Author: William Torphy
I’ve always heard voices, whispers actually, from another dimension. I exist between worlds, suspended between the quotidian concerns of one and the timeless aspirations of another. People call me distracted, ditsy, and sometimes even disturbed. They have no idea of the chorus that sings to me every day, multitudinous tales of hardship and celebration, disappointment and love.
They are usually women, consoling voices of mutual understanding whispering their secrets. But men sometimes speak sympathetic words too, loving the way humans should love without guile or greed.
I speak with the dead, not because they don’t talk back, but because they listen. There’s a fundamental difference between these two qualities. I always have an earful to tell them, usually about the others who are dead.
I remember my father only dimly He was a pilot chosen to be an astronaut who left my mother and me behind to explore the stars. He could have refused to go if he loved us more than emptiness. He would argue about that, I suppose. Not about loving us, but about the emptiness.
“There are billions of stars and planets up there,” he told me when I was seven, days before he went into space. “Worlds filled with mystery. Everything that is, except for this tiny ant globe is up there.” I guess he loved that world more than us, because he never returned.
My head is filled with the voices of mystery, never mind space. I’ve attempted to call in my father from the farthest reaches, but he has not yet come through. I have so much to tell him of our little world, the one he so willingly deserted. I will tell him about those with whom I speak, voices from some space other than his outer. I will inform him of my mother and the others who have passed into the infinity. Whether dead or alive, with his silver ship forever circling in space, I will hear from him someday. He will call to me from some dark corner of the universe, telling me tales of all he’s seen, as I remind him of all he’s missed down here.