"The blistering summer heat was clawing away at my pores. I was drenched in sweat, lying in bed and watching TV. My eyes stared blankly at the screen, with not a thought occurring. I sat alone in this small apartment of mine. I was always alone. Even as a child, I was lost in my own world, one that no one else could enter. Now I’m 31 years old, and that hasn't changed.

Ever since my childhood, I’ve had the need for a distraction from my own thoughts. This is why my parents left the TV running all day and why I found myself with a smartphone at the ripe age of 7. I don't know what they were so afraid of. A child should think, a child should live, and love. But I wasn't allowed to. They needed to have me occupied.

 

After a while of uncomfortably rolling around in bed, I decided to open a window in the sloping roof of my room. I felt like a bag of cement that was trying to roll itself, with all its might, to any destination. I was a rotting man without ambition and purpose. You could say that I was a failure, and you would be right, yet I somehow lived on. The breeze cooled me, and I looked outside to see the sunlight bursting through the saturated leaves of the trees in the park in front of my apartment. I've seen couples walking their dogs, I've seen children playing, and teenagers drinking and enjoying their youth. I looked at life occurring just below me, life that I desperately wanted to be a part of, but I couldn't. I was trapped within myself and kept living in this state between alive and dead. God, how I wanted to live...

 

Because I was already up, I decided to make myself some food. My tiny apartment was dirty and untidy, yet the one habit of my life that wasn't messy was cooking. I enjoyed it too much; it was the only real thing I did, the only meaningful task my life would allow, because I created something. It was just a grilled cheese with tomato soup, but I made it, and the act of creating something was enough to keep me from killing myself. I've had a complicated relationship with suicide. I've always had one safe haven that was something real. Once it was my girlfriend, once it was work, now it is cooking. It was always enough not to kill myself and to keep on living for just that thing. Also, I always knew that I couldn't go through with it. Somehow, I always enjoyed life just a little bit, although I knew it was a meaningless, boring shit show.

I ate and lay back down in bed. I scrolled on my phone with the TV running, I was a profound vaper, and the small, euphoria-inducing sticks of chemical fluid, lithium and plastic were piling up on the bedside table. My lungs were crying. But at least I got a nicotine flash.

 

All of a sudden, without a great entrance, a wasp flew through the open window and headed straight for my body. I hated wasps with a burning passion. I was never stung by a wasp, and maybe that is what made me fear it so much. I jumped up and ran for the door, but the wasp hovered in front of it already. For a brief moment, I was looking directly in the face of the thing and shuddered as I saw its features. It wasn't a normal wasp. It was the length of my middle finger, and it had the girth of my thumb, with a long, menacing sting on its rear end. It had an almost beautiful red and blue shimmer all over its dark body, and the black compound eyes were staring right into my soul.

Like a maniac, I was looking around in my room to find something I could kill the Wasp with, which at first seemed pointless. But then I noticed a porn magazine on the table where the TV stood. I grabbed it quickly and rolled it up into a makeshift club. I was ready for the grand fight. But I had lost sight of it. I couldn't find it anywhere. I heard it buzzing and flying against objects, but I couldn't see it. I know I've heard it, but it wasn't there. It began to sing. For five minutes, that felt like an hour, I couldn't see the thing, but I knew it was there because of this deafening song that droned in my head like a siren. I was frantically looking around when I finally felt it crawling up my arm. It left me just enough time to realize its presence, and then it stung me.

It was more shock than pain that left a mark on me, but still, it was enough to have left me terrified. I didn't know what would happen. "Was the sting venomous? Am I allergic? Should I call a doctor?" and other thoughts like these rushed through my head faster than the harmless venom through my veins.

 

In one quick reaction, I hit the Wasp hard after it stung me. It fell to the ground, and I was left standing there like a wounded soldier in battle. I knew it wasn't over. I had to hit it again, and therefore had to, again, get in close proximity to it, which terrified me even more than the sting. I crouched down and hit it over and over and over...and over again. I had such a fear of this creature that killing it felt like the greatest achievement of my life, which proved either a sad life or a great fear.

It lay there dead before me, its muscles still twitching, and half of it turned to a fine pulp.

I crouched down to look at it and to mock it, but as I stared and the minutes passed, it became more and more eerie to look at its disfigured body. Guilt and fear were creeping up my neck, and it felt like I had just done something bigger than just kill a wasp.

I've seen the Wasp laughing.

"I know it knows these things. I know it knows everything". Thoughts like these just passed through my brain. It needs to be gone.

I unrolled the magazine, where there was now a small stain of blood and organs, to scoop up the corpse.

I wanted to throw it out the window in the sloping roof, but halfway through the room, it twitched again. The dismantled corpse began to scream with a deep voice and in great pain, and with one last effort, it flew behind the TV and through a small gap between wall and dresser.

I wish now that this was it. That it just stayed there rotting behind the dresser. That I could have gone on with my meaningless life. Maybe it was for the better. Maybe a life full of fear and terror is better than a meaningless one.

/

I wanted to turn my life around, I really did. And on nights like these, the desire to set my life ablaze with passion was oh so strong. Thoughts of a better future, of love, of joy came crushing over me like a wave as I stared outside again, watching the night sky that enclosed everything. I desperately needed to change.

The first thing I needed to do was to get in contact again. I called up my best friend and we arranged a catch-up in a bar. We never really stopped talking to each other, but life and change got in the way of meeting up. We'd message each other from time to time, but they moved to another country for a scholarship.

Quinn has always been the most important person for me because, like cooking, they were one of the only connections to real life I've had.

It wasn't just for catching up. I needed to tell someone about the Wasp. I needed to share this experience, the way it laughed at me, stung me and then cried out in a voice much too human...the way it knew.

The next thing I did to change was to clean up my whole apartment. Basic, but effective. Don't let anyone tell you that you can beat depression by just cleaning your room. It might be a temporary comfort, but that root lies deeper within. Yet it was nice living in a space where you wouldn't have to worry about tripping. And I couldn't help it, but the clean-up felt like an enormous step.

It wasn't easy turning my life around. Lethargy came over me much too often, and I fell back into old patterns. Rotting is like an addiction. Yet the euphoria comes from having no euphoria at all. You're just numb; no dreadful thoughts occurring, no future that I have to care about, no worries, just seething away until life is finally over. That was the high I got out of it.

But I truly changed. For a bit...

 

I got dressed and was on my way to meet Quinn. I put on some of the last clothes not in the washing machine and wanted to leave. I stood before the door and remembered that I had forgotten my phone on the bedside table next to the window in the sloping roof.

I got it and wanted to leave, but as I began to walk past the dresser with the TV, I began to have sudden cramps. The muscles in my legs burned and pulled tightly together. There was a strange ringing in my ear, like tinnitus, but it was deep and droning. It sounded like a bass choir of giants that stood around me in a circle, singing to me a foreboding hymn. I felt my brain almost shattering.

I broke down on the floor, and when I shortly opened my tear-ridden eyes, I saw the Wasp crawling out from under the dresser.

In terror and shock, pain and confusion, I wanted to crawl away from it on just my arms, but they began to cramp almost immediately.

 

My whole body was numb. I lay on the floor of my bedroom, backside down, staring at the ceiling. I was paralyzed. I knew what was crawling just below my feet. I broke out in a terrible sweat. My fingers were the only thing I could move, so I clawed at the floor to calm my nerves, just to do anything. I felt it crawling closer; it was the strange presence that you feel when you're being watched. My throat let out a terrible scream. "Maybe the neighbours would hear me,” I thought. Turns out my neighbours were an almost deaf older man and a couple on vacation.

My fingertips were bloody, my vocal cords just about to snap. And then I felt it. The wasp crawled onto my bare leg. I felt every step of its six legs. I couldn't look down; maybe it was for the better. I suddenly felt deep, warm breathing against my leg where the Wasp was. It left me with goosebumps that almost made me throw up. It was the first time I was scared of throwing up because I would've quite surely choked to death on my vomit.

 

The wasp was now on my knee and about to crawl under my shorts. I was somehow able to move my wrists and my neck, which I used to bang my fists and my head against the floor. I don't know what I tried to accomplish with this. Maybe to scare it away, maybe to further alert the neighbours, I don't know.

I felt it under my shorts on my right thigh, making its odyssey to my face. The breathing continued.

All of a sudden, the Wasp briefly clapped its wings as if it wanted to escape through the fabric. It felt...disgusting and horrifying at the same time, this short, nervous motion that seemed to be utterly arbitrary. It shook me to my core, and I stopped screaming in an instant. I was back to being in a state of stiff shock. The Wasp told me to be quiet with a flicker of its wings, and I obeyed like a slave. "God, I’m pathetic," I thought ", it's just a wasp, an insect, I could kill it again if I wanted to, why am I so scared of a wa-," my thought was interrupted by a sharp pain on my thigh. It stung me again. As it pulled out the stinger, I felt every drop of venom getting pumped into my veins and every nanometer of it slowly leaving my body, as if I was in a trance where everything was a thousand times slower.

Every step of it was in itself like a sting. I was drenched in a terribly reeking sweat, a pure concoction of sweat and adrenaline. The wasp was now on my lower pelvis and crawled beneath my underwear. I felt in which direction it wanted to go. It was towards man's centre of creation.

As soon as I felt its goal, my pulse rose to heights I thought impossible. I couldn't scream anymore; my fear manifested itself as silent tears that ran across a cramped, frowning face.

It was on my upper inner thigh. It got closer. It was at the base of it. It got closer. It reached its destination. All was silent, and I didn't move a muscle.

In one brutal, snapping motion, it tore away at the base of my right testicle, piece by piece. In a raging manner, it ate its way through the flesh. It felt like scissors, very slowly cutting off my genitals. Bit. By. Bit. I screamed like a tortured thief. I thought the Wasp was going to go on like this until it would have eaten every last part of my body, which would have lasted days.

But as it was halfway through the testicle, my cramps loosened, and I was able to move again.

Under immense pain, I slowly awoke my muscles. I stood up and quickly took off my pants, which revealed the bloody mess the Wasp had made. I grabbed the magazine that was still lying next to the TV and hit the wasp as hard as I could. It fell to the ground and retreated to its spot under the dresser.

There was a cut about 2 inches deep in my right testicle that I provisionally patched up and disinfected. I was already late for the meet-up with Quinn, so I had to get going. It hurt like hell, but I didn't want to call a doctor. Plus, I needed the distraction.

I looked at the dresser, terrified by knowing what was beneath it. I knew I couldn't do anything against the Wasp, the sole thing that stood in the way of changing my life. I couldn't ask for help; everyone would have hated me for it. I couldn't kill it; every time I tried to, it stood up again. Hell, I couldn't even forget about it or ignore it. It screamed my name too loudly; its deep, horrible tone was too much to bear. It sang its foreboding hymn every night. It sounded like a full choir praying on my pain and...on my...I don't know.

I got ready to leave when the first notes started again. I quickly shut the door behind me and left to see Quinn.

/

We met at a nice restaurant. I went through the streets as something mounted into the wall of an old apartment building in an alley caught my eye. It was a small statue of St. Anthony. For some reason he fascinated me. He felt familiar and seemed to know how I felt. I couldn’t move away from the statue. He felt like a friend.

The restaurant was small, yet it burst with originality. Quinn had a great taste in pretty much everything. The place was full of decorations and paintings that shouldn't have worked together, yet did so effortlessly. It was a charming chaos that was the very thing I needed to get me out of my situation.

Quinn sat right under a very abstract oil painting of the Beach Boys, studying the menu. Just seeing their face under the dim light of the bar was already enough to brighten my mood. Quinn was one of the last flickering lighthouses in the vast, vacant sea that was my soul. I saw their light that day. Brighter than ever. I sat down and said hello.

 

"Hey, how are you?" Quinn said.

 

"Oh, I’m good, I think. I'm very happy to see you."

 

"Me too, I haven't heard from you in ages. I tried reaching out to you, but I got no reply..."

 

"Oh god, I'm sorry," I said, interrupting them, “I changed my number and service, and it didn't inform old contacts. I'm sorry, I really am. What did you text me?"

 

"Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. Just asking you how life is. How the job search was going, and how you've been. How Ava's been."

 

I felt something crawling up my leg again. I tried to sweep it away in one spastic motion, but it was just a phantom. Just like when you think a mosquito is on your body, but there isn't anything there.

 

"No, she's good...she's good," I said, unsurely, and paused for a second. Quinn looked at me with a confused and almost worried look.

 

"I have actually found a job. I work as a crane operator, unusual, but I’ve gotten lucky."

 

"Do you enjoy it?"

 

"It's alright, I guess. I like the view, but it reminds me a bit too much...You, what have you been up to?” I asked, trying to shift the conversation.

 

"Well, I’ve finally managed to get a script approved by a producer. I think that was probably one of the best days of my life. It was like a kickstart for the art I make...I don't even care about the money. I just want many people to see the stories I write. Are you well? You seem a bit ill"

 

I was sweating like a pig. There was too much around me, too much going on. I haven't talked to someone in too long. My arm began to itch slightly. I tried to scratch it and put pressure on it, but it slowly grew stronger. It felt like something was wanting to get out.

 

"In all...honesty, I am lonely. I sit at home, I work, which is the only reason I leave my apartment at all. Meeting you here is the first real interaction I've had since I...last saw Ava. I bury myself under fleeting pleasures to mimic a sense of feeling alive. But oh god, I want to be a part of life. I want to experience every minute..., but I can't. I physically can't get up and live. Like a terribly heavy blanket of angst was lying over me"

 

"I can only imagine how you're feeling. What are you afraid of?"

"There's this social dread I can't get rid of. I'm afraid of everything that's waiting for me behind any interaction. So, I just rot away in this terrible safety..."

 

"Yet you need uncertainty to live."

 

"Yeah..."

 

Our drinks came, and soon after, my food. Quinn didn't order anything to eat, but I ate a whole lot.

 

"You know it's not your fault. Not entirely. You're distracted from living, but what is distracting you? It's machines and patterns that have been specifically made for distraction. People who are living a fulfilled, spontaneous life are not profitable. At least not when looking at the broad population. I always ask myself to what extent a normal guy is responsible...or what his real thoughts are and what he got told to believe..."

 

Quinn got melancholic, and a short silence fell between us.

 

"I'm sorry, I gotta use the restroom real quick," Quinn said and went away.

 

Suddenly, I was alone. Maybe the restaurant was pretty empty before, but now I felt alone. There wasn't a sound, not even from the kitchen.

 

Maybe I imagined it, but I heard a faint buzzing coming from somewhere in the bar. It faded in and out but grew steadily louder. I started sweating again. My arm began itching again in an intensity I've not yet felt. Like there was a burning rose bush beneath my flesh that tried to see the sun. I scratched and scratched, but then I felt a small vibration. Shocked, I stopped the scratching, realizing where the sound came from. The buzzing came not from the bar. It came from under my skin. I felt it moving there.

I clawed away at the sting. I just wanted the thing to get out, I wanted it gone. My arm began to bleed. The pain was unimaginable, but the adrenaline made me scratch it even further.

I saw the sharp and rifled knife next to my plate that was covered in remains of the food. I took it quickly and started drilling it into my skin. The red, oily fat on the knife began mixing with my blood and went into my body. I tried everything, but it didn't come out. My whole arm was now covered in blood and oil. I rushed out into the foggy night and went home. I couldn't burden Quinn anymore. I just couldn't.

/

I ran home, clenching my teeth, holding my arm tight, trying to put pressure on it. The town was silent, and all I could hear were my footsteps in the alley and the buzzing of the hatching wasp.

With my bloodied hand, I opened the door to my apartment. I fell to my knees in anguish before my bed.

 

"Get out, get out, you're buried there deep in me, I did everything, I wanted to change, you didn't let me, get out, get out, get out," I said, crying with a stiff grimace.

But then it finally happened.

In one painful pop, a wasp squirmed out of the gaping wound, followed by a dozen slimy wasp eggs that resembled rice grains. As terrifying as it was, some part of me was glad that it was over. Or so I thought.

The freshly hatched wasp flew around the room before it landed on my face. I was paralyzed again. It was not that I couldn't move. But I knew that if I did so, the wasp would sting me. So, I knelt there still with the aching, throbbing pain in my arm.

It crawled over my face, stood still for just a second and then scuttled on. Quick, hectic motions went all over my eyes, mouth and nose. Once again, I felt every leg of the insect moving. They tickled my skin. I felt disgusted and horrified, I didn't know what the wasp would do next.

As I felt it crawling to my nose, I thought it wanted to crawl inside. I got too terrified, and in one quick, short swoop, I hit it, and it now was in thin air again. I took the magazine from the dresser, unfolded it and hit the wasp to the ground. I wanted to finish it, but suddenly the other rotting Wasp quickly crawled out from under the dresser, crippled on four legs with a mouldy, slimy corpus, and began eating the other wasp alive. After it was finished, it dragged the half-dead body back to its retreat.

I went to the bathroom to drown the eggs in the sink. I needed to squeeze the rest out like a pimple. After that, the pain slowly went away, and I patched up the wound.

I took three towels and stuffed them in the space between dresser and floor. I knew that wouldn't fix the problem, but it gave me some comfort.

"I need to stay in. Everywhere I go, it will follow me. I can't put this on someone else," I thought, realizing my sad, distressed future.

I wanted to change my life. But it wouldn't let me. God...I am so sorry, Ava.

/

The blistering summer heat had worn off, and the cold autumn nights set in. It had been a month since I met Quinn in the bar. I went to work a lot and even worked overtime. Up there was the only place the Wasp couldn't reach me. Every second I was in my home, the wasp was talking to me. No rest. Constant talking, screaming and singing. The towels just barely muted the Wasp. The "good moments" were scarce as ever, and I was close to ending it.

"After all, isn't it my good right to kill myself? Doesn't everybody have the right to do so? If I want to go, let me go, don't drag me back to my life, to my apartment that's already hell. What? Am I too profitable for you? Is that why you want to keep me? Or would my suicide lower the morale of other people, therefore keeping them from working? What is it? Is it the crumbling painting of a perfect society you desperately try to keep hung up, that I would shatter with a brushstroke of my own blood? In that case, let it be broken. Paint a new one, why don't you? I refuse a painting where a painting is needed. It's not the picture that I crave. I just want to live, I want to finally know what it feels like to burn, yes, to burn in a moment of spontaneous passion, God, let me melt in this grand oven that is my desire, please. House, that is life, please let me in and then throw me out immediately after, but let me in. For just one foot over your doorstep is enough to fill a life. Yes, I want to live, but not if it takes any longer. And you, you keep me from living, you fucking pest! What? Am I not good for you if I live? Am I sour then, not to your taste? Well, then I want to taste like shit in your mouth, only then would I live. But I'm sour either way...if I live, if I die, only if I stay in this paralyzed condition am I just right for you. God...I just want to live..."

I don't know who I was saying that to. The Wasp, society, myself...all of which fused to one enemy I was screaming and rambling at.

The next day, I went to work as always. I climbed up my crane, and it was peaceful again. It was a bright blue day with many clouds that lay there like specks of white in a painting. There was so much life beneath me. I wanted to stay alive just to see others living. It was the very last joy I’ve had. I didn't think it would change...

On that very day, on the crane, I began hearing something again. I've heard a strange tune. It was a buzzing elegy that came from within the crane booth, slow and sad it sounded, with overtones of hatred and despair. In a panic, I began looking around the booth. I looked under my seat, behind my seat, in my bag, but I couldn't find where the sound was coming from. Then it hit me that the lyrics of this incomprehensible song sounded exactly like the words the Wasp was always singing to me.

 

The crane was in motion. I was in a state of terrifying stress. The buzzing became louder and louder until the whole booth was droning with this horrible sound. Then I suddenly felt something crawling up my neck. I tried to swat it away, therefore letting loose on the controls.

 

In one swift motion, the heavy concrete load of the crane snapped and rushed straight down. As it happened, my only thoughts were hope that nobody would stand under the crane end, "anything but that, please don't let me be responsible for someone's death, god, please, don't let the Wasp kill someone else," I thought.

Hastily, I went down the ladder, stumbling a lot and almost falling myself. I hurried to the crash site and saw what had happened.

My colleagues stood in shock around the huge concrete slab that had fallen onto an excavator working directly beneath the end of the crane.

I didn't want to look, but as it is with any accident, there was a strange draw to it, like a siren's call. So, I looked at it.

The body in the driver's seat was folded almost completely, but one could only observe the head with the shoulders and the legs at the pedals. Everything else was covered by the caved-in roof of the excavator and the concrete. The worst thing was that one could still very clearly see the worker’s face. One could not distance oneself from the body. You could see every mark. There lay a whole human experience that now has ended. He looked content. It didn't look tragic. Maybe he thought of something beautiful. There was sadness, there was joy, there was life and death all together concentrated into one scene I was responsible for. I was an artist for once in my life.

 

I couldn't take it. I ran away from the site, never to be seen by my coworkers again.

They blamed a mechanical failure and covered for me, but I quit the job. I thought the Wasp could only hurt me. Alas, I was wrong. The Wasp hurt everyone around me through me. I needed to isolate. Finally. Isolate.

/

"Isolate. Isolate. Isolate. I thought I was the only one drowning. All the while, I was a brick tied to their ankles, pulling them further down. After all, everyone is drowning, only divided by the weight of their bricks and the depth of their waters. I don't want to pull them down. My life is only fear now.

Quinn, my colleague...god, I don't even know his name...Ava...what happened with Ava? What did I... Isolate. Isolate. Isolate.

Do I deserve contact? What is wrong with me? Or is it the wasp? WHAT DOES IT WANT? Was I such a bad person? I just want to live. I try to be kind to everybody, but I just can’t interact with people in a normal way; they find me weird and I just...Isolate. Isolate. Isolate.

I want to love again. I need touch. How is someone supposed to live without touch? But I can't, I'd hurt the person I'd love. Or is it the Wasp? I NEED TO KILL IT. But I tried and failed. I could set it on fire, and it would burn eternally. I would kneel before it like Moses before the rose bush and await the commandments. COMMANDMENT I: Isolate. Isolate. Isolate.

I need to distract myself even more; no thought must occur, just noise and noise and noise. Every thought would mean confrontation with myself, life, and death. That would kill me. That would make me uncomfortable. No thought, just loud tones of a life thrown away. No therapy, I can deal with this on my own. I can drown everything out, and I can always isolate. Isolate. Isolate.

...or die. That might be the only way to get rid of the Wasp. But I can't do that either. I can't kill myself because there is still some confused part of me that enjoys life, so I just wait and hope for my death every minute of my life. What a meagre existence that would be...with the only light being the view of the park. Or I could...no... I must isolate. Isolate. Isolate.

I need to change. I need to leave everything behind, step over the ledge and fly over the pyre of my past life. Something new. Just new, not old, just good. I need to break out of this cell. I need to experience. I need to live every moment and every second till seconds cease to exist. I want to love, I want to see, I want contact. I need to isolate isolation like a prism in a prism. I will dare a step over the door, and I'll be

free. Beyond my fear lies a new life. Let me taste the bitter salt of life," I said all of this in my room, alone. It was the last speech I gave to myself. After that, I tried to live.

/

I went to the park for the first time in my life. All the time I've looked at the park, yearning to be a part of it. And now I suddenly found myself before it.

I went through the grand iron gate, decorated by various ornaments its bars had made. The air was damp, and the freckled sky shone a bright grey, while the sun occasionally greeted us, the ones scattering below.

The grass and the trees were fat from the summer that had now laid itself to rest; now was autumn. The season that is the year's slow walk to the deathbed.

Children and dogs were playing in the park, old people on benches, grieving times that have passed, grieving moments and grieving others. There were only chaotic specks of grief on these benches. There were couples and friends on blankets in the grass, tasting the fresh bleeding ecstasy of youth and love. Every now and then, an insect flew by me and scared me to near death, but the shock quickly fled.

I wept at the profound beauty this park had to hold. I wept for everything I could never have experienced. I wept for myself, and I wept for...

I sat down on an empty bench that looked in the direction of a small pond. There was no distraction except the warmth of the sun and the cold breeze. My brain was almost silent, only left with a faint ringing. No wasp, no guilt, no past, just this warm moment. I felt courage beginning to boil within me.

I was looking around in the park and saw a person sitting on the bench next to mine. She was reading a book, I believe it was "Crime and Punishment”, occasionally looking around, trying to spot any interesting facets of her surroundings. It is of no importance what she looked like, but her eyes were too divine not to mention them. Two piercing, bright water spirits beneath her brow that carefully inspected every moving thing around her. If one were to examine them, they would have shot two clean holes through one's soul, leaving no stone unturned, no secret unseen. She could read anyone except me. But I couldn't even read myself.

I looked at her in amazement; she had such a knowing presence to her, like she figured things out that most humans haven’t. I caught myself staring too late before she looked at me. Embarrassed, I turned my head down to the grass, hoping she didn't notice my gaze.

Curiosity and passion began to brim inside of me. Something told me that I needed to talk to her. In the span of seconds, it became my mission to approach her. The interest in her was there, but the real motivation for talking to her was the sole action of talking to her. I wanted to have one moment of courage, just one. Even if she'd reject me, I'd still have made the step over the ledge and flown. One act of true courage might be enough to fill a life.

My heart pounded for it knew what it had to do. What terrified me was that I knew I had to do it. I knew that I would do it. But the words still had to leave my mouth, the sentence still had to be formed, and the fear of embarrassing possibilities still had to be conquered.

My eyes were fixed on the grass; my head was full of thoughts. I sat there for an hour thinking and calculating. Then it came to me. I wouldn't do it; I wouldn't have the courage.

"She will leave any minute now, and you won't talk to her, yes, you will never see her again," I thought. My leg began to shake, and with every minute, I got more nervous. I saw her putting her book away, implying that she'd leave any second. I felt an inferno forming, like a crown, around my heart. My breath grew shorter and shorter.

And then I just did it. Like a feather, I let myself fall, and I talked to her.

"Hi, I'm sorry, but could I maybe have your number?" I asked, stuttering like I swallowed a toad.

She hesitated for a second and eyed me up and down. I believe she saw everything within me right from the start, except this awful, unlit corner in my being that I myself have pushed down so deeply that I couldn't see it anymore...but in that corner, there was always the face. A meek face of innocence that turned into one of angst and confusion. This metamorphosis happened over and over again, and with it came a strange song. But all in me was quiet in that moment when she said:

 

"Yeah, you seem nice."