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I found a bench to sit on and texted him the general location. It was a nice day. Peaceful, barring what had happened in the cafe. The birds were chirping and cooing as they flew about the busy city. People were out jogging and walking their dogs. The sunlight was an old friend that I wasn’t sure I ever really appreciated before.
As I sat there on the bench in the late spring sunlight, I realized how lost I had been all this time. I had been wandering through life with a blindfold on, just following whims and convenience around. It’s simpler to cling to what’s been lost than go through the effort of moving on and finding something better. I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I had a feeling I might be able to figure that out in my biological family’s house. I looked up at the clouds gently brushing over the city’s skyscrapers.
“Arthur? What are you doing here?” Farah called out to me from down the street. She waved and ran over. “Never seen you sit on a bench before. Did you hear about what happened at the cafe? Apparently some explosion or something happened?”
“I was there when it happened,” I told her as she sat down next to me. “It’s going to sound crazy, but it was a car that popped in and out of existence.”
“What?”
“Holly and I were never meant to coexist,” I explained to her in a melancholy tone, looking instead at the sky above and the ever-changing clouds. “Our parents were experimenting with trying to make two realities exist at the same time, a boy and a girl. They succeeded, but when Holly and I are close to each other, reality bends. The car was a part of that.”
I looked over at her to see a stunned and confused face looking back at me. I could tell she wanted to believe me, but couldn’t manage to. She probably couldn’t even figure out if I was joking or not.
Mahli’s car pulled up after a moment of stunned silence. “That’s my ride,” I told her. “It was nice seeing you. Maybe we’ll see each other again soon.”
“Yeah, I’d like that!” she said in a friendly way as I got up from my seat. I waved goodbye and got into the passenger seat. “Hey,” I greeted my best friend.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he questioned me in a quiet but serious tone.
“I’ve felt different ever since we went there,” I told him. “I’m not trying to get back to where I was, but… yeah, I’m sure.”
Mahli didn’t ask anymore questions after that. He understood that I had to go, for one reason or another. It was a long silent drive, but it was still somehow nice. Silence doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Sometimes everything can be said without the use of a single word.
The area around the house looked different in the daytime. There was police tape draped from one end of the driveway to the other, tied to trees on either side, but otherwise the place seemed quiet and untouched. The buds on the trees had found a way to break open and were slowly spreading out their leaves. The house at the end of the driveway was almost welcoming. It had a basic white siding and black shingle roof. It was dirty but still in good condition.
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Mahli asked as he put his car in park.
I shook my head. “No, it’s okay. I’ll go in alone.”
“Alright, if you say so. Text if you need anything.”
“You got it, and thanks again for the drive.”
I got out and walked towards the house. A spring breeze blew, gently rustling the forest as I walked. Birds sang and flew around. The odd squirrel chipped here and there and crossed the driveway by jumping from branch to branch. I passed underneath the police tape and headed for the front door of the house. The lawn was still mostly uncut, but a path had been cut out to the front door. I followed it in and stood in the entryway of the house that would have been my childhood home in another version of reality. Natural light filled the house through the windows that never got boarded up. The smell of burnt candles was gone, replaced with a hint of the fresh spring air seeping in somewhere.
I wandered through the house, looking at it in a new light. It was relieving to be able to explore without worrying about being attacked from the shadows or Solenne’s well-being. The place was mostly furnished, except for the child rooms with the broken cribs in the corner. As much as he had been living here before we found him, the place still managed to feel abandoned. It was like I had survived the apocalypse and was exploring the childhood home I had before it all fell apart. Everything seemed to be an echo, a reminder, of a life that could have been.
I found my way to the master bedroom on the second story. It was just past the office where we had been attacked, where the end had started in force. The door creaked open as my doubt and hesitation kept it from being flown open. It was the most occupied room in the house. Dirty clothes were strung about the floor, and knick-knacks of all sorts covered the dressers and bedside tables. There was a curtain pulled over the window. I carefully walked over and pulled it open, filling the room with the welcoming spring light. When I looked again, the room had changed.
On the opposite side of the room sat the dresser with a large mirror on it against the wall. I saw myself reflected in it, but thought it was my biological father for a moment before shaking the idea out of my head. I wandered towards it, my footsteps muffled by the clothes on the floor. A photograph was stuck into the mirror’s frame, showing a familiar couple smiling and happy. I pulled it free and stared at it, falling back onto the bed.
It was the first picture of my parents together that I had seen. It was unsettling to see Holly there with the younger version of the man who attacked us, but it was a Holly I never got to meet.
After a short while of staring at the photograph, staring right into the past, I placed it down on the dirty and messy dresser. I wandered out of the room and back into the office. I looked at the floor that had once opened up to swallow Richard Holtz mid-attack. I stepped over the spot and ruffled around the desk. Most of the notes I found varied from musings about the nature of reality and how to “fix” what he had done to letters to his late wife.
I skimmed through a couple of the letters, but they were all the same. They all had the same amount of regret, guilt, and obsession in them. As I flipped through his belongings, all I could think was how pathetic he was. He was so fixated on what happened that he never moved on, never found a way forward. Instead of facing what had happened, he ran away and then returned and secretly planned to “set things right”, but he couldn’t turn back time.
Sometimes when we’re looking at a reflection of ourselves, we don’t fully realize it at first. Like a baby seeing themselves for the first time, we gaze at ourselves in shock and curiosity until it finally dawns on us: this person is me.
I put down the papers and looked out of the window at the forest just beyond the overgrown lawn. Squirrels and birds lived their lives, bouncing and flying around the trees for reasons I didn’t quite understand. The budding leaves on the trees seemed to invite me out. This place has stood here for years, abandoned or inhabited by a madman, but the rest of the world went on without him, without it.
I left the room, went down the stairs, and headed out the back door. I circled around the house to the driveway and followed it back to Mahli’s car. I didn’t look back. There was nothing left to look at.
“You okay?” he asked me as I approached as he leaned on the hood of his car with a pen and notebook in hand.
I nodded. “I think… I think it’s time that I move,” I told him.
“What? You can’t mean to here,” he responded in surprise.
“No,” I said, chuckling. “I’ve had the same apartment for years now with almost the same exact things. Worked the same shitty job in the same city that I’ve never really bothered to leave. I think it’s time for some change.”
“Okay, but why? And where?” he questioned.
“Holly and I can no longer be near each other. It messes with reality. She said she was going to move, but I don’t think she’s the one who should leave,” I explained to him. I sighed. “I know it’s going to suck living in a different city from each other, but this is something I need to do.”
“Alright,” he said softly. “If this is something you need to do, I’ll help you move.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
There were a number of conversations I needed to have before I could move, and one of them I dreaded more than anything, the one with Solenne. I knew she wouldn’t be moving with me, and I didn’t think I wanted her to anyways. What’s the point of moving if I bring my past with me?
“I’m going to move,” I texted Holly as we drove back to the city. “So don’t pack.”
“What? Why? I said I was going to,” she replied a couple minutes later, accompanied by, “and by the way, thanks for leaving me at the cafe to try to explain what happened.”
“Sorry about that, I just needed to do something.”
“It’s okay, so why are you moving instead now?”
“It’s time I see the world,” I answered.
“You’re going to travel?”
“Well, no. I don’t want to end up like Richard. He spent the past 25 years fixated on what happened, clinging desperately to a past that was already gone, trying to somehow fix what had happened…” I explained.
“Well, best of luck then, brother,” she replied after about ten minutes. “Evette will be glad to hear that I won’t be going anywhere anyways. How’s Mahli dealing with the information?”
I glanced over at him. He spotted me looking out of the corner of his eye and smiled at me briefly before returning his attention to the road. “Well enough, I think. That or he’ll have a whole book of poetry out of this experience. Either way, he wins.”
“Haha, glad you’re optimistic about it.”
“Life goes on, as they say.”
“Ugh, leave the poetic responses to Mahli. They don’t suit you.”
“So when are you going to tell Solenne?” Mahli asked as we got to my apartment. I put my bag down by the living room and flopped down on my couch. He took a seat in my computer chair.
“I don’t know, honestly,” I said as I buried my head in my hands. “Never thought I’d be having this talk with her.”
“Do you think she’ll want to do long distance?” he questioned, but he wasn’t prepared for the real answer.
“I don’t think I do…” I mumbled in vague disbelief.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You’re not exactly acting like yourself,” he inquired with a worried tone.
I nodded. “I’m sure. I don’t know how I’ll do it though. How I’ll tell her.”
“The same way she told you almost a year ago,” he said with a smirk. “Go out for coffee and tell her the truth.” He paused. “But why don’t you want to be with her?”
I took a deep breath. “It’s kind of weird to explain, but it feels like trying to hold onto a handful of water. No matter how hard I try, it always slips through my fingers.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “It’s just chasing after something that was barely real to begin with.”
“Wow,” he exclaimed quietly. “You really have had some sort of epiphany, haven’t you?”
“Turns out having your biological father try to murder you will make you reconsider your life sometimes,” I answered with a nod. “Wanna play some Mario Kart?”
We played for a couple hours, only swearing half the time about how the game was rigged, before he noticed the time and got going for a meeting with Evette. I saw him off, and watched him drive off with the idea it was one of the last times I would. Something that once seemed endless now had an end in sight. It was strange.
I spent the night alone, planning out how I was going to talk to Solenne about it. I must have spent at least four hours trying to plan out a script, with papers crumpled up and tossed over the floor. I wanted it to be perfect, to be airtight, but I couldn’t find a way to make that work, to make a plan that accounted for every possibility. I guess that was not a terrible surprise, but I really would have liked it.
It was midnight when I decided to ask her out for coffee the next day. We hadn’t spoken since the kidnapping. A part of me felt wrong for wanting to leave after what happened, but it was something that I had to do. It would be a couple months before I would be able to move anyways, so it wasn’t like we had to stop seeing each other immediately.
I think I passed out in bed around 3 am, having stayed up waiting for her response that didn’t come before my body gave up waiting. My heart had been rushing the blood through my body, but found a way to let my brain drift off into dreams of madness and random floods and new dawns, new faces blurred by the blinding light. The blinding light grew and grew until my eyes opened again and I was lying in my room with the morning sun shining in through my bedroom window.
I rolled out of bed and stretched. For a moment, I had forgotten what I had been doing before I fell asleep, but that blissful moment did not last long. I rushed to check my phone, discovering no text from Solenne and the fact that it was only 7 in the morning. I didn’t feel exhausted. I didn’t feel tired. I was suspicious that it would creep up on me later.
Mostly awake, I was unsure what else to do with myself besides wake up. I left my phone on my bedside table and headed for the bathroom. I let the water warm up as examined myself in the mirror. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the first time I had really looked in the mirror like that in a long long time. I wasn’t looking to find some answers in my eyes, or sorrow hidden behind them. I was just looking to see if I needed to shave or not. After deciding against it, I slipped into the warm shower, welcoming its embrace like an old friend.
Time collapsed in on itself while the water ran onto me and into the drain. A thousand thoughts ran through my mind, but none of them bothered me too much. I was calm, but knew that the anxiety of seeing Solenne was bound to come eventually. All that was important in that moment was that it wasn’t there. A moment of peace in a life of chaos.
After my shower, as I was getting dressed, my phone went off. I checked it with my shirt only half on, saw Solenne’s name, and quickly finished what I was doing.
“I think coffee is a good idea too,” she had texted in response. The lack of any emojis or punctuation made me wonder if she was thinking the same thing I was. I hoped that it was true, but I couldn’t believe it in seriousness. She had tried so hard to make it work, after all, and only got kidnapped for her efforts.
Surprisingly enough, the cafe that I usually found myself up was open that day, even though a car had plowed a hole through the front of the building the day before. It was covered in a thick plastic that made it hard to see inside, but I could see some planks of wood through it. I headed inside and saw that Farah was working. She was looking at the plastic covering when the bell caught her attention.
“Arthur!” she exclaimed. “It’s nice to see you!”
“I’m surprised you’re still open,” I commented, motioning towards the taped off area of the cafe.
“I am too,” she confessed to me in a hushed tone as I got to the counter. She looked over at it again. “Apparently building engineers came by yesterday to see if the building was still stable, and it was. With the weather being warmer, management thought they could stay open while the repairs took place.” She looked back at me and sighed. “If you asked me, I think this is a bad idea, but I’m not going to turn down a shift.” She glanced at the time. “A bit early for you, isn’t it?”
“Surprised you’re even here,” I told her. “I’m meeting Solenne here.”
“Oh.” She paused. “Well, there should be some free seats further in. Unfortunately your favorite table was destroyed.”
“That’s okay. It was just a table. There’ll be more,” I said in a joking tone. “I’m going to go grab a seat and I’ll be right back.”
“Sure thing!”
The cafe was almost entirely empty, save for one young woman of maybe 21 sitting by the window in the far room, a window that looked out into what would have been the building’s backyard if they didn’t use it for deliveries. I set down my stuff and headed back to the counter. Farah had taken out her school books while I was gone and was reading when I approached the counter.
“Whatcha studying?” I asked in a friendly tone.
“Psychology,” she answered as she dragged her eyes up from the page back to me. “Same coffee as always?”
I shook my head. “Nah, I think I’ll try that latte that Mahli’s always getting. He likes it enough.”
“Wow, look at you,” she joked, “expanding your horizons. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Oh, speaking of which, I wanted to tell you something,” I said right before the bell rung behind me. I turned around and saw Solenne standing by the door. Our eyes met. There was pain in her eyes, that much I could tell.
“Hey, Solenne,” I muttered as she slowly walked over. “What would you like to have?”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” she said matter of factly. “Where are you seated?”
“In the back, just look for my stuff,” I told her, motioning in that vague direction. “I’ll be right there.”
“I can bring you your latte,” Farah piped up behind me. “Go sit down with your girlfriend. It’ll only be a bit.”
“Alright,” I agreed hesitantly. “If you say so.”
Farah didn’t know what was about to happen. She didn’t know she was about to witness our second breakup in this very cafe, something I had sort of wanted to push off, but now I didn’t have any excuse not to.
Solenne and I sat across from each other. The room was quiet. The other patron had her earbuds in and was staring out of the window, only occasionally taking a sip of her tea. There was silence between us for a decent while. When Farah came by with my latte, we hadn’t exchanged a word, just let our eyes wander around the room avoiding eye contact.
“Here you go,” she said to me. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks, Farah, will do!”
Once she was gone, our silence was broken. “I think you know why I wanted to meet you,” I began.
Fear flashed behind her eyes as she nodded. “I’ve been thinking it too…” She paused and stared me right in the eyes. “But before we do this, I want to be honest with you. I had been seeing someone else in the months we weren’t together. When he ghosted me out of nowhere, I rebounded onto you. I wanted to show him that I didn’t need him, but I shouldn’t have used you like that. I’m sorry…”
I was speechless.
“And it wasn’t like that the whole time. I remember how much I liked you, and wanted to get back to what we were, I really did, but everything felt off. Like all of a sudden, the connection we had no longer existed… Isn’t that why we’re here now?”
I nodded slowly. A lot of emotions ran through me in that moment, relief being one of them, but also frustration. I felt used, but knew deep down that I had been using her too, just not as consciously.
I took a deep breath and focused on the task at hand. There would be all the time to think through her words and feel every way that my mind wanted to feel, but this time was for telling her goodbye.
“I’m moving away,” I told her bluntly. A look of surprise crossed her face. “This whole thing has made me realize that I’ve been trying to hold onto something that was already gone. I’ve been living the same life for so long, content with nothing changing because I was so scared of it.” I shook my head. “It’s time for me to finally move on. A part of me has been waiting for this for years, even before we broke up. That’s why you broke up with me to begin with, wasn’t it? I was a shadow of a man, an echo of who I could be, defining myself based on you.”
She was stunned. She slowly nodded and reached a comforting hand across the table. “I do care about you, Arthur,” she said softly, “but I understand how you feel, and you’re not wrong…” she looked away at the window for a moment. “I can’t believe we’re having this talk.” She sighed and looked at me again. “I never thought you’d feel this way…” She got up. “I’m going to go… Give me a hug.”
I didn’t say anything. I just got up and wrapped my arms around her for what very well could be the last time. The idea was painful yet somehow freeing. When we pulled away, she looked me right in the eyes and said, “goodbye, Arthur. Take care.”
“Goodbye, Solenne,” I said softly as she brushed by me and left the cafe.
I stood there paralyzed for a minute, only to notice that the woman who was sitting by the window was looking at me with an expression of concern on her face. I shot a casual smile at her and sat back down. I let out a heavy breath and leaned back in the chair, staring at the blank ceiling above me.
Farah’s face filled my vision as she leaned over me, her black hair falling down and blotting out the world. “You okay?” she asked with a careful tone. “I saw your girlfriend leaving and she didn’t look happy.”
“We just decided to end it,” I told her as I sat back up. She sat down across from me.
“Are you okay?” she paused. “Maybe you two should stop meeting here at all. Something always seems to happen when you do.”
“This is for good,” I told her in a solemn tone. I took a deep breath. “Oh, there was something I wanted to tell you too.”
“What’s that? The latte is your new favorite drink?”
I hadn’t taken a sip of it yet. I shook my head. “I’m moving, couple hours away probably, so you won’t be seeing me here anymore. Except maybe when I’m visiting Mahli or my parents.”
“What? Why are you moving?” she questioned, a frown forming on her face.
“The whole thing with Holly, honestly.” I explained it to her with as much detail as I felt I could spare. I really wanted Farah to understand, more than Solenne.
“I’m going to miss you,” she said sadly. “You’re my favorite customer, and a good friend.”
“Well maybe I’ll visit from time to time,” I said with a hopeful tone. I took out my phone, unlocked it, and handed it to her. “Add your number. That way we can still chat even when we’re not here.” I chuckled nervously as she took it. “Honestly, feel like we should have done this a long time ago.”
She handed it back to me and shyly said, “would it be okay if I visited from time to time too?”
I was reminded of what Solenne had once said about Farah. I smiled and nodded. “Of course. You’ll always be welcome to visit.”
“I’ll bring some coffee with me and show you how to make a decent cup at home,” she offered with an excited smile.
“Or we could just hang out,” I suggested instead.
“That works too!” The front door opened with a ring. “Oh, I have to go! Come see me before you leave!”
She ran off to greet the new customer, and I was left feeling rather content with myself. Things were changing, but not necessarily for the worst. I was excited to see what the future would bring for the first time in years. In the weeks following my talk with Farah, I found an apartment I could afford, planned my move with Mahli and my parents’ help, and even found a new job in the city I was moving to.
The first time I entered the city, I was overwhelmed with the size of it. It was nothing like where I grew up, yet was so close to it. It was older, and taller, surrounded by water on most sides, and easily had more than twice the population of my home town. I found myself questioning whether my home city was really a city after all.
Once I was all moved in (but not unpacked), I messaged Holly to tell her that I was out of the city. We started talking again, recognizing that just because we couldn’t be near each other didn’t mean we couldn’t use technology to communicate.
The summer heat was bearing down on me most days, reminiscent of the summer that had marked the end of my relationship with Solenne, the summer that had broken me. But now, a year later, I was melting away in an apartment above of a corner store sitting by the window watching people pass by on the street below. The trees planted into the sidewalk stretched out their branches as far as they could, their leaves soaking up every little bit of sunlight they could get. I felt like one of them, technically sort of an alien to the city, but finding a way to live in it regardless.
To be honest, when this whole thing started and we discovered that our biological parents had messed with quantum mechanics to allow both Holly and I to exist at the same time, once we found out our father was trying to kill one of us, I thought it could only end with one of us dying, or being snapped out of existence. But life isn’t like a computer program, there’s no undo button. Sometimes we make mistakes, and all we can do is learn from them and find a way to move on. The past is gone as fast as it happens, and time marches on with no care for our whispers of lives.
THE END
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And so ends another journey, yet another story. For now, that will be the end of "Kindred Spirits". We will see if I ever look at it again! I hope the ending is good enough for you, and that you've enjoyed yourself. Writing it posed an interesting situation, and my initial plans for the novel were soon found out of place (as is often the case). The ending was not meant to be so happy initially, but the pieces just seemed to fit together this way as I wrote.
The next session of Camp NaNoWriMo is quickly approaching and I still haven't a clue what I'll be writing. Maybe I'll pay some old ideas a visit. Maybe I'll find something else. Anyways, until next time,
-Zero
