Timothy Benjamin

Timothy Benjamin is an average guy and does average things.

He is the kind of guy you would stumble upon in the street and think to yourself that he reminds you of somebody. And then you would completely forget his face ten minutes later.

He has one of those faces that easily dissolve in a crowd. That you would look at but never really see.

And when people actually do notice him, it’s because he reminds them of other people.

He wasn’t handsome. But he wasn’t not handsome either. He was just average.

That kind of guy that no one can imagine as a main character in any story.

Not even his own. 

He was always somebody’s something.

Someone from the circle of people whose existence would never affect the storyline. 

But when I think of Timothy ,I picture him as anything but average.

And if he will ever get to play a main role in anyone’s story; it would definitely be mine.

Timothy was the plot twist I never saw was coming.

He barged in my dull-life like a wild storm and blew everything upside down.

And then, he disappeared. 

Because that’s what storms do. They cause damage far beyond- repair and then they leave.

Only, even after the storm has died and the heavy silence reclaimed my life, the sky never cleared and the sun never rose again.

Now, and 6 months after he dumped me, my heart still feels like a city of lost souls.

Like a graveyard for all the stupid memories that chased me like ghosts.

I loathed Timothy.

I would sit everyday on top of the wreckage that is my life now and think to myself that I will never be able to rebuild again.

And I loathed him for that.

For so long, I spent days and nights, looking for ways to cause him as much pain as he did to me.

Plotting for scenarios that all ended up with his insides spilled down on the street. For cars to run over. And wild birds to feed upon.

But now, as the rage that boiled in my insides started to settle, I started to experience a new kind of sadness. A new kind of pain.

Some days, It feels as if someone has opened a hidden siphon inside of me, letting all the emotions seep out and turning me into this empty hollowed-out shell. That looks just like a human. But isn’t exactly one.

I’m not quite sure what I am anymore.

Something ugly and dead inside.

I hated this new me. Even slightly more than I hated Timothy.

This new version of me, spent the most of her days slouched on her couch, drinking gallons of coke and feeding upon buckets of cheep chocolate ice cream she bought from the store across the street.

And on the times she isn’t binge eating or drinking or weeping, she would be thinking about Timothy. And how above average he was.

Timothy Benjamin is an asshole.

But he is inevitable.

For the whole 6 months that followed our break up, I felt as if I was stuck in a closed circle.

And no matter how fast I ran away from him I ended up thinking about him.

That asshole and his sharp jaw line that curved just at the right angle.

The day he dumped me, marked our five year anniversary. 

And as if breaking up with me wasn’t already enough pain, Timothy decided to do it on the day I was expecting him to ask my hand for marriage.

So you can only imagine the way my face dropped down when the wrong words spilled out his mouth.

He took me out for dinner to that fancy restaurant and after eating our food in silence, he flashed me one of those looks of his, when the soft warm chocolate of his eyes would spill right into my soul and instinctively, I started nodding my head till it almost fell off my shoulders because Yes I wanted to marry you Timothy Benjamin. And Hell yes I wanted to spend the remaining days of my life with you.

And then, just as I was preparing to stretch my arm over the table for him to slide our engagement ring into my bare finger, Timothy dropped the bomb.

And my whole world fell into pieces.

He said something about me being a handful. About him getting tired. Timothy Benjamin said a lot of things only I could not follow anymore.

I stared at him. At the way his lips moved fast. At the expression of sadness that veiled his handsome face. 

And I thought silently to myself “Damn girl , this guy is an asshole”.

It was deep in august, when days blended into one another and time lost completely every meaning.

The air was heavy and dump, as I lied on my couch chewing over a cold slice of pizza and binge watching grey’s anatomy for the third time.

It was weird the way feelings work. The way sadness settles deep into your bones , the way it weighs down your body and anchors you to the ground.

But I tried to oppress the thought and shove it back into the tiny box in my brain where I’ve been keeping off-limit things.

On the bad days, when the memories fight against their latch and break free from their forbidden corner in my mind, I’m almost left paralyzed.

But today, was one of the good days. When sadness was reduced to a quiet whisper in my bones.

Three angry knocks on the entrance door, stole me from my thoughts.

I already knew to whom they belonged.

Alison, my sister, have been calling restlessly on my phone for the past 3 hours.

I fired up the volume of the TV, drowning away the persistent knocks on the door.

I had no strength in me to engage in a conversation with her. Let alone now, that she was angry.

After a while, when the blasting of the TV in the room wasn’t quite enough to silence the pounding on the door, I rose reluctantly on my feet to answer her call.

Alison was stubborn and I knew she wouldn’t give up even if it meant her breaking the door and barging in.

“Where the hell have you been all day?”

She sprang inside the minute I opened the door. A million angry fires were igniting behind her wide blue eyes.

“Just lying here”

I tried to flash her my most elaborate smile, in the hopes to convince her that there was nothing here for her to worry about.

But apparently I failed.

Alison released a heavy sigh, her anger seeping out and by the time she gulped in a new deep breath of air, a sad emotion started curling down the corners of her lips.

 She was worried about me.

And I hated it when I was the reason behind her sadness.

But maybe Alison was just another collateral damage of Timothy Benjamin.

Who would’ve known?

“You’re coming with me” She decided out of the blue.

“Sorry, but..umm...I have this thing I’m currently working on...I can’t now..”

But I should’ve known better than to think that Alison would buy the lie I’ve been restlessly feeding everyone around me for the past months.

“Grey’s anatomy and expired junk food? That’s the thing you’re working on? Killing yourself ?”

It’s not as if the thought didn’t actually cross my mind on the worst days. But on those days, I was so numb to even attempt to do something.

She dragged me to my room for me to change into new clothes that smelled less of food and dump sweat and I let her do it.

I didn’t have the energy to object. And anyways, it would need more than some energy to convince Alison.

It took me a while to get ready. It was so long since I embraced the world beyond my entrance door that I forgot the drill.

But apart from my matted greasy hair and my color drained face, I was quiet happy with the result.

“Come on” Alison said when I emerged from behind my bathroom door. “We’re getting late”

“Where are you taking me?” I inquired when we were on our way to her car.

“You’ll see when we get there” She contented on saying.

The drive was silent, for my great relief and appreciation.

Alison didn’t ask any questions and I didn’t have to come up with reassuring fake answers.

Because as much I hated lying to her, I hated making her worry about me even slightly more.

She pulled off in front of an old house standing alone in a narrow alley that itched its way deep in one of the town’s long forgotten neighborhoods.

As I followed her across the alley, a heavy dump smell of rotten milk and death hang in the air.

“Why are we here Alison?”

She didn’t turn around when she answered me and kept carefully making her ways around the small crevasses scattered on the dirt road.

 “To make you feel better”

“Yeah right”.

I rolled my eyes, but of course she didn’t see it.

Up close, the naked brick walls of the old house were almost crumbling on themselves, hanging tall just by the pure power of will.

It felt that the slightest whisper of wind will send the whole thing collapsing down on the floor.

Different forms of Moss were beginning to take back the wood of the entrance door. Vines springing in the cracks and slithering along the dump wood and onto the concrete walls to plunge back into the dirt floor like green snakes.

And I thought to myself, that the thing looked more like a mouth of a cave rather than an entrance to a house.

 I wondered whether there were people living inside beside rats and ghosts.

Before either of us had the guts to knock and acknowledge our –regrettable-presence, the door groaned into an open, and an old lady with a sour-face appeared.

Her black beady eyes wandered for a moment past us making sure we were alone, before her scratchy voice filled the silence.

“Were you followed?”

Alison jerked her head.

And the lady’s skeptical eyes scanned us for a second, before her hand eased over the door handle.

“Get in then” she ordered then she turned and disappeared into the doorway.

“Alice!” I whispered when the frightening lady was out of earshot, entangling my trembling hand around Alison’s elbow , dragging her back.

“We’re not actually getting in!”

“Trust me for this one Ash..it’s completely fine”

Her hand squeezed gently mine.

Alison was 3 years older than me and I’ve always trusted her with everything. But this time, it seemed like I was going to regret it.

Inside, the house was as well lit as a coffin and the air felt heavy and thick.

We waved our way through a rectangular room, whose bottom wall was covered floor to ceiling with shelves of jars filled with what seemed to me, as different body parts of animals suspended in a thick liquid.

I prayed silently in my heart for us not to end up in one of the jars decorating this lady’s walls.

The bare solid concrete floor was covered in a thin layer of dust that awakened like ghosts at every step.

When we made it to the far bottom of the threshold, the lady nudged us in, through a narrow door to a dark room lit only by the smallest hints of daylight peaking through a window sealed shut.

She sat on an armchair before a small round table centered with a big bowl filled with what looked like ash and then ushered us to sit across from her on two small wooden chairs.

“Poor little thing” She addressed, looking at me “Did he do all of that to you?”

Then she stretched her arm across the table and ran bony witch-like fingers over my cheek.

I shivered under her cold touch, still not quiet fathoming what she meant.

I threw a glance at Alison sitting by my side, back straight and tall against the wooden chair.

She smiled at me. A small, reassuring thing that reached only her eyes. Her lips were still pursed into a tight line.

“Did you get me what I asked for?”

The lady’s voice tore the silence. As sharp as a dagger.

Alison nodded her head and produced from her purse a little folded newspaper page that she infolded carefully.

And it wasn’t till my eyes fell on the thin dark hair lock the color of coal, that I started to see the direction all of this was taking.

It was Timothy’s hair. 

I would still recognize that ungrateful’s hair even with my eyes shut.

My heart fell somewhere between my knees at the ascertainment.

“Is that what I think it is?” I snapped at her, forgetting for a fraction of a second about the frightening lady studying us carefully from across the table.

“Ashley, please...” Alison started before that the witch silenced her.

“Enough” she groaned, her voice bouncing off the walls of the small room before exploding in our ears.

I tried my best not to give too much thought about the way Alison procured that hair.

I’ve always known that she was a superstitious person, but I’ve never imagined she would take it this far.

“Now, darling, you will have to believe in the process for it to actually work”

The lady reached and plucked one hair from my head and I winced in surprise.

“The fire will heal your heart. The fire will stitch your wounds. The fire will erase the names of those who hurt you the most. The fire will purge your soul from all the damage that’s been done.”

She clasped the hairs in her bony hand and closed her eyes, her lips muttering some words to the bowl of ash.

Then in one sudden move, she tossed the hairs inside and an orange avid flame rose snatching them even before they landed on the ash.

“The fire has accepted you my child ” She announced, as if I’ve passed some sort of test.

Alison's eyes lit up and she muttered some words of gratitude to the lady. And I rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of the situation.

“Will she be fine?” Alice asked in a small hopeful voice, once finished thanking her.

“Once stepping out these blessed doors, she won’t even remember his name.”

Alison’s face lit up again and she flooded her with yet more words of gratitude and a generous amount of money.

On our drive home, the air felt lighter as the sun was making its descent behind the horizon line in a swirl of soft oranges and reds.

The fiest of colors tinting the sky, made flowers blossom in my chest and butterflies flutter in my stomach.

Alison kept silent but I could feel her checking on me from the corner of her eyes, as I rolled down the window glass.

The summer breeze of late evening blasted inside, refreshing and alive.

And I closed my eyes for a moment to savor its touch against my skin.

“ Can you please let me walk my way home?” I asked when the car slid closer to my neighborhood.

“Are you sure ?” 

Her face creased in concern.

“You don’t...You don’t feel like yourself”

“ Come on the weather is good. It would be a waste to go home now and leave all of this.”

She lifted one eyebrow in surprise.

It wasn’t till she made me swear on the seven skies that I will call her if anything happened, that Alison pulled up the car and let me out.

It was weird how light my body felt, as if I was ready to float in the air.

I made my way slowly down the street leading to my apartment building, breathing in the fresh summer breeze and letting it toss gently my hair locks.

“Good evening”

A shy, hesitant voice stole me from the bubble of haziness I was floating inside.

 I turned around to face him.

It was a man, with wide brown eyes the color of honey.

 His coal curls were so black, they glinted in the afternoon setting sun.

 And his  sharp jaw line curved just at the right angle.

He was handsome in so many ways, I thought silently to myself.

“Is there anything I can help you with?”

I offered as he got closer, crushing in the distance between us.

But as he approached, his face felt familiar somehow.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” 

 “I guess you do”

He smiled. A side smile  that played on the strings of my heart.

And suddenly something was pulling at me and electrifying the air between us.

“May I know who are you?”

He raised one eyebrow in astonishment. As if it was a question I wasn’t supposed to ask.

“Timothy....Timothy Benjamin”

He answered a little concerned.

Timothy Benjamin.

The name had a sweet ring to it.

And I knew instantly.

I was falling in love.