When all the lights go out*
A dark room, four walls of a colour that might have been white once. A wooden wardrobe in a corner, worn out on the outside, rotting quietly. A narrow and old iron bed along the wall. No bedtable. A dusty metal chair with clothes scattered randomly over it. A desk with two halp-empty packs of cigarrettes, a dirty ashtray, a shining gasoline lighter, perhaps the only item in the room that looks new. In the wall over the desk, a small window facing the outside, a narrow alley, capturing whatever light is left of the day. There's never much light left in these days.
A man is sitting in the bed. Alone. Next to him there is an open briefcase of worn leather with papers. Drafts, unread for years, almost forgotten, never completed. Tales never told. Around him, in the bed and in the floor, pictures. Old pictures. His eyes stare at one next to the pillow, a picture showing four faces together, their laugh captured in the paper, their lips smiling, their eyes shining with joy of being together, the four of them. He cannot remember when that picture was taken. He knows that the place where it was taken no longer exists. He doesn't know where three of the people in the picture are, or what happened to them. He is the fourth. He stares at another, it shows a face. A face he ought to remember, a face staring back at him after all those years. He moves to another one. Then to the landscape behind them. A place he shall not see again with his waking eyes. His eyes stare at another picture, one of a girl with bright eyes and a wide smile. Love. Futile love. The last love, her face faded and then lost like all the faces behind him.
He doesn't know what happened. He doesn't know where the people in the pictures have gone, and why. He hasn't seen any of those faces in years. He hasn't called them. He hasn't heard anything from them, their voices lost in the void that lies beyond the door of his small room, just as that familiar landscape that has vanished as the years went by.
His eyes move to the briefcase, to the papers within. His old ideas. Ancient worlds of his own making. He doesn't know how did the ideas scattered themselves. Something happened, something he can't quite place. Something changed. He looks at his drafts. Everything used to be so natural, so simple. Then it was gone. He picks up one of the papers, wrinkled, the letters on it blurred by the time. That was a long time ago. A whole life ago. The wrinkles of his drafts are the wrinkles of his face. Eroded, worn-out, forgotten. Time heals everything, they say, but it never, ever forgives.
What changed, and when, is unknown. There must have been something, something happening at some point of his life. Some step taken, some path followed. A choice, perhaps. A wrong deed, a wrong word. A small grain of sand that had brought the cogs to a halt. He does not know. Yet that path ended up right here, with him sitting alone in a dark, dirty room, surrounded by his own ghosts. Ghosts. He doesn't mind them any more. They are the only company he has left until the day when all the lights go out.
*rewriten
A man is sitting in the bed. Alone. Next to him there is an open briefcase of worn leather with papers. Drafts, unread for years, almost forgotten, never completed. Tales never told. Around him, in the bed and in the floor, pictures. Old pictures. His eyes stare at one next to the pillow, a picture showing four faces together, their laugh captured in the paper, their lips smiling, their eyes shining with joy of being together, the four of them. He cannot remember when that picture was taken. He knows that the place where it was taken no longer exists. He doesn't know where three of the people in the picture are, or what happened to them. He is the fourth. He stares at another, it shows a face. A face he ought to remember, a face staring back at him after all those years. He moves to another one. Then to the landscape behind them. A place he shall not see again with his waking eyes. His eyes stare at another picture, one of a girl with bright eyes and a wide smile. Love. Futile love. The last love, her face faded and then lost like all the faces behind him.
He doesn't know what happened. He doesn't know where the people in the pictures have gone, and why. He hasn't seen any of those faces in years. He hasn't called them. He hasn't heard anything from them, their voices lost in the void that lies beyond the door of his small room, just as that familiar landscape that has vanished as the years went by.
His eyes move to the briefcase, to the papers within. His old ideas. Ancient worlds of his own making. He doesn't know how did the ideas scattered themselves. Something happened, something he can't quite place. Something changed. He looks at his drafts. Everything used to be so natural, so simple. Then it was gone. He picks up one of the papers, wrinkled, the letters on it blurred by the time. That was a long time ago. A whole life ago. The wrinkles of his drafts are the wrinkles of his face. Eroded, worn-out, forgotten. Time heals everything, they say, but it never, ever forgives.
What changed, and when, is unknown. There must have been something, something happening at some point of his life. Some step taken, some path followed. A choice, perhaps. A wrong deed, a wrong word. A small grain of sand that had brought the cogs to a halt. He does not know. Yet that path ended up right here, with him sitting alone in a dark, dirty room, surrounded by his own ghosts. Ghosts. He doesn't mind them any more. They are the only company he has left until the day when all the lights go out.
*rewriten
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