Vachon Imagined

Walking with her friends one night on their way home from a party, she secretly wished for depth, not distraction.

Her friends laughed, drunk from whatever substances they had both ingested, letting themselves be carried away by the night. She watched them and felt an ache inside her, a longing to know more. To pierce beyond the failed smiles of drunken disillusionment and enter the cave.

The cave of her own knowledge, where drunkenness and absurdity were not allowed.

The mischievous nature of emotion had to be parked outside the door of whatever she was about to enter.

And enter she did.

It was an ache she often experienced around her friends, when laughter failed to give her peace. Now, she embarked upon an opening.

“Next party!” her girlfriends shouted.

“Go ahead,” she said.

They looked at her, wondering what she was doing.

Some of the girls bit back.

“Why are you being so weird?”

And weird she felt.

The word stung like a knife of impropriety piercing a heart she already knew was strange. She let them run off.

After their resistance, and her attempts to defend herself, wore off and became mundane, she entered the cave.

It appeared as a tube.

The entryway called to her as though it had a voice, as though she were its next muse.

She entered timidly, afraid, but courageous enough to step inside.

The door shut behind her.

And she knew that whatever lay ahead had to be better than whatever she had left behind.

She was bored.

Bored with tradition. Bored with the fake smiles that never lasted. Bored with the superficiality that had its place in magazines, perhaps, but not inside her heart.

So deeper she ventured.

At first, she could hear only her own voice.

Her own thoughts.

She could feel her heart racing, her breath becoming trapped inside her chest.

Still, she remained.

At times, when it became unbearable, the insides of the fortress seemed to press down upon her back. She fought her way through the agony, convinced she would break beneath it.

And then, without warning, it disappeared.

This happened countless times.

Pain came.

Pain stayed.

Pain disappeared.

Until eventually, she could sense when it was beginning, and she learned to relax.

Somewhere outside of tension, somewhere in between moments, she could feel herself beginning to trust again.

The space between pain and suffering and mild discomfort increased with every step. Further and further apart they grew, until she was no longer aware of herself.

She was no longer aware of the fortress.

Was it even there?

She couldn’t say.

Somehow, her voice had seeped into the walls of the fortress.

The fire that once burned through her flesh, tearing wounds open like markers of disarray—she was there too.

She was everywhere.

Only, she wasn’t there to know it.

She wasn’t there to sense it.

She wasn’t there to report on it.

Now, the distance between those friends, her memories, and the fear she once felt was no longer part of her reality, or anyone else’s who entered the cave.

Who entered the fortress.