The Dead Night

 Outside, heavy sheets of rain fall on cracked stones, making them glint in the cold light. Inside, however, all is silent. He stares up into the vaulted ceiling; fancying that he can see past the wooden rafters to the distant stars beyond, but their comfort eludes him. The bed is cold. White rays of light barely reach the worn covers; they creep across him like a disease. The house is large, large enough to fill a poor man’s deepest desires; empty rooms full of old memories to make anew. He could scream, shout and shoot the wall but there are too many doors between him and a friendly ear. These memories flowed back in torrents. For the briefest of moments he was there again; not sitting on the hard back of her chair, not letting her listen to his deepest fears; his nightly torments.
The black curtains sway about him, constantly moving like a great ship. Unable to rest, he stares up but the darkness closes in expelling the entropy of his thoughts into twisted and terrible shapes. For a moment there is a child in the room with him, a small boy. His stiff eyes fall open; nothing more than a wisp of a half forgotten dream.
* * *
“I see. Did you know him?”
“Who?”
“The child”
“He had no face. I didn’t look at him… I didn’t want to” She scribbled furiously on the accursed book. “Progress, I think, Mr Plath,” a phrase which he knew came to her as easily as breathing. “Please continue”
* * *
Why must he be cursed with this affliction? This white disease; seeping into every facet of his existence; forced to float endlessly on a sea of waking dreams; re-living the embarrassments, the mizzling days. Grotesque and ominous parental faces sway around him, high above, casting their deep felt judgment. Such uncomfortable feelings, replayed over and over again in his mind; endlessly on repeat. Each memory as real as the next, clawing inside his skull to be set free. ‘What is it to be free’ he wonders, the night no more than an uninteresting, unremembered novelty; not to have to live every second in debilitating exhaustion. The glass shields him from the cold droplets. Nevertheless he feels them on his face; a cold sweat on his bumpy forehead. His breath creates swirling white mists, undisturbed by the glowing embers.
So many empty rooms around him, their creaking magnified. An orchestra of splinters and drafts mingled with the onslaught of the heavens. Outside the bright dawn might be starting, he can’t quite tell anymore. What is real, what is another haunting episode of exposure? Soon the tirade of footsteps will fill the streets like a river running endlessly on, never questioning what the destination might be. He is drowning, falling upwards to the grey light; surrendering to their assault on his eyes.
* * *
“Is that what you feel?”
“Yes”
“Then it will be true”
“You asked me to be honest. I am. It is what I believe”
“Every night?”
“Every second”
* * *
Walking along in the hot sunlight, her gaze is beating painfully down onto his rocky brow. The windows are perfect mirrors; endless recurrences of his awkward figure turn and stare at him. Their judgement is cold, unrelenting. They shout, banging their fists; remembering every dark thought, every unfavourable perception; painting him as the picture of inferiority. Tormented, he runs down a corridor of diminishing perspectives; falling through a forest of memories, their significance wavering like a leaf in the wind; so very important, and yet. Not.
Through one crinkled brown vein he glimpses a time before; when provocation was food and drink to him. Each dawn blessed with the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby. How many droplets. Sweet sugary planets to return to the sweet solace of sleep. They still lie mockingly at his bedside. Useless reminders of his desperation. The bright swathes of light bring him back to that moment; he cannot avoid the pull of it any longer.
To fall would be gift; he is staring down at the moving stars, the web of streets. To jump would be a sweet release; too many chains hold him back, willing him to choose the coward’s path. To live through the pain in wonderment of an impossible future, hope is toxic.
He is trapped in an endless desert of painful memories, irritating sand stretching in every direction. Perhaps they could be his salvation, an ending to the unending cycle of frivolity. Waking every day to the cheerful twitters of birds, they come out of hiding to invade his private procession of torture.
* * *
“Enough” She doesn’t shout, he doubts she ever has, but there is a strain in her voice, some pain he can’t quite detect. “Same time next week then” Her eyes follow him across the room, in the silence his shoes on the soft carpet echo off the white walls.
Same time next week then.