The Fine Line
A short story
I am staring at the ashtray. It’s a chipped porcelain dish, blue with tiny gold flecks, an heirloom, though no one would ever care to inherit it. The cigarette butt I’ve just flicked in twists itself into the mound of others like an earthworm burrowing into fresh dirt. I think of blood.
The clock says 11:57 p.m., but it could be 3 a.m. for all I know. The thin strip of moonlight cutting across the floor has slipped through the cracked blind, and I can feel it like a blade against my skin. My fingers tremble as I reach for the bottle — half-empty, no, half-full. I pour the last inch into my glass. I don’t even feel the burn anymore. The smell of cheap whiskey mingles with the scent of stale tobacco and damp wood. This apartment was supposed to be temporary, just a stopover while I figured things out, but I’m still here. Still staring at the ashtray. Still trying to sort the mess of my thoughts.
The memories come in flashes. They aren’t neat or orderly. They crash in like waves, dragging debris up from the depths, leaving me gasping.
“I love you,” he had said. *I love you*, but that wasn’t love. It was something else — something darker, heavier. It was a weight. A tether tied tight around my throat. Love isn’t supposed to strangle you. But it had. It still does.
There’s a creak at the door, and for a moment, I think it’s him. My pulse quickens, and I feel that familiar knot in my chest. My heart doesn’t know whether to race or stop altogether. But it’s only the wind. The door remains closed, but it might as well be wide open. I can still see him standing there. His coat dripping rain, the shadow of him almost bigger than the man himself. His voice, low, like the hum of a distant train. He spoke in riddles. Always did. And I was the fool, trying to solve him. Trying to find the answers when the questions weren’t even mine.
I walk over to the window. The streetlights below flicker and hum, their sickly yellow glow staining the pavement. There’s a man down there, leaning against the lamppost. His face is shadowed, but I know him. I’ve seen him before. Always lingering. Watching. Waiting. The hair on the back of my neck rises, and I pull the blinds shut, forcing the darkness inside to seem less empty. But it doesn’t work.
I light another cigarette. The lighter is heavy in my hand, a cold slab of metal. I remember the first time I picked it up. *I bought it for you*, he’d said. It was a joke — he never knew I smoked. But then again, he never knew much about me, did he? He thought he did, though. He made me believe he did. That was his gift: taking what was already broken in me and making it seem whole, if only for a moment.
But it wasn’t wholeness. It was illusion. Like those cigarette smoke rings that dissolve before you can touch them. He’d seen the cracks, though. And instead of mending them, he’d filled them with his own poison. I let him, didn’t I? I let him seep into me, so deep that I can still feel him in my veins, even now.
The phone rings, startling me. It’s been silent for days. Weeks, maybe. I pick it up without thinking. “Hello?”
“Are you coming?”
Her voice slices through me like a razor, sharp and thin, slicing open a wound I thought had long healed. It’s Rachel. She’s been calling for months, but I never answer. Not until tonight. She sounds the same, though, like she’s still back there — where we grew up, where everything was supposed to be simple but never was.
I think of her — her wild hair, the way she used to twirl it around her finger when she was nervous. How we’d sit on her porch, legs dangling over the edge, daring each other to jump, but neither of us ever did. How she’d laugh at the smallest things, but it was always a nervous laugh, the kind that hides more than it reveals.
“I can’t,” I say, but the words feel like stones in my mouth.
“You have to,” she replies. There’s no pleading in her voice, just a cold certainty. She’s always been good at that — cutting straight through the bullshit. I hate her for it, and I love her for it, too.
The line goes dead. I stare at the receiver for a long time before I realize I’m crying. The tears surprise me; they always do. I never see them coming until they’ve already fallen.
I glance back at the clock. It’s 11:59 now, almost midnight. Something shifts in the air, a barely perceptible tremor that makes me think of that fine line — the one between love and hate, between truth and illusion. I’ve been walking it for so long, I’ve forgotten what it feels like to stand on solid ground. Maybe I never have.
The ashtray is overflowing now. The air is thick with smoke. I can barely see the room around me, the outlines of the furniture ghostly, like a fading photograph. I wonder if this is what it feels like to disappear.
But I’m still here. Still breathing. Still trapped in this skin that no longer feels like mine.
I reach for the glass again, but it’s empty. I toss it aside, and it shatters against the floor, the sound sharp and final. It echoes in the silence, filling the room like the voice of someone long dead.
Rachel’s words hang in the air, though, haunting me. *You have to*. I close my eyes and see his face again — his eyes, dark and hollow, like the kind of man who’s lost everything and knows it. He’d always talked about leaving, about disappearing into the night, becoming someone else, somewhere else. But he never did. He stayed. And that was the tragedy of it.
I walk to the door, my hand trembling as I reach for the knob. For a moment, I hesitate, and in that pause, I feel the weight of all the decisions I’ve never made pressing down on me. I think of Rachel, waiting, always waiting, for me to come back, to be the person I used to be, before everything changed. Before I changed.
The door creaks open, and I step out into the hallway. The light is dim, casting long shadows on the walls. I hear a distant sound, like the ticking of a clock, or maybe it’s just the beat of my own heart. I can’t tell anymore.
Outside, the air is cold, biting at my skin. The man by the lamppost is gone now, replaced by an emptiness that stretches out into the night. The street is quiet, deserted, but there’s a tension in the air, a sense that something is about to break.
I walk, though I’m not sure where I’m going. The city hums around me, a living, breathing thing, but I feel separate from it, like I’m moving through a dream. Each step feels heavier than the last, but I keep going. I have to.
In the distance, I see a figure. I stop, my breath catching in my throat. For a moment, I think it’s him. But it’s not. It’s Rachel. She’s standing there, waiting, just like she always does. And for the first time in a long time, I feel something like hope stirring in my chest.
Maybe this is what it feels like to walk the line — to balance on that fine edge between who you were and who you are, between the life you had and the life you could have. Maybe it’s not about finding solid ground. Maybe it’s about learning to live in the in-between.
Rachel smiles as I approach, and for the first time in what feels like years, I smile back.
Maybe that’s enough.
© Ani Eldritch, 2024.
