three hundred sixty-five days

“Leave,” they told him.

“How long?” he asked.

“A year,” they told him.

He was no idiot. He knew a year was three hundred sixty-five days.

On the first day, he carved a tally mark on the wall of the small, pitiful shack they had built him. It had been a long day. The journey to this strange, distant place, his struggle to light a fire without a match, the realization that he was really, truly alone -- it piled up on a man, weighing down on his shoulders and making his heart work overtime.

He stared at the tally mark, and said aloud to himself, “One. Three hundred sixty-four more to go.” He hadn’t realized just how big three hundred sixty-five was.

After the first seven tally marks -- days, as he stopped calling them after staying out after dark until the sun came out and sleeping in until it was dark again -- he started to realize that three hundred sixty-five tally marks was a lot of tally marks.

After about twenty tally marks, he looked at the four scores on his wall and decided he would need a bigger space if he wanted to keep track of the days.

After about a hundred tally marks, he started carving them on cave walls instead.

He considered not keeping track of the days of all. He considered forgetting about the tally marks, putting in the work and building himself a new, not pitiful home somewhere else. He considered making a new life for himself. He didn’t need them.

How foolish he was.

He saw them everywhere -- constantly wavering on the edge of his vision like ghosts. Sometimes they screamed and shouted. They told him he was a coward. They told him he was an idiot. They told him they hated him, and the world was better off forgetting him. After a hundred thirty tally marks, he started to smile at the insults. It was better than the silence that constantly surrounded him. It was better than solitude.

Sometimes, they were silent. He saw their blurry faces creased in disappointment and anger and hate. Those hurt more than the screams, somehow. He wondered why.

On a hundred seventy-two tally marks, he came across a falcon. It looked at him with black, beady eyes, and somehow, it felt like the greatest kindness he had ever experienced. (Had he ever experienced kindness before? He must have. He had a life before the tally marks, didn’t he? He had a hard time remembering.) He offered an arm to the falcon, and it flew down from its tree to land on him. His other arm stretched out to stroke its feathers, and it nuzzled into him.

(When was the last time he had been touched? Was it really the first time in his entire life experiencing touch?)

He named the falcon, but only in his head. He didn’t talk anymore. He was sure he could -- when he woke up at the sun’s height after a nightmare, he screamed. He cried. He felt something in his throat.

Maybe it was nothing.

On a hundred eighty tally marks, the falcon flew high in the sky, searching for prey. It scanned the area, sharp vision aiding it in its hunt. It spotted a small, lonesome bird perched on the forest floor. It dove, but the small bird rose up to meet it, no longer lonesome. The small birds tore the falcon to shreds.

His eyes burned. He must have sat too close to the campfire the other night.

On tally mark two hundred, he found an abandoned village. He had never seen people near him before. He tried to find out when it was abandoned, but the evidence seemed to suggest the people had left only a tally mark or two earlier. That couldn’t be true. He stole a sword he found in the blacksmith’s shop, a sword that had never seen the light of day, let alone the heat of battle.

Had he felt the heat of battle? Had he ever even felt the heat of the forge?

After tally mark two hundred, he began to wonder if he was real.

On tally mark two hundred and fifty, he slept, and he dreamed. It was a good dream, one that emulated long-forgotten memories and emotions. The ghosts that constantly haunted him were dead no longer, and they smiled at him. They laughed at him -- no, with him. He finally knew what it was like to smile back.

Then he woke up, and the memories began to fade.

“No,” he said. His voice was raw. Raspy. Painful. His tongue felt solid and heavy. “No, no, no.”

He couldn’t remember how to say anything else. No matter what words he thought of, his mouth was incapable of forming any other shape.

“No.”

He missed them. He didn’t know what he missed, but he felt that sense of longing nonetheless.

The tally marks filled the cave wall like ancient paintings, spreading up and over the rocks until they surrounded him. When he slept, they watched him, and when he woke, he saw them spinning and waving, like water.

He carved tally marks into the wall over and over again. The tally marks were the only constant he had left -- the only memory of his old life, the only sign that three hundred sixty-five days were almost over.

He stopped counting the tally marks, but continued carving them anyway.

When he no longer knew what tally mark he was on and no longer knew how far away freedom was, he started to count again.

Three hundred sixty tally marks.

He carved “IT’S ALMOST OVER” onto the wall. Then he carved a smile, because it was all he knew how to make other than tally marks.

He went to bed on the night sixty-fourth tally mark and woke up the morning of what should have been the sixty-fifth.

At first, he didn’t want to carve the last tally mark. He woke at dawn and watched as the sun rose. He waited, and waited, and when no one had appeared to take him back by the afternoon, he walked down to the cave. He had time to carve the last tally mark. One last tally mark before he was free.

He went down to the cave, but as soon as he stepped inside, he froze. Tally marks no longer covered the walls and ceiling of the cave. It was smooth and empty, apart from the words he carved on the wall what he thought had been five tally marks ago.

IT’S ALMOST OVER.

The smile remained next to the words.

A single tally mark was carved into the wall below.

“No,” he hissed. He hadn’t spoken since his dream. “No, no, no, no.”

He collapsed next to the wall, his knees drawing up and his eyes closing.

He woke up the next morning and carved the second tally mark.