The dialogue for this just popped pretty much fully formed into my head the other day. Since then I've been trying to give it some context and meaning. It seemed right that Lucas (who was just an unnamed antagonist) should be the protagonist from another story of mine, Zen Man (
http://www.writingforums.com/short-stories/77553-zen-man-short-story-needs-help.html#post883785). It's not really a "proper" story, just something that came into my head and I had to get down on paper (or at least silicon). Any feedback would be appreciated.
On the cusp
Alden found Lucas in the warm-up room, lying on his back with headphones in his ears. The roar of the crowd outside was muffled here but you could still feel it as a dull vibration. It made him think of animals, the way they must feel before an earthquake hit. Alden cleared his throat but Lucas didn’t look up. A tinny bass sound was thumping from his headphones.
Alden walked over to Lucas’s prone form and gave him a quick kick in the leg. Lucas’s eyes flashed open and he made to get up but relaxed when he saw who it was. He closed his eyes and slumped back to the floor.
“How’d you find me?” he asked tonelessly.
“That doesn’t matter now,” Alden replied. “Fact is, I
did find you and now you’re gonna tell me what the hell’s happened to you.”
“Nothing to tell.” Lucas said in the same bored monotone. “At least, there’s nothing worth telling. I had a personal crisis, that’s it. And that’s not your business. It’s no one’s business but mine.”
“I’ve got a very pissed-off woman crashing at my place that says it
is my business. And if it ain’t mine, then it sure as hell is hers. You owe her an explanation at least, and since I know you won’t come back with me, you need to tell me so I can tell her.”
Lucas seemed to consider this for a while. He sat in silence as the minutes ticked by. Alden was about to kick him again when he suddenly spoke.
“You ever been windsurfing? Not just pissing about on some lake, but really out there in the monster waves with some gale-force wind trying to flatten you?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Alden replied. He’d never been fond of the water.
“It’s hard to describe. You’re on this cusp, standing on a piece of carbon and plastic with twenty feet of water driving you along, waiting to crush you, hanging off a sail, matching your bodyweight against the wind. Everything’s perfectly balanced. If even one thing goes slightly out of synch, you’re toast. But as long as everything matches, you’ve never felt so utterly at peace.”
Lucas looked wistful. His eyes were half-closed and his breath was slow. The faintest ghost of a smile played about his lips. Alden, however, was impatient, and in no mood for mind-games.
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at really. What’s that got to do with…?”
“That’s what it felt like. I felt all of these different emotions at once, felt them stronger than I’d ever felt them before. I was angry and scared and just a bit elated and hell, there were feelings there I couldn’t even
name. But they were all balanced. It wasn’t any particular feeling or emotion. It just
was emotion. It was passion without form or distinction. Y’know how those monks over in China or Tibet or wherever are always saying how bad passion is, trying to leave the world behind to be at peace?
Alden frowned. “Again, can’t say that I have.”
“Yeah? Well they don’t know jack shit. Feeling
everything at once, without reason or…or…hell,
that was peace. It was, what’s the word? Serenity, that’s it. I was totally serene. For a couple of minutes, I was content.”
For the second time, Lucas lapsed into silence. Alden didn’t know how to respond. He’d known something wrong but hadn’t expected Lucas to be this fucked-up. He needed to keep him talking.
“You want that feeling back,” Alden stated, hoping for some elaboration. Lucas obliged him.
“I’ve tried. I really have. Do you know what it’s like to wake up next to a woman who used to mean more than life to you, and know that even though your feelings haven’t changed, you’ve experienced something so much greater that love feels inadequate? Love’s fine and all but now it just feels like using one sense when I could be using all of the others
plus new ones that no human has ever experienced.”
“That doesn’t explain why you ran away. Why you’re doing…this.”
“It sounds stupid, but I thought, maybe it works the other way too. I got complete peace from all that feeling. Maybe if I get rid of it all, I can do the same thing, just from the other direction. Two sides of the same coin, y’know? Like those political spectrum diagrams, the one that looks like a circle, with Stalinism and Nazism right next to each other. Two extremes that lead to the same place. Maybe those monks are on to something after all.”
“So you fight?” Alden practically shouted, his voice incredulous. “How does that make sense?”
Lucas didn’t seem abashed at all. Instead, he gave a resigned sigh.
“I told you it sounds stupid. But trust me it makes sense. When I’m fighting, I can’t afford to feel. Emotion makes you stupid, makes you do stupid things. To win a fight you have to switch everything off and just let your body do what you’ve trained it to do. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m getting closer.”
Alden decided to try a different tack and speak to Lucas in his own language. If he pretended to take him seriously, he might have a better shot.
“Maybe you’re going about it the wrong way. I mean going back to your surfing analogy..”
“Windsurfing.”
“Yeah, whatever. Anyway, the point is that that ‘balance’ you were on about isn’t natural. You have to fight for it, you can’t just stop working or that wave will crush you, right?”
“Ok.”
“So even now, you’re still fighting. You’re actively trying to get that feeling back by going at it from the other extreme. Except, the fact that you’re still working for it means it’s
not the other extreme. Maybe, if you really want to approach it from the other side, you have to stop fighting. And I don’t just mean that literally, I mean stop working for it. Maybe you just need to surrender and let life do its thing.”
Lucas let his head slowly drop.
“…you could be on to something there,” he barely whispered.
“So let life do its thing. Surrender. Come back with me, if only because there’s no way I’ll be able to explain this to Jessica. She needs to hear it from you.”
Lucas glanced up at Alden. His eyes were wide and full of confusion. Alden allowed himself to hope. Maybe Lucas had been convinced. Maybe he could heal and take back his old life.
Suddenly, Lucas climbed to his feet.
“I won’t be going back. You might as well ask a butterfly to go back to crawling on the ground.”
He glanced down at his watch.
“I’m up in twenty minutes. I need to start getting ready. You need to leave now, Alden. I appreciate you coming, but it didn’t work. It can’t work. I don’t want to see you again.”
Alden opened his mouth to make one more impassioned argument, but decided against it. With a sigh, he turned on his former friend and stepped out into the corridor. He glanced over his shoulder but Lucas had started to pound out a rhythm on a jump-rope, his back to the door. He didn’t even bother to look back.
