1.4

I kept seeing Io in the periphery of my waking day. In the night she was right in the centre, sitting there, a little sprite with forthright eyes and strange clothes made of opals and pearls.

She started getting in the way.

She started following me everywhere I went, rattling along on the bus, sitting staring in the office weekly meetings, gouging out my attention, plucking little moments and gawping at delicate baubles in her palm as if they held a secret.

I ignored her as best I could.

I took a trip to the edge of town, where the field receded into the horizon like the sea tickling the shore, the frail and tired scraps of nature before me, the city island behind.

I'll forget all about Io, she was never going to be the one.

This search is fraught with meanderings and double-cross paths, I can take my time. 

The clouds agreed, the trees cheered and bowed their heads, then I saw a wave across the barley field.

How pretty.

As nature conveyed its everlasting support for my wellbeing, the rain got wind and joined to offer its kindest regards.

The drizzle cut short my walk and there was Io.

Sometimes the whims of the needy are too obscure.

I can do without nature’s support. I decided to rely on the modern. I played games on old computers, night and day blurred together like a spinning top, with time smeared across its surface. I watched nebulous dramas on the internet and shopped for all the things I didn't need but so wholeheartedly wanted.

The days turned into weeks as they do.

I went to see a doctor.

“She’s following me everywhere, but she doesn't really have a form.”

The doctor’s nose protruded into my psyche, questioning my motives, general deportment and sanity. Nothing I said registered any reaction on his face, he took notes, mumbled agreements with sounds of having heard.

“Mmm hmmm.” He said.

Then after I talked to him for an hour I felt light and stark like looking through a freshly cleaned window.

“Take two of these a day, no more. Just some pills, they'll help with the visions.”

“But they're not that sort of vision.” I protested.

He didn't even blink.

I left with a handful of leaflets and phone numbers and websites and helplines and stories of others’ seemingly erratic behaviour made good. Io took a lot of interest in the pamphlet about the loss of a loved one. She didn’t speak, she never did.

I took the pills anyway. They tasted of strawberries.

Then after a while my dreams stopped repeating her name, their performances were devoid of her sparkling form, her face turned into black and white and crinkled about the edges like an old photo.

Then one day she didn't turn up.

She was gone.

Grey skies preponderated over the wailing moon, the gloom spread like fog, it was like I was at the bottom of the sea. 

All seas heaped above me, dark stark coldness, the face of Io high above, distorted beyond recognition across the waves.

I stopped taking the pills once I could no longer bare to be alone. Life bled onwards, every day my shadow shed a little time.

Then my fingertips became a little ghostly. 

I noticed on the bus.

Soon the knuckles and before long my arms and legs were translucent, I could see the pattern of the bus seat through my lap, and then, as nines turned to fives and Mondays to Fridays the thoughts in my head began to vaporise and sublimate gradually into some other ether. I had no name any more, no inkling of recognition at the wispy face in the morning mirror. Even my memories were kept in distant drawers, in darkened rooms in worlds that ceased to exist.

Then one black and white Tuesday morning, the last of me vanished like a crumb of ice. And there she was.

Her face shimmered with a halo that extended into the future. She gleamed in my mind. 

She sat next to me smiling.

She followed me across the road, and into work. 

She accompanied through my tiresome meetings and through the streets as the sun sunk and the stars rose. 

And when I lay in bed and closed my eyes she was there all lit up like neon on the backs of my eyelids.

“Io.” I said to her wonderful face. 

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” And then she vanished for ever.