You stare at your reflection in the mirror, wave a hand up and down to see if the man in front of you does the same.
You’ll see the sun reflecting in the background. Wincing, you’ll close your eyes and wonder what that man is thinking about.
You finally open your eyes, and the light is gone. You wonder if the man in front of you has light in his world, because certainly there’s none in yours.
There hasn’t been for a long time.
You tear yourself away from the silver world in front of you and walk into the living room. It smells of burnt plastic and decades-old sex. You know it’s a comforting smell but you’ll never admit it.
You know exactly what you want now. You know that every time you bank on that feeling, every time you listen to the little devil sitting on your shoulder, you’ll end up trying to tear you own heart out.
You’ll end up wishing that it would all go away.
The television hasn’t been turned on in weeks. Or months. God only knows that if you turned it on, it would be too much for you to handle. You know that the white noise will billow inside your skull and gnaw at your mind.
Your mind is the only thing that you have left. Losing it now means losing it all.
Renegade water drips from the faucet in the kitchen sink.
Drip, drip, drip. It doesn’t stop.
The plushy sofa underneath almost swallows you whole. It wants you to sit there forever, loathing and listening to the voices around you. The voices echoing through every crack of the tiny apartment.
The voices of the lost. The voices of the angry. The voices of the dead.
Drip, drip, drip. It continues.
You’ll stare outside and watch society pass you by. You inhale the air it breathes and know that it was never meant for you. You want to spit it back out, give it back to them.
You want to go back to sleep, to dream this life away.
Drip, drip, drip.
It’s time to go outside. It’s time to walk those streets and envelop yourself in a world outside of your own.
The sun is almost departed, it’s making its final descent into the horizon. Something makes you want to keep walking towards it, to follow it until your legs give out and your muscles pop, bleeding through your paper thin jeans.
The cool breeze scares you, moves you from the streets and into an alleyway. You sit against the brick wall of the building behind you. You feel the wind nip at you, feel it travel through your shirt and into you.
You want to close your eyes again. You want to stand in front of that silver world, waving a hand up and down. You want to know what that man is doing right now.
You see a small flash of orange from the corners of both eyes. You don’t turn around, but know there’s someone in the alley with you, smoking a cigarette and watching you.
Minutes later, you’ll get up, gathering enough courage for your bones to swing again. The orange glow is gone, replaced by the stars in the sky. Night doesn’t welcome you, but you want it to.
You want to look up at the sky forever and feel at home. You want it to suck away whatever is living inside of you.
It’s too cold for you, now. The faces floating past you don’t gleam in the moonlight. Every smile isn’t genuine, every nod isn’t sincere.
You walk back into your building, but you can’t remember if the doorman was there when you left. His rosy red cheeks say everything his mind cannot, and he holds the door open for you.
Elevator. Up. And waiting.
The “L” lights up above the elevator door and dings in unison. It feels like a prison. You suddenly wonder if once those doors close, you’ll be trapped inside forever.
You grip the chipped gold bar behind you, your fingers running up and down, doing anything to forget about the journey. You pull on it, hoping it might break from the elevator wall and fling you forward.
The doors do open, and you realize you’ve forgotten to push your floor’s button. You don’t remember what floor you live on.
You step out anyway, just for a reason, just for an escape from the elevator.
Each cream-colored apartment door seems to have the same number: eleven. You blink and it changes. Twelve. Blink. Thirteen. Blink, blink. Fourteen, fifteen.
You rub your eyes and feel the burn inside of you. It’s dragging inside of your chest. Just when you think it might burst through, it settles and finds comfort within you.
It’ll never go away.
You’ve been walking down the hallway for a few minutes now. You feel fingertips grace the edge of your hair, but there’s nothing there. You think that now might be a good time to walk into one of these rooms.
You stop when you feel it’s right and open a door. It’s your apartment. The smell is there, the walls the same.
It welcomes you back in. You walk past the mirror, and the man is there, staring straight ahead. His eyes are red, you notice as he tilts his head.
Teeth clenched, you make a fist, but sway the notion of destroying that silver world. There’s a reason why you keep it alive, even if you don’t quite know it yet.
The one thing you do hear is the faucet in the kitchen.
Drip, drip, drip.
You fall back into the sofa. Your head rests back and you glance at the ceiling. The yellow circles above you create a map to somewhere.
Drip, drip, drip.
You turn to your right, and that man in the silver world is staring back at you.
He’s not smiling anymore. And you know why.
Christopher J. Dwyer is a writer from Boston, MA. His first novel, Shape The Black Sky, was released in early 2005, and his short fiction has been featured at literary zines such as Dogmatika and Flashing in the Gutters. His official website can be found at www.christopherdwyer.com.
Wow, second-person perspective. That’s not something you see often. This was well-done.
A high degree of despair here. It also felt supernatural, almost like the character was fading out of the world bit by bit.