Epsilon Kiss

Between the crisp lines of reality, a boy who longed to exist met a girl who wished for nothing more than to die. The girl had thought the boy into existence, and he clung to it like a smooth wall that would escape him at the slightest movement. Nameless, he single-mindedly knew of his desire to exist. Her name, though she wasn't particularly partial to it, was Alice.
   The boy was so because Alice had thought him up as the antithesis of her person. His gender happened to be one of the first things filled by this singular defining characteristic. A few other small details came next; his white, medium-length hair, his brown, hopeful eyes, and his generally pretty visage… Quickly and quietly, like a bubble rising in a pond, the core of his person expressed itself in Alice's mind. It surfaced as the slightest whisper of a voice, crying out hoarse but with all its might: "I want to exist."
   At its utterance, Alice felt a slow wave of dejection set its weight upon her. She first tried to brush it off. She had made a promise to herself, and she couldn't… no. No, this was fine. It was just her thoughts, she wasn't doing anything wrong here. She reassured herself that she could keep going. —And, she thought, what could she be expected to do, never sleep or let her thoughts waver from the boy? That was unreasonable, surely it was.
   Alice sighed, and then sat in silence for a second. though, Ultimately, she knew she needed to be honest with herself. Those words were so hollow. It was pathetic that she thought she might fall for them. She knew she couldn't sully this moment. Even that aside, she couldn't lie to herself like that.
   Not letting the boy exist was murder. He already existed and she would be ending that. He was only real in her mind, yes, but was or wasn’t that real enough for killing him to be wrong? Was his desire to live 'real' enough was what she supposed she was asking, and that seemed a sick question to her.
   Not that how things seemed mattered at all, she supposed. Alice didn't know what to do, but when she really thought about it, she couldn't picture herself confidently saying there was nothing wrong with it after having killed him and not feel guilt. And even if it didn't matter, it was cruel of her regardless, she thought, to be imagining this torture. Killing a thing that desired so wholly to exist. Especially if it didn't, and this was the closest it could get to existing.
   Though, she supposed, the immorality lay in thinking him up at the very beginning, even if she didn't realize it then. He would die eventually as a consequence of being born, and soon no matter what, just from the sheer difficulty of keeping him alive. And he was already born, with nothing more to do about it.
   However, she calmly noticed, he was already gone now. He'd slipped out of her mind while she was thinking about all this, and so the decision was already made for her. And see, she told herself, there was no way she could've done anything more, if she couldn't even manage for a few minutes. All she could do, all she had to do, was keep her promise.
   What was she doing wasting time on this anyway, when this was supposed to be her last solace? Though, that didn't really matter. She enjoyed it enough, or, it was interesting enough for her at least. Happiness never mattered to her, it was just something she couldn't have that was less important than something else she couldn't have. She should get on with it though.
   She steeled herself and shut out every other thought, not letting another in about anything that might mean. Then she breathed out a long sigh, draining all the air she could out of her lungs, and laid back onto the cold, rough concrete she was sitting on. It would finally get done.
   Knowing that, it being right in front of her, an overwhelming calm washed over her. In a moment, the earth would slam into her violently, blatantly and in the open, rather than agonizingly and suffocatingly as it had done for all this time. In a moment, all of this would be over. This was the soft death that she wished for, being able to have this moment where everything in the world went the way she wanted it, even if there was the bitter imperfection of the boy not letting her have her one moment in full. Her, she knew, but there was no harm in blaming someone who didn't exist. The sanctity of her beliefs were still retained since she knew that anyways.
   Alright. One last thought, she would allow herself. One more thought to wrap things up. Regardless of what it actually was, of that unexpected irony, it was really nice to have unconcerned thoughts about things that didn’t matter to anyone except her. Truly liberating, she thought. She hugged the boy in her mind, conjuring the thought up slightly to fully put it to rest with all the others. And that was it. Out of her head he went, and any lingering scent of anything that had ever brought her solace.
   Alice sat up, scooted closer to the edge, and looked down.
   “Headfirst, I guess?” she said out loud.
   Shit. I’ve ticked one over the last thought I allowed myself, she thought. And there’s another, and I can sense the oncoming flood of thoughts about how to distinguish the semantics, followed by an expression of distaste for semantics.
   “Good thing that none of this shit matters anymore.”
   Alright, I’ll do it bit by bit she thought, and dangled her feet off of the edge. She promised herself she would do this. Next, she scooted a little more off the edge. The concrete surface was a bit rough on her hands, but she ignored it. She pushed herself a little more forwards, until her thighs were completely off the ground. The night air was cool and still. She noticed her body was abnormally relaxed, like there was an absence of some tension she knew was constantly there, even if not in her conscious. More or less, she felt ready. And…
   “You’re a loser.” It was a sharp tone, with a hint of snideness. Alice hesitated. She didn’t pull back though.
   "Hey, you gonna ignore me? That's even more pathetic." It was the boy. Alice pulled herself back up.
   "Fine. What?"
   "You're a loser because you only care about yourself, about what's convenient for you."
   “You’re just me, so I know you’re only doing this because you want me to live. I know how you think, because I think you. I know this is just a weak attempt at getting me to stop for even a moment, but you have soured the moment, so congrats for that.”
   "Shut up. Seriously? At first, maybe, but then, as I was saying it, I realized something… It felt good, those words coming out of my mouth. You clearly value my life as nothing. You don't even care that you created me just to kill me. I haven't been in this world for very long, but that is the most evil and cruel thing I can think of. Are you really that self-centered, that me wanting to live is out of concern for you? Despite truly knowing that I want to live just as much as you want to die?" The boy paused for a second, and then continued.
   "And also, don't go on deciding things about me without asking me at all, the hell is that? I'm fine not being thought of 24/7, just don't fucking kill me, how about that?"
   "You… you know what? You're, you’re the selfish one! Just wanting to live, not even knowing anything about life, that can't possibly be worth all of the misery I've lived through, all of the will and determination and… I promised myself, goddamnit!" She paused for a moment.
   When she spoke next, she sounded much more composed. "From far before you were ever around, this is the one thing I want and have wanted from life. The one thing. I gave up on anything else."
   "That's not true,” he interjected. “If it was, you wouldn't be doing this. You'd already be dead by now, but you're not. You're not even set on what you want, or living according to it. I am. I don't see the problem with both of us living. You've been living this whole time, and the instant I become collateral is the instant where you decide to stop? Whatever, fine. But you're telling me that you know for sure, out of every possible outcome of your life, death beats out all of them?"
   "No, I don't know." Alice started. "I don't know, don't you get it?" she screamed. "If I knew, there would've never been any back and forth. This limbo is just insult to injury, and even before I was dead-set on jumping, chances were that it was bound to happen eventually! If I didn't decide then, I would've wasted my whole life until I did kill myself, or until life took the choice out of my hands! I would've wasted my life not being able to decide. Well guess what!? I decided! I decided… and then, now I don't know because I don't want to hurt you, even though you don't even exist! And isn't that kind of insane anyways? Wouldn’t the sane thing to do be to jump, really, if the alternative is trying to avoid hurting a person who doesn’t even exist, screaming at myself in the middle of the night? Wouldn't that make the world a better place, getting rid of an insane person like me? I wasn't gonna do anything productive else, just delay my suicide and leech from everyone else." She sat there for a few moments, catching her breath.
   “What the hell am I even doing anyways,” she whispered.
   "You're clearly not thinking straight right now. You're letting your emotions rule you, when yeah, maybe… yeah some of those things, that's really rough to deal with. But those thoughts, they'll be there and you can return to them later without being clearly past your limit for tolerating them. I see now that I'm hurting you, and I didn’t need to, and… well maybe some of the things I said I should've said more nicely. I think it's because, maybe, I think you hate yourself. But, let's just go home. Please?"
   "Okay." she said in a half-whisper. "I need a bit." Almost as an afterthought, she added, "I guess the one more thought was premature, if I still need to finish with you, the one before it."
   Alice pulled her legs fully up and back over onto the roof. Then she got off the elevated lip of the roof and pressed her back into it, sitting down on the main, lower surface. She pulled her knees in with her arms and laid her head on them.
   "You okay?"
   "Obviously not."
   "Sorry… I just… didn't know what else to say."
   "It's fine. Let's go."
   She stood up and slowly walked over to the roof door. Then she opened it and stepped through. The moonlight pulled away from the floor up the steps behind her as the door swung shut, leaving her in the darkness. Alice felt her way down the steps, and opened up the door to the ground floor. She could finally see again a bit, with small amounts of moonlight trickled through the windows.
   "So…" Alice thought.
   "Yeah?"
   "Do you have a name? Or, want a name?"
   "How about… Ecila?"
   "I kinda like that actually, where'd you… Oh. That's just Alice backwards, isn't it."
   "Yeah, but it's thematic and cool! Come onnn."
   "That's so stupid… absolutely not."
   "I’m your antithesis, so I gotta say the opposite, so… Ecila it is. S’just the rules." The boy, no, Ecila, smiled with mock innocence.
   Alice rolled her eyes, but the beginnings of a smile formed at her lips. Somehow, the world seemed a little warmer than a few moments ago.