The Rest of Our Time

 

Patricia had never known darkness like this before. From where she lay, the hand in front of her face was undetectable, and she thought it odd that she also couldn’t even feel herself raising her arm. “Must have gone numb,” she mumbled to herself, “That’s what you get for lying on your side too long”. And suddenly all she could think about were the times in her youth when she would wake up in the morning, arms above her head resting gently on the pillow, feeling light as air until she tried to lift them at which point they dropped as if they were filled with concrete.

    Patricia had spent most of her life invariably feeling weighed down in one way or another. The fatty cells that built a colony inside of her added physical weight, but her mind had been held down by rocks for many years. The invisible backpack she wore made her shoulders droop when she walked, and it had been so long since someone had remarked on her good looks she forgot she ever had them. Sometime in her late teens it’s like her brain decided she was ugly, and so her body learned to catch up.

    Sam had never made her feel like that, in the early days at least. He wasn’t particularly attractive either, but he had the confidence of a model. Life owed him big time, and he was going to claim it. Part of his reclamation was to wrap his arms around Patricia and bring her out of herself, even if only for a moment so she could see the sun again. Sam used to say to Patricia, “Today’s the day you’re going to feel lighter”, and sometimes she believed him. On days when she didn’t believe him, she’d get up anyway, but her footsteps were one tenth of an inch closer together. Imperceptible even to Sam, it took her an extra minute to reach every destination on those days.

    Laying there, Patricia thought about how long it had been since she’d been able to take a step, stretch her legs. It’s not like she was getting crampy, in fact she barely felt her feet anymore, but there was a sense of longing running through her that she failed to pinpoint and instead decided it was probably due to lack of exercise. Like most people, half of her life had been spent in denial of the fact that exercise truly does help the mind feel sunnier. So instead she had done it, not for herself, but for others. Once Patricia’s 40th birthday arrived, her bones started to cry out for movement stronger than ever, so she took up running. It started as a way to get out of the house — Sam could be unpredictable some days — but eventually became a way to let all of the excess hot air out of her body. Every time her soles hit the pavement it pushed up through her body and forced a deep breath out of her throat, and some breaths felt like they’d been sitting stagnant in her lungs for years.

    “If only I could go for a run now”, she thought. “I just know I’d feel better. I wonder if there’s someone I can ask?” Looking around was fruitless; it was still pitch black. And she had an eerie sense she had been left on her own. The instinct to shout for attention was there, but her jaw wouldn’t unlock wide enough to let the sound out. Alone, in the dark, reduced to no more than a whisper, Patricia was really starting to feel sorry for herself. How did she get here?

    More flashbacks came to her, solidifying themselves in the air above her as though watching a movie play out of the projector through her eyes. Gosh, Sam really did have a lovely smile, didn’t he? Moments of them dancing together, laughing, chasing after each other, it almost brought tears to Patricia’s eyes. She missed him so much. And then she didn’t. Followed quickly by missing him again. Motion sickness set deep in her stomach as she rode the waves, a longing for Sam swiftly replaced with pure hatred, back to love again, back to rage again. It felt as though she were falling backwards with no discernible landing point, doomed to play these memories on repeat for the rest of time.

    The rest of time. Hadn’t he said something like that on their wedding day? “I will love you for the rest of time” — was that what he said? No, “I will love you for the rest of our time”. How had she never noticed that? It was certainly an odd way to phrase it. Whose was ‘time’, if not theirs? To whom did their remaining years belong? And why did it feel like maybe his fingers had been crossed when he said it?

    Of course, her mind always gravitated towards grammatical errors. “A career in publishing will do that to you” she reassured herself, somewhat smugly, not that it mattered since there was no-one around to hear her say it. In fact, a career in publishing wasn’t quite the truth, unless you counted an office manager role within a small, independent publishing house as a literary profession. From the outside it looked good, but really her days were spent ordering office stationary and reminding people to empty their bins on a Friday. Sometimes she watered the plants, too. But over 30 years at the same employer had to look good on a resume right? “Which reminds me, I really ought to dust my CV off again”. Another useless thought that escaped her lips, but made no recognisable sound at all.

    So the semantic wedding-day slip from Sam must not have gone entirely unnoticed, but in fact was probably buried deep within her, with the deliberate intention of being ignored. Ignoring things came easy to Patricia, so much so that she used to ignore herself for days on end. It was easy to float through places as a shadow if you don’t even consider yourself worth remembering, and in fact it was preferable — days passed quicker if you could barely remember them. And with each day of her life, Patricia wished for the passing of time to speed up more and more, eventually finding herself swept in a riptide that was no longer manageable. She hadn’t, however, felt that way recently. Lately, each second passed through her so slowly it’s like her body was digesting it before spitting out the remains.

    Remains was such an odd choice of word wasn’t it? Patricia had never thought about describing vacant human bodies as ‘remains’ — who’s remaining? Surely no-one, since there’s no-one home anymore. The soul leaves the body, and what remains are the remains, but nothing has remained except a shell, really. A headache was setting in as the word started to float around the back of her eyelids, and when she closed her eyes to distract from the searing pain at the base of her skull the letters started to scatter apart, R, M, S, E, N, I, A, all vibrating and bouncing off of each other. Other words started to form — MEN, AMEN, RAMEN, SAM. Sam. Remains.

    As the pain grew stronger, floodlights were switching on inside her head, illuminating scenes that she’d forgotten — Sam, shouting at her that day she’d accidentally broken his favourite bowl. Sam, pulling on her hair when she turned the TV off before the show ended. Sam, with his fists edging closer after she told him she’d lost another of his babies. Sam, with a curtain rod in his hand because she’d told him she was leaving. Sam, standing over a body.

    Sam, remains. Sam remains. Everything was clearer, and Patricia was finally lighter. Her soul had left her body, and who remained? Sam did. Patricia had never known darkness like this before. Because darkness is what you get when you are no longer remaining.