The in-between that only everyone knows about their own

 

The sky never looks quite the same. Looking up at the most beautiful stars he had ever seen, he sat in a dead city illuminated by a pale moon. If you saw him you may thing he was on drugs, you may think he was homeless, you may think he was a runaway. In that moment he was all these things. 47 feet to his right was the back of a theatre where he had just poured himself out to a crowd of strangers being someone with more power than a human. He was emotion in its truest form and he was entertainment to the masses. Now it was over and as the rest of his troupe was tearing down the imaginary worlds they spent so much time and energy constructing he was lain out on top a brick wall half of him covered by the branches of a tree, the other side exposed to the universe. He was laid out there killing the character he had become. In the moments of change, when he wasn’t himself and he wasn’t his character, he was not human. He was this spirit, this aura, and the emotions of two different people were colliding around him and festering in his mind. As what was the real him came back to his mind he looked over through the trees at the theatre he sees the girl he’s thinking about in the backdoor. He wonders if she can see him as he studies her beauty, then she waves at him. All he can do is smile back, then she starts to walk over to where he is. He rises up and looks around right underneath the canopy of trees sit’s a pile of rubble topped with a flat concrete slab. It made the perfect bench for two people to sit and look out at the city from. Smirking to the world, he sat like an old time English compatriot on the slab waiting for her to turn the corner and not see him. As he waited he couldn’t help but look back, dropping his act he turned to observe the spot. After a few moments he was somewhat surprised that she hadn’t appeared. Then she surprisingly jumped out of the trees scaring nearly to the point that he fell off the seat. He helped her up and they sat there looking out at the city with the stars on top. After awhile with them still having not said a word he grabbed her hand. She looked over at him and admired him as he searched the sky for answers to questions that no one could understand. He was the answer to her questions but she didn’t know that. No one knew anything and no one knows anything but pain. Pain is the only thing that is positively identified, its never confused. Happiness can be misconstrued, it can be overlooked, it can be denied and misunderstood. Pain on the other hand was blunt, it was loud, it was sure. He turned to her to say he loved her and inn the distance, maybe 100 feet from them a group of guys walking down the road yelled out and took off running. They were directly in front of the two and he quickly stepped in front of her, helping her down the back of the rubble. Tires screeched behind him and shots rang out. Endless shots in that one second and two stray ones caught him in the back of the head. He fell down the back of the pile and landed beside her, she couldn’t scream, she couldn’t speak. She just cried and held him. He died there in between himself and his character, not completely human, not completely real. They buried him there under that pile of rubble, and to this day after every performance she is in, the beautiful girl goes out and sits on that slab of concrete and looks out at the city, searching for answers to the questions he never asked.