Afterimage
One of the fluorescent lights in the waiting room kept flickering. Ashton Gray knew it was ridiculous to be so irritated—with everything that had happened, shouldn’t her mind be focused elsewhere?—but every time it flickered it made an incessant buzzing sound, and she wanted to scream.
She was aware of conversation going on around her, of whispered comforts and tears, but everything seemed blurry and somehow…dark. Except for that damn light. She found herself wondering if it would just go out. Give up. Shut down and die. Her chest hurt. Why did that idea bother her so much? It was only a light. Perhaps, she thought, insanity was catching, a virus she caught from--
She stopped thinking.
Or you’re just afraid, whispered the side of her mind the darkness dwelled. After all, you know that it isn’t really the light you’re worried will go out.
No, it wasn’t. Ashton knew that. Logically and technically. But it hurt to breathe whenever she thought about the reason she was sitting in this waiting room to begin with, so she stared at the flickering light, hating it, and praying that it wouldn’t finally dim to nothing.
~
Most of the others had left. The family was still waiting—and Ashton—but the kids from school and the teachers had all given up on the vigil. Ashton was glad. The hypocrisy of their coming here for…
For what? None of them knew Kyle—most didn’t even like him, thanks to Chris Henders, football player and b*****d. They all infuriated Ashton. It was because of them that Kyle was here, unconscious in a hospital room, a light flickering and about to go out.
Ashton felt a scrambling terror deep within her. Her breath was shallow, panicky, and she curled her fingers into fists, feeling the sharp bite of her nails into her palms. The panic was childlike and illogical. It was the ancient and very human fear of the dark, the fear that when all the lights went out there would always be something waiting, hungry and unspeakable. Ashton knew she was being irrational, but…
The world was always darkest after being blinded by the light, and though Ashton had once been accustomed to the darkness of her own life, Kyle’s brightness had made everything lucid, everything focused with sharp-edged clarity.
And now Ashton feared the darkness and the things that hid within it. She feared her own cruelty, her cynicism and bitterness, the anger and hatred, the loneliness. She feared what she became in the absence of light.
Ashton had never been a good person. It wasn’t something that bothered her—at least it hadn’t until Kyle inadvertently exposed her own monstrosity. There was an innate goodness in Kyle that Ashton craved, like a person who had been cold her entire life and had finally found the sun. To lose that now, to be blind in her own personal ice age, was terrifying.
The selfishness of her fear made her sick, angry. Here she was, alive and breathing and terrified of her ever darkening mind, while Kyle fought for life in the clinical starkness of a hospital room.
Or didn’t fight, as the case may be.
Because Ashton’s light had been trapped in his own darkness, and he had been willing to die to escape it. Beautiful Kyle with the dark eyes and sad smile, who had chased away the night that had consumed Ashton’s soul—she hadn’t done the same for him. And there were no excuses she could make, nothing that could justify her lack of empathy. After all, she had known he was hurting, had seen first hand the horrors he had to contend with, and yet she had assumed that he would be okay. Because how could light succumb to darkness?
She had been so stupid, and she hated herself for it, and she found herself hating Kyle as well, which served to increase her self-hatred, but how could he leave her? Didn’t he know that good was stronger than evil, that light always chased away the darkness? How dare he give up.
When Kyle had taken the blade to his wrists, he had cut the one thread of certainty that had existed in Ashton’s mind—that within Kyle she had found salvation, strength and light and goodness. What was she supposed to do now with her vision tunneling and the coldness once again seeping in, while the light that had been Kyle dimmed further.
~
“He’s stable now,” the doctor said, to all of them, though he only looked at Kyle’s father. “He should be waking up soon if you want to see him”—and Ashton felt another thrill of fear. How do you face someone when the darkness inside of him was black enough to end his life? How do you lead the blind when you’re blind as well?
And how—how do you fight someone’s monsters when you may just be a monster yourself?
~
Kyle’s room was stark and bright to the point that Ashton was uncomfortable. The artificial light that cloaked the room held no warmth or comfort—it simply revealed, and Ashton saw every broken detail of the room’s occupant that she might have otherwise missed. Like the gauze bandages nearly invisible against his pale skin or the bruised half circles under his eyes and the desperation within them, the grim set of his mouth. Kyle’s expression was tentative, unsure when he looked at her. Ashton saw that, too, with the fluorescent lights burning brightly overhead, and she wanted to turn them off. Monsters might hide in the darkness, but so could they. After all, light tended to become uncomfortable once it began exposing flaws. Darkness was safe.
“I thought you were going to die,” she said, finding her voice, and there was the slightest flinch at the corners of his eyes. Ashton wished she hadn’t seen that either.
“That was the idea,” he answered. He said nothing more, just watched her, and she wondered what flaws of her own he could see.
“I thought…” She hesitated. “I thought you were better than this.”
A smile quirked at the edge of his mouth. “Why?”
“Because you are, Kyle,” she snapped. “There’s so much good in you, but you’re letting people like Chris and your father win. The bad guys, Kyle. They’re not supposed to win.”
He blinked at her, then looked away. “I think life is more complicated than that.”
“Yeah? Enlighten me, Kyle.”
There was another delicate wince, underscored by the lights, and he sighed. “You can’t classify people as good and evil, Ashton, and I’m hardly the saint you seem to think I am. There is”—his voice faltered—“so much darkness in me.”
Ashton looked up at the harsh lights, letting them blind her for a moment, then she sighed, moved closer to the bed and sat down on the edge. She glanced at Kyle, her vision obscured by the blinding afterimage of the lights, and she dropped her gaze to her hands where she twisted them in her lap. “Of light and darkness, light is the stronger of the two,” she said. She looked at him again, met the bleak tragedy in his gaze and refused to turn away. “You’re stronger, Kyle.”
He made a soft noise low in his throat, like a scoff or a strangled sob. “Darkness is so much easier,” he whispered.
Ashton found that she agreed. She had been so afraid of returning to it when Kyle’s life hung in the balance, but she knew there was a part of her that wanted to go back. Because when everyone was blind, no one need worry about minute details like scars and tragic eyes. It was so much easier. Except…
Except.
“It’s only easier, Kyle, because when you give up and let the light go out, there’s nothing left to fight for.” She bit her lip and took his hand in hers. “If you had died, my life would have become a lot less complicated, but it would have been pointless.”
“Sometimes I feel as if my life already is pointless,” Kyle said. He rolled his eyes. “Hence the suicide attempt, Ashton.”
She sighed, ran a frustrated hand through her hair. “But you’re not pointless, Kyle. You are the point. You’re the only truly good person in this whole town, and most people fear that, I know, but others have fought for you, Kyle—even your father fought for you when he thought he was going to lose you.”
“Yeah, well…” The edge of his mouth curled upward. “Without me to control, what’s he supposed to do with his life?”
The comment surprised a grin out of Ashton, but she sobered quickly. “Kyle…he loves you. I know I’m the last person you would expect to hear this from, but I saw him while they were working on you. He was…so scared. It was like all the life had gone out of his eyes just knowing that maybe you would die, and that…and that he played a hand…in what you did.”
She could see that Kyle was fighting back tears, his hand clenching spasmodically in hers, and she wanted to stop, because darkness was so safe and so easy. Blindness and ignorance had their merit. Except Kyle—no matter how much he might have wished it—was not blind.
“I think,” she continued, “your family would fall apart without you, and your father knows that.”
“He hates me."
Ashton winced at the hollow tone in his voce and shook her head. “He’s afraid of you. Devin likes the dark because it doesn’t force him to look too closely at himself. You…challenge that. Yet at the same time he realizes that without you he’d be lost.” She hesitated a moment, looking away, “I’d be lost.”
Kyle was silent, his eyes peering and guarded as he watched her. Slowly he sat up, clinging to Ashton’s arm for support, and she turned to face him, waiting as he caught his breath. “You’re stronger than that, Ashton,” he said. “Braver. Smarter. Whatever. You’d have found your way.”
“Creeping and stumbling through the dark?” She smiled.
“No. You would have found a light better than myself. I’m not the savior you’re looking for.” His fingers tightened on her arm, eyes bright with feverish desperation, determined, hard, almost furious. “Don’t depend on me, because I’m going to let you down. Please, Ashton, don’t let me do something like this to you again. Please.” His head had fallen forward, resting against her shoulder, and he was still pleading, almost inaudibly.
“Kyle,” she said. She touched his hair. “I trust you.”
He was silent. Then—“Why?” His voice rasped, disbelieving.
“Because I never expected you to be perfect, Kyle. I only thought that you’d always be there, someone to turn to when the world seemed dark, just like I hoped I would be the same to you--if not a light, at least someone you could hold on to for support.”
“You are,” he said, still not looking at her.
“Yeah.” She sighed. “And yet here we are.”
Kyle laughed, hysteria edging his voice. “I’m not particularly rational, Ashton, especially when I’m scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Of everything.” He gave another shaky laugh. “My father. Of the dark.” Lifting his head he looked at her. “Mostly I’m afraid of the light—your light. That you’ll see me for what I am and you’ll leave.”
“But I didn’t. Wouldn’t. You tried to leave me.”
Kyle winced. “I saw myself too well,” he said.
Ashton shook her head. “No, you didn’t. Kyle, I don’t think you see yourself at all. It’s like you shed so much light on yourself that you were blinded.”
“Ashton,” he said and brushed a finger across her face. “If that’s true, then you’ve blinded yourself as well. You shine.”
She smiled, amused. “You can’t see my heart, Kyle. Sometimes I get so angry, so bitter, that I want to kill someone. I tend to hate people, you know? Chris Henders, his friends…they make me furious. And your father practically drives me insane. No, Kyle, my nature is very dark.”
Kyle’s expression had become intense and serious, his eyes narrowing. “You have the heart of God within you,” he whispered.
Ashton froze, her eyes going wide, then gave a short laugh, scoffing. “I don’t even believe in God.”
“No,” Kyle said. “I realize this.” He smiled softly at her, tipped his head to one side. “And yet he burns in you more so than in people like Chris and my father, because religion is a dark sea where truth often drowns.”
Ashton arched an eyebrow. “I thought you were into the religion thing.”
“I follow the traditions—I like the traditions—but they’re hardly essential, and they become traps when taken too seriously, when religion becomes too exclusive and its followers…too judgmental.” He shrugged. “God is the defender of the outcast and he crushes the oppressor. I wish I were brave enough to fight for the oppressed, but I’m not. But you, Ashton, you have a heart for the outcasts and the lost and the broken. And they love you for it.” He hesitated, his gaze falling away from her face. “I love you for it. The heart of God works through you whether you realize it or not. We all feel it. See it. I’m not blind to you, Ashton, except for that one moment when my world went dark because I closed my eyes. Don’t do the same. Don't let the afterimage of someone else's light blind you to your own.”
Ashton just looked at him for a long moment, then let her mouth curve into a half smile. “So I shine, huh?” she said. Kyle grinned at her and his eyes lit up. Ashton decided that the fluorescent lights overhead--they weren’t so bright after all.
End.
