open | prompt six | DEMONS

[wrens]

prompt six | D E M O N S be careful in casting out your devil ‘lest you cast out the best thing about you. ( friedrich nietzsche )

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WALLACE | venus

[folded]

Why get rid of anything in the first place?

[mocked]

[ Without much thought (without realizing the overarching irony): ] Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent blokes. Some people don't like extra weight.

[folded]

[ Perhaps Wallace doesn't realize the overarching irony. (Or maybe she does.) Her voice is neither offended nor curious when she asks: ] Am I extra weight?

[mocked]

[ His answer is quick, easy as pie. ] Nah.

You barely weigh a thing.

[folded]

[ She tilts her head and then reaches up to tuck a bit of Trammell's unruly hair back behind his ear. Somehow Wallace manages to keep this gesture from being either too warm or too matter-of-fact. Everything she does as an oddly abstracted quality to it, as if she's simply pantomiming a gesture rather than doing it herself. ] You're being literal, I think.

I hoped we could be existential for a little while.

[mocked]

[ (He has loved her for a long time. It was an unavoidable fact, he supposes, like Life of Pi or something like that, except he has always had the option of leaving and she has never once tried to hurt him — not in the way a tiger would, at least. He's loved her since he was young and brash and skinny as a lamppost and he loves her now he's old and filled out into his frame. But he's never once done a thing about it, because if there's anything that their travels have taught him, it's about the nature of inevitability and her nature, too. So he loves her the way someone loves a plant or a painting — with all their heart, but with no expectations of reciprocation or even necessarily acknowledgment.) ]

Lemme fix the statement, then, [ he says, with a half-smile. ] I don't think you're the one that's heavy. I'm not carryin' your weight.

[ A beat. ]

Better?

[folded]

[ (The story goes: she hadn't brought him along at first. Too brash and too young and what Wallace had wanted was safe and constant. What she had wanted was someone to travel with, not babysit. A companion, not further responsibility. And so young Trammell was left to his world and his life, though his face — handsome in a different way than how it's handsome now — would occur to her from time to time, reminding her of the boy she'd left behind.

Then the story goes: she opened a door and stepped through it and on the other side was Trammell again. Older than before, but still young, still handsome in a different way. And while Wallace doesn't believe in things like fate and serendipity, she does believe in missed opportunities.

And so the story went: Wallace asked and Trammell said yes.)

That had been a long time ago (longer, Wallace suspects, for him than for her). He loves her now and though he never says it, Wallace sees it in the subtleties of his expression, woven through his nonchalance, touching the edges of his half-smile. It makes her the envy of all of her siblings but it also makes Wallace inordinately sad. One day, the story will go: and Wallace is no more; it has to, but Wallace dislikes that particular inevitability.

She stares at his half-smile for a moment. It seems simple enough — harmless, careless — but to Wallace is reads love, love, love. Her expression gives nothing in turn (a kindness, a necessity). Is it possible to love someone by refusing to love them back? ]

Do you think I'm carrying yours?

[mocked]

[ (Wallace asked and Trammell said yes. He'd been an idiot back then — arguably still is — and who had he been to say no? Sure, he'd said. Sure thing. Anything to follow such a pretty bird, anything to travel through fucking time.) ]

You think I'm existentially fat?

[ He doesn't much care for these particular lines of discussion though he'll engage them from time to time. It's the same kind of resignation that means he never says I love you. She doesn't age. He does. She was born to travel like this. He's a hanger-on. His thread, so to speak, will end no matter what continuity they take. There's no escaping that.

She refuses to love him, and he tries not to let it hurt him too badly. ]