Untitled

Frank could feel a bead of sweat making its way down the side of his face. Embarassing.
But hey, he thought, I’m allowed to be nervous. This was, after all, his last call ceremony.
With each pendant that didn’t click into place with his, he got closer and closer to locking eyes and pendants with his soulmate.
God, he just hopped it wasn’t a girl. He may have never gone on a date in his life, and he may have done nothing more than fantasized about the world of sex and kissing, but he sure as hell knew what he liked. He sure as hell knew he didn’t like girls.
The longer he sat in that chair, torso lent forward at an awkward angle, the more his neck started to ache. By the time the line of people was halfway dispersed, he started to feel like he couldn’t possibly sit still any longer. He needed to move, needed to talk, needed to play something on his guitar. He was desperate, shaking with the need to take all of this nervous energy and invest it into something other than sitting in a chair, holding out his pendant for the people in front of him to take their turns with.
He didn’t grow worried until there were about fifty people left.
Where the hell was his fucking soulmate? These were literally the last fifty people left of the group of people that could possibly be his soulmate, and none of them looked promising. Not to mention, a majority of them were females. God, he was going to be so royally pissed if he got a fucking girl!
Time ticked, and it started to feel like even the audience was shaking, buzzing with the anticipation of seeing Frank lock pendants with that one person, finally, and for the first time, look into the eyes of who he would be spending the rest of his life with.
Then, the line dwindled down to ten nervous people. God, the universe is really cutting this one close, Frank thought.
Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
One person left, oh god, one person left. Oh god, oh god, this is it, this is my soulmate. It’s a fucking girl, goddamn it, what the fuck?
Frank held out his pendant dutifully, looking uncertainly into the eyes of the girl, who couldn’t have been a day over eighteen. This is strange, he thought, I don’t feel it. I’m supposed to feel it. Why the fuck don’t I feel it? Why the fucking hell don’t I feel it?
Not a soul breathed as their pendants touched together.
They moved, scraped against each other, and the two soulmates’ eyes looked down to see how Frank’s jagged edges did anything but welcome her soft curves.
The two soulmates weren’t soulmates.
Frank’s eyes went wide, and he yanked his pendant away, sitting up straight and craning his neck to the side desperately to see who could possibly be standing behind this girl.
But there was no one.
There was no one left. She’d been the last one.
Frank’s last call ceremony was over. And that was it. That was Frank's last chance. And it had come and gone. By some breach of the normal order of things, Frank had been fated to live alone for the rest of his life.

“It’s okay, dear.” Frank felt his mother’s hand over his shoulder, but he couldn’t bring himself to reciprocate the display of affection. He couldn’t even bring himself to open his eyes or tear his head off of the inside of the window. He felt like shit. He felt like absolute, utter shit.
He couldn’t believe this. Literally could not believe it. He’d tried every person on the island within five years of his age, tens of thousands of them, over the past two years. The number made Frank’s head spin. There were that many people out there, and none of them were for him. None of them made his heart thud in the way it was supposed to.
He was twenty-one.
Fucking twenty-one.
You were supposed to find your soulmate before the age of eighteen.
Was there something wrong with him? Had he driven his soulmate away? Had his soulmate died? Oh god, what if my soulmate died? Frank hated this.
He was so sure that he’d be leaving that fucking place today with someone’s hand locked in his, he was so positive that he’d leave that place with a grin that he just couldn’t lose.
He was so certain, so absolutely sure that he’d meet that person he’d been waiting for, searching for for four fucking years. He thought his loneliness would be coming to an end today. He thought all of the grief and depression and bullying and shit he’d endured all throughout high school and the years after graduation would finally pay off when he met the one person who would accept him, would give him a fucking home.
But he was leaving in the passenger’s seat of his mom’s car, and he felt no better than he had before. He felt worse. He felt like he was defective.
Frank thought that the nasty kids from high school must’ve been right. He really was that weird, he really was that fucking unappealing, that fucking unattractive, that he wouldn’t even have a soulmate.
He was so far gone that even nature’s laws didn’t apply to him. That the system that hadn’t once failed had actually failed him.
He was just that disgusting.

Frank was really, really glad he’d finally passed the legal age of drinking last month because the last thing he wanted to do was to attempt to mooch alcohol off of the sketchy few customers that walked out of the liquor store at nearly midnight.
He was also really, really glad that the door marked RAY TORO: RECORDKEEPER was only a block down from the liquor store.
The recordkeeping business was one that had been in the Toro family for generations. Most days, Frank hated that Ray’s dad had gone and died, leaving the business to his son, because it kept Ray from keeping Frank company and giving him much needed attention. But on this night, Frank felt a small appreciation for the family business because most people weren’t allowed to just look through all of the records ever taken on the island. Most people were only permitted to look through the public records that had been released by the government. Ray, on the other hand, was one of the few outside of the government that had access to all those records. He’d definitely taken an oath to never reveal them to anyone outside of his family, but fuck it, Frank figured, it’s worth a shot.
The bell on the door chimed loudly as Frank pulled it open, alerting Ray to his presence.
There was some rustling around that could be heard coming from the backroom, and then Ray appeared through the little door, a surprised look on his face. He usually didn’t get visitors at this time of night and he was probably about to head home. “Frank? What are you doing here?”
Frank wondered for a moment if he should cut right to the point or if he should butter Ray up a little bit first.
He shrugged, “Just stopping by, I guess. I had my last call ceremony today.”
Ray’s eyes widened, and Frank knew he must’ve already heard about what happened. He was, after all, the recordkeeper. He’d probably been putting the data in the computer as Frank had been getting into his mother’s car.
“Yeah, uh. Sorry I couldn’t make it, dude.”
Frank shrugged again, “I know you’re busy.”
Silence fell, and Frank knew that Ray was just searching for something to say. He got like this when something bad happened. He always wanted to say the right thing but never really knew what the right thing was. He didn’t realize that Frank didn’t need to hear the right thing, really. What Frank wanted was for someone to care about his issues, and Ray already had that covered. “I, uh... heard what happened.” Ray nodded somberly, his lively hair bouncing around his head. “Really sorry, man.”
“Yeah, well...” Frank pretended to not be too affected by the day’s events. “I was wondering if you’d let me...”
A knowing look appearing on his face, Ray sighed, “Look through the records?”
Frank looked up at Ray for the first time since he’d made his entrance. “Yeah.”
Ray shook his head, “You know I can’t let you do that, man. I took an oath.”
There was a strange feeling creeping up the insides of Frank’s body. Like bugs crawling up the walls of his skin from his toes, slowly making their way toward his throat. He felt like he was about to break into hysterics. Like he was so desperate, like he’d been waiting for so long, that he was finally about to step over the edge into insanity if he didn’t find that one person, that one person he’d longed for and dreamed about. That person without a face, without a real identity who was destined to make Frank feel something other than loneliness for the first time since he turned thirteen.
“I know, but... I’m desperate.” His throat felt tight and he couldn’t look Ray in the eye because he was afraid he was about to cry. “I mean... I’ve met everyone in my age group, how is it even possible...?”
Ray made an attempt to offer some kind of hope, “Maybe you’re one of those late couples.”
Frank shook his head, beginning to grow angry with Ray. “The latest a couple has ever met was two years late, at the age of twenty, Ray. I looked it up when I got home. Unless the full records have a couple that met later, or another person my age who hasn’t found their soulmate... I don’t have one.” There were tears forming in Frank’s eyes, but he didn’t really care at this point. He was desperate, he was a mess. Why hide it? “And god, I’m so lonely! I always have been! And if I really don’t have a soulmate, well...” His voice cracked, and his sweaty hands were shaking, “I don’t see the point in not killing myself.”
Frank hated himself for saying that because it wasn’t completely, one-hundred-percent true. Sure, Frank felt kind of suicidal at times and sure, he’d actually attempted to kill himself once or twice, but it wasn’t like he was constantly ready to take a knife to his own throat. He didn’t walk around constantly wanting to die like some people did. But maybe if he made it seem like he did, Ray would cave. Ray was anything but heartless. He’d always been the first one to care when Frank felt sad. He may have like to be seen as a cool rock dude who played mad guitar, but really, he was just a soft, caring fuzzball. Frank always imagined that his fluffy, bouncing hair reflected what he looked like on the inside.
“Frank...” Ray’s voice was heavier, lower now, having heard Frank’s confession. “You’ve got shit to live for, man, I know you do.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans. Frank knew that he was close to being swayed. Frank knew Ray had a soft spot for him, his childhood best friend. “You’ve always wanted to be in a band. There’s so much shit you know you want to do before you die. And, I mean, you love your mom. You wouldn’t do that to her, man. You can’t.”
Frank finally looked up into Ray’s eyes, taking in a long breath. “I love my mom but that doesn’t mean I want to live with her for the rest of my life. Doesn’t mean I want to live alone for the rest of my life, either.”
Ray sighed again, visibly wracking his mind for something, anything to say. His voice was uncertain and Frank could tell that he was running low when he came up with, “You could move in with me and Christa... for a while... I guess...” Ray didn’t want Frank to move in with his wife and him. Ray really, really didn’t want that, but Frank knew that if he was really that desperate to move out of his mom’s house and to not live alone, Ray would let him.
Frank made an attempt at something like a smile, “Thanks, Ray, but I’ll spare you two the trouble.”
Ray sighed yet again, and Frank could see his own argument slipping right through his hands. “Look, I gotta get home. Christa’s making a late dinner and she’ll be annoyed if I let it get cold.”
This time, Frank’s small smile wasn’t forced, “She really has you whipped.”
Ray was trying really hard to hide his smile, “Yeah, that’s what everyone tells me. Can’t say I really mind, though.” He shook his head, ‘fro moving along as if it had a mind of its own. “I’ll give you the key to the place, okay?” Pausing for a moment, Ray grabbed from the counter a pack of sticky notes and a pen, scribbling down a username and password before handing it to Frank. “Burn this when you’re done, and be sure to lock the front and back door. Don’t let anyone see you leaving.” His voice was stern and Frank thought that he was about to go weak at the knees because of how much he loved Ray Toro in that moment. “I swear to god, Frank, if you mess anything up, break anything, get me in any kind of trouble, whatever... I’ll cut your fucking balls off, okay?” Even through his unpleasant threat, Frank was still momentarily in love with Ray.
Frank jumped over the counter and pulled the guy into a tight hug, gushing to him a desperate thanks before whizzing past him into the back room where Ray’s computer could be found.

By three AM, Frank’s eyes were burning from the light of the screen in front of him and his entire body was aching from being stationary in that uncomfortable computer chair for three whole hours.
He felt worse off than he had when he’d left his house to head downtown for beer and to see Ray. Searching the records really, really wasn’t helping his mental state. The only people he could find on record that had ever not met their soulmate were people whose soulmates were dead. And when your soulmate was dead, well... you would be dead soon, too. That’s how the universe works. One soulmate dies, the other dies soon after, if not at the same time.
Frank felt as if he sunk lower and lower into the ground with every file he came across, announcing that so-and-so couldn’t find their soulmate and then so-and-so turned up murdered in their own bedroom or so-and-so died in a biking accident or so-and-so developed a terminal illness. The only reasonable explanation to Frank’s problem here was that his soulmate was dead.
And that he would be soon, too.
So, Frank started searching through a different set of files.
He started searching through recent obituaries.
Frank looked through the pictures of the poor 16-26-year-olds that had died over the past year or so. He wasn’t really sure if the connection could be felt by seeing a simple picture, but he hoped that it worked like that. Otherwise he’d never know who he was meant to be with.
And even if that person was dead and even if he was about to be dead soon, he still wanted a face, still needed a smile and some eyes to tack on to the faceless body that kept him company in his dreams. Maybe he only had a few dreams left in him, only a few more nights to live. And maybe he didn’t have any more nights to live. But he was sure that having a face would at least give him some peace of mind. He couldn’t stand the thought of dying without a face in his mind.
But when he’d exhausted the recent obituaries in his age range, he was still left empty, without a face or a connection. He was shaking, sweaty, near crying once again.
He was doomed to die within the next month, he was sure of it. He was doomed to die alone.
With shaking fingers, Frank typed in one last attempt to find some sort of loophole, some sort of salvation programmed into the computer.
Romantic love outside of soulmates was what he’d searched, and he could feel the back of his neck prickling as he clicked on the little search button. He knew that it was illegal, he knew you’d be damned, cast out of society if you took part in romantic love outside of who you were destined to be with.
But at this point, all of his desires to be socially accepted were in the back of his mind, far out of reach, and all he wanted was some sort of comfort. He wanted the computer to tell him that he could find love, real, passionate love, outside of the person he was meant to be with.
Frank held his breath as the computer loaded the search results, and when they popped up, he continued to hold his breath for a few more seconds. He released a bit as he clicked automatically on the first result, a large file titled Out of Bounds Scandal of 1976.

The next morning, Frank woke up late and called in to work sick. Bob could see through his bullshit, Frank knew that, but Frank also knew that even Bob wasn’t heartless enough to not feel bad that Frank had been so royally screwed over by the universe.
With at least six hours of sleep in him, Frank’s head was a bit clearer than it had been when he locked up the recordkeeping building. It wasn’t until he’d woken up around ten AM and layed around for a few minutes that he finally decided that trying to find some sort of romantic relationship outside of his probably dead soulmate wouldn’t be a wise choice.
That file he’d opened, the Out of Bounds Scandal of 1976 file, had scarred his mind. Apparently, back in ‘76, when Frank’s was nothing but an idea and his parents were just getting married, there had been this huge scandal involving a woman and a man who were having a love affair with each other, even though their pendants didn’t fit together. They were caught by the man’s wife and she’d exposed them to the public eye as revenge for him cheating on her.
Unbeknownst to her, this had been the biggest mistake she would ever make. The government got involved, and, well, long story short, the man ended up being executed. Which, of course, meant that his soulmate, his wife, died also.
The woman was scheduled to be executed three days after her illegal lover had died, but due to undocumented reasons, the government never ended her life.
Frank didn’t care that the woman had gotten away with her life; all he cared about was that the man was executed by the government for stepping out of bounds.
Frank didn’t plan to die by the hand of a fucking executioner. He planned to die on his own terms, or at least by accident. He wouldn’t be killed by the state; no fucking way.
There was a knock on Frank’s bedroom door and without waiting for a reply, Frank’s mom stuck her head just inside of the door. She smiled warmly when she saw him awake and then pushed the door open further, carrying a plate that made Frank’s mouth water even though he couldn’t even see what was on it.
“Hey, hun.” She greeted, setting the plate of pancakes and bacon down gently on his lap. Frank grinned at her, muttering a thanks before immediately beginning to stuff his face with delicious pancake. “Dad said he heard you calling in sick. You feeling okay?”
Frank nodded, chewing down a bite that had been much too big for his mouth. “I’ll be fine, mom. Thanks.”
She sighed, staring down at her son and nodding, “I know you’re probably sad, but try to feel better, okay?” She placed a gentle hand in his hair, pushing it this way and that until it resembled something that didn’t make Frank look like a bird had made its’ home on his head.
“Okay.” Frank mumbled around a mouthful of bacon. His mom started to turn around to leave but before she reached the door, Frank swallowed and caught her attention, “Hey, mom?”
She turned to look over her shoulder expectantly.
“You know he’s probably dead, right?”
Blinking, Frank’s mom turned the rest of her body to face her son. Her face had suddenly gone a shade paler. “Who?”
“My soulmate.”
Frank’s mom blinked again, and swallowed, shaking her head, “You know you can’t always predict the gender of your soulmate, Frank.” She’d completely side-stepped the real subject Frank was trying to pry at. He rolled his eyes even though he didn’t really feel in the mood for giving his mom the attitude that he never outgrew after his teenage years.
“Whatever. They could be dead. They’re probably dead.”
After taking in a long, measured breath, Frank’s mom opened her mouth to speak but then closed it again. Frank could see her eyes searching his room for nothing in particular, as if she’d stumble across something to say to her son, who was probably going to die very, very soon.
“Honey, you don’t know that. Have a little hope.” She took a few steps closer to his bedside and faked a smile that was a lot less convincing than she thought it was. “I’m sure that whoever it is, they just missed your last call ceremony. They’ve probably heard that you didn’t find your match and are searching the entire island for you right now. Maybe if you went outside for once, they’d run into you.” Frank really did appreciate his mother’s encouraging words, but he also really didn’t believe them.
“You know if they’re dead, then that means I will be soon.” Frank had trouble keeping his bottom lip from quivering and so did his mom. She sat down on the edge of his bed and placed a hand on the side of his face gently, worried wrinkles appearing around her face.
“Don’t think like that.”
“I’m just being realistic.”
She shook her head, “You’re being pessimistic.”
Frank disagreed, but didn’t press the issue any further than pulling her in for a careful hug over his breakfast and whispering into her ear, “I love you, mom.”

Frank still didn’t believe the words his mom had told him. But that didn’t stop him from quietly slipping out of the house that night.
If, by the slightest chance, his mom had been right, then Frank wanted to be out on the streets. He didn’t want to be cooped up in his room because it wasn’t like his soulmate, if they were alive, that is, would come bursting in his window or through the front door to find Frank in his own home. Frank felt much more likely to find his soulmate out on the streets, even if he didn’t feel likely to find his soulmate at all.
How he found himself slipping silently into the catholic church a few blocks down from his house, Frank will never really know.
He’d always hated the place, from the time he was a little kid in sunday school with those kids whose parents were better off financially and who called him names when the nuns weren’t listening, or were pretending not to listen. He hated those stupid nuns, who had always made him feel like shit about himself as a teen. The moment his parents had given him the option, Frank stopped attending Sunday mass and never looked back. He’d stepped foot in the building maybe twice in the three years since he’d turned eighteen.
It was almost midnight, so the church was all but vacant. There were some lights on, however, and there was an old car parked in the lot, so Frank knew that there had to be at least one soul present, probably Father Way, who Frank had always thought actually lived in the church when he was a kid. Frank had never once been in the building at a time that Father Way wasn’t present.
He was an old man who was only in his fifties but had always looked to Frank to be in his sixties or maybe seventies. Frank had never really liked him. He wasn’t sure why; the guy was actually pretty decent. He’d always been kind and gentle in the encounters Frank had with him, but Frank just guessed that he hated anyone of any kind of authority in any kind of religion. Frank had called bullshit on all of the god stuff when he was maybe fourteen. How could there possibly be anyone up there when he always felt so alone?
As Frank made his way through the church lobby, feet light as a feather, memories of judgement and guilt washed over him. He remembered countless Sunday mornings having been dragged here by his hair, wearing sunglasses throughout the entire service because he’d drunk himself nearly into a coma the night before and the bright lights made his head want to split in two. He remembered the distaste on the faces of the nuns and of all of the self-righteous moms with their perfect little kids who they liked to think would never touch a drop of alcohol in their lives unless it was “the blood of christ”. He remembered the look of shame that always flashed across his own mother’s face when she thought he wasn’t looking, when she caught other mom’s staring at her poor, lost son.
Although Frank wouldn’t change a thing about his teenage years except maybe the horrible feeling of loneliness, he’d always felt kind of bad that his mom had had to put up with his shit. He really was a pain in the ass and that woman never deserved that.
It was in the past, now, though, so Frank shrugged those memories aside as he came across a door, cracked open that held behind it a staircase leading to the church’s basement. Frank’s memories of giving his mom hell as a teenager were replaced with memories of Sunday school down in that basement, or at least he thought that was where the room was, where he’d goof off when he wasn’t supposed to and made messes the nuns pretended to forgive him for.
He’d been such a little shithead. These memories brought a mischievous smile to his face, and his curiosity began to get the better of him as his fingers reached for the doorknob. He pulled the door to the side, swinging it open, and stared down into the darkness. He could make out a door at the end of the stairs, but there was no hallway like he remembered there being. He shrugged it off, figuring that the building had probably just had some work done on it since he’d been a little kid. It had, after all, been ten years since he’d been in a Sunday school class.
Frank glanced over his shoulder, across the large open room where Father Way’s office was. The window had blinds drawn over it, but Frank could see light through them. There was soft music playing from the office, so he figured that the Father wouldn’t hear if Frank quietly slipped downstairs to go exploring the place he’d dreaded so much as a kid.
Frank didn’t even know why he wanted to go downstairs so bad. He just did.
So, he slid the door shut behind him as he took the first few steps down the stairs. Nearing the bottom, his eyes began to adjust to the dark and by the time he was at the second door, hand already on the knob, he could see that there was a large, heavy padlock locking him out of the room.
Huh. Frank thought that was strange.
He shrugged, thinking that maybe the church had converted it into a storage closet of sorts, and was about to turn and leave before Father Way caught him and made him sit down for a long talk about why he hadn’t been “giving time to the Lord” lately. But as Frank began to turn, a sound came from beyond the locked door that made his ears perk up as if he were a cat.
It was music.
And Frank couldn’t place a name or an artist, but he was certain he knew that melody. He knew the guitar part that was softly bleeding through the door, and so he pressed his ear up to the wood to get a better listen.
Yeah, he definitely knew that song from somewhere. He even knew the lyrics.
“And if the world needs something better, let’s give them one more reason.” Frank mumbled along to the song, his knees beginning to feel weak, his head beginning to spin. God, he hadn’t noticed how fucking exhausted he was until that moment, letting himself slide down to sit on the small area of flat floor with his back against the door. His eyes began to droop shut as the song went on, but he didn’t let himself fall asleep. He had to be in his bed in the morning or else he’d give his poor mother a heart attack.
He sang along with a hoarse voice, his throat dry and scratchy from breathing in the cold night air outside.
This broken city sky
Like butane on my skin
Stolen from my eyes
Hello angel, tell me where are you?
Frank’s fingers felt cold all of the sudden, and he wanted to be home in his bed, but he didn’t want to be alone. He wanted to be with someone, anyone, who was warm with body heat and could keep Frank wrapped up in their arms.
God. Frank felt so lonely.
His fingers wandered up to his pendant slowly, and he grasped it. It felt as if even his fingers didn’t fit with his own pendant. Maybe he really was just that disgusting, that he didn’t have a fucking soulmate.
He felt lost. There were tears in his eyes.
Tell me where we go from here.

The realization that something in the whole rock music playing from the inside of a very locked very secluded room equation didn’t add up didn’t really hit Frank until later that night, when he was just about to fall asleep.
His mom woke him up the next morning entirely too early for him to function. It was a Sunday morning so that meant that Frank’s mom and dad would be headed to Sunday mass and would return long before Frank awoke. This Sunday morning, however, Frank’s mom had different plans in mind.
Sticking to her theory that Frank’s soulmate was still out there and searching desperately for him, she convinced Frank to attend mass with his parents just in case his soulmate showed up there. Frank didn’t admit to his mother that her persuasiveness wasn’t actually all that persuasive and that the real reason he agreed to go was not that he thought he might find his soulmate there.
No, Frank was pretty sure he wouldn’t stumble into a handsome man who would swipe him off of his feet at a fucking church. He was pretty sure he couldn’t fall in love with the church-going type. On top of that, Frank was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be falling in love at all, ever. He was pretty sure he’d be dead by the end of the month.
The real reason Frank caved and agreed to go with his parents to mass was that when he’d been laying in bed at around one AM, thinking back on the few minutes he’d spent at the bottom of the stairwell in the church listening to the song he still couldn’t quite name, a red light had gone off somewhere in his brain, signaling kind of belatedly that something was very very strange about the situation.
Who had been playing the music and, more importantly, why were they locked the fuck up with that huge-ass padlock? Frank swore to himself that he would’ve gone back to investigate right then in the early, early morning had he not been exhausted as fuck.
Frank’s parents were the kind of people who showed up to literally anything nearly a half-hour early. So, Frank had the chance before mass started to snoop around outside of the building and look for any windows that would allow him a peek into whatever was beyond that door in the basement. He’d told his mother he needed a quick smoke, she scowled at him, and he gave her the best puppy dog eyes he could manage, and she let him off with great reluctance. He’d apologize for it later, before he died, he promised himself as he walked around the church building, looking for one of those little windows that basement rooms sometimes had that were only about a foot tall and were at the very top of the wall on the inside but were at the very bottom of the wall on the outside. He couldn’t find any windows like that, though, and eventually had to go inside to sit through mass.
He’d surveyed the crowd a couple of times, and there were definitely no epiphanies hitting him, no eyes that made him hit any kind of brick wall of love or whatever. Yeah, he thought, church was definitely not where he was going to find his soulmate, if he ever was going to find his soulmate.