Shelf

I was in a small quaint village this time. I could hear the bustle of suburbia off to my right; the cars rolling along the cobblestone pathways, the brakes of the delivery trucks, and the mumbles of distant conversations.  I could see the faded white figures rushing around me, bouncing from storefront to storefront. The smaller figures ran to the playground to start chasing each other and playing on the equipment. Taller figures looked on, while others walked right past. Some figures reached out at the crowds to invite them into their shops.

“It’s about time that you came around.” A voice said from the street. I turned around, and Good had positioned himself on top of crutches.

“What happened to you?” I asked him, helping him get up onto the sidewalk.

“You did smart guy.” He laughed, wincing a little as he jumped the curb.

“Yeah,” I fumbled, “sorry about that.”

“You know normally I would be willing to accept your apology pretty quickly.” He started, going towards a bench further down the road. “But I’m not going to. It wouldn’t be right.”

“I understand.” I announced, placing my hand on the back of his shoulder and helping him to sit down.

“So did Soul teach you anything worth while?” He exasperated.

“Something about healing.”

“So, you did not in fact learn anything?”

“No, I did.” I stuttered. “It just didn’t ‘stick’ as well; I’m used to hearing things like that coming from you.”

“Yeah,” he said, staring into one of the nearby storefronts, “it’s weird, isn’t it? To have another voice of reason shouting as loud as they can in a desperate attempt to be heard?”

“You’re particularly salty today,” I said, glaring at him, “aren’t you?”

“How would you feel if someone broke you up into a thousand different pieces; split up your entire being into it’s core expressions, and then expected you to be completely normal?”

“Well first, I don’t think humans are capable of that.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“And second, I didn’t know what it was going to do.” I pleaded, turning my body towards him. “How was I supposed to know it did whatever it did?”

“Well to start with,” he lectured, “you could have listened to me, and not him.”

“You know I have a tendency to not do that.”

“I’m aware.” He stated, sighing deeply. “Forget about it. Bad is in just a bad of a shape as I’m in. Actually, I think he got hit more by it.”

“You two talk to each other when I’m not here?”

“Believe it or not, yes we do. As a matter of fact, we live together.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me,” he grinned, “we live together.”

“Please tell me that that was on accident? And not on purpose?”

“How about we settle with ‘a little bit of both,’ huh?”

“Would it be to much to see the living situation?”

“Not at all.” He grinned, still looking into a store window as a bus pulled up behind him. “Not at all.”

*****

“I know it doesn’t seem like it,” Good winced as he hobbled up the driveway, the bus pulling off behind us, “but I still have the utmost faith in you.”

“Considering all of the shit I’ve pulled,” I replied, “that seems like a stupid decision.”

“There’s a reason for it though.”

“Does that reason involve ‘blinding optimism,’ or anything of the like?”

“Well,” he stopped short, pausing to cross his eyes slightly, “yes as a matter of fact. I won’t lie to you, but yes it does.”

“Then therein lies the problem, does it not.”

“At some point, you’ll learn that optimism can be considered a good thing.”

“But let me guess, not today?”

“Nope.” He grinned, leading me up to the steps of a small cottage. The bus had taken us for a five minute ride outside the village. We were now in a neighborhood with many small, white cottages, just like the one that Good was leading me towards.

“What’s that?” I asked him. I pointed to a cluster of light a few blocks down. It was getting higher, and materializing into the shape of a mansion.

“That’s where the others live.” He said simply, fumbling with his keys to open the front door. “They won’t show up until the houses are done. They haven’t need them until a certain someone screwed up that concept.”

“Whoops.”

He swung the door open, and dropped the keys on top of a chair that sat next to the door.

“Honey! I’m home!” He called out. I heard mumbling from the other end of the single-story house. The house was divided up the middle, with a brighter light and fancier silhouettes of objects strewn across the walls on one end, and the other half of the house was darker, and had less ornate decorations.

“What do you want this time?” Bad mumbled, rubbing his eyes as he left his room. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Surprise!” Good said without enthusiasm. He turned around, and grumbled as he slunk down into a chair. Bad groaned, and walked into the kitchen, which fell in the middle of the divide.

“Well,” Good said, “make yourself at home.”

“Thanks?” I said, unsure if he had forgotten that what I see if much different from what he sees. To him, he sees an innate, detailed world like I would in my life. But all I see is white walls and white shelves.

“So there’s a reason outside of optimism as to why I still have faith in you.”

“What’s that?”

He smiled, and motioned towards the wall to his right. A collection of five shelves, mounted above one another, were hung from the wall. They all housed objects, all in color and detail, the kind that I could differentiate. There were trophies, hand-sewn felt ornaments, and pictures.  I walked up to one of the pictures, and it encapsulated me at my high school graduation. The picture captured what I saw as I looked up into the stands after shaking hands with the principal.

“Every Time you do something amazing, or worthwhile, some new thing pops onto the shelf.” He smiled, standing up out of his chair and coming over to my shoulder.

“Everytime?” I asked him.

"Every Time; this is the shelf." Good said, holding his hand up to the shelves, "this is the shelf upon which I hold everything dear to me."

"These are the fields upon which I grow my fucks." Bad mocked from the kitchen. "As you can see, the fields are bare!"

We both stopped, and glared in the direction of the entryway of the kitchen.

"Regardless of what happens,” Good continued, finally looking back at the shelf with fond eyes, “regardless of whatever shit you so happen to pull on any given day, I keep coming home to this. I never lose track of what we've done. And that helps me to think about what we could still do.”

“That’s optimism you imbecile.” Bad said from the entryway with a cup of coffee cradled in one hand. His right eye was blue and swollen, and he had a thick cast wrapped around his left leg.

“Will you go back to bed?” Good pleaded, rolling his eyes.

“I don’t wanna.” Bad mumbled, slowly shuffling in the direction of his room.

They kept bickering, and my attention wandered to a window near the shelves. It pointed out at the front of the house. The mansion had finally materialized, and another, smaller house started to be build next to it. In the top level of the mansion, I could make out a figure; pointing in my direction.”

"Who is that?” I asked, panicked. They stopped arguing, and both looked out the window with me.

“Oh you’ll like him.” Bad laughed, clearly amused. “You’ll love him! He’s a poetic little bastard that one is.”

“God damn it.” Good grumbled. “Not him.”

“Who?” I asked again. “Who is that?”

“You’ll figure it out in time.” Bad laughed, the white light beginning to overtake the room.

Good looked down and sighed. I looked back out the window; the figure had vanished.

Heal

I remember this place. I thought to myself. The trees, the brook, and the distant sounds of life. All of it, smothered by ash and smoke. I come out here to calm down; to let the embers that I held in my palms slip through my fingers, and let them drift down into the river to be extinguished. But everything was gone, everything had burnt down.

"Bad did this," a woman's voice asked me from behind, "didn't he?"

I turned around, and Soul was hovering at the edge of the clearing, above a small wisp of a tree that still retained its color.

“He did.” I replied, holding myself. “Why?”

“You need to hold him better.” She mumbled, changing voices. “He needs a shorter leash.”

“Yeah,” I snapped, “no shit, thanks for the advice. I thought that you were supposed to be common sense, not obviousness.”

I could feel her glaring at me. She didn’t move. I stayed near the outcropping.

“Can’t you just leave me alone for once? Can’t I just be out here, alone?”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.” She said through what must have been a grin.

“Okay, I give up.” I exasperated, flinging my arms in the air. “What is the metaphorical lesson that you want to teach me today?”

“I’m going to teach you nothing.” She proclaimed, still standing above the colored tree.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I’m not going to teach you anything.” She said once more. “I just expect you to fix all of this yourself.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “Fix the forest?”

“Yes.”

“Why should I? Bad started it, he should be the one to fix it.”

“That’s not how that works either. Just because he’s the one who started it doesn’t mean that he has to be the one that fixes it. That is not how life works.”

“I don’t care! I didn’t start it, I don’t want to be the one to fix it!”

“You’re not understanding me. This is not how life works.”

“I don’t care,” I said once more, tears welling up in my eyes, “I’m tired of cleaning up after him.”

“Well I still expect you to fix this.” She said simply, edging towards me.

“How?” I exclaimed, throwing my hands in the air.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, “I’ve been using the wrong words. I don’t mean ‘fix,’ I mean ‘heal.’”

“That didn’t help me at all.”

She sighed, and started to float away,

“I’m sorry.” She said once more. “I wish that I could be more descriptive. But I just can’t.”

“I won’t hold it against you.” I sighed. “You came out of my head, after all.”

“‘Fixing’ has the implication that if you follow through with it and find a solution to the problem will cease to exist. That it will never resurface or be of any harm or foul. But ‘healing’ has a sort of non-permanancy to it. A solution can be found, but it the problem may come back after a while.”

“So,” I tried to explain, “it’s like how you can fix a problem with a car, and have a pretty much guaranteed chance that the problem won’t come back, unless you messed it up?”

“Correct!”

“But you can’t fix a cut. You can still get cut again, even in the same place. Even just the linguistic use of the word ‘fix’ doesn’t even fit in there right…”

“Too far English major…”

“Am I at least on the right track?”

“The metaphor is a little off, but yeah, you’re right.”

“Alright then,” I complained, “make a better one?”

“Look around you.”

“The forest?”

“You can’t fix it. There is no permanent solution to the problem. You can never keep another tree from being cut down, and you can never keep another ember from landing upon its roots.”

“Well if you want me to heal the forest, I really don’t know where to start; the English major doesn’t really teach you a whole lot about botany.”

“This is where I can’t help you.” She said.

“Oh, of course.”

“I can’t tell you what wounds to heal. Of course you can, and probably should develop some sort of strategy, in which you heal the large wounds first and the small ones second.”

“I’m pretty sure most people would have the common sense to try to heal a leg that’s been sliced open before they try to tackle a papercut.”

“Well actually,” she stuttered, “now that I think about it, you may not have to do that.”

“Please,” I sighed again, “do elaborate.”

“In your opinion, which is the harder task: making your bed in the morning, or writing an academic paper from the beginning?”

“Depends on the paper.”

There was a silence wedged between us. I could feel her glaring at me.

“Okay,” I gave in, “making the bed is easier…”

“So which is going to take less time? Which is going to take less willpower? Less energy?”

“Making the bed, in all of those situations.”

“So,” she continued, “if you write the paper first, and then make the bed, will making the bed be easier? Considering that you have the big project out of the way?”

“Sure?”

“Then there ya have it!”

Another silence was interjected between us. Now it was my time to glare at her.

“What?” She responded.

“I loathe your ambiguity.”

“Like I said before: if common sense were easier to understand, a lot more people would have it.”

“I like how that’s your excuse.”

“Is it not good enough?! Because it’s pretty spot on! Would you like me to make a metaphor for your arrogance and ignorance?!”

“I would rather you not…”

“You have an opportunity here,” she hissed, her voice shaking as it transposed, “one that you don’t want to miss out on.”

I said nothing; I folded my arms across my chest.

“What holes do you want to heal in this world? Will you spend your life healing every wound that this world has? Or will you be the one to just throw a bandage over it and call it good? Or will you even bother trying?”

I placed my hands on my hips, and sighed, looking around at the burnt woodland.

“I can see it in your eyes.” She continued. “You want to fix every problem that the world has, just like most sane people do. They want to be the one who fixes everything. Well I can tell you right now that you won’t be.”

“I know.”

“You think that the time that you have left on this word will be spent wasting it on a menial job with menial pay, occasionally celebrating the remaining free time in the company of friends and family.”

“You’re optimistic.”

“I said that that’s what you think. I don’t have a clue what your life will be like; that’s for you to forge.”

Her voice was shaking and cracking, and the world began to fade away.

“What holes do you want to heal?” She asked once more. “It’s not a decision that I can make for you. You have to be the one to make it yourself. You think that your efforts to heal and fix will be mostly in vain.”

I looked down below her, and a small flower began to bloom.

“But sometimes,” she stated, her light forcing more flowers to grow from the ground, “it won’t.”

Borrow

"Where am I?" I spoke to myself, my eyes darting open. I was sitting back at the table. With faint round stains on the surface, and two empty chairs in front of me. It had been a while since I had seen or heard of Bad and Good. I don't know what happened to them. I stood up from the table, and placed the chair back underneath. I turned to face the other way, and started walking. I walked for fifteen minutes before I walked past a small tea shop. On the patio, was a ball of light, perched at the table.

"Seriously?" I asked as it turned around to look at me.

"What?" A female voice responded, offended by my comment.

"What happened to Good and Bad?"

"Do you not remember?"

"I do remember, I told them to shut their traps, essentially."

"You did plenty more than that." She replied, slowly hovering down the stairs towards me.

"It couldn't have been that bad."

"I don't think you're aware of the severity of what you've done." She started, but her voice shifted. At first she sounded familiar, like the voice of an old friend. But as she finished her sentence, her voice modulated and changed into that of an ex-partner.

"So who are you?" I asked, placing my hands on my hips.

"I am Soul." She replied simply, stopping at the base of the stairs.

"Okay?" I stammered. "So what gives with the voice changing?"

"It's nothing more than part of who I am."

"So based on the ambiguity," I started, "I'm guessing you're here on behalf of Good?"

"Funny."

"Well you're if you're not going to tell me who you are, I'm going to sit here and make smart-ass remarks."

"My name is Soul." She answered once again. "Basically, I'm nothing more than your own personal interpretation of common sense."

"Okay," I sighed, "so are Good and Bad, gone?"

"For a while." She responded. "What you did to them was not easy. It broke them. It didn't just break them up, but it broke them; it rattled them to the core. They're still around, but it will take a while for them to heal."

"So you're here as their replacement?"

"Like I said, for a while."

"So." I stuttered, trying to collect my words. "Okay?"

"I'll be Frank." She sounded. "What you did to Good and Bad was a completely stupid idea."

"It worked," I exclaimed, "didn't it?! I did it so that they would shut up and put me back in control! And look, they aren't here, and I'm the one in control."

"For now, until they come back."

"I can handle Good and Bad, I just need a break from the two of them."

"Not just them."

"What?" I stopped, collecting my breath.

"You broke Good and Bad up." She continued, her tone changed as her voice modified. "I'm not the only thing to have come out of Good. And there are plenty of things that came out of Bad."

"So I'm really not the one in control?"

"Why is it only about control to you?"

"Because one would think that being in control if the thoughts in his own head would be important?"

"Control is important, you're right." She spoke as her voice changed again. "But there's more to it than that."

"Well if you could elaborate on that, that would be great."

"You share a world with them. Yes, you may just see them as the voices in your head that may or may not get in the way of you doing what you want to do. But to them, you're pretty important."

"I don't follow."

"Everyone has these sorts of voices. Right?"

"I like to think so. Or at least something of the like." 

"So you could say that you share this 'alternate' world with everyone else, yes?"

"Sure?"

"You share your real life with real people. You really don't have a choice; it’s just a thing that you have to do. But this. This. All of this world that to you, is nothing more than a purgatory you fall into in your dreams, is so much more. Just like the real world, you share it with others."

"So everyone else comes here to talk to the voices in their own heads?"

"Yes."

"So," I started, "what does all of this have to do with power?"

"You would rather this all be gone; something that you don't have to deal with. Right?"

"Pretty much."

"Would you want that same fate to befall the real world?" She questioned, her voice continuing to change. "Where it all just ceases to exist because you don't want to deal with it?"

"No, but—."

"This is why you shouldn't be the one in charge. There shouldn't be anyone in charge. So what you did to Bad was a good thing; we don't need him to take charge. But we don't need Good to be in charge either. So the fact that you did that to both of them did nothing but bring ruin."

"I still don't know exactly what happened to the two of them." I proclaimed, shifting my feet. "Outside of the fact that I 'broke them up,' and now they're just a bunch of different emotions."

"There really isn't a whole lot else to know about." She said through what must have been a fake grin.

"So," I hesitated, "when do I get to meet them?"

"When you're ready." She replied. The wind began to pick up, and she started to drift off into the distance.

"What if I'm ready right now?" I shouted.

"You'll be ready later," she called back, "but I first recommend that you figure out how to share these worlds that you live in."

"What if I don't want to?!" I claimed, making her stop.

"If you're not willing to borrow this world as easily as you are the real one," she regained, continuing to drift away, "then you're not ready." 

I sighed audibly, and she stopped once again.

"This is no longer about just you and Good and Bad. There's more players now, because of your own accord as well. So I wouldn't be so ready to get rid of it."

"You know," I shouted once again, "for being the humanization of common sense, you really don't make a whole lot of God damned sense."

"There are more players in the game now my friend." She smiled. "And if common sense actually was as crystal clear as you want it to be, a lot more people would have it..."