At Night

They came at night, as usual.

I sat up in bed, thinking that the wind had blown the papers taped to my wall. The tick-tack, tick-tack of one sheet went on and on. In the dark, without my glasses on, I couldn’t see anything in the room with me. Then I heard her voice.

‘Don’t worry, little one.’

Her voice sounded more like the wind than words, but I’d stopped being afraid of her.

‘We’ve come to ask you again,’ he said. His voice echoed in the room, though he never spoke above a whisper.

‘Ask.’ All I ever needed to tell them, this started the ritual.

‘Where did you come from?’ This question seemed forever on their minds. He asked like a child, and I tried to answer.

‘My parents created me.’ As I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, they lurked in the darkness. I knew if I turned on the light, they would vanish. Their ways had ceased to upset me months ago.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but before that, where were you?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Not this body,’ he gestured from the shadows -- a dark talon, not at all shaped like a hand -- toward my chest, ‘but your essence, where did it come from?’

Once, they asked only simple questions, or so I thought. How long have I known that I existed? What do I call myself? Have I always looked the way I do now? Well, I thought these questions reflected their simple understanding of human life. I’ve come to realize that they pry into deeper meanings.

‘I do not remember.’ That reply wouldn’t suffice, but what else could I tell them?

‘We understand your linear perceptions,’ she said, more to herself than to me. ‘We need more.’

‘Do all of your kind think as you?’ His voice held something like fear in it.

‘I can’t say,’ I told him, but my eyes remained locked on her form. In the dark, I fixated on what appeared as two embers suspended in her tenebrous form -- her eyes? I found no other human-like features in either of them.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You only know this life’s experiences.’

‘Exactly.’ Sleep still clung to my brain.

They folded themselves back into the dark. I thought that they’d left me, but then her voice whispered in my ear.

‘Don’t you ever feel limited by this linear life?’

‘I guess so,’ I mumbled.

‘If you could find another way,’ his sonorous hiss said in my other ear, ‘would you choose to sacrifice this existence?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If we offered you another way,’ she sounded plaintive, ‘should you accept it instead of your current condition?’

I had no answer.

‘We may return,’ he said, and then I felt them leave.

The paper tick-tacked again, but as I lay down again, my mind kept returning to their half-explained offer.

If I could find another way... What did they mean?

Now I toss and turn all night, waiting for their return. I wait to ask them more.