| Ficbit Challenge 5
Six -
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| The way to deal with it, he'd found, was to divide every day into smaller
and smaller bits, map out his life in fragments and fill every one. He
went to more movies now than he had when Mary was still... around. And
television, television helped, although he often surfaced to find himself
unclear on what he was watching, or who the people on the screen were,
or what was happening. He forgot the show as soon as it was over and moved
restlessly on to the next one, waiting for it to be time to go to bed.
Still, the bright lights and cheerful voices calmed him, and often made
him laugh, and filled the empty spaces. Normal people watched television.
He was normal.
I'm He couldn't sleep when it was dark. The darkness robbed him of sleep, left him alone with nothing but what was inside--which was nothing. He started going to bed before it got dark, falling into his light and troubled sleep with the evening sunlight still shining in his bedroom window. That worked well enough. He'd wake up at three or four in the morning and turn on all the lights in the house, put on loud music, make himself a huge breakfast and do all the dishes... once he'd found himself on hands and knees at five in the morning, scrubbing at the kitchen floor with a paper towel, and he'd made himself stop and go get in the shower instead. Normal people left that sort of work to the maids, and he was normal. I'm here He'd started going to the grocery store every day after work and buying just enough food to tide him over until the next day. When the cashiers started to recognize him--worse, when they started to look at him oddly--he started going to other grocery stores, picking a different one out of the phone book every day. He could kill an hour in the grocery store easily, reading labels, wandering the aisles, watching other people. But he was careful. He always kept one eye on his watch and forced himself to check out after an hour had passed. Better that than to be stared at. Better that than to stand out and be watched. Normal people didn't loiter in the supermarket for hours, and he was normal. I'm here, Mary All he wanted was to be left alone. The last thing he wanted was to be left alone. He didn't know what he wanted. There were so many things he didn't know. There were so many things to do. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what he wanted. All he wanted was to be left alone. Left alone to be normal. He was normal. He was. I'm here, Mary, where He was drowning, and the very things that he clung to as a lifeline were dragging him under. On the rare occasions when he surfaced, he was dimly amazed by what he'd become, a walking waterlogged corpse, with a thin and tenuous shell of everyday normality on top. No one ever seemed to notice. Maybe it was just him. I'm here, Mary, where are He would smile if spoken to, and mouth pleasantries, all from deep under the dark water of his thoughts. It wouldn't have surprised him if brackish water poured out of his mouth when he said these inane things--but then, nothing much surprised him any more. Look at me, I'm drowning, he thought. "I'm doing fine, thanks," he said. I'm here, Mary, where are you? He came home on that Friday to that heavy dusty-brown envelope on the hallway floor. His small bag of groceries (a steak, a single potato, a can of green beans) crashed to the floor, forgotten, and he fell to his knees to lift the envelope in both shaking hands. He nearly tore it in half trying to tear it open, and when he started to weep, he noticed. He felt the tear well up, and well over, and race down his cheek, and the walls that he hadn't seen properly in three years blurred, and even with the mystery of the letter clutched in both hands he found a moment to marvel that he was, after all, undrowned. The air felt sharp on his skin, as if it hadn't been there for years. Or perhaps it was James who hadn't been there for years. In the end, it didn't matter which. He was here now. |
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