The Second Last Chapter

I

 The Beginning Of The End

I was daydreaming. In my dream, there were herds of wolves chasing a farmer and soon a little girl cam into my picture and hummed a song. The song she hummed was barely recognizable but how could I miss my favourite song? Even though her tune was completely out and the tempo was in disarray, I could still tell it’s “I need to be in love” by The Carpenters. I knew this song since I was young . My mother used to sing it when she was doing household chores. Although I barely remembered her voice, I missed her and her singing. I missed this song, very much indeed.

 

From far, I could see clouds hovering on the sky, mingling with each other and fusing. I could also see a guy who was about my age kicking the stone on the ground. He was listening to an iPod and without any reason, I thought he was listening to ‘I need to be in love’. As if sensing my intrusion, he turned his head and looked at me. I blushed temporarily before I realized he was just staring admirably at the big tree at my back. Disappointed, I stood up, trying to inhale the fresh air but what I breathed in, was the air of still and faint trace of melancholy.

 

And then, I saw the girl. She was coming from no where as if she just came into the big picture of mine accidentally. Gingerly, she approached the guy. For a spur of moment, I felt jealousy welled up inside my turbulent mind. Then, she stopped in front of him, purposely kept a distance between them. Were they trying to fake their intimacy? I didn’t think so because there’s no one there but me, a reluctant witness of the untold stories.

 

They stared into each other’s eyes for a while. They didn’t utter a single word and neither did they move. All I could see were the tearful eyes of them. If one was not observant enough, he or she might not tell the difference between them because they stood so still and every breath and movement of theirs were so coordinated and unison. But, I could tell, the girl was in more pain than the guy.

 

And I also realized, they were not a couple and would never be one.

 

X

 

Shelton

A New Chapter

He told me a story in the cafeteria. We always went to the same cafeteria, not for the food sold there, but for the privacy. It might sound bizarre. Privacy in the cafeteria? Impossible, some people might say. However, once we really settled down, people wouldn’t pay more attention to us more than any Tom, Dick and Henry.

 

Occasionally, there were intruders passing by us and trying to pilfer some details from us. What did they get? They pretended to be contented with what they had just eavesdropped but I could tell the guilt running right underneath their insolent expression. They knew nothing. If they knew something, they wouldn’t have appeared again and again. Apparently, they were still in search of their Holy Grail, our secret.

 

He and I were seniors and juniors in our university. I knew him in a club and somehow we grew closer to each other. Eventually, we went out together which many of my friends considered as ‘dates’. But, I was the only one who held the truth, a saddening truth.

 

He was a good story-teller. What set him different with other guys I ever went out with was, he appeared ordinary when he was silent. Once he started telling one of his vast collection of stories, his confidence flared, his temple twitched and his charm radiated. His stories were always enchanting and if I were to nip-pick any flaw in his character when he was telling stories, it’s the trace of melancholy in his voice.

 

His stories largely were heart-warming. Positive message, he once commented on his stories. Nonetheless, he contradicted himself later by quoting Oscar Wilde ‘there’s no such thing as moral or immoral story, there’s only well or bad-written story.’ I once asked him, out of curiosity, ‘why you have so many stories to tell?’ For once, he pulled out a matter-of-fact expression and told me solemnly, ‘I heard them.’ Why so serious? I had never seen that expression again until this morning.

 

‘Hi, wanna have lunch later? Same place same time,’ I texted.

‘Ok, but I’ve got to rush later,’ he replied.

 

When I met him in the cafeteria later, he had that solemn expression hung peculiarly on his face. Deep down inside me, I could tell something was wrong but what could I say? Told him I felt uncomfortable with his peculiarity? No, I chose to keep quiet instead.

 

He took his own sweet time to finish his food, as usual. Uncharacteristically, he played with his fork and spoon, which was something he never did before. Later on, he shifted his attention to the chilly bottle on the table. Again, he never seemed to pay so much attention on the bottle that was always there.

 

Something was happening, right here, right now.

 

‘Is something bothering you?’ I couldn’t resist to ask.

Taken aback, he swiftly turned to me and his stare made me uneasy. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ on a spur of moment, I thought his normal self was back. His spontaneous urge to tell stories was back. No, he was not himself. He never told me a story with his shoulder slumped like a flaccid gunny bag.

x

Ronald

 The jigsaw puzzle.

She was different from other girls I had ever met. So different until I was so afraid to admit that she really existed. Once she told me, ‘different or same, they are both relative. Perspective determines everything.’ I must confess that the first time I heard this, I was totally lost.

 

But now, I completely understood the explicit truth of her words.

 

She was my friend’s closest friend. They went to the same school, they stayed in each other’s house sometime, they once had a crush on the same boy, they checked each other email and Facebook account, and they were totally different. My friend was a total extrovert and was omnipresent in any function and party. She, on the other hand, loved jigsaw puzzle, writing poems, reading Steinbeck’s and listening to Bach’s.

 

Difference, was the thing that glued them together, strangely. They ate together, they studied together, they cried together when time was hard and they both loved to hear my stories. I was a good story-teller and I needed not to boast it. My friends could prove it anytime.

 

That’s how I began to know her more. In one of my stories, I mentioned about a jigsaw which couldn’t find its way home. It’s not my best story. However, she later told me she actually loved it and refused to tell me the reasons. Eventually I found out that she was fond of jigsaw puzzle and she could do that all day long.

 

The more stories I told, the more I got to know her. Only by coming out with stories incessantly, by luck, I might stumble onto her another untold secret. Then before I was aware of my obsession in telling her stories, I fell in love with her. She proved to be less ordinary than I first thought. The more she revealed herself, the more I deeper I was in love with her.

 

Sometime I told myself that I didn’t really love her, it’s my obsession in secrets that hooked me. The explanation was not good enough. Her smile never failed to lift my spirit, her melancholy never failed to affect me and to put it in an overused term, I found myself connected to her.

 

I was not sure whether she felt the same way but she didn’t seem to avoid me, which was a good news. My friend knew it well, though. After knowing what I was up to, she earnestly advised me and asked me to think of this question, ‘Is she your dream?’

 

Without even ruminating the trick she hid behind the question, firmly and confidently, I gave my answer, ‘Yes.’  

 

‘Make her your reality, not your dream,’

 

Until today, the impact she made in me was still there although many things had been changed by the unforeseen circumstances. Her statement, like a meteor crushing onto the Earth, forced its way into my heart and refused to come out ever since.

 

I took up her advice and whatever happened after that, though memorable, was no longer overwhelming. The impact was not greater than that statement. The reality was not realer than the dream.

x

Samantha

 Piecing a dream

Everyone loved him. No, love would be an understatement which I personally found demeaning. Worshipped would be more appropriate word. No matter how hard he tried to play down the commotion revolved around him, the facts would never be fictions. Ironically, he loved telling fictions and somehow I believed in the made-believe world he created everyday tirelessly.

 

He was not full of surprises. He was boring sometime with his stories. I was never sure of what he was up to. My friend told me his stories were just a tool of his, to fish my secrets. I scorned at her so-called epiphany because it made me sound mysterious. I was not.

 

But I didn’t know how other people perceived me. Quietness was equated to mysteriousness, thanks to all the soap operas, I ought to be mysterious just because I didn’t speak much. To be frank, sometime I could be sarcastic but I didn’t hide secrets. I didn’t have tricks up my sleeve.

 

Playing psychology games was simply not my forte. Nor was he good in playing his little mind game. I could feel a slight tremor in his voice every time he was about to tell his new stories. The tremor was faint, nearly invisible and inaudible. It was there, nonetheless. Was it a sign or I was just thinking too much? At that time, I was never sure about that and you had probably heard of the girls’ six sense but as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t have that inborn ability.

 

Hence, there’s no progress. He continued telling his stories and I continued feeding him as much ‘secrets’ as I could. Like a tug-of-war,  we each tried to pull each other to our side and our relationship was a ribbon tied on the middle of the rope. It neither moved forward nor backward.

 

It’s frustrating and toilsome. Because as he told more stories, the more he made his intention clear. But our relationship was already stale, unless there’s a trigger, we would stay still no matter how hard we tried. I could be the one who poured out my heart to him and I could be the one who broke the silence. But that was a tug-of war, once you gave in, you lost and you fell. I refused to be the one who fell although the temptation was great. I simply couldn’t risk it.

 

He was not better than me. His stories became more and more melodramatic. The mood swing of the characters was no longer like a thermometer reading, it was like a tidal wave. It changed within seconds and was gone within split second. Waiting agonized a lonely soul and agony changed a hapless soul. Before I realized anything, he had changed. He was no longer as cheerful as he used to be. There’s lots of laughter before this and now it had gone with the wind. I could tell from the development of his stories.

 

He was in pain. Tug-of-war was slowly killing both of us.

 

Until one day, something was changed. He asked me out as he always did. I didn’t see it coming and without any warning, he confessed his love to me, in a very calm and pristine manner. For a moment, he looked immaculate once again as if the agony had deserted him for good. His eyes beamed and his body glow with a strange rhythm as if it was just emancipated.

 

That’s a moment of truth and the tug-of-war had ended. To thaw the ice, to sooth the pain, to massage the numbness, whatever you might call it, he told me…

 

‘You are not my dream because you are real, as real as I can hold you right now.’

 

And then I said something I couldn’t really recall. At that moment, strangely enough, all I could run through my mind was, I would be leaving this country in 2 months time. We had so little time together.

x

Ronald

 Unfinished Puzzle

She bought us a jigsaw puzzle for our first month anniversary. 1000 pieces. It’s a portrait of a couple holding hands in a park with a girl sitting under a tree. The shadow casted by the tree partly concealed the face of the girl sitting under the tree. We didn’t notice at first but as we started piecing the every piece of the puzzle, it’s revealed the girl was actually listening to a walkman.

 

‘What song she is listening to?’ She asked me dreamily, in a casual but luring way. ‘Well, you are a story teller, aren’t you,’ she pressed on when she heard no reply from me.

 

I needed sometime to think of a story but instinct told me, she was indeed listening to ‘I need to be in love.’ The idea just occurred to me suddenly and without much processing and reasoning, somehow I was convinced that she was savouring this The Carpenters’ less well-known song. Just like a pendulum, the title of the song gave me a push to upset the balance of the invisible pendulum in my mind. Now the balance was absent and my mind was churning out a story again and I told her.

 

As she listened to my story, she suddenly broke into tears. For a moment, I felt a sense of triumph welled up inside me like a pot of boiling water. That feeling didn’t last long before I realized something was not right. She never cried because of a story. In fact, I never saw her crying before.

 

For once, I was panicked.  

 

She was telling me something that day in a shopping mall we went together. We were in front of a shop that sold antique clocks. Out of curiosity, we went in and were awed by the sheer beauty of vintage. They were so meticulously crafted. I was so absorbed to the clocks and I didn’t notice she was no longer by my side.

 

She had gone outside of the shop and sat on a bench. I thought she must be exhausted by the long hours of shopping but she shook her head when I suggested we went home. She wanted to stay with me for a longer time. I didn’t think much at that point of time.

 

Now, baffled by her sudden overflow of tears, I understood. Her voice suddenly rang in my ears again, ‘I want to stay with you.’ What else could she mean? I was not unaware of her departure for the United States in a month. I was just not very prepared to accept the truth.

 

That always happened to me. Sense of urgency didn’t strike until the imminence enervated me. ‘She is leaving,’ I repeated that in my mind. I needed to clear my mind because wishful thinking began invading my veins. I dreamed of stopping time.

 

She wiped away her tears and said, ‘how much you love me?

X

 

One month later, as I sent her away to the States. I gave her a book. It’s written by me and all the stories I had told her were inside that book. I had them published and I wanted her to be my first reader. She quickly glanced through the title and flipped through few pages.

 

‘Why The Second Last Chapter?’

‘Cause I don’t want our story to be the last chapter. The last chapter, we must write together and the beautiful story we write shall be named ‘The Last Chapter.’ Will you write that story with me?’

 

She smiled and that smile, I swore, was the most resplendent and beautiful I had ever seen. Her smile, eradicated the sense of regret for not able to finish our puzzle. Her smile, gave me the answer I always wanted.

x

Samantha

Fonder heart

Long-distant relationship was not easy to maintain. The first real test of our relationship happened during my first month stay in the States. I was busy with all sorts of club activities. Life here had been so busy. There’s gathering nearly every night. There’s outing every now and then.

 

He tried very hard to understand. He hardly showed any discontent when I told him I had to go to such and such gathering. In fact, he never objected anything I said. No matter how encouraging he might appear to be, I knew he wanted to spend more time with me. I ought to share more of my time with him.

 

Even though I had done my best to call him everyday, set aside the time difference issue, I couldn’t just forsake my first university life. If I didn’t seize my chance to mingle with them, I would end up as another reclusive oversea student. I had seen lots of them who just locked themselves in their room and I refused to be one.

 

I hoped he understood and he did say it more than one time that he understood what I had gone through. But truth was always more convoluted than myth. The problems of our relationship, the miscommunication, wouldn’t be brushed easily aside by ‘I understand…, I see…, I know…’. Turned out I was right, we became complacent and we patronized each other. As if greeting was just some sorts of formality, our relationship grew sour. 

 

Both of us tried to reverse and relive the old days we spent together but it just didn’t happen. Problems kept rising one after another and we had our first big fight 4 weeks after I reached the States. Both of us blamed ourselves for not communicating well but at the same time, demanded more from each other. He said that he expected more. ‘Since when you stopped telling me stories?’ I rebuked and both of us fell into eerie silence than spanned few thousands miles.

 

Then we both apologized to each other and vowed to make our relationship meaningful once again.

 

Just when I thought that we had gone through the worst, I heard some gossips about him. All sorts of rumours started coming into my inbox. Some of them were malicious and some of the seemed genuinely sincere. I told myself I was not going to let them wavered my faith in him.

 

However, it’s impossible to do so. I was staunch believer of his commitment but the rumours, were like parasites. They might be removed from your body but the effects were still intact. Whenever we had disputes, the images would pop out instantly. ‘No, I won’t let those images dictate my life,’ I told myself.

 

Things didn’t get better. I was pretty sure that he had heard all those rumours himself. His life wouldn’t be easier than me, if not harder. His friend told me he had quit some of his club activities to avoid more conflicts with me and I was deeply touched.

 

What else I could do? I didn’t know. That’s why during my birthday, when he phoned me, I said something like ‘we have been together for 5 months, I wish it will be longer.’ I never did understand why I said that.  He immediately sunk into his dejected tone. I could tell when he was uplifted or dejected. He didn’t say anything about that after the incidence but I guessed he was pretty sore about my reply.

 

How I wished I didn’t say that! His email further distressed me. ‘Are we going to finish our last chapter?’ He sent me this after we had that conversation. Soon after I read those, I confessed to my best friend and as usual she showed her understanding. She never stood by anyone of us.

 

I cried because I knew I was going to lose him. We were not going to write the last chapter together.

x

Shelton

A story-teller’s story

The story he told me was depressing. Because it’s a true story. Nothing would be more depressing than the truth and truth always hurt. He told me about his ex-girlfriend. Everything they did together, the jigsaw puzzle, The Second Last Chapter, the life in the States, and the most depressing among all, how they broke up.

 

She never picked up his phone call after her birthday. She never replied his email anymore. She changed her Facebook status to ‘single’. No clean break-up, no explanation, as if she had gone missing.

 

He demanded for explanation. But what could he do? He was in Malaysia, she was in LA. He tried calling her everyday, sending her offline message and email. When all these attempts failed, he even called her parents. They didn’t want to talk much about that and were evasive.

 

He didn’t know what happened and he was furious. How could his girlfriend just broke up with him as if their relationship mattered nothing? Where had all those deceiving promises like the last chapter and jigsaw puzzle gone?

 

What made thing worse was 1 month after he lost track of her, her Facebook status was suddenly changed to ‘In a relationship’. Moment of truth! He once thought. She ditched him and now she went for the other guy in the US. Strangely, after he found out about that, he was somehow calmed. The ripple stirred by her sudden departure finally showed sign of recession. But, he wanted more than that. If she had fallen in love with other guy, why couldn’t she tell her? Why?

 

So he sent her messages again. To no avail, his effort was never replied. Saddened and baffled, he decided that life must go on despite of all the peculiarity and surprises that were even more melodramatic than his stories.

 

Letting go was easier said than done. Getting over was even worse. There’s no easy way out because her image just sprung back and upset the balance of his life anytime. He still couldn’t help but routinely check out her Facebook status and tried to contact her. Although he refrained himself from calling her friends, he still made some calls to them occasionally. Excuses like he just wanted to make sure everything was alright were dropped.

 

And he still hadn’t decided what to do with the unfinished jigsaw puzzle. ‘Should I leave it there or should I just chuck it away and never look at it again?’ He once questioned himself. But he didn’t do anything about that. The jigsaw puzzle was still there and he was still melancholic. Stories were still narrated but the narrator was becoming more and more detached from his own stories.

 

Then, something which he always considered as ‘miracle’ happened. She told him she would be coming back at the end of the year to celebrate Christmas. She would confess everything and give him the explanation he had been waiting in vain for one whole year.

 

‘Now, it’s time to close the last chapter. Like a Pandora box, I finally get to close it. No matter what will follow, I think I’ll recover,’ he said that to me in the cafeteria.

‘I must close the chapter,’ he repeated it once again but his voice had been reduced to a nearly inaudible murmur.

 

That’s when I chose to make the toughest decision in my life. I must follow him without him knowing. I cared too much about him. A part of me insisted to go after him and witnessed what would be unfolded, would there be any drama, tears?; a part of me attempted to tie me to my conscience, no you were not supposed to be there, his story should be ended by himself…

 

I made my choice. And I must go because his eyes told me so, his body language whispered to me and his story forced me to act. I was no longer myself. Before I realized that, I was already part of his absorbing story and I would always be there, for him.

 

I

 

The Second Last Chapter

 

Perhaps you already knew my identity, perhaps you hadn’t. But did it matter, for this story, for ‘The Second Last Chapter?’ I guessed if It didn’t matter initially, it mattered now. Because it’s all about me and without me, the story wouldn’t exist in the first place. Without me, the story would have ended abruptly the day she said ‘we have been together for 5 months, I wish it will be longer.’

 

Samantha died tragically the day after her birthday. I was with her at a park when a drunkard suddenly hit her skull from behind with a beer bottle. The moment the bottle shattered into millions of splendid ruby gems, I knew what I needed to do next. Her story should be sealed. He should not know the truth because he still had the illusions that they were destined to be together and the last chapter would be written together.

 

Truth didn’t work that way. Samantha was my best friend and we always shared each other’s story. From the beginning to the end, I was the one who knew the most. How they got together and how moving their love story was. She confided everything about him in me.

 

Not surprisingly, I also knew about their promises to each other, their struggles to keep their dream alive, and their conflicts. She cried the night she was supposed to celebrate her birthday. ‘I don’t know why I said that to him,’ she shook her head in despair and for once, I felt the helplessness arisen in her. For once, I sensed the deepest fear and doubt she had for this relationship.

 

As usual I kept quiet, not because I couldn’t help her, but I wanted to let her be herself. I still remembered his promise to me, ‘I want to make her my reality, not my dream.’ No reason I should lose my confidence in him back then. And when she was on the verge of collapse, I asked her, ‘why are you two together?’

 

I could never forget her answer right until today. I sat under the tree, listening to my favourite song, ‘I need to be in love’, looking at the hovering clouds, trying to reminisce as much as possible what happened after she told me her answer and I was moved. There was no tear but my heart was wrenched. It had been a long time since I last had this feeling.

 

Memory was a painful ability. And her reply, ‘We are living up the dream we have together,’ after so many months still had the same effect it had on me on that day. They were supposed to be together, chasing the dream of reality and live up the reality of dream.

 

She might have survived if she summoned a one last deep breath before she died. But instead of doing that, she gave up. Perhaps she was tired by all those dream chasing, perhaps she thought the story should be left unconcluded… I never got to know why but one thing for sure, she didn’t want him to know.

 

That’s why I logged into her Facebook account and changed her status to ‘single’. He tired to reach her frantically. He called, he sent email, he texted, but he didn’t know all his efforts ended up at the wrong end. I read all his mails to her and I didn’t reply. I had a story in my mind. Both of them, he and she, should be in the story.

 

He must have resented her. She, who no longer lived, was given a new life, new relationship and new memory. People might be abhorred by my selfish act and I would be reprimanded by all my readers. However, this was a story. Fiction, from the beginning to the end. Lies were built on truths and truths were built on lies.

 

In my story, he must move forward. He shouldn’t look back and he shouldn’t know the last chapter of the story. Because ‘The Second Last Chapter’ was always more beautiful and more often than not, it’s more like an ending than the actual last chapter.

 

He should still live in the harsh facts that she left him for other guy. He was not good enough for her. And his stories ought to be continued with someone else. What was gone was gone and he had to accept that. Perhaps that’s why I always surmised that the second last chapter was more readable than the last chapter.

 

The twists, the ‘truth’ revealed in the last chapter made a real story phony. A good story should never have a last chapter.

 

From the place I rested myself, I could see him and a girl confronting each other. He was surprised to see her there. ‘Why you?’ He was genuinely surprised. She was not the one he was expecting to see. The girl, her name was Shelton, wasn’t it? She was yelling at him, telling him that he should never see Samantha once again. ‘It’s for your own good, forget her!’ She exasperated.

 

Watching her and all her deeds, it deepened my conviction that Ronald should never know the truth. I came back not to tell him the truth, the last chapter. I was going to tell the lie, the second last chapter, that hurt less than the truth. Then a strong and ferocious feeling was brewing inside me. The feeling was so intense and so real and that’s the time I realize my mistake.

 

I shouldn’t even have considered telling him the lie! I shouldn’t have disguised as Samantha and sent him the mail in order to ask him out. My efforts were all in vain because my mind which was always rationale clearly understood something.  

 

 He didn’t deserve the lie if he was still after the dream. Long time ago, I had already warned him about the dangers of dreams. He was still insisting on chasing a shapeless dream and choosing to neglect the reality in front of him. I couldn’t tell a lie to a man who couldn’t even differentiate dream from reality.

 

Hence, I stood up and turned away from them. I muttered something I could barely hear, ‘I couldn’t tell him, I couldn’t tell him, I couldn’t tell him…’ Suddenly, tears were tumbling down my cheeks and once again, I asked myself, why couldn’t I tell him the truth, perhaps the lie?

 

I had no answer because I myself  lived in my own second last chapter and refused to know the last chapter, which might free me from my excruciating pain.