I was directed toward the lights that perforated the once dusky buildings behind me. Everyone seemed to be skeptical, avoiding the thoughts that this source of the light can forever change the depravity in such a dark-tinted community. It was something that never really happened in a secluded town so far south of Indiana. It was the kind of area where everyone gripped on the vine of faith and let fate drag them through their weary lives. The only lights that shine overhead were lonely gas stations, making their scraps from the lost tourists that meander through the still streets that need to refill their tank as they can’t find the way out of the town.
As an unspiritual man, I never believed in the existence of miracles. Luck never played my part as I earned my reputable position as a standard phone operator.

“Yes, your order seemed to have a fragment error in the shipping address,” I would state. “No sir, I’m fairly certain that we’ll get it shipped to you first thing in the morning.” I live through constant complaints from people I only know as people who seem to be dissatisfied at the little things. I never got to see anything so immense that I could say it really matters. It seems like I could never leave this town, as it has its idiosyncratic plague on its fellow residents. Like a silent permanence, the people who move into this town seem to find their place in an instant. The town acts as a puzzle, where there are the general missing pieces. Once you find your area on the board in which you fit with the faintest severance, it will be the only thing that you see yourself doing as your soul hangs by thread.

Waves of crowds began coming from the darkness of their homes, as if they had the same delayed reaction to the glimmering light coming in their direction. As I move closer to the blinding lights, I began to see the opaque figure more and more as I ambled, starting to become unaware where I was at that moment of time. The finer details of this silhouette become more apparent, from the shape of its thin body to the fine tips of its fingernails. At that moment, it touched me, as my memory of the past grew to a close. Nothing started to make sense, I thought.

Why did I never choose to leave and see if there’s more out there? I chose to stay within the frigid hands of the town, a mental purgatory. Was I ever more than just a voice of reassurance through a phone?  Little things began to corrode into my head. Things that I used to hear from my mother when I would trouble her like “you’re the one that makes the troubles, so you must fix them” and “know your place in this world.” She was the silver tongue in the family, always being so uplifting even when lecturing her son. Then, just like that, the memory began to fade after intense thought.

I was still walking. Yet my mind remains on overdrive for the entirety. It went down the timeline, mainly arranged through feeling. Childhood, first reactions to small things, first loves, first deaths, first feelings of sadness, first feelings of stress, first feelings of anger, first feelings of depression. But where has happiness been? Why have I been parted without it after all of this time? This overlook of memories felt like the actual duration of my whole lifetime again, to reach this anomaly that has no reason for its existence. But, why is it now everything to me?

“Are you finished with everything,” I heard a faint woman ask with a beautiful tone. Then the chill of my spine hit me as I heard a man say “yeah, I’m going to call it a night love. I have to get to the office extremely early tomorrow. It’s December after all, so the lines are going to be off the hook.” It took not even a word to know that I was once this man. I had everything I could ever want when it came to living in a home. Reassurance has never been so reassuring, when you can have confidence.

The world looked lifeless the next morning as I was dragging myself out of the bed, as a truck raked its plow across the asphalt to drag all of the snow into a sooty pile. It was roughly 5:36 in the morning, 28 degrees, and I was desperately lugging my coat off of the hanger. My wife was still asleep, but I kept avoiding the slightest bit of sound. She wasn’t feeling well again last night, and I didn’t want to be impudent (as I always seem to be). Once more, my hands hold the door to the outside. As the door slips ajar, the freezing air brushes through me. I rush myself towards the porch steps. I feel the cold touch of frigid flakes that recede onto my coat, making the light brown material become this darker shade.

A wound appeared on my chest and the light radiated with the blood. Something became lodged in my shoulder as I felt a tip of a slug shatter my ribcage. I felt the blow back, the movement of my body, but as a recent memory. I then stared at the silhouette, scared at why I remained idle to the moment of impact. I held the area on my mutilated chest, but it was painless. I inhaled the distant air, mortified, yet relieved. The shadow nodded, as if this thing was supposed to occur. Then, everything appeared black in sight.

It was the last time I ever could say that I was content with myself. I was in the office taking multiple calls on shipping complaints for Christmas gifts. I was drifting to sleep, after finishing a call from a woman in Lafayette who ordered multiple packages that supposedly got the wrong items, when she did in fact got what she ordered (all through unimportant grievances from the mouths of her kids). I was stressed, and Meredith was on my mind constantly. She couldn’t stop throwing up last night, as I held her in the bathroom praying for her pain to end. I felt guilty to leave her home, expected to take care of her. But who else could keep a roof above us? I had to let her sister keep an eye on her.

My mind drifted away, as I began to doze off on my office chair. Then there was the ring of a phone. I immediately sprung up to answer phone. I slurred a “hello, this is [removed], how are you today?” I heard gentle cries through the phone for a moment’s time. It became clear that it was Meredith’s sister on the other line. I grew worrisome. “Gillian, what’s wrong?” She didn’t respond at first. I felt as I had to repeat myself. “Gillian, c’mon. Are you okay? How’s Meredith?” The greyish blue top of my desk faded into a crimson red. I stared to become hopeless when I realized that the delay from her mouth had to be her holding the greatest pain she has felt for years to come. I didn’t like this feeling. At an instant, she bawled, slowly hissing the words “She’s dying Phillip.” It hit me like a slug to my ribcage… I throw my phone off the desk completely neglecting my exertion of pain that was displayed my workplace. I ran out of the building, the cold air, now null to me.

It was not her. Who is she? This can’t possibly be Meredith. Gillian wanted to leave me alone with her because she couldn’t bear the “knives in my eyes”. I was bloodshot, paranoid if the woman in the hospital gown staring at me would manage to say something to make me cry. Something like “Phillip, it’s my time” or even “I love you.” Her once strawberry blonde hair withered into a ghostly white. Her skin was closer to her bones, to the point that the creasing of her joints can easily be seen. It was so unbearable, I held her praying for her pain to be finally over. I didn’t want her to go, but the time became more apparent.

The last moments were just reminiscing moments, the only moments of happiness I had through all of the anxiety of work and a wife who was dying, but not so abruptly. The last breath left her throat, and caressed my face. Holding her hand, the feeling of her controlling her body finally left me this body. She was stripped away from me, as easy as a soul taken from Earth. A simple alter to the brain, burying the person I used to love into the soil beneath my feet. I let go of this chapter of my life as if anyone would when they stood in the face of hopelessness. How could I easily forget this?

I fall to my knees, right in front of this silhouette which now shaped to be her. I could hear her faintly whisper “Are you finished with everything?” I managed to croak out a “yes” as I held in this pain. I cried out “I missed you” to her only to get no response. I tried to say it again to this unreal figure, but it faded away before I could speak a single word. She was gone, as my mind then failed and was no longer connected to my body, soulless. The ground then began to dissipate and become nothing to me. The wind has taken me above with her. For the first time since her departure, I was finally complete again. No pulse was left in my body. The lights dimmed out. The city becomes silent once again as it always is, after my body was lifted from the ground by the paramedics to establish the cold exit.