Negative Space

by B.R. Yeager

Like meeting God finally and learning he hates you.

The most important thing anyone can know is this: just by existing, by inhabiting this planet and space, we are put into communion with entities we cannot begin to understand, in manners we cannot begin to understand. We float on the surface of an unfathomable ocean, and though we may stick our hands, our feet, our faces beneath, we can never go much farther without drowning. Once made aware of this, a man can no longer see the Earth as a sphere. It is a serpent. It is a length of rope, forever curling around our persons.

AW SHIT YEAH I’M BACK FROM THE DEAD.

He said that ever since his resurrection he could see ghosts. “Because part of me is a ghost now. I’m half in that world.” He said they appeared to him sometimes as moths, sometimes as dark strands unspooling from heaven. He said he could hear them, and even speak to them. That sometimes he’d do favors for them, but only if what they wanted was Christ-like.

“You’re going to die becoming what you need to be. But when that happens you won’t need who you are right now.”

She tells me my state isn’t fixed; there is no rope binding my wrists; there is always a window to climb out of. She tells me I can save myself and find a place I love before the world dissolves. She stays, even when I turn cruel and out of phase.

I learn to leave. I leave before he sets himself ablaze. The fire in his skin and hair. I can’t see it but I know it’s happening. I can’t see it because I’m already so far away.

The world, and my life inside it, shifted ever further toward him. A new veil thrown over everything I once assumed was true. My fingers pushed through his stiff, sullied hair, and we exchanged fresh admissions and promises beneath an alien dawn. We would always be together and know each other’s secrets.

I laughed. “So what’s the moral?” Another pause, and then: “One day, no one will ever know you were here.”