A Writer's Fairytale

Mary: Falling, Just Not For Him

Then they stopped right beside me. I was ready to strike at any in moment until I heard the voice “Are you alright?”

The question stunned me. Was he really just a caring person? No, my experiences taught me that there was always something more to the story, an extra chapter that was unseen and unknown to the reader. “I am fine,” I said my voice was harsh and lacked life and joy something that I noticed my voice lacked a lot of the time.

“Are you sure?” the voice sounded so caring. I wanted to believe that he was just a simple guy that really just wanted to help, but that was never the case. He bent down beside me. I wanted to punch him in the face but as long as he was doing nothing to harm me, I saw no need to harm him. I know that this logic is flawed, but I try to stay as passive as my emotions will let me.

“I am fine,” I said this as a bout of pain took over and I went to grip my throbbing knee. As my hands went to grab it, I felt him grab my hands. His hands were both scary and yet safe. There was something in the way he held my arms that said that he actually cared about me, and that was all that he cared about. “Get out of my head. I will not let this be true,” I thought. I knew better.

“Excuse me,” I finally managed to get out as the war waged on in my head. “It would be very kind of you if you would let go of my arms sir.” My words dripped with disdain. I didn’t even know the man yet my words spoke of only hate. When had I lost my faith that I had once had? When did my trust leave me? When did I become an empty shell of hate and despair? Those were questions that I didn’t even know the answer to, yet I was willing to ask them every time something happened that I was not as pleasant as I should have been.

He didn’t seem to notice that my tone only sounded biter and rude. “Do you promise not to grab your knee?”

I looked at the figure for a minute. Was this man crazy? “Why?” That one word no longer carried the offensiveness that the words that I had spoken had. This one word was cloaked in curiosity.

“Do you promise not to grab your knee?” His voice stood firm. It sounded so soothing and yet it awakened my mind further then I thought was possible.

I could see no harm in playing along for the time being. My curiosity was overwhelmingly powerful and I could not resist. “Alright sure whatever.”

“I want to hear you say I promise.” His voice was calm. I couldn’t figure him out. I wanted to, but he was something that seemed impossible to understand. He was a story that I had only started reading half way through, and I was missing some of the key details that the introduction would have given me.

I admit that comment frustrated me. I said sure was that not good enough for him? Obviously, my question was stupid the answer was no.  I took a deep breath to release the frustration that I felt building up in me. When I exhaled I was calmer. “I promise.” The second the last syllable had come out of my mouth he released my hands. My knee had begun to throb again and I could feel my hands rise toward my knee.

 “You promised.” His voice rung in my head, his voice repeating you promised. Could he really see that I was going to go for my knee or could he just sense it? I quickly discredited the latter and decided that he must have excellent eye sight in the dark, something that I had never acquired. I had terrible eye sight in the dark. I never thought that I would need it. I guess I was wrong. Then I began to feel his hands around me.

“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted. I knew that he was going to try something. I knew better. I was glad that I had kept my guard up. His hands quickly moved from around me. It felt almost like I had startled him that I was angry that he had placed his hands around me. There was a silence for several long minutes. I felt ashamed. I had no idea what I felt ashamed about, it was not me that made the choice to put my arms around some stranger, yet I felt like I had overacted. That he was just trying to help and I yelled at him for no reason.

I felt something warm around my shoulders. I hadn’t even realized that I was shivering or that I had forgotten my own coat back at the apartment after I had written my letter to Rebecca, until the warmth of something was covering me. “You looked cold,” the voice said. I was about to say thank you when the voice continued to speak “May I carry you?”

I was not angry. I figure that I should have been, but there was something so tender in his voice that anger was not a possibility. “Where do you wish to carry me to?” I asked. I was just curious. I had no real intentions of letting him carry me anywhere. I had survived this long being self-sufficient, I was not going to start to change that then. Not because some man had a sweet voice.

“Where you live, my car maybe, anywhere where I can see that your knee is ok.” His voice sounded so caring that it stunned me. It was almost not a possibility to believe in anything expect that he only truly cared. I was beginning to drift into a state where I trusted this man. A state were the labels that I had put on the world were being torn down and there was trust and respect and decency something that I could have sworn was lost long ago.   

I quickly regained my composure and replied, “That is quite alright. I will be just fine on my own. If you could just help me to my feet I will be on my way.” He did as I had asked, but I had a hard time standing and found myself leaning against him for balance.

“May I at least walk with you so you may stay on your feet?” As he said this he put his arm around my side. I wanted to brush it off, but there was a soothing aspect to his arm. 

I wanted to tell him to buzz off, but two very clear points flowed into my head. One point that stuck in my head was that there was no way that I could get back to my apartment without his help. I could barely stand on my own. My body swayed this way and that. I knew that without his grip around me I would likely fall and be stuck on the ground again.

The other point was less logical, but it still had merit from all the actions that he had portrayed since I had met him. The point was that he would follow me till I fell again. I did not think that I wanted to do this whole scene again, so I figured that I didn’t have much of a choice. “If you must,” I said, making sure that him being there, him wanting to help me was an inconvenience for me. I wanted to make it apparently clear that I had no interest in him helping me and that I would much prefer to do it myself.

I could not tell if he didn’t hear the tone of my voice or if he was just being kind. “Shall we be on our way?” I waited several seconds for him to make the first move, but we just stood there. Then in a quiet and gentle voice I heard him say “When you are ready, you may make the first move.” I realized then that he wanted me to start walking. I took my first step with the knee that I had hurt. I winced with pain the minute that I tried to step down. I must have squeezed his shoulder harder than I thought that I had. “Are you alright?” his voice said. It sounded so caring, so gentle, so loving; I wanted to know where he learned to act like this. He was too perfect. There was something wrong with him. I just had to figure out what it was. I needed to figure out his character development. I needed to figure out what made him the way he was, and what his end game was. I needed to know what would happen when the story was finished.

I was both angry and curious with his question. I was an independent woman and if I said that I could handle something then I could handle it. I didn’t need anyone to question whether I could handle something. I was strong enough to handle anything and everything. The thing that sparked my curiosity was the generosity that seemed to bathe every word. It really seemed like he cared. He must have been one of the best con-artists that I had ever heard of. The tone of his voice was enough to make me wonder if he was sincere. My mind only toyed with the idea for brief moments at a time. I never let it linger on that idea for too long. “I am just fine,” I said, taking another step then gripping his shoulder even harder.

The pain was getting worse. Every step I took the pain would seer from my knee into my hand. Every time I squeezed his shoulder, I wondered what he was planning because he took a lot of pain for it. I wasn’t rich, so if he is going to try to con me out of money, he wasn’t going to get much, but more likely he wasn’t going to get any money from me because that was not what he wanted. What he wanted I wasn’t going to give to him no matter what.

“My apartment is in that building,” I said, pointing to a large stone building. This was the first time I thought about it; I couldn’t let Rebecca see this man. I would never hear the end of it. This was the first man that I knew, other than George and my brother that made the appearance of kind and gentleness. She would never let him leave without asking for his number for me. I couldn’t let that happen.

Once we got in front of my building, the stairs became dizzying for me. To think that the pain that I had just went through was nothing compared to what was going to happen when I walked up each of those steps. I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to say thank you to him. I was prideful. I hadn’t asked for his help. I didn’t want his help, yet he forced it upon me. I knew I had to thank him however, I knew that I would never have been able to walk this far without him. “Thank you.” I paused to make sure that it had sunk in that I had said thank you. All of the disdain and hatred that I had cloaked my words in was only part of who I am. I wanted to show him that somewhere deep inside my heart and mind I was a kind person. I looked at the steps again my mind trailed to the thought of the pain that I was going to have to endure to climb them. Then after I got to the front door of the apartment building my room was on the second floor and I would have to climb those steps as well. This was going to be a long and painful walk to my apartment. I looked back at him and gave him a weak smile. “I can take it from here.”

I began to put my foot on the first step. The pain was overwhelming and my body could not take it. My knee throbbed and then buckled. My body began to fall backwards. I was sure that the ground was going to hurt. I braced myself for more pain, but I was caught. I looked over my shoulder and he was still there. I gave him a weak smile. “Nice Catch.” I was sure that my cheeks were tomatoes and I was glad that the night was shielding that fact. He said nothing, but I felt one of his hands go towards my legs. “What do you think you are doing?” I asked. My tone was nowhere near inquisitive; it just demanded an answer for what I considered a horrendous action. I knew that he wanted more and was just waiting for a moment, but of course he had had several moments that he could have done this. Why was he doing that then?

He still said nothing, his other hand supporting my back. Before I knew it, I was up in the air. “What floor is your apartment?” he asked. It was like he was paying no attention to the questions that I was demanding answers for and he was demanding his own answers.

“I am quite capable of walking up to my room on my own thank you.” I did not need some guy to take care of me. I had been doing just fine on my own. What right did he have to think that I needed his help? Had I not made it clear that I didn’t need him?

“What floor is your room on?” he asked again his voice was still calm. It was an infuriatingly calm. I was demanding him to do things. I was yelling at him and his voice remained calm and steady. I began to wonder if he could actually hear the tone that I was saying my words in. I wanted to understand why he bothered. I figured then that he must be some high-tech robot that was being tested for his abilities to help people in need even if the people were sure that they did not need his help. That was something they were going to have to fix if they were planning on putting this into mass production. Another solution that I toyed with in my mind was that he really wanted something from me, and I knew exactly what that was, but he wasn’t going to get it. That I knew for sure. That seemed to be the only thing that I knew for sure. The one that rested in my brain for the least amount of time was the strange possibility that he actually cared. That he was just a man that cared about women’s safety and was just trying to help.

“The second one, but I more than capable of taking care of myself.” As soon as I said the second one we were moving. He went up each step with a sense of carefulness. It seemed that he understood that each step we went up hurt my knee when I was tossed and he took care to make sure that didn’t happen.

We got to the second floor and my mind was a mixture of interest and despise. I was interested in him. He seemed genuinely caring and sweet and that sparked something in me that I had long since decided had died and I was glad. Something that over the years, people had slowly killed and I no longer had it. I no longer needed it. I did not need nor did I want it. It was something that I felt only destroyed a person it never helped a person before.   

Despise came for two people. I despised him because he refused to listen to me. I had told him several times that I was fine on my own, but each time I said that it was almost like he took pleasure in the fact that I was wrong. He liked the fact that I needed him. The moment that I needed a little help he was there. That annoyed me. I was not used to needing anyone and I wouldn’t have if he wasn’t so close every time that I fell or slipped up. I would have been able to fight for myself. The other person I despised was myself. I despised myself simply because I was interested in what this guy would do next. I had long before sworn off any men and had trusted that in doing so I had made the best decision for myself, but he brought back the feelings that I had given up, the feelings that I had sworn off and destroyed long ago. He had no right to try to bring them back to me, to make me feel those awful feelings. This made me furious with myself. I needed to get out of my own head and back to the reality that I had built for myself. The reality that I needed to call home. The reality that I knew was safe.

“Which number?”

The question shook me from my own head and back to reality. It shook me so hard that all I could do was answer the question. “220.” I was so gone from what was going on outside my mind that the answer was short and I had forgotten almost everything else. I went back into my mind until I heard a knocking.