Patrick's Surfaces XI

Why are you running?

Why are we running?

Or is it not me, but Patrick? Just some generic, ageless white boy with you.

Would help if I knew what Patrick looked like. Would help if I knew what the fuck I'd be doing in that book. IN that book.

I was addressing her although she was no longer there - both her vehicles to presence, the computer and the book, had made dents in my door. The book, though, was still intact. There, across the room on top of bits of white plastic and bent metal. I found myself addressing the book, addressing her fleeing image on the book, and even with my head in my hands her blond and blue were facing me, running towards me, holding Patrick's hand - my hand? - running towards me through impossible blue elms.

"Bitch," I said to the running girl in my head. "Get out."

The silence was her laughing, her laughing with sad shoulders, fightless eyes. "Fool," the silence said. "Fool."

And then I remembered. I finally remembered. "Fool," she had said, laughing. The whole scene came back.

She had been on the middle of a red, wood footbridge, long hair and white gauzy skirts so fiercely wind-blown that it looked like the river was plucking her downward. One of her hands was gripping the one-rope railing. The other was on her hip. I was close enough to hear her calm despite the wind, but not close enough to touch her.

"We may only be in Patrick's mind, Zachary. Foolish Zachary," she'd said. "But, that means you and I cannot exist without him, cannot exist just each other. Stop your dreaming silly young Zach. You are here to get to the end of the story. Not to start a new one. I can't leave Wemoreland. And when you reach the end, all you can do is leave. Alone."

I remembered the feeling of confusion. The realest thing when I walked onto that bridge was the girl before me who had come to the end of so many chapters with me, partners, companions, her land-smarts, bone strength, night's eye, and owl's intuition complementing perfectly my knowledge of game-narrative, of strategy, of planning for the unexpected with my defenses always up. But, his real thing, she was reminding me, had no reality. The confusion turned to anger, the jealously turned to hatred and I left her on the bridge and swore to myself to leave both her and Patrick to suffer forever without resolution, without an ending.

With the confidence of this memory, with the relief of remembering, I walked over, picked up the book, saw us fleeing through blue elms, and heard her say, "Free us, Zachary."

"How?" I replied, to the book.