He didn’t often shave. When he did, the mirror twisted and cracked, his face split between the shards, each of those infinite reflections thinking of infinite ways to die and why he was frightened by, and drawn to, each one of those endings.
Instead, he drank coffee with no caffeine, because caffeine was just a rush of heartbeats and regrets, inky black, like so many nights caught in the grip of sleep paralysis, but in liquid form.
From there, it was the choice: clean or unclean. Most days he was unclean. This suited him. Let the cover be the book. Let the book dictate the cover. And aren’t we all merely books made flesh?
On this day it was no shave, coffee that did not tempt his heart to punch out of his chest, and clean. Today was the day to pretend. An errand here, a smile there, stolen glances he hoped no one would notice, a sigh, a wish to sleep forever, a brief fight against the shadow that was always there, another errand, then home again, where the walls peeled and the floors were stained and perhaps tomorrow would be different.
But it never was.
“I have to write this down.”
That night, while doing exactly that — he had to write things down; it was the only way they became real — he paused for a moment to read something else. A story. A story purporting to be true. A story about a man accidentally seeing a video depicting the last seconds of his son’s life. For a moment, he entertained dwelling in this other person’s misery. Of being in his shoes. Of feeling it. But why? Why subject yourself to that? Why embrace a burden that isn’t yours to bear? Wasn’t the sociopath’s way better?
No.
More comfortable, perhaps. But not better. Shaving in the morning is just scraping away the wreck of the life you had yesterday, casting it down the drain and pretending that today is going to be different; that the miseries of the past will not be the miseries of the future, if only you’re mindful enough to shed them each day. Of course, it’s all just acting. We’re all acting. You are acting. I am acting, he says, slipping into first person for a moment, and in doing so giving up the game.
As I type those words, a hum begins to fill the air outside. It’s night out, traffic buzzing in the distance, crickets calling, but a terrible light comes into being, first from above, then probing directly into the windows. I realize I am no longer breathing. I can’t hear anything but the hum. It is terrible and beautiful, like a thousand murmuring voices, or the fuzzy rush of blood heard only in the womb. No more traffic. No more crickets. Just the hum.
The light pours in the house. My fingers freeze where they are, a word half formed on the screen. Everything goes silent. The light becomes everything. Shadows outside. Two, four, eight of them. More. Shadows within the light.
They begin to enter through the window.
end part 1 – part 2
