Unfinished

“Hey, I’m glad you’re all here. I just don’t want anyone to worry, that’s all. Can everyone hear me?”

Ryan is in a large room. The sun shines through the windows creating a path of colored light. There are rows and rows of people sitting in front of him with blank expressions. He recognizes most of these people, but he also sees unfamiliar faces. He sees his mother and father sitting in the front row. Their faces are still, staring blankly ahead at a point somewhere past Ryan. He takes some time to really look at them; he hasn’t seen them in a while.

Ryan’s mother is beautiful. She is tall and slender, with honey blond hair that hangs around her shoulders in loose curls. Her eyes are like Ryan’s, deep-ocean blue. She has high cheekbones, and usually has a healthy pink flush in her cheeks and lips, but today she looks pale as paper. She sits ramrod straight, one hand on his father’s hand, her face wiped of expression.

Ryan’s father looks like what Ryan will probably looked like when he reaches that age. The father is tall and lean. His brown hair is just long enough to look scruffy in a styled way, and there are a few gray streaks through it. The scruff around his mouth is also starting to turn gray. His skin is tanned from his time spent outside in the sun. Today, he slumps a little, also looking at a point somewhere beyond Ryan.

The sight of his parents startles him a little. He quickly looks around at the rest of the people sitting in the crowd. There’s Zach, Ryan’s best friend. Next to Zach sits his cousin, Lilith. Ryan is surprised to see her as well. He feels his cheeks get warm as he remembers their last interaction. He feels bad that she is here. She looks miserable, unlike the rest of the crowd in the room who all look like zombies. Ryan looks around the rest of the room. He sees people from his college, people from his high school, and some relatives whom he hasn’t seen in years.

He tries again, “So, thank you all for being here. My name is Ryan, for those of you who don’t know me…” He takes a breath and looks down at his hands for a second, thinking of what to say next. “I know that I’ve been gone for a few days. I’m back now. Sorry for any worry I might have caused you.”

There’s something odd and vacant about the crowd of people. There’s something about them that doesn’t quite fit in with the colorful room. They seem distant somehow, as if they don’t quite fit in the room. Then, Ryan notices that they are all wearing black. He looks down at himself and sees that he, too, is wearing black.

A woman Ryan hadn’t noticed before gets up and looks straight at him; the first time this has happened today. She is small, fragile looking, with thin arms hanging at her side comfortably. There is a faint glow outlining her body. She has pale skin and bright blond hair chopped into a bob. The faint glowing around her makes her hair seem even brighter, clashing with the dullness of the crowd she stands among. Her eyes are shaded with heavy black makeup, giving her otherwise sweet face an edge. Ryan looks at her hard. He has never seen her before, but she seems somehow familiar.

“Where were you?” she asks. Her voice rings through the room like music.

“I’m sorry?” Ryan asks.

“Well, you said that you were gone for a few days,” she smiles a little, but it isn’t cruel. It is sympathetic. “So where were you?”

“Well, I- I mean I wasn’t here.” he says, trying to remember where he had been.

He cannot recall where he has been, just that he has been gone. In fact, he can’t really remember how he even got here to this room, or why everyone he knows, and people he doesn’t know, are sitting in front of him. He looks down to his hands again, looking for note cards. Is he making a speech? What about?

“I think I just need to take a quick break. I’ll be right back, I’m so sorry,” he says to the crowd and he runs to the door. It takes all of his strength to push it open, and then suddenly there is a brilliant white light. He has to close his eyes against it, and when he opens them –

****

“ – do you mind helping me clean the dishes?” Lilith asks. Her perfect blond hair is tied up and out of her face. She smiles brightly at me, her overconfidence shining like the pink gloss on her lips. Lilith’s blue eyes, almost the same color as mine, look alive. There is energy sparkling in them. I realize that I am staring for a little too long, and quickly nod my head. She smiles brightly and pulls me by the hand to the kitchen.

I am at Zach’s house for the weekend again. I have been here so often in the past four years that it almost feels like home.

“So, how bad was it this time?” Lilith asks suddenly. She has been watching me closely as I dry the dishes. I look up at her and see that she is determined to get me to talk about it this time.

“Lil,” I start, but she stops me with a raised eyebrow.

She won’t leave me alone until I talk to her about it. I can see why Zach thinks she is annoying, but I am only grateful that she can see how much I need to talk to someone.

“Fine,” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It was pretty bad this time. My dad basically told me to get a job or I’m done.”

Lilith leans closer to me, putting her hand on my shoulder in earnest. “But did you tell him how important music is to you, though? Like, really tell him? Did you show him your songs?” she asks, insistent that there is some way I can make things right.

I sigh. I can’t help it, I know she doesn’t understand, but I don’t want to push her away. “I tried Lil. I really did. He just kept yelling at me. Even my mother couldn’t calm him down this time. He just kept yelling at me saying, like, what if I don’t get famous, and how am I going to support myself and shit like that.”

Lilith shakes her head and takes her hand away, looking back at the dishes in the sink. “I still think that you should talk to him. And to your mother. They probably just want what’s best for you.”

“I know, but they need to understand that sitting at a desk from nine to five is not what’s best for me,” I say back. I feel the anger at my parents rising up in me again. Lilith notices.

“Fine, fine,” she says, though I can see that she does not accept my answer. She looks back up at me, smiling. “At least you’re pretty much part of the family here. Aunt Faith would do as much for you as she would do for Zach.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what I would do without her. Or you guys,” I add, suddenly noticing how close Lilith is standing to me. Her body is just a few inches from mine, leaning in, her face tilted up to mine. I could reach out and kiss her right now, and I don’t think that she would mind.

Then, Zach walks into the kitchen and Lilith jumps away from me. Zach looks between us for a second, shakes his head, and then turns his attention to the dishes.

“Dude, what are you doing?”

“Lilith was going to do all these dishes by herself, and I couldn’t let that happen. I am a guest here, after all,” I say.

Zach rolls his eyes. “Yeah, about as much of a guest as I am. Stop doing housework, I never do. Anyways, come on! I got the drum set, let’s go practice!”

I leave the kitchen, but not before giving Lilith a big, silly grin. She smiles back, and our eyes hold each other’s for a second longer than they should before I turn around and walk away.

****

– He is in a white room. Not just plain white. The walls glow so brilliantly that he has to squint his eyes to see anything. He is breathing hard, gasping for air. A voice in his brain screams something at him. Try to remember! You need to remember! What does he need to remember? Things are all just fading away so quickly.

Ryan turns around and around, trying to remember. Where has he been? What is the last thing he remembers? He hears the door open behind him and turns around quickly, only to find the woman from before standing inches away, staring up into his eyes.

“What is… where – who are you?” He tries to make sense, but the blood pumps in his head and his pulse is louder than his voice.

“That’s really not important,” she says, her voice somehow finding its way into his ears past the blood. “You should sit down, you look like you’re going to explode.” Her voice sounds like music. The sound of it calms Ryan down just a little.

He sits down and rests his head on his knees for a few seconds. He takes in slow, long breaths

“Okay,” Ryan says lifting his head up, “I’m not going to explode.”

She nods once, sitting down next to him. “Right. Now, just think back. What’s the last thing you remember?”

He closes his eyes and thinks. He was in the city for something. Lilith was with him. What was he doing? He concentrates harder. That’s right. He was –

****

“ – going to be fine,” Lilith says. She is trying to lend her confidence to me. It’s been about a month since I moved into Zach’s house this time. I moved in right after graduation, after my dad chewed me up about getting a proper job. Zach’s mom has the tendency to take in those without a place to stay. That’s why Lilith lives there too. Of course, Lilith’s situation is different from mine.

You’d never know it after having just met her, but Lilith has a pretty tragic past. Her parents died in a car crash when she was only five years old, and her aunt took her in. I was surprised and flattered when Lilith told me about it. She didn’t let people in so easily.

“I’m not so sure. Maybe my parents are right,” I say.

We are on our way to a meeting with a producer. Zach and I and our band have made a demo CD, and this meeting could change everything for us. We could be in the recording studio if the meeting goes well. Lilith is coming with me for moral support, and as we walk she laces her arm through mine. I feel her warmth wash over me.

“No! No, you guys have great songs. I can’t believe you wrote some of those. They are really good. It’s going to go well, don’t worry.”

Suddenly, I bump into someone and get drenched in coffee.

“Oh, I am so sorry!” the man says, “Are you alright?”

“Crap. No, it’s fine. It wasn’t your fault,” I say, my mind racing through images of important men in nice suits laughing at my coffee stained shirt and tie and throwing my demo CD into the trash.

The man nods and walks away. I turn to Lilith. “I can’t go to this meeting looking and smelling like this!” I say. I am almost yelling, but Lilith understands my panic.

“Not to worry, we are really close to my school’s theater. I can pull some strings and get you a new outfit,” she says, placing her hands on my shoulders and looking into my eyes. She does this to calm me down. The pressure on my shoulders makes my racing thoughts stop. I look at her and nod. “But… it’s going to be a little more classy than the one you have on now, is that alright?”

I shake my head and laugh. “Take me to the theater, Fairy God Mother,” I say.

Before I know it, I’m suited up – literally. I have on a black suit, styled like the suits in the 70s, Lilith tells me. I look like one of the Beatles, I tell her.

“You’re so right! You look amazing. Now you don’t have to be worried about this meeting at all,” she laughs back.

“What would I do without you?” I ask her, giving her a hug. She feels so right in my arms. I let her go but keep my arms wrapped loosely around her body. “Really,” I whisper, suddenly afraid of what she might be thinking, “what would I do?”

She looks nervous as well. There is a force field around us, shutting everything out and pulling us in to each other. She leans in until our lips are millimeters away, looks up at me and says, “I really don’t know,” and then she kisses me lightly and pulls away. “Now, let’s get you to that meeting on time.”

****

– “So she made the first move,” cuts in the woman.

Ryan opens his eyes. “Did you see my thoughts?” he asks.

“So what happened next?” she asks, ignoring the question.

“Wait, you need to tell me what is going on,” he says.

“No, I asked a question first, and you still haven’t answered it. I asked where you were, remember?”

“Yeah, but you just, like, read my thoughts or something!” he retorts, unsure of what to make of it. He’s not even sure that’s what really happened.

“Ryan, look at me. You need to do this. What happened next?” she persists. She looks straight into his eyes so that he can’t look away.

“Fine,” he says, closing his eyes to break the connection so he can concentrate, “but when this is done, you are going to answer my questions.”

So, he remembers walking quickly through the streets of the city, trying to get to the appointment on time –

****

“ – and don’t forget to smile. Smiling is very important. It gives people a good impression. Makes people think that you are confident, which gives them a reason to have confidence in you,” Lilith says hurriedly.

I’m trying to pay attention to her and concentrate on where I am walking and stop running through the scene of her kissing me in the theater from a few minutes ago at the same time when, suddenly, I hear a low rumbling sound. I stop and look around, but no one else seems to notice. Then, the ground starts to shake and –

****

“ -what happened?” Ryan asks, scared to remember more. He still feels like the ground is shaking but then he realizes that he is the one shaking.

“Ah, yes. So you know what happened now,” she answers. She looks at Ryan, making sure he is not freaking out again.

“You don’t answer questions, do you,” He says, suddenly angry.

“Not in the way you wish,” she says. She gets up and holds her hands out. Ryan grabs them and lest her help him up. “I want you to open that door and take a look inside the room, but don’t go in,” she says, walking him to the door.

Ryan opens the door and looks into the room. It’s so much duller compared to the room he is in now. He sees everyone he saw before, but now there is sound and movement. And emotions. Oh, the emotions. He can feel them and hear them, see them and taste them. They are seeping through the crack in the door he has created. The room he is in starts to turn gray and blue and purple in conjunction with the emotions of the other room. He hears a person talking and looks up to the front, where he was standing just minutes ago. He sees his father standing there. His eyes are red and puffy, and his hands are shaking.

“He was a brilliant boy, really,” Ryan’s father says, voice shaking in time with his hands. “He – he was a musician. He created beautiful music. All he wanted to do was…” his dad stops speaking and puts his head in his hands, shaking with full force now.

It’s too much. Ryan closes the door and looks back to the woman. “What is going on?” he asks again, though he is beginning to understand.

The woman hands him a newspaper article. He sees his own face smiling brightly out of the paper next to an article. He reads the headline, and then the rest of the story, and lets the paper slip from his hands. He looks up –

****

The ground below me is shaking. I look to my right and see a construction man not too far away, using a jackhammer. He is getting too close to the grate that Lilith and I are standing on right now. Things suddenly happen in slow motion.

Lilith’s face is frozen somewhere between a smile and horror as I push her away, hard, and her hands reach out to me, just out of reach. The jackhammer comes in contact with the grate and the grate falls in, with me on top of it. A large truck passes me on the street just as my head disappears into the hole. I don’t feel anything; I am separate from my body. As I hit the underground, I hear a subway train in the distance pulling up to a station. Then, my head hits the ground hard and I feel it. I feel it badly for one second. The pain, the unbearable pain. Then, I can’t hear anything and my surroundings fade to black.

****

“Are you alright, Ryan?” asks the woman.

He honestly doesn’t know. He can’t wrap his head around it. He paces in circles around the room, around the woman, trying to grasp at the idea that…

“You were in a coma for three days before you left,” she says calmly, interrupting his thoughts. “Everyone had a chance to see you off.”

He can’t believe what she is saying. He can’t believe his own memory. In an insane effort to prove them both wrong, he reaches up to his neck to check for a pulse. Nothing.

“But I didn’t get a chance to make up with my parents,” Ryan says. “And Lilith. Lilith, what happened to her?”

“She is fine. You saved her. She was trying to get your attention. She didn’t know why you had stopped, and then… you know,” said the woman.

“Can I go back in there? Just to say bye?” He asks. He is afraid.

“They won’t hear you. The crowd you saw earlier, the silent one, was just there to help you realize what you are,” she says quietly.

“I have to go in there,” he says. “There’s so much I need to say… I remember now.”

Ryan opens the door and walks into the room. Everyone has gotten up and is giving their condolences to his parents. They look a little lost, but filled with grief. He walks straight to them.

“I’m sorry,” he says to them, hoping beyond hope that they will be able to hear, somehow. “I should never have stormed out.” They show no sign of recognizing his presence. He lets himself look at them for a long while. If only he could be sure that they knew how much he loved them. He wishes that he could make them hear him.

Then, Lilith walks up to them. She is sobbing quietly. This is so different from how he has ever seen her. He realizes with a pang of guilt that this brings up some vague, sad memories from when her parents passed away.

“Lilith,” he says, his voice catching in his throat. “Please, hear me.” She looks in Ryan’s direction, but her eyes do not see him. She is looking through him. “Lilith, can you hear me?” he says, and she stops crying. She moves closer to him, looking for something. The woman comes back into the room and beckons to Ryan. It’s time for him to go.

“Lil, please hear me,” he says again, and this time she looks right at him. He feels something pulling at his chest, the edges of his vision glowing the same white as the other room. Their eyes meet and she gasps, reaching out to touch his face, but everything flashes white and he’s gone.