Ghost of the Sun

Have you ever thought about the windows on a train. How essential they are. Think about it; travel by railway would have no association with romance if someone went and sealed them all up. No world to watch go by. Just a sealed carrier binding its inhabitants with mission rather than adventure; a landing craft to burst open at the station and unleash dull, grey hell on unsuspecting cities.

Yet tonight I would have given anything to board them over as though the guard had announced the next stop would be the zombie apocalypse. I was making the journey I made every day, the return leg of my commute, only this time I was pregnant with a fragile resolve. I was going to tell my husband that I didn't love him anymore. That our marriage was over. And that there was indeed someone else. 

Self-loathing crawled through me from stomach to skin. The last thing I wanted was to be in my own company, yet I was trapped with my doppelganger. She sat next to me, reflected in the darkness outside the window, mirroring my every insufferable movement.

The full moon was the only light my eyes could latch onto for relief, otherwise they were drawn to stare into themselves, bottomless wells of ugly malice, hungry for my torture. Dark clouds had colluded to obscure my escape for the last ten minutes, and my cheeks were streaked with tears by the time my ghostly angel finally reappeared. 

By its merciful light, my head was allowed to run a modicum more clearly. I could see my transgressions through the lens of our naïve and doomed marriage. Mismatched desires carried forward by duty and expectation rather than what I could now identify as love. I had made mistakes, and those mistakes would hurt him, but was it truly possible to sever a marriage with surgical precision? Was it not destined to be messy? 

I would have loved to identify my feelings early, to know them like I knew the taste of coffee, to calmly and dispassionately explain them to Ben and for him to understand. My bag would already be packed, the cab arriving just as there was nothing left to say, whisking me away to the space we would both need. Tonight would not be that way, but at least I could justify the pain I had to inflict.

Yet the clarity I could find in the moonlight was the flakiest of friends. The kind who would cancel plans after you had already been seated at the restaurant. Denial was the much more reliable companion, though it was the one you always regret hanging out with. 

I could feel it sitting next to me, staring at the back of my head expectantly, waiting to be called into action the moment my clarity wavered. Perhaps that was why my reflection in the window looked so detestable; she knew all the things I needed to say, but she also knew I could be persuaded to abandon that conviction, to prevaricate, skirt the truth, and coat with sugar that which needed to be bitter. 

My weakness would hurt Ben more than was necessary. I would bring waves of false hope to rise and fall within him, become an apologetic Poseidon. And I would drown him in those waves slowly, metering out the truth of my betrayals drip by drip, as if letting the water rise slowly past his chin was somehow kinder than harpooning his heart and letting him float atop the totality of my sins.

A blast of white light temporarily outshone my reflection. A station had appeared outside my window. I would have been glad for the distraction had it not meant that my stop would be next. As the train pulled away and returned to speed, I seriously considered riding past my stop and thundering on into the night. Whatever the end of the line looked like it had to be better than here. And if I couldn't avoid hurting Ben then why not spare myself from looking at him while I did it. It would be the coward's way out, I knew that, but was being a coward really any worse than being an assassin? 

It could just be a text. A text would make for a clean execution. He'd hate me for it, for reducing our marriage to handful of characters on a screen, but that hate wasn't without upside. Let him burn all his love for me in big hateful flames, let him burn it all to ashes so that he could rebuild more quickly. There would be no derelict rooms for the next person to remodel. Everything would be theirs to design. 

I felt denial squeeze my thigh and nod in enthusiasm. It could have been something if only the girl in the window hadn't sighed and shaken her head. If I couldn't look at myself now, how long would my sentence be if I couldn't even give Ben the courtesy of attending the break-up of our own marriage. It was no use. I would have to deliver the killing blow in person and try my best to make it quick, clear, and final. Perhaps I would have a chance if the moonlight held. 

My eyes fled back up to my spectral companion as the brakes began to squeal. What was it like up there, miles from anything. Eight billion humans below your barren surface, their trials and sufferings so abstract, so cosmic. Perhaps I didn't need to make a lunar landing to find perspective. Breaking up a marriage was a problem plenty of those eight billion heartbeats would trade for. Did I owe it to them to not make such a hash of it? To not balk and cave to contradiction at the first flash of pain in Ben's eyes. 

I didn't know. If human nature was to be obsessed by other people's problems then maybe humanity wouldn't have any. I could no longer follow a thought to conclusion anyway. The moon was again hidden by cloud, and my train was pulling in. 

I was the sole departure at my stop. A light drizzle had started to fall and I could feel denial's fingers creep across my shoulders along with the raindrops. It was okay, his honey voice whispered, tonight just isn't the right night, don't rush it, there’s no need, what if you belong with Ben, best wait and see for just one weekend more, that’s not too much is it, just one more chance... 

With uncharacteristic fierceness, I snatched up the damn fiend by its lapels, and cast it under the wheels of the departing train. I knew that moment of defiance could never be the end of it. I well knew how the worst in us can survive almost anything. But all I needed to do was outrun that part of me for just a few hours. 

My pace was blistering as I scanned through the barrier and entered the suburban streets that would soon cease to be my home. It needed to be. I could already hear the mangled corpse crawling behind me, feel it snatching for my ankles, trying to slow me down, to make me pause at each mundane landmark of these familiar streets and let sentimentality talk me out of my plan. 

I didn't let it. My footsteps remained brisk and emotionless until I reached to the pathway to my front door. It did almost get me then, my hand quavering indecisively over the handle. I cast my eyes up to that wet and moonless sky in a plea for courage. Alas, my moon would not shine through. I had to settle for what it had left in my imagination; that plucky, battered asteroid that had the daring to fight against the darkness with only the fading ghost of the sun's light as a partner. 

I turned the handle. 

Ben stood in the hallway, his hands wrapped up in the vacuum cleaner power cord. His eyes were earnest, his face lit with a smile inspired by my appearance. I felt denial's arms slide around me, his blade sink deep into my gut. 

I closed my eyes and tried to find a breath, searching for the words I had traced over on the train… silently journeying to the moon and back. 

"Ben, I need to tell you something, and I want you to know these are the hardest words I've ever had to say..."