Author's note: This story was written in response to a writing prompt I found online. The challenge: write a short story, with a real plot and human characters, without using a single line of dialogue.
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My best friend Adam is dead.
I suppose that's a terrible way to begin a story. Surely, you'd prefer to hear the events leading up to his death, then be taken by surprise. You don't know Adam, at least not like I did, but you still want to have your heart ripped out at the end, when I tell you that he was suddenly no more. Indeed, were I the one hearing the story, and you telling it, that's the way I'd probably prefer it too.
I'm sorry to have disappointed you.
Strangely, though, this seems a better way to start. There would be no need to meander through what came prior as though this were not the way it ended. It would be unfair to you if I tried to catch you off guard with something so somberly morbid as death. Odd, isn't it, how things such as that make for such great stories?
But you were not there; I was. You do not know that the story begins, not during the time leading to Adam's death, but afterwards. Had I not told you beforehand, you would have let the story end there, and I would be left where I was before. My mind has been burdened greatly since those occurences. I will explain why in due time.
First, though, you must know a bit about Adam and me. I cannot easily describe how we felt about each other. No, my feelings were not indescribably strong. Quite the contrary, actually. I never did feel much attachment to people. They are impossible to deal with, really. This is because they feel. The way they go on, wearing their hearts on their sleeves, you'd think emotions had some effect or other on their lives.
I knew better. I knew that feelings do nothing for you-- nothing but confuse you. I know that feeling anger does not impose wrath upon others, no matter how large the fire is inside you. I know that sadness will not make a problem lighter, and the multitudes of wasted tears do naught but hideously distort one's face. I know that laughter does not make a joke funnier, or a dance faster.
I never felt petty emotions worth my attention, let alone my time. So I didn't have them. It was a choice on my part, and one to which I found easy to commit.
Then came the day that I met Adam. If I could remember the time and whereabouts at which I first met him, I'd tell you. But I can't. It would do me no good to remember, and it never hurt me not to know. Those are two things a person can do without, should they be willing to give them away-- emotions and memories.
Although the concrete facts of that day are insignificant, there remains something that I do remember. And that was the feelings. The emotions. I don't feel them often, so I know it when I do. Adam spoke to me, and I responded, as I do with all others. But, uncannily, this time was different. I can scarcely remember anything but tiny bits and scraps of the conversations Adam and I would have, but I do know that they were like none I'd ever had before.
Perhaps it was the way he talked, or perhaps it was the topics of the conversations we had. Either way, whenever I talked to Adam, I felt. He would tell a joke, and I'd feel myself smiling, sometimes not even knowing what was funny. He would laden upon my shoulders the yoke that was the stories of troubles in his life, and I gave him empathy in return.
These new feelings, these strange senses that I'd never before experienced, were consuming me. Every time I'd talk to Adam I'd feel them. They began to follow me, too, to the other realms of my life. I would go to graveyards and read epitaphs and feel, somewhere that I couldn't control, a twinge of pity. I would see couples sitting on benches, gazing lovingly into each others' eyes, and my mood would suddenly lighten, as though this would somehow have a positive influence on my own life.
