THE CHARLIE CHRONICLE

She had finally called. This is how it went:

"I realized Charlie, most people are happy but us. Most, Charlie."

"Most? Surely most people can't be happy? The heavy lady in C12 --"

"A lot of people, Charlie. Ok? It's like we're catatonic or something..."

"Or something?"

"Or something, yeah. Like we have no happiness. It's like we're both dead inside or something. "

"Or something--?"

"Dead. Charlie. Us. And I don't want to be like that, you know. With someone, like that..."

There were no traces of breathing on other end of the line, just silence; just the weight, of her. Her 5'4 frame of a body. Her unrestrained presence; her ever electric, fragmented mind. Her. Chloe: That he'd known for the past six years. She had been staying at her mother's in Maine for some time to herself when she finally decided to call.

She had said she needed a break one day out of the blue coming home from her job at the diner. She slipped off her shoes and blew off her ketchup stained uniform in the bathroom and shouted:

"I need to get out of Brooklyn. I can't breathe here. Everyone is pretentious, and, and the air on the subway reeks of shredded metal and bones... The years they just keep coming, you know? I just keep getting older. Maybe I'm not making sense? Am I making sense?" She poked her head around the corner biting her fingers, her body still emerged under the harsh florescent light. "I just feel, trapped... Yeah." Her eyes seemed to drift past Charlie as if they were traveling to an unknown horizon. Possibly a better version of her life.

Chloe looked back in the mirror, and reevaluated her passing reflection-above the incandescent light--a pair of hollowed out eyes and pale skin.

"You've been at that awful diner for five years now, maybe its good to move on...Just change it up... Maybe go back to school..."

"I'm thirty five...I've already made my choices. Kinda feels like its too late to be great at something." Chloe threw her old work clothes into a mountainous heap of dirty laundry.

"We're just ordinary people Chloe, who expect the extraordinary..." Chloe formed the saddest smile she had experienced in years.

Later that night she said she felt safe. That she was the safest she had ever felt nestled in Charlie's armpits of Old Spice and gin tonic water. And that life was perfect: And that she was coming to terms with that. The next day she called her mother in Maine.

Chloe was an artist. Or use to be. Along the way, she slowly started to conform, talked less about her desires to create her art, and more about what customers recently belittled her at work. She became more reclusive in her spare time, and could be witnessed smoking cigarettes while potting plants at dusk; or reading self help articles while listening to "The Five Steps To Leading a More Fulfilled Life."... And her hair, her hair faded to its natural mousy brown, something in the past she said she always hated. It use to be different. She use to be more alive. And her hair, her hair was always a kelidescope of colors. ____________________________________________________

"Aren't you going to say something?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"Something about this. About what we are talking about..."

"I don't know what we are talking about."

"What comes to your mind? What are you thinking?"

"I don't know..."

"Come on, please... Please, tell me something... Please, Charlie..."

"I thought we were good..."

"But we're not. We haven't been. I haven't been. I don't think you have been either."

Silence.

He reached down inside himself, and searched -- but all that came up was the passing of his father, and the last song Charlie played on his way home from work. A song that had been stuck in his playlist for the last six month:

"... I wish that we could talk about it. But there, that's the problem. With someone new I couldn't start it. Too late for beginnings... "

Chloe let out an airy sigh of frustration that only meant that her fingertips were pressing too hard on her forehead when she struggled to find her inner voice.

" ... LCD Soundsystem?... "

"What do you want me to say? Something that plays into your idea of this--?"

"You can't even express yourself without having to quote some silly band. I'm talking about us, but you make it so difficult to know you."

"What is there to know, Chloe? What is there to know?! I'm not that complicated. I'm really not. I think this is just your way of creating drama, tension in your psyche that shouldn't be there, that doesn't exist..."

"Come on... Tell me something... Anything."

"Are you ok?"

"I'm fine. I'm fine, ok. Don't make this about me, when it's about us, ok?"

But, still, nothing came.

Except, The Cave.

Hovering over his head like a magnetic field, The Cave, was a place without light, without beginnings, middles, and ends. Materializing every now and again ever since he could remember, the black vortex produced no sound of its own, but the sound of sunken memories, a place where things got stuck. He was not surprised it appeared at this moment in time when Chloe was leaving him, but the thing that Charlie did notice was that it was growing in size. And that one could say, it was carnivorous. It had been four years, since the The Cave appeared stranger than ever.

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Charlie was making his way home from a particularly hard day at the office when he rode the L Train late that night. He was one of the few on the subway car that evening. To his left were a few workers asleep, or "dozers" he liked to call them, their heads folded in their laps gently resting on their coats, half in and out of slumber, like sleeping cats. A group of about six riders of different diversities entered the train and took their places amongst the open seats. Charlie thought nothing of the introverted group but he felt an erie uncomfortableness in their presence. There was a peculiarity to their energy, like a dishevelment of a particular kind, something in their movement that wasn't quite human. At one point, he thought their feet never hit the ground, but rather hovered. And their effortless gaze seemed to penetrate into his inner thoughts even when he seemed to look away. Faster and faster, the train sped through the dimly lit tunnels of the underground until only glimpses of the riders were seen between the seconds of time. Flashes of orange, yellow, pink, and blue soon collided through the subway car, magnifying the strange beings who were now suspended above the subway floor. Their bodies, unclothed and shapeless. They appeared to be in energy form. Drifting to Charlie, they collided into one: a single vision of pure white bliss. But Charlie was paralyzed, unable to move in their transcendent approach.

It was then, The Cave appeared, of consequential size, expanding in presence like a hungry trap. Charlie found himself staring into The Cave's deep well of memories. He had been here before as a child, a long time ago. But this time, Charlie wasn't alone. They were standing next to him observing the pulsating vortex; melting away any sense of anxiety, calming his spirit. Charlie felt a sudden warmth he had never experienced before, like a sensation of being held for the first time. There was ease about The Cave for the first time, and its inhabitants he called The Others: Shadows of figures that lived in The Cave -- remnants of people, places and things that hid in the confines, chambers, and stalactites. Charlie never liked interacting with them and always avoided The Others at all costs which only irritated them. However, this time, a magnificent glow could be seen in The Cave's distance, a new horizon. Maybe there was an end to The Cave afterall? --- The light beckoned to him, but he would have to journey to the center and interact with The Others; something he had never done before.

The metro came to a screeching halt. Sparks spasmed from the breaks below. Charlie's face smashed into a metal divider. A slit of blood ran down the side of his head. The intercom...

"Ladies and Gentlemen. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please exit Montrose. Once again, this train's last stop will be Montrose."

A man walked up to Charlie, "Damn, you, ok...? We was all watching you and you looked like you were in something deep... Deep man... Your body was vibrating. Must have been a good dream or something. Hope your face is ok."

Charlie looked around for the strange beings, but They were not there. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, and never told Chloe anything from that night.

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There was a heavy sigh on her end.

"You never really share things with me. But why would anything be different I suppose. Maybe you shove things so far down, you can't feel them anymore... But I can't breathe. And I don't want to carry around this heaviness anymore... Don't get me wrong, I'm fucked up. I know that. Way fucked up. Long before I met you. I get that. ...But now... I just want to be happy. With you, things feel... I don't know how to come home to you... In Brooklyn. To myself even. Around you. So, I can't keep going..."

"Ok..."

"I've tried, Charlie. I really have."

Her soft breaths hung in the heaviness, like a dying heartbeat. But it didn't matter, he really couldn't picture her anymore. He was staring at the entrance of The Cave.

"Say something, Charlie... "

More distinct, and smelling of old musk and mold, The Cave was darker, older, wiser, swallowing the years of time.

"Charlie... Charlie?..."

An echo emerged from inside-- "Charlie?.. Charlieee"

Staring into the cave, Charlie could see The Others were coming out of their hiding places. Their slender shadows grew and stretched on the The Cave's walls in a ritualistic dance of delight, as if announcing to each other Charlie's timely homecoming. However, there was more cause for celebration. A new shadow was being born to The Cave...

"Tell me something funny, Charlie. Something priceless," she said. "Remember how we use to smile." But Chloe's voice played like underwater distortion. He was observing the vibrating darkness.

Now, Charlie breached the ingress of the darkness knowing the temporary comfort of the deep silence, and breached the ingress of The Cave's abyss.

Just a speck for the moment, the new shadow grew in its size as if a splendid spider unfolding its elegant legs. In its last transformation, the uncoiled shadow took its last form assembling into the collection like a shrinking sovereign. It was Chloe. She had joined The Other's. Trapped for all time. But with a hue of a pink halo that separated her from amongst the rest.

"I can't believe." --Her-- "How silent you."--- Human--"I can't."-- Voice -- "I can't with--"--- Started--- "This is-- " ---Disappearing. ---"Breaking me."-

He knew that he must walk through The Cave alone, at some point.

"Goodbye Charlie. Please don't ever contact me."

And just like that, Chloe hung up and was gone, lost to her mother in Alfred, Maine. Time seemed to vanish. All was quiet on the Eastern Front.

With a rip of space and time, Charlie was suddenly released from The Cave's grasp, crashing his body onto the hardwood floor, shattering his nose: A gentle stream of blood made its way to the morning light's rays just in reach to say hello. By his side, his cracked cellphone lay on the ground dead as usual. This was The Cave's doing. Technologically speaking. He couldn't call Chloe back even if he wanted to. There was no way of contacting her now to hear her voice. Plus, he was use to people leaving. Like a bag of old potato chips.

He recognized a pair of old pink house shoes she left behind when she packed for her trip. He wiped his nose blood on his shirt, a shirt she had given him when they went to their first concert together. How tattered and weathered her shoes looked now. Not like the first time she wore them. Not like their newness of when he first saw her. He thought back to that night after work, drinking one evening in a seedy bar in Union Square. It was a collection of conversations, but Charlie drank alone at a small lit table big enough for two. He wanted so desperately to make a connection with someone, anyone, but the anniversary of the death of his father and the recent emergence of seeing The Cave later that morning, left him in an isolating mood... He tried to find his sense of humor that day, but he admitted the day's defeat and settled for three Sierra Nevadas instead, and a small side conversation with the barback. That is when he saw her paintings hanging on the sickly chipped burgundy walls of the bar. One painting in particular, stood out; a woman with blue hair standing outside of an old abandoned house covered with vines and graffiti. The pretty woman was leaning against the house, casually smoking a cigarette; her hand, pushing back her winded hair that fell into the corner of her eyes. In her face, a certain dreamlike sadness. The caption read -'A Girl and Her House.' That moment he wanted to know her more than anyone at that bar, and more than anyone in New York City.

Months later, when he asked her about that painting she said, "I don't like discussing my pieces. They loose their magic. Just like people...But let's just say, I think I am the house."

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"How much is that painting over there," Charlie asked the bartender. He shifted and adjusted his rags while addressing a complaint from a patron a few stools down.

"Hey, man... Sorry. What'd you say?"

"How much is 'A Girl and Her House'?... That painting over by my table." The bartender pursed his lips together in thought.

"Ha...Don't know... She doesn't give us the prices, she just comes in and hangs her work. Knows the owner. You can call her and ask...I have her card here somewhere..."

He pulled up a faded business card that looked like it'd been forgotten in the mess of the bar for years.

"Here." Charlie looked down at the card, a photograph of a pair of green eyes and an introduction.

'Chloe Kucharski. Just a Fucking Human Being.'

"Phone numbers on the back my friend."

And there, a hand written number scribbled across the entirety like a manic birthday card.

"Oh, totally forgot, I think she has a performance tonight in the back room." He pointed to the entrance of a small hallway. "I'm pretty sure it starts at nine. Just uh, keep an open mind." Charlie pocketed the card. "Hey man, you see that latest Marvel Movie?" he asked with a toss of his towel.

That night, Charlie saw her performance. He made his way down the small ominous corridor, to a dimly lit black box theatre where she stood, center stage, naked, for all to see.