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I wake up to the morning sun persistently attempting to reach me from behind the black curtain obscuring the lone window in my room. I don’t want to get up just yet — instead, I shift onto my back and adjust my head for comfort. The two baggy pillows underneath it are stacked on top of each other — they keep me a solitary company at an early moment of the night, not wishing for me to let go of them in a morning like this.
‘I glance at the clock on the wall just opposite my bed, it’s too unreliable to tell the time, held in place only by a single nail I once pulled from the kitchen floor.’
‘Despite all my tempering and attempts at ensuring its descent to the strike of the hour, it stubbornly clings to its own time. It’s the only clock I’ve ever had, yet it’s not the only one I see.’
It must have fallen after all, silently striking another near floor pillow while I was asleep — the alarm did not go off.
Raising my head slightly, I reach out enough to spot the rusty nail tumbling on the ground, the clock already there.
With no witness, it could have fallen forever in one’s mind, never quite the same. Its dented front shield falling face deep into gentle deafening feathers of the pillow. Despite all this, it still ticks ever so quitter and soften if I just put my ear to it without disturbing it.
‘The one on the wall is not an afterimage; it is the way I see the world. Things that have been there for too long to leave, they leave impressions, hard–to–wipe–of stains on this world’ — and they make themselves visible seemingly only to me — the boy in bed who only wishes to read the time.
‘The image of the other clock is sharp enough to be seen through the closed eyes, unlike the blurred mess of my just–awakened view. It is already telling me just how late I was.’
I imagine they weren’t far apart from each other, separated only by the distance of a single fall but a thousand chances of it happening in retrospect. Of all the times, it decided that today was the day. It was always a little late anyway, and I’ve never had enough skill or eagerness to try and tinker with it to work on time. We are more aligned that way.
Being late, as one sometimes finds out too late to be, I decide there is no point in rushing it now. Certainly,
no way of taking it back or preventing it in any meaningful manner. The consequences have been set in motion, and the punishment prepared beforehand.
In the time spent pondering, all that remains is to delay the inevitable.
I get myself comfortable, as much as I can, lay back just for another moment, without closing my eyes. I know this room well enough, both within my imagination and in the dark. There’s no need of adding anything new to the stories it already holds.
It’s still strange, but no longer new or unexpected. In fact, it’s quite hard to distinguish at the first glance. It would come, this feeling, crawling up my back, wherever I’d look at the peeling paint on the ceiling or the parting spaces between the floorboards, or anywhere else, really. This gift — to see not what once was, but what had left an impression towards the space I found myself within.
‘Awaiting the conclusion of tonight’s last sighting of the moon, I instead find it still in place, just behind the sun. Coming from behind the window, crosshatching, tracing steps it would bare resemblance. Inches from each other the new brought stars would collide in patterns and events, drawing the slim silhouette of a man.’
‘But he’s not just a shape; the young man — perhaps only of youthful face, with a smooth and feature–rich texture to it — he has entered the room just moments
before. Wearing a black leather jacket, his expression conveys weariness through tired eyes and hands covered in sawdust and splinters. He’s only just gotten back from work, his hands resting on the chair, which he pulled away from the desk under the window. Still filled with strength and emotion, he leaves marks on it with his nails.’
‘He is lost in his thoughts, mostly self–doubt and fear of tomorrow. As he looks at the moon, trying to shake off some of those feelings, he sorts the rest in order of importance, in order of probability, usefulness, and leaves only a few of inspiration and dreams at the very end, where they begin to drift into obscurity.’
‘He thinks of his daughter. Before he even knows it, he shifts his focus entirely to the little girl for whom his world exists; the angel he both prays and sings to. His wife, love unbound, always by his side, still thin wall apart, giving him the time he needs to think.’
‘And he thinks of work, second only to his poor performance — the next series of deliveries, with no alternatives in sight. Change which could not guarantee his family’s well–being.’
‘He sits by the desk, just below the window, and moonlight. His worries temporarily set aside, stacked upon the impossible, his hand stops trembling, and he is calm and reassured. Not thinking of his time, he reaches for a pen…’
‘Brings out stories, the ones my own dreams still project, the ones he brings from work to tell his daughter — the little prayers. From a shelf that no longer hangs, he retrieves a paper–wrapped journal concealed among other unlikely–to–be–read books.’
‘He opens it where he left off, on the blank first page, and begins to transcribe what little had remained in his mind of the stories. A silence of thought follows, an intention gets snuffed out, and a man stares at his own handwriting, a barely finished sentence with no impact on the character or himself, meaningless words without a place to follow.’
‘He stares at it for a while longer, before putting the pen away, turning off the old oil lamp, and hiding the journal once more. It would be the last time, the story of an author whose name wouldn’t be printed on any cover of a book found in the world. The story ended before it even began, a tale lost only in his own thoughts.’
‘The tired artist hangs his jacket and goes to sleep, to dream another dream. To remember the stories he forgot, only to forget them again. In the morning which would follow, no story would come back and he would not try again this night. Where his night comes to an end and meets mine in the morning, he no longer stays present.’
I can hear someone knocking on their ceiling down below my apartment, a kindly reminded, though sure enough last warning as to how long I get to stay in bed. I must be running later than usual, but then again, there is no way to know without disturbing the time itself, and besides, the sun would point to this as much.
It’s not often that I’m paid attention to. The more interesting things often being around me, whether it’s a room or the people in it. It is as if they are meant to divert me from introspection, to discourage me from looking at myself too closely.
There has always been more… things, rooms, and places than me, spaces, and the people within them that make one feel insignificant in comparison to all those surroundings. And the insignificance would not feel bad for a while. It would make one… easy to slip through the cracks of a story and go about their day unseen both in the general history and the daily life, memories of others. Lost in the distance, to the world and sometimes to themselves.
As insignificant as I am, I am still needed, by someone, somewhere and it fills me, if not with purpose, than a sense of obligation.
I get up from bed, not in any more particular mood to bid farewell to the pillows and soft fabrics. Much like the man in the leather jacket, I’m called for another duty.
A quick change of clothes, a rushed brush of hair, and one last look into a mirror:
Every which mirror, in any way reflective surface always feels like an introduction to a new met stranger. A face of a young boy, roughly my age, with short black hair and a rather nasty grin on his face, greets me back. His name is Arthur, and He looks awful smart for someone so late. He cannot help himself, despite the lack of energy from the night before; He is still curious about what awaits him downstairs.
A new stranger, with only one detail remaining constant, serves as a reminder of himself. I was told there was an oddness to it, an everyday notice and a proof in the gaze of others, only coming as an insurance.
For a brief moment, the boy’s eyes stray from the path set by his wondering expression and meet with mine. He looks at the edges of the constant, his left eye — the odd one he must have come to look at. An eye with a peculiar, strange shape that neither of us can explain. The iris having has formed a brim and an even half–inch parting, a dark black stripe expanding from the pupil in the center — a lock–shaped eye. An odd secret lying dormant in an in–between of eyelids.
When forced open, it still sees the pupil shrink and protect what’s behind. It’s only natural, as the other eye does not act differently, but the left still holds something more — something deeper — a secret, perhaps to
himself, his ordinariness, maybe even the memories of his past or people he could once remember.
From the lower drawer, I pull out the other part of the mystery. The key — which sometimes finds itself in the other boxes, under the pillow, and sometimes, when held during the day, on myself. Hoping very much that, like me, it will one day disappear and find its place where it belongs.
However unsuited they are for each other now — the eye and the key — they somehow go together, and someday, one will point the way for the other. The key is simply too big to fit into the eye, and still too small to risk getting lost in my pockets. Today, it travels with me, so I hang it around my neck with an improvised shoelace string and bid the boy in the mirror farewell.
I rush through the living room and into its annexed kitchen. The rest of the apartment is rather large for its single resident now. Beside my bedroom, there’s another room, adjacent to the living space, which, with the landlord’s blessing, I’ve repurposed into a resemblance of an office — rough piles of files, maps, and tools I never get to use.
Although they do come in handy sometimes. I am, after all, known in town for being something of a freelance detective or just someone with a knack for finding lost things, people, and creatures.
Those often–lost small things, precious keepsakes, have rarely been a challenge to find, but always worth it, bringing a smile or a small sum of money — something to cover the rent, at least.
There is also a bathroom with a full size bathtub and a leaking showerhead above it, which I’m still too short to reach and fix without a ladder that, for reasons I’m no longer allowed to use at the apartments.
I skim into the kitchen and climb the one–sided cabinet. I reach into the top shelf, grab my favorite and only meal — cereal, and prepare it in the most inventive of ways — by pouring the cold leftover milk over it in a cold bowl.
I sit by an empty table and ‘listen in on the ongoing conversation. As it usually is, everything is in rush to keep going.’
‘It’s late by the account of the moment, and the man of the house has just returned. The man in the tall jacket sits down on the opposite side of the table, while his wife is almost finished with a wonderfully smelling meal. She smiles and, taking away his focus, she moves to ask about his day.’
‘Looking to avoid his daughter’s presence and reluctant to have her listen, he is even still reluctant to be honest. Speaking in half–tone whisper, he confesses to losing his job and the consequence of it. It would usually
go on for much longer, bringing in the little person who needn’t to be there to see them argue.’
‘ “Please, don’t leave,” I say quietly, with my head down, forgetting myself as I try to join the conversation. I have nothing much to say, nothing that would change the state of their presence. The wife doesn’t even give me a look. They aren’t much, but they are still more than pictures of strangers hanging on the wall…’
‘The couple’s conversation is cut short, from a small room of my office and the otherwise now occupied space, comes the small girl, barely younger than me.’
‘Her father invites her to sit amongst us; he sits as well, and the mother finally serves the late dinner. The mother sits next to the husband, and, in an eye–exchanging manner, so does the little girl next to me.’
‘I swear I once even heard her name, it was only mentioned outside the context of the office I’d come to spend my time in. She would be the one to tell the stories of her school, the only one inside the city. A school she no longer attends, which her parents can no longer afford, with all the knowledge left to rot away into nonexistence anyway.’
‘Captivated by the story of uncapturable squirrels — creatures once native — which caused her teacher to abruptly end a session,’ I finish my meal of soggy, overthought cereal and head to the kitchen sink. ‘The wife, standing next to me, cleaning the dishes, hums the
same old song, sometimes even trying to sing it, never remembering the words.’
‘She would feel lonesome when he was no longer here, when he left for work only to come back late at night.’
‘ “He works so hard, harder every day,” she starts to think to herself. “Too tired to work, to live, and with nothing left to dream. Every day, giving that little bit of himself, he cannot get back. And he dreams of being a writer, though he won’t admit as much yet another daily morrow of sunlight washing away at his dreary will.” ’
‘ “He wrote that in one of his novels to be, didn’t he? Daily morrows of sunlight,” I ask the woman, and as surprised as I am, she looks at me confused, sitting at a counter, trying to make at the conversation with the air.’
‘ “I’m— so sorry, I… I didn’t notice you there.” She would look apologetic, although not able to place her sight, unsure of where and at who she would do so.’
‘ “That’s okay, it took me a while to see you too, any other won’t seem to see or notice you at all.” I reply, as if speaking only to myself, putting a thought in my mind that somehow, sometime, breaks through the barriers of time and makes it onto the other side.’
‘ “It takes so much to see, to truly know someone. Most of us never really get a chance to learn even a fraction about themselves, let alone others,” I say, captured by a single mark. She leaves the dishes
suspended in the air for them to fall and not break, finally looking at me.’
‘ “That eye—” she begins, but as if broken from the spell, she turns her head back and returns to cleaning the dishes, unaware and unbothered. There is nothing I can do, nothing I haven’t already tried to bring a change in her cognition for a little while longer. After all, we are a pair of strangers, no more or less than those we see in the morning mirror.’
I pack my backpack, putting a half–read–through book — an outdated guide to the city, some oranges, and a small notepad only half filled with missing cat cases and lost item requests. I tie my shoes… slowly, ‘still trying to learn from the passing schoolgirl.’ I put on my jacket and prepare to head downstairs.
‘From behind, I hear the dear wife saying goodbye to her daughter as she leaves for school.’ I take one last look back at the apartment and see that there is nobody there.