Immersion or; Like a Tin Can

A deep yet shadowy vice; this immersion, he ponders. A cold book store at the end of a street not far from anywhere else, a man, this man, is sliding the rough tip of his finger along the spines of aged books.
He glances at passersby, young, dirty hands turning glossy pages of rhyming words and colourful pictures, teenagers pouring over celebrity gossip magazines; middle aged women too.
He looks back to the bound pages of knowledge before him and slowly walks down the aisle.
This is his safe harbour; his port in the storm, a storm which rages every other minute he is elsewhere.

He scrunches his nose upward as his eyes take careful note of the title before him, so familiar. A work of fiction he had read a long time ago; with her. John Irving’s story had entertained them for months, they grabbed hours every chance they got to submerge into the world according to Garp.
He looked briefly at the cover, an almost teal green, turned it over to glance at the back, and then swiftly squeezed it in between the two books housed on either side of it again. He tried to concentrate on the next row of books but his mind kept remembering, wondering. He hated to think of her.

Feeling an emotion rise up inside of him like a troublesome wave in the ocean he decided to leave. He stepped out into the heat which was a shocking contrast to the coolness of the store and immediately focused his adjusting eyes on the commotion across the car strewn street.
An indirect brush with mortality; he saw ambulances and tow trucks and people in uniforms; he heard sirens and hooters and gasps.
He wondered silently, as he stared at the mess, how long he had been immersed in the book store, the bodies, or what was left of them, were already gone; all that was left were the vehicles, almost unrecognizable to him now, crushed.

For a minute he stood rooted to the sunny pavement, pondering whether or not he should get into his car, this sight made him think twice. How easily this could happen, how quickly, he thought. In the blink of an eye, life as you know it ends.
This man was never one to stand and gape at such spectacles, normally he would try to avoid looking, driving by as quickly as possible, but today, this sight sent something down his spine and he couldn’t move, his eyes darting from smashed car to smashed car, this calamity had him in a trance of some kind.
He focused on each vehicle; zooming in, he could see blood, a lot of blood and he felt he could almost smell it in the air, as if an unkind breeze was sending the acidic, rust-like smell toward him. His stomach tightened for a moment and relaxed again; it was just his imagination.

He wondered how the paramedics had gotten the bodies out of the cars, it could have been no easy feat, he wondered if there were any bodies to retrieve, or if there were only parts of bodies to retrieve. He shuddered involuntarily, he could not look away, and he stayed fixed.

All of a sudden he wished he’d never left the book store, he wished he could retrace his steps, start the day again and avoid this encounter as he was having an unusual reaction to it, it surprised him and he wasn’t sure how to respond to how his emotions were behaving. He thought of her, and he thought of how fragile the human body is; how quickly, how easily it can be destroyed.
He felt his eyes begin to burn, with what? He rubbed them as if he’d gotten something solid in them and when he looked down at his hands he saw the tears there, staring up menacingly at him.
He felt confused, strangers passing by, the sun frying his face as he stood and stared. He felt a tug in a direction he was unwilling to go toward, such a familiar tug, such a sensation!
In the presence of life and death he felt strangely high. He felt a strength suddenly, and his legs began to walk, and walk, and walk.

They took him to her house. The house looked the same, the grass was the same length, the trees the same height; it was as if no time had passed, he could have been here yesterday or the day before, last week even. It had been 6 years, 4 months.

He saw his finger come up in front of him to press the doorbell; it felt more like he was observing someone else’s finger.

He waited out on the doorstep for what felt like an eternity, but in actuality was no more than a few seconds, until finally, the dark door opened a crack and a single misty blue eye peeked out at this man.

All that had happened did not disappear, their hearts did not suddenly forget, but their eyes locked and all the years, all the resolve, melted away like an ice cream in a child’s hand on a warm day and what was left was a sweet, thick liquid, a happy day.

A happy day was all they had, and they knew it.