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of gleaming white, lit only by the solitary naked bulb hanging above him. So much light from such a small thing, he thinks.

  He tries to rise from his chair but he can’t. Paralysed from the waist down and chained by invisible restraints. He tries again to move but his brain cannot even will his legs to move in the slightest. Trapped, alone, lost inside his own dreams. His eyes study the chessboard. It lays mid-game, incomplete and unfinished. He wonders who’s turn it is.

  The light dims. The darkness descending. He looks up from the table, a primal fear in his eyes. He sees it, the tall shadow moving towards him from the room’s corner, the tendrils of smoke thrashing around its base, rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, casting long shadows around a shadow. It moves in silence. Gaining distance to the table to the soundtrack of the dead. He watches it approach, he knows who it is, what it is. It’s been a part of his life for some years, if not all of them. Watching from the shadows, standing patiently in corners, waiting for an ill moment, a moment it could step forward and place its hand upon his shoulder and make its presence known. Oh, and how he has felt its kiss. The loss of everything and nothing pressed into his mind so lovingly. The darkness pumping its way through his veins, clouding the heart and making an enemy out of his body’s core. They say love kills; he guesses they’re right.

  The shadow sits in the vacant chair opposite. Featureless, casting shadows across the table, its tendrils encircling the set up. A circle of darkness in the light of hope. Silence. All he has heard since this dream began is the sound of nothing, the sound of silence. Sat at a table with his tormenter, his stalker, his own personal Death. His eyes look at the chessboard. As he watches, one of the pieces begins to move from its position at the centre; it crosses the squares then walks off the board into nothing. He feels a sorrow inside at its departure, a twinge of memory. Eyes upon his pieces he understands that each one represents choices, lives. Each move creating infinite options, new pieces, new hopes or fears.

  ‘You’re waiting for something,’ the shadow’s voice whispers across the table.

  He doesn’t move his eyes, still scanning the table in front of him. ‘I’m waiting for your next move.’ All the pieces are the same figures. Different sides, different possibilities played with different hands.

  ‘No.’ The shadow’s whisper is thoughtful. ‘No, you wait for someone, for something. Something that is out of your control; a piece moved by a different set of players. Who or what could be so important as to govern your thoughts this way?’ It pauses and passes its hand in the air above him. He feels its coldness entering into his mind. ‘You’re lost. I can see it now. So much of your soul poured into this one person, so much of you stored within another. A lost connection and your soul refuses to heal. No, it doesn’t refuse; you refuse it. Your heart is screaming out in pain for its other half, the half you refuse it to find in another, in itself. You wait and you wait. You make a move across the board and it draws you closer. Close enough to touch; close enough to kiss. Then the piece is moved off your board again.’ A pause, then the shadow sighs. A contented sigh. ‘Oh, how painfully delicious. How satisfying it is for me. This hurt, this soul-bleed all pouring into me, giving me strength, giving me the power to show you the way into the darkness. Are you so blind as to not notice that you called me forward tonight?’

  ‘Blind or chose? Is it so hard to believe that I chose to be here? That I want to embrace you as you so desire, to feel your touch against my body. I’m here because I want to be.’

  A cold laugh. ‘Why torture yourself with these lies. You don’t want to be anywhere, let alone here. Your despair brought you here, and your self-pity and fears guided you. I’ve been waiting years to consume you but even now as I sit so close I know now is not the time. You are not destined to feel my love just yet.’ It laughs gleefully. ‘So much anger in you. So much rage and yet no one is listening. No one but me that is. So tell me, what is this piece you so desire?’

  ‘What does it matter? If you know so much why don’t you tell me?’ He feels his anger growing within him. ‘And if I am not meant to be here at this moment then why am I still here?’ He struggles to get up from his chair but the invisible bonds refuse to loosen their grip. Struggle, struggle, struggle, give in, surrender.

  The shadow watches for a moment before speaking. ‘I know who it is, I know what you desire, your depressions have told me. But whether or not I know already is irrelevant, you need to know for yourself, you need to admit to your soul that you desire at its expense. No one can do that for you. You can’t run all your life, and you certainly can’t run from your destiny. Believe me when I say that for once I have come here as your friend, not your enemy.’

  ‘So what do I do? How do I play this piece I ‘desire’?’

  ‘You don’t play it. You can’t. As much as you wish you could, you have never played it nor will you ever. It is another person’s piece. Your meetings are mutual and both feel this soul-bleed because as much as you poured into him, he poured back into you from himself. You both hurt, you both desire, but not every meeting is to be forever; it’s reassurance, to know you both feel the same deep down above any words spoken. Some things never die, yet others are destined not to be.

  ‘So, what are you to do? I can see that’s what you are thinking. Such fear in your eyes. You’re scared to trust again, scared to love another so you just hold on to a memory. All you have been through and seen since you parted ways feels so insignificant because of this desire. Others have tried to love you and you let them, but you never gave them the full capacity of your heart and you still don’t. You have chosen a path of pain as the route to your destiny. This can still be changed if you want, if you choose, or you can stay where you are. Either way this game of two pieces will run in its direction, you cannot force what fate controls. The combined fate of these two pieces will wait until the ends of the Earth.’

  ‘But the Earth has no ends. It runs in circles.’

  ‘Then you will wait for eternity. What’s meant to be will be. Don’t lose sight of the bigger quests in your life; don’t spend all your time following a sub-plot. You have a destiny to fulfil, so don’t sit in wait. Remember, whether that piece is waiting for you is a different matter. This is something you will never know.’

  ‘So what’s the point?’

  ‘The point is that there is no point, and some things in your life are out of your control. However a love that was true can never be destroyed. It is remembered. But love can turn to fear, and fear blocks many paths to salvation. People come and go, but some will stay with you forever. It is actually your turn to move.’

  He looks confused and raises his arm over a piece. ‘If I make a move on fear where will it take me? Will it end my destiny?’

  ‘It won’t end it, it will just detour you from it. Happiness lies at your destiny; do you want to be happy? You are destined to make change, that is all I can say.’

  He snorts with disgust. ‘Why bother making change? There’s so much hate, anger and disgust in the world, so much destruction and death, why bother with it? Can one person really make a difference? Can one person change the world?’

  ‘Speak to me from your heart. Bleed into this silence that won’t judge you. Find your true desire, not what you think it is.’

  ‘I want to change the world.’ He feels a small glow within him. ‘I want to have a say, speak out at the top of my lungs. Who listens to me? I want to make them listen. But I don’t know if I have the energy to keep going.’ His glow deepens, pushing back the shadows. ‘I need to find the energy to keep going through all this shit and rejection. Why mend what’s only going to be broken again? No reason, you just do.

  ‘I have to push on.’ Brighter. ‘Have to endure this shit.’ Brighter. ‘I don’t know why, maybe there is no point to it but I know I have to keep pushing forward. It’s all I have.’

  He r
ises to his feet. The bonds gone and the darkness reduced to the corners. He shouts, ‘Remember your dreams. Follow them; make them real. Prove them all wrong.’

  He looks around. He’s alone in the white room, the table and chair gone, the chessboard now in his mind awaiting his next move. But even when I fulfil my dreams, he thinks, will I ever be truly happy? Can I ever feel whole again?

  He crumbles to his knees. Doubt. ‘God please,’ he whispers. ‘God please fucking help me.’

  He awakes in his own bed, sweating and thick headed. How pathetic, he thinks, to wake up and want to cry. His pain is immense. For one moment in his dreams he’d battled, knew what he had to do, then the doubt set in, a cloud blocking out the sun. He’d instantly prayed for the help of God. Not a god, the god. The god with the capital G. So much hope placed on a collection of stories, so many people attempting to be like God rather than looking within themselves and striving to be a god. That’s all very well to say, but what if you look within and find nothing? What then?

  He buries his head in his pillow; it wipes his face clean of marks and hides it from the world. Lay with your head in the sand and hope for the best. Prepare to face another day and