Darkness to Light

Stanley grimaced as the Whiskey burned down his throat in an agonizing but pleasant way. Shouldn’t he be used to the sensation by now? He couldn’t remember how many drinks he already had. The barman was quick in taking away his empty glasses and replacing them with full ones. If only life would work that way too, he thought bitterly. Replacing everything that’s gone with something new.

He had lost everything. First his wife, his kid, and now his job. And no replacement in sight. 

The empty glass clanked on the sticky counter. He caught the barman's eyes and saw the hesitation. Should he give the lonely fucker at the end of the bar another one? After all, it was only early afternoon, but a few minutes later another glass appeared before him. 

His hands were still steady when he picked it up. After his boss (ex-boss now) had told the news about the layoffs he had been shaking, barely able to walk out of the shabby office. His mind had stopped working for a while until he found himself inside the pub on his usual barstool at the far corner, with an unobstructed view of the TV. The tremors had stopped in the familiar surroundings, now he only felt numb. 

His eyes moved to the TV screen hanging on the wall to the left where he usually watched rugby or football. It was showing the news at this time of the day. Something about an eclipse, he figured. There were scientific-looking pictures of the sun, the moon, and the earth. The sound was off, so we couldn’t hear what was said. Probably for the best, he thought. He didn’t give a damn shit about some astronomical phenomenon. Why should he? The universe didn’t give a shit about him either.

Only now did he notice that the pub had started to fill. Voices of people filtered into his addled mind, laughter, and shouts and greetings. The noises all washed over him like water over a stone. He focused on the brown liquid in front of him instead, drowning in his misery.

“This seat’s taken?” A young woman appeared next to him. She was tall, about his daughter’s age (around 18 or so) dressed all in black with spiky black hair tipped in pink and blue. 

She looked at him expectantly until he nodded, indicating that the barstool was free. He assumed she would take it to her group of friends, but to his surprise, she sat down right there next to him.

“You’re here for the eclipse?” she asked, clearly not noticing that he was not in the mood to talk. He just shook his head and kept staring morosely into his glass. 

“What are you drinking?”

“Whiskey”, he murmured.

“Any good?” 

He let out a low grunt, still not looking at her. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? 

When the barman came over, she ordered the same as him.

“This is good shit,” she said after she’d taken her first sip. “You’ve got good taste, old man.”

He couldn’t help but look up at her this time.

Something in his expression made her laugh.

“You look like you haven’t talked to a human being before.” 

Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t talked to anyone all afternoon after his life had officially ended. 

“Is there anything I can help you with?” The words were out before he could stop them. Even at his lowest point, he was still polite. He fucking hated it. 

“Nah, I’m good,” the girl said, sipping the Whiskey, and looking around the room merrily. Stanley felt like he was set up by someone. He surreptitiously glanced around the room, but no one paid him any attention. That didn’t come as a surprise. No one ever paid him any attention. 

“I just thought you could use some company”, the girl said, breaking the silence. “Saw you sitting here alone, and I thought, I’m alone, too, so maybe, you know, we could be alone together? I know it sounds a bit crazy.” She let out a nervous laugh and started to play with one of her earrings, which looked like a small planet. She was a very peculiar girl, Stanley thought. 

Suddenly her eyes widened. “I’m not here hitting on you or anything.” The words rushed out of her mouth too fast and were accompanied by waving hands. “I just don’t like, you know, drinking alone… in a pub. So, I just thought I’d come over and…” She trailed off, looking apologetically and taking another sip of her drink.

“I’m sorry,” Stanley said, which was the only thing that came to his mind at that moment. 

“Sorry for what?” she asked. 

“I don’t know,” he said. And it was true. It was a habit. He always seemed to be sorry for everything but rarely knew why. 

“You’re funny, old man.”

“I’m not old,” he muttered with less indignation than he thought he should have. But he felt old. Old and tired. 

“Well, you’re older than me,” she observed and despite himself, he caught himself smiling. For the first time this day. Heck, probably for the first time in weeks. He didn’t even know his facial muscles still remembered the motion.

“Can’t argue with that,” he said. 

He felt her eyes on him, and the anxiety of social interaction flooded his system. He felt his hands get clammy, his left leg began its usual rhythmic bounce and his breaths shortened. He was not good at talking to people and small take made him nervous. 

“Soooo.” She drawled out the word to three syllables. “If you’re not here for the eclipse, why are you here?”

“Just having an after-work drink.”

“Bad day at work, huh?” She seemed to pick up on some things.

“You can say that. I’ve just been fired.” 

It was the first time he was voicing this occurrence out loud. To his surprise, just saying these three words felt somehow freeing. His admission of failure was now out in the world, not just in his head anymore. He had let the truth lose into the universe, floating around like a particle in the vast cosmos of life, and just for a moment it felt like a weight had lifted from his shoulders. Until reality crushed down on him again and dragged him under.

“Oh shit,” the girl said, sounding genuinely sorry. “That must be tough.”

He couldn’t understand why a stranger would be upset about his fucking messed-up life. No one else seemed to care. Not his wife or his kid. Definitely not his boss or colleagues. 

But it felt good. To have someone care, even if she was a stranger. 

“How long have you been working for them?”

“20 years.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, shit.” He drowned his Whiskey and revelled again at the sharp tang burning down his throat and settling in his churning stomach.

“What happened?”

“The usual bullshit,” he said. “Economic pressure, rising costs, cost reductions. Blah blah blah.”

“I see,” the girls said, sounding pensive. 

“The way I see it,” she said, while he motioned for the barman for another drink. “Your situation is like the eclipse.”

At these words he looked at her, curious despite himself.

“Here me out. The darkness is only temporary. Right now, this event - your unemployment - is the moon that’s blocking the sun which is all the good things in your life. So right now, you feel cold and numb. But you can still see the light at the edges, right? And as the moon passes on, the darkness recedes, and the light returns and with it all the warm and happy feelings.” 

When he still didn’t say anything, she continued: “It’s a cycle. Bad things happen all the fucking time and they cast a shadow over your life so you can’t see the good things that also make up our lives. But these bad occurrences never stay. You push them along until they make space for brighter things again.”

He could see some flaws in her theory, even in his addled mind, but for what it was worth it sounded better than his own miserable thoughts. 

“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re studying philosophy?”

“Astrophysics.” 

He barked out a laugh that surprised him. “You’re not what I expected.”

“I hear that a lot.” Her easy grin was infectious and lightened the mood around him a fraction. 

She drowned the rest of her Whiskey in one gulp, impressing him by keeping a straight face, and stood up. He felt a pang of sorrow at seeing her leave. He didn’t even know her name and still, he could already feel her absence as another void inside him, feeding the emptiness that felt as vast as space, expanding with every minute. 

“It’s time,” she said, waiting. Waiting for him, he realized in surprise.

“Time for what?”

“The eclipse, of course, old man.” She laughed and took him by the elbow to drag him outside, where most people had already congregated to watch the cosmic conversion. 

The girl fished two cheap-looking paper glasses covered by a dark film out of her tote bag. The bag was sprinkled with pins of obscure band names Stanley had never heard of, but his daughter was probably listening to. He missed his daughter. He wondered if she missed him, too. Probably not, he thought disparagingly. After the divorce, they hadn’t had much contact and then she had moved to the other side of the country to go to college. 

 “Hey,” the girl’s voice pulled him out of his reverie. For a moment he had forgotten where he was and was startled by the offered glasses.

“You have to wear these”, she said gently. “Otherwise, you can’t watch the miracle.”

He took the glasses and put them on his nose, the world immediately darkening before his eyes. That must be how his insides looked like right now, he thought. 

“Don’t forget to take them off again during the totality”, he heard the girl say next to him.

“The what?”

“When the moon covers the sun completely. It’s the best part.”

“OK”

They stood silently as they watched the dark shape of the moon creep across the bright star of the sun, blocking out the light.

He forgot to breathe for a moment. 

It was beautiful. 

One of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen. And to think he had almost missed it because he was drowning himself in alcohol inside a pub. It would have been a shame.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” the girl exclaimed.

“It’s incredible.”

“To imagine that we’re part of this vast universe, floating on this tiny rock and looking up at other stars. It always makes me appreciate human life so much more.”

He felt tears roll down his cheek and he let them. The girl was right. Everything that had happened in his life was like this eclipse. He was walking around his life wearing dark-tinted glasses, afraid to look at the sun. It was time to take them off and face the darkness head-on. Confront his unresolved issues and push the darkness onward. Only then could he move past it and find the light again.

The eclipse wasn’t the end of the world. Just because it got dark for a few minutes, didn’t mean the light was never going to come back. It was still there, just hidden, for a few moments in time.

Tomorrow would be another day. His life moved on. Just like Earth, the moon and the sun did. He knew his reasoning was in no way scientifically correct, but who cared? He felt something shifting within him. Maybe this positive feeling would only last a minute, an hour, or a day, but he just had to make himself remember this moment, when there was hope.

He and the girl stayed together during the whole eclipse, not speaking, only witnessing the universe’s spectacle unfolding before them. 

When it was over, he took the glasses off and was momentarily blinded by the brightness of the day and the tears still glistening in his eyes. 

“Thank you”, he said, as he passed the glasses back to the girl.

“Keep them,” she said, smiling at him. “Hopefully these will always remind you of this moment. The moment when the darkness took over and passed again.”

He had the urge to hug her but felt too awkward to do so. He just stood there, clutching the glasses in his hands watching her vanish into the crowds. 

Years later he still sometimes wondered what happened to her. He didn’t even know her name. And still, he would never forget this day when he had decided to take his life into his own hands fight the darkness within him and come back to the light.