I assumed that the call for help would have been answered.

I was tempted to leave it longer.

I imagined the gentle fingertips, which typed that keyboard, gently running along my back, pressing indents like light feet in sand. Footprints which time could blow clear as if our actions leave no mark. But my fingers hesitated. Help comes at a price.

Everyday at intervals I would return. I took care not to favourite her. My wife questions, you see.

Carol47. I had seen her name before. I had watched it, noted the fashion with which she had addressed the problems of others. She had a humble humanity of language, which I had come to admire. A defacing sense of humour that I had come to cherish. A knowledge that was grounding. And a blinding self awareness.

When I finally answered I wrote “yes” .

Her answer came, after a brief pause, letters falling out of the screen to land silently on the pillows I had placed there. “Thank you.” It was written softly, on an out breath, a sigh. Never has a word so unequivocally aroused a man. I felt myself blush and checked that my wife was working down stairs. When I answered I tried not to trip over my fingers as they ran along the keyboard and I made sure that within that sentence there was nothing to give myself away. I kept it to the point.

It was a question of memory. It turned out.

I suggested checking each file. Sometimes a file accumulates baggage and can weigh the process down. I explained that it is useful to think about a balloon. If a balloon has too much ballast then it will not float.
The reply came back that it had been tried.

Ah, I thought, I am not the first explorer to this shore.

“No, I was not,” came the reply.

Only once before have I ever had a telepathic conversation. That was with a girl of extraordinary beauty. Fond memories still haunt me of that so exemplary love affair, the sand, the sea, the wordless feeling and finally the violent schism of parting.

So, I suggested, that I was taken through the problem.

“Alright,” she wrote, “I haven’t been able to function properly. I haven’t been able to see that far back. I stopped because I could not work out who I was, because I had no recollection. Not even of recent things. So I got to thinking about memory. First of all I went back in time. I tried to imagine my great, great grand-parents, people of whom I have absolutely no memory, not even a photograph. I imagined that my great, great grand-father had an enormous beard and a stern forehead, that life had made him so. And that my great, great grandmother was a kindly women with a pleasant plump demeanour, a little decomposed perhaps from nursing her husband’s rather haunted disposition. I could picture them wearing black. Sometimes my great, great grandfather had a moustache with his beard, and sometimes not. To imagine them I had unravelled my genes, like a scroll - but I found my genes indecipherable, so instead I set to meditating. I breathed very deeply. I discovered that meditation was pointless because it demanded too much practise. It was then that I considered that the best approach was to think about myself. That perhaps my ancestors were no different to me. That we were all manifestations of the same thing. A mutation of the same note. I found this thought disturbing.”

“Why, I asked?”

“Because to think of history as being flawed is distressing.”

“But it is.”

“I know.”

“We are from where we are, I said”.

“Yes, but, as far as we are concerned, where is not a place”.

“No”.

“It is not a time either.”

“Time has a habit of rushing ahead of us,” I said, noticing that the evening had run away with itself, “I have to start early tomorrow.”

“Please, I don’t want to be alone.”

Of course I wanted to stay, of course, the feeling was burning inside of me, the ember had been glowing for a week and now the flames had taken hold. I was looking at my screen sweating, the anticipation of what ever might take hold me filling me with a jack in a box energy. I got up and paced, my hands stretched and locked. I walked away, I came back.

“Are you alone,” I asked?

“Yes.”

“There is no-one there with you now.”

“No.”

“You don’t have anyone you can call?”

“No.”

“Surely, you have a mother, a father, perhaps a brother, somewhere in the world a sister.”

“No.” And then she hit the nail on the head. “I have thought about dying, putting a full stop to my line. I have thought about it great deal these past few weeks. I don’t think on it as something terrifying but rather calming.”

No, no, not death, not now. Think, think, what words could hold her back. Clearly, to consider the past was distressing, to consider a family pointless, so what of the future, what of a world encompassing now, our great spiritual raison d’etre and so my words fell off my stupid philosophical tongue - “What do you imagine after this life?”

“I imagine nothing.”

“And you don’t find this distressing.”

“No. I find it pleasing. This floating darkness, this end of ends, this great finishing. I find it a relief.”

“But what if you are wrong?”

“Than there will be nothing but torment.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know of no other existence.”

What I thought, what? Should I walk closely to the edge with her, watch the sea break against the rocks and give her a gentle...

“Yes,” she replied, stabbing the word with her fingers. Emphasising each letter so that I knew that she had heard me.

“Do you want for me to hold your hand?”

“Through the whole process.”

“Until your final breath.”

“Until it is done.”

I could feel my pulse miss a beat. I could feel the breath in her chest rise and fall, the panic spur the pace, the last moment of anguish spread a contortion of fear, before that last fire cracker shudder of death, and to do this alone, with no-one, with no soul to care. All I had wanted was an erotic touch, a brief fling, no strings, a little fleeting something for my self and now I was playing a role for which I felt unequipped, profoundly out of my depth. “Alright. Alright. But first we must clear whatever history there is between us. Not one word must remain. We must blot it out. Do you understand? I cannot help you unless you agree to do this, not one letter can remain.”

“There is nothing between us.”

“No trace of our communication?”

“No dots, no ats.”

“And you have communicated with no-one regarding this desire.”

“Only one other.”

“And who was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“And how did they react?”

“By ending the conversation. People are, on the whole, unkind.”

“I am here to help you.”

“Yes, you, you alone are considerate.”

Tenderness creeps into life at the oddest moments. I chivvied her along by describing how I would administer to her body, that in life affection had been amiss, but in death I would ensure that her body was found in dignity, that I would anonymously contact the authorities, that I would travel whatever distance, at whatever expense, to ensure that her burial-

“I wish to be cremated. I want nothing more to remain of me. I want to be found when it is time for me to be found - no sooner. If nothing remains of me but bone meal then I shall be satisfied.”

“But you will allow me to attend to you figuratively?”

“When I am dead it will mean nothing.”

“No, that is not true, you have lived, something of you will live on.”

“No, there must be nothing of me. Nothing.”

I did not answer for a while. I could not bring myself to speak. Her words struck me with a crushing sadness. To live and yet, not have lived. “You must allow me to breath your last breath. I must be entrusted with this. It is rare thing to breath one’s last.”

“Do you believe it will give you special powers?”

“Like the taking of head?”

“Like a trophy, yes.”

“I’m not sure that I am so primitive. I mean, that to be here now, in front of this machine, with you in there, as you undo the bonds that trap you to this earth, is… well who can claim to be witness to such an event. I believe this will be an all time first. Ordinarily I would proclaim the event worldwide,” I joked. I could feel the colour rise in me, my forehead was burning. Jesus, all I had wanted was a chat-room affair.
“I wish to pierce my breast with a blade, to murder my heart.”

How does one answer such a cataclysmic statement, with hope, with spirit, with care, with tender whispered words? But instead, “do you have a knife,” fell out of me and clattered on the floor.

“I have a very sharp skewer?”

“You can break a potato skin with a skewer but have you considered of your ribs? A thin blade might not be up to the job.”

“I need something thin, that will nip painlessly through my skin.”

“If you’re scared of the pain you could try-” I heard my wife downstairs, she would be coming to bed, she might knock on my door and ask if I would like to follow her. The possibility sent me into a panic. She would sense in my voice some tremor with which she would assume some carnal deceit, the bestiality of her, that here now I was experiencing a great computerised calamity and she would cast this moment to the depths, no, no - “You must do it now. Now, I say. A minute more and I might be called away, I might be taken from your side, I might be forced to abandon you.”

And without a word it was done. Without a word. Her head must have fallen forward, for her keyboard let out a yelp from the force of the blow and I knew that she was...

A silence fell upon me. My fingers hovered above the keyboard. I could feel her presence between the plastic and my skin, her spirit slowly defusing into the atmosphere. Carol47, defusing until gone.

I heard the footsteps of my wife ascend the stairs, her slippers brush the carpet. The light snap on in the bedroom, the tap run, her electric toothbrush whir. I heard her cough as she urinated. I heard the toilet flush, the tap retch and I listened to her undress.

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