How Not to Die Alone

by Richard Roper

he added, putting a hand on Andrew’s arm. Andrew did his best not to recoil. He hated it when people did that. He wished he had some sort of squidlike defense that meant he could shoot ink into their eyes.

There was nobody for him to share the story with. No one to help him laugh his way through it. Loneliness, however, was ever vigilant, always there to slow-clap his every stumble.

One day shortly after Andrew had turned eleven, he had waited until Sally had gone downstairs before creeping into her bedroom and just standing there, smelling his sister’s smell, wanting desperately to perform some sort of spell that would change her and make her care about him.

And I’m not sure I’m a good enough person to get involved in that if there’s nobody left at home to see my Facebook status about it.”

He’d gotten adept at sweeping that feeling away as quickly as he could, telling himself that it would only lead to unhappiness. But what if he let it grow—nourished it, in fact? Maybe that was the only way forward. The past was the past and maybe this time, once and for all, he could stop it from dictating his life.

“When you see one of those massive ones by a skyscraper, do you ever wonder if they had to use another crane to build that crane? Or did it just get up there by itself? I suppose it’s all a metaphor for how the universe was created. Or something.”

he might not know what the future held—pain and loneliness and fear might still yet grind him into dust—but simply feeling the possibility that things could change for him was a start, like feeling the first hint of warmth from kindling rubbed together, the first wisp of smoke.

“The problem you’ve got here,” Peggy said, “is that you’re trying to apply logic to the question. Logic is not your friend here.”

The realization came to him like a radio signal finding its way through static: a lie can only exist in opposition to the truth, and the truth was the only thing that could free him of his pain.

All of it was intoxicating. He decided this should be part of some governmental scheme: that everyone should be legally entitled to have at least one evening a year where they could sink down into soft cushions, their stomachs rumbling in anticipation of ravioli and red wine, listening to chatter from another room, and feel for the briefest flicker of time that they mattered to someone.

He stayed there, quiet now, feeling a pure and strangely joyful pain wash over him, knowing that as much as it hurt, it was something he had to accept, a winter before the spring, letting its ice freeze and fracture his heart before it could heal.

None of us can be sure at the start of our lives just how they will end, or what our journey there will be like, but if we were to know for sure that our final moments would be in the company of good souls such as yourselves, we would surely be comforted.