand, he leaned forward when it felt wrong to lean back; he leaned back when it felt wrong to lean forward. He inched himself closer to the edge when it felt wrong to be so laid back. He turned to one side, went as far as laying prone, testing the size of the coffin, when sitting had outstayed its welcome.

Laying there it was almost like he was alone, riding the ocean’s waves, being rocked toward the final sleep.

Laying there, he might have misplaced the curiosity to look back whenever he knew she was staring at him.

He wanted her to stare, and it wasn’t a malicious stare; she looked at him because what else did either of them have but each other?

Sharing the same space where it felt wrong to be taking up any space at all rendered him in a very anxious state.

Maybe he should stand back up.

Maybe he should go back to sitting.

Maybe he should swim…

What he felt, and failed to name, was what ceaselessly wrapped around the living, the stuff of life.

Put into perspective, it could be called anxiety.

He knew that something was wrong and it had everything to do with what could not fit correctly in both coffin and mind.

This wasn’t him, so pale and thin.

Pieces missing yet understood, he could finally stop paddling. They were going nowhere. The coffin floated in place. The waves rocked it back and forth, pushing it forward enough to make up for how much they pushed it back. The motion of the ocean spun his thoughts into one blank episode, one on repeat until admitting what he needed to admit.

It would take much longer to understand the whole of his postmarked demise. Visible: he saw, for once, what had already been seen, and because it felt so familiar, there was nothing else to do but blame her.

She would be waiting, ready to reciprocate.

HER TURN

The name might have been hers to choose. Given a list with names, she may have been the one outlier. But then, it failed to fit. Much like how he had doubled over in unfathomable anxiety, she held on, letting the omitted memories leave.

Everything within touch triggered the name. She knew her name and yet could not say it. This borrowed body had no reason to say the name. It hadn’t been his.

No doubting that it was her name. In life she went by the name and, floating idly, she held onto the name like an anchor that took one whole section of this story to discover.

In order for this to work, there needed to be something out there, or at least the thought that there might be.

She needed to keep herself occupied and able.

She needed to start watching him like he was onto something and held back, keeping something from her.

Everything she cannot name.

There is a discovery that she might have made right from the beginning but he was her distraction.

This was the excuse that began circling her like a shark, each time quicker and hungrier than the last.

Impatient until she was ready to lash out.

Perfectly ready but the words would not come.

Dry mouth and bitter hate growing.

She ground her teeth shut, filing them down as if they were made of wood. The focus here was not on what the bodies become because, really, they have become all that they could become. Much like a sculpture finalized, nothing else could be added, only taken away. The focus here was on how both share the same feelings. They have always shared the same feelings. Denial, now a sunken feeling, they both reacted to newly recovered worries.

For once, they used their senses to interpret. And it was anger. There would be no surprise to find that she did not like what she saw. Fault held strong. It was not her fault.

She fixated on what had been taken away from her.

By him.

The way he lay there taking up too much space. The way he seemed to take this all in stride. The way he seemed to know where he was going while she did not. He took from her and he keeps taking from her. The dirtiest flicker of a thought rose from the depths of the sea entered her left ear and stayed, never exiting out the other. Why did she carry the weight of a poor and miserable man’s girth?

She was not yet aware that the blame fit the excuse and the fault was her burden to carry. Well-known for most would be, for her, an obscure reference.

Her excuses fell flat when she couldn’t match the grimace, speaking lines that could not have been dialogue.

Something needed to move.

He did all the moving. It was her turn to move. Again, the blame. Fault. She continued to sit.

The waves slowed and soon it was still water on all sides of the coffin. The sky was grey, devoid of choice. The solitary sound was of him tapping fingers against the wooden surface. She reacted by creating a second sound, sweaty palm slapped against her face. He noticed and since it couldn’t show, she used this body to express his copy.

Fist to frown. Anger without expression.

But only the one time. There would be a repetition but that second punch went straight through. She fell sideways; he might have laughed, but mainly because she expected that he would. Time for laughter elapsed. There was only silence. The silence augmented the muted fit. Fury boiled to the surface in the only way possible.

“Are we having fun?”

Repeated over and over, because it was her turn.

She had become aware of the title of this chapter, the momentum of these pages. She read into the next sentence while he was stuck reading the past.

Just like her to use it against him until the very last moment, when they both would need each other to finally let go.

HIS TURN

He said as much as he could ever say, but truth of his turns, and for that matter, hers, the real source of anger and hostility could be found in the fact that what they wanted to say couldn’t be said. What they said existed in different conversations, spoken in a different voice. What they had in mind to speak was overwritten by the lines that left his lips and hers.

What they said had already been said and what they said now and again, fell flat, a conversation held at sea rather than solid ground. But perhaps what is still important is that he spoke.

He still speaks.

Straight faced, these lines tell a different story.

A story that was more like his and hers than could be immediately understood. Characters joined, they were intertwined in the lapsing of holding on. Held on, he could begin to feel that pressure, and with each push, he reacted with anger. Anger directed to the only one there to take it. He took to one side of the coffin, the one that offered the clearest view, the part of the coffin that might have been labeled the bow, where the captain points and plots out a destination. Feet firmly placed, he positioned both hands on his hips. He pushed out his chest. He let out hostile accusations, watching as they immediately fell flat.

“I am faithful to my father.”

[…]

“Now how does that make me feel, to hear that you need to tell me what I should already see?”

[…]

“Confidence!”

Adding exclamation points to every line would be right, but that would also imply that what he said was somehow changed, which could not be remotely true.

Stepping forward, he tempted more of the coffin. This coffin was his. This coffin was his to take.

Thought registered in the heat of this awkward back-and-forth, that she might think that it was his fault.

His fault? It was enough to take a second, big step.

“I lost something back there.”

[…]

“You should have covered that mouth of yours.”

[…]

“Calm down.”

[…]

“It’s just a headache.”

Words without reason are words burned like kindling for the fires of anger. For this: A fight to pass the blame. Neither to be blamed when in fact both are the leading cause, both are burdens on each other. He enabled her as much as she enabled him.

And so they conjured up bad times.

They hurt themselves, and each other.

HER TURN

She said as much as he had said, but who got the last say? For sure he did, but because this was her turn, this time the last will be hers until turned back over to him.

She couldn’t have a turn if he didn’t get one too.

Measure not a single line more because this really has nothing to do with her feelings for him. This was a blameless and needless sort of resentment.

A deep resentment that was there to fill the missing pieces, the halves from this point out forever hidden.

When he stepped forward, it made her step back. Where she now stood, she had no room to step back. Stepping back meant falling into the water. Falling in meant breaking her stare.

That couldn’t happen, not without letting go a little more.

She remained right here. She did not let the blame drown in the calm, warm water. The frigid temperatures must stay inside the coffin. Hurt comes in a dozen shades, all of them having to do with the way she looks at him.

She gestured with each line, knowing that words would fail her. He took steps but she took him back to dark times. Picture the lightless night in a cramped space. Picture words written all across the walls, maybe words like the ones that left her mouth now.

[…]

“Oh your dad…”

[…]

“My dad, what?”

[…]

Raw, like wreaking havoc on his memory, she gestured for sleep. She drew the shape of blankets and pillows, and then of hands around her neck, pulled tightly.

Then she spoke, shouting out the first word, much like he did with his own lines, only to have it all fall back down to the flat monotone muttered in her gruff, frank voice.

“None of your business.”

But the flatness let it pass as he took that second step forward. Lost language as she had begun to feel the same way he felt: Overcome with this heated, murderous need to make something change in the other, something bad. New scars.

New lines of distention, something.

Something…

[…]

“This isn’t yours.”

[…]

“This is my house.”

[…]

“You don’t pay for anything.”

[…]

No — she simply could not let him take a third step.

She couldn’t taste the saltwater. She refused to drown, feeling like she had already drowned.

Maybe failed at that too.

When she looked beyond him, she felt calm, like this might all be washed away with a simple rainstorm. She would be washed out, blurred by the storm. For that to happen, she would have to let go of what she felt, and she simply couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t work, not when everything that had been written before this line defined her character as resentful and capable of holding grudges.

No. Simply no.

That’s how she would leave things. Scissors cutting the cord, letting it all drown.

All of it.

No.

HIS TURN

Stepping back, he was too late. He had already overstepped. Two steps too many. She lashed out with lines that read more like:

FIRST WORD.

Enough to remind him of her distaste, her complete loathing for him, followed by a trail of the rest of whatever she said acting well to make it sting.

What exactly stung wasn’t worth talking about. Rather, it was how she continued to define things, those places, which seemed so wrong. For that reason, he saw himself there, in the wrong.

She put him in this situation, the feeling that it really was his fault, and he could feel the anger subside as she lashed out at him with line after line, spoken statements like triggers of the self, wilting.

[…]

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[…]

He saw in himself what he saw on her surface.

What you are:

Overweight.

Half a life over, a life over from the start.

Crackpot. Desperate for legacy but destined to be forgotten.

Insomnia-driven caffeine addiction.

Poor hygiene led to poorness in a number of respects, mainly that of poor finances and poor looks.

Look at you, look at that.

He tripped and fell as she delivered one more line.

[…]

Looking beyond her he felt calm, as if he could still let go of all the wrong, all the bad that he had done. Demise buried it all, though. It buries everything. For the wrong to be wiped clean, the good times would need to be washed out as well.

He sat inside himself, sat inside his sitting, balled up and retreated inward.

HER TURN

She had wanted the worst in him to surface. She didn’t know what she wanted, but it’s practically identical to how they once were, which is to say that she hadn’t a clue from the start. It was always about just starting, never finishing, going and letting it go whenever she lost interest, hoping it wouldn’t return.

But he returned. And returned.

He returned every one of her lines with one of his. It wasn’t even what he said anymore but rather that he had forced her into a corner. This allowed for the anger to completely boil over. The result is what can be seen as one lashing out at the other.

As she breathed nonexistent breath, she spoke in rapid succession, each line beginning with a sharpened blade and ending dull. She pushed forward as she spoke. The coffin weighed in one-sided, causing one side to rise and the other to sink.

“You can’t talk to me like that!”

“Whatever.”

“No! Not ‘whatever.’ You can’t talk to me like that!”

“I just did.”

“Are we having fun, huh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Watch where you’re fucking going!”

“You should feel bad.”

“Well I don’t.”

“Without me you’ll drown.”

“You’ll drown too, bitch.”

“What is happening to you?”

Coffin at tipping point, she jumped up and down, the extra weight causing water to pour in.

She enjoyed it, what she saw, the losing end of this, his face in a state of worry. But if she wanted to make sure, she couldn’t stop now. She jumped a second time. More water poured in but she watched a different source, tears from his face, from that stupid young face of his, the one that made her resent him more. The reason, she already had it in mind, but she would have to let go a little more to see herself, really see that the only thing she hated was how she looked. She had always hated how she looked. Too thin, too childish. How old are you really?

People were always mistaking her age.

There, see how a single flicker of memory is all it takes to send her over the edge. One more line spoken:

“I’m falling in ‘love.’ Whatever.”

He could be seen curling up, bringing knees up toward his chest. For one brief moment, she would almost enjoy the satisfaction. Almost because, floating here, she couldn’t be anything more than half.

Half of a feeling, half of a thought, half of herself.

For this one brief moment, she believed she was not responsible for the strangeness of this tale.

HIS TURN

“You are weaker.” A line, a leash, a tether tending to him before he sank. Before he gulped up the water pooled in the coffin. After he grabbed and held on, he could quickly see that everything wasn’t wrong. When he looked at her, he was forced to look at himself. Beyond all the blemishes, he could identify the good. He could see that his eyes weren’t dull, behind swollen cheeks was a brilliant mind. He sat inward and was able to see that all the good he had experienced, everything he had given and in turn given back hid inside rather than broadcast plainly on the surface.

Since he had been given very little to work with, for his sake and for the sake of her, the anger returned. The anger bled and bade for his best attempt. Pathetic, but it had to be pathetic. This was not for him. The anger was for her, because she needed him to be angry. At this precise moment, she needed him to bend down and be like a dog, lapping up the water she had brought on.

Burp out lines, each given plain, the anger saved for the last word rather than the first, between mouthfuls of the water.

“I’m the one with the license.”

“I feel perfectly fine. In fact, breathe in this air. I have never felt better!”

“You haven’t proven anything!”

“Look at those eyes.”

“Not at all like what you might imagine; just because you don’t see it does not mean it does not see you.”

“Look.”

“I am looking.”

“Your eyes have gone grey.”

“Blink, why don’t you blink?”

“There can be no turning back now.”

“You need to look.”

And because it was her body that he borrowed, when he released the water back into the sea, vomiting it up effortlessly, she watched it once again unfold.

But for once he retorted and felt the sort of relief that is fleeting, the feeling of satisfaction that she had felt in the moment before this.

All the lines delivered and the mouthfuls of water gulped down, all of it laced in a fake sort of anger, a sort of resentment that only needed to be there so that she could identify that she might have gone too far. Ultimately, it was his humble move toward letting more of this go.

Letting the tale continue rather than derail.

Her resentment was truer now that it was, here and now, written to state that he, not she, was first to let go of the anger, admit the anger, and look for the pieces that could still be offered some sort of apology.

Here was his first, maybe, if she would take it plain.

But of course she wouldn’t, and she didn’t. She would take the coffin as far as one could plot a course through this sea, and given his efforts with the paddling, the unpredictability of life, it would not be very far.

HER TURN

[…] See that? The ellipses in brackets, bracketed together as an indication of omission, how their dialog, no matter how organic and honest, will always fall flat, always involve saying while what they felt, what they might be feeling at least distantly, becomes erased by each additional word.

This is how she felt as it crept on her too.

The anger subsiding.

He fought back.

Typical and it was typical of her to respond to his actions with sarcasm, with dry and dead jealousy. There was no just cause for jealousy. But indeed there it was.

And there it led her, right into those blue eyes, the kind of blue that every film and every summertime television show duped people into believing the sea could be that perfect.

Into the blue, she saw what only she could see in herself: the pride of a young preteen, inflated beyond managing, the sort of thing that might involve mixing in the word “perfection” among every line having to do with her looks.

Voiceless she let that borrowed body of hers sink.

As he drank the water that she let into the coffin, she sank deeper into the color blue as it painfully made it clear that what she had fought was what she couldn’t bear to see.

[…]

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If there would be any blame, how about blaming the pride, the poor image-development, how the smile that still managed to be cast across his face even though he couldn’t be smiling, was the result of endless sessions at the mirror, her ceaselessly practicing each flattering gesture, examining each inch of her face and body for wrinkles, problems, something fixable.

Additional blame being that she brought in the water, like she might have brought them here. She brought him closer to danger. She used everything that was available to use, and she was the type to take advantage, to become bitter when things weren’t skewed her way… and the fact is she still is all of these things, despite all that she can no longer be.

She made him drink all that water, but it was her body that took it all in. Fault, and, by far, the word would be transformed into the basis of what she saw. Fault. Hers.

Nowhere near perfect. Frankly what she saw, her tongue scraping against the floor of the coffin, was pathetic.

She could think of herself as nothing more than that.

HIS TURN

Well now. Are you well? You don’t look well. You might be sick. You might need help. I can help you. You can’t do this all by yourself. I can help. I want to help you. I will care double to make up for your carelessness.

Words to live by. They were words from a dialogue hushed by the inability to tell her any of it. Instead he had told her, “This argument of ours is proof that we have made progress!”

Even if they had, it looked like both him and her kept as far away from each other as they possibly could. They pushed away instead of pulling closer. There was a great lingering, a dauntless display of what they simply could not do. He lingered to one side while taking quick, jittery glances in her direction.

For all he knew, she did the same.

He could still taste the vomit in his mouth.

Bright sunny day bore into their borrowed bodies, enough that they couldn’t keep it up for long. He looked and then looked away. She looked and waited until he looked again. Eyes met; there was no affection, only a deep longing, a lingering that felt like an apology.

He was first. He would always be the one that started and she would always be the one that stopped.

He walked over, found a spot near her, and looked into those tired eyes. Unable to take it for much longer than a glance, he knelt down near the side of the coffin and looked into the water.

His reflection was her reflection. Breathlessly, he imagined exhaling relief. He had missed seeing her. Every time he looked at her, he had to look beyond her. But not when he looked into the water. Looking into the water, he could really see her, and then there was talk. He had wanted to talk.

Talking let him hear her voice.

“Now how is that not the exact same thing as demise?”

What would he say to that?

“His heart is now stone.” Felt where her heart would be and having failed to find it, he understood that it was his heart that he was looking for. It was his heart that he couldn’t find.

“I have a number of ideas.”

“Help is help and I am here to help.” Help wanted.

He liked hearing the sound of her voice.

“I worry about you.”

The way her voice almost sounded certain and caring when he spoke. He needed to hear it again. “Why do you care?”

It sounded like she still cared. Cared about him, cared that they could be so close and yet so distanced from each other. He heard only the tone and inflection of each line, lived by the way each sounded, evidently aware that she should never have been made to say these things.

“How long are you going to hold your breath?”

“I’ve never been this close.”

“You are already dead as far as I’m concerned.” It was then, with his arms crossed, hands hiding in the curve of each arm, that he understood what he had borrowed. A moment of worry replaced with a moment of grace. Again and again he will hesitate and he will suffer from a distant and old, a tireless worry. The hesitation will appear to her as a lacking, a gesture of doubt, of jealousy, the narrow yet wide range of deceit, again and again, because he couldn’t just reach for her hand. He couldn’t just tell her what he now knew. Reaching for her hand, he’d only grasp air. To touch her hand, he would later learn to bring both of the borrowed body’s hands together, clasped in mock prayer. Maybe he’d pray, pretending that she could feel this too. For now, he plunged one hand into hers, his body, and seeing what he had done, she plunged her hand into his, her body. The perfect moment to say something. Say that he had done it to save her. Say that he had done it because it was how he could remain close to her. Say whatever can be said. It would make no difference.

This was all talk of the mind.

HER TURN

This is a line written to fill in for what she could not express. This is another line written for all the lines she will never be able to say, much less explain. And this line represents the halves that she’ll never identify. Every other line is written using the half that still remains, the half that keeps glancing at her when she isn’t looking. It’s the only half of her that’s left, and it’s the part of her that she does not want to see. The rest became part of the telling.

The rest is what cannot be washed away by the waves, at least not until she finally and fully lets go.

She couldn’t bear it, seeing herself whenever she wanted to look to him. And she couldn’t speak to him, so she shoved those borrowed hands into the cool water.

Fell against one side, still not yet used to the weight of this body, and felt the coffin rock back and forth.

She wanted to get sick. She wanted to throw up so much that perhaps she could escape out of this body. There was the thought that letting go was easier, but when she tried, her eyes wandered back to where he sat, also looking over the edge of the coffin, into the water, and she felt nothing.

Because she felt nothing, she stared into the water.

She made ripples in the water by moving those heavy, bloated hands. After the water stilled, she was surprised to see him staring back at her. She opened her mouth to speak, “You should be well by now.” So out of place, it seemingly ruined the moment, so she once again spoke, “Maybe it’s cancer.”

She recognized what she had said but could not yet place where it had come from, and why the word “cancer” seemingly pulled her face forward into the water, an inch from being submerged. Impossible to just say what she wanted to say.

“That’s not true.” Everything here has already been said. She merely treaded shallow water, tracing out a line that lasted, at best, as long as it took to trace. She spoke because it made the water ripple, the borrowed body and borrowed voice made moves that she could never make. She was docile in the heavy mass of a middle-aged man. “It might come true.” But it won’t come true, not if it had already come true. “Fine. This is who I am. Wonderful.”

This is who you are. Why don’t you go ahead? What’s stopping you? The longer you hold on, the more you drag him along. You only care about yourself. You bring down everyone around you. You—enough! She shoved her face into the water, held it there, hoping for something she would not get so she lifted it back out. Dripping wet, some of the saltwater got into her eyes. Instinctively she rubbed them, turning to see her reflection in the water. The hair, the vacant, judgmental stare as if saying, go ahead: Let go!

“You have a behavioral problem.” He took a step closer. “Whatever.” A second and third step as he reached into her, into him, the body that could only be his, and he looked into her eyes using hers. Unlike him, she could see much farther. “Why are you so angry?” He might have said something, but it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Hers was talk to fill the gap, the nothingness that seemingly bloated the vastness of the ocean surrounding them, the relative size of the coffin compared to all the death that filled the water.

“I’m not.” But she was. “Maybe you did it.”

When it was she who might have really done all of this. Past anger, she felt remorse for how she acted, and not just now, but always. “Now how could I do such a thing?” She could only feel remorse long after the point of it making a difference.

This is a line that is written to hide the fact that she no longer hides from anything but herself. She reached in, maybe hoping that in reaching into her body, she could prove something to herself. “Didn’t do it.” But she did. And she did that too, the details of which are all behind her, watching and judging from a distance. It was why this was penance. It was a perfect switching of places. In switching places, both were at their most vulnerable while facing the final ghosting effects of life. They were burrowed into bodies, borrowing from the one they knew best.

Seeing each other, they would be forced to face themselves.

BARGAINING

HIS TURN

Swim. It crept up toward him, the half-thought becoming heartfelt: Swim. The longer he remained at her side, the more ashamed he felt for having felt the way he did. Her fault? He couldn’t be sure she was anything but perfect. The longer they fought the waves, floated against the current, the more he could almost believe that he really could swim. He had been barely able to stay afloat during those days, when a heartbeat acted as backdrop to his prize, her. He stretched all the dollar signs as far as they could go, fed the edge of all fashion with imaginary currency. All for her, and yet he never felt like he was doing anything but drowning.

Swim. He had only the blue of the water, perhaps matching the blue of those borrowed eyes, around him to distract from what cannot be done. Just like him to believe that only he could apologize, that only he was at fault.

To hold on, there had to be another ledge. Of course the lonely ledge would be the one of a lover unwilling to let go. But see where this is going? This tale starts and stops, but has everything to do with the residual, the residue that remains of a person, ghost-like to those alive, barely a glimmer to those who have died. From the depths, the coffin is a blotch, something to swim to, if swimming would lead anywhere after you’ve met the ocean floor. He will be first. He is the first to let go.

He had reason to apologize, but it was so much easier to tempt the waters. Where she sat, he avoided, and avoiding in such a small coffin would have been impossible if they hadn’t the body to borrow. This was the problem. He could barely stand to see himself. If he turned to her, he would have to look at quite the sickly sight. His was a body that had been let go too early, at a time when there had been too much life left to walk.

The sea rippled, tensing up the five letters. Voiced on the waves, it was his voice, saying the word.

Sorry.

So sorry.

He had been so bitter, so angry. She reciprocated; they felt and fought the same woe. There had been conflict, peeling them apart as grief continued to set in. He watched the waves clash, the waves rolling to the unforeseen. The waves seemed to point the way. The waves ran into each other, the sound made upon colliding as if to say, delve deeper. If he jumped off the edge he would still be swimming. There’s no changing the fact that, in the tense exhales of aftermath, he now understood.

He had led them nowhere. He might have been confident that they could return but… return where? Therein lies the problem. He had no clear destination in mind.

The past, once so certain, simply met with the horizon, forming the entire expanse that eluded him.

The floating there was indeed a waiting, in the same way what he worded-out as a perfect apology was simply more talk of the mind. The mind unraveled, talking itself into untold corners that should have been a helpful shadow under a scorching sun, pulverizing his ability to see. And yet he watched, looking for signals in the sea. Sorry.

Sorry for having shouted at you. Sorry for making no sense. Sorry for being nonsense. Sorry for letting this happen. I might have saved you. And then, as per the talk of talking back, more apologies, sorry for thinking that I could.

Having to say something, this is what he said:

“I love you.” He meant it but he wanted to tell her so much more than those three words, a phrase that synchronizes the various complications that turn any relationship into a wreckage of memory and breakneck feelings, a kind of loathing that led to the desire to love again.

I love you. It wasn’t an apology but it would have to do. No more looking away. He used his turn to face her. He blinked once and decided that her eyes would once again be hers.

HER TURN

She closed one eye and cupped her hand around the other, focusing in on a patch of water where waves merged to mimic the shape of a human mouth. The sea wanted to speak, but all she heard were the words that she kept to herself. Accusatory in nature, she hid in the borrowed body, secretly attacking herself for having pushed the only one still close by, even after everything, and quite literally everything, disappeared beyond the horizon. He remained her anchor and chain as much as she was his. Never mind their past; never mind their future. The present was what got the best of her. It was what worried her most. It was what pulled at her, a threat that nothing would change; no matter how much she did to bargain a better draw.

Reverted to the past, she rode out the same lines that could be reread, if one desired, in the preceding turns, during that stage of letting go that had brought her to this juncture in the first place.

Quick to nag, quick to be numb, she wasn’t swimming to escape him. She swam to escape herself. The fact that seeing him meant having to see that vain smile, the threat to be perfect that made her a threat to everyone brought close, only tightened the tether, soaked it in kerosene, ready to spark with a single shift of the situation. If anything went wrong, she was the tantrum to turn everything to cinders. Burnt ash. Blame. Can’t carry the blame so she tosses it to the person nearest, closest, most dear.

Flicker but nothing fades. She was still here.

Bathed in sunlight, the borrowed body felt heavier, and she watched, distantly felt, as it began to stink. The sweat was yellow, the bodily fluids escaping the drying body, a murky brown, it was an odor that only she could smell. The water would wash it away, she thought. A smell so overpowering and bitter when she brought back up the past, every single time she had treated him as less.

Less a man and more a burden.

She banked on herself before she would any bond.

The water tempted her, the mock-mouth opening and closing as she heard the thoughts in mind resonate across the waves.

He would do anything for you. You were on your deathbed and he tried to save you. He did all he could and listened through all your nonsense, all your bullshit and stupid blaming. Even when you forgot how to breathe, how to blink, he breathed for you. He remained at your side, putting drops in your eyes.

Her with a question. Her with an answer.

The waves mouthing the word:

Sorry. But when she tried to speak, she saw that words alone weren’t what had begun to expire. Beyond the sundrenched scene existed a limitation; a borrowed body was a body all the same. Past-due and setting sail across curious waters that no physical map would ever reveal, not even so much as a mark, the body becomes the final marker, the final compass pointing the direction of expiration. Sorry. Say it.

I am sorry.

She tore open the mouth stitched closed by dry lips, saying all that she believed she had heard. Everything that she needed to have told him, meant to tell him for so long, as long as it will take to tell the entire tale, the hundreds of pages, and perhaps so much more, but for all the effort, all that she had wanted to say, every line that had been fought over in her mind, became invisible as it left her mouth. Invisible to both line and page. The only words that came out were the same words he had told the sea.

“I love you.”

Neither character heard each other, relegated to speak without using speech, but for that one moment, when she listened to what she had said, articulated in his voice, a fire rose that gave her the cue to turn and face him.

If it meant saying “I love you” a thousand times to rid herself of the smell, she would drench the coffin in the word “love.”

HIS TURN

He met her eye-to-eye, blinked when she blinked, and breathed out when she pretended to breathe. He saw a sweaty, double-chinned, bald face, a face so familiar, it took him this long to get the lines right. It took an entire life; by now, those lines were the length of waves headed in no clear direction.

He met her mouth with his and then said, “Are we having fun?” Imagining what she might be thinking, he bartered another “I love you,” and watched the sparkle in those eyes.

How dull he must appear to her from behind those old, apathetic eyes. Desperate though he may have been, he bargained that she saw only a fraction of the sunlight, understood only a small flicker of his apology.

“I love you” was her response.

“I love you” was his only reply.

“I love you” once again, he began to see tears welling up, tears that had seldom been shed from those sorrowful, admittedly unremarkable eyes.

He said it again, and watched as they started down her face. He wiped them away before they could travel down her cheek; dragging a finger across her face forced him to feel the various blemishes and pockmarks, grime and skin tearing of a body he had misused.

“I love you,” he said and meant every word.

“I love you,” she replied and seemed to retreat into that body. Their faces flush, hands held, potbelly and nearly flat-breasted chest pressed, he could sense her fleeing him in the one way possible. He had so much to tell her.

He met her fault with his, which came out as a forlorn and melancholy “I love you.”

It is admirable to see someone care about another so much that he’d say anything to conceal true feeling, to keep her here. I love you, I love you, I love you — repeated in a rhythm that matched what’s missing:

A heartbeat.

Blurred sight, tears fell. His, much like hers, was a silent cry, tears that blinded him as much as they seemed to blind her.

And though they continued to look, they could no longer see. All he saw was the cloudy black of those two eyes.

This was the result of forced feeling, and though they felt, neither him nor her could grasp the language to let it all out.

They settled on “I love you.” He laundered feeling underneath the word “love.” When the tears did not stop, he languished, feeling an all-too-familiar loneliness. Blinded by the tears, he no longer saw her. All he could smell was his own body odor, his own foul breath, as she exhaled in panicked, practiced bursts. He closed the eyes, opened them, and closed them again. He flushed the fresh tears, letting them fall down the borrowed body’s cheeks, her rosy cheeks, and felt each eyelid. He felt as her eyes anxiously moved left to right, as if reading how this will end.

What you must do.

He opened the eyes and used the same fingers to feel them out of their sockets. He handed them back to her alongside a forlorn, apologetic “I love you.”

She reached for them and blinked.

Tears beyond what she needed to feel, he was glad when she took them and, best of all, when she gave him his.

“Are we having fun?” as if to inquire how she felt. She nodded and placed her eyes in her borrowed face.

Blink, and he did the same.

HER TURN

“I love you,” she could finally see him through the worry. “I love you” she could recall the good between the bad. “I love you,” the words did not come but she remembered a time when coming froze everything until she felt every little thing, touch, taste, smell… until she exhaled, never more confident that she was alive.

“I love you,” became a cipher for dead speech, what he had said to her and what she said back. Tongues remained tight, and mouths dry, but a breath could be brought up if she felt it right.

“Are we having fun?” she might ask even though there was no answer because there really was no question. Yes, him and her together were a fun time, a fun coupling, no bother about the impossibility of their fun, and how really their past was as nonexistent as their future. It was what could be read between the lines, what happened between those transitory moments of reality, that she found escape.

Theirs was a fictional story, but it resembled the friction of affection when it did not fit for society.

“I love you,” the cipher to speak and say I’m sorry.

An “I love you” in return acted as an acceptance.

A follow-up from him “I love you” was to say that he wanted to apologize too.

Fun was the bargain they had bought, and though it might have never happened, in the dead of all dead seas, this vacant sea as invisible as it wanted to be, she fixed an image and hid behind what she couldn’t imagine herself to be.

But he brought her back.

He always brought her back. He was in tears, and so was she. Their’s was a past that could only be told here, after each perished, pardoned themselves from the life they never had.

Too young, maybe, but she reached as far as she could and, she knew him fully, knew him best. He lived twice as long as she but never breathed out once.

Never really blinked. His was a tense life, one full of held back tears and dozens of cries for help.

It was only now, after having borrowed his eyes, that she realized that he held it all back. Much like she was certain that he saw the ugly and the alien, the random grudges and the unneeded hate, that she fled and fought back with apathy, with ignorance.

He had seen all that and still said, “I love you.”

“I love you,” he handed back her eyes.

“I love you,” she gave him back his.

“I love you,” she would rather be blind than be alone.

“I love you,” embedding agreement with the inflection added to the “I” in “I love you.”

He could keep her smile. He gave her enough: He chose not to let go. Eventually they would.

The sea, maybe calm, would soon change. Nothing remained the same, and neither would she, no matter what she did to stay with him.

HIS TURN

Seeing with his own eyes, he could pick out a horizon of his choice. It was his to choose, for it was his eyes that would see. He traced the air into partitions and within those partitions he formed invisible pages. Extending a finger, he wrote onto the air and squinted to read what it became.

With his own eyes, he could see and could feel without tears forming; he could feel what little he felt and let it settle. Him and her could feel and soon, as they returned what they had borrowed, they would admit to themselves that this is what they’ve become.

They have met death and will be unable to escape it.

Words propped up like a skyline view in the distance; he observed the sea, waited for the sun to begin to set, before touching her. Sun never set until it was too late, and by the time it did, he discovered what, maybe, she already knew.

He could not touch her without touching himself.

“Are we having fun?” laundered the question of giving her a hand. When she gave, he gave both, gave both of her hands back, and she did the same.

With his calloused and fat fingers, he felt a body, his body, as she felt a body, hers.

This scene does not work.

The romance is clearly off the page.

He wanted to kiss her, but to kiss her, those lips would be so bitter. She reached below but felt his set rather than hers.

To make love was to make love with oneself, masturbation of a stranger duped into becoming you. It was sickening, and even more sickening was how he felt nothing, the severed senses, halved by demise, a demise that continued to loosen his grip, tempting him ceaselessly to just let go, die.

Die. You are dead.

What little he had to hold onto he still held, and never, not even once, did he question whether or not she would let go.

No letting go of each other.

A kiss he couldn’t take back, a kiss meant for her, but she still carried his complexion, and he was still girlish.

Worst of all was how he smelled; his odor on her did not match. It could have never been as wrong as it was here.

Sickness overcame them, and it was horrible to think that only sickness, the ugly of anything, could feel so bold on the wide-open sea. In fact, the sickness, the nausea, the disease felt sharper out here, wherever they were.

He could so easily succumb to it but instead he said, “I love you,” and she said it back.

Nothing laundered, no feeling, no sickness.

It was genuine, a genuine “I love you.”

HER TURN

More, much more than anyone could bargain for, she had returned to herself, felt with her own fingers, grasped with her own hands, and now able to hold back the tears, each feeling, no matter how construed and defeated, held there on the air, for her to see. Those blue eyes of hers could easily forget to blink.

Much like breath, she made a conscious choice to continue, and she continued mostly to be able to continue alongside him.

The coffin is the loneliest place for a person.

But with touch given back to her, she tried and he tried. She felt the sickness on her mouth, and soon she ran to the edge. She could see it so well, his reflection on the water, as she began to pretend to dry heave.

Exchanging “I love you’s” made it better, as perfect as can be. He held her hand and she held his.

No matter how ready they were, the sex eluded them.

It eluded them before, back when they had the heart to feel, the breath to breathe, the sight to savor. It will continue to elude them here.

“Are we having fun?”

It was a question. For once it was a question whose only answer was a definitive silence.

A silence that is left to the reader to determine if theirs was ever anything but poor timing, a poor fit of two similar personalities; everything about them clashed and yet something else made them fit so well.

Nonsense was their own true sense.

“I love you.” She knew what had to be done and signaled, gestured, for him to do the same.

She pulled his face from the borrowed body, the nonsense dripping in dark red onto the coffin, and she gave it to him.

In that instant, she was death incarnate.

She saw it then as he did exactly the same, trailing with another “I love you” that was genuine, as if to imply that he remained only for her, and she took it at face value, believing, really believing, that he would.

She could believe that she would do the same for him, and maybe she would. However, it was deeply written into her to think firstly about herself and if her actions were in any way selfless it was because she was concerned with how the people around her felt about her. She skewed her actions in favor of getting an unfair, overly favorable, judgment.

With her face in her hands, they both held onto their faces, letting the blood red outline how high the invisible water had risen in the coffin.

Soon it would be above the ankle.

She examined the shape of her skull, watched as his eyes scanned his own skull, before they both placed their faces in place.

Underneath their skulls were still borrowed mechanisms, bone ill fitting, but wearing their own faces somehow made it better. Even when their faces hung there, she leaned in and said, “I love you.” They kissed and she considered again the sex that she craved.

HIS TURN

Sundown. He played with language on the air, letting the lines he loved most highlight the horizon. He had accepted the fact that he would be unable to share this with her and, quite possibly, she had something that she would be unable to share with him.

They occupied the coffin, wondering and waiting for the coffin to sink.

But it wouldn’t sink.

Ciphers clipped their conversation into hardly felt statements, but somehow it felt like forever ago when they traded hands and eyes, scent and faces, when really it could very well have been a mere moment ago.

Sense of time draped the bottommost depths of the sea much like nonsense framed every single aspect of their meeting and subsequent, short-lived, relationship. If it could be called that.

But he loved the words that seemed to answer and prove what he felt.

The study had been right, the study of death during life was his plight and even now he looked to prove that it was not a waste, when perhaps everything that uses life can be wagered and ranked in as possible waste.

No wasted “I love you’s,” for every so often it will be his turn to say “I love you” and it would result in a return to anger if either failed to give reply.

He no longer sat at the so-called front, the “bow,” of the coffin, their buoy, their boat. He shared the entire coffin with her. He carefully moved in circles, and she fell into the same routine, circling the coffin so that it never tipped over, never became docile or prone to further damage.

The water that continued to fill seemed to slow its ascent if they remained mobile. How they discovered this to be true is unclear; however, he took to bigger steps. It was his way. He couldn’t deny the fact that he made sure to be quicker, more mobile than she, and it might be the one reason why he did not trade the rest of her body for his. At least not yet. He enjoyed sampling a more youthful, nimbler, body.

His face hung there like dry and dead skin; every couple circles he would catch a glimpse of himself on the water and it would catch him off guard. It made him feel something he could not express. No matter how many words he saved for the horizon, it was something unnamable.

It was guilt. It had to be guilt. For this to be a romance, he could never be pardoned from the guilt of feeling as though he could have saved her. From what exactly, it wasn’t defined until this very chapter. He cared enough in life to still feel, in death, that he might have saved her life.

Fault would be the anchor that pulled him under.

HER TURN

Encircling the coffin, she greeted them over and over, once a rotation, and the rotations never ceased. She walked, seldom sat, as if she were walking his body, giving it some exercise.

“I love you,” every time, every single time, she saw him.

And never was it in question.

It was not an empty statement.

There was a momentum that continued to anchor them, continuing to fill the coffin, and yet the splashing of that water never seemed to worry her. She felt as though she were entitled of his worry. It was his responsibility to save the two of them.

So instead she played a different part.

It was difficult enough to cater to them. She was hardly ever the socialite but they chose to visit her again here, of all places, and really though, now was the perfect time for these sorts of visitors. The ghosts that visited her had become social acquaintances, neighbors out at sea.

Their speech had no reason to sit between quotation marks.

They spoke in thought and it didn’t seem like he could eavesdrop. Only she could see their words on the air, fading so casually, like comic strip speech bubbles without the ink.

You seem well.

Why thank you. Where’s your coffin?

It’s over there. You just can’t see it.

Still getting used to that selective sight thing.

You never get used to it.

I see… but you’re holding on well, right?

I am, I am.

We all are.

That’s worth toasting to. Where’s your water?

Right here.

Well, let’s toast to it.

Here, here!

It was really worth the sip of saltwater. Coughing, it was her turn. “I love you,” and both him and her seemingly fell back into their own minds, their own routines.

How are you holding up?

Good… she was confident in that even though she aimed to sound extremely confident so that they would judge her favorably.

That’s good. But you have to tend to him as much as you tend to yourself.

I’d say it’s the opposite — easy to tend to him, harder to tend to yourself.

They were all in agreement. And she nodded too.

I will hold on for as long as I have to. Again, really confident so as to be extremely clear.

No end in sight, pointing to the quiet one and said, lost the mouth in the last storm.

Storm?

Different every time.

Correction: Different for everyone.

No need to explain because she simply knew all of a sudden. It was the harsh truth that the dead share. Drank the rainwater. Didn’t even really want to but thirst rose up like a fire from within. Always a fire. And at that moment, right after swallowing, the mouth disappeared. But then, she believed that she’d be careful.

They pointed to her face, how it sagged.

You can be so sure…

It bothered her, but she held up; she needed them to believe that she would be holding on for good.

He said, “I love you.” She recognized that it would soon, once again, be her turn to be his savior.

She was responsible for herself and, because of it, she had to be there to save him as much as he would most definitely be there to save them both.

HIS TURN

A person would do anything to hold on if it meant never being lonely. He matched up the words until what he saw on the horizon was a perfect measurement in description of the kind of shoreline he desired to see in the distance.

Beaches.

A beacon, a lighthouse light directing the coffin to safe shores.

In this night, the moon finally there, MOONLIGHT, something he had missed the most, if one could really miss anything now.

A skyscraper.

Another skyscraper.

A series of smaller but visible buildings lining the area between skyscrapers.

SOUND and another SOUND.

It didn’t matter what those sounds were as long as they were sounds, something indicative of society.

He crafted the city landscape from out at sea. He could almost taste the smell of fried dough, the kind you could smell in heavy clouds when walking the boardwalk of any popular beach.

He wanted to sense something even if it meant tasting what was normally smelled, smelling what was normally tasted.

Most of all, he wanted to hold on.

He bargained for this to be where they would be.

Here, between any real place, the nonexistence, the area inside walls. Whatever it might be called, he leaned toward never letting go. Now that would seem impossible, sure.

And it would be, but don’t let the hopeless-suddenly-hopeful ghost kill a romance before the romance really started.

He again turned toward her and held back. Before there could be any concern, he touched her lips to his. They kissed and in that single sign of affection, he handed her everything he saw.

When they touched lips again, it wasn’t a kiss. They held lips, suctioned them tightly around both mouths, and waited until tongues touched. Waited some more until the tongues began to move, switching places. Tongues so tight he could hear the voice returning to him, the gruff and often growling voice climbing back into his throat, and her cheery voice leaving.

But that couldn’t be it. It wasn’t enough.

In order to hold on, he needed more than just his hands, and she needed more than just her face. They needed to return everything they had borrowed. They needed to be themselves.

He opened his mouth to speak, and told her.

It was no longer merely talk of the mind. It was talk.

It was telling.

HER TURN

With the borrowed now having fully become hers, they brought themselves close and mended all that needed mending. First they turned to the coffin, recognizing that their pairing must have been on purpose, meant to be, because there was only the one coffin.

The coffin shook as she spoke in her own voice, the words that do not matter much for this tale, outside of this manic moment, so they will not show up here.

The quick and plain decision was that as long as they weren’t alone, they decided to hold on, and holding on involved caulking the coffin, not letting the invisible water sink them.

She cut her arm, but only after telling him that she would.

He nodded and did the same. Cut arms, they brought color to the once-invisible water. They used their hands for good, cupping the water and splashing it overboard. Did this for quite some time until the water lowered.

Next she felt every square inch of the fabric of the coffin for hairline cracks while he examined all four sides. With their own bare hands, they plugged the holes with pieces of their skin, be it from their forearm or their thighs, their bodies were now theirs to use how they saw fit.

In celebration they paired up whatever was left of their senses with whatever was left of their bodies.

Afterwards, the sex that she had desired for so long, the sex she never experienced in life, felt perfunctory. She dismissed the feeling in favor of the fact that it was still the sex that she had craved. It was the sex that only he could give her. Perhaps the expectations exceeded the actual act. What she was surely positive of was the fact that she cared for him, and cared for him deeply.

She was glad that it had been with him rather than someone else. And when it came time to speak without restriction, the result of having held on so long, the speech returned to her and him, it was surprising to find that both chose the same three words they had said countless times:

“I love you.”

If this was all they could be, they would take it.

Inevitable though it was, letting go, they held on and it was a holding on that involved facing themselves.

More they did, they sensed and smelled and swore that they had never borrowed, they were satisfied enough with sharing their solitude, this purgatory. This aftermath.

Demise would be the setting of their romance.

Their romance would be spacious “I love you’s” in the waiting room between life and death. They would love and be genuine at a time when no one was genuine, at a time when time elapsed and people, everyone, the masses let go.

And by that it could only mean finally letting go, seeing how life is a series of escapes and ledges, an admirable duration of holding on. Hold and be held, that is life.

And this, this is death. There could be no love without first being a death.

FEAR

HIS TURN

Having bargained to hold on, he now feared how much left he had to lose. No question about it, there would be loss. He feared the coming dawn. Nightfall wouldn’t last for much longer.

This, her in his arms, would not last much longer.

She shivered when he didn’t shiver, and he had begun to shiver nonstop. But at least they had faced themselves and could say anything to each other to shelter each other from their fears.

His fear grew with each turn, and he answered before she could ask, “Yeah, we’re having fun.”

Much like a hero in any other story, he needed to feel like he had the power to make a difference. He wanted desired needed to play that role.

The tale goes on like this. It gets darker. It invokes fear in both him and her. The conditions quickly turn merciless.

The role may be fake, and it is, but it is his strongest hold, the only means of holding on. It will get so much worse the more they are willing to admit to their demise.

She leaned into his arms, a cuddle that was kind and gentle. Too bad he couldn’t enjoy her company.

He was too concerned, as if he could now see the coastline, and a line of riflemen aimed at them, looking to pull the trigger and force them to let go. He had to protect her.

His biggest fear was that he would slip away and yet she would remain. Alone.

Neither could face the feeling of loneliness. Never could.

A protector, fatherly and of a far-fetched sort, he held her more than she held him back, but it was perfect because it was all they could do. Having so much to say, he couldn’t begin to tell her of what might be watching from the ocean’s depths.

To allay that worry, the worry so real, he treated her with fantasies, “Maybe we can do a duet.” Anything to occupy or entertain her doubled as preoccupation and, when she seemed to believe him, really believe him, he almost forgot where they were.

It could have been a boat and they could have been only a few paddles away from a beach.

“Maybe we can see who is the fastest swimmer, one straight line and back.”

He clicked his tongue.

“Maybe we can fish for new fantasies if none of these worked. We could look for the one that you wanted, the one that is on the tip of my tongue, but I can no longer remember what it was.”

Fantasies were all they were and barely that. They were his buoys more so than hers, but she’d still kiss him on the cheek, still laugh or giggle, and, if none of the above, she at least smiled that smile, the one so perfectly practiced it erased the creeping dangers from view.

When she wanted a drink, he cupped his hands and plunged them into the cold waters. He saw in the water the reflection of the sky, now a light blue. Soon it would—

But she wanted water, and that was enough; water was what she needed, and until he gave her the water, it was all he could think about.

He cupped his hand and lowered it into the water. Bringing it up to her face, her smile inverted to a frown. She coughed, spitting the water, telling him to try it. It had turned acidic. The seawater tasted like copper and wouldn’t stay down.

He leaned over the edge, dry-heaving.

She asked him what it meant and he shook his head, “Not yet. Don’t start until it starts.” He had to be confident. There could be no alternative. But of course, the shark appeared at dawn, little more than a ripple in the water, sleek and silent, barely noticed, until he saw the fin circling the coffin.

The shark was an omen.

It brought with it everything he had feared.

This belongs to you. Now let go.

Arms tightening around her, “I’m not letting go,” he said under his breath.

HER TURN

His arms were heavy and warm. She hid from the cold inside his embrace. There was cold only because she couldn’t bear to be anywhere but in his arms. The cliché of new romances and the desire for consistent affection and contact existed as a cliché because it was true. It was the only reason she held on.

Her grip so tight on his forearm, she wasn’t avoiding demise because she wanted to remain. She avoided demise because she couldn’t bear to have him go.

Somehow he had turned her into his own buoy, his only reason to remain, and it was because of this that she would remain too. Hold on because not holding on would cut them in half.

Severed: her error, as always, ruined everything.

Little kisses kept him from losing focus. In his arms, she wasn’t afraid. However who did he have to confide in?

She took and never gave back. This is what she believed. Based on how he acted, it might be true.

All the fantasies fed were just cause for a genuine smile.

The plainest fear was that he wouldn’t be able to keep the coffin afloat. What could she do…?

Nothing.

Those little kisses were enough until she coughed, spitting out the water he had given, and the entire charade, from her eyes, shattered like the night. Clouds formed yellow borders as if to taunt her. Soon. Soon there will be no way to hide.

For this to work, one character has to know more of the story. One of the two characters needs to be able to read these lines. Every single line read in the past tense, and therefore clearly understood of the implications of being where they had already been. The burden that’s his was nowhere near as heavy as the burden she carried. Every single one of her actions and inactions concealed the true wreckage of this tale.

Forget all about the water. Forget how it tasted. She had known all along how it would taste. Coughing was better than swallowing it down. Eyes shut. That’s right. Shutting one’s eyes would save the moment, the moment that, she imagined he wasn’t able to enjoy. Because of that, she felt a tinge of pity, followed by the truest range of self-loathing, how one must feel when completely alone, silenced from all connection.

She shut her eyes from it all and enjoyed how this felt, how she felt: timeless and safe. Here is all she needed. Right now.

When his grip tightened around her chest, it was enough for her to notice that the moment had passed.

She could feel his shivers through his bloated belly. Though she couldn’t see the shark, the effect of its appearance seeped through him right into the pit of her stomach.

She bit her lower lip, tasting what he had tasted upon sipping seawater.

She could see the sun quickly rising. Its appearance brought not the beauty of a sunny day but rather what the ghosts had warned her about.

Love could be so blinding, it almost fooled her into thinking that she wouldn’t have a problem holding on. To think, forgetting the trajectory of the story, foolishly pretending that it wasn’t going to end the way this is written to end. Looking at him, she could see it plain as the previous day.

They finally have each other, where no one could ever judge what they had, and yet neither would be able to enjoy it.

Counting how many turns remained, she knew there wouldn’t be much time left. And then she saw it.

A shark fin.

Right on cue.

HIS TURN

Shortly after the shark fin, the sun gave its warning and receded behind a cloudy, darkening sky. The sun had no reason to remain. Gave them little more than a warning before it left him to fend off the drizzle that soon became a soft, delicate rain.

“Stay in my arms,” he warned.

It would be right to keep her safe. Whatever it takes.

He looked over the edge of the coffin. The darkening sky made it difficult to see much of anything. He wouldn’t be fooled; the shark was there. And indeed, soon enough, he saw it.

Worse: The shark could be seen in the water, the light grey of its body, the dead stare a reminder of his demise.

The inevitable demise.

How foolish must you be to hold on? Life has elapsed. It was time to let go. Pass on. The aftermath would be the afterlife, as dictated by blind faith. What waited for him over the horizon, past the words of warning that seemed to block his view? He wouldn’t be able to know without letting go, without letting the coffin float in that direction, the direction where only he can go, the direction where they part ways.

No. Words on the horizon read like commands:

KEEP HER SAFE.

CLOSE YOUR EYES.

SHE LOVES YOU.

LOVE HER BACK.

To which his replies were instant, honest, and true:

He would.

He did.

He does.

He always will.

The hero role took hold and the soft rains and darkened sky tore the moment, replacing it for the beginning of what would be a deeply-rooted fear of the sea, of the waters and what they hid from him, rising to the surface, building into a boil.

He saw it on the horizon, the one statement he needed most:

YOU CAN.

And it might have been new, what happened next; his actions, so admirable of a fight to pull her close, to live in this moment, despite the plain melancholy of this tale:

It is told in the past tense. Living in the past, there is no present to save you, no future to explore. All that can be merely was, and if it weren’t then, it never would be.

And this is how it will come to pass. It already had, now is merely a retelling of the tale. Not for the sake of it but for his sake, a hero in death, a simple man in life.

The shark ran its body into the coffin, pushing it to one side. Hold her. Hold her now.

“No!” he shouted.

The rain grew stronger. The softness of this rain concealed the true danger. What little hair he had left wilted. Skin burning, bubbling, and peeling. Not that he felt any of it.

There would be no feeling. It was only physical.

The pain, it had long since passed. A hero held on.

A hero must.

HER TURN

The shark shook the coffin, which shook her to the core. She couldn’t stop shivering, having failed to recognize the extent of her fear until perhaps that moment. Whatever she denied, they would spell it out for her. Them. They returned, right as the sun retired for good. For good, they said.

It won’t return.

Why is this happening? she asked.

It already happened, they replied.

A showcase of their own loss, missing arms, mouths, eyes, bodies in a state of wreckage from a continual plight against demise.

The fact that they are dead. The fact that they denied their death, turned every moment into a moment all its own, a moment of war upon the inevitability of the universe’s energies. Or…

Simply stated, it went against understanding.

They were dead, but…

How does it end? She asked though she knew.

The soft rains hid him from noticing that she cried, and continued to cry the more they explained, the more they pointed at the sea and the dozens of sharks, an army of shark fins moments before revealing themselves.

And him, holding her tightly, shouting to the sharks, shouting to the sky, the sky that had turned pitch black save for one circle, one all-seeing eye, a dark blue, a moon of missing hope.

She would need to illuminate the sky.

Her hope, a blind hope, would help.

They told her this.

They showed her how it would end, the ending of this tale, the one she knew more than the reader, at this particular point, but her fears kept her cradled in the fiction of a happily-ever-after kind of tale.

It could still happen, she told them.

They watched from afar, from their own coffins in the sea. They watched, a silent vigil, as they too held on for their own reasons.

Help me, she implored.

And they would. They will. They already did.

For reasons all the same yet different, they held on. One held on because it never said goodbye to its child; another held on because it didn’t believe it really died, its death so quick the transition was seamless; and then there was one that held on out of vengeance, wanting to haunt every corner of its enemies. And maybe did, for a time. Now they were fragments of their bodies.

They borrowed from memories that were once theirs, now strange residual flickers of something that happened in between the onslaught that never passed.

Here it comes, one said.

And she saw five sharks swimming straight for the coffin.

Hold on. Tell him to hold on.

But she hesitated. She wouldn’t, though she could.

HIS TURN

The coffin nearly tipped over that last time. One shark had turned into five, five sharks turned into a full army. He couldn’t stand up he was so fearful of their next attack but still he held onto her. He searched for a weapon but the words on the horizon told him that SHE IS YOUR WEAPON and that was enough.

One shark did not move.

It positioned itself right in front of the coffin, its face jutting out of the water, eyes piercing his; it opened its mouth, showed its teeth. Though very little would be said, he had begun to understand how this would end.

The shark’s presence made him realize that, maybe, she understood too. Maybe she kept this from him. Understand that she will play this part. She played it in life and she will play it on the passage into death. It is up to her whether or not she can grapple with her own demons. They speak to her now, much like they tell him what he wants to hear, clear that he will end the same as he began.

They tell him THEY ARE JUST TRYING TO SCARE YOU.

He believed it. He will always believe the words hanging on the horizon, the words out-of-reach and therefore desirable.

Shark perched at the front of the coffin, as a reminder. It set up as foreshadowing for the familiar sort of end, familiar for one and merely a hero’s departure for the other.

Its army circled the coffin, enough present to change the direction of the waves.

He could see nothing above and nothing below, nothing near and nothing far, but he didn’t need to:

Nothing had changed. Nothing will change.

Her in his arms and him holding off the onslaught, he cannot bear to see anything change. He turned coffin into warship, imagining the words as weapons as the sharks took turns ramming the coffin. First from the right side and then from the left, the coffin creaked and began to take on seawater.

This water could be seen, a dark murky seawater that stank of decay. He held her with one arm as he fought off the water, small, useless handfuls of water, but he would never let go.

A hero’s fear is that he is really the enemy.

YOU SAVED HER. It was what he wanted to see, needed at this very moment, and what he would have heard, if the soft rains hadn’t entered his ear canal, hadn’t taken his hearing while he paid attention to a more visible enemy.

By the time he noticed the rain, it had burned most of his skin too. He glanced down at her and saw that she was whole, unaffected by the rains.

He believed it was due to his embrace.

A hero is blind to the truth.

HER TURN

The rains continued, steady and localized above their coffin. She watched as he started to waste away, the rain burning him apart, just like they had said. She squinted out into the water, avoiding the fact that the rain had no effect on her. Instead they floated, every memory floated in the water, the onslaught to which would be forever her unraveling.

Why?

It was stupid of her to ask but they gave reply.

Why not?

Admit that it hurts.

She couldn’t admit it. For this to work, admission came after fear and her fear had only begun to really surface.

How fickle then for her to refuse.

The sharks, did you not recognize, are not here to feast on you; the body that you use is not the body that you were. The physical is an offshoot of misunderstanding, of the impossibility that you bother to remain at all.

Ghostly and ghastly, they told her that there was nothing physical about this.

Affection transcends the turn.

Each turn is his or hers to employ.

Timeless, there is only this, this trek.

The rain wasn’t hers to feel the harm. Instead, the sharks ate at every single one of her memories until she saw the fins return to the perimeter of the coffin, circling once more.

This time they swam faster, causing the coffin to spin.

She looked at him, hoping, dearly hoping, that he noticed; when he did, she felt relieved. At least it was still theirs—

This coffin, this casualty. This chaos.

She watched as the ghosts turned their attention to another coffin. Sitting alone in the coffin she saw her mom, arms wrapped fearfully around her knees.

She wasn’t seeing this.

She couldn’t be seeing this.

They made sure that she did. The coffin floated up to theirs and when her mom seemingly noticed her there, she could do nothing but scream a bloodcurdling scream, a scream that burrowed deep into her stomach and forced up the fear.

Reaching out toward her mom’s coffin, he pulled her close, wouldn’t let her go. Her mom saw him, saw him with her, and as fleeting as it was, the coffin that carried her mom close pulled away, the shark fins trailing after.

She could not have both and really she could have neither. Her fear is being alone. The ghosts, her demons, made it clear that her fear wasn’t something implied.

It was something true.

Her fear is real. It is here, part of the pulling apart that would soon be their letting go. No amount of affection could abstain the inevitable acceptance, the fact that she would be alone with her demons. Alone with the ghosts and therefore more alone than loneliness could provide.

HIS TURN

Something had come over her. She fought his embrace. She tried to break free, and the hero inside him, meaning the words formed around him on all sides told him HER WEAKNESS IS YOUR STRENGTH. He needed to be strong. Continue to be strong.

For her.

There he kept her close and when she continued to fight his grip, he held her closer until her face became buried in what he had come to realize:

He was still an overweight and naïve man. Middle age in death is the same as middle age in life when the one you hold onto, the one with whom you share an intimate bond beyond explanation.

How he had categorized this as subscript, considered briefly before the constraint to save, to be a hero, to protect, overpowered him. For that brief struggle, he experienced a thought in full, and he nearly let go. He almost did until the sea reacted, as if it had won. The waters froze; its freezing doing nothing for the sharks as their fins shattered through the ice sheet, bringing with it an entirely different kind of downpour.

The rain from above continued to melt away his physical being. He was nearly bone now, and still he was a man that wanted nothing more than to know that he could make a difference.

He tried and continued to try, the effort ultimately would be turned to waste, given how this could only end the way it had already been written to end.

Everyone is capable of a lifetime and nothing more. A poor resistance is still a resistance, one that is fought in frigid temperatures, as the water from above turned to sting.

Jellyfish rained down on the coffin.

For him, the sting of a jellyfish mimicked the rains that had burned him. The jellyfish stung and held on, quickly covering him all over but on his chest where she held onto him.

For her, the jellyfish felt for her flesh too.

They would sting anything they could.

The jellyfish became, for him, a second skin. The coffin crystalized in the water, the shark waited patiently, unaffected by the extreme temperatures, just like the other sharks.

He saw his breath in the air. This could not be good.

The words on the horizon, commands like IT WILL BE OKAY and YOU ARE HER HERO and SHE LOVES YOU froze, became heavier, and fell into shatters on the ice.

Waves had frozen high and low turning into steep inclines that tried to block out his view of the horizon.

One jellyfish landed right on his face and stung his right eye. He cried out in mock-pain, half feeling it and half letting it pass; he managed to dislodge from the jellyfish’s grip but it had already taken half of his sight.

He blinked and blinked some more.

No use. Vision in his right eye faded like the words he wanted to see, commands like HERO and THANK YOU and I LOVE YOU, and even if he could get it back, the soft rains saw to it that it wouldn’t happen.

The soft rains became a steady downpour, rain drops freezing moments before impact.

HER TURN

The darkened sky unnatural and looming closer, pulled in to force them into a crouch, and from a crouching position, it would soon force them to meet the water, meet the depths. The sky became yet another form of deceit.

Her in his arms, they lay in the coffin.

They saw nothing but the sky, the breath in the air.

They forced out breaths as often as possible, using it to communicate with each other.

Thankful because she couldn’t see them, instead she watched the blank sky.

She had reason to tell him what would happen next but instead she let herself enjoy this.

Already she treated it as the final stretch of a protest.

In his breath, he told her, “Don’t be afraid.”

She exhaled and wrote on her breath, “I’m not.”

The moment froze. All they had now were moments, reliving actions and sensations, speech and impulse, that had been unappreciated in life.

Touch being only touch, both of them imagining the warmth that would have been shared if their bodies had been bodies alive and still able to be repaired, they lay there like it might have been a bed rather than a coffin. The final end.

Not yet.

No.

Not yet, she fought the ghosts.

They reminded her. Tell him. Tell him.

She would tell him. Later.

“Later” arrived and left and returned once more. Still, she wouldn’t tell him. There would be no telling on her part.

That’s what these lines, these paragraphs, this tale, are for.

The fear lapsed for one loving stint until the sky became the top of the coffin, pressing down against it, the coffin buckling under the weight of the sky.

He tried, though he had no control, never any control, to strike the sky, as if there had been anything physical about this; instead, it was her turn.

This is her turn.

This is one of the first times she’ll ever listen.

She reached out and that’s all it took. The moon blinked to life and recreated the distance between sky and sea.

The air cooled. She could see what the rains had done to his body. The jellyfish covered most of him but underneath, she could see the sagging flesh, the bone, the would-be blood, and she felt sick. Felt sick because she felt responsible.

Fault. It is her fault.

The ghosts had warned her and yet again she ignored her fears rather than facing them. One look at him triggered a shiver from within that rippled from her body out onto the frozen ice.

It reached the sky and shook the moon free from its perch. It fell and shattered onto the ice. For once it was true:

This was her fault.

HIS TURN

He saw the sum of his fears in the dead moon broken into pieces across the ice. Cracks formed in the ice. Shark fins continued to cut through, seemingly working to break apart the ice and let the moon sink to the bottommost ocean trenches.

Without the moon they had nothing left. The sun had been bad to them, but only as bad as it needed to be. He would never admit that they were bad to each other; more so, they were bad for each other. Much like if the moon had met the sun, the sun would engulf the moon. Only one could really survive.

This was happening, and is it not clear who is the sun and who is the moon?

And still he could not let the light go out.

With her in tow, he left the coffin but the coffin would not leave them. It floated behind, never more than a foot away from where he swam one-armed, a swim that would seem effortless compared to how difficult it would be for him to drown.

But for now he swam like he had been swimming all along.

She hid, holding back, but reached for the pieces of moon when they seemingly got close enough. Glowing brightly even in a fraction of its form, the moonlight acted like beacons bringing him exactly where he was made to go.

The horizon had turned dark.

She saw hers.

And then he saw his, but only the first letter, before losing control, something pulling him under, pulling him and therefore forcing his grip free.

It was his final turn, this: His last turn in the tale.

It ends here for him, who loses his grip on her.

She makes it back to the coffin. She is left alone, ultimately one with what she feared most.

However, he still fought. He could see the coffin just out of reach. Much like he had swum toward the shards, he swam so forcefully with both arms toward the coffin.

Though only a foot away, he couldn’t get close enough.

Something held him down. The shark fins appeared at his side; he felt their teeth bite into his ankle.

Almost registering was the thought of how painful it must be to be eaten by a shark. Make that half a dozen sharks.

He made it to a patch of ice and climbed aboard. Free for one moment, the cool waters quickened into a boil. The sheet, his one last hope, disappeared from under him and the rest will have to be told in her turns.

There was no more.

For him, it was his time to finally let go.

HER TURN

Her mom’s death might not have been her fault. In fact, it wasn’t her fault. It might make what comes next sound so much better. Her mom died of natural causes. However, it could only be her fault. Mom died because she died. Not suicide, not self-inflicted cause. The cause, it was her.

And now, she is the one that does this.

He swam for the both of them. She held onto one arm as he seemingly swam toward nothing.

Whatever it was, she could not see it. The moon had fallen and in its place she could only see the ghosts gathered where he would soon falter.

Tell him.

Tell him to turn around.

But she couldn’t. She had succumbed to her fears. Much like he had been consumed by an impossible goal, the hero protecting the good from the bad, she was consumed by the fear that kept her from speaking.

The ghosts wanted to see a hero win.

They cheered him on despite what they knew would happen; they cheered to force her to act.

She does this.

Her fault. She collected it all and feasted on it, which saved and doomed her as he was driven into the frigid waters.

She swam back to the coffin, watched from a safe place, as he faded into the darkness. He faded with the moonlight.

This is where he ends and she continues.

The tale goes on like this. Remarkably, she swam after him. All the self-loathing pushed her over the edge. She realized how big the coffin seemed when she was the only one to fill it. She swam but the ghosts had already departed.

They returned to their own coffins.

She would have to bury her own. She would have to bear the weight of losing the one she cared for most.

The hesitance became her only source of hope; she swam and swam until she stopped and discovered that she hadn’t gotten any closer to where he sank. She was right where she had begun, coffin floating behind her, hitting her in the arm.

She watched until the sharks showed her where he had ended. Picked apart he was now whole while she remained half.

The sea had settled into a boil. Worse, she felt it. The heat sent pain signals up and down her spine.

Her arms too short to paddle over in the coffin, she briefly wondered how he was able to do so back when they had been burrowed in each other’s bodies, back when a borrowed body had been necessary to remain in denial.

Staving off demise long after the will to do so, she closed her eyes. She waited one moment.

She closed her eyes. She would no longer need them.

Finally accepting what she must do, she jumped into the boiling water.

And then…

ACCEPTANCE

HIS TURN

She imagines. It is important for her to continue to do so. She imagines because she still holds on. Without him here, it might be that something else holds onto her, preventing her from simply falling over the edge of the coffin.

Something won’t let her sink.

Something that is most dearly nothing.

But his turns continue because she chooses to imagine that he is still with her.

She does not embellish, she does not prefer or have any preferences. She imagines him as he would be, even though only the faintest image of him could be imagined.

She imagines the coffin and his sheltering embrace.

She imagines him as a hero, and plays out what would have been his hero’s end.

Not that he wasn’t a hero. She would consider him nothing less, and yet he was flawed for having found in her a strange partner. Would he call it significant, she can’t say.

But it was significant to her: His role in her life, death, and the roundabout end that this had become.

She imagined his exit.

How she’d have preferred him to leave.

Her at fault, she featured him in her memory as the person who might have shared her coffin. In this version, she was the one to be buried in the coffin, not him. In this version, she would cease to exist as a burden before he had to see her off, a burial it would not be. She would pass on, let go, and live on in his memory. The hero would survive and would have saved her because he would have needed to save her in order to survive.

Survival is what she imagined.

His survival.

Using the few turns that remain, she imagined for the sake of a man that tried twice to save her.

It would never be his fault.

He tried to save what could not be saved.

How can one save a person who cannot begin to save herself?

Much of what she imagined existed in the white of the page, the blankness that echoes out much like this:

…echoing her wishes would have been his voice calling in the distance, near the horizon, a call that had everything to do with telling her that he was fine.

Still holding on.

Instead, there was a hero’s fantasy.

And there was loneliness. But it’s saved for her turns.

The loneliness does not bleed into his turns.

HER TURN

In this turn, she felt the loneliness beginning to restrain, pull her in such a way that she had to keep swimming to keep from being consumed by the conditions. What is clear to her now:

There is no going back.

He was here, but now he isn’t.

She was young.

Life had that way about withering and her life withered in the time it took most to get started.

She affected too many people, and those people became burdened by her demise.

Demise before it became hers was something desirable. It was an interesting concept, danger, a thrill sought after being stung by the consequences. She never could have assumed that one adventure would lead to this.

She felt cheated. She felt like a cheater.

Equally, she took too much and inevitably it was her life that was taken.

It was penance for her precarious actions, her lifetime in advance, running toward the bitter end right from the beginning.

And now she was where there were no explanations. She occupied the drift between the two phases of life. She existed, just barely. She had it better but resisted. She could not simply accept it until it was too late. These are the conditions, and this is what placed her loneliness in perspective. After acceptance came the void, emptiness of having little else to feel, no one near, only the few items she would rather forget.

All she had left was her imagination.

But if it hadn’t been explained earlier in the tale…

Indeed she did:

She swam through scalding waters to recover his body. She recovered the body and what’s more, she pulled it toward the coffin. When it wasn’t there, she went ahead and opened her eyes. She saw for long enough to see the coffin. Her eyes open in the boiling water was enough for her to lose sight of everything else.

When she reached the coffin, his body was whole. Not that it wasn’t a skeleton. Not that it hadn’t become unrecognizable.

In the dead end of acceptance, she lost sense of everything but touch. And after swimming through the waters, she lost that too. She chose to imagine him as he was, and her as she would have wanted to be.

Her imagination omitted the shark at the front of the coffin, waiting until she closed the coffin so that it could pull him finally away from her. She constructed an entire scene, one that plays out in these last few turns.

In the remaining lines of this turn, she fell back into his embrace. For one moment, her skeleton gripped his and it was perfect. As perfect as can be.

Finally in the coffin, the seawater cooled.

The coffin began to take on water.

It wouldn’t stop until the shark pulled it under, bringing whatever was left of him to the depths of death. Right where any that still floated on the seas belonged.

HIS TURN

For this turn, she assumed that the water was still boiling, that the coffin still floated, and that she was still in his tender embrace.

She focused on him.

What he would think before finally jumping into the water to collect the shards that had once been the moon.

She mulled over whether or not the moon needed to shatter, and yet it was strangely romantic of him to seek out the light.

It had to continue in the very same way. He would have preferred it.

During his turn, he told her it was okay.

Maybe it was even a little fun.

That became his excuse: “We’re having fun.” Only they could have fun in such a dire situation. However, that’s what brought him to her. She was an out of control child, barely even a teenager; she had, perhaps, grown up too quickly.

But the way she imagined it, she sought out fault because she still believed that she could be a good person.

A person like him could not have cared for someone that could be nothing but a burden.

In this imaginary scene, they both laugh.

“It is fun, actually.” That’s what she says.

It’s always about fun with you.

Actually no — she changes that.

He says something cliché. He tells her, “I have fun whenever I’m with you.”

She adds, “It doesn’t matter what we do, where we go, or where we’ve gone. It’s fun when you belong and I belong with you.”

Hold back a sentimental tear. She tends to the bittersweet scenario. By definition, the hero has to be a real charmer. He was a charmer, a real charmer, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. Really he was just some guy who had chased foolish ideas, received a modicum of success from a small group of peers, and let himself fall over the deep end after they had told him that he might not be full of shit.

Death was no closer to being a disease than love being something that you overcome. If you felt anything pure about a person, you wouldn’t surely fight to get away.

Maybe only if you were her.

But this is her imaginary scenario.

Her fantasy.

And in this they swam for miles in each other’s arms, the sharks following them, maybe attacking, but his own return attacks, using a weapon she incorporated into the fantasy in order to apologize for pinning down one of his arms when he could have really used both.

She wanted it to be something she wouldn’t need to accept. She wanted it to be something that didn’t need any accepting.

Something before the inevitable nothing.

HER TURN

“Are we having fun?” she shouted out to the sea. She shouted because there wasn’t anything else she could do. She imagined that the sharks circled the coffin. She imagined that her flesh had fallen off her bones in large sheets and the jellyfish had continued to grip onto various parts of his and her bodies.

It was worth accepting that it would continue to be pain until the very last moment.

She shouted to the shark, the one that watched and directed the entire onslaught, “Are we having fun?”

She meant for it to be a question, meant for it to be loud, carried out in an echo that might be heard elsewhere, but she could not hear her own voice. Because she couldn’t hear her own shouts, she imagined them as gruff whispers, barely anything but a wheeze from her mouth.

What she must look like, she decided to leave off the page.

One love buries another.

His burial required her vigil. Though he fought so that she would never have to be in such a position, her role as burden in so many lives transformed into purpose, her very real purpose in continuing to hold on. Her loneliness became a deadly buoy in an already dead place. Indeed, she accepted her role.

Burden is always yours, never theirs. She accepted what she needed to accept. Her mom’s passing. The life that was a waste, the life she didn’t do much to protect or save.

Everything without a name, burned like a cigarette lit to be put out on her thigh.

She had finally accepted everything. Summarized as such:

Once upon a time a young preteen sought danger because that foolish person thought danger asked for nothing in return. Risk was simple. Risk was face value.

She never understood that danger would inevitably require a life. It took hers because she hadn’t been careful enough.

The stage, the final stage, lives passing on like the shark fins poking through the cooling waters.

If she could, she would feel his face. If she could, she would run her own hand across the sockets where her eyes had once been; if she could, she would separate herself from this body.

If she could, but she couldn’t because the small part of feeling that remained had a very physical connection. The ghosts in place, the ghosts she could hear calling her name, speaking beyond speech, beyond sound, faulting her for yet another fault, she ignored because they simply couldn’t understand.

She must tend to his burial.

She must feed the sharks.

“Are we having fun?”

HIS TURN

This is the turn where he continues to fight back and gathers all the shards. There are as many as she thinks there should be to put him in a positive light.

By that you can expect a lot. With each shard she places him in heroic situations:

He fights the shark that had watched them from the start. And wins.

He swims to the horizon and pulls back a rope bridge. And they walk it over the horizon, back to their still-beating hearts.

He swims circles around the sharks and gets them to cannibalize each other.

He builds a second coffin for her and they both sleep side-by-side.

He freely controls the temperature of the sea.

He makes sense of the nonsense in their lives. He tells her that this was all just a dream, and maybe, depending on how traumatic this had been, a nightmare, and she wakes up.

It’s all part of his study.

She wakes up and feels so much better.

Key word: feel.

He makes her feel again.

Say goodbye to numbness.

He makes death as distant as possible. But even she can’t completely imagine how that might be possible.

The one that works best is the one where he gathers the light and places the moon back on its perch. It is the one where he kicks the sky back up to its typically impossible-to-reach distance.

He places her on his back, tells her to grip on, and paddles back to the coffin. In that coffin, they sit and enjoy. They watch as the sky becomes a real sky, full of stars, the moon looking like it had never been broken. Their senses return and they share a perfect moment.

Demise sticks to its ocean depths.

They share the dream of a starry night.

By dawn, they let go. She figures if it must be over, it ends at once, together, with a single breath, a single blink of an eye. Most of all, she imagines him as a hero.

Her hero.

HER TURN

Acceptance, all along. Each turn of a thought led to the inevitable.

Accept the impossible. Deny it and admit defeat.

Restrict and remain closed to the possibilities and you let demise infect your senses. Soon you feel numb, muted — a life being wasted. A person has fun because they feel.

“Are we having fun?” she shouted.

The ghosts were there to respond.

Their replies may have been yes, but the majority would say no. The ghosts, the few that posed as her demons, began to disappear. They concluded their own passing, and perhaps they took with them a piece of her peril.

She felt the pressure, the burden, lifting, and yet she could not change the fact that she must face this alone. Seeing off someone you knew, someone you cared for, more than yourself.

Some would arrive and some would leave, but the ghosts, they would always be there, watching and waiting for what they couldn’t let go of in life.

Much of what they held onto is what they denied, what caused them great anger, something they bargained for, or something they outright feared. The ghosts held on because they denied it from the start. So then, the reader accepts it no matter the unfortunate ending to an already unfortunate tale.

Accept that she had to let him go in order to loosen her own grip. Sadness isn’t all she felt. What she couldn’t imagine, the reader of this tale might offer a hand, suggesting alternatives to how the tale can be told. For this telling at least, she must step out of the coffin. She must take to the shark-infested waters, the water that once again began to cool into a freeze. Blind to all sense, she will step in and envision herself standing on water.

And it would be all she saw.

Burden layered the body that had been his, the body she had borrowed, in the texture of the coffin. The texture of velvet and that of a tender embrace cradled his body, the one she could no longer cradle.

The shark that directed is the shark that watched as she pushed the coffin away. A pretend breath and then that one gentle push…

And the lapsing moment, one that goes on for way too long but then it might not have been very long at all:

She was the one that treated it as forever.

After forever lengthened to the shark swimming with the coffin trailing it, she stood still on the water.

After three steps, the water below her feet turned to ice.

After that, she stepped on shark fins, fighting off the inhibition. She tempted them. Go ahead and bite.

Of course, what she imagined to be sharks might have been nothing but frozen waves jutting up like pointed rocks.

For this to work, she continues as our point-of-view, and because she is our means of seeing the story to its end, she really does feed the sharks and it is treated with surprise when the sharks do not bite, perhaps full or lacking an appetite.

She had to continue on her own.

There wouldn’t be a sudden end.

HIS TURN

She counts the steps she takes as one year’s time together. In a place where time is meaningless, the duration that might have been “the rest of their lives” looks a whole lot like this:

But then they were already dead, and this line would be most acceptable as an indication of how much time they had together.

Her imagination filled in the blanks.

Everything changes. Nothing is true.

The water whispers, the depths shout.

She is a different person.

He always was.

HER TURN

In the end, his turns became hers.

Her swimming had become a walking.

A long walking. The walk was her penance.

The walk was her search for him.

This tale had come to its conclusion.

It was an emptiness that she accepted.

The emptiness can be seen on the page.

The blank of the page is death’s take.

What remains is what a life leaves behind.

The more you accept the less exists on the page.

HIS TURN

She imagines his last turn as flat desert terrain built on a dead, frozen sea that would never again thaw.

She imagines that she has been walking for her entire life.

She imagines an expanse of time where she carries the zest for life. It looks like a tiny coffin, a little pocket-sized trinket that she holds in one of her hands.

Time goes on like this. Walking. Adventure.

No need to think about tomorrow.

He shows up. They meet because they are walking in the same direction. They seek out the same destination.

Adventure.

Each line invisible are events that transpire while she is alive.

The lines visible here are of events that either never happen or happen after demise. These are the lines that take place where there is no longer any life.

If she could imagine the page, she would see that her life wasn’t a waste.

They are able to throw their speech, share and borrow their bodies, and collectively remain significant in each other’s life.

But they never meet until they stop walking.

When she stops walking, it all stops.

And so she walks.

HER TURN

She walked the imagined terrain until the physical limitations of her destroyed body could no longer be denied.

She imagined steps where the sea had parted. In place of the parting it looked now like a frozen canyon.

“Are we having fun?” she shouted and her voice bounced back throughout the canyon until it returned to her:

“Are we having fun?” His voice.

It might have been excitement. It might have been delusion.

Whatever it was, it was how she let go.

She had come to believe what her imagination splayed across the greater expanse of her blindness.

There was no difference now.

“Are we having fun?” she shouted again.

He answered back with the question.

Two more steps passed. She was getting closer.

She could feel the burden being lifted two at a time, each step pulling from her everything that had resided in her to remain.

“Are we having fun?” she shouted.

His voice answered with the same question. She had begun to wonder if he was the one that needed to know.

She continued down the steps.

What initially couldn’t be answered registered as obvious.

She said, “I have fun when I’m with you.”

And then she asked the question again.

By now she was nearly at the bottom of the canyon. She hesitated. She couldn’t see anything at the bottom. She heard nothing back.

The fantasy started to slip away and she could almost see the reality of this descent, the pressure of taking on water, the pressure of deep sea, but then she heard.

She heard him.

And what did he say?

He said, “ .”

He said what she needed to hear in order to let go.

She took the final two steps and as simple as his part ended in this tale, hers ends now.

It ends right here. She swam until the swimming had passed her, much longer than her past could bother. Every buoy peeled, soon she felt the pressure.

And there, after a complete and final acceptance, she sank, pulled under until she became the water and the water became her.

The ocean pulled from her a final choking gasp.

She was passed over to the sea that passes over her in the gentlest waves.

She did what is done.

She let go.

THE FUN WE'VE HAD

OUR TURN

So now you can see why they couldn’t be for long.

They had wanted to be individuals, much like we all seek the highest waves in hopes of surfing them to a distant shoreline, one that doesn’t exist until found. We seek the peaks in hopes of pleasing the fact that we thought we were, for a time, an individual among individuals. Though we may, though we might, the waves are purely that — temporary and fleeting, no matter how high. The current continues, changing all that doesn’t appear to change, the valuable becoming meaningless, the meaningless becoming valuable; the tides make daily proclamations.

The life of the ocean continues its cycle, on schedule for both new-and-old to balance out to become nameless.

The waves are hellos.

The storms are goodbyes.

The stories that stick around are our sincerest apologies.

The coffin floated carried by a beast made beastly by the culture that had turned it into a danger. Where there had been dangers, true dangers, societies founded state capitals; where there had been wars, new torrential storm patterns formed in hopes of outdoing the other.

We wanted to separate ourselves from the sea.

We wanted to be our own oceans, our own bodies of water, capable of being seen from space.

We wanted what was wanted by others, and a little bit more, if only to be the first to want to have swam that far. The farthest shores resemble everything that we fail to find out at sea.

We wanted to stay, holding on, where a single wave might kick the coffin over, forcing us under; we fought a fight not worth fighting for, but we were the harm.

We were the conflict.

We were the beginning and we are now the ending.

He saw a buoy in the textbooks, in the famous telling of his even more famous findings.

She saw a life that needed to be louder than the human senses would allow.

What they saw was only what they wanted to see.

We floated and merely liked floating together. We float together even when we work so hard to ride our own waves.

The current continues to move and we are moved.

It will always move us to feel, and upon feeling less, it features our final gasps. We swim in a similar circle, meeting each turn with a similar but individual strike of luck.

The current matches the stride of time, the orbit of the earth, the existence past existing, but it is never anything but final. The current outlasts the orbit of our lives; it gathers us together and tells us to swim. Keep swimming.

We will be caught.

We will be someone’s catch.

We are cautious but kind.

We are alive and it needn’t be possible for there to be anything but life. For there to be a beginning, we must all have an end, but for there to be a story, someone will have to die.

We go on living, but for one, maybe two characters, who become the clear focus of the story we have told, they end where it fits best to end. And for the telling, it goes on and on like this, stories printed based on the deaths and births of each pair.

The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can swim.

If you have, then let’s go.

Let’s have some fun.

“Are we having fun?”

“I have fun when I’m with you.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael J Seidlinger is the author of a number of novels, including

The Laughter of Strangers

and

My Pet Serial Killer

He serves as the Reviews Editor for Electric Literature as well as Publisher-in-Chief of Civil Coping Mechanisms, an indie press specializing in innovative fiction and poetry. Find him on Facebook, Twitter (@mjseidlinger), and at michaeljseidlinger.com.

Content

Michael J. Seidlinger
The Fun We've Had

PRAISE FOR THE FUN WE’VE HAD

PRAISE FOR THE LAUGHTER OF STRANGERS

OUR TURN

DENIAL

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

ANGER

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

BARGAINING

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

FEAR

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

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ACCEPTANCE

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

HIS TURN

HER TURN

THE FUN WE'VE HAD

OUR TURN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR