As the Rock Falls

Traci, my girlfriend, and I were silent, standing in the darkened apartment of my college friend, Rock, trying to imagine what the world was like for him

We’d gotten a call from his landlord, that he’d been talking strange, speaking a language of his own. In spite of Tracy’s objections, we decided to go. I swept a beam of my flashlight across scattered pieces of paper on the floor.

She and I had moved out of town after graduation from college, but he stayed, working as a dishwasher or a cook during his lucid spells, but the landlord said that he’d been wondering the streets at night.

A cold wind blew through an open window, and the pipes of the radiator clanked. Broken glass and a tattered photo of him standing with me lay on the floor. I picked up the photo, and wiped a tear from my eye.

“This isn’t the person I knew,” I said.

Tracy shook her head, her patience growing thin.

“He must be out saving the world,” I said.

“Let’s go,” she said, but she agreed to look for him one more time.

A cold wind swirled round us as we walked around the block, and the street lights flickered. We stepped into the coffee shop, where he’d introduced Traci to me, when I was lonely. There he sat in a corner of the room, crying to himself. I agreed to help him, remembering he’d helped me before.

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