The rain falls and the streets quickly become rivers and oceans. The moisture once surrendered by the earth has returned, as if it had never really gone.
Beneath a flickering streetlight the road is black and shiny from rain, and here a man slumps. Dark hair pulled back into the nape of his neck and silver rings on each finger. With each breath his chest staggers as though his heart is breaking more completely with the passing seconds. With water filled boots he rises and begins to walk through the city streets in absolute silence. There are no cars, no planes over head, no drifting music, no voices, no buzz from the neon signs. As the rain begins to fall again, it to is silent. This world, his world, has become empty and hollow; the universe is grieving.
Stopped in front of a convenient store he lights a cigarette, inhaling with hunger. For the first time in a long time, he stands on the street without fear. Not a single shred of it. His back is not against a wall, his eyes are looking downward and his hand only serves to take his hand rolled cigarette to and from his bruised lips.
The sky is starting to turn over, to awaken. He stubs his cigarette butt out and stuffs it into his pocket; there are no bins in sight. His mind calculates the number of hours he has before the sun will rise and his dark cocoon will be stripped from him; three at most. He does not want to waste them on other people, making menial conversation and pretending to listen to their empty and irrelevant words. He cannot though, stomach the thought of heading home yet, no, not yet.
“No matter how far away/I will always love you/No matter the words I say/I will always love you/I will always love you.”
He sings as he starts to slowly move again down the street, The Cure, hoping for one. His voice is piercing the haunting silences that has engulfed the city. He feels an inch of warmth within, and in doing so realises his hair and clothing are heavy with rain and feel icy against his skin. His boots are weighted and his breath is visible in front of his face. He does nothing to change this.
His heavy boots carry him along this city street. His steps are even, unfaltering, without purpose. He is just moving one step at a time. He passes a liquor store that is all but deserted. Further down the street he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the window of a closed book store, but is unable to definitively make out any of his facial features. For the second time tonight, he stops to light a cigarette. The flame from his lighter is strong as draws his first breath. He turns his head to the left and realises he is outside a dimly lit bar. So cliched, so perfect. He pushes the door open with his cigarette between his lips. He immediately notices two things; the first is that the bar is holding only a sparse clientele, and the second is that the padding of silence he had been traveling along the streets in was gone.
It was a red lit bar filled with faint music, the haze from chain smokers and anguished patrons. He takes a stool in a quiet corner of the bar, where he can watch the rain outside. From his haven within a haven he sits silently and watches as the rain starts to ease and then almost instantly, cease. He thinks that maybe he should be blaming God. Or whoever. That perhaps his mind should be filled with raging thoughts of cliched revenged, sadness, fury and depression. Should be filled with some kind of moving emotion, instead of the abyss he feels within. Should be something, but he is nothing. He barely feels the abyss.
Under the buzzing red neon “Bar” sign, he slumps. His head rests in the join of two walls, his eyes stare unflinchingly out to the street. The street is still empty, he is still empty.
The music is louder than it was when he first entered, as if it has been on an undetectable increase since he stepped into the bar. It does not stir him. It becomes a buffer between him and the murmur of others in this place. He lifts the glass to his swollen lips and laps up the last drops of vodka. His vision is not what it was yesterday, or even this morning. Nothing is what it was yesterday. He wishes he had a dog to go home to, even a goldfish, just something that could snap him back into the painstaking routine of life. Something that reminded him he had to do basic things like emptying the bins, paying the gas, defrosting the freezer. Something that would thrust him into the real world where he had to deal with real and raw emotions. He has nothing.
With a fresh drink in his hand and a never ending cigarette in the other, he decides to stay in this spot forever. To live right here, in this place, with these strangers and forget about anything he might have once enjoyed, the people he might have once cared about, the jobs he might have once felt ambition for, the travels he might have once wanted to experience, the love he might have once found, the life he might have once been destined to lead.
His eyes are still locked on the street outside as a mist of rain sweeps down the road. Heavy, fat droplets form and start to fall so hard and violently that world outside becomes nothing more than a faded memory.
