Exit to the Right ??

Matis had haunted the tip of St. Paul's for hours like a good ghost, the Thames' sluggish path through the city always in view. It cut like an iron band through an anthill, anchoring the bustling activity left and right. Matis had hoped that the sight of the steadily flowing water would do the same for him. Waiting for the effect to set in, he had watched tourists come and go, their tidal range determined by the groups' slowest on the myriad of steps up there.

He had sat there until a white-haired man with a slight German accent had asked him curtly, if he could perhaps move a bit so he could pass by him. At first, Matis had been too flabbergasted to do anything but get up and press into the wall behind him. When he had finally turned, and had scanned the people around him, he couldn't tell which one of them the man had been. But for the first time in a long while Matis really looked at other people, without caring that most of them would never see him.

The truth was, nothing had changed in this respect. When still alive, most of these people wouldn't have noticed him, even though he would have stood in plain sight in their midst. It had not mattered, since the people important to him had known of his existence. And yet, he had cared for these people and their future, more than he had cared for himself. Still a breakable human, he had known about his weaknesses, and yet he had gone out and had given it his best.

He could still choose to be that man, even as a ghost. Or especially as a ghost. Where humans saw a clean-cut double homicide, he knew of the danger that was brewing in its wake. Should he waste the chance because of decisions in the past, he now wished he hadn't made that way? Should he waste it because he knew that he would fail alone?

Dying had changed one thing fundamentally. He had to learn again how to trust. Still alive, he had never thought much about his decisions where he put his trust. He hadn't been gullible, didn't trust everyone. Very few actually. But it had come natural to him, one look and he had known whether to trust or not.

It hadn't been until he was granted a peek into Perdita's head, who lacks the ability to read people, that he had understood that trust was a choice. And that this choice determined whether and how you participated in life.

Matis had come to admire Perdita's bravery to trust herself no matter how defective others told her she was or how defective she perceived herself. She knew she could mess up, always calculated with the possibility that she would. The burned child she was, she knew that the same was true for others. And yet, deaf to the world of nonverbal communication, the basis of human relations, she went out into the world and extended trust. Initially. Then, applying logic to her experiences, she had clear lines of what was acceptable, and what would revoke her trust.

What if Matis applied those standards to himself and to those he could choose from to group up with? He had a lot to repent for. Others had made mistakes. Most of the things that had piled up – and that accounted as facts, he knew as true – were forgivable. With some the evaluation was harder than with others. Matis would always forgive choices made from a place of love. A few things however, could never be justified in his opinion and their reasons made them character defining.

When he had worked all that out, the picture in his mind focused and with it his vision and sense for the world returned. He noticed an envelope in his hand of which he wasn't sure how long he had already held it. When he opened it, and pulled an invitation to a dinner from it that had been issued by his parents, his bracelets reacted with the gold of the initials. Threads crossed and created a web that sank into his skin. It was gone as soon as he took the paper in his other hand.

With a shrug, he tore the envelope in halves, pocketed the parts and moved to the stairs that would lead him down. On the way, he pulled his cellphone out. He knew what his next step had to be.