Edge of End (2 page)

Where should I go? There
might be a telephone, in the
town,
but whom was I going to call?

Go to the police,
I heard a voice in my head say.
Good idea
I
thought.

Taking a huge breath, I
walked over the
town’s
threshold confidently. As I walked the street, the ground
became softer and damper and my footsteps vanished without leaving
any trace of my presence.

I contemplated my
surroundings with a feeling as though I’d been transported to a
nineteenth-century
town,
with dusty metal roads and scruffy looking lawns.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d seen hoof-prints
too.

But the first two houses on either
side were new and modern. The one on my right was a light brown
two-storied house with a long balcony on the first floor. The roof
was a gloomy gray that darkened the walls.

My attention fell on the house to my
left. I examined it with great curiosity–it seemed strangely
familiar. I narrowed my eyes, staring at it much longer than I had
had the house on my right. It too was two-storied, with bright
wooden walls that had lost their shine under the shadowy
sky.

Confusing, but it was as though the
sky was sucking up the vital forces from everything–from the
houses, from the ground, the trees, and even from me.

A cobbled path led to the door,
dividing the yard in two. The remaining yellowy grass told me that
there had once been a green lawn encompassing that house. Now it
had died leaving dry blades for the wind to carry through the air
and encircle me. My eyes ran over the yard and became fixated on a
dry tree that was squeaking in the wind, and there was an old
rocking swing hanging from its thickest branch.

A strange sensation knocked me
inwardly hinting that I’d been watched from inside the house, but I
could see nobody behind those depressed looking windows. The glass
was too dirty, and beyond them–the inside got lost in a mystery.
The house had surely been abandoned a long time ago. However, it
seemed so.

I glanced at the road and
then at the other houses set along it. The
town
seemed desolated. Before I
could begin worrying, the house door abruptly flew open. My eyes
jerked, and a fluttery feeling started in my stomach.

A little girl of about nine or ten
year old ran out of the house, a big smile on her face, her blithe
laughter filling the pressing air around me and ranging in my ears.
I froze. She didn’t notice me as she made her way to the swing, but
I stared at her with unblinking eyes.

Several pictures flashed before my
eyes in a second. They might have been outbreaks of my wounded
memories, and I was sure I knew that girl. Her loose black hair,
dancing in the wind, brought her scent closer to me and I inhaled
deeply. Closing my eyes, I allowed my mind to wonder, trying to
conjure up memories of that girl. Instead I experienced the same
darkness as I’d had in the desert.

“
Melissa,” a soft voice
came from a woman, and I forced my eyes open
immediately.

A beautiful woman, probably in her
late thirties, appeared from nowhere. Her eyes were dark brown,
unlike the girl’s glacial blue ones, but she had the same sleek
black hair as the young girl.

The girl peeked back over her
shoulder. “Yes, Mom,” she called back and her smile faded away
instantly.

“
Get back home,” the woman
said sternly. “It’s dinner time.”

“
But Daddy,” the girl
hopped down from the swing and reluctantly dragged her feet towards
her mother. “Where is he? He’s late,” she asked, holding onto her
mother’s hand.

“
He’ll come soon,” the
woman’s voice quavered.

I sensed her obvious lie.

“
But he promised me,” the
girl tilted her head. “He never keeps his word.” She
added.

“
Don’t say that, honey.
He’s on his way.”

Then she stared right at me as though
demanding an explanation from me with her widened eyes.

I glanced back vacantly. Nobody was
behind me. Perplexed I turned my eyes towards them again, but they
were walking to the door.

I watched them go inside. They
disappeared from my sight, and emptiness rested on the yard again
with the air whipping through it.

I stood for a while rooted to the
ground, just gazing at the house. Maybe I hoped to see that woman
outside again, and then I could talk to her.

Then the girl’s face appeared looking
out of one of the windows. Her eyes were sad, probably waiting for
her father’s arrival, but she kept staring at me. I couldn’t break
eye contact with her, I had this annoying feeling as if I knew her,
that she was important to me, but I could not recall
how.

You can go and ask her
mother,
I thought and made a step back
onto the path warily.

The door blew open, and the woman
appeared on the threshold with an accusing expression painted on
her face. I stopped in my tracks, but then I realized she wasn’t
staring at me, she was looking through me as if I were a piece of
glass.

“
Ma’am,” I tried to sound
confident as I called out to her. “Excuse me, please,
but–”

My words hung in mid-air unfinished.
She faced back towards the house and called out for the girl.
“Honey, your father is coming.”

Then she eyed me, or through me, and I
saw the girl’s head emerge from behind her mother’s back, her face
lit up with joy. She looked at me.

I watched them waiting for
the lucky man who had such beautiful wife and daughter. The woman’s
lips moved, and she mouthed ‘
Come to us,
darling
’.

I can tell you that she had talked to
me, and I won’t deny that I wholeheartedly wanted to go to them. My
insides demanded me to move ahead and enter the house, to take that
fetching woman into my arms.

‘
Jonathan
’ she squeaked
vaguely.

It might be me, who knew, I was
unnamed at that moment.

I pressed my hands on my eyes
breathing rapidly. Was this just a dream? When I opened them, the
woman and the girl had already gone inside, leaving the door wide
open.

I hesitated, staring at the
threshold.

At least I could go in and ask for
help, as they were the only humans I had seen that day. But this
vague day had only just started, and the strange way they had acted
held me back. With an uneasiness in my heart, I moved backwards,
indolently and uncertain.

When I was in the middle
of the road, the front door shut itself. A sharp wind came from the
far end of the road and cut in front of me. I peeked at the heart
of the
town
.

Where was I?

Had the scene with the woman and the
child been real, or had it been a cruel game of my mind? Was it
making me relive a glittery moment from my past disturbed when I
was trying to gather the broken pieces of my memories?

I thrust my hands into my
pockets and moments later started off hastily deeper into
the
town
.

Regarding the seemingly
abandoned houses (I say seemingly because although they looked
abandoned from the outside, I had no way of knowing), I pushed
deeper into the
town,
at the same time feeling some heavy weight of mystical gazes
on me, even though I hadn’t seen any living soul other than the
girl and her mother.

I walked along the road
trying to take in the sights and at the same time wondering what
kind of
town
this
was. Every house had a different style. You could even say that
every house was from a different era.

I had no idea how I knew
this, maybe from watching historical movies in the past, but the
influence of the past and present had left an impact on the
town’s
houses.

A number of cars sat parked up in
front of some of the houses with a thick layer dust covering them,
clearly being sitting there for several years untouched.

I peered behind me, back
to the house of the mystical looking woman and her daughter, then
to the
town’s
entrance which was further in the distance behind
me.

I didn’t have any idea how
long I’d been travelling or how much time had passed. I wasn’t
wearing a watch, and there was no sun to guide me, just the
gloomy
daylight
from an incomprehensible source illuminating both me and
the
town
.

The wind had stopped blowing. The
usual sounds of nature that you’d expect to hear were
absent–complete silence, broken only by my footsteps.

This
town
reminded me of the clichéd
towns, where the army or scientists experiment and test their
atomic weapons, then abandon. It seemed to have been built for the
purpose of nothing and with that in mind, I even thought of it as
the
town
of
nothingness.

A ghostly smile briefly came across my
face when I noticed a sign reading ‘café.’ There might be a working
telephone inside. My legs lugged me towards it.

The notice hanging on the door said it
was open. I tried to figure out anything inside, but the shiny
windows showed only my reflection. Unlike the house windows, the
windows of the café had been cleaned. Either that or the dust
hadn’t touched them yet.

In the reflection I saw a
blond-haired man peering at himself, with narrowed blue eyes–his
eyes reminded me of the girl I had seen swinging in the yard. I
checked myself over like I was seeing my reflection for the first
time.
This is you
, my mind told me. I even nodded to myself as yanked the door
open.

Inside, the café appeared small
compared to the size of the building. The bar sat right in front of
the door. I slipped in hesitantly and cautiously looked around as
if I was waiting for a maniac to fall upon me with a
knife.

Instead, I saw a woman behind the bar
who was most likely the manager, and a man sitting opposite her. As
I entered, she raised her head acknowledging me as she peered over
the man’s shoulder, but the man didn’t flinch.

Closing the door carefully, I walked
in and seated myself at one of the small tables and waited for the
woman to serve me. From out of the corner of my eye I caught her
whispering into the man’s ear. She did so without turning her eyes
away from me.

Her expression wasn’t unfriendly–more
curious. I tilted my head slightly to avoid her imposing
stare.

It was at that moment I realized, I
was stranded. Thoughts began racing through my mind. I might have
been robbed, kidnapped and dumped far away from home. Since I
didn’t remember what I had been before and what kind of business I
had been doing, who knew? It could be true.

The only questionable thing was that I
didn’t seem to have been beaten: my clothes weren’t ripped, and
there were no apparent wounds, nor did I have a headache. As far as
I knew, the cause of losing my memory could probably have been a
good strike to the head, which surely would have been aching by
now. With this thought playing in my mind, I ran my hand along the
backside of my head in search of a bump. Nothing!

I heard someone distinctly clearing
its throat, and I lifted my eyes instinctively. The woman was
eyeing me from head to toe with her stern look. She didn’t have to
say anything; her eyes said, ‘What the fuck are you doing in my
café?’

She was a rather plump woman with a
round face and a mass of frizzy dirty hair that sat matted and
tangled on her broad shoulders. If it hadn’t been for that hair of
hers, I would have thought she was a man.

“
Don’t even try,” she cut
me off with a gesture as my lips twitched to utter a word. “No
coffee!”

“
What? I didn’t even…” I
stammered, my fingers flinching in my empty pocket.

“
He didn’t,” she chortled,
glancing back at the man who still hadn’t turned his face to me
yet. “Did you hear him Malcolm? Have you ever met anybody like
him?”

The man didn’t respond. I was
perplexed, wondering what that coffee had to do with
her.

“
Ma’am, I’m sorry,” I
tried to change the subject and ignore her blatant laughing at me.
“I’m lost. I need a little help to get back to my hometown. Do you
have a telephone here?”

“
Telephone?” she sniffed
smugly. “What the hell do you need it for? Who are you going to
make a call to?”

She caught me by surprise. She had a
point. I had no numbers in my mind to call.

“
Can you tell me where the
police station is?” I replied instantly. “I need help,
really!”

“
There aren’t any police
stations here,” she replied. “I’m not the right person to help you,
young man. If you need anything to drink, spit it out, or get the
fuck out of my café.”