My project for course: Short Story Writing: Create Fiction from Personal Experience: "Between the lines"

Between the lines

I stay for the stories.
First, it was the stories of humans that kept me here. I seemed to have a certain je ne sais quoi about me that made people pour their hearts out. Whatever was on their mind, I could see it finding its way to me like a river flowing into the ocean.
Random people on trains and bus stops and in coffee shops and waiting rooms would tell me about heartbreak and loss, about false hope and disappointment and calcified sadness and anger buried deep inside – sometimes for decades.
I would listen. I would drink the words, the meaning between the lines. I would take in the unshed tears, the clenched fists and the deep wrinkles that wrote paths of sorrow on the storyteller’s face.
At first, I would find it fascinating. I was so thirsty for life.
I’d never question the gravitational force that pulled broken people into my orbit.
I took it all in and I could sense their relief after the last words had fallen from their tongues.
I even thought that I might make a good therapist. I never had the grades to enlist in a university, but perhaps, now that I was older, I could try again.
I could be one of the therapists that make their office as cozy and inviting as possible. Warm, calming earth tones, soft materials, natural lighting. I would be compassionate and ask all the right questions. I would offer comfort and understanding and most of all: a hiding place.

It became all too much on a random Tuesday. I followed an urge for a cool beer and perhaps a new story before going home to my silent apartment that felt nothing like my imaginary therapist’s office.
I sat on one of the barstools, unnoticed, like the observer I’ve become. I finished my drink and left. Just as the heavy wooden door closed behind me and swallowed the deep baritone of a man and the nervous, excited laughter of his date and the upbeat elevator music that set the background for their conversation, an orange glimmer of light caught my eyes.
Full lips around a cigarette, grey smoke lazily travelling upwards.
“I’ve lost my daughter”, a voice said, cold, lifeless, stripped of all and any colours.
I did not respond. There was the story I had been looking for but now that the words were fed to me, I felt sick.
“She died a week before her thirtieth birthday”, the voice continued.
“It was an accident.”
My head started to spin.
“I should have kept her from … If only I … I will never forgive myself. My only daughter … I’ve seen her body.”
Her sorrow washed over me. It was as if I suddenly forgot how to swim. I had been following all those stories without realizing I’d lost sight of the shore.
The waves crashed around me, I fell deaf.
“If I only could, I would get destiny to swap our places”, I blurted out and hastily turned around and made my way home.

That night I dreamed about the daughter. We were both drowning, and I tried desperately to reach her with icy fingers. The darkness grew around us, but her skin seemed to have a glossy shimmer that guided me towards her. Like she was shining from within. I could not see her face, but there was this feeling of dread inside me, of knowing something I didn’t want to accept. It was already too late. I was fighting for a lost cause. I could not save her. I was too late. Before she vanished into the depths of the ocean I could hear her voice echo in my mind. “Never forget my story”, she begged me.

But forgetting stories is all I’ve been trying to do ever since. Now, I never leave my apartment without my noise-cancelling headphones and my sunglasses. I don’t want to see; I don’t want to hear. I do not even listen to music, because music too is story and emotion and human suffering.
I am lacking at work because I cannot concentrate on the tasks ahead. It all seems so meaningless. What am I even doing here?

It was my nieces’ upcoming birthday that snapped me out of my numbness. She loved books, just as I did when I was a kid. She could spend hours following the three investigators on their secret adventures. And so, I picked myself up from my couch and made my way to the recently opened bookshop in town. The little bell on the doorframe greeted me like an old friend from long-forgotten times. I was surrounded by the smell of freshly printed books and the comfortable silence felt like a warm cup of tea. Even my footsteps were swallowed by the thick carpet.
It was in a bookstore not too different from this one that my love for stories was first ignited. Why did I stop reading? My fingers traced along the cool, smooth spines, taking in all the exciting titles. Suddenly there was this longing in me. This longing for mystery and magic, for something bigger than my dull life. I longed for all the things I could be between the lines. The riddles I would solve. The spells I would cast. The friends I would make along the way. Even for the sadness that would sometimes linger for days after I’ve finished yet another book. I could feel my shoulders rolling back and I took a deep breath for the first time in ages.
It was at this moment that I decided to stay. I’d stay for the stories.