Objects in Space [Hisao]

[Doomish]

Playing around with vagueness.

=

I'm lying in bed, trying in vain to sleep. As usual, I've woken up before the sun and now I'm just tossing and turning waiting for the proper morning to arrive. Thoughts are running through my head at a hundred miles an hour. I sit and I retread the same ground over and over again, my mind wandering from anxiety to loneliness and then all the way back around; I can't rest. Time is going slower now that I'm awake. I get up and go to the kitchen and sit down at the table, after putting some coffee on to bring me out of a hazy blue and purple glow. I glance at the clock and it doesn't even matter what time it is, I'm awake now and that's all there is to it. I scratch my chest, feel my aching heart under my bones and groan at how I forgot to take my pills again.

But I don't want to leave the table for some reason I don't know so I don't, I sit there watching the coffee burn in the pot and wait for more light to fill the room as morning arrives. My thoughts start to drift again toward recent events and current events, how every day is the same as the last one and nothing ever changes. I think of places I've been. The house, the grocery store, visiting with my family. I feel exhausted.

Thankfully the coffee is done now so I pour myself a cup, but all I can think about is how much better the coffee would be if it was for two and suddenly I don't want it anymore. I drink it anyway. Staring out of the window in the kitchen as I sip from the piping hot mug, I watch the snow drift lazily down from the still-black sky into the parts of the yard lit up by the porch lights. It gathers into piles on the lawn, covering it in a lumpy blanket of white. Inside, the house is toasty and warm as it should be during the winter. I think of Christmas and it makes me sad to remember what happened last year. Pathetic is what it is.

I take a hearty swig of my coffee which by now has cooled down, but it barely stirs me from my haze. Face unkempt, hair a mess, dressed in a bath robe and my underwear, I don't think I'm ready to face the day just yet.

Wandering into the living room, I sit on the couch and stare at the empty chair you once sat in a long time ago. It looks comfortable but for some stupid reason I just can't bring myself to ever sit in it. I can still almost see you there. It was your chair, we used to joke. Nobody else could sit in it but you. Books used to stack up on the side table but you'd never get around to reading them. I guess we were both a little lazy.

The coffee mug blocks my view of the chair.

Everywhere I look I see something that reminds me of the old days, when the house was still fresh and maybe our relationship was too. The closet where you kept your old school uniform, wrapped in plastic and ironed to a wrinkle-less polish. The pictures of you I never took down that are still in the hallway between the bedroom and the stairs to the attic. Your chair and the furniture I won't rearrange.

I'm behind on my work and I should be doing it right now, while I am awake and I have time, but it sits there in a manila folder in the office along with the treadmill covered in blankets and coats and collects dust. You were always the one to whip me into shape, to tell me I needed it done before the deadline. I don't have any willingness to even go into the room today. I know I should be working on it but here I am sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself instead, and I don't know why.

Inside I know that I need to get out of the house. Not just for a while. I want to leave and never come back, and for a moment I imagine my old beat-up car tearing down the highway at ninety miles per hour, you in the passenger seat and me never looking back. A pipe dream only held back by the amount of money in my bank account. And besides, I'm tied to this place now. Even if I leave, it'll follow me, haunt me. I've lived here for years and so did you and now it's too late to forget it, or to just leave it all behind in the blink of an eye. My coffee is finished, so I set it on the table instead of taking it over to the sink to wash the mug.

With another glance out the window, I think about having to shovel the driveway and the sidewalk once the sun comes up. Part of me hopes it stays dark forever. Daylight brings people, and people make me nervous. I don't trust them, I can't rely on them, but then am I really all that trustworthy either? Most people, especially co-workers, don't accept "I'm sad" as an excuse for not having your work done on time. I stare at the old, dusty recliner and think about not going to work today, but I will anyway and I'll get chewed out and it'll be my fault.

Relationships are scary. It's like they're a puzzle, and now a piece of mine is missing. That piece finished the whole thing and now I don't have it anymore. The spark that kept me going, the muse is gone. I'm just spending my days waiting for something else to come to me to bring the light back, because it hurts too much to go looking. I close my eyes again, this time softly, and lean my head back against the couch.

[azumeow]

Should've expected that from, you. Nice piece of work, ambiguous enough that I can't be positive who the other person is, or was. I can't help but love a good feels story when it comes down to it.

[edruil]

Very pleased to see you post again, Doomish. This had a very tangible melancholy to it - made me think back to days where I would spend evenings sitting in my chair, doing nothing but drinking whisky and listening to rain hammering on the windowsill. More questions than answers in this one, which I expect was your intent. Short, but well done.

[peachboy23]

I agree, this is well written.