A Fistful of Water

It had to be perfect.

And what was more perfect than the place where it all began? The place that they had made theirs. A vantage point from which they had imperiously surveyed their birthplace, their birth right and the world beyond. A world that awaited them with open arms. A world that lacked its gods and cried out for them to take their rightful place at its head. This was a place as perfect as they were back then.

And they were gods in those heady days. Their dreams were not the mere dreams of mortal men. They saw beyond that and dared to look upon what could be. Unfettered by the dulling responsibilities of their peers. Not for them was hearth and home. They had dispensed with the illusory comforts of an adoring wife, two children and a slobbering Labrador. Those were anchors and chains that tore at the wings that all men had in their youth, if only they would unfurl them and take that leap of faith that would launch them on their true trajectory.

Richard came to the place early. He dropped the heavy basket down upon the ground and paced the area. Surveying it from every angle. Bending it to his will, but failing in what had been so simple a task once upon a time. His energy was volatile, making of him awkward angles. He grit his teeth against the ache in his head and he tried with all his might to be the person he had once been. A treacherous rage bubbled up within him. Failure to be himself here was not an option. Not now. Particularly not now.

He threw himself down in the grass of the field with the intention of staring up mindlessly at the blue skies above, and bellowing a warning at the heavens. Today he would not be denied. This was his day and let no one stand in his way. No one. But even in this simple intent he was thwarted by a higher power. The sun stared him down and he had to close his eyes in meek submission. Silenced and blinded by a more powerful and constant god. 

Plans in disarray, he sat up and dismissed the notion of plans and his inability to land them. The car wreck of his life was behind him and it would not do to brood upon that. He was here to resurrect dreams, not to discern his future by reading the entrails of the rotting corpse of his past.

All the same, as he gazed down upon the village he had grown up in, he returned to the past. There was little scope to do anything else. This was after all, a place that was stuck in the past and he had returned here in order to reset. His life, as was, was no life at all. He’d launched himself at the welcoming world and too late had found that those arms were not open in welcome, they were instead poised to strike. To smash down. To enfold and crush. The promise of the future had been a dark lie meant to entice him to a painful and ignominious end.

But this place had never been a lie. Richard could see that as much as he had always felt it. This was real. Sitting here atop the hill and looking down at the village. His village. Their village. An undulating patchwork quilt of fields with a slumbering giant’s head poking out and smiling upwards at him. Beyond that bed were tell-tale signs of modern civilisation. The nearest town was a place visited, but never to linger in. Now, as Richard ran his eye along the jagged horizon, he saw it for what it really was; a terrible warning. 

Back then, they’d wanted more. They’d seen that town as an obstacle. A poor facsimile of what waited for them beyond. A symbol of mediocrity encouraging them to strike out and go further. Much further. Charging headlong into a world of wonder that was meant for them and only them.

Richard remembered a wonderful night spent on this hill. One of many. But this night was marked out by the fireworks that sporadically lit the skyline before them. Their own private show. Richard imagined that the world was burning around them and that they were the only two people left to witness its end. He’d carried on imagining this as they tore at each other’s clothes and made love like it was the last act in their short and sweet lives. Perhaps it should have been. Maybe they should have quit while they were ahead.

Was that when it had started to change? Was it then that their paths diverged?

Well, it didn’t have to be like that. Here lay the truth. Their truth. They had been seduced by lies. All they had to do was return to this place and the way it was. The way it was meant to be.

Richard saw him when he was already halfway up the hill. As soon as he saw him, he mourned the loss of his progress. Wondered how he’d missed him until now. Missed him more for that. The sense of loss deepened as he saw the way he moved. There was a weight upon the man that did not belong. A crushing sadness that he could not help but share as he watched his friend trudge towards him.

But this was not his friend. Not as he remembered him. The transformation was shocking. This was a corruption, not only of youth, but of love and of truth. This was not the same man. This revelation pierced Richard’s heart and yet he still ran the last few yards and embraced the only man he had ever truly loved.

That embrace was a betrayal. Richard could not unravel its complexities and he stood there with something in his arms that had ceased to be that which he had known so well and so deeply. He stood stock still, but could not match the stillness of the cold statue in his arms. He thought he’d understood the gravity of the situation before this, but the reality of it overwhelmed him all the same. There was a pause in time as he struggled for something to do, and in that pause he wished that he’d not come here. Too late now. There was no going back. Those words rang in his ears as he loosed his hold on his erstwhile lover.

There was no going back.

“Come! Sit!” he enthused with false jollity, “I have prepared a feast!”

He launched himself at the basket and opened it in the hope that there was a weapon inside that would pierce the armour of the statue that had taken his friend’s place. Patting the place beside him, Richard did his best not to attach meaning to the absence he saw before him. Empty handed had his friend come to his place, but it was his empty heart that was most apparent.

The statue lowered itself on the other side of the basket. A wall of defence that set the dynamic between them. 

“Sandwich?” Richard ventured.

“I’m not hungry,” said the statue in the surly manner of a small child.

Richard smiled indulgently, automatically saying words that made him sound like his own mother, “you’ve got to eat,” he hated himself for those words.

“I’ve already eaten.”

Richard held back the hate he was already feeling. Bit his protesting tongue. Didn’t say the words that would label yet another betrayal; but I told you I was bringing a picnic! We came here to eat!

They hadn’t come here to eat though. They both knew that. They’d come here for the same reason, but with differing motives. To rake over the dying embers of a past they had shared. One to invest more of himself in an attempt to restore the flames that he still held within his heart. The other to piss on the last of the fire so that no one would ever catch even a glimpse of what had been. What he had been.

“Do you remember…” Richard began his attempt at resurrection, but the memory of what had been caught in his throat, and through tear-filled eyes he could see the impossibility of a past that he’d been privileged and lucky to have shared with the man sat apart from him now.

“Do I remember what?” asked that man.

Richard drew in a stuttering and reluctant breath, “any of it?” he sighed, “all of it.”

“I can’t,” said the statue coldly.

Richard turned to look at the statue, but the statue sensing Richard’s gaze, did not reciprocate, “you don’t have to do this,” he said to the side of the man’s head, “there’s still time.”

“Time for what?” asked the statue.

“Us,” Richard poured the tiny word out with all the passion he possessed.

The statue laughed in icy mockery, “there is no us.”

Now Richard was on his feet. A fluid moment that he took no time in considering. An unself-conscious act that brought him eye to eye with the man who had once loved him, “there will always be an us. You can’t erase the past, Jonnie!”

Jonnie looked at Richard for the very first time that evening, “I have to.”

Richard scoffed at that, “what? For her?!”

Jonnie got to his feet, “yes for her!” he paused, running a hand through his hair as he always had during their impassioned exchanges, “and for me. For all of it. Things are different now. Even you.”

Richard shrugged, “but I don’t want to be!”

Those words struck him. They hit harder for the pathetic way he’d whined as he said them. This was where it all went wrong. But it had been a failed venture from the very start. There was no merit in underwriting a future with another’s life. That was a fool’s bargain and the devil himself witnessed the signature on that contract.

Richard deflated. Not defeated, but beaten down all the same, “will you at least have a drink?”

Jonnie looked upon his friend kindly, “yes, why not?”

Richard opened the bottle of Prosecco with a flourish. The cork flew a few yards down the hill. A nod to a ritual they had shared in another life, “oh!” he cried, “it’s a boy!”

Jonnie smiled awkwardly, uncomfortable at this living reminder playing a part that he’d moved on from a long time ago. “Thanks,” he said as Richard handed him a flute filled with glorious bubbles. Happiness in a glass. The bubbles died on his tongue and the chilled liquid warmed and became sour in his mouth. He swallowed it all the same. Forced etiquette. He knew how to force things. That was a habit he’d adopted long ago and perfected since then.

As they drank, they looked down upon the place where it had all started. Elevated, but no longer hope-filled. So much had died since those days and that which survived was uncomfortable with the nature of that survival.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” Richard whispered.

Jonnie turned to look at his friend, wondered what he saw. Respected his right to see something beautiful in a world that had taken so much and given so little, “yes,” he said without meaning.

Richard turned and smiled, and in that smile Jonnie saw the boy he’d grown up with. Something fluttered within his heart and with a force of will he mercilessly crushed it under the bootheel of his conformity.

Richard chose not to notice this. His head was now bowed as he rummaged in the basket, “indulge me in this,” he said as he found what it was that he was looking for.

“OK,” said Jonnie, his curiosity overcoming his reluctance to give this man anything further.  Unwilling to be drawn in. Fighting any hint of manipulation. Fighting himself most of all.

Richard raised an object wrapped in several linen napkins.

“What is it?” asked Jonnie.

“Magic,” grinned Richard.

Jonnie shook his head and mirrored the grin. Forgetting himself and almost finding himself in the moment, “you always were the superstitious one.”

“Sentimental is what you called it,” Richard replied.

“Same thing,” said Jonnie, narrowing his eyes at Richard. A warning. No games. And certainly no traps, “you can’t hold onto the past,” he warned, “that’s like trying to hold onto…water.”

Richard shrugged, ignoring the warning, returned to the object, “what do you think it is?”

Now it was Jonnie’s turn to shrug. He didn’t know, and he did not want to venture a guess. Worried that he was right in that guess. And he was right. Had known it all along. The certainty of magic and the inescapable trap it never failed to lure him into.

Richard unfurled each napkin as though he were a magician, and perhaps he was, because as the napkins fell away, he held a brass lamp.

Jonnie eyed it suspiciously.

“Tell me, Jonnie. What would you wish for?” Richard asked, his eyes boring into his friend. Searching for the truth. The truth they once shared.

“Nothing,” Jonnie said sourly.

Richard shook his head, “now, now, Jonnie. That isn’t how this game is played.”

Jonnie stood up indignantly, not meaning to be so purposeful in that indignation, but it was too late to go back on that now. Always too late. That was the story here, “I’m not going to play your stupid game!”

Richard arose serenely. Matching anger with peace, but under that peace was something hard and dangerous, “you’ve no choice,” he said this as he polished the lamp with the final napkin, “because the genie is out of the bottle.” He eyed Jonnie meaningfully, “always has been.”

A statement of fact as far as Richard was concerned.

A dangerous and dire threat as far as Jonnie was.

Jonnie stared balefully at Richard. His hate wasn’t for this man, but there was nowhere else for it to go. He could not take his feelings out on the source of his pain. That could only lead to ruin. The shattering of his carefully constructed façade and an unsurvivable aftermath.

He wanted…

He wanted with such a power that it would undo him to give into that want. He’d lose everything in a single moment if he succumbed to this man. His head was a storm and his fists clenched and unclenched with each tortured beat of a heart he’d purposefully broken in order to escape who he was, but still he heard his love speak to him, and he heard him well.

“I wish we could stay here forever” Richard breathed the words conspiratorially to the genie in the lamp. The words were a lover’s sigh. They were an echo of a promise made in this place long ago. A promise they had both made, but both failed to uphold.

The problem was that Richard meant it. He would give everything to go back and start again. But Richard was stuck in the past and he had no future. He had nothing to lose. Whereas Jonnie had a new life and a wife-in-waiting. Jonnie had made other promises since, and he had to keep them. He had to. There was no other way and there certainly was no way back.

But the genie was well and truly out of the bottle. 

The truth stood before him.

His truth.

And that truth threatened to undo him. Jonnie couldn’t bear that. Didn’t have the courage to see the destruction through. Had little faith in becoming what he had once been. He had turned his love for this man to hate. He’d had to. He’d had to turn everything around. Invert it. He’d become his own shadow in order to make his life work conspicuously and successfully.

His body was shaking uncontrollably and through all the noise of his thrumming feelings and buzzing thoughts, one word crashed through like a ragged heartbeat…

No.

No!

NO!

As the drum beat grew unbearable, Jonnie launched himself at Richard and once again, they lay in the grass of the meadow that looked down upon their beginning and their end. This time though, as Jonnie clawed and beat at Richard, Richard lay there passively, smiling up at his lover and his best friend. The smile never faltered and the constancy of it broke something within Jonnie. Broke him beyond repair. A dread cold filled him and he became the statue Richard had seen climbing its way up the hill. The life within him ceased and the next moments were not his own. Thoughtlessly, his hand found a rock. An extension of his statue-like state. The unbeating heart of a man who courted Medusa and thought he could lose himself in her eyes.

His frozen eyes did not see what happened next. He was blind to the fulfilment of Richard’s wish. His dying wish. Their lives ended in this moment, and this was where forever began. Here. Here they would stay. There was nothing else. Not anymore.