The Collector rarely visited our village. And when he did, nobody could be sure it had actually happened. More troubling than that was when he left, nobody could be sure he was really gone.
Many write us off as a dazed and disorganized people. Few others insist the Collector is especially furtive. Fewer still have looked him in the face (or think they did) and understand the unique confusion.
I was born and raised in this village (it is likely I will die in it) and I can tell you with absolute certainty that within my lifetime, the Collector has visited us at least once. By "visited", I mean to say he's been sighted, and by "sighted", I actually mean reported, and by "reported", I refer to my testimony. The only testimony to ever come out of his visits.
I met the Collector when I was twenty-five years old. Let me describe to you how I think I remember it.
Scarlet leaves, turned purple in the moonlight, were dancing sleepily to the ground where I sat. Something had happened to me recently. Inference tells me it was bad, because my face was wet and my knuckles red and stinging. Rough gales bit at my cheeks as I fiddled with a rock. I have no recollection of who put it in my hands. Abruptly, the wind changed direction, and there was a presence at my side I was reasonably confident had been there the entire time.
To my left, I saw a man. Just a man. He had no defining features, and the ones he did swam curiously in my vision. I seemed to be able to look at him and through him simultaneously. He was there and not there, and as soon as I looked away, never there. His voice came from inside my own head, and his mouth moved in the wrong shapes.
"I can help you forget," the whispers started. They chorused like that for some time. Echoing from outside, inside, and all around. Perhaps I was the one speaking. At some indiscernible point, they changed into something else.
"I can take it away." Or maybe he'd said, "give it to me." I can't quite remember. He was hissing many things, all at once, in my language and his, from every angle. He was holding my rock in his hands. Our eyes met.
The Collector had unremarkable eyes. They could've been my brother's, or my wife's, or my dog's. I stared at them, headlong, for anywhere from a seconds to hours.
This is the part that only the villagers believe. I implore you to listen before walking off like the rest of the outsiders.
Before I looked into the Collector's eyes, I felt.
Since then, I haven't.
He pocketed my rock when the whispered ceased, and, watching his face, his sorrow looked horrifically like my grieving brother or my hopeless wife. I understood, peripherally, that he had taken my pain and that it had cut him deeply.
He was gone quickly, and was somehow still there. I thanked the air. There was nothing behind it. And from within my head and outside it, from left and right and up and down, he confessed to me, the wind's howling silenced by his hauntingly quiet speech.
"I helped you forget." Leaves swirled around me.
"I took it away." My bloody hands burned in the bitter cold.
"You gave it to me."
I wonder what I gave him.
"I help you forget," and I understood that his "you" meant the village.
"I take it away."
"You give it to me. They give it to me." I could see his face and I couldn't. What had we given to him?
The leaves dropped, the wind stilled, and the whispers fell silent. The moon shone far too bright, blinding me. And I was roughly certain he was gone.
The Collector had saved me. To this day, I believe he saved me. I believe he saved all of us.
Or perhaps he was never there.
I am fifty years old. The last half of my life has been entirely painless. My brother smiles at me with a face half-stony, and I see him in his eyes. My wife takes my hand with two rigid fingers, and I see him in her eyes. They've all saved me, just as he's saved them.
Every night I see villagers sitting by the trees, turning rocks over in their hands. They hope, and they receive. They come back in the mornings with him in their eyes. And the Collector grows his collection.
The Collector rarely leaves our village. And the number of rocks within the village walls never changes.
Your story is really interesting. It tells about this person in a village who meets someone called the Collector. The way you describe the meeting is cool, like how the wind changes and the leaves fall. The simple language you use makes it easy to understand and enjoy. I like how you show that the Collector takes away pain, and the villagers believe in him. It makes the story mysterious and makes me want to know more about the Collector and the village!
Your descriptions are lovely and the concept of the Collector is really fun -- who doesn't love an elusive rando?