Read My Life in Darkness Online
Authors: Harrison Drake
My Life in Darkness (3 page)
I knew you were smart, like me. Studying architecture would be amazing. It would have made my dad proud if I’d done that. At least it would have been somewhat in line with his idea for me, wanting me to take over the family construction business. And a dancer, too? I was wrong thinking you were a gymnast, I guess. I would love to see you dance, you walk with so much grace I can only imagine how you’d dance.
It’s so nice speaking to you, but at the same time it feels wrong. Like I’ve spent so long thinking about you without knowing who you are, and now I’m finding out things I never would’ve guessed. Now I have to change my image of you. What if the things I learn make me think less of you? I couldn’t handle that. You’re the reason I’m still alive, the reason I am where I am. If I didn’t have that, I don’t know… I don’t even want to think about it.
I can’t lose you. Even if it’s not the real you I’d be losing.
NOVEMBER 23, 2003
Dear Lena,
I really wish you were here, it’s unbelievable. It’s coming up on 23:00 Universal Time, almost a midnight eclipse. Of course it’s summer here, even though it’s November, and the sun barely sets.
There’s nothing but ice as far as I can see, not a research base or anything nearby. The last untouched part of the Earth. It’s possible that when I step out of the plane, I’ll be the only human to ever have been in this area. The continent is so big and so unexplored. But you must know all about it. I’ve heard that Roald Amundsen is a hero to your people—the first person to set foot at the South Pole. I wish there were still places to explore like that, things to do that no one else had ever done.
The weather is holding for us, which is nice. If we can find a spot to land the pilot will, and I’ll get to set foot on the ice to watch the eclipse. My hands are shaking. I’ve seen so many, but there’s something about this one that’s making me anxious. In a good way though. Maybe it’s because of how isolated it is, the fact that there are so few people here. I guess that’s how I wish I could live, isolated and alone.
I’m alone on this one, too. Just the pilot, co-pilot and me. My mom didn’t come. She was worried about the flight, about how dangerous Antarctica can be. And I think she didn’t want to leave my dad for that long. It was a long trip to get here, and I won’t be home for some time. Even money can’t buy you a flight in and out when you want it, it just got me onto the plane. I have to wait around in McMurdo for a week and a half for the next flight out.
It’s exciting though, being there with all the scientists and researchers. I kind of feel like they’re a lot like me-they’d have to be to live here.
We’re going to be landing soon. One fifty-seven, not long enough, but hopefully being here will make the darkness even better for me.
I’ll see you in a couple of years. I’m looking forward to it, to talk to you again.
MARCH 29, 2006
Dear Lena,
I should have expected it. It’s been three and a half years since I last saw you. You’re married now, a new man, British by the looks of him. I should have asked you last time for an e-mail address, or even your phone number. Maybe we could have talked about eclipses at first, and then it could have gone from there.
But now I’ve lost you.
I guess it’s okay though. I’ll still write you these letters. Maybe he won’t be your forever love, maybe that really is me. I want to believe that I’m that person for you, even if believing is only for my own benefit. But you look so happy with him, that smile would have been nice to have seen in Antarctica. I could have used something like that to warm me up.
But I’ll have it next time to keep me warm.
I wish I could tell you that it’s me paying for the next trip. I would have liked to have just taken you, but I didn’t want to come right out and ask. Okay, I did, I just knew I’d never be able to. So I’m bringing all of the ‘philes, every last one of us. At least there aren’t too many who come out to every single one, but still, forty-five people are already booked.
I’m doing it for you. We’d be better off going to Russia-Novosibirsk would give us more totality. But there won’t be another eclipse visible from anywhere in Norway in our lifetimes. I wanted you to see one from your own country. It would have been nicer if we could have stayed on the mainland though. But this will be interesting. Flying to Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen Island in the Svalbard, then taking a boat to the east side of the island of Kvitøya—you’re lucky you’re worth it! Up near the Arctic, it may be the closest I’ll ever set foot to the North Pole.
Everything should be good in my life. I’ve launched a second game now, and the money just keeps coming in. I could retire now and never have to worry about a thing. But I’m still unhappy. I doubt that I’ll ever find love, at least not with someone I haven’t put on a pedestal. No one appeals to me like you do, and I doubt I appeal to anyone for any reason other than my money. It’s really the only thing I have going for me. Sometimes I wonder if I should give it all away. It’s not making me any happier, it’s just making life easier.
But at least I get to take you (and everyone else) to see an eclipse in your homeland. There are benefits, but it has brought so much pain as well. People who never spoke to me except to make fun of me, some who never came near me except to hurt me, are all finding me now. They’re asking for jobs, they’re asking for handouts. And I feel compelled to give them whatever they want. I don’t know why, why I would want to help someone who did nothing but torment me my entire life.
The pain comes back in torrents whenever I think of the past, of school, of my childhood, of my father, and I find myself thinking old thoughts again. Frightening thoughts. The kind you saved me from. And you keep on saving me from them, making me remember the good in my life. I know I’ll always love you, but is there room in this damaged heart for anyone else?
The darkness comes, I can feel it. My heart beats stronger now, and I feel stronger. Three minutes and fifty-eight seconds of darkness, enough to last for a long time. Maybe I should move somewhere were the sun never rises in the winter, but I know it wouldn’t be the same. There’s magic in the eclipses (magic is the only word I can think of, I’m too rational to really believe in magic) that I can’t describe.
Even science can’t answer all the questions. Like why does a torsion pendulum undergo sudden changes in motion during totality? They call it the Saxl effect after the scientist that discovered it. I can’t even begin to understand why that would happen, but if the eclipse can cause effects like that, there must be an explanation for why I feel the way I do.
I wish I knew if it felt the same for you.
AUGUST 1, 2008
Dear Lena,
I’m so lost right now. Nothing makes sense, and I can’t even think enough to write about it. My world is falling apart. I think you’re all that holds it up.
I hope you enjoy this eclipse. Remember, it was all for you. Repayment for everything you’ve done for me. One minute and twenty-two seconds of repayment.
I hope you can still do more for me, I really do. But I’m not sure even you can get me through this one.
If I’m not at the next one, just know that I’ve always loved you.
MT ONTAKU, TOSHIMA ISLAND, JAPAN
JULY 22, 2009
Dear Lena,
I’m sorry about last time, but everything was blowing up around me. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t act, all I could do was cry and wish it was over.
My father died just before the last eclipse. He still hadn’t said a word to me since the fight. I guess he’d started drinking more, maybe because he was mad at me, maybe because he was jealous. He drank himself to death one night, just kept pounding them back until he passed out and never woke up.
Mom’s been having a rough time of it. The man he was the last few years wasn’t the man she’d married and she knew that. She says none of it’s my fault but sometimes, I’ll see the way she looks at me and I think maybe she blames me for his death.
If only I hadn’t hit him.
If only I hadn’t been born the way I am.
If only I wasn’t so fucking useless.
Maybe she doesn’t blame me, but I sure as hell do.
If only I’d been stronger, faster, more athletic.
If only I wasn’t incapable of talking to people. If I’d had friends, a girlfriend, maybe then my life would have been normal.
Maybe if I hadn’t been born under that eclipse. It must have been a bad omen. An omen that everything I’d touch would be blotted out like the sun. I destroyed his life, my mom’s life and now my own.
I won’t speak to you again, I’ll stay as far from you as possible. I shouldn’t even be writing you these letters. Maybe it’s time I stopped.
Everyone I touch turns to shit, and I refuse to let that happen to you. You’re too perfect, too pure for me to allow that to happen to you. I’d die first.
Six minutes, sixteen and a half seconds. Even this one, longer than any in almost twenty years, won’t be enough. It’ll never be enough. The darkness finds me and it gives me life, but it takes it away from everyone around me.
Why do I bother? Why have I ever thought that things could be normal, that my life could be worth living?
You’re all I have left, and I’ll protect you as long as I live.
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
Dear Lena,
Things haven’t gotten any better for me. My mom is sick, that’s why I wasn’t at the last one in Argentina. I think she’s given up since my dad died. She’s not here with me, only the second time she hasn’t been. It’s probably best she stays away from me though.
Congratulations on your daughter, she’s beautiful. I wish you all the happiness in the world. Someone needs to be happy, just to show me that it’s possible.
Two minutes four seconds. I don’t even care, I just want this all to end. And maybe it will. They say there’s only a few weeks left until the end of the world.
Is it terrible that a part of me hopes they’re right? The only reason I don’t want it to happen is because I don’t want to have to think about you suffering. Everyone else in this fucking world can die for all I care. The world is full of shit and it just keeps getting worse.
Maybe the end is what we need.
MACRH 20, 2015
Dear Lena,
I need to apologize to you. I was going through some major issues in the last few years. Severe depression, anger, and a bunch of other things. The medications are working as is the therapy. But I’m still angry. Just now I realize it wasn’t my fault. My father chose his path and he pushed me on mine, even though he didn’t want me doing what I’m doing. It was his constant criticism, the hatred and anger in his voice that drove me further from his idea of the perfect son and toward the imperfection I am now.
And yet, again, you helped me through it all. Your face is forever in my mind now, and it’s all I see when times get tough.
Two minutes. I want to walk up to you in the darkness and hold your hand. Maybe you wouldn’t know it was me, maybe you would just think it was your husband. Maybe I could get away with it.
I love you.
MACRH 9, 2016
Dear Lena,
We aren’t far from where we first met twenty-eight years ago. It’s just a couple of islands over. Funny how things come around full circle like that. I see you have two children now, it must be nice. A boy and a girl. I always wanted kids, but it just wasn’t in the cards for me. But that was your choice. We could have been together, we could have been perfect. But you didn’t want that, you wanted someone else.
Someone who isn’t right for you, someone who isn’t me.
There’s nothing I can do about it now. You’ve made your choice and I gave you my life. For nothing. All that’s left for me is the darkness. It was always the one thing that kept me alive, the one thing no one could take away from me.
But you used to be in there too. You used to give me so much strength, but now you’ve been taken from me. Taken by him, that man. I see his eyes, that glow he has isn’t like ours. It’s evil. You aren’t safe with him, but maybe I can make you safe.
The things I could change in the next two thirty-eight.
The things I could do if I was strong enough.
LAND BETWEEN THE LAKES, KENTUCKY, USA
AUGUST 21, 2017
Lena,
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I can’t do this, I can barely breathe. The walls are closing in on me, Lena. I can feel them coming for me, I can hear them. Little feet tapping on the walls and the ceiling, little feet chasing me. Their motors click and buzz as they fly around, disguised as beetles and ants and mosquitoes. They watch me, every second of every day.
And they’re everywhere now. They’re flying around us but no one else notices, no one knows what’s going on. Everyone just stands around, smiling like idiots, while everything turns clockwork. And there’s nothing we can do about it. I’ve tried to stop them, tried to stop them all. They just keep coming.