GONE: The Interludes (text)

Lovely GONE listeners, I promised to do this a while ago and I'm sorry it took me so long: The Interlude episodes, while I did make them somewhat garbled on purpose, are naturally going to be somewhat difficult to make out for some people, and while I was posting the text on the Podbean page for a while, I let it slide. So here, for those who want it, is the text of all the Interludes. Hope you enjoy. 💖

The Fall

I only once ever really saw you scared. 

You always seemed so together. You always seemed so solid. Honest to God, a year with you and I was starting to think nothing got under your skin. 

Might be part of why I fell for you. Something I was looking for. You were so many things I didn't think I could ever be. Maybe that's a shitty reason to fall in love with someone, but it's not like I was into evaluating my motivations. 

You were brave. That's the point. 

Except when we got on that fucking plane. Cruising altitude and the turbulence hit, and it was like we dropped all thirty thousand of those feet in five endless seconds. I thought you were going to bust your seatbelt, scramble into my lap like a frightened puppy. You held my hand so tight my bones were grinding. 

I have my secrets. This is one of them. 

It's that I liked how scared you were. I liked seeing that. The evidence that it could happen, right in front of me. That little fall stripped you as naked as you ever were with me. 

You needed me, for a change. I was the solid one.

When we got off the plane, it was like it never happened. You left that fall up there in the sky. I was okay with that. I wasn't going to lord it over you. I didn't want this to be some kind of power struggle. It was never about that for me. 

But it was good to see you weak. 

See you like you must see me. 

The Push

I remember sunrise, how it used to be. 

I remember my first sunrise with you. First night we spent together. It was like a world broke open and came pouring through. Then when the sun rose it was like it happened all over again. 

I felt like it was a gift you gave me. In that moment, I think I started trusting you, because if you made me that happy, it was inconceivable to me that you would ever hurt me. 

Yes, I really was that stupid. 

I know we didn't have a night together for a while after that. I never told you what I was doing in all those nights without you. At the end of them. It was another one of my secrets. It felt stupid, I was too embarrassed to tell you. Even years later I was too embarrassed, but I don't see a sunrise now without remembering. 

How it was. 

I stayed up late. I woke up early, into the dark. I burned away my sleep over you, just to see the light cracking the horizon open and the world come pouring through. 

It doesn't matter how late I stay up, now. It doesn't matter how early I wake up, either. I'm not even sure I'm sleeping anymore. 

There's still light. But it's weak. It's not bright enough to break anything. 

I know it's not fair to you. I know it's probably wrong. But I feel like you took those sunrises away from me. You gave one to me, like the first hit of a fucking drug, and that's when they all started slipping into the dark, because after that it was never enough. 

And soon, I think, it'll all be over. 

The Tide

Sunsets too. That was a thing with us, though it didn't happen until later. 

There was our honeymoon. I've never forgotten that. The whole week, but that one night in particular, driving up the coast, trying to outrun the dusk. There was this beach you wanted to get to, this special beach you loved so much when you were a kid. You wanted to show it to me. There was this perfect, pure, childlike excitement soaking your face like the sunlight gone all red and gold, swelling in your voice, washing through every movement. You were the tide coming in, and watching you out of the corner of my eye, your hands on the wheel, I don't think I ever loved you more than in that moment. 

Until we got there. Because of course we got there. Of course we won.

Leaping out of the car. You ran, I struggled to keep up with you. Your strides were always so much longer than mine. You always covered so much more ground. 

At some point you paused long enough to pull off your sandals, and that's when I caught you. Hooked my arm around your waist and you hit the sand, and we were both laughing even as you punched my shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. 

Somehow we got to our feet, my shoes off, and we left them and kept running. The sun was touching the water when we reached its edge. You stood there, foam swirling around your toes, and you were quiet for a moment, gone all still, and I looked at you and saw the tears on your cheeks. 

I kissed them away. Remember? 

Then I did a lot more than that. 

Good thing no one was there. Far as we ever knew. If someone was, I always figured at least we gave them a nice show. 

That was perfect. That was a tiny slice of perfection, thin as the crescent moon we watched rise, later. After. 

We never took another trip like that. 

You know, you always said we would. I asked you as much as I could, kept at it, though I was careful to never come off as a nag. I don't think I was one, anyway. But now I wonder if maybe I should have been pushier. Maybe I should have gone ahead and fucking nagged. Because three months later you got the job at the institute and they ran you like a goddamn racehorse, and it was good, you were being paid obscenely well, I was lucky enough to be a kept woman - and I know I was lucky. I know that. 

But you said we would go back. 

Did you know, when you said it, that you were lying? 

Did you care?

I never told you how much I really wanted it. Wanted you like that again. I was so close to you, cradled in that slice of a moment. I was inside you. In more ways than one. In every way that mattered. And you denied me that. 

I didn't know how angry that was making me. I didn't know that until now. 

I have pictures of that beach. Neither of us is in them. They're deserted. I can sit in the dark and look at those fucking pictures and put both of us there. It's what I have now, because you never gave me anything better. 

I know that's such a petty thing to care about now. It's so small. But I'm so small, drowning in a rising ocean of whispering black with my useless pictures and my memories that don't amount to shit, so maybe that's only what you should expect. 

I love you so much. 

But fuck. You.

Somnambulist

You were coming home so tired by the end. And I felt so useless. 

I wanted to do something for you. That was how I coped, I think, with the fact that I was feeling useless anyway. I needed to do something that mattered, though it was never that simple. I needed to do something with some substance, some weight. I needed to do something real. 

No, none of what I was doing felt that way. 

So I took care of you. You remember the times I had orange chicken and rice waiting for you when you got home? Remember the massages, the ones I studied on how to give? You remember the times I met you at the door wearing a skimpy little scrap of nothing? I was lost in unreality so much of the day; I was trying to be a fantasy. I was trying to be a fantasy I'm not sure you ever really had, although you were always very appreciative and I never felt like you were taking me for granted. 

But somehow it never quite got the job done. 

You came home so tired, and while it never occurred to me to ask you why—never as a thing I might actually do because I was a good little housewife, obedient as you please—yeah, I did wonder. I wondered what could wear you down like that. Wasn't always long hours. It was a reliable exhaustion. 

It was a thick exhaustion, that seemed to hum into the air around you, making the molecules that surrounded you like an aura whisper and dance. Secrets about what you knew and I didn't. You were so tired that it was like a gravity well, like it warped reality. I'll tell you now in all honesty; I was scared and I didn't know why, and I wasn't honest with myself.

You know, I think you were scared too. I'm pretty sure I saw that in you. 

You weren't sleeping much. You were restless. Maybe you thought I didn't know, but I was awake often enough to get a sense of how much time you spent on your feet, pacing the halls. You never turned the lights on; you were a pale figure drifting through the shadows in a t-shirt that hung long and baggy around your thighs, making your form formless. 

A couple of times, I believe I woke up just enough to see you standing over me, feeling the pressure of your attention even if I couldn't see your eyes. Could have been my imagination but I think you might have been trembling at the edges. 

Could have been my imagination but I think you might have been whispering. 

What were you saying? Was it a blessing? 

Was it a curse?

What scared you so fucking bad? What did you know? What was building inside you then, waiting to tear itself free and reshape the world? 

And why am I asking questions to which I already know the answers? 

Because yeah, I know, sweetheart. I know a lot, now. 

I know a lot, long after it's much too late for it to matter. 

Episode 5: Arrival - Introduction 

You think you know fear. You don't know fear. You think you know dark? You don't know dark. You think you know what it's like to be powerless? I have no idea if you ever felt powerless in your fucking life. You sure never seemed to. But I'm wondering now, if - at the end - it was mostly what you were feeling. 

You liked to be in control. Didn't you? So maybe you made one last grab for it before everything slipped through your fingers like poisoned sand. 

You bitch, were you actually trying to be some kind of hero? Were you trying to save the world? Were you really that full of yourself, that you thought you could ever do that? 

Did you really think that, by the time you knew we were fucked, it wasn't already too late? 

You did nothing. You were a tiny little cog in a gigantic machine, a fucking meat grinder, so hungry, hungry enough to eat the whole damn world. You looked into the abyss a long time before the rest of us did, and you saw it looking back, you heard its siren songs, its warnings, and you still thought you could make it work. 

I've read about projects that hurtle completely off the rails. They start small and then fall into this inexorable recursion of exponential growth, this downward spiral of what you stupid motherfuckers probably thought was progress, and you lost sight of whatever it was you were originally trying to do. All that was left was the spiral, pulling you downward, and you kept thinking that, okay, one more step, it's not out of control yet, we’ll know where to stop, we have safeguards and failsafes and every kind of thing that propagates and reinforces the illusion of safety, and you don't see the fail part, and you don't understand how failures cascade. 

I didn't ask to be part of this. I didn't ask to be part of your little project. But I hope you're happy with your results. 

I don't know what you've learned. What I've learned is that things can get so much worse than you imagined. Things can get so much worse than you ever would have believed. You don't plan for them. You just make it, if you can. 

You survive. 

I know fear. I know dark. We’re very good friends, me and the dark. 

Power… Well, that's something I'm working on. 

I'll let you know how it goes. 

Episode 6: Accusation - Introduction

I'm not alone. I'm never alone. All the friends I've made, always with me. Everywhere I go, the drone of their conversations, their debates and their arguments. It seems like there's a lot they disagree on. 

Trying to sleep. Whispers in my ear and fingers combing through my hair. I slap them away but there's never any point. Nothing I do makes any difference, remember? 

I might as well not even be here. 

I lie awake and I listen to them. They crackle and hiss like bad radio reception; sometimes they're clear and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're singing their little tones, over and over, rising and falling. Transmitting a code I can't hope to understand. 

Looking up, watching them standing around me. Ring of shadows, darker holes gaping in their faces, pits of nothing. They move. They're always moving. Even if I could touch them, I don't think I could pin them down. 

I hate them. I guess. But they're also my company, you know? They're my companions. I suppose, since I'm not in a position to be picky, that they're my friends. 

Like the best friends, they refuse to abandon me, no matter how many things I throw at them, no matter how many stupid fucking bullets I fire, no matter how much I scream. They're so loyal. 

They're so much more loyal than you. 

When they finally let me die, if they ever do, I have a feeling they'll be the ones who watch me go.