Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
“Mind if I sit here?”
Colin Stamper turns the page of his book. He can’t imagine the question is directed at him. No one ever wants his company. And the feeling is mutual.
“There’s a spider on your shoulder,” says the voice. He decides to engage, just in case. The only thing worse than smalltalk is spiders. He glances at his shoulders, thankful they are both spider-free, then raises his eyes to the person beside his table, irritated.
“I thought that might get your attention,” the grinning woman says. “May I sit?” She scrapes out a chair and plops down, not waiting for his response. Colin’s intestines writhe with menace—the unfortunate side effect of any human interaction. Her striking appearance only exacerbates the problem. Her mahogany eyes are pressed into a milky face, above her plum-painted, smiling mouth.
He curses not having taken his latte to go. Sitting in public places can be an invitation for socialization. But it is a lesson learned too late, and now the exit door seems to retreat toward the horizon.
“Whatcha reading?” she asks. Her eyes flit over the book in his trembling hands before they bore back into him.
He dog-ears his page, then rotates the cover in her direction. Any attempt at speaking the title would likely have been unintelligible.
She coos. “Ooh, I haven’t read that one yet.” A jet-black curtain of hair spills before her left eye as she leans forward to examine the cover art. “What do you think?”
I think you’re exquisite, Colin muses, well aware she’s talking about the book. “It’s … a real page-turner.”
She tosses her head back in laughter. “That’s perfect!” Collecting herself, she adds, “That’s my name: Paige. I guess that book would really turn me, eh?” She takes a pull from the straw in her iced coffee, and gives him an expectant raise of her eyebrows.
Colin descends into analysis. Great, I guess now it’s my turn to speak. Think, Colin. What would be a clever thing to say right now? I can’t think of anything! God, why did I stay in here? She’s going to think I’m an idiot.
“I won’t think that,” she says. “Whatever you’re thinking I’d be thinking, you’re wrong. Yeah, I can see the wheels turning in there,” she taps her temple. “Look, um … sorry, what is your name?”
Colin swallows in a futile attempt to wet his vocal cords, then croaks, “Colin.”
“Well, Colin,” she says, mimicking his strained pronunciation, “I have a proposition for you. I can see that this”—she gestures between them—“is all a bit … awkward for you. So, what would you say if I told you I can make it easier?”
“Are you saying that?”
Paige rummages in the large satchel slung across her midriff. “Ah, here we are.” She extracts a small bottle of semi-opaque brown glass. Inside it are what appear to be small, white pills. She sets it on the table between them. “Take one.”
Colin twists the cork from the bottle and looks inside. Three pills rattle in the bottom as he turns it in his hand. “Right. Take a strange pill from a stranger. This is a joke, right?”
“Colin,” she says, “I promise it isn’t anything nefarious. It’s not drugs. Just take one, and you’ll see.”
He shakes a pill out of the bottle into his hand and rolls it around. The squat, cylindrical pill — the size and shape of a pencil eraser — has no markings. The surface is chalky and irregular. “What does it do?”
“It’s a gesture more than anything,” says Paige. “You won’t regret it.” She watches him with wide eyes as he raises his hand towards his mouth. She nods and leans forward in her seat.
Colin doesn’t want to appear cowardly. What’s the worst that could happen? He pops his palm against his lips, and the bitter pill tumbles into his throat. After he washes it down with a swig of his caramel latte, he sits back in his seat to await the punchline of what must certainly be a prank. Why else would a beautiful woman want anything to do with him?
Paige, however, looks only relieved.
“Now what?” he asks, and his voice echoes in his skull: Now what? Now what? Now what? As his words careen through his thoughts, his peripheral vision collapses. The woman before him slowly dissolves to transparent as the whole world dims. His pulse quickens. He tenses, murmuring, “What’s happening?” What’s happening? What’s happening? What’s happening?
Then, there is nothing but blackness.
“Closing up in ten,” says a voice, jolting Colin awake. A sullen teenage boy drags a mop across the floor behind the counter. It is dark out, and Colin taps his phone to discover that it is close to midnight. He’s been sitting here for nine hours—evidently asleep. To his surprise, all his belongings are right where he’d left them. That nonsense with the woman and the pill must have been a dream, but the half-empty large latte in front of him represents a very real situation.
“Bathroom?” he says, rising.
The teen groans through gritted teeth. “I just cleaned it.” Nevertheless, he points to the back of the coffee shop, and Colin hobbles towards it on hasty feet. It’s going to be a photo finish.
A tide of relief cascades all the way to Colin’s extremities as he lets loose at the urinal, shivering.
“God, I thought you’d never wake up,” says Paige’s voice, making him jump and miss his target. He grimaces, certain the impatient barista will be out for blood when he finds this mess.
“Paige?” In his compromising situation, Colin can only crane his neck, looking for where she might be hiding. “This is the men’s room, you know.”
“You can say that again,” she replies. “Very nice.” It sounds as if she’s right next to him, but another scan of his surroundings reveals he’s still alone.
He hunches closer to the porcelain. “A little privacy might be nice.”
“Well, normally I’d be happy to oblige, but …”
“But what?” He shakes off and zips up. The sensor on the urinal triggers it to flush.
“How can I explain this?” She hums while he washes his hands. Again, it sounds like she’s humming right into his ears, but no one is in the mirror besides him. “I’m in you, Colin.”
Colin chuckles. “What—you mean you’re into me? Like, you like me?”
“Not into. In. I am inside you.”
“Okay, where are the cameras? I knew this was some kind of prank! You know, I don’t appreciate—”
“Shut up and listen to me, Colin,” Paige says. Something in her voice compels him to obey. “I may not have been completely honest with you about that pill.”
“No shit. What was that, LSD?”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” Colin feels his mouth clamp closed. “Look, here’s the deal. I’m possessing you, all right? I’m a ghost, or a spirit, or whatever you want to call it. I died. Years ago. And now I’m in you. Got it?”
Colin struggles to open his mouth, but can only mumble.
“Sorry,” Paige says, relaxing his jaw. “You can talk now.”
Colin logically concludes he’s imagining things. The pill must have been some powerful hallucinogenic for the manifestations to extend into his own muscle control. He splashes his face with water. “Just have to wait for this to wear off,” he mumbles.
“You still don’t get it, do you?” Paige says. “That pill was nothing but a piece of chalk. It was symbolic. I can only get in when someone trusts me.”
Colin pinches his fingers over his eyes. “Snap out of it, Colin.”
Paige groans. “So you want to do this the hard way, huh? OK.” He feels his hand raise beside his face, and then it slaps his cheek. “I did that. Still don’t believe me?”
“What the hell was in that pill?” he says. His hand raises again, and he fights with it, but it’s no use. It slaps him again. Hard. “Cut it out!”
“Need another? Look, I’ve got all night, but I bet that barista wants to get the hell out of here, and he still has to clean up your piss.”
“OK, let’s assume for a minute that I’m not going crazy, and you’re … in me. I guess my first question is, why? What do you want from me?”
“What do I want?” Paige laughs. “That’s easy.”
Colin gestures for her to go on.
“I want to party!”
The thumping bass rattles windows from two blocks away. The rave is still pounding well into the wee hours of the morning. This is the absolute last destination on Earth that Colin Stamper would ever have chosen, but Paige’s enthusiasm is like an aggressive infection. He feels his pulse begin to match the techno trance rhythm, and involuntarily syncs his footsteps with the driving beat.
Paige whoops in his ears. “Now you’re getting it!”
“Hey. Can you not? I’m right here, you know. I’ll probably go deaf in there anyway, so I don’t need your help.”
“Oh phoo. You’re going to love it. Trust me. But first we need to do something about this.” His hand grabs a fistful of his polo shirt.
“Hey! Take it easy, this shirt was expensive.”
“Yeah, and if you walk in there wearing it, you’re going to look like an idiot. Take it off.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not going into a rave shirtless!”
“Why not? I bet half the people in there are already shirtless. Men and women.”
“I’m just not, okay? I’m putting my foot down.”
“No you’re not,” Paige giggles, as he finds himself compelled to lift his feet and kick them in awkward angles, hopping and skipping down the deserted streets of the marina. “Ministry of Silly Walks? Colin here. I’d like to a government grant to develop my walk, please.”
“Will you stop that?” Colin shouts, struggling to walk normally.
“Take it off, Colin, or I will.”
“Fine—I’ll take off my shirt. Just let me walk normal, please.” He feels control of his limbs return, and his face flushes red as he pulls off his shirt on the city sidewalk. “There. Happy?”
“Now the pants.”
“Oh, come on!”
Paige laughs. “You’re too easy. Hurry up! I want to dance!” Colin finds himself jogging, shirtless, towards an overnight rave, while inside he’s both petrified and mortified. And yet, the cool nighttime breeze on his bare chest is exhilarating, as is the novelty of the situation. Still, he’d have much preferred to be holed up in his apartment with his latest read.
“By the way, I thought all women hated Monty Python,” he says, as he walks in step with the bass that now practically lifts him off the ground with each thump.
“Oh-ho, sounds like someone wants to buy an argument,” Paige says through a laugh, and he plunges through the door.
Dawn is breaking when he files out of the marina warehouse with hundreds of exhausted ravers. He has locked arms with two young women, one on either side. On his left, Candy (if that really is her name) is sporting a tie-dye leotard with furry pink boot covers that come up to her knees. On his right is “Pikachu,” dressed in a neon yellow jumpsuit with bell-bottoms and a tail kinked like a lightning bolt.
“Let’s go on an adventure!” says Candy, with a glint in her blue eyes. Pikachu jumps up and down, her bobbed hair bouncing in the dawn.
“Yes, Colin,” says Paige, “who’s up for an adventure?” He knows only he can hear her. He also knows that arguing with her will be pointless. For the last four hours he has done a thousand little things he’d never have dreamt of—not the least of which was to dance, shirtless, within a writhing mass of flesh. Ravers of every permutation of sex, gender, race, and age, in various stages of undress—and in various stages of chemical intoxication—had gyrated and rubbed against him as Paige gesticulated through him, whooping and laughing the whole time. After the initial embarrassment of it all, though, he had to admit it had been quite the thrill ride.
Colin finds himself saying, quite out of his control, “Let’s get ice cream cones and run through the fountain at the park!” He winces from the ensuing stereo squeals—one in each ear, and one inside his own head.
Eventually, the trio (foursome?) make their way to the docks, soaked-through from their fountain romp, where they’d been chased off by a whistle-blowing constable. There are fishmongers there, slinging their catch, and Paige—through Colin’s mouth—convinces the burly men to give each of them a turn. They laugh as they fumble with the slimy, slippery creatures, fresh from the sea. Finally, they rinse off at the seashore, and collapse onto the sand, holding hands.
“You’re a lot of fun, Colin,” says Pikachu. He feels joy well up in his chest, but it’s fleeting. It’s not really Colin she’s speaking to. He wonders if Paige can hear his thoughts. He’s out of his element. Out of his depth. He’s an imposter. A false adventurer. Candy and Pikachu, now dozing in the salt-air, warmed by the mid-morning summer sun, deserve someone genuine. Someone like them. He remembers why going out and socializing like this has never clicked: he’s faking it, same as always. He doesn’t deserve the contentment he feels.
“I bet I know what you’re thinking,” says Paige, “and you’re wrong, you know.”
“Paige, I—”
“Shush. Now listen to me. I may have just met you, but I know you better than you think. I used to be a lot like you. You wear your introversion like a suit of armor, but it doesn’t serve you the way you believe it to. Who do you think those people were, in that rave? Who do you think Candy and Pikachu are? You’re probably thinking this is their real life, and you’re some sort of intruder—someone not like them. But that’s only because you never bothered to ask. They might be just like you, like everyone else—a little lost, a little scared, and not just a little bit starved for some living. Who’s to say they didn’t both get dragged to that rave kicking and screaming like you did?” She giggles. “Literally kicking, in your case.”
Colin chuckles.
“Everyone at that rave is just another poor player, strutting and fretting, trying to make the best of their brief hour upon the stage. I bet a lot of them are as closed off as you most of the time, but they found a way to open that door a crack once in a while. And you can too. That doesn’t make you an imposter. On the contrary, it means you belong. That doesn’t mean you have to go lose yourself at a rave in order to live. It just means live a little! Take off that armor once in a while. You might be surprised to find you don’t need it.”
Colin stands up and walks to the seashore. He lets the tide wash over his feet, while mole crabs tickle his toes, and seagulls shriek to and fro on thermal currents. “How did you die?” he asks. “That is, if you don’t mind saying.”
Paige is silent for a moment. The sounds of the ocean ebb and flow like breaths. “Let’s just say I’m making up for the life I never lived.” Then, before his eyes, in the ocean mist, Paige materializes. Her eyes are wet with tears. She reaches for his hands and holds them tight in hers. Long scars run lengthwise up her arms. “I learned too late how precious life is.” She leans in and kisses his cheek, then whispers in his ear, “But I’m pretty sure you’re going to be OK.”
Colin swallows the lump in his throat. “Is this the last time I’ll ever see you?”
“I’ll always be up there,” she says, tapping her temple, “but I’m never going out with you again.” She turns to head up the beach, evanescing like the sea mist. “You walk too funny.”
Colin Stamper smiles.