A cycle of fate; a bundle of choices in life that consequentially ends the same way it was predicted.
It is a predicament of good and bad, a question of morality, and a simple answer of mortality.
It was a warm spring evening, winter had stayed past its invitation, the sun now outshine the once dusky breeze.
"On that small island we had everything but a school that taught above the eighth grade."
That worn hill me and Arlo raced each other back and forth as we wasted away the setting sun's light. Once the final light stretched behind the horizon, clumps of these long, black masses faded away into the setting darkness.
Arlo sat in the dock, not still, of course.
We were good at pretending that stillness was a choice.
The last ship always left to go to the city once the clock hit 9 PM, and so, like clockwork, the ship blew its horn and left the pier.
"Those after school activities run late, that's what Marisa said." My voice echoed past the bored sounds of crickets in the long grass behind us, my voice wavered at the thought of having to wait daily.
Arlo lazily nodded his head, his round eyes narrowing to a slit. "He's probably out with a girl or something."
I frowned. "What the hell, don't say stuff like that."
Just like it had never mattered at all, the waves that crashed like the violent sounds of metal whining; just like those withering wails out on the sea, a final farewell sounded out to the wood fringes the rope had been untied from, and out into the vast body of water.
The breeze brushed past my hair like it was running from the waves, like it would get sucked up by something it could only tread through. Yet, the breeze and sea intertwined into a large mass I watched go up and down as the burning sun burnt the last reminisce of its large orange husk.
The sky became a tranquil blue before long; yet flashes of bright white blinded that peaceful blue, sucking up everything it took up.
I didn't hate that blank flash, it transformed that cold white into a still-born memory that became preserved with time. I thought it was something beautiful, something that became a catacomb of memories.
Or did I?
My feet were planted in the sand like a weed I spread deeper and deeper; the warm sand gave that relaxing sensation of water nourishing my soul.
I plopped my head backwards, towards that huge blob my blurry, tired eyes created.
"Where the hell are you gonna get by taking pictures of the sky with the flash on?" I grimaced, throwing a small pebble at the scatter-brained boy next to me.
Arlo muttered something under his breath as he fiddled with that large machine in his hands, crouched over by some rock, flipping through some booklet like it had the answers of the world written in it.
I lifted myself up from the blackened rubble, the small bits of warm yellow rocks turned into a swirling mass of metal and pipes that looked like it was seconds away from collapsing, everything within the radius of it had already done so, the ash fluttered about like the last bits of dusk playing a memento of the bittersweet youth; we knew dawn was a given, yet once light came to be, the peaceful days of the night sky grew wary and beloved.
The illusion of peace had been disrupted, I treaded far from the empty gravesite of my brain playing back empty tapes that were louder than noise itself.
"Have you ever been out of the city, you know, like the island?"
The two men in chairs looked at one another.
"Once."
I nodded. "You'd be surprised with how different the night sky looked back on that small island, it was bigger than anything else you'd ever seen before."
The scene of the stars in the sky didn't return back to the way it was before, remnants of light masked my eyes and turned what I looked at into a blurry musk or darkness.
Yet once developed, that photo would see things my weary eyes couldn't. Much later, like much, much later I would find that photograph. The one Arlo took when the light was already gone, it hadn't shown what I had remembered seeing.
Arlo froze the moment in time, and somehow the stars behaved just for him. In memory, they'd burned brighter than they ever did that night. Like the world only makes sense once it's already finished with you.
Perhaps that should have warned me.
The photograph kept what my eyes missed, and when I would think of that night I could only remember the picture instead of the truth—and I would believe it.
"The boy who went missing, he was a friend of Arlo's?" Ink-man spoke, his pen paused, hovering over the sheet. "What made him begin with this theory of getting revenge?"