MetaDeprivation - 18. MetaPrompts 597: Done (MW8)

“How does he always know what to say?”

He jerked out of his sleep. Who had said that? About whom? And why? In his after-sleep caused grogginess he realized it was two political commentators raving about the unusual eloquence of the new president on TV. “Graceful, insightful, witty, intelligent, but highly relatable,” they called his latest speech to the nation.

Colt shook his head to get a clear mind. He didn’t know where he was, yet he felt his surroundings were familiar. As if he had been here a long time ago, a very long time.

He got up from the sofa in the media room. Instinctively, he reached for the remote to stop the blabbering. Where was he?

The air-conditioning was on, but it was warm air, not cool one. Yet he spotted palm trees in front of the windows, illuminated by what looked like the setting sun on a late afternoon.

The house looked spacious, modern, elegant, desert-style. And then it clicked. He had stayed in this house before. A long time ago. It was in Palm Springs at that October week they had spent fall break to get away from LA. The week they had met Isaac.

But why was he here again?

And where were the wolves?

He rushed into the bedroom he had slept in. It was as he remembered: functional, with pieces of mid-century artwork hanging on the wall. The bed was made.

He found two suitcases. Suitcases he had never seen before. Prime hated suitcases, even those with wheels. His solution was duffle bags for everything. The suitcases had tags. He read the name. ‘Colt Parker,’ they said. Strangely, they were his.

He quickly checked the other two bedrooms. They were empty. Beds perfectly made, no suitcases.

What the hell?

He rushed through the big kitchen and dining area to open the French window doors to the luscious garden. The sun was just on the cusp of disappearing behind the brown mountains in the West. The last rays pampered the landscape with oneiric shades of ocher and orange, being reflected by the calm water surface in the pool.

He remembered how Prime had made a show out of getting out of the water, so Colt would start salivating. He remembered the enforcers jumping into the pool watering the plants generously with the splashes they caused, to lie down afterward on the spots of grass to sleep like the sleep-deprived enforcers they had been. He remembered Brian sucking seductively at his ice cream just to turn Colt crazy.

But the garden and the pool were empty. They looked as nobody had used them for weeks. He couldn’t hear them, smell them, nor discover any sign his wolves were around …

… or, worse, even existed.

Cold sweat of panic formed on his back. He rushed back into the house to find his wallet, his phone, his computer, anything that would help him in finding himself.

The wallet showed his driver’s license. With a chilly shock, he realized he still lived at the address he had grown up at as a kid in Texas. He found a corporate credit card of a company he had never heard of, several dollar bills which weren’t sorted by value (something he always did), and the boarding pass stub SLC-PSP – 11b – aisle.

His phone asked for his code. But his code didn’t work.

His laptop – a Lenovo of all brands! – asked for a password he didn’t know.

Luckily he found a pad that was still unlocked. But the contacts app didn’t show any of his wolves’ details, no Prime, no Brian, no CE, or any of the others. Just names of people he didn’t know, they all looked like work colleagues. For a second, he tried to remember what Prime had been called in his dreams – Forest. But he didn’t find a Forest, or Burt.

He dialed Prime’s cell phone number. But he only got a “this number does not exist” message. He sent a test mail to the wolf’s wwpinc.com address, but it was returned immediately as not deliverable.

None of them existed.

He was alone in this house in Palm Springs.

Just with two suitcases and a work laptop.

He needed a headache pill, ran into the bathroom. And nearly slipped on the tiles because of the shock he encountered.

There he was.

In the mirror.

Old and fat and ugly. He had gone from young, scrawny, and ugly directly to old, fat, and ugly. No wonder he was alone.

He couldn’t find any painkillers and returned to the sofa, exhausted, scared, tired, shaking. A sigh escaped him.

The chill of the loneliness on a winter Sunday afternoon in Palm Springs enveloped him like the wings of evil.

He shuddered.

‘Painkillers,’ he thought finding a small plastic bottle on the side table. When he reached for it, he noticed it secured a piece of paper.

A letter.

Handwritten in his own barely decipherable messy style.

‘Dear soldier, you who never came,’ it started. He instinctively knew it was a good-bye letter. And he instinctively understood those pills weren’t painkillers for a headache. After all, he had been there before.

‘When I spotted you the first time as a kid, I knew one day we would meet again; well, I hoped we would meet again. Maybe not you in specific, but somebody like you.

My whole life I have kept myself ready to meet somebody like you. I tried to be good at school despite my being shunned, good at work despite my being bad at sucking up, understanding to my parents who had saved me from the dumpster, kind to the few friends even if they lead such busy lives that we couldn’t spend all the time together I would have liked, loyal to my country, especially to the taxman, and respectful to nature. Not only once a wasp stung me just after I had rescued it.

My whole life I have been on the look-out for you. At work, during travels, in the bars, on the Internet, during parades, and at many places more.

Whenever I was disappointed, rejected, or heartbroken, I soldiered on, because I was convinced one day we would meet; one day we would get together and have a family. For some strange reason, I had already believed we would get married before that kind of marriage was legal in Texas. And for some strange reason, I always imagined us having little soldier boys to complete our family.

I was prepared that you wouldn’t be a soldier, nor that stunning blond I had observed in front of the barber, but it wouldn’t have mattered, as long as we would have met.

And at every birthday, at every New Year’s Eve, and at every July 4th, I was convinced I would meet you before my next birthday, the next New Year’s Eve, or the next July 4th fireworks.

And so I have spent my whole life looking for you, waiting for you, hoping for you.

But you never came.

I guess you found the cute girl to marry years ago; or you found that cute boy you’ve been waiting for to marry for years, and finally, you could propose to him. I guess I was never in your plans.

So I need to tell you now I’m done waiting. My tenacity, my strength, my energy, my getting-back-up-on-my-feet-ability after being stabbed so often … they’re gone. I cannot see myself anymore celebrating another New Year’s Eve alone, or worse with ‘friends’ who just feel sorry for me. And the number of candles of my next birthday cake (not that there would ever be one) is too insane to hope still that one day you would wake me up with kisses to wish me a happy birthday.

After all, you never came.

I don’t blame you. I don’t resent you.

But I need to change things. Even the strongest pine tree will break under the weight of snow, even the most resilient seed of a rose will freeze, when it just snows for too long, with no spring in sight, no ray of hope left.

I hope you’re happy with your girl, or your boy, your kids, your dog, your life.

At least one of us should be.

Good-bye, my soldier, you, who never came. As of today, I will stop looking for you.

C.’

Colt’s hands lost their grip on the paper, so it slowly sailed to the ground. He didn’t have to open the lid of the bottle to know what he had planned to do next.

And then he shook.

Everything around him shook.

A cold chill caught him, making him drop the bottle as well, all the pills rolling across the floor with little clicking noises when they hit the tiles.

“How does he never know what to say?” somebody asked.

“Wake up, Colt,” somebody shouted.

Colt opened his eyes.

Somebody shook him.

Not somebody. Isaac.

“Are you okay?”

Colt didn’t say anything.

“You fell asleep. Your dreams again?”

Colt just nodded.

And while Isaac shut down the TV where somebody was talking about the incompetence of the president to form a complete sentence, no to mention an intelligent one, Colt grabbed the marine and squeezed him tightly.

“I won’t leave,” Isaac said in his calm baritone. “Ever.”

‘If only,’ Colt thought, but was happy for this elusive moment to enjoy the feeling of being able to hold ‘his’ soldier.

Because he knew how it felt not having found him.