Arriving at my apartment after sitting in traffic forever, I felt dazed from the flask of rum and Coke. Thinking back to it now, it was a lot more rum than Coke. The therapist’s advice stewed in mind through the car ride. I’d made myself promises. I’d straighten myself out. Quit the booze. Look into going back to school. Reconnect with friends.
Getting out of the car, the world spun on me and everything slowly started to fade away like it had been a dream. The downpour must have waited for me to arrive at home. As soon as I set one foot out the car door, the heavens opened and drenched the world around me in the fattest, heaviest raindrops imaginable. The smell of ozone hung in the air. I took a deep breath of it looking up to the sky. Black storm clouds blocked out the sun turning the day nocturnal. Rolling thunder accompanied the flashes of lightening.
In the distance, bolts shocked the ground.
Yet, I didn’t care. What does a little rain matter when the whole world seems to be crashing down on you? Plus, it was refreshing to feel the water pour over me. It must be how grass and plants feel when it rains.
By the time I entered my apartment building, my clothes were soaked. My shoes made squishing noises all the way through the lobby, up into the elevator, and to the sixth floor. Mrs. Wiselink, the building manager, would have murdered me if she’d seen me.
The hallway was silent except for the air conditioning running through the building and some obnoxious laughter coming from one of the apartments at the end of the hall. Those bozos were always carrying on. I’d be pissed if I lived next door to them.
Stepping into my apartment, I tossed my keys onto the table near the door and walked into the bathroom. Yanking off my clothes, I didn’t bother looking into the mirror. There was no need to see the purple bags under my eyes, courtesy of the sleepless nights. My eyes didn’t seem to have the same color tone either. Right now, as you can see, they’re probably a dark brown. Maybe it’s a trick of my mind to match how I felt but I remember them being duller. I hadn’t shaved or cut my hair in months either. I must have looked like some prehistoric man living in modern times.
With Elena gone, I didn’t care about grooming or the weird spurts of weight gain and loss. When I first started getting heavily into the booze, I paired it up with binge eating too. Nothing like shoving a whole pizza pie down my throat with a bottle of rum. After a while, I quit the food binging because it left more room for alcohol.
And to not forgo on the truth but without going into the gruesome details, constipation took the pleasure of binging away. The constant struggle with going to the bathroom left me less willing to eat. The constant vomiting later balanced everything out though.
Walking out of the bathroom and into the main part of the apartment, the kitchen, living room, and bedroom came together to form my happy little studio apartment. A cluster of dirty dishes rotted away in the sink. The overflowing trash can was a collection of empty rum bottles and pint size Chinese food cartons. Clothes littered the room. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I’d done laundry.
The storm raged on outside growing stronger with heavier rain smacking against the window. Lightning crackled across the sky followed by thunder in an explosive dance of nature. The wind howled tossing around leaves, yanking the branches off trees, and throwing other debris into the air. Explosive booms followed brilliant flashes. The entire building shook.
The power flickered before going out. With nothing else to do and feeling the effects of the alcohol on my system, I decided it was best to sleep on what the therapist had suggested. Stormy weather always made me want to curl up under the covers. It reminded me of how Elena and I used to spend our Sunday mornings in bed until late in the afternoon cuddling with each other. The weight of the world came down on me once more. Only now I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
Getting into bed, I pulled the comforter up over my head and laid my head against the pillow. It was cold against my face exactly how I liked it. Allowing myself to relax for the first time in months, I fell asleep feeling hopeful there was a path for me to feel better again.
There was no tossing and turning. No waking up and having to fall back to sleep again. It was a state of unconsciousness as close to death as I could come without meeting the Grim Reaper himself. There weren’t any nightmares. No dreams. No feelings of actually being.
Upon awakening, I felt reborn. There was an energy inside me I hadn’t felt since Elena disappeared. The realization lasted only moments before I noticed someone was laying in bed next to me. A cold shiver ran down my spine. For a moment, I thought in my drunken state, I’d opened the door to the wrong apartment and didn’t realize it. But I was certainly in the right place. Next to Elena.
Elena brought a finger to my lips before I could scream or say a word. I couldn’t believe it. She was as beautiful as I remembered her. Long blonde hair flowing down past her shoulders. Emerald green eyes, sharp and piercing, yet full of love of warmth. There was so much I wanted to say. So many questions yet nothing came to me.
Elena placed her hand against my cheek and smiled. All anxiety, depression, and anger, everything I had felt the past years, evaporated within the moment, leaving me only the warmth and happiness. Life had regained its meaning. Love had come back into my life again.
Even as she pressed her hand against me, in my heart, I knew she wasn’t real. It had to be a dream. One of those dreams where you can control the outcome. A lucid dream. People don’t disappear and then reappear suddenly in bed with you. Elena didn’t have a key to my apartment to let herself in. I’d locked the door before coming inside.
It didn’t matter though. There are no words to describe how joyful it was to stare right into the eyes of my angel. I wanted to tell her I loved her and missed her tremendously. No words came out of my mouth when I tried to speak. It wasn’t because of the shock anymore. It was because I literally could not speak.
Signaling toward my throat, Elena didn’t appear to get the message something was wrong. I shifted my weight to turn over and found myself unable to move. Elena’s grip tightened over my face nearly crushing my jaw in her hand. There was nothing I could do. Her smiled faded from her lips making her seem like a mannequin except her eyes rolled into the back her head. Blackness filled them until they bulged out of her sockets. Both popped a moment later, splattering everything with the black fluid.
The fluid continued flowing from her socket. Then her nose and mouth followed. It didn’t sink into the sheets or mattress. It converged in the space between us in the bed. Still in Elena’s grasp, there was nothing I could do besides watch. Swatting and pushing away from her only tightened her grip further on my skull. She reached under her pillow and pulled a box cutter from underneath it. Sliding the blade out until it clicked, Elena pressed it against her forearm and dragged it down to her hand. Skin split and veins were torn open. The would bled the same black fluid.
Congealing between us, the black fluid swirled like water going down the drain. Elena dropped the box cutter and squeezed my nose shut with her freed hand. She held the other over my mouth cutting off my breathing. The black fluid rolled like a tidal wave in the ocean as it crawled up from the center of the bed and onto me. It felt like boiling oil had been dripped on my face. It made a loud slurping noise in my ears as it entered them. It forced itself up my nose and into my mouth once Elena released them. It entered me through every orifice it could find.
The world became a mess of white, hot searing pain accompanies by a growing darkness as my vision began to fuzz. Being unable to move, scream, or otherwise fight back against it left me at its mercy. Giving in to the assault, I dropped all resistance of both mind and body. I waited for the end to come. I thought I was going to die. The black fluid enveloped me completely. It plunged me into a darkness of boiling hot pain. The sounds of slurping nearly burst my ear drums. Being at the edge of true insanity, my mind crashed allowing me to fade away into nothingness.
Waking up, I screamed at the top of my lungs and grasped at the pillow in my hand with a vice-like grip. Dried blood coated the bed, the pillows, and my hands. My mouth tasted overwhelmingly metallic like I’d been sucking down pints of blood straight from the vein. Jumping out of the bed, I ran into the bathroom to survey the damage I’d done. Fresh scratched covered my face. There was no major damage done.
Jumping into the shower to wash off the dried remnants of blood, I turned the knob, and nothing came out. Cursing, I tired the sink and nothing came out either. The storm must have knocked out the power. The water pumps were probably down. It would have made sense if the lights hadn’t been on in the bathroom. Leaving the bathroom to call maintenance, I discovered my phone had died. Hooking it up to the charger I was left with no other choice but to go to them directly. With paper towels and a bottle of water, I cleaned up the best I could, got clothes on, and tried to head out into the hallway.
Only I couldn’t.
The lock on the door wouldn’t budge. The doorknob didn’t turn either. I had no reasonable explanation for it. I tried to force the lock open and yielded nothing. Grabbing my toolkit from the closet, I went to work removing them lock only to find my tolls had no effect either. The screws wouldn’t turn regardless of how much lubricant I strayed on them. Growing more concerned by the minute, I decided to break the lock and knob with a hammer. Those could be replaced later. Multiple full force hits did absolutely nothing. Not even a scratch.
Feeling trapped and utterly baffled, I left the tools at the door and went to the window to see if I could leave through the fire escape. Opening the curtains, there was nothing outside. No fire escape. No sky. No ground. Nothing at all except pitch black. A shiver passed through me at the thought of the black muck burning me alive in my dream. The slurping sounds it made were still fresh on my mind.
Taking a moment to myself, I stood there rationalizing the irrational. The world outside the window was gone. The locks on my apartment were stuck, impossibly so. Checking my phone again, the light indicating it was charging hadn’t been on.
Going back to the front door, I looked out the peep hole to see if I could flag someone walking past the door. The same void was on the other side of the door.
A sudden rush of adrenaline hit me. Whether it was fear, anger, or final going off the reservation, I grabbed the hammer from the ground, and hit it against the door until my arm hurt. I shouted into the void for help. Realizing it was useless, I turned to the thin plaster walls, and began to hammer at it too. Once again, it didn’t even scratch the paint from the wall.
Finally, I tried the window. The hammer bounced off the pane of glass like it had hit a trampoline. Falling to the ground out of the breath and exhausted, nothing came to mind except closing the curtains on the windows. The voided nothingness disturbed me. It wasn’t logical. There was no reason or possibility for this. It was impossible to be where I was.
For the sake of my sanity, I stopped thinking about it, and thought about grabbing a bite to eat. A little food and relaxing could spark an idea. Unfortunately, it only showed me my appliances stopped working too. The refrigerator stopped functioning yet the food inside stayed fresh for long after it should have expired. It didn’t matter much since all food and drinks tasted bland and flat like the flavor had disappeared.
Even the air in the room felt stale and dead. Sound didn’t carry. It seemed dull and reflected poorly off the air. When I spoke aloud to myself, it was barely audible if I wasn’t yelling.
The apartment lights still functioned, although flipping the light switch didn’t make a difference. Some other force regulated those. They would go on and off for hours at a time. It was the new system for knowing the difference between night and day. When the light shut off, it was night. Lights on meant day time. My biological clock must have been thrown out of whack because I did little sleep in those first “days”.
During one of my many outbursts, I tried to break the light. It was stupid of me to try. It wasn’t in my best interest to sit there alone in perpetual darkness. The best explanation for it is the need to prove to myself something still made sense in the universe. Glass was supposed to break. The world was supposed to exist outside of the window. Breaking the light would be breaking the new rules. It would be taking back my power. Or something like that.
I just wanted to change the monotony. And I got my wish.
Grabbing the hammer once more, I brought it down as hard as I could on the bulb. Hitting it sent an electrical current ripping through my hand. The hammer bounced off the light bulb, hit the ceiling, and fell to the ground with a muffled thud. I learned to behave once I regained feeling in my hand.
Foregoing the idea of escaping, I tried to entertain myself with books. The problem was I couldn’t read them. The words on the pages were jumbled up and illegible. Focusing on reading only produced words like anagrams. The letters moved on me too. Letters, numbers, and symbols mixed together and floating around in the pages like an alphabet soup.
Unable to distract myself, I had a lot of time to think. With it came many panic attacks. The mind’s ability to cope with and endure the illogical is incredibly small. Time had no meaning. Being trapped in my apartment in what appeared to be some black hole in the universe is likely to drive anyone bonkers.
If it wasn’t a black hole in the universe, my other theory was I’d died or committed suicide and this was my punishment. Think about it. Boredom is a viable torture method. Solitary confinement ravages the mind. Humans need social interaction. Unable to satisfy the need for stimulation, isolation is probably one of the worst punishments imaginable. Pair it with the fact I don’t know I’m dead and you’ve got yourself an eternity of suffering.
Those were the two I settled on the most though. The other theories are a bit more elaborate and easily disproved but necessary. One needs to keep the mind going to survive. Maybe an alien race had abducted me and sealed me into the apartment and kept me as a pet in some galactic zoo. Maybe someone was running an experiment on me against my will. Then again, those might have both been episodes of the Twilight Zone I was pulling out of my subconscious.
I take back what I originally said when I started. Maybe I am a little crazier than I thought. Do you blame me, though?
Day in and day out, lights on and lights off, I’d go about the time like a prisoner in solitary confinement. Building a routine was vital. Upon waking up, I’d immediately check the windows to see if there was still only darkness outside. Once I had confirmation I was still in the lowest pit of Hell, I did body weight exercises. Pushups, leg lifts, and squats. Cardio too. Jumping up and down, jogging around the apartment, and a little tae bo. After finishing my exercises, I’d go into the bathroom and pretend to take a shower. Wiping myself down with a towel, I’d speak into the shower head and ask my captors if I could have a little water. Obviously, there wouldn’t be an answer. I always hoped for a miraculous change of heart in the aliens, the demons, or whoever controlled the lights.
Once I’d cleaned myself up, I tried to relieve myself. I had no memory of the last time I’d peed or dropped a deuce. Human needs weren’t a necessity. Then I’d go into the living room, grab a pen, and start writing in my “journal”. Exactly like the books, the letters would drift off the page upon being written. Lucky for me, I never ran out of paper because of it.
After getting bored with the journal writing, I’d turn on the television. Of course, turning it on didn’t do anything. I’d stand in front of the television and act out my own shows. Comedies, police procedurals, soup operas, whatever struck my mood. My co-stars were sock puppets. Granted, they had no eyes or decorations on them to make them seem human-like but it didn’t matter. My white socks could be Dr. Philip Rogers, plastic surgeon to the stars, Allegra Dominguez, the beautiful housemaid with a heart of gold, or Hayward Fette, billionaire extraordinaire.
Of course, there were times when the depression would set in again. No matter how many sock-puppet characters you make, you’re always talking to yourself. No one in the world would know where I’d disappeared to. My mother and I hadn’t spoken in close to ten years. My father hadn’t been in the picture since I was five years old. I wouldn’t recognize the man even if we’d bumped into each other on the sidewalk. I certainly would have appreciated him coming back into my life at this point though. I wasn’t close to anyone at work and hadn’t spoken with anyone since the plant closed.
Elena would have been the only person to realize I’d been gone.
With all my bills on automatic payments, no one would be coming around unless a payment didn’t clear. There was plenty of money in my checking account to cover my rent and utilities for a while. There would be any bill collectors coming to bust me for non-payment either.
You’d think the mail man would have noticed I stopped getting my mail and notified someone? Nope. The bastard never said anything to anyone. He was more concerned about completing his route and getting home in time for dinner.
You want to know the damnedest thing about the whole ordeal? Even with finding a routine, thinking about all my life problems and coming to grips with being somewhere I didn’t belong, eventually, the psyche gives out. With no escape in sight, the idea of suicide was more appealing than ever. Gathering the courage to do what I hadn’t done before, I took matter into my own hands on several occasions.
Mind you, this was after losing track of how many days passed. Figuring Elena was trying to tell me how to escape in my dream, I tried to slice open my wrists with a kitchen knife and found out I couldn’t be cut. Same happened with the hammer after trying to bash in my own skull with it. No pain, no injuries. Just a bit of pressure on my head where the hammer should have broken through my skull and scrambled my brains. Going as far as smashing each finger on my hand, hitting myself in the testicles, and jamming the handle into my eye socket, I learned what it felt like to be Superman.
I can’t tell you how long this cycle went on. It could have been a week, a year, or a decade. I got no clue. I stopped keeping tracks of the lights. They didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
Then one day, as suddenly as this endless cycle began, everything changed…
Submitted June 22, 2017 at 06:44AM by Human_Gravy http://ift.tt/2rTIxAh libraryofshadows
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