Picking Stones Chapters 23 & 24
"Rock" & "The Void"
Table of Contents
Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)
ROCK
Last night had been even more magical than the last. Something inside me had changed. I wanted everything to be better. She had stoked the hot coals, and now breathed life into an ever growing fire. We had spent all night together, and the morning. All day was a constant barrage of back and forth messages, as if she never had to leave my side.
That night, I was set to meet her and Cindy for a rock show at a place on the other side of town, closer to her apartment. Maybe it would be the first time she’d let me see it. How much time did we have left together? I didn’t want it to end. What do you do to make a moment last forever? I remembered first meeting Beth; I thought I loved her once, but this seemed different. It was a psychokinetic energy, unspoken. Maybe it had been there before either of us were born, and were to remain long after we were dead.
She made me feel happy. Made me forget the nonsense about the card buzzing in my pocket, about being followed, about Nim or any supernatural entities ruining my life. It all seemed like a distant memory. It was like my entire life up to that point had been a bad dream, and now I was awake.
I was living a life completely unlike any I could have ever imagined a month before. Writing in the morning, laughing with someone at night. No sense of dread for the next day to come. A new lease had been created and I was ready to take full advantage.
Ready? Her text message had asked. Looking through the mirror in my hotel room’s bathroom I nodded to myself. Was any of it real? As I typed a response, I nodded. It was real and I was ready for anything.
Work was still in session; it was only five. I had just enough time to call out for another week, extend my trip and stay here as long as I could. I didn’t care about the money or the ramifications. “Hey, Will!” Alice, my boss’s secretary said, “Enjoying your time off?”
It was approved—begrudgingly, but approved nonetheless. All too surreal. Granted an extra week like I was given an extra lifetime. There was suddenly time. I couldn’t suppress the smile, the laughing, the wave of energy that ignited me while I walked out of the hotel to see her.
To the disappointment of no one, Ramona’s friend was unable to make the concert. It would just be the two of us. Had she ever agreed in the first place? I didn’t care. It was better this way. Had I remembered to put on deodorant? “Could’ve done with one more scan of the hair,” I said, but it was too late.
Halloween was two days away. The orange and purple decorations lit the brick sidewalks that had gone dark from the quick setting sun. No sense of being followed, it was finally gone. Another smile. Ramona had tried to help me piece together the picks, the game. But after a while we got lost in each other and the thing that brought me there seemed nothing more than a trivial bit to send me to my destiny of meeting her.
The concert was in a place along the water. It was actually another brewery that had built a little makeshift stage into the back corner of the place. Brick oven pizzas and drinks were being flung all over the place. I don’t think anyone had gone there for the music, including us. “Cool shirt,” she said. I was wearing a Smashing Pumpkins shirt Phil had given me once. I’d never heard their music. Awkward hug, passing of a cold wet glass of beer to me. “Sorry it’s just the two of us,” she lied.
Once the music started, our conversation dissipated into smiles constantly shot to and fro. The music wasn’t bad. What sounded like a half decent ripoff of 70s rock buzzed through the two big amps on the sides of the little stage. I don’t remember when we started holding hands.
Ripping guitar solo, another sip of drink and bite of pizza. “Ouch!” the entire crowd shrieked. On the highest note on the highest part of the neck, the guitarist accidentally ripped the plug out of the guitar, sending static shrieks exploding out of the amp. Hands over ears, I tried to make out the words coming from Ramona’s mouth. “Let’s go back to my place.”
And so we walked. Down dark sidewalks, under orange lights of decorations and a feeling of security. Hands clasped tight as we walked. No need to look behind me, no need to fear. I realized I didn’t even see any streetlights blinking.
The moon was almost full, alone in the night without a single star to keep it company. It shone down on a green-shingled building Ramona abruptly stopped in front of. It seemed familiar. It felt like home.
“Home sweet home,” she said.
Three flights later and we were inside her apartment with the click of a lock shutting behind us. Green hatted gnomes poked out from the welcome sign beneath my feet. I was first met with the living room dining room surrounded by navy walls and dark wood accents. An acoustic guitar and bookshelf were up against the far wall next to the TV. Besides the kitchen there were two more rooms, a bedroom and her art studio.
“Want a coffee?” she called from the kitchen while I was busy floating into the studio.
“Sure.”
The walls were light blue. A few canvases were scattered on the floor half finished. A winter landscape one one, a potted flower like the one on the cover of the book on another. In the middle of the room, under a spotlight was the piece she was working on at the moment. It was the view of a lake from the top of a mountain. A house was overlooking the still water and behind it, through what was probably miles of forest, was a rocky shoreline with white foamy waves crashing onto the red granite.
While she made the coffee I went to the living room and picked up the guitar and immediately set it down. There was a little record player set on the bookshelf. I thumbed through the collection of vinyls stacked on the lower shelf and recognized the name of the band whose shirt I was wearing on a yellow album. The record slid out and before I knew it the plucking of an acoustic guitar was coming out of tiny speakers.
“This is a great album!” came from the kitchen. “That one song, “Obscured”—words literally cannot describe.”
“I’m excited to hear it,” I shouted back.
“Here.” A warm mug accompanied by warmer fingers slid into my hand. I looked down and saw her hands first, then the mug shaped like a mushroom with coffee swaying inside. “I love this mug,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s cool,” she said and smiled at me without breaking her frost colored eyes from mine. “There had to have been a reason you came here. Everything happens for a reason. Is this it?”
“I want to believe that so badly.” She was already well accustomed to me by that point. “But if that was the case, why am I trapped?”
“You aren’t, Will. You trap yourself, man. Seriously. If you want to be happy you can be. And believe it. If you weren’t miserable you wouldn’t have wanted a change. But you were put in the position you were in and now look. You’re here. With me.”
“True.” I let out a sigh. My thumb tapped the top of the mushroom mug. The base of the mug was a creamy white, its top was red with white spots. I took a sip.
“Listen.” She grabbed me from the waist and pulled me in. I could smell the pineapple pizza on her breath. “The world is good, Will. Stop choosing to live in the bad. Think positive and everything will work itself out.”
I smirked. “That reminds me of a Shakespeare quote I read back in high school.”
“There’s neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so. That one?”
“That’s the one.” I smiled and we swayed back and forth together for a minute, an hour, or a lifetime. She finally broke it, almost caught me by surprise. “Come on, Will.” She whispered it with just enough resonance in her voice for me to hear it. Her breath sent goosebumps down my neck that swam through me and jumped onto her. “Will. What’s one thing you want more than anything in the entire world right now?”
“You.”
THE VOID
“You need a question to find your answer.”
A question for what? Thinking…it always came back to the same questions. What was the point of any of it? Why was I in the shoes I was in? Why was there never enough time? Why did nothing seem to matter? Why didn’t there seem to be any meaning at all? Why was it so lonely? Would I really be gone when I was dead? I didn’t want to go.
“Just close your eyes and dream.” My ears folded into themselves as each pluck of the acoustic guitar string traveled through my body and soul and hugged me with warmth, sending vibrations that tickled and flew around me. My body leaned into the couch and I felt myself sinking deeper. I was gone, some place I had never seen, inside my own mind.
Music swirled inside and around me while I took it all in. The neural pathways pulsed and blended into an array of shimmering yellows and blackness. All the neurons danced and rode the yellow and black beams of light like a roller coaster. I watched the coaster pump pump inside the confinement of purple endless sky that was the inside of my skull, riding up and down and across and sideways and backwards as the echo of the music washed over me. I was on the roller coaster.
I was spinning, further and further as the coaster dipped and dodged and glided in circles looping around my head. The music soared and the coaster soared with it. At lulls the ride dropped and I was sent plummeting with it. Notes began getting higher and brighter, and I realized we were going up again. Up up and up toward a black hole high in the purple sky, right at the inside of my forehead. The coaster spun around and rode through my head in magical circles and highs and lows. Closer and closer. I felt my arms reaching up toward the black hole, like a vacuum, but I couldn’t reach it.
Spinning and spinning, round and round. We dove down and flew up, ride loops and shooting stars and the smile on my face was stretched from ear to ear. Another loop, swooping low and sending the coaster high, high up toward the back hole in the sky. This time I reached up, forcing every bit of energy my soul could muster toward the opening in my head, but I missed and plummeted thousands of feet down into an abyss rocketing fast.
I knew what needed to be done. The music got higher and the sliding guitar glittered around me. To get to through the opening in my mind, the space I so desperately needed to get to, I needed to let go. The next thing I saw was the coaster turning and shooting straight toward the black hole.
Yellows and blacks warped my vision, flying faster than I ever had. I stopped thinking, let go. I just was. When the coaster approached the black hole I gave myself to it and was sucked into a vacuum, blasting through the opening in my forehead and shooting straight through space and sent to the heart of everything.
There was no sound, the music had gone and so did my body. My soul floated before the entire galaxy and I realized I was sharing the space with every being that ever was and ever would be. Past, present, and future. The stars swarmed all around me and I was washed with warmth that spread into myself, my heart, and my soul. Before me, comprised of a bursting sphere of light was everyone, everything, including me. Before me was God. The Universe. Everything.
It was the single most real experience I ever had, and so familiar. It was where I was before I was born. It was where I was while I lived in New York, when I was in Maine, or anywhere else. It was where I would go when I finally died. It was beautiful.
I wanted to rejoice, to scream with happiness, but there was no body only my energy. Suddenly I was floating over my body that was lying on Ramona’s bed in Maine. Then I was back up in the galaxy and knew I was in both places at once.
I was in the afterlife, in the before, in the now, in the place where it all was and always would be. I felt happy. I felt connected to something. A voice, without it speaking or me hearing anything, told me we all were. I knew it was true.
I stared in awe at the dancing galaxy I was a part of, that we are all a part of. My parents came to mind, I missed them more than I let on. Little sparks shot off from the massive ball of light and I floated to them. When I reached them, I felt myself reach out closer and closer to the little shooting stars and when I got to them I was shot at warp speed. Then I was in Queens. I was there sitting on the couch next to my mom as she held the dog in her hands. She looked happy; I was, too. Where was Dad? Then he was underneath me as I floated in the sky above him. He was taking out the trash, upset and silently cursing to himself about something that happened to him that day.
“It’s going to be okay, Dad!” I tried to shout to him; he needed to hear it. I floated to him to give him the embrace I foolishly waited years to give. Then he was gone and I was back in the amalgamation of everything that ever was. I knew I could help my father be better. Mom too. I sent warmth to them, and hope. I knew they felt it. We were all connected, no matter the distance.
The energy spinning every which way around me was a different soul going to a different person that they loved. Forever in love with each other, forever together. I saw Orla and my dad’s friend. The both of them were fine, happy actually. They didn’t mourn the loss of their own lives because they never lost them. They had the gift of everything in front of them.
Thinking of Ramona, I was suddenly there with her. Or was she here with me? I told her thank you. I felt so emotional, so happy, so peaceful. I saw her in her studio painting. She turned to me and smiled. Did she see me?
I went back up into the stars. Back into the never ending everything. One thing left to do.
Everything stopped. There was light next to my light, and I knew it was my grandfather. I begged him to forgive me, for not being there enough and taking him for granted. For not knowing the good I had when I had it. For not telling him how much he meant to me, and how it had been so much. In my mind I saw his image and he smiled. He’s been with me as long as he’s been gone. He knew then and knew now and he was happy. He wanted me to be happy, too. He had his time, and now I had mine, all the time in the world.
That was when I felt the tears on my face, the warm wet tears soaking the skin on my cheeks. My hand reached up. Fingers felt bristling hair on my cheeks which felt realer and realer and millions of miles away.
The stars grew fainter and I was staring into a vacuum. I was getting pulled, further and further back. The galaxy and everyone and everything I had been with me became smaller and smaller until I finally opened my eyes.
I was on the bed.
Ramona was next to me, asleep. And I was crying. Not a bad cry, not at all. It was a good cry. A cry I needed for an unreasonably long time. It was a great cry. I was safe. I was happy. I knew I was going to be okay. I knew we all were going to be okay.
Warmth in my chest. Heat, passion, heart. There was a fire burning inside me and I knew, more than anything, that I could never let it go out again.
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What a truly beautiful catharsis and healing transformation. ❤️.