Revolutionist

Everyone’s asleep finally. Or, rather, everyone else is asleep. Emerson’s still awake, but only because he rarely sleeps anyway. So he’s awake and sitting on the floor, surrounded by the sharpie murals that are his walls. The sounds of a voice no-longer alive wash over him through that distinct filter of old radio static. He’s having a hard time concentrating on the speech tonight; the lecture’s lessons are all but lost on him. The words and illustrations seem to fly off the walls and circle his head, all vying for his attention, his development of thought. For the first time in a very long time, Emerson feels suffocated in his own sanctuary.

Sighing, he stands and grabs his top hat from the post of his bed, tossing it haphazardly atop his head as he sweeps from the room and through the empty corridors. The air on the roof is still and slightly humid, ageless and Parisian. It smells dank and tastes like car exhaust. Constellations in the sky replace the writing on the wall, and the wind replaces Alan Watt’s philosophy as the soundtrack. It’s much less overwhelming as he can’t read the stars and doesn’t speak the language of the wind. He feels their words instead. The slope of the font inlaid in the starlight and the caress in the touch of the wind. He revels in the feeling for a timeless moment. There are headlights rolling along in the distance, proving that he’s not the only one awake despite the feeling of absolute seclusion. They may be awake, but still mindless marchers, the kids of the city. They carry alcohol on their breath in their speeding cars, causing a reprimanding scream from the lungs of the same wind that embraces Emerson. They may be awake, but they’re not aware.

Emerson wonders. He thinks to himself, I wonder if there are any others? Any more aware and awake likewise? An idea starts to form in his mind, and when he looks up the instructions to his plan are encrypted in the constellated sky. He reads it there and follows the steps, urged on by the wind. He almost loses his hat over the edge of the roof as he runs around, collecting starlight and weaving it, holding it together with borrowed ribbons of headlight, ties it all together with a bow of artificial illumination. An incandescent moon, as tall as Emerson himself, takes form, as powerful as fluorescent lighting and as pure as the stars. He pushes it—nudges it really—off the edge, stands back, and watches it glow in the sky.

A few shades are drawn open, a handful of the pairs of headlights turn in his direction, beaconed by the rising moon. As the minutes, hours, time passes, more and more people start coming his way. The buoy tries to set and sink repeatedly, but Emerson just stands underneath it, arm upraised as he bumps it back into the sky each time. A single word echoes in his mind, humming along the wind as the kids, the awake and aware, start scaling the brick of his home. A single word keeps his arm up, batting at his wild little moon like a dying balloon long after the feeling is gone. A single word: revolution.

Emerson jolts awake from where he’s slumped against his wall, neck bent so that it hurts to look up at Remington’s face. His friend sighs and rolls his eyes back into his skull before tossing Emerson’s hat back onto his head with a guttural noise.

“Get up,” his friend hisses, starting to pull him by the sleeve. “We’re late already.” Emerson stumbles along, catching sight of the crescent moon drawn on his wall in sharpie, thinking it wasn’t there before last night, wondering at his dream. He never dreams. He rarely sleeps, but Emerson never dreams.