NOTE: This is not so much a collaboration as a completion. The first half is written by Snowbear, while the ending is mine, I clearly state in the text where Snowbear's ends and mine begins. Snowbear has kindly given me permission to post this collaboration on my page and I am honored that she has allowed me to finish her story. She, of course, reserves the right to post it on her page now or in the future.
When I read this unfinished tale, I liked the subject, where she'd left off, and wanted to try my hand at how it might come out. I have silently edited her tale in a few places, making only minor revisions. The idea of the story and its theme are hers. Hopefully my ending does justice to it, to her intent and to her writing ability.
Understand that Snowbear writes the King's English, and I, American. I did not try, or wish to change these differences.
Thanks Snowbear!
Yemassee
They say there are moments in our lives that we will never forget. Moments that affect us so profoundly that we wish time would stand still to allow us to savour every last bit of it.
I remember thinking that this moment would have to become etched permanently in my mind. I recall experiencing it like a series of rapidly taken photographs, an attempt of my mind to immortalise the precious seconds. I created a picture album in my head that I could carry around with me everywhere, dip in an out of whenever I felt the need to refresh the memory. A moment as powerful as this one would be there for me to recall whenever the futility of my existence threatened to overwhelm me.
Surely every human being requires those moments from time to time. The absurdity of life can be kept in check only by the knowledge that there is something, somewhere, that makes it all worthwhile. And even if this understanding is obtained purely accidentally, like in my case, it can still become the rope to cling to when the floor gets whipped away from under us, when everything seems so pointless that we feel we might as well admit defeat.
I remember the moment when I killed him.
It wasn’t premeditated, you understand; I wasn’t out to kill someone that night. I had left my bed-sit with a few coins in my pocket to buy myself a couple of drinks, hopefully enough to forget my misery for a little while. The man who came up to me asking for a cigarette didn’t look like his life had much more purpose than mine. Against my better judgement, I shared a smoke with him, and we conversed of the world for a few seconds, like strangers do. When my hand, still holding the packet of matches he had just returned to me, momentarily became trapped in my coat pocket, he made his move. His right fist exploded into my stomach and, as I doubled over, his knee smashed into my face. Gasping for breath and feeling blood gushing from my nose, I was barely aware that he turned me over on the ground and hurriedly began to empty my pockets. He found the packet of cigarettes and not much else, and, cursing me under his breath, he kicked me again before running off.
I lay on the ground for a while with little interest in getting up. My stomach and nose hurt greatly, and and for a brief moment I feared I might be seriously hurt. Eventually, I got to my knees and finally to my feet. I had no handkerchief to clean myself up, and now I didn’t even have a packet of cigarettes anymore. I laughed. Life sure was a hoot.
It was entirely unintentional that I bumped into him again later that night. I hadn’t given it any thought that the alleyway I had so carelessly used as a shortcut might be where he usually hides out, and were I to hang around, perhaps sit myself down in the dark shadows behind the trash cans, I might have the pleasure or misfortune to once again encounter him. I was sitting at the side of that path purely because I could not think of a compelling reason not to.
When I saw his shadow approach I crouched down deeper behind the rubble and allowed him to pass. As I got up, he sensed my presence and turned, and, recognising me, he backed away.
“Can I trouble you for a smoke?” I asked, slowly walking towards him with my left hand hidden behind my back.
He hesitated for a moment, then, judging me a harmless fool, shrugged his shoulders and reached for my cigarettes. That was when I made my move.
I brought the brick, I'd held concealed, down on the side of his head, splitting his skull open. The force of the blow wasn’t calculated, and up until that second I had been unaware that a single strike could kill a man. I can now attest to the fact that it can, and this was when the moment, that one, short and everlasting moment began and ended.
The freeze-frame pictures of my mind still show me every last details of it: How his eyes widened with surprise that he had misjudged my intentions. How his hands, one of them now clasping my packet of smokes, flayed in an attempt to steady himself before his knees gave way and he went down forcefully as if he had intended to throw himself to the ground. The cigarettes went flying as the back of his hand hit the concrete, and his legs kicked out aimlessly, not intended to hit me or serve any other purpose than communicating his brain’s effort to stay alive. His body convulsed into a few spasms, and his eyes were still wide open, the shock of being struck now replaced by a different one, and it was the light that seemed to be emanating from his eyes that drew me toward him.
I had never seen a man die, and the force of it both fascinated and sickened me. Who would have thought that life, so pathetic and bleak, so utterly hideous, would choose such a powerful way of ending itself?
I knelt by the side of his head, about a second after the brick had connected with his skull, and watched the light fade away. I wondered briefly if that spark was a reflection of the last, the final thing his eyes saw, and could not stop myself from turning around to check that there was no bright light behind me - the headlights of a police car perhaps, or a wavering illusion of the pearly gates of heaven, both would have been acceptable to me - but there was nothing.
I was repulsed by my actions, of course. In a fit of momentary madness, a pathetic act of revenge, an absurd attempt to vindicate myself, I had gone too far. Instead of teaching this wretched soul, whose life was at exactly the same stage as mine, a lesson in balance and equality, I had ended it altogether and thus prevented him from learning anything at all. His last thoughts, if indeed he had any, might have been how unfair life was, when in fact the exact opposite was true.
Yes, I was repulsed, naturally, but at the same time there was another, far more powerful emotion which I could not stop from filling me completely. It wasn’t a feeling of justice, not even the notion that everything you did came back to you tenfold, if only by the dirty and cowardly actions of a being like myself. The thought was far less concrete than that, a little like the flame of a candle lit at night to point the way and every bit as dim and ineffectual. It distantly resembled a feeling of achievement. For the first time in my life, I had actually done something defining,. Something so powerful and extraordinary that, from this moment, no one, not even myself, could ever call me a waste of space again.
I don’t know how long I sat by the side of his head, staring into his dead eyes, the light of which had long gone out. I don’t know why my saviour and I were the only ones who were brought together by fate in that alleyway that night. There was no one who came to interrupt my thoughts, fleeting and incoherently at first, rushing into my head like the rasping breath of a marathon runner. Time passed, and as my thoughts swam into focus and my breath quietened, I began to understand the full magnitude of my actions, the complete, undeniable, wonderful truth, as I finally understood, I found myself still sitting in the same position on the ground, at daybreak.
Snowbear's portion ends here--- and Yemassee's begins
As I rose from my sitting position, I walked over to the cigarettes, picked them up, and looked inside to find that three remained. I hastily put them in my jacket pocket and strolled out of the alley, looking up at the sun, which was just beginning to rise above the tops of the downtown buildings across the street.
I suppose it might seem odd to you, but I looked differently upon the city, as if I were seeing it through new eyes. As if for the first time I noticed the dirt, the foul-smelling odor, and the people walking to work along the sidewalk. Nameless, faceless, they moved as if in a catatonic haze, while I, on the other hand was alive – I, who no longer feared the night.
I thought about the man in the alleyway, that last look of shock and then realization in his eyes. I remembered the feel as I stood over him, his head split open from that single blow of the brick. I knew then what that last look was, and what it meant to me.
I also knew that soon the police would arrive, that my crime would be on the news that night. My heart beat faster at the realization, but not out of fear of being found out. Maybe I was still in the grasp of my crime, of my power to end life, but I had no fear of being apprehended. After-all, the more I thought of it, was I actually guilty of a crime? I'd done the city a favor hadn't I?
Last night I was just looking for a drink, trying to forget my worries, but today, I didn't feel like drinking, I had no need to drink, I didn't have a worry in the world. What did I care if I lost my job, or if my wife left me, that no longer mattered to the person I'd become now.
I walked down the street, it seemed people looked at me differently, with a sense of fear and respect, I felt good, I finally felt like my life had meaning. I'd finally done something in life, a defining moment. I could feel the blood coursing through my veins, I was alive wasn't I? But as I walked, I began to feel uneasy in the daylight, people made me nervous, I wish it was again the night, where I could fall into the margins of society, that prowled around when the moon was out.
I took a cigarette and put it casually in my mouth, dangling from my lips. I took out my matchbook, and turned it end over end with my thumb and index finger, contemplating the night. My thoughts flipped through the slide show, images in stop-motion, flashing before me. I flipped it open with my thumb and pulled off a match and lit it, watching the phosphorus end sparking life into the flame. I watched it reach its zenith, its glow wavering in the still, cool , morning air. But before the flame could ebb, I placed my thumb and index finger over the head, and squeezed firmly, snuffing the flame out. I felt the pain for a moment, but sensed it dying away. I slowly released my grip on the extinguished matchstick, but I did not toss it aside. Instead I placed it in the palm of my hand and held it tight, trying to absorb the little heat that remained.
Adding your comment:
blessings, Sandi
The person in this story might just imagine the whole incident was a bad dream and go forward with life. 
WOW!
y
