Conversation with My Character

         She is whispering, not to me, just whispering. Or is she yelling, shouting? Crying, wailing? It just sounds like a distant whisper to me, and echo inside my head.

         What are you looking for? I ask.

          “My son, I need to be with my son. I need to find him.” The her eyes are rimmed red read raw with emotion, desperation, fear, need.

         Where is he?

         She sobers her emotions and looks down. “Away, I sent him away. Or did he leave me?” She furrows her brow. “Why are my memories muddled?” She stares at a piece of the ground, in concentration. “It wasn’t safe to stay together,” She looks up with the sudden realization. She shakes her head, “But he is still in danger,” said with a restrained urgency.

         She takes a deep breath, the exhale with more quiver in it that she cared to share, “I need to stay away. But I still need to protect him. I don’t want him to be found. Disaster…” She looks around suddenly as if to leave.

         I know these feelings, I know this too well, but there is something else I want to know, something else that she knows, that she has yet to reveal to me. I ask.

         Weren’t you looking for something else?

         She looks puzzled.

         Before, before your son. You were searching for something. What was it? Why were you looking for it? For what?

         She grimaced. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” She waves her hand as if to brush away the thought like a annoying cobweb.

         But why were you searching for it? I press.

         Her annoyance crossed her face, as she looked at me pointedly. But still she paused a moment before answering, “Well,” she wet her lips. “It started when I was searching for my mother. It started with her, everything, well not everything, but the ending starts with her.” Her cryptic-ness half intrigued me and annoyed me, but she continued. “I didn’t know why she was so desperate for it. Maybe for resolution, absolution. But it clouded her, so much that she couldn’t see that I was so desperate too. I wanted her love, approval, care. She left us so much just searching. I started following, searching too, just to feel close to her. She did know what I was doing, I don’t think she knows now what I did for her love. But in following her I found that she didn’t even love herself, so how could she love anyone else? How could she love us? So what was the point in looking anymore?”

         So you didn’t find it. You gave up.

         She eyes flicked up with a dark glare.

         Didn’t you?

         She smirked sardonically. “You might like to think that the truth is inert, objective, cold, and hard. Facts, figures. But no,” She is looking down at her hands. “ Its alive, pulling and searching, hiding, and taunting. It wants to be needed, to be sought. It needs to be this so that it can exist. Once I stopped searching, it found me.” She closed her hands in upturned loose fists. “As if it was waiting for me to stop looking to reveal itself, waiting for me to be in the right mindset. It gets in you, you in, and gives you more than you bargained for. I didn’t want to know that much. Too much.” She shook her head as if to shake away water from her hair. “But you can’t forget it. A truth, a dangerous thought, a terrible thought. It can spread in you like a virus. It makes you doubt yourself, and everything around you.” She leans in whispering, “I feel constructed sometimes. As if I’m not real. That parts of me were made, and I am more animal than being. As if I am an experiment. A truth that cackles at the sound of your world about to tear apart at the seams.”

         So, are you the only one that knows?

         She smiled bitterly, “ I am sure there are others, who know. And for the rest, you will be surprised how many people are close now. So many years ago, such an idea was madness, and the secret protected by the shear absurdity. It was like what that American poet wrote, Poe? The story about that letter they all searched for hidden away in the light and open air. But in this new age, the absurdity of old ideas are now fading away, and now they look new and promising. Now many shinny glittering boxes, of Pandora’s demons. The truth is out there in pieces, and if you know you can see it all converging at one point. When that happens…” He eyes un-focus as she trails off.

         What will happen?

         She blinks slowly, the action shows off her long black eyelashes. “How am I supposed to know?” She shrugged her shoulders. “All I know is that I need to protect my son from it.” She looks at me intently.

         Does he know?

         She makes a face. “Why would I tell him such a thing? But he is close to figuring it out himself, and I can’t stop him.” I can’t identify the look that passes across her face.

         Is that why you are afraid for you son? That he will find out the truth?

         She tilted her head contemplatively, “Partly. Other things are more immediate things, immediate dangerous. Sometimes confining my worries to that of a mother, is what keeps me sane, to keep me from trying to run away from the future.” She sighs and looks off into the dark distance. “Sometimes I want to run back. I was always running, to my mother, to the truth, then from it. Running. Running, always running. But I can’t leave him, and I can’t imagine a place where he wouldn’t exist.”

         She looks back at me making strong eye contact. “I can’t run anymore.” She moves to leave. Then before she goes she looks over her shoulder at me, “Plus, soon there will be no place to run to.” Then she was gone.