"Left Behind" - A Short Story

Darkness feels a Little heavier tonight. I am laying on my bed, watching the ceiling and sighing, like I do every time I’m alone with my thoughts. I don’t know what time is it, because a little or a long time ago –can’t say exactly when- every watch I have stopped working, either damaged, or victim of the current blackout. Even my cellphone’s battery had died out.

To my side was a short story anthology left mid-reading. I was supposed to be giving the final touches to an essay about the author, but time is faster than I am, and as such always escapes from my grab. I had thought that it could be read quickly, write something half-decent about it and still get a couple of hours of sleep before next day’s classes, but old birthday candles can only last some minutes.

Now what?, I’m tired, but sleep doesn’t come. My cat -my only partner during insomnia- is missing, maybe curled up in a chair somewhere, or with crossed paws quietly watching downwards like a gargoyle atop a castle-bookshelf. Meanwhile, I look upwards and see that sea of unmovable darkness that makes me think in the future.

An involuntary grimace appears on my face. I really don’t want dawn to come, I don’t want to go back to the same accelerated routine where no one stops to truly appreciate things, where everybody “swallows” instead of “taste” the moments. That empty need to go forward just because, I hate it, and maybe that is the reason I’m considered “Slow”, but there is a chance I just am.

There is a new sound, repeating and repeating. A mosquito buzzes close to my ear and I accidentally slap myself when trying to hit it. I realize. To my misery, that another thing has evaded me, and the sheer frustration makes me get up and sit and the bedside. Moonlight’s sight is filtering through the curtain-covered windows, and my eyes form the picture of a beautiful albino voyeurist that silently watches inside the house.

How incredibly annoying can be having to wait awake for something that isn’t desired but must be completed, to wait amidst a heat that stays so static and asphyxiating like the general environment, one where the mosquito fled, the cat is an unknown statue, and where not even a single night critter sings its part in the usual nocturnal choir. That singing could have been the instrument to not be lost in time, with every discordant note a grain of sand escaping from the hourglass that by now, only the albino lady must know.

And I truly hear nothing else, nothing apart from myself asking what time it is. Like that, becoming a hypocrite should be forgiven, because I can’t wish strongly enough for the next day to come so I can get rid of obligations, and with them, maybe also that deep feeling of stagnation.

I like to follow my own rhythm, but being unable to do something, anything, is painful. And here and now the only thing I can do is complain, Complain and wait. Something tells me that a lot of time has happened, but I feel everything exactly the same it was before the blackout.

The heat starts to ask payment, forcing me to blindly walk around the house, trying to get to the kitchen for a glass of water. All the way I kept my eyes closed, trying to thicken the unlight that ate all images, so that I may fall unconscious and rest. But that is another possibility that runs away, and as such I reach the kitchen completely awake. I drink the water while my eyes can’t be felt opened or closed; maybe it’s all the same in this darkness.

Then I try to go back to the bed, but I get lost. Or maybe the path exchanged places with another one that took me to the front door. There, I feel an impulse to open it and run like a madman just for the joy of a finished captivity. But the impulses are domesticated, and with a firm hand I grab the doorknob and slowly open the door. I’m received by a blinding light, cold, and a “smell” that is more like the absence of aroma, and before me is a world I don’t remember, too white and gleaming.

Suddenly, I feel more tired than ever before, and a multitude of small pains start to invade my body. When I raise my hand to massage my temples, the fingers touch a beard and hair far longer and far much whiter than when I was reading that short story under the lamp that didn’t warn about the coming darkness.