Day 148 - Afterglow Story

Afterglow Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Lloyd on had been living on two continents on two different worlds. He was very young when it began and didn’t fully realize what was happening. He just went to sleep on one planet and woke up on another. At first he thought he was just having very vivid dreams, but the other was too clear and his trips there were too often. He grew older, but still didn’t understand it. He had no explanation. It should have been impossible, but he knew it was happening to him.

Lloyd learned at a young age not to tell people about what was happening to him. Very few people listened with any open sincerity, less let him finish. None believed him. But they all had judgment. That was one universal – they all would judge him. Lloyd learned quickly enough he did not need that. He hated the way people looked at him and whispered when he was on the other side of the room. He could only imagine what they said when he wasn’t there, but he hated that too. He didn’t want to hate them all, but he couldn’t help himself. The blatant disrespect and constant questioning made it impossible to interact with them on any normal and positive level. So Lloyd kept his mouth shut a lot. He hated living that way.

When he was young, it was said that he had a great imagination. As a young man, he was called a daydreamer who lacked focus and maturity. When he reached young adulthood, he was weird and unbalanced. Throughout it all he had seen many different therapists and self-help gurus. Most friends and families thought Lloyd was bored and would someday grow up.

On the other world he was much freer. This world was much more advanced than the world he came from. It was like living in a science fiction fantasy. It was a world of technological marvel. It was a world of simplicity and leisure. There were dynamic and electric cities. There were forests and lush natural habitats. There were creatures like he had never seen before.

When he was a child it was easy to imagine it was all a dream. That was a simple and easy explanation. That was the explanation that made sense. When he was on the other world he was a young man. He didn’t understand why, but he never seemed to suffer any of the normal human frailties. He was never hungry, never tired, and he couldn’t remember ever being hurt. Even if something had happened to him before traveling, he was fine when he arrived. Bruises were gone. Cuts were healed. It was a fantasy paradise available only to him. When he was a teenager he wanted to flee his life and escape full time, but that was impossible. He had no control over his travels. His travels began when he was asleep. Later they occurred more often – sometimes with a blink, other times with a stray thought. One thing he never had was control of when or why he would travel. That was beyond his power of comprehension and influence.

Time worked in a very strange way. On one world he aged. He grew. He married and had a family. On the other he was still young, ever young. When he was young on one world, he was a young man on the other. When he was a young man, he was a young man on both. As he got older, he had the joy of retaining his youth. Other people went grey and lost their hair and added wrinkles and unwanted pounds, and he did too, but not on the other world. It was an amazing gift, the chance to have something forever. He didn’t know if anyone else got to have that, but he had to imagine he was the only one. He never knew anyone else that didn’t age.

During his late teens Lloyd began seeing a therapist and continued to see various therapists on and off over the next twenty years. He didn’t know what answer he was searching for, but he often felt empty. Living a split life was draining and he was often dissatisfied with both. He loved certain elements of both, but never got the satisfaction that would come with having everything at the same time. No one had any answers for him, but some of that was because he lied to them all and never told them about his other life. Some of their failure to help his was that he didn’t really want the worlds reconciled or combined. He was afraid that if they somehow did become one that he would lose the best part of both and what made them so special. He would rather have two imperfections that held moments of greatness than risk losing either.

There had been a girl there – a young woman who he spent a great deal of time with. Her name was Lisa or Lizzy or Michelle or something like that. He couldn’t remember it when he was on the wrong world. He didn’t know why. He could strain and struggle and try very hard to remember details, but most of the time it was a cloudy blur. She was smart and sarcastic, but sad. He could feel her melancholy across time and space on whichever world he was on. She had light freckles and usually had bangs. He knew that. She had a peaceful smile when she would allow herself to be happy. He didn’t know why she was sad, but he knew she was.

Most people he could remember were always sad. All the amazing things, on either world, and yet they were always a little bit unsatisfied and sad.

His memory was always bad. When he was on one world he could hardly ever clearly recall the other. He supposed that was part of the trick. He didn’t know. He wished he could see things more clearly. But instead it just lingered there, a bit of perfection just out of reach. It always left him with a lonely longing feeling.

He grew older and older and then so old that all he could do was look back. He had very few regrets, but he did miss the sandy brown haired girl whose name he couldn’t quite place. He wondered with all the amazing technology that existed why no one had cured the sickness that was aging. He could swear he had been young once, young in an infinite and everlasting sort of way. He remembered long timeless adventures. Where had those gone? It was lost to him. They were never supposed to end. He had never been able to share them enough or really live them, but he remembered them like they were real and true. And the girl with the freckles and bangs. She had loved him. He was sure of it. Did she have glasses? He wished he could see her face more clearly.  They used to run over the hills during endless summers, or were they running through city streets on cold autumn afternoons? It was an amazing land. He missed it so. He was young, always so young. And when he died, he could swear that wasn’t all there was to it.