The Pain of Knowing You

The white candle wax drips bit by bit onto the oaken floor. My hands are cold, and I tuck them into the sleeves of my sweater. But so are my lips, dry and purple with chill, and my flesh is dotted with goosebumps. This is how it always starts. 

Every night is like the first - gloomy and mysterious until he shows up. Except this night. For some reason, I have no idea how it will go, although I’ve lived it a thousand times. My heart beats wildly inside my chest in anticipation of the unknown. My neck feels hot like someone is breathing on it, but when I turn around, no one is there. I keep seeing things move in the corner of my eye. I am constantly on edge.

The room is dark except for the dancing flame from the thick candle that creates moving shadows on the wall. Below my feet, I hear the muffled, melancholic sound of “Clair de Lune” playing eerily on a piano from another room. I don’t know where I am or if anybody even knows I’m here. All I know is that I went to sleep and I woke up in this freezing cold room.

The music stops abruptly. My heart beats hard and rapidly as heavy footsteps like that of a giant approach me - boom, boom - closer and closer, like the sound of impending doom. But the figure that appears is small and lanky, nearly shorter than me. Their hair is short, and I can see the suggestion of tiny curls in the shadows of the candlelight. I can’t see their face - only feel their presence.

“You made it,” a low, melodious voice says from the doorway. His voice hits me as a bout of warm nostalgia - like melted caramel or dewdrops falling off a flower petal after it rains. “I missed you.”

“Missed me?” I ask, confused. I have never seen this man before in my life. But somehow, I have the odd feeling like I have. I just can’t quite put my finger on how.

He steps out into the range of the candlelight so that I can see his fearfulness. His eyes, black as midnight, are wide and deep, as if they hold a thousand secrets. “It’s already happening, isn’t it?”

I stare at him, squinting. “What do you mean? What’s happening?”

“You’re dreaming,” he says seriously. When he notices my bewildered expression, he continues, “You’ve dreamt of me every night for years. And every night we fall in love a little bit more, and every night we feel the pain of letting each other go.”

I stop breathing for a moment, the hair on my back prickling down my spine.

“I always knew this would happen but . . .” he trails off. He looks away, but I know there is pain written behind those sullen eyes. “I just didn’t know it would happen tonight. It’s too soon. Too soon!”

“I-I don’t understand. What’s going on? Why can’t I remember?”

He punches a part of the wall where the light doesn’t reach. “You’re moving on. Even recurring dreams end eventually. Nothing lasts forever.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and shakes his head, letting a drawn-out sigh escape his lips. “Gotta learn that the hard way, huh?”

Now he paces back and forth across the darkness and as he passes, I catch a whiff of a familiar aroma like a mixture of charcoal and pinewood. My breath catches in my throat as I begin to remember who he is - but in brief flashes, so fleeting it’s hard to catch them. I remember, vaguely, being held tightly to his chest and inhaling that scent, and I melt at the thought. I remember him.

“You remember,” he says before I have a chance to say so myself. “I can see it in your eyes.”

I nod. I don’t even have to move a muscle before he’s on me, gathering me to his chest and wrapping me in a warm embrace. I feel safe and serene in his arms. I breathe in his essence once more - charcoal and pinewood. It feels like home, and I never want to leave.

“I don’t want to forget. Maybe I’m not ready to move on,” I tell him.

He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and lifts my chin up slightly to plant a soft kiss on my lips, raising goosebumps on my skin once more. “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be forgetting.”

“It’s not my fault! I would stay here forever if I could.”

“If you could. But you can’t.”

I cross my arms and pout. It feels childish, but I don’t care. “Why not? Who’s in charge?”

“The Fade. It comes to all recurring dream characters sooner or later. It’s how dreams work, and there’s nothing you or I can do.”

He pulls away to stare at his hands. A flicker of something passes through him like static on an old-fashioned TV screen. “Can you feel it?” he asks, his voice quivering.

“Feel what?”

“Me slipping away.”

“Please,” I beg, hugging him again. “Don’t talk about it. I want to savor this moment for all that it lasts.”

“Why pretend? It’s inevitable.”

I look at him, and his face is hard to read all of a sudden. “It sounds like you don’t really care.”

He shakes his head, an incredulous breath of air escaping his lungs. “I care about you more than I care about the end of the world. Because when you leave, my love, my world is already over.”

“No. You won’t be over.”

“You have a life of your own when you wake up. But me? I live only for you. And when you’re gone, what will I do? Where will I go?” He stopped to ponder this for a moment. “I’ll cease to exist, I think.”

“You’ll live forever. I’ll never let you die. I made you up.”

He grasps my shoulders tightly, staring straight and stern-like into my eyes. “Look at it this way. When I’m gone, and all I am to you is a distant memory, you can have other dreams. Maybe you’ll meet someone else.”

“I don’t want other dreams. I want you.”

The feeling of him slipping away is getting stronger. I can feel my physical body trying to wake up, but I resist. 

“I think I get it now,” he whispers. “Love, my dear, is our greatest foe. For some, it makes dreams die, and for others, it makes dreams live. Your dream is loving me. But now it’s my love for you that is making that dream die.”

“But that makes no sense at all. Wouldn’t our love conquer all?”

“We weren’t supposed to fall in love. Maybe you would feel for me, but I wasn’t supposed to feel the same for you. I’m just a guy in your dream. I’m not real. I shouldn’t be able to feel anything.” He takes my hands and places them on the spot above his heart, which beats quickly and deeply. “But I . . . I do. I don’t know how, but . . . it’s like this feeling deep in my chest, like a void that can’t be filled. My heart. It hurts so bad, until you fall asleep and you’re here again.”

“I think that’s why it came so soon," he continues. "Maybe you really aren’t ready to move on. Maybe it was me.”

He looks at me with sorrow in his eyes, and I lean in to kiss him passionately on the mouth. I couldn’t care less who did what at this point.

When we part, we look down to see that his hands have already begun to fade away, and my eyes grow wide with terror. I try to grab his hands, but they’re already gone. The Fade is moving quickly now, up his arms and toward his shoulders. Reality sinks in, and I realize I’ll never again feel his hands on me, caressing my face or pulling me closer. Suddenly, I can’t hold it in any longer, and my face feels hot as I begin to sob uncontrollably.

“Please don’t cry. I love you. I’ll always love you,” he says, and he makes a move to comfort me, but he’s forgotten that his hands are gone. I hear him sniff, and I know he’s trying to stay strong for me. “Who knows? Maybe when you’re an old lady, you’ll come back. And I’ll be here - somewhere. You can dream of me as an old man, and it’ll be like we grew old together.”

My crying is so loud now I can hardly hear myself think. “I love you,” I say between sobs. “I will never forget you.”

He hears me, and he smiles, even as he vanishes into thin air. I know he believes me. I watch as every last inch of him disappears until only a pale glowing light is left, and soon that dissolves away, too. Nothing lasts forever.

I awoke that morning with a dull ache in my chest and my eyes swollen as if I had cried myself to sleep. That day was rough, and so were the months that came after. I think of you in everything I do or say. When will it get easier? I don’t know. But for now, the thought of you, at least, is keeping me sane, and the hope of somehow seeing you again. Someday.

I told you I will never forget you, and I intend to keep that promise. Even when I’m an old lady like you said, and the skin on my face is wrinkled and aged, I will still remember your eyes like pools of midnight. It hurts to know I’ll never hear the secrets hidden in their depths. But I will remember the scent of charcoal and pinewood on your clothes, and the warmth of your body against mine, and I'll never not feel homesick whenever I’m near a campfire or candlelight. But most of all, I will always remember the pain of knowing you, and somehow, that is the greatest gift you could have ever given me.