Episode 67 - Weight

(Music fades in)

  Welcome back to the podcast. To a character study of the shadows in my mind. I mean, these aren’t real people. They aren’t people you’ll ever meet in any way. Whatever they are, they are gone. Their impact on the world is slowly starting to fade. I am slowly starting to fade. And if the lack of emails in my inbox is anything to go by, once I am gone, that is it. This show–this series of stories–will fade with me…

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  Not to get too existential on you. That’s the ultimate party foul, isn’t it? Hey, we are little life forms out in the wind, flickers of light that will one day go out and oh no, we are going to take so much out with us. The immediate world around us will go, that slice that only we would ever know. That story–or stories, rather–maybe they were only ours to tell. Or maybe it was just the perspective that was only ours to share. It was our glimmer of light amidst so many other stars. And so, it’s easy to think that small flicker doesn’t matter. It’s just one among many. It’s just a blip whose absence is hardly noticed. 

  And at this point, I know I’m supposed to say how wrong that is, how I don’t agree with it. I’m supposed to find that small sliver of light amidst all the stars that differentiates them. Or I should be pointing out I’m not looking at this wall from some distant edge of a galaxy. I should be stating that I am right there, at the edge of it, with you. I am the star beside you so I see you. 

  Or that’s how the line goes, and I want to say that. Hell, as cynical as I am, I recognize that this is a beautiful sentiment. It’s just not one I can honestly say. It’s just not relevant to me. Because you aren’t next to me. No one is next to me. I am alone in the void of space. And that’s probably for the best.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  There’s something about the Wild West that both invites and repels the feeling of existential dread. It’s a part of history that’s long gone and was full of strife and murders when we had it. It was a dangerous time when death was just behind the next tumbleweed. And yet, there’s something iconic about it that has allowed it to endure. It is a distant time, almost something like a fantasy, a picture plucked out of the world of possibility and laid out before us. It is a way to escape from our reality, from the things that trouble us, that could end us. And so we’re more than willing to ignore that the west was won with blood. Or maybe not with blood directly, but blood certainly came up. Or out. 

  It wasn’t a bloodless conflict, I should say.

  And I think Wyatt knew that.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  His face was set in a sullen expression. It wasn’t fully sour, though. His brow furrowed, pressed down by a heavy weight. The weight of his brother’s disappearance, you would think. I’m actually inclined to think that, but I have to wonder if there wasn’t something more. I have to wonder how one would handle living in a world like that: surrounded by death and all of its signs. We banish it from our minds until it’s something we can monetize. Or maybe that’s too harsh. There’s a socially acceptable distance, I should say. And then we can gawk all we want.

  But when you’re up close like that, you can’t just stare with a hand over your mouth to mask your mocking whispers. You know the dead will be able to hear you. You know their faces. You can remember the laughter forever silenced and left to rot in the dirt. You know them. And you can’t stop knowing them. 

  On one hand, it means they can never leave you, but my word, that is a heavy weight to bear.

  I just wonder how much of it exactly Wyatt had.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  Wyatt would glance over from time to time at the silent companion beside him. He was waiting for some sort of question, some sort of follow up or even a platitude. He expected a remark to fill the air, but instead, he heard nothing. 

  Slowly, he learned that it was not her way to talk. It was a lesson that took time, though. 

  The only thing that moved slower was the horse, its confidence shocked by the broken wheel–by a delay nothing and no one was used to or had anticipated. And so, time drew on. Time ticked on, wearing down Wyatt’s ability to keep quiet. 

  “It’s just me and him,” he said.

  Jade accepted what he said as true. She had no reason to question it, assuming she even understood what he meant.

  “Our dad is dead,” he said. “So is my mom.”

  Wyatt did not clarify what he meant by that. He did not have to. The simple pronoun switch spoke volumes.

  A shared father. One without a mother who was not shared. And that same one left more desperate to cling to his brother, the only person he had left. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  I think repetition is a way to resist loss, the being eaten away by time, the fade out as the universe slowly consumes.With repetition you can insist that you are there. You reiterate that you are real and present and a part of this. 

  Of course, sometimes repetition causes distortion, sometimes the part of you that you insist is there is the first to go. The insistence makes you a target and you are soon eaten away. You are taken away. You are changed. You might not be. Or right away. The possibility is there. 

  It’s such a gamble, isn’t it? And in the end, you still don’t make it out. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  The house the horse pulled up to was set apart from the road, or what would be considered a road. Who even knows. Either way, it was a surprisingly modern looking house. One story with a walk up and a porch. On the porch was a rocking chair faced towards whoever might be unlocking the door. 

  “This is my stop, little one,” he said.

  That word choice seemed weird. It didn’t seem time appropriate. Everything else about Wyatt seemed so coded for the Wild West that this one deviation from the norm sticks out in my mind. It makes him seem more human. In a way that isn’t comforting. 

  Because I remember how the story ends. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  Come to think of it, why did my parents let me watch this show? That’s a question I haven’t tried to answer yet. This seems like the sort of thing they should have stopped or prevented somehow. Like, I get that it was a different time. But I wasn’t in the “ads on the TV to remind you that you have kids” generation, but I was still left alone a lot. I had to hide a lot. Even before I was a teenager and I found solace in online life. Even before the early internet with the games and the forums. I think I was alone my whole life it seems. 

  And in some ways that was okay. I mean, it meant I watched a show I probably shouldn’t have, but maybe, that was why I liked Jade’s story so much. Maybe it was just the right distance from home.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  Wyatt was an odd character, I have to say. His art style was somewhat on the realistic side. His world was one out of a fantasy, but it was a fantasy you could seemingly touch. It had that physical edge to it. Like somehow, the sand had grains. It wasn’t that each speck was drawn, but it was all there somehow. 

  And the same thing could be said of Wyatt. His art was flat. His face was a stereotype. But there was a world behind his eyes. Somehow. There was just more than meets the eye. 

  It’s not revealed, though. But I knew it was there. I could see it and even feel it, and it has stuck with me all this time. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  If Jade recognized the house from before… Or its silhouette I should say. Or maybe that’s not even it. Maybe it’s the components, the pieces that took on different forms and colors but still made up the whole. It was not the old with a completely fresh coat of paint. There was more to it than that, more to the differences. And yet, it was still the same. It was the house from before, from that other episode, from that other world. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  Repetition is a powerful tool. We’ve come back to that, ironically enough. The return of the familiar, the resurrection of an old friend or an old inconvenience. Either way, something is back. Something has returned. For whatever purpose yet to be seen.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

  Wyatt hesitated before he entered. It didn’t seem like it was in his character to do so, but it didn’t stand out as much as his earlier sentence. And that discrepancy was further drilled in by what he said next.

  “Ya reckon this is it?” he asked the girl.

  Jade didn’t know, though. Of course she didn’t. There was no way for her to know. She had just come into this situation, found the closest thing to a lead that a child could be expected to see. The broken wagon wheel had been a breadcrumb, and she had followed it to the next point. This was that point. 

  So Jade stood next to him at the edge of the property. She did not react to his question or to anything before her. Her face was just as blank as it had always been. Even when the door opened, Jade did nothing. Even when the woman came out, she didn’t react.

(Music gradually fades out)

  Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or post about it on some mysterious online forum. You do you.