Hero

He sits in a chair, alone semi-darkness, and pretends to be a hero. He has to pretend—he has to—because in this room, there is only one hero, and it isn’t him. The hero is something else, something undefined: a thing or a concept, something—but not him. He is the guardian, and the hero is compassionless, emotionless; so he sits and reads.
Every once in awhile a voice cries out: “No, No, Please!” He ignores it, because there is nothing else to do. He turns a page in his magazine and stares at an advertisement for Vegas, Sin City, Paradise. Heaven and Hell wrapped up into one, represented on a glossy page by a smiling woman in a bikini that is barely there. He imagines what it would feel like to be on a beach somewhere, sweating in the sun with a cold beer in hand. Listening to the crashing of the waves and watching the clouds roll by. There is no one else on the beach, not in his fantasy—not even the smiling woman. He tries to place her there and fails: she is as out of place in his fantasy as he would be on a beach. She is probably called Trixie, though never by her parents. Oh, no. And she probably has brown hair.
“No, No, Please!” He sighs, turning the page. They are louder today, moaning and roaring over the waves in his head, drowning them out just as they are drowning. The pain will overwhelm them, or insanity will, but there are no heroes here. Just him in his chair, in the darkness, with a magazine. They cry out to him, and he knows that they are pretending that he is a hero, too. How can they think that, when day after day he doesn’t save them? And yet they cling to frail hope, to the miserable idea of salvation—and he turns a page and clings to the waves, to the beach in his head. But it is only ever in his head. And they cry.
“Please, Please No!”
“Shut up!” He cries, throwing the magazine resolutely to the floor. “Shut up!” He moves to the doorway and leans in, standing his ground and refusing to succumb to the darkness of the Other Room.
“No one can hear you!” The cries fall away into whispers and moans. He leans away and they seem to grow louder: they are meant for his ears alone.
“Please, please. You have to save us.”
“Do you know who I am?” He shouts, his voice conquering the others. “Do you know? Do you know?” He breathes deeply and leans away again, afraid of the darkness. He thinks of the beach, the sunlight and the beads of sweat that are rolling down his neck, his back, the palms of his hands. “I’m not a hero,” he tells them, breaking the fantasy, the pretend.
“But you could be.” They whisper back, and before he realizes it, he is walking forward, wading into the darkness and reaching out with his hands.
“You don’t understand. Please, you don’t understand,” he begs them, as his hands grasp at the air, searching for something—someone—to hold. “There is only one hero here, and it isn’t me.”
His fingers graze the cold stone of a wall and he panics, withdrawing his hands. He turns in a circle but the darkness is overwhelming, and he can no longer see the door. Lost it, he has lost the door.
“Please,” he whispers, “please, no.” But there is no one to answer him, now. He is alone in the darkness, searching for a hero. But there is only one hero here, and the hero is Death. And he cries, his voice undulating like the waves at high tide, and he is drowning, pain and desperation breaking over him in waves.
“Please, please no.”