Gloria: A Short Story

   

Approaching the back hatch, dimly lit by the exit sign, Roger stops to adjust his helmet. “Am I really doing this?” A vision of Gloria comes to him. Her auburn hair blowing in the wind, each strand stroking the blue sky like the bristles of an artist’s paintbrush on the canvas. She had an energy no earthly force could stomp out. Even death, its impenetrable walls, could not contain her. She was everywhere. The leaky faucet in the bathroom, dripping incessantly, mimicked the tune she hummed while she worked at her computer. The park where he took his evening run was a forest of trees bearing emerald leaves the color of her eyes.  The coffee brewing in the kitchen, its earthy aroma mingling with notes of lavender, Gloria’s favorite flower, brings her back to him every day. No matter that her time of death was recorded with several witnesses to bear truth to the fact, they could not keep her from sitting at the kitchen table gazing at him over the steam of her morning cup of joe. It's why he had to leave. He could not bear her ghost anymore.

“I’m doing this.” Roger steps off the platform and makes his way down the hatch ladder, his eyes holding fast to the exit. As he descends the ladder, he feels himself moving faster, his body growing lighter, his heart pounding heavier. “There’s no way I can change my mind now,” he reassures himself as he feels Gloria’s hand on his back, pushing him to keep going.

He reaches the exit, places his hand on the handle, pausing briefly only to take one last breath of manufactured oxygen. He exhales and opens the door all in one motion. The light, shockingly bright, immediately forces him to shield his eyes. After a moment of adjustment, he opens his eyes anxiously. He yanks at his helmet’s strap, freeing his head from its constraints.

            One breath in. One breath out. The oxygen is real. He can feel it course through his blood. Butterflies flutter throughout his whole body, bouncing off the walls of his insides, knocking him to the ground. Earth. Quickly removing his gloves as if they are burning his hands, he digs his fingers into the sand grasping at each grain. The prickle and pinch of every granule intensifies as he digs deeper wanting nothing more than to bury himself in it.

            He catches his reflection in the helmet he abandoned moments before. He despised that helmet; the way it limited his vision and kept him from seeing everything around him. Instinctively, he looks around 360 degrees several times before looking back at his hands filled with the sand. “Water. Need water,” his dry throat urging him to move quickly, he gets to his feet clumsily. “Stupid boots,” he says to himself as he kicks the giant, ridiculous marshmallows from his feet. The sand tickles his toes sending shockwaves of electricity up his spine. “It’s good to be home.”

            He walks for a bit, if you can call it walking.  Picturing himself, he must look like a toddler learning for the first time how gravity works. With each step it feels as though he’s crossing a path of slippery stones, the earth beneath him rolling like the hot dog cookers at the ballpark. But after the first fifty yards he feels steadier, gravity no longer playing tricks on him.

            He turns, only once, to look at what he leaves behind. The vessel, cocked oddly at a thirty-degree angle, its invincible steel shell dented and cracked from its bumpy arrival back to earth. The vessel had promised an escape from “All your earthly woes,” Roger recalled regretfully. It held him prisoner far too long but at last, he was free. “What was I thinking?” he shook his head sadly, remembering the lengths he had gone to so he could escape her ghost. “Gloria. My sweet Gloria. I’m so sorry. I could not live without you, but living with your ghost was more than I could bear.”

            Down just a bit further, Roger spots the river with cool rushing water. He stumbles down the hill, his parched mouth begging for a drink urging him to go faster- faster! He collapses at the river’s edge and crawls awkwardly into the water. Gulping water and splashing his face, its icy refreshment piercing him like daggers, he takes one last deep breath before submerging himself.

            There he remains, surrounded by a liquid blanket, until he can feel his heartbeat slow. Just under the surface, the water muffles all his senses except for one. Touch. The softness of the water reminds him of Gloria’s hand caressing his cheek. An odd warmth fills his body despite the icy waters. But there’s no mistake, he can feel her hand upon his face. He doesn’t dare open his eyes for fear that it will mean trading his sense of touch for his sense of sight. He knows it is her hand that rests upon his face. He remembers exactly how her skin felt, how small her hand was, how her heartbeat seemed to pulse through her fingers and vibrate within him when she touched him. He longed to stay in this moment forever, but his lungs began to burn. Dizziness enveloped him and he had no choice but to make his way back to the surface for air.          

Breaking through the surface, his lungs were satisfied to breathe, but his heart cursed his lungs for it. “I wanted to stay. I wanted you to stay, Gloria,” tears filling his eyes, blurring his sight. “I could not breathe, and my heart burned with the fire of hell. The more I breathed, the more the oxygen fueled the fire within my heart. I had to leave, Gloria!  I had to find a way to breathe and not feel as though my heart would erupt. I’m so sorry, Gloria.”

            Roger forced his way to the shore, his tears mixing with the river’s water on his face. Pulling himself to dry land, he rubbed his eyes and shook the water from his hair. Unsure what to do next, he sat motionless in the sand still recovering from depriving himself of oxygen. With every breath he drew he braced himself for his heart’s hellfire to ignite again.

 In. Out. In. Out.

 But there was nothing. Not even a spark seemed to light. He breathed in deeper, exhaled heavier, waiting for the pain.

            In. Out. In. Out.

            Then finally, he felt it- the pain he remembered from before. As it intensified slowly, he could feel it rumbling within him like thunder chasing a dark rain cloud. But confusion took over when he realized the pain wasn’t how he remembered it. At that moment a strange memory began to play out in his mind. A snow-globe perched on the top shelf of his mother’s China hutch with a disfigured black creature inside. He rubbed his temples trying to remember what it was. “A winged animal of some kind- ah yes, a raven,” he finally concludes. As a child he hated that snow-globe. No matter where he stood in the dining room or where he sat to eat his meals, that damn raven would find him and stare menacingly at him. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he recalled the ominous raven.

He remembered his mother finding him at the dining table one day looking at the raven snow-globe, his vexing expression giving it away how much it troubled him.  Pulling the globe off the hutch and sitting beside him with the snow-globe she shook it and said, “See, darling?” his mother’s gentle voice cooed, as tiny black birds appeared, swirling around the raven. The sunlight shining through the window caught the wings of each floating bird creating a sparkling effect making the dreadful raven look a bit less ominous- somewhat beautiful, albeit in a strange way. “Sometimes we just need to let in the light and trust that the darkness isn’t as bad as we think.”

The throbbing ache in his heart jerked him back to the present where he was still trying to make sense of this new pain. Its usual razor-like edges seemed strangely dull. He imagined the pain, encapsulated like the raven inside his mother’s snow-globe. The grief and pain of losing Gloria- like the grim raven cemented inside the globe, was not going anywhere. Escaping was not the answer. He knew that now. The memory of her laugh, the smell of her perfume, the warmth of her hand on his cheek- like the tiny black birds surrounding the raven- were there to soften the pain, to dull its edges, if only he’d let the light in.

Sunlight bursting through the clouds encouraged him to stand. He felt Gloria take his hand as he stepped away from the river and left the broken vessel behind him. The light followed him as he made his trek home. He no longer wanted to escape Gloria’s ghost. No, he wanted nothing more than to feel her, see her, smell her- real or imagined- it made no difference now. The air he breathed was the oxygen needed to fuel his heart’s burning fire but without it, Gloria wouldn’t be real. The fire he felt within him was Gloria. The pain he felt was her love- love he could not live without. Gloria. She would be with him forever right alongside the pain. Without the pain there would be no Gloria. Without Gloria, there would be no pain. He had to accept them both.

Finally, they reached the park with its trees of emerald leaves. Roger looked down the path and saw home straight ahead. Gloria, releasing his hand, skipped joyfully ahead of him. Looking over her shoulder she called to him, “Well are you coming, or you just gonna stand there like a space monkey?” She teased and turned again to face home.

 “Space monkey,” he laughed to himself.

He caught up to Gloria after a quick jog and wrapped his arm around her waist as a flock of tiny black birds descended from the trees. Whirling through the air, they darted between the two of them, forcing him to release her. Roger watched as they dispersed just as quickly as they had come. Only a second had passed before he returned his attention to Gloria, but she was nowhere to be found. He frantically searched in all directions. Still, no Gloria. The birds made a swift return, swirling around him once more before flying off into the trees again. This time as they departed, they transformed themselves miraculously right before his eyes. Above him, an image of Gloria sketched in the sky. He blinked back tears and looked again to be sure. Yes, there in the sky, he could see the tiny black birds- the sun sparkling off their glistening wings- reminding him, “Let the light in, Roger.”

            “No more escaping, Gloria. I promise. You and me, air and fire, pain and love, all of it, always.”