He tries to stare into her eyes, her souls window; her insecurities don’t allow him. She closes her eyes to prevent him of knowing parts of the unshared past. Both stuck in electric and ethereal memories of their previous encounters. She is Madeleine. Madeleine is remembering how she felt when they both met, the sensation of their first conversation over ten years ago. They spoke of space, the universe, their existence and the minimal and rare probability of their encounter. You see, Michael was six years older than her. He sat at a 24-hour diner at four in the morning, he wrote a lot about the people he witnessed. He wrote about her, Madeleine, she was a waitress. It was unusual, almost impossible, for him to feel any sort of attachment to people. He was an outcast; kept to himself most of the time. He was superior in his mind – regardless of his monetary poverty. He left her a note, it read, “The things we don’t do are the ones that haunt us…” A tear breached her eye and slowly crawled down her cheek and she felt a numbing sensation in her brain. For some reason, this spoke to her at a, for lack of a better word, deep level. This was the moment she fell in love with a toxic and ghostly man.
A year passed, Madeleine carried the note in her wallet. Michael stepped into the diner once again, finally, he had gone to Italy for the year to work. He’d come to a point in his life where he wasn’t struggling to eat that day, but also a point of realization that he wasn’t all that he thought he was.
She saw him in a different light, regardless of her attraction to him, she forced herself to stay away. Madeleine went to the restroom to talk some sense into herself, she stared right into her own eyes, took the note out of her wallet, “The things we don’t do are the ones that-“ then she whispered, “haunt us”. Walked out of the restroom immediately, walked toward where he sat, and gone he was. The note was never more right.
Ten years passed in the blink of an eye. Madeleine had lived a very full life of excitement and unpredictability since. Lived by the words of the note – though only 12 words in length, it was her bible. Michael on the other hand forgot of all of this. That one moment of attachment 11 years prior sparked an emotion he had never felt before, he sought endlessly to relive that feeling at the extent of that day. He began getting attached to any other woman he met that gave him the slightest of attention. He was never able to replicate it and he fell into a few years of depression. Their views on life were altered forever due to their encounter, if for the better, no one can really say, for the better is subjective and has no true definition.
Through the passage of every second, an un-countable number of actions, decisions, and reactions are done. As if every human being is in a room alone, five doors in front of them, by walking through a door you know you can’t walk back, always ending up in another room with more doors. Life is just an infinite loop of acting, deciding, reacting. It happens several times a second to everyone, all humans, animals, plants, and even technology now. doing you open a door and enter more options – a future – if you don’t do anything you will find yourself in the exact same spot you were before.
They ran into each other once more at a friend’s art gathering. They were presenting contemporary sculptures of abstract humanity. Madeleine stared and sipped one a glass of champagne, stared at the people, partially judging them and their pretentious and superficial conversations. All of them trying to one-up one another. As she was looking around, these two people talking in front of her wearing un-ironed suites separated from each other. Slowly opening a gap between their heads, she saw him. Michael was standing there, his eyes already locked with hers – for a second, the world came to a slow stop, the jazz music came to a fade, conversations were nothing more than muffled white noise, the lights above him got brighter whilst everything else got darker, a vignette surrounding him. There were no more doors other than one, at the end of it stood Michael.
They both came to an agreement without even saying a word, they headed toward to patio outside, not speaking still. They stood a few feet apart and took a moment to stare at each other, their eyes both lite up. Madeleine took the first step, then another… continued to walk forward slowly, Michael looking right at her as she walked. She stood centimeters from him, she stood for several seconds. His hand slowly lifted, starting from her waist and toward her neck. Madeline felt a heat in his hand, it numbed her entire body. She was in a sensual heaven, she closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and this was the happiest and most mesmerizing moment in their entire lives. A feeling compared to no other, the feeling of pure love.