The Writer
by Erty Seidel
It had been nearly four years, dear reader, since Mitra had seen Talik, and every day diminished her hopes of reuniting with him. When he had first disappeared, she had cried for nearly two weeks, and only at the absolute demand of her father had she finally come out from her room, eaten some food, and returned to school. Her friends stayed away from her for the first few weeks, and Mitra sulked in the back of the classroom. "Such a bright girl, before Talik died," said the teachers. "Poor thing, her grades are slipping and I just don't know how to help her."
Before the incident, Mitra had been a happy and popular girl. She wore her half-wavy brown hair in a ponytail, spoke quickly, and within two weeks of starting school had attracted the attention of local strange-kid Talik, a quiet boy who kept to himself and his books. Talik had a knowing air around him, as though he could see, with his rare golden eyes, down into one's soul. Mitra felt uncomfortable around him; the more he tried to make himself noticed and likeable, the more he had driven her away.
Love is a funny thing, reader, because it so often takes people by surprise. It can turn a person's perceptions upside-down and inside-out, and this is what happened to Mitra over the next two years. Two years to the day since Talik first noticed Mitra and nearly dropped his math book, nearly felt his heart jump from his chest, and stood with his jaw hanging loose as the most beautiful girl in the world looked at him as though to say, "Your jaw is hanging open."
Talik had read enough books to know that he must be gentlemanly about the whole thing. He did not follow her through halls, or dream of her in anything less than full clothing. He left her a note, on Saint Valentine's Day, signed anonymously, but she turned him down for both the Winter Formal and Spring Gala, despite him already having purchased a suit and a dozen roses on both occasions.
But, reader, we cannot just focus on Talik's side of the story. Mitra felt threatened by Talik, and so denied his advances. She could not comprehend what Talik was doing - that nerd, geek, fool - and so followed her friends' suggestion to date an upperclassman named Krall. Krall was a fan of two things: sports and talking about sports, and so the fleeting infatuation was just that, and Krall was certainly not worse off for it.
But then there was Talik, that strange exotic boy, offering her his hand in an honest gesture of friendship as she sat, sulking on the sidewalk, thinking of the things her friends must be saying about her. There was Talik, with those oh-so-deep golden eyes, opening doors for her and offering to pay for as much of their meal as he could afford. There was Talik, asking her (and this was the last time, he promised himself, before he finally gave up) if she would like to accompany him to the end-of-school dance, and she said yes. There was Talik, introducing himself to all of her friends, and getting along quite well with them, so that they finally offered a general look of approval about the newcomer in their midst (although Talik felt as though he might lose his meal anytime).
So, reader, you must be wondering, what is this tragedy, then? What happened that turned this seemingly happy occurrence, two young adults falling in love at school, into a nightmare? This is where things get strange, reader, and so to accompany me you must put trust in these thin lines on paper, these "just words," and follow me to the next page, so that the real Adventure can begin.
It was midnight, perhaps a few minutes after, on the first of June when Talik fell deaf. He was sitting up against the door to his room so that the light from the hallway would leak in and illuminate the pages of his book. Suddenly, silence. Stillness. He couldn't even hear his own breath, or the sound of his heartbeat. Not even the woooosh of the seashell winds that usually one can hear swirling about their own ears. It was as though he had never been able to hear, and he gave a shout (silence to him) and ran down the hall to tell his mother what had happened.
The next day, the doctor used his best hearing tests, his best medical tomes, and suggested a trip to a specialist in the city, but he himself could not find anything wrong with Talik. Perhaps it was an ailment of the brain? The doctor had seen a case of a sudden muteness, once, and maybe this was the same? Talik sat silently, tears on his face, in the office as his mother and the doctor tossed words back and forth that he could not hear.
It was midnight, reader, on the second of June that Talik lost his sense of smell. Unable to sleep from the fear of his deafness, he was sitting in the kitchen nursing a bowl of soup when he suddenly felt as though his nose had gone completely numb. The soup tasted odd, like it did when he was sick and his mother was trying to get him to eat more, more, soup is good for you. Convinced he was simply in shock, Talik tried again, mostly successfully, to get a good night's sleep.
Mitra was incredulous when she heard, her incredulity turning to worry and despair, as the doctor's daughter (a good friend of Mitra's) told her that Talik had been taken to the city that day to see the specialist. Mitra could not focus on her studies that night, and her uncertainty and fear nearly forced her to sneak out to check Talik's house to see if he was there.
Talik and his mother spent the night at the specialist's, as he consulted with his colleagues about what might suddenly make this adolescent lose both his sense of hearing and smell. Talik fell asleep quickly, as the yammering of the doctors was invisible to him.
He awoke the next morning with no sense of touch. Reader, have you ever laid wrong on a foot, perhaps a hand, and had the poor appendage become dead to the touch, numb and empty? This was Talik's entire body. He could not feel whether he was smiling or frowning, he could not feel the blankets lying on top of him when he woke up. He could not feel the air rushing into his lungs, although he assumed that it must be happening, since he was still alive. He panicked, and acquired several bruises in the ensuing commotion, none of which he noticed until the doctors had him standing, nearly naked, in the middle of the room so that they could take measurements and use their strange tools to peer into his golden eyes, his deaf ears, his debilitated nose.
Talik was terrified! What would become of him - would he be confined to a wheelchair? Would Mitra ever love him as an invalid? Oh, he swooned, Mitra. Somebody needed to tell Mitra! The words were hard to say, and the doctors held up cards telling him not to speak, since he would not notice if he bit his tongue. So Talik kept himself holed up in the fortress of his own mind, desperately hoping for a confirmation that everything would be okay and he could go back to a normal life.
But, reader, I have already ruined the surprise for you (in the first sentence, in fact), so let me just tell you now that during the next two nights, Talik lost his sense of taste and then, finally, lastly, his golden eyes dimmed and became pure white. Yes, reader, Talik became blind, and with this he was completely severed from this world we call reality.
Talik began to dream. He began to dream wondrous and terrifying apparitions into life, as he laid completely still (Perhaps the doctors were moving him about? He would never know.) and started to lose touch of what was real and what was only fantasy.
And Talik began to fade, physically, despite the best efforts of the doctors to feed him and keep him alive. Talik's skin turned translucent and thin, his hair started to fall out in tufts, and he became a gruesome sight to behold. But inside Talik's mind, reader, there were even more terrible sights, even more terrible and awesome things. Talik dreamed of monsters and castles, of Mitra, of death. Talik was suspended, by a single dreaming thread, to life, and even that was threatened by his unique ailment.
Reader, know that Talik did not die. No, that would be too mundane for this story. Instead, he slowly faded away into nothingness. His skin became completely transparent and slowly fell away, so that he was simply a pile of human organs and bones lying on the table, still breathing, heart pumping, beating, but no more. Only two doctors would dare venture into the room to check on him and pour more food and drink into his body. All of Talik's teeth fell out, one by one, and in the end, he collapsed into nothing more than his vital organs - a head, an abdomen, and nothing else.
Talik was scared for himself, but more than anything else he was filled with a longing to see Mitra, even if just to say goodbye. He dreamed that he would leave her a note, but when he went to leave it behind, the monsters tore it out of his hand, laughed at it, and ripped it to pieces. He dreamed of a stone tablet, inscribed with a long goodbye note, but the monsters stomped on it until it was a pile of grey dust. Talik thought for a while, and dreamed of a small golden gem, oblong, about five centimeters at the widest, and inscribed it with:
Mitra,
I Love You, and I am not gone forever.
Look for me in the darkness. I dream.
Talik
The gem was small. Perhaps the monsters would not notice it? He dropped it surreptitiously, and it tumbled into the darkness, wrapped itself in the black edge of his consciousness, and dropped through. Talik breathed a sigh of relief, before cowering once again before the towering apparitions.
The next day, reader, nearly two months after he had been admitted to the hospital, there was simply a pile of dust lying in the stained and oily bedsheets. Where Talik's heart had been, however, laid a small golden gem, inscribed with the same words that Talik had dreamed. None of the doctors could make heads or tails of this (although one made a tidy sum with an article to a tabloid), and the only obvious course of action was to take the gem to Mitra and hold services for the departed.
Departed, yes, but one who has departed often expects to return. Talik did. He had left the gemstone with the last of his life-force, as the darkness and monsters dragged him farther and farther into the infinity that surrounded him. He could feel other consciousnesses, other minds, just out of reach of his fingertips, and he swam (through no water) and flew (through no air) but could not escape the terrible nightmares and shapes. Dark shapes, unknowns, dragons with teeth that were blacker than black, voids that were not just dark but were like looking at nothingness. No color, not even the emptiest of empty space could compare to this darkness. Talik struggled, and Mitra wept.
Four years, (a little less, perhaps) and so much had happened. Mitra left for university in the city, still sulking. The doctors moved on to new and less mysterious cases, and Talik endured. He huddled by himself as the terrors ripped at him and the darkness consumed him. But he had not died, and he had become adjusted to living on his own. "If I have not died," he reasoned, "then it is most likely that I will not die, and I will see Mitra again." So he persisted. Each day (if you could call it a day, reader, as each "day" was as black as each "night" and there was no sun or moon to mark the passage of time) Talik would reach out as far as he could, shouting for help, grasping for the other minds that he could see, now, just beyond his reach.
And he got stronger. By the third year he no longer even regarded the terrors, and by the fourth he had actually managed to touch one of the consciousnesses once. It had felt warm and soothing, but he was quickly pulled back into the nightmare. But he had that hope, that drive that told him that he could do it, he could make contact with one of those minds on the other side of the veil.
And so he did, reader. He willed himself to do it, and so he did. He reached out and touched, with his entire mind, the mind of another human being. And he wept with joy, not only because he finally felt something else besides terror and coldness, but because it was none other than the mind of his love, Mitra.
She was dreaming, in her dormitory at college, stressed because of some exam or test, and suddenly she felt lucid, and there was Talik, his golden eyes lit with such fire and ferocity that she nearly broke down in tears right there in her own dream. She ran to him and embraced him, folded him into her arms, and the tears came.
"I am trapped," he admitted, finally. "I am trapped in a terrible dark cold place, with nothing for company but monsters." Mitra looked at him with an unsure expression. "I need you to save me," said Talik.
And Talik felt himself being dragged backwards, back into the cold and dark. "I love you," he said.
"I miss you," she said, and woke, smiling for the first time in four years.
So Mitra would dream of Talik and they would discuss their plans for Talik's escape. Talik dreamed her a knife, but the monsters stood in front of the veil, baring their teeth and launching themselves at the blade. Mitra dreamed him a file, but there were no bars to cut, and the file caught itself in the darkness and disappeared. Talik dreamed her a pair of wings, but the monsters were much faster than she, and dragged them down when they tried to escape into Mitra's mind.
But they could talk, and Talik learned of the goings-on of the world through Mitra. He gave her notes to leave for his mother to tell her that everything was going to be okay. Slowly Mitra fell in love with him, even though she had not been certain that she could love an apparition (what if he was simply an imagination? Was it practical to love a dream?). Somehow, his golden eyes and warm smile always melted the doubts away.
Reader, it was Mitra who had the idea to dream Talik back into existence. Sitting together one dream-time, she offered to realize him in real life, and perhaps he would exist again. "It's worth a try," said Talik, "and I will dream of becoming real, so that I can join you."
I would not believe this if I hadn't seen it firsthand, reader, but I swear to you this is the truth. The small gemstone was placed on the floor of the dormitory, the annoyed roommate was bribed with a few bricks of noodles, and Mitra and Talik started the long and laborious process. Talik, the dream Talik, suddenly felt as though there were a hole in his chest, and sure enough, when Mitra awoke, there was the faint outline of a heart, beating on the floor. By the next morning, the heart had become opaque, and a ribcage could be seen, ethereal but definitely there.
Now, of course, this kind of thing would not stay silent (especially with the nosy roommate that Mitra had to deal with) and so people came over daily to see Talik's progress. He grew lungs, great healthy lungs that inhaled and exhaled slowly and deliberately. Biology students took notes as the arteries, veins, and capillaries began to form around the still-translucent skeleton. One Wednesday morning, a rushing sound announced the purging of the air from his cardiovascular system, which filled with rich red and blue blood, pumping with each beat of his heart.
He grew skin slowly, and the dream-Talik started to fade, his hollow body now cracking like paper, monsters diving to collect the scraps of skin and hair that fell from his body, behind the veil. When his body was complete, Mitra started to dream his senses back.
First, sight. He opened his eyes and stared into hers, and tears flowed from around his golden irises. Next, taste and touch, and finally he opened his mouth, to say, simply, "Thank you. " And then, "Will you please marry me? "
She exclaimed that yes, of course she would! Talik couldn't hear it; it would be another two days until she dreamed him his hearing back, but he understood her. He smiled his biggest smile yet, and fell asleep on the floor, dreamless, content, and whole.
And that, dear reader, is how I got Mitra to marry me.