Flash Fiction: The Inhabitant
Past the towering cities and mindless strangers not that dissimilar from post-apocalyptic zombies; past the depths of suburbia and carefully manufactured cookie cutter homes, like a scene from a cartoon I once enjoyed; past the expansive fields reaching out into vast nothingness; past society itself; there is a house at the end of everything. Surrounding this house, there are woods acting like massive gates, concealing it from the outside world and all that its inhabitant fears. The house precariously rests on the edge of a cliff, on the brink of an abyss to which there is no end in sight.
The Inhabitant lives a dark, ominous life, brimming with mystery, and yet, for some reason, his existence is an open book. Fact: he despises humanity not for what they’ve done, but for what they haven’t. Fact: his speech is slurred from vices enjoyed; sorrow indulged. Fact: he is completely and utterly alone.
I suppose everybody has their dealbreaker when they come too near to perfection. Their one cataclysmic quality from which there is no recovering, as if the gods have branded it on their foreheads to persevere for all of time. It’s one of those things where, whether or not you always knew what yours was or if it simply developed to be more prominent over time, you were born with it. Here, after all these years, I now recognize what mine is: an unfailing, dependable habit to look for the good within humanity. I used to blame it on luck, an oddly optimistic outlook, perhaps. But now I know that I, and the Inhabitant, for that matter, have just been selected by an arbitrary roll-of-the-dice to bear this flaw. We were too trusting, much like Icarus, who loved the sun too much, too close.
Which is why we find ourselves here, at the very ends of the earth, drowning ourselves in our bloodied agony, drunk on the idea that life could ever be hopeful, people could ever be honest, and fate could ever be merciful. Eating away at the only chance of redemption. The Inhabitant stands on his porch, overlooking the chasm of promise, everything of possibility in front of him. And then I jump.
I, the Inhabitant of the House at the End of Everything, leap into the void beneath me, with no regrets other than never being able to make a change, make a difference. They say it only takes one person, but here I am, one person, with my actions seeming atomic and my words disintegrating as soon as they enter this acidic world. Light encompasses me as I sink, as if the darkness tethering me to reality has finally lost its grip and I am floating. Only, I am floating. All at once, I’m ripped from delirium and my disorienting state of a fluorescent daydream. Sparks fly, colliding with each other on microscopic levels I could suddenly see. I blink upward, knowing that if I blink hard enough, I might discover the secret of the universe. Then it hits me. In my moment of lucid ecstasy from the sensation of free-falling into oblivion, the anticipation of rejoining something bigger than myself, bigger than comprehension, I didn’t realize I actually was floating. Suspended midair, leashed to the earth like an old lover grabbing the arm of his once beloved, pitifully pleading for another ending.
Looking up, during that cosmic collision between life and death, fate and chance, physical and spiritual, it was then that I finally understood what I had been searching for all this time. Sometimes, meaning tends to slip away, and it’s then when you wonder if you could ever feel something other than the gaping hole inside your chest; despair pounding against your ribs like a caged bird trying to liberate itself from the hurdles of life. Only, the light is always there. Even through the depths of night, I know there’s light someplace else. Perhaps that’s the secret of the universe: knowing there’s still light and maybe, just maybe, it’ll find you again.
I grasp the arm holding onto me, the arm that sought me out and found me at the end of everything, and haul myself up. Maybe some words can survive for a brief while before they disintegrate, and maybe actions aren’t so insignificant when you look at them under a lens.
