Peripheral Visions: The Still Place

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

The Still Place

Jason walked slowly along the trail. The landscape looked familiar, but he wasn't sure where he was.

He rounded a curve and took in the sight of the northward-facing slope. Rays of sun shone down at a steep angle, picking out tree trunks and setting them in brilliant relief against the forest's cool, dark greenery.

Now Jason knew where he was, but he was a little confused about everything else. He hadn't walked this path since...

How old had he been?

How old was he now?

I'm twenty... twenty-some... I'm twenty-eight?

That didn't seem right.

I'm thirty?

That was too old for him to be where he was.

Jason stopped walking and stared at the trees, which stood straight and tall. The silence was profound; he couldn't even hear himself breathing. It was this absolute hush that had earned the spot its nickname – Jason always thought of it as The Still Place.

I haven't been here since I was...

Jason wasn't able to finish the thought. But did it matter? However long it had been, he had the sense that it had been too long. There was a feeling of relief in him – spilling out of him – that seemed to be carrying long-held fatigue out of his muscles and bones. His joints tingled, and Jason recollected vaguely that his body had been filled with painful places.

Had been... but wasn't now.

Jason wanted to forget the questions troubling him and simply embrace the moment, but his mind rebelled. There had to be some reason he was here. There had to be some reason for the way he was feeling – as if he had escaped some terrible calamity or found out that some overwhelming source of guilt had actually not been his fault after all.

I must be dreaming, Jason realized. It was only waking from anxious dreams that he ever experienced this sort of relief, which felt like reclaiming his entire life from the verge of absolute catastrophe.

But the trees stood firm, their bark crisply detailed in the pellucid light, a foam of green ground cover all around them. Jason looked up and saw the blue of a bright sky. If this was a dream, it was uniquely vivid.

It occurred to Jason to look for the remnants of a low stone wall that he used to sit on when he came here. It was the perfect perch from which to enjoy the cool of the forest in summertime and its snowy beauty on picturesque winter days. He didn't see it at first, but then, as though materializing from the shadows, there it was: Solid and covered with ferns, moss, and other greenery.

Jason made his way to the old wall and took a seat. He sighed and looked at his hands. They weren't old; they weren't young. He was certainly no longer in his twenties, but could he be older than his thirties? Older than his forties? Even older than that?

He had been feeling old; he knew that much. Was that because of the years, or were there stressful things happening in his life? Both, he suspected. The thing was, he couldn't remember anything about his life at the moment. He knew he no longer lived in the Pacific Northwest and hadn't for a long time. It had been years... more than years; decades... sine he'd walked this path and visited this beloved oasis of tranquility.

None of that matters right now he told himself. Whatever else is going on, I'm here... now... and that's all that matters.

He'd often told himself he should make it a point to step back, breathe deeply, and allow himself to be in the moment. His was a busy, inquisitive mind; his was a sensitive heart. Gil told him all the time that he was too sensitive, that he wore his heart on his sleeve...

Gil.

That was his husband's name.

But his husband had died twenty years ago.

Twenty years. Jesus!

Jason was definitely past his thirties, probably past his forties. He must be in his fifties, at least. He and Gil had been together for...

The thought almost got away. Jason hooked it, tugged, concentrated, brought it slowly back into focus before it could slip away.

They had been married for eight years and had gotten together four years before that. Then Gil had died in 2033, three years into the nation's bitter civil war.

I knew we should have left, Jason thought, his sense of peace evaporating as a wave of guilt and anger overtook him. Gil had been reluctant; Gil had said they should stay and fight. "We need to resist!" Gil had proclaimed, whenever Jason brought up the possibility of fleeing.

And where would they go? Once Canada had closed its borders to refugees from the United States, a sense of having missed a crucial window of opportunity tormented him. Gil was unmoved. Jason looked into moving to Mexico, where U.S. expatriates were increasingly unwelcome. Then the massacres had happened – one, two, three bloody attacks on enclaves of expatriates who had left the U.S. looking for someplace cheaper to live, someplace less riven by social and civic strife.

Mexico no longer being a safe or desirable place to which to retreat, Jason had looked to Portugal, Ireland, Greece... He found only roadblocks. Every place seemed hostile now. Americans were not welcome anywhere.

Gil maintained that it didn't matter. "I don't want to run from a fight," he'd said. "There's no place safe," Gil added. "The whole world is dangerous now, especially for people like us."

People like us. And why? Because politicians looking for easy targets were spouting lies about them? Because megachurch pastors were trying to grow their flocks, and their revenue streams, by thundering biblical condemnation about "abominations" and God's wrath? Who were they to talk about sin, the soulless killers?

Jason realized he was clenching his teeth, clenching his fists. His head was full of raging thoughts, his heart blazed with fury. He chose to step away from all that; he sought the peace of his surroundings.

The quiet of the forest seeped again into his soul.

Jason sighed and leaned his head into cupped hands.

He had barely ever returned to the house he and Gil had shared. It still stood... at least, he supposed it did. Gil had been talented in so many ways, and managing money and property was one of his skills. They owned apartments all over the city. Json had moved into one of them in a quiet part of town, a neighborhood that never seemed to attract troublemakers that periodically targeted parks and the pedestrian mall with demonstrations of their machismo and hatred: Boys playing dress-up in body armor and machine guns, not realizing that their martial gear didn't make them into men because their minds and hearts were still juvenile.

He'd stayed in that apartment for twenty years, playing landlord, monitoring the value of his stocks, living quietly and in mournful isolation. He'd left their house to stand empty. Gil's sister looked after the place and reported on its condition from time to time. The place seemed to be holding up remarkably well, despite not being lived in for so long.

Or, wait. Someone was living in it. Gil's niece, and her boyfriend... Thomas? Tad?

How long had they been there?

How old was Jason? He mulled the years that had elapsed, and realized he had to be around seventy. That made sense... he'd been in his early fifties when Gil had been murdered, when the light in his heart had been extinguished...

Twenty years. Twenty years of pain and rage and grief. Twenty years of telling Gil in his mind and his prayers that he missed him, but also thinking, I told you so!

And he'd come here to...

Jason's thoughts stalled.

Why was he here? Was he thinking this would be a good place to die? Was he planning a jump from a cliff or a swallow of poison?

None of that seemed right.

"Are you doing all right?" someone asked him.

Jason looked up to see a smiling man – backpack, hiking boots, layered shirts, a friendly face and rusty red hair. He was good looking, and he seemed familiar, but Jason couldn't place him.

"Do I know you?" Jason asked.

The smiling man shrugged.

"Do I seem familiar to you?" Jason asked. "Because I am pretty sure I know you from somewhere."

"Oh, yeah?" The man laughed. "Look closer. You'll figure it out."

Jason stared, then shook his head. "I'm sorry. I can't place you."

"Nothing to worry about," the man said. "Are you okay? Getting where you need to go?"

"I'm not sure," Jason said. "For some reason, I can't quite recall why I'm here or when I started my walk."

"Hm." The man drew closer, looking him over intently. "I don't think you're having a stroke," he said. "So maybe your lapse has more to do with your emotional state. Or your psychological one."

"Are you a doctor?"

"In a way, I guess I am... I've always considered myself a healer, anyway."

That was less than clarifying, but Jason didn't feel like following up on it. He didn't feel like having a conversation at all.

"Well, look, thanks for your concern," he said. "But I'm sure I'm fine. I'll get my thoughts sorted out and then..."

"What brings you here?" the man asked him.

"What do you mean?"

"To this particular place. Why are you here?"

"I always loved this place," Jason said.

"Enough that you could spend forever just sitting here and looking at the trees?"

"Yeah. Sure." A thought occurred to him. "Wait – do you mean that literally?"

The man's handsome smile was back, this time edged with tenderness. "Yes," he said. "You know I do. You know where you are... don't you?"

All at once, he did. "Not alive anymore," Jason said. "And not dead yet, either."

"Well, technically." The man nodded at something up the path, back the way Jason had come. He turned and looked behind him and saw...

Not forest. Not the path. Through some distortion in the air, or some wrinkle in perception, he saw himself. He was looking down at his own body lying on a street, surrounded by strangers. A man in a uniform seemed to be crouching over him.

As he watched, Jason felt a pull: His body seeking to reclaim him, his life trying to pull him back –

He revolted, spun away, turning back toward the light and the trail and the still place. The stranger was there, watching him.

"Did the cops get me?" Jason asked.

"No," the man said. "The Terror is over. Well, at least for a generation or two, before America lapses back into fascism. No, that man is trying to help you."

Jason stared at the ground, at a reassuringly real and familiar trail strewn with rocks and pine needles. He didn't dare look behind him again, but his mind was busy trying to work out how he could be seeing himself from such a different angle, from what must have been miles... many miles... away.

Not miles, he realized.

"This isn't really a place," he said to the smiling red-haired man.

"No," the man agreed, shaking his head.

"And if I stay here... I'll just disappear, won't I?"

"Honestly, I don't know," the man said. "What I do know..." He looked up the slope, toward the sun. "What I do know is that you have a choice to make. Go forward out of your life – or go forward with your life." The man looked back toward the path behind Jason, toward the strange window that seemed set in the air itself and looked down at Jason's own body.

Jason felt himself shaking, but he didn't know why. Anger? Grief? Fear?

"I have no idea what happens if you stay put," the man added. "Probably nothing. The choice will still be there. Eventually, I suppose, you'll get bored and want to move on one way or the other."

"I don't believe in this sort of thing," Jason said.

"That doesn't matter," the man told him. "You're here. Or maybe you're not; maybe this is a dream in the last few minutes of your life." He looked back at the scene unfolding behind Jason. "How lucky were you that you got help so quickly, though?"

"I can't imagine it," Jason said. "America's not the kind of place where anyone helps anyone else anymore."

"Maybe the world is better than you think it is. Or, if it's not, maybe it's up to you to help improve it," the man replied.

Jason looked toward the bright sky where the sun hid behind the trees. "It's too hard," he said. "And I have nothing there anymore. Gil is gone. All our friends... none of them survived The Terror. Only me." Jason squinted into the light. Up the slope, beyond the trees, it was a blinding, pure radiance. Its brilliance seemed to swallow everything. "Is he there? Gil?"

"They're all there," the man said.

"Then that's where I want to go," Jason said.

"Are you sure?" The man's expression was still kind, still edged with tenderness, but there was a note of challenge in the question.

"Why wouldn't I? What reason do I have to stay where I was? What hope did I have, what hope is there for the entire world?"

"You," the man told him. "You are the hope."

"I don't feel hopeful. The world is too cold, too cruel."

"It doesn't have to be," the man said. "There are some who still remember what it was like to live in a country that offered reward for work, a chance at prosperity; a culture that valued life and the things that make life worth living. A society that celebrated the freedom to be compassionate. They remember, and they work to bring the world back to what it once was. They aren't rich or powerful, but they set an example. They lead the way. You could be one of them."

"I don't want to be anything anymore," Jason sighed, looking back at the ground.

"It would mean work and effort. It would mean finding faith in yourself and others again," the man said. "It would mean returning to life... not just going back the way you came, to your body, but emerging from your oasis of isolation, engaging with the world. Reaching out to your neighbors. Being a mentor to young people who know there's more to life than suspicion and punishment, more to human relationships than selling each other out for individual profit."

"Look, I'm no dissident, and I'm no saint..."

"You don't have to be. What you have to be is a man. Not a swaggering sack of aggression... a man."

"And what's a man?" Jason asked, with a bitter smile. "Someone who steals? Kills? Attacks on sight?"

"You know what a man is. Someone who builds, someone who heals, someone who cultivates. Not a vandal – a man."

"I've seen the way that men live, and... and they're animals," Jason said. "I don't want to go back to that."

"Then what was the point of having been there in the first place?" The stranger, so familiar, looked at Jason with intent curiosity. "What do you image the point would be of finding a new existence up there, in that light?"

"Peace," Jason said. "Happiness."

"But you can't find that back where you came from?"

"Not since Gil died," Jason said. "All I want is to be with him. And the others, too. All I want is to see my friends again."

"Your friends like Tad, the surgeon? Who ran a clinic for people hurt and maimed by the cops if they tried to protest? Or Annalise, who gave away her time as a lawyer for people prosecuted for preaching that Christianity is a religion of hope and love? Or even Gil, who knew how to make money, but who gave a lot of that money away to help starving families eat?" The man nodded, as if to say Of course you want to be with them. "Do you think they were in a hurry to run away from the chance to do something useful for someone else?"

"You mean I'm being selfish?" Jason asked. "I'm old. I'm tired. What good can I do anyone?"

"You're bitter, and you're afraid. You've let yourself become weak. You've made excuses instead of making a difference. You've aided and abetted the oppressors by refusing to stand up to them. Do you think Gil, and everyone else you want to see again, will have any pride in you for giving up?"

Jason looked up at the light.

"It's your choice," the man told him, "but to make it you might want to ask one question: Are they calling you to them? Or are they waiting, expecting something better from you?"

Jason yearned for the light. But he knew it wasn't for him... not yet.

"Do I have to earn my place among them?" he asked the man.

"You have to earn your sense of peace from yourself," the man replied.

Jason looked at him, trying to place him. The face was familiar, and yet... who was he?

"Are you my guardian angel?" he asked.

"Like your mother always told you would be watching over you? In a way, perhaps I am. I have certainly been there with you every moment of your life." The man stepped forward and grasped Jason by the shoulders. His intense gaze lingered.

Jason understood. "You're me."

The man's smile seemed to brighten. "In a way. You at your best, you as you want to be. You as you still might become."

This made no sense. At the same time, strangely, it made complete sense. "What do I do?" Jason asked the man.

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to be worthy of Gil and all the others. I want to be worthy of the happiness of joining them again," Jason said, feeling he truth of the words.

"Then do it."

Jason felt the truth of the man's words, as well. Still, he hesitated. "How?"

The man leaned forward, touched his forehead to Jason's.

"Wake up," he said.