May 14, 2010, 3:45AM
"Have you ever heard of the hour of the wolf? ... It's the time between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning. You can't sleep, and all you can see is the troubles and the problems and the ways that your life should've gone but didn't. All you can hear is the sound of your own heart." -Commander Susan Ivanova
Harold Lee wouldn't have known to call it that. The hour, it's said, the wolf lurks outside the door. It wasn't his folklore, and he had only a subconscious glimmer of the dual meaning it held.
Without knowing its name, he'd been living in that hour for 52 days.
There were moments when he thought he'd never want touched again for the aching reminder of what was missing. Fleeting whispers of wanting to die, or wanting his mother, wanting home, wanting smashed, wanting sex, wanting answers or wanting nothing at all. There had been a long, keening plea with the universe to set things right. The way their lives should've gone but didn't.
The sound of his own heart filled the gaps. Each beat was a stolen moment of joy, a smile, a laugh, time to make love or talk or hold each other or stand naked under a thunderstorm with a rumbling heartbeat of its own. The space between the heartpound and silence, where faith managed.
Heartbeat or no, it had been that perpetual hour.
He still lived in that hour, even now, staring at the inside of his eyelids. His thoughts ordered themselves. Silence inching toward heartpound. Tick to tock.
Harold didn't know what it was about what Scotty told him that gave him a sense of direction. Maybe it was the perspective that had most struck home to him; this, he understood on such an intimate level that he felt spider cracks across his heart at the same instant his mind had latched on to some kind of answer.
Implosion was meant to cancel out explosion, but Harold felt as though they existed in impossible tandem, like this damnable, never-ending hour that couldn't decide between night and day or nightmare and consciousness so was both at once. Limbo.
He knew this road. He knew it well enough to know that no two people travel it the same way. That whatever guidance he could carve out of his own experience, he'd still never be able to show Scotty all the potholes and stray stones. Hell, he wasn't exactly done with his winding trek, either.
Still. It was understanding, of a kind. Knowledge is power and power is change, and in the end, faith manages.
Harold Lee was awake. Awake, but not so lost any more. He felt as if Scotty had finally named the beast outside their door.
Maybe, all this time, the wolf had been lurking there to guard against it.
"Have you ever heard of the hour of the wolf? ... It's the time between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning. You can't sleep, and all you can see is the troubles and the problems and the ways that your life should've gone but didn't. All you can hear is the sound of your own heart." -Commander Susan Ivanova
Harold Lee wouldn't have known to call it that. The hour, it's said, the wolf lurks outside the door. It wasn't his folklore, and he had only a subconscious glimmer of the dual meaning it held.
Without knowing its name, he'd been living in that hour for 52 days.
There were moments when he thought he'd never want touched again for the aching reminder of what was missing. Fleeting whispers of wanting to die, or wanting his mother, wanting home, wanting smashed, wanting sex, wanting answers or wanting nothing at all. There had been a long, keening plea with the universe to set things right. The way their lives should've gone but didn't.
The sound of his own heart filled the gaps. Each beat was a stolen moment of joy, a smile, a laugh, time to make love or talk or hold each other or stand naked under a thunderstorm with a rumbling heartbeat of its own. The space between the heartpound and silence, where faith managed.
Heartbeat or no, it had been that perpetual hour.
He still lived in that hour, even now, staring at the inside of his eyelids. His thoughts ordered themselves. Silence inching toward heartpound. Tick to tock.
Harold didn't know what it was about what Scotty told him that gave him a sense of direction. Maybe it was the perspective that had most struck home to him; this, he understood on such an intimate level that he felt spider cracks across his heart at the same instant his mind had latched on to some kind of answer.
Implosion was meant to cancel out explosion, but Harold felt as though they existed in impossible tandem, like this damnable, never-ending hour that couldn't decide between night and day or nightmare and consciousness so was both at once. Limbo.
He knew this road. He knew it well enough to know that no two people travel it the same way. That whatever guidance he could carve out of his own experience, he'd still never be able to show Scotty all the potholes and stray stones. Hell, he wasn't exactly done with his winding trek, either.
Still. It was understanding, of a kind. Knowledge is power and power is change, and in the end, faith manages.
Harold Lee was awake. Awake, but not so lost any more. He felt as if Scotty had finally named the beast outside their door.
Maybe, all this time, the wolf had been lurking there to guard against it.