Mr. Light
by Daniel Beadle - Monday, October 19, 2009
Stalker sits on a lonely hill, bracing himself against the winter wind beneath a dead tree. His eyes are fixed on the horizon, watching the sun disappear. The sky takes on a bright orange glow. Stalker stops shivering momentarily as a calm feeling washes over him.“We do not recognize our souls until they are in pain…” says a voice from behind Stalker. “A man named James O’Barr wrote that after his fiancé died.”
Stalker turns to see a man standing a stone’s throw away. The man has a solid frame, standing at just over six feet tall. His white hair is combed back, but a few strands from the center of his widow’s peak wave in the wind. His eyebrows are thick and black, and his eyes are a pale blue. The man has a square jaw, and a look of strength that is contradicted by the warmth in his eyes. He wears a grey trench coat over a matching suit with no tie, and holds himself up with a wooden cane. His eyes stare at the horizon. He has more senses available to him than the average man, and he sees more than any of us will ever know.
“Are we sure I still have a soul?” asks Stalker.
“Of course. As much as you like to deny it, you are still human. …With all of their emotions, their desires… and their flaws.”
“Too many to count.”
“Perhaps. But not many more than anyone else.”
Stalker feels tears form in his eyes. “I’ve done such horrible things…”
“All men have.”
“I’ve killed…”
“You’ve fantasized about it, sure. You’ve imagined yourself as a monster to cope with your pain. …To cope with your disillusionment. But you’ve killed no one. You’re not a monster, Graham. You’re just a person who fell in love. You remember love, don’t you?”
Stalker feels his eyes begin to water. “She was beautiful in ways I can’t even describe. I loved her so completely… and now it all means nothing.
“We had been apart for a month when I visited her at her school. A five-hour drive, but she was worth it. When I got there, something was off. It’s like the chemistry was gone… like we were two strangers going through the motions. I kissed her hand and told her she’d be fine without me. We both knew it was over. …Before I left, she told me that I hadn’t done anything wrong…
“I know it doesn’t seem that dramatic. There was no big fight. Our lives just… separated. There was nothing we could do about it. I guess… love isn’t always enough.
“But there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her. I think of all the details… the song we danced to on the night we kissed for the first time. The names we came up with for all the different types of kisses we shared. The plastic tulip that she wore in her hair during the Hawaiian-themed party. The midnight breakfast at the local diner. The way ‘I’ became ‘we.’
“I’m not even sure who I am anymore without her. Am I her stalker? Am I her killer? I exist in a constant and deep state of depression… like I’m drowning in storm, and no one cares. My memory has gotten so unreliable. I can’t even remember what life was like before I met her. And now I’m confronted by an endless stream of characters, each one more grotesque than the last…”
“Those are the projections of a mind struggling to find a sense of self. From the id to the superego, and everything in between. …That’s the difficulty with human relationships. People define themselves through their interactions with others. In the absence of human contact, one is forced to carve out his own identity. Sometimes, it’s an idealized view… in other cases, it’s something far more sinister.”
“And who am I now?”
“Someone who’s lost his way. …But there is a way to find it again.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have no claim to an identity anymore, and nothing in your reflection or in your memories that is recognizable. But there is someone who can give you answers, someone who can illuminate your past and help you understand who you are.”
“His name?”
“Find Daniel Beadle. Ask him about the Stalker Imperative.” The man walks away. "You find him, and all this ends."
Stalker is confused, but voices his appreciation. “Thank you, Mr. Light.”
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.”—Voltaire
