Geist

• Lachlan Swan, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2010

As I watch her drown, I realise I cannot help her. My hands, wet from ferociously wading into the icy autumn waters of the lake, slowly recoil from their frantic slashing, hoping to grab hold of some sort of fabric and drag the girl from the water.

I watch her, silently screaming at me to help, her eyes pleading with complexion far beyond her tender age. She becomes less and less dynamic; Death creeps up behind her and…

I leave the waters, as to not disturb the surface tension itself, and leave as a shadow. I stalk down the walkway, disjointed from what just happened. I pass a homeless man; he stares at me with fierce judgement in his eyes. He knows what I am.

I continue to take my long strides down the black strip of asphalt, keeping my pace as if not to stop and not be able to start again. The path seems to continue to the horizon. Damn my eyes! How they deceive me. Not even they can prove my reality.

I keep on pressing forward, against the stinging wind of distortion. I gradually muster the courage to look back at the lake. I see the waters peacefully lapping at the frosted edges of the bank; the brown and yellow trees sway slightly as the whispering wind passes word of the ill-fated girl.

Bile rises in my throat and I turn back to the path in front of me and hasten my pace. I stumble at my sudden switching of attention, and the black path mocks me with its perfect surface, showing the entire fault to be mine. But it’s not my fault, not the defect of my doing.

My legs mechanically overtake each other, running on pure adrenaline, the fuel of shock. At least my mind still works; my sanity is still intact, just. My health has not completely diminished.

I lapse into guilt at this thought, and my memory embraces its latest failure.

Why? Her eyes ask.

I cannot help you, even if I saved you from this fate. I replied with sympathy in my eyes.

I snap back into this world as I breathe, for what seems like the first time in eons, and my legs numbly travel onwards. I spot a light up ahead, and I automatically move towards it, like it was the salvation of my dilemma and the answer to my paradoxical life.

As I move closer to the dilapidated, rusty iron post my attention centres on the naked globe held by the Victorian curve, eternally arched to benefit its makers. I find myself captivated by its simplistic beauty, entrancing me in the artificial illumination. Half light. I see my soul in that glass prison, and in that moment I feel like collapsing to a tidal wave of emotion pouring through my synapses, and pushing at my tear glands in my eyes.

A voice cuts through my detachment.

“Sir, I am with the police. Would you come with me?”

I see a hand reach towards me. I instinctively pull away, years of isolation toning me for this moment. I rasp the following words through my sickness.

“I am a leper. Do not touch me.”