A man had somehow forgotten how to live, misplaced his passions somewhere beneath an important document in his filing tray. If living is the part that happens prior and post-reflection, then he was like a faulty pendulum that had stopped ticking between these two modes of being. His incessant reasoning would ironically conclude ‘a good dose of the irrational is essential in life’, and yet his reasoning couldn’t help him obtain it. For a year he devoted himself to debauchery, assured that this would overwhelm him into a ‘moment’ similarly to how a large wave knocks you rolling to the shore. However, his meticulous exploration of all the perversions on offer failed, and only left him with an increased immunity to life. Feeling defeated into inertia, he next spiralled in to the vice of ambitious distractions; he earned himself a promotion, took on more work than he could manage and wasted his free time tangling himself in all sorts of voluntary projects and social affairs. This proved effective at halting his thoughts. And when any spare hours snuck out at him, he combated them with a self-induced (albeit thoroughly insincere) addiction to soaps and celebrity gossip. The heart of the matter was this: that he intended to forget completely his own beliefs and all the paths of reasoning that led him there. He dreamt of that part of his mind withering in to a neglected stump. Perhaps he’d become sub-human or animal; be alive without being conscious of it. And those were the last thoughts he’d had on the matter, the last thoughts he’d allowed himself to have.
ter. His day had been like a mathematical equation. Its legitimacy was irrefutable, though it seemed to run parallel and detached from anything of consequence. The crows scattered like darts of ink. They cluttered branches, shielding themselves from the rain which tapped with increased ferocity upon the steel roof. His pulse began to replicate the speedy drumming. And next his mind, as if caught in its slingshot, had no choice but to follow suit. Ravenous thoughts were born and ~ sifting through the desert of his mindscape ~ they inevitably ended up circling the memory of a woman he passed each day on his journey to work. Seeing her face gleaming like a moon from her window had subtly developed in to the only glimmer in his day. She seemed to be waiting there only for him, and that notion revitalised him, reacquainted him with his own presence. He stood for a moment, trying to recollect the first time he’d noticed her watching him, and what he could piece together of her features, or perhaps make a guess of her age. It was a Friday, and on Friday’s in particular he often had an indecipherable, and incredibly tenuous, internal zing of rebellion. It was as if the dreary symmetry of his week begged him to take a hammer to it. The liberation he felt on a Friday could be likened to a spiralling speeding belt to the surface of the ocean to gasp at air.
ELENOR LITTLE
And now, weighted under his overgrown coat that had become wet in the rain, he stood crumbling like damp cigarette embers, beneath the empty bus shel-
This zing occasionally brought about a semi-rash decision on his part. And, twinned with the mental stirrings for the stranger at the window, he now felt compelled to walk to her house where he would look upwards, devilishly, accusingly, in search of a possible moment ~ a meeting, or confrontation.
Even if only their eyes met and maybe an unreadable smile came of it, well, a smile could last him a month at least. He’d learnt to digest things slowly, as his life so far seemed only to offer him scraps. And, if the window just so happened to be absent, then it wouldn’t necessarily be a disappointment. Because even then something could be gleaned from it. Evidently, it would imply that she wasn’t always at her window, watching the world. No, she purposely went to the window to watch for him. At this conclusion, he leapt forward in to the rain, almost in to the speeding shadow of a car that ripped through the world like paper. The hollow beats remained for a moment, making him feel alarmed and untamed in his rashness. The perched blackbirds shrieked and dove up into the dark clouds. He continued again, and this time he was halted by the vision of the face he recognised. His silent watcher, the woman at the window; she was hurrying through the rain on the other side of the road. He squinted at her flickering form; her heals digging at the concrete to give her speed, her hands clenching her coat tight at the neck. And, she was dressed in a nurse’s uniform. After pausing whilst she turned into an alleyway ~ which he knew led to the local hospital ~ he to follow her to her workplace. His compulsion had grown to unearth the secret of his watcher, his metaphysical lover. This shielded him from his own angst at entering the hospital; a portal – he’d always maintained ~ to death and all the horrors of human existence.
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However, upon entering, the filth he found there ex[ CONTINUES NEXT PAGE
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