Are you lonely?

I sat on one of the benches at the lake place. It was dusk. And in the half light of the evening, a murky shape of a human came out of the dark as if from nowhere and sat beside me. Within a few seconds, in a very unique tone, from the deepest core of his voice and with an unusual high pitch, he uttered those words...

"Are you lonely?"


I looked at the man. His age could be anything between twenty-five to forty. He was wearing a pair of dark glasses, underneath which his yellowish eyes would be resting, I guessed. His hair was untidy, probably not taken care of over a week or so. His face was in dark, half visible and half not. And his clothes - rusty, gritty and old, gave him a look of a vagrant...though not a madman. The first impression towards him will always be repulsive, for sure, but there was something in his voice, and his words, which made me think.

"Yes, I guess." I keep it short.


Silence fell. And then it continued. But only to be broken by a chain of sentences.


"I fell in love with them. One after another. But soon I realised I wasn't meant for any of them. I realised I was too strong, or perhaps too weak for one single girl. Also, it was making me too vulnerable. So I left. I put enough hatred in their heart so that they go away, and don't come back, ever. And so they did. My plan worked. To become a winner I had to push everyone away, so that I don't have anyone to lose at all. And if I don't have anything to lose at all, who can stop me from winning?"


"So you have won then, having no one to lose now." I said, already taking some interest in him.


"It doesn't work like that. And I'm afraid I paid a heavy price to learn that lesson. Winning is not about getting rid of the people you attach yourself closest. It's about pulling yourself through with the world. Nothing can be achieved alone, and within a day. I lost the people I valued, and lost the life I wanted for me too."


"Things are going to be better, for sure." I said, trying to console him.

"You know, I know this place just like the back of my hand, but still I find a pain in my heart when I think about something every time I come here." He said.

"Something terrible happened here, isn't it?" I said.


He didn't answer. Rather, he looked at me, put his glasses on the bench and on that very moment the local train marked its presence by whistling from the other side of the lake and in the neon reflecting from the coupes of the train, I saw the man's face.


Before everything went dark, I remember a chill and a shivering came out of nowhere in my body and it went straight to my head. A sudden cry, thrown out from the core of my throat, fear and subtlety...and I fell senseless.


In the murky evening of a summer in the lake place, on one of the very disturbed moments of life, I saw myself.




-March 10th '12