6Dr. Raymond M. Banks glanced at the clock; still two hours to go. He cringed. Time seemed to creep by so slowly in that office. He never could make peace with that device.
As he stared at the minute hand, which seemed to lay dormant against the ominous white background tile, his thoughts wandered. He thought of Lori and of the years that had gone by since he had last seen her. They were so many and not quite as far between as he would have liked, and he blamed them for the stillness of time.
The light above him flickered, and he realized that he was alone. Of course, he had known for some odd years now that his office was his and his alone, but now he was set with a true realization, an awakening of sorts. He was alone – really alone – and it was all her fault.
No, he thought, no. It's not all her fault. And fearing to delve any further into the subject, he returned to his work.
He punched at a few keys and glanced at the clock again. He wanted to smash that clock, to beat it into the endless oblivion it represented, but he restrained his desire. He forced his attention back to the monitor.
There he sat and worked furiously at a multitude of unsolvable equations of his own design. It was a circle, a perfect circle, which he knew to be a mathematical impossibility. But it was.
He turned his thoughts to impossibility. He knew that word, knew it inside and out, and every time it entered his mind, he tended to want to destroy it. Such knowledge existed in Raymond's mind that told him everything nobody ever wanted or needed to know. It was a dangerous knowledge. Impossibility, he knew, was not so dissimilar from infinity. Damn it, he thought.
The circle watched him in silence from the computer.
How did I do this?
* * *
The time for Raymond's studies exhausted itself, and he returned to the shadowy apartment he called home.
It was not a homely place. In fact, it seemed altogether miserable, though it may have been fit for living in. The doctor noticed this, but failed to recognize it. To him, it was a place to sleep. Sleep had been his only friend since Lori died.
He spun around. "Who's there?" His voice reverberated against the hollow walls, and was met by no response. The dim light overhead flickered and went out. Raymond glanced around, paranoid.
He hated the darkness almost as much as he hated that clock. He knew what dwelt in the darkness; that was why he hated it. And now, here he was in the darkness, alone.
"Who's there?" he said again. The echoes returned to him a greater emptiness in his heart than had been before. No answer returned to his ears, and it was still dark. He became afraid, genuinely terrified.
He closed his mind to all possibilities and stopped listening. It did him little good. Instead, he turned his eyes towards the eastern corner of his small apartment. He could see nothing, but he knew something was there. He looked.
The air shimmered. Impossible, he thought. The darkness secludes even the most basic sights. How could I have seen that, even if it was real?
The bitter night shimmered again, and a light broke the darkness. Raymond gazed on, petrified, unable to do anything else. It danced and flittered around the room. Always, he noted, in a perfect circle.
He was scared, and for the first time in his life he did not know why. It was an impossibility, the beast in his apartment, and he watched as it danced another impossibility into his mind. It was the circle.
A scream escaped his mouth as he jumped from his bed. What? How? Was it all a dream?
It did not really surprise him. Since Lori's death, he had become accustomed to ungainly and detestable nighttime apparitions, and, since they were the beasts that inhabited the darkness, he came to despise the night. But it seemed so real. Could it really have been a dream?
He very quickly decided that he did not care and threw himself back into bed. It was an altogether miserable bed for an altogether miserable man.
* * *
When he awoke, the sun was up. Bad, he thought, this is very, very bad. As he slipped on his black khaki pants, he wished he had not have woken up in the first place. It is all a dream, he thought, a nasty, nasty dream. He wanted to wake up, so that he might see Lori's radiant face again.
He stood out on the street and waited for a taxi. The usual ominous sight of a yellow cab was disrupted by a brown one, a sign of the changing times. Raymond was incomprehensibly greeted by a Jamaican driver.
"One Diamond Drive," said Raymond, and the driver drove him there in silence. Raymond paid him his fare along with a generous tip. Since Lori passed away, he always had too much money. He hated it.
He got to his office. A man was waiting for him inside. Shit, he thought. He opened the door and stepped inside.
The doctor had expected the person to be Mr. Demms, the man who paid his salary, but he was both relieved and annoyed to see that it was not. He did not know the man.
The stranger introduced himself as Detective Howard Rhodes of the New York Police Department. Raymond simply stared at the circle encompassing the star on his badge. It was perfect; impossible.
Their discussion was brief and fruitless. The detective was interested in his late wife, Lori. Not wanting to think about her, Raymond simply refused to discuss the issue. The detective threatened him with a subpoena, but Raymond refused nonetheless. I don't know what happened, he thought. She's dead.
The detective left, and he was alone with his equations. He glanced at a sketch of the circle he had drawn on a napkin. Those equations were driving him mad.
Something inside him snapped at the sound of the ringing phone. He could not bear to answer it. He stood up and left.
It had been some time since he had visited Lori's grave. He needed to see her again. It was the only way he could live. He left his office. Unwilling to wait for a cab, he started walking. Detective Rhodes followed him at a distance.
The cemetery was a mere two miles away. It took him not more than half an hour to reach it, but he did not stop there. He continued walking past its gates. Odd, thought Detective Rhodes, but not entirely unexpected.
The doctor walked on for about three more miles. The road twisted and bent, and it reminded the detective of a circle. It was quiet out there. Too quiet.
Raymond approached a cabin and went inside. The detective stayed at a distance, hoping to discourage his attention. He succeeded.
The door stood open. It's cold in here, thought Raymond. Cold, but not dark. He smiled the first smile he had in a long, long time.
He walked over to the fireplace. He never did understand why that fireplace had been built there, but it was a very lovely fireplace. The bricks were smooth and intricately cut. He liked that fireplace. He bent underneath of it.
For more than a fair amount of time, he laid staring into the black oblivion. It was dark, and he hated it. He hated it because it was Lori's grave, and it would forever keep her from him. He looked up, knowing that Lori was looking back down at him. He felt happy. He laid there.
Detective Rhodes was getting tired of waiting. He stepped out of his car and approached the cabin door. He knocked. "Doctor Banks? Are you in there? I have a few more questions for you."
The doctor bolted to a stance, completely unaware that the detective had followed him. He could not let him find out the answers to his precious equations; at least, not before he could. They were perfect, impossible, and only he could understand them. He picked up a fire poker and stepped to the door.
"Yes, detective, I am here. Is there something I can help you with?"
The observant detective had noticed some hesitation in the doctor's voice. He half expected the man to lunge into an all-out brawl right then and there, but the doctor kept his wits about him. Detective Rhodes remained prepared.
"I'm going to be perfectly frank with you, Doctor Banks. We know what you did to Ms. Coil. All we need is the evidence to prove it. If you help us get that, we will encourage the jury to be lenient on you. What do you say?"
The star, he thought, the star with the circle. It is too perfect. What can he know of a perfect circle? It is impossible, impossible for him but not for me. I know impossibility better than anyone. It is mine, and he is trying to take it.
Without answering, the doctor pulled back his arm, preparing to strike the detective. He could not follow through. The detective struck him in the stomach before he could land a blow. The doctor fell to the ground, helpless.
* * *
It did not take long for the evidence to be found. The trial was made quick, and Doctor Banks was locked away in a very particular asylum for the criminally insane.
Every day, as he awoke, he was met by a light on the roof of his cell. The light was good. It kept away that darkness that choked his darling Lori. Around his cell, it would cast a perfect ring of darkness, a circle that only nature could create. It was perfect. The answer, he thought, the answer is nature.
A perfect circle is mathematically impossible. Every artificial creation governed by pi is also governed by a finite number of sides, regardless of how large or small they may be. The true infinity which is found in a perfect circle can only be created by nature, by time.
His circle was a perfect circle governed by the infinity of time, of nature. He knew this; he knew it inside and out. A perfect circle is not an impossibility, he thought. Not an impossibility at all.