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“Wanna get out of here?”
His voice seems to come from underwater. There is no water here.
“Yeah,” I say, turning to him. My voice dies in the air around me, soundwaves ceasing to exist.
There is no one there.
I nod. I decide to just start walking again.
There has to be someone eventually.
Something between days and years pass as I walk. I hear him again, sometimes. He still isn't there. He still isn't standing in front of me, car keys dangling from his finger. He still isn't nodding over his shoulder towards the car, ready to take me home.
I don't know if any of us have one, anymore.
From nowhere (from somewhere), I hear the other one. I hear the other other one as well. Calling out for me. I'm lost.
At least we all know I'm lost.
“Wanna get out of here?”
I don't know why I always turn. Why I always hope.
“Yes,” comes out of my throat with exhausted desperation as I turn. He still isn't there. None of them are.
I find a well. I look inside. I find myself at the bottom of a well.
I ask him how he's finding it.
“It was better than I thought it would be,” he calls up to me.
His body is mangled, broken. He's bruised and bleeding. He's smiling at me like an old friend.
“There isn't any water,” he tells me.
“Isn't that a shame,” I say.
I keep walking.
The other other one finds me. I prayed for this, but now I want to hide. I can feel something in the air. I can feel his disappointment, his judgement.
“Peter,” he drawls, “you're holding up the line.”
His foot taps in anxious irritation. I blink and we're back in a cafeteria. I refuse to blink, and I'm being served creamed corn.
“That's what you get,” he says, with a little sneer.
I blink again and it's all gone. He’s gone. Someone in the sky is laughing.
“Would you just stop?”
When did my voice start to sound like someone else?
“Wanna get out of here?”
I turn on my heel, fast as I can. This time, I've caught him.
“Micky!”
I scream it like it can make him real.
“Let's go. I'm tired,” he says, nodding over his shoulder.
I nod, opening my arms as I walk towards him. “Boy, am I glad to see you.”
When I close my arms around him, there's nothing. He's nothing.
“Wanna get out of here?”
It comes from over my shoulder. This time I don't turn.
I keep walking. I change directions on a whim. Sometimes I break out in a run.
I find something. A glass wall. I've come up against the edge of what I'm allowed. I walk along it, searching for something. For anything.
For the other one.
“Wanna get out of-”
“Not you!”
I walk away from the wall. I try to remember where the well was. At least there was someone to talk to.
I walk in meaningless directions for meaningless amounts of time, the white expanse around me never changing.
The moment I give up on ever seeing something again, the other one finds me.
“Peter, you shouldn't be out here. It's too cold.”
As soon as he's said it, it's true. It's dark, too. Where we are, I can't remember. It's snowing. He pulls me close.
“Let's get inside, shall we?”
He pulls me towards light, towards warmth. Towards a yellow rectangle preview of the cozy house beyond the open door.
The moment I step over the threshold, it's gone.
The moment it's gone, I know I should've known better.
The moment it's gone, everything is, and it's just me again, standing in the artificial spotlight of solitude.
I open my mouth, wanting to cry out, to question and beg.
Instead, I hear…
“Wanna get out of here?”