Evan Viniche was a cold midget of a shadow, elongated to conceit by far-falling shadows of the waning day. He stood directly in front of the setting sun, impatiently. The horizon burned and churned and seethed orange-pink with exasperation, self-righteous anger, even. But it was all to his back. Chhai shivered in Evan’s darkness. You have to leave. You two can’t stay here. The concrete under the tarp still felt warm with the sun’s energy, despite the evening air that floated in. Nikki looked over to Chhai, who only glanced back incompetently. It had been a long day. A real long day, Officer Viniche. The buttons on Evan’s blue uniform did not care. Evan’s eyes went fuzzy and black dots swarmed in, prickly and furious. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger, prompting tiny yellow lightening bolts to erupt on his eyelids. Tiredness. He removed his hand and looked back down into Chhai’s only slightly less apathetic eyes. Yes, Evan realized that the man on the tarp was exhausted to marrow. He softened a little in the wake of his new fatigue. It had been a long day, after all. Chhai and Nikki should get to the shelter. It was getting cold. They ought to try to get some rest. Move along, now. Nikki waited until Chhai began to get up, then started to move slowly and reluctantly. The tarp crunched sadly as they rolled it up and Chhai folded it under his arm. He shuffled past Evan. Thanks, Viniche. Nikki stared at his uniform, a thousand accusations at the ready. Evan started to reply politely, but found it just too ironic. He silently watched them depart. The girl kicked a bit of urban debris along as she shuffled away. She was so young. Why did so many young, young people wander the streets, homeless? To Evan, it seemed more rampant lately. More and more bedraggled teenagers skulked in shadows and slept dreamlessly in forgotten alleys. It bothered him. He stared after her, bravely fighting down his own goosebumps. But the pores in his soul were pushing open, testing their boundaries and tearing away all inhibitors to his permeability. He tried to close their tiny eyes, but Nikki was tearing into him, and she was completely unaware. Lonely, Evan thought. Lonely. Lost. And…something else. He frowned. Since this strange clairvoyance had overtaken him years ago, he had become a connoisseur of sentiment. He could name nearly every emotion to it’s subtlest tug on a heartstring, its most elusive, blurry manifestation. Many suffered from lack of emotional nomenclature, but not Evan. He suffered from knowing, sensing, feeling entirely too much. And as he absorbed her from across the empty evening air, a thick tear blinked from his corroded green eye. It tumbled, sticky, down his nose, cheek, coming down to kiss his gummy, rocky lips. It stung the tiny slits in the sensitive skin, leaking in, supersaturated the underlying tissue with salt. But he did not feel it. It was Nikki’s pain that made him pinch his eyes shut and made his flesh crawl. He left the mostly-empty bus station, left to home, to his wife and daughter. His shadow shortened widened, then lost pride and followed. The traffic lights were flashing red when Evan finally made it home. When he took driver’s education at age fifteen, he’d learned that most of them in this city did so after 2 AM, a power-saving measure. In a way, it had been a comfort to him. He’d always imagined that they functioned normally at all hours, directing ghost traffic, courtesy of their own deluded imaginations. He felt better for knowing that depressing image did not exist. But tonight, each wane and wax of the bulbs just reminded him that he was losing touch with the world and, more than ever, reality. There was a time when 2 AM meant sipping cheap vodka straight from the bottle before passing it on, taking hits from joints rolled in concert flyers, getting lost in his battered sports shoes as his legs dangled precariously off the edge of the nearly silent overpass. The summer night meant friends, memories he knew he was making, altered minds and stoner logic. Cold, clear winter after-midnight hours were for love, peace, contemplation broken only by the sounds of visible breath. Tonight, it was approaching winter. But Evan felt no calm. No serotonin leaking into his blood. There was, however, a fatigue he could never shake anymore, a love that cut long, streamlined slits in his psyche every day and every night. Evan pulled up in front of the house he and Karin had shared since they married. Normally white, it shone tacky pinkish yellow in the orange streetlamps. A tiny lawn housed a patch of snapped dry stems, the necrosis of a successful garden. This year’s blooms had been beautiful. He tried to remember that each time his eyes slid over the vegetative death. Even with the eyesores of late autumn, he found the entire street to be such a calm coating to what transpired in the house nonstop. He started to find it ironic, but realized it was more tragic than anything else. He navigated his car down the long, narrow driveway. It was nestled snugly between the house and the vindictive neighbor’s fence, and was surely a zoning violation of some kind. Evan knew that one day, he’d have the time and righteous anger to report it to someone, but both commodities were now too precious to waste. He realized that he could not remember what it was like to have a surplus of either. He glanced at the end of the driveway and startled slightly to see the garage door. Usually, Karin’s grey Toyota Cressida covered the dark oil slick that stared at him now, Rorschach-like and accusatory. He sighed. She was off again. Where, this time? Every time she silently rose to leave, his eyes followed her desperately. Every time he came home to an empty house, he worried that it was forever. And every time her absence stretched to the early morning hours, he knew she would not return until at least the next day. The stars moved slowly on these nights. Evan parked his car at the end of the driveway, pulled his feet away from the pedals, laid his pale forehead on the steering wheel. He fancied octopus suction feet grabbing at his thin skin, holding him there. They were not there. He did not feel them. Yet he could not shake the imagined round tentacle that devoured him cell by cell. “I’m losing it,” he mumbled. Then he pulled his face free from the wheel, yelled to the ceiling. “I’M LOSING IT!” Snow began to fall. He stared out the window, watching the orange glow of the streetlamps spill over the street alongside the twirling snowflakes. One streetlamp, the one next to his daughter’s bedroom window, had its outer casing smashed by the neighborhood kids long ago, and shone brighter than the rest. The precipitation formed a halo around the lamp. It reached out in all directions, calling wayward flakes to its jealous domain. Its fragmented shards cut the globular glimmer, and Evan’s salt-stung eyes imagined a jagged rainbow tracing the lamp’s disheartened skeleton. He made tiny snow mountains with his shoe as he slugged to the first concrete step of the porch. Worlds tumbled down to their apocalypse with a wipe on the WELCOME mat. Evan unlocked the badly-painted front door and twisted an infected knob with slippery wet gloves. He pushed it open and watched as the oval crochet rug crouched in the middle of the front room sucked wayward ghost ships into the whirlpool of its psychedelic world. But even as his different sensory lobes attacked the endless paradox of still life, Evan noted glumly that he was the only lifelight in this room, indeed, in the whole house. He tore off his fur-lined boots and tossed them beside the radiator. He rooted then in his favorite, green, rough-linen armchair. But something felt wrong. The welcoming cushion only attempted to line with the contour of his body. It did not meet him wholeheartedly, like before. The springs in the old armchair had regained elasticity and returned to perfect spirals in his absence. The entire house had been lost on him, really. The yawning empty space below the ceiling sniffed at him curiously, with only the most negligible trace of recognition. The television set lay on a small shelf across from Evan, poised to strike. Evan faced its blank and acerbic stare, sighed to usher in the cliché. He was indeed a stranger to his own house.
That was very cool. The imagery is well done. I don't understand this exactly. He pushed it open and watched as the oval crochet rug crouched in the middle of the front room sucked wayward ghost ships into the whirlpool of its psychedelic world. But even as his different sensory lobes attacked the endless paradox of still life What do you mean? Nice work.
It's hard to explain, sort of.....I guess the point I was trying to make is that he's not quite in his right mind, and he's so alone in his own house that he begins to see life in inanimate objects. However, at the same time he knows it's just a delusion. Thank you for your comment! I was afraid no one would/had read it.
Just something to think about Liz. I think as we look for our voice and our stories we sometimes let the art of writing get in the way. Like letting the brush strokes show when that isn't the look you're going for. I do that a lot. The passage I didn't quite get was lyrical and well written and a bit confusing. Also as a wise man on this forum once said, it takes a little time to get use to eachother's styles. I have limited time to create, but I'm making it more of a priority. Hope to read more of your stuff soon. Hope to post some myself as well. Keep it coming
