chapter monday

8/12/2019 Chapter Monday

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Monday-Or-

“North of Nothing” _______________________________________

The clock on the wall ticked onward into infinity. It was the singular, lonesome clamor

reverberating in the room.

Tic.Tic.

Tic.

Will‟s blurred eyes opened to the repetitive metronome. A white comforter blanket

was suffocating him under its overbearing affection.Tic.

Tic.Tic.

He coughed, scraping the edges of his throat with the contrived air from his organs,then swallowed in response to his arid mouth.

Tic.

Tic.Tic.

His eyes traced the uneven white paint glued to the wall. They followed the dried

ridges along the drywall face until they connected with a green plastic arc, holding the

false glass in place in front of the ticking roman numerals.Tic.

Tic.He sucked in his chest and forced all available energy to his forearm, whose circulation

was draining under his body weight faster than it was being replaced. He pushed into the

comforting fabric until his waking arm collapsed from the strain.

Tic.His rising hips fell back into the cotton folds, shaking the loose bed frame into

whatever floor was supporting it. The lights flickered above his head in objection.

He blinked in rapid succession, demanding the water in his vision retire earlier than it

had planned.Tic.

Attempt the second. Again he directed his weight into his poorly circulated limb,

commanding his bicep awake and his forearm to push to the ceiling. He seized whateveropportunity the show of strength allowed him to slide his right hand palm underneath historso for balance, followed by his opposite palm. His dead weight was screaming to be let

go, but his arms were importunate.

Will looked back to the wall, and the fully realized clock came into focus.He hated it.

Tic.



color were solidified in blue, orange, green, and red. None were white. There had to be a

while one. It made logistical sense, after all, that the vanilla room would have the vanilla

color to go along with it. He begun scanning the bare floor for something he may havemissed the first time around.

That‟s when he saw the wheelchair.

Its presence took him into a frenzy of petrified astonishment.Instinctively, almost by a reflex, he kicked his leg against the mattress. Or, rather, heattempted to do so to debunk his own instantaneous fears. No motion. He tried again,

with his other leg this time. Again, there was no motion, though Will was nearly certain

he felt a ripple through the sheets. He vainly twisted his ankles, curled his toes, bent hisknees, anything to dig up the relief reserve somewhere in his stomach that he wasn‟t

stuck in the body of a paralysis victim.

There was no such luck.

A flurry of blind rage and misplaced animosity warranted a furious convulsion in hismid torso, still clinging to his fleeting hope that a nerve ending would awake from its

extended, joking slumber. The blankets bounced from his immobile being. No feeling

rushed to his lower body as his expectations deflated.The legs were consistently frozen. Nothing had been changed excluding the fact that he

was now panting to himself in frustration.

Stop resisting. You know it to be true.

He parted the clumsily tossed blanket to his side, exposing his limp body covered byhis coordinated sleepwear, consisting of a green t-shirt and matching thin, cotton shorts.

His legs were thinned to the point of emaciation, shriveling to meet his torso connecting

to his shrunken thighs.He sat up. Not because he wanted to, but because he needed to. Because his instincts

would not allow otherwise. Because the sadistic corner of his mind needed to confirm the

fears tearing up his insides instead of just laying back down and pushing the cold

thoughts away. He sat up against his wishes, and immediately wished he hadn‟t. Though it was nearly effortless, the reaching movement registered the lack of feeling

with a thud. Any disbelief suspension crumbled to dust when he should have felt his lazy

hands grazing his lower skin.Shit.

I‟m paralyzed.

His reactionary instincts dove him immediately into his own personal informationwealth pool, containing treasure troves of life experience that could be an inkling of use

in his face-burning ordeal. He fished in his memories for a recollection he had seen one

faraway day in his distance past, of handicapped persons beating life‟s daily demand

quota. He was relieved when he recalled several, and incoherently put their actions to hisown predicament by filtering the commonalities between them.

He was problem solving with a surprisingly level head.

So he did what he believed he should have done: he wrapped his hands around the base

of his calf, and heaved it off the bed‟s side without exhausting much recognizable effort.One. He repeated his process with the remaining limp limb, tossing it to be parallel to the

other one. Two.

He pushed his weight into the mattress once more, this time with his knuckles downand making the best use of his biceps that protruded from his arms like stones wrapped in



a plastic bag. When his torso rose, he twisted himself around to face in the same direction

of his legs.

Now begun his most challenging task. He instinctively directed his foot to grasp themetal handle nearest to the bed, only to have it deny his command and forcibly remind

him of his newfound paralysis. So he instead chose to flail his arms at the thing until his

pinky finger caught its cylindrical edge. His hand latched to the polished metal and pulledit closer, dragging it along the floor.Carefully, Will piloted his legs into the mobile chair, letting the dead weight fall into

the place he thought appropriate. And he jumped.

He didn‟t know what he was thinking, throwing himself from the reassurance andsafety of the bed without first considering the obvious implications were he to fall.

Though to his credit, Will had only been surviving with the debilitation for less than a

dozen minutes, and no one could blame his failure for lack of trying.

He fell. And he didn‟t fall gracefully. He fell and hit the floor like a bellyfloping diverinto a dried pool, the slapping sound of skin colliding with floorboards evoking memories

from childhood carelessness, of victimization from pointless antics and falling to his

living room floor.He groaned a deep, guttural groan when he felt his bony wrist smack into the hard

surface, producing a nearly audible cracking sound as it went. His protesting pain

indication bounced off the walls.

But it didn‟t take long before Will‟s repentance for this uncalculated misdeed kickedin, and he was scrambling to his arms to push his way into the only foreseeable

transportation means. He jammed it into the gap between his bed‟s frame and the floor

itself, ensuring its conformity to his intentions in the form of immobility.Okay.

One.

Two.

Two.Three.

Three.

He heaved himself into the padded, insurance-covered convenience and aligned hislegs with their acceptable positioning, or at least what he interpreted them to be.

It was a shaky entrance to say the least, but following three arduous realignments, he

was successfully seated in moderate comfort. He was panting from the effort once again.The room. He left his thoughts alone for the time being to re-examine the room from

his inconvenient perspective.

The infernal ticking clock he remembered chucking into oblivion lay in a heap on the

floor, as it should have been.Will steered himself in the direction of the dresser in the corner, standing upright in all

its discounted glory. Upon further inspection, it exposed its inconsistent ridging and holes

like Swiss cheese. He removed the lowest drawer, pushing against the corner with his

right arm, and discovered a variety of three kinds of pants, each more indistinct than thelast. He gripped the first pair he saw that wasn‟t entirely disinteresting, and begun the

task of getting them on his person.



He donated a total of five minutes and thirteen seconds before abandoning the project,

tossing them aside somewhere and hoping he wouldn‟t be going somewhere that they

were required.He wheeled to the door, still breaking himself into the new, old transport, and headed

to whatever waited outside for him.

He expected a lengthy hallway pushing onwards coated with the similar vanilla paintuntil it was terminated by the next closest livable space. Instead, he was greeted to breathable air and expansive walls. His apartment revealed its remainder to the tenant in

one foul swoop.

He chose not to behold it. The unsolicited clarity punctuated his psyche deeper than hisloose definition of reality could support with its dated Tacoma Narrows beams. So he

averted his eyes. Because they could follow an order. Because his proverbial rope was

burning to a crisp from both ends. Because it was the insignificant straws disguising

themselves to be taken care of or under wraps that were the most destructive.It wasn‟t a cartoonish shield with his arms to block the sun‟s rays with his elbow, yet it

was deliberate. It was conscious. He looked to his feet. The ends of them became the

most interesting subject available at the local community college with a stack ofmandatory reading material. He backed the chair into the impromptu comfort via

familiarity in his bedroom, and thought it best to make a second attempt at dressing.

Ten minutes (and hundreds of expended calories, like existing was the only exercise

built into his regimen) later, and he was twisting the finishing touches on the collar of his buttoned plaid shirt. He dug his wakening hands into the rebellious cotton pockets, and

sat in front of the wooden barrier in anticipation of the unexplainably fear-inducing

apartment waiting beyond. His hands were flinching into the rubber lining his chair‟smetallic circular frames.

The door creaked open. Not a molecule of oxygen had been disturbed since his

preliminary entrance. But his observations were overshadowed by…something. An

awareness. A recognition.He had somewhere he was expected to appear.

It wasn‟t a unique observation. Its foreign nature had gone stale not days before, and

its stress-inducing familiarity was growing stressfully dull with its repetition. Theambiguously motivated victims that his overbearing being had stolen would often

defiantly reclaim a pathetic portion of their existence, in the form of a subconscious

notification or internal directional instruction. So Will didn‟t immediately succumb to his pressing urges to discover his, as he believed, pre-planned journey down the discovery

railway.

Yet a lingering command repeated itself below his brain‟s mattress, demanding his

compliance in such a way to convince him without knowledge of his own free will‟sabsence. So the MK-ULTRA candidate left his apartment with the overwhelming urge to

disappear into whatever obstacle lay in his path, forgoing his inspection of his rented

chambers and nearly forgetting to lock the door on his way out, his freedom of choice

shunned by a greater force.The elevator just outside his apartment‟s entrance dumped him in some kind of lobby

area, though its lack to committing to this identity made him uncomfortable in believing

it to be a lobby. Yet it was far less offensive to his senses than his elevator rideundertaken not seconds before. Atrocious was the closest, most accurate word Will could



conjure on a moment‟s notice. His (or anyone‟s, for that matter) sense of balance could

hardly support his weight without the unnecessary wrench in the mechanical gears. It was

human nature to exhibit the behavior. But the few embarrassing instances he could countand tell on his fingers could not hold the brightest of candles to his time spent in his

apartment building‟s elevator in a wheelchair for the first time. The palpable shift to

supporting both he and the contraption he required in daily existence was noted by asmall bounce, throwing him off guard and breaking whatever concentration he apparentlyrequired to pilot his body. His wheels shifted in response to the miraculous shift. He

compensated and nearly scared himself away from it before it had even begun motion.

When the doors closed like the pages in a book of fate for late adults, and with theglowing yellow button assigned to a floor on which it is to travel, all trepid mental

precautions were lost outside to a particularly ruthless breeze. A breeze with the force of

a hurricane. Will first slammed headstrong and face-first into its front facing entryway

whose untouched buttons glowed like darkness. His immobile ankles caught the brunt ofthe force, he luckily discovered upon his emasculating accident. Yet before another word

could be uttered by common sense‟s attorney, the chair reeled backwards, his skull

colliding with cheap slang built for and used by middle school students.He scratched his head‟s backing and tended to the dull wound as he waited for the

lobby to reveal itself.

The lobby wasn‟t hideous, and it wasn‟t broken, but something between the tile‟s

cemented rows struck a distrusting nerve somewhere underneath a pile of whimsicalrubble. So he made a beeline for the worn glass doors signifying the primary entryway.

He passed a walled-off section of door-covered mailboxes, taking care to avoid any

chance of small talking with the man in his red sweater already there.The instant the door left its hinge, the air swept in and a mild chill took over.

The immediate weather beyond the doors was livable, which he was surprised at, given

his newfound experience dealing in harsh conditions. He hadn‟t noticed a coat on the

rack upon his exit, and didn‟t feel he required one now. The sun need not fight its waythrough congealed (and vaporized) darkness hanging in the sky on today‟s calendar date.

Today‟s calendar date proposed smooth, blank blueness to dominate the atmosphere, and

any natural forces at play were in unanimous agreement.The glass doors found a short-lived pathway to a concrete sidewalk, the slabs broken

by insistent indentations, even when this particular street was slanted facing the right

side.It was after his concrete observation and before he reached his internal destination

when he chose to bask in the cityscape.

He was in Quebec.

He had lived there for two years in a transition period buried somewhere in hismemories under a shallow grave. Its identity was perceptible from vast distances beyond

its borders. Socially appropriate elation rushed in and subsided in seconds, recalling the

circumstances for his return to the city.

He hailed a cab. Though he desired escaping back into the city‟s enveloping embrace,the machine had a due destination in mind.

A fifteen-minute hired drive and half the magnificent town covered later, and his

therapeutic cruising was terminated by a sudden turn into an open parking lot. The carspontaneously halted, and the driver declared their presence at his destination.



He paid the man whatever unrecognizable currency was wedged between the leather

wallet flaps in his pocket, and it wasn‟t until he exited the vehicle that he identified the

anonymous building put on display for him:It was a hospital.

The building in its progressive, metallic walls merged into the surrounding cityscape

into one immense conglomeration of modernity, stamping its mark into millennia. The building itself effortlessly faded into nothing until it was needed, instead choosing todedicate itself to being a cog in the thriving machine.

He made his way in through the clear sliding glass doors and on to the mass-produced

tiled floor that made itself at home in airports and food courts worldwide.The medical center was alive with activity, but familiarity swept in from days

previous, and Will filtered his vision to a science. He headed through without so much as

a second glace, straight in the direction of the elevator.

The elevator was a chore to locate. It was hidden within the hospital‟s corridors like itwas a precious gem worth keeping secret. He had gone halfway down the hospital‟s

eastern wing before recognizing his mistake and doubling back to follow the west wing‟s

path, only to uncover that he was right the first time. He wheeled past another limitlesswall with discreet doorways liberally tacked into it every few dozen meters or so, until

the singular steel plated doors announced their presence. Will pressed the calling button

and secretly hoped to himself that the place was sanitized. Preferably with something

airborne.The short journey towards the ceiling stole his comforting guard for a brief moment

when it took off and the alignment shift sent him hurling into the collapsible doorway,

and slamming his knees into the metal, sending a jolt of pain into his legs where thereshould have been one. Will shook it off and thanked reality for the voided presence of

another passenger.

Ding.

The metallic red sea parted with a ding.The floor opened for the wheelchaired man, and if what he considered on the first floor

was chaos, this was something beyond mortal achievement. It was anarchic bedlam. It

was an apocalyptic sandwich with instability as the luncheon meat and pandemonium andmayhem as the bread slices. At least, this was the case to the untrained observer.

Will continued his journey forward, and the wheels occasionally gripped against

something stuck to the floor, making the corresponding peeling sound by his ear. Herolled to the room he might have recalled visiting once before, except, as he knew, he had

never visited this city in his lifetime.

Room 306. Straight ahead.

He rolled past another overwhelming amount of crammed doors, some ajar, somefastened shut. He acknowledged his socially inappropriate habit to look inside each one

with an opened entryway, but he found he couldn‟t help himself. The life stories held in

these rooms, within these beds, were unforgettable. In the room on the left was the victim

of an unjust motorcycle collision; taken down in a crosswalk on his way to work, butcoming into the ER with only minor damage. In the room on the right was a young

woman stepping down the spiral staircase of her life, battling a rare condition with an

immobile smile from cheek to cheek. In the room two doors down was the teenage boy



who couldn‟t remember his name but bottled his passion into preservable glass. But a

rogue phenomenon broke his brief trance on the path to the anonymous room.

He heard the unmistakable sound of a string instrument.It, like so many other rising sounds experienced in his past transient week, begun

faintly, as if it didn‟t exist and was merely a stress-induce figment created from nothing

but involuntary willpower. It begun as an inaudible hum in the distance because he hadn‟tdiscovered it.He steered the chair toward the faint humming on a miniature journey of self-

discovery: unsure of his destination and what to expect when he arrived at it.

It was in the same hallway occupying his presence, and the door was open. The tilefloor stretched to the near end of the hallway before the culprit could have been

discovered, but Will was lucky enough to be in the small audience in the correct moment.

He followed the sound waves as they materialized from thin air, arriving at a room

with the door carelessly left opened and the lights unexplainably turned off. It grewlouder with each rotation of his spoke-covered wheels into the floor.

A teenage girl sat in a black, plastic looking chair facing the medical bed prepped

against the wall on the right. A violin sat proudly buried into her neck and in her left palm. The music flowed from her like a calm brook on a summer evening, reflecting the

moon‟s haunting glow in its crystal waters.

The chords she played struck one in Will himself. Every note beamed her liveliness

constructed between her youthful cell borders, her enduring spirit generously donated tothose less fortunate to have their own. The immaculate sound waves rolling from the

metallic strings silenced the intrusive hospital turmoil and fed a lulling void behind his

skin. The artistic beauty swimming around his seated persona had never beenexperienced prior to this culminating moment in time. He felt his core attributes rupture

within his bones, turning into a warming feeling that filled the vacant hollowness from

his stomach to his neck.

She was seated across from an elderly woman attached to the most variable machinesrobotics had to offer. Oxygen tubes ran from her nose to a tank hidden beneath the button

rows and wires. Her finger was clamped into a receiver loosely attached to a machine to

measure the exact decline at which her heart was going to fail. Her nearly transparentskin followed the bony finger to her veins protruding plastic tubing, and again, attaching

to one among the machine wall.

The notes were slowing now. What were the moderately paced strums of the violinistnot moments ago now faded into drawn out illustrations of musical brilliance and

illumination that could not be replicated in the Sydney Opera House with a team of life-

dedicated composers and an orchestra reenacting their lifelong talents. The somber

undertones to the string instrument‟s tune echoed the calls from outside the room thatWill could no longer perceive.

The woman was smiling as she looked on. She proudly showcased her enjoyment in

the young girl‟s talent, outweighing her debilitating circumstances that would have

broken weaker victims. Though it was difficult, but not impossible, to clearly observe thefiner details in the darkened room, Will maintained to himself that there was a visible tear

rolling its way down the weakened cheek.

A lengthy note drew on longer than the others. When it ceased its presence, it snatchedthe resonating music remaining in the hospital air back into its wooden shell. The bed-



ridden woman obliviously tugged on the wires in her arms to clap her near immobile

hands together as best as she could.

Will‟s presence in the doorway went unacknowledged at the song‟s finale. Themusician attentively listened to her deserved praise from the passionate soul, and Will

became a fruitless observer with the notes still floating in his ears.

A man in a white coat materialized from nothing to Will‟s right, clipboard in hand, and politely asked Will to clear from the doorway for his own entry. Will apologized andwheeled backwards in his trance. He caught the front end of a sentence “I have some

good news…” before the door was sectioned off to him and his original intent became

obvious once more.The melodious instrumentation still clung to him like an abandoned housecat.

He awkwardly twisted his chair into his original direction, taking care to store the

memory of what he had seen somewhere where important memories went to live out the

rest of their days.Room 306 appeared to widen with each point closer he became. The disobedient

doorframe refused to maintain the code-regulated standard for room access ways, and

instead decided it best to expand its borders into the wall. By the eventual time period inwhich Will ended the chair‟s movement, the room was twice the size it had been from the

hallway‟s other side.

He heard the violin‟s ghost repeating its tune as he knocked his knuckles into the door.

“Come in,” a familiar voice replied, muffled. Will unlatched the door handle and pushed the door open as far as it would allow.

The room was bright, at least, contrasting the deficiency of such light from whence the

orchestral beauty originated. Where there had been chairs and machines in the oldwoman‟s room, this one was nearly bare. The overbearing artificial bulbs had an

unblocked passageway to their reflections from the overly glossed floor. Where the prior

room had been opened, receding behind the patient‟s bedside, this one was intimate, and

he nearly opened the door into the bed, since it was in its path.The hospital room was nearly deserted, and he failed to notice its singular occupant

upon his first inspection. It was a young woman reflecting the attributes of both

individuals in the next room over: the youth of the musician, but the health of the bedridden patient.

Her face lit up like Christmas eve when she spotted his face sailing through the

doorway.“Gabriel!”

She covered her open-mouthed, pristine smile in a pair of cupped hands.

From the end of the bed, she appeared to be shorter than he, yet she was distinctly into

her twenties. She wore only the blue mandatory hospital gown, and though she appeareduncomfortable with it loosely covering her skin, it served to accentuate her waving brown

hair, appearing as though it had surfaced from water within the hour. It connected well

with her dark brown eyes that Will could observe from across her dedicated medical

space.He wheeled in the direction of her bedside. The moment he was within her arm span,

she threw her arms around his clavicle. When she finally relented, she stole a kiss from

her unsuspecting victim before he could say a word in her acknowledgement.



“Yeah,” she said, suppressing a laugh as she looked at the corner of the room,

reminding herself of her friend‟s presence.

“He called me about twenty times before he actually came over. I kept telling him notto bring anything, but you know how he gets.”

They shared in an obligatory chuckle that died in under a second.

“Yeah. I would have brought you something but-“ “No. Stop. I want nothing of you and I ask nothing of you.” Will threw up his hands in a half surrendering pose that was in jest.

“Okay, okay, well you‟ll be happy to know that I didn‟t bring anything!”

“Good. I‟m gonna be out of here hopefully soon enough anyway. I don‟t know whatthe hell I‟m supposed to do with all this stuff once I leave.” She interrupted her own

sentence with an exasperated laugh, and held her palms out to the ceiling to sell her

joking end-of-her-rope attitude.

“Well, that‟s Liam.” “That‟s Liam.”

“So, hey, how are you doing? I mean everyone is worried about how you‟re holding

up, basically locked up in here.” “Tell them I‟m fine. I‟m doing much better in the last few days actually than last week.

Last week wasn‟t….wasn‟t as good. I was a mess.”

“What happened?”

“You don‟t want to know. It was just really bad. But now it‟s going great. The nursesare awesome and I can‟t even remember the last time I ate this much soup. I forgot how

amazing chicken noodle soup is,” she emphasized, grabbing her nearby soup bowl from a

bedside table.“You know that‟s not even the good kind, right? It‟s just hospital soup.”

“Soup is soup, bud. You want to deny me my soup because you don‟t like where it‟s

from?”

“Hey, I‟m just saying.” She drank another spoonful.

“This and orange juice are my new favorite foods. Now you know what to get me for

my birthday if my fridge isn‟t already stocked.” “That reminds me! Did you want us to chip in for groceries or something? There‟s an

idea going around that you‟d appreciate that.”

“I hate to say it, but that would actually be really helpful. I‟ll pay you guys if you wantit. I just have to figure out the money situation a little bit.“

“Well, we already have it covered. Trust me, we‟ve talked about it, and we‟re okay

with just spotting you the money.”

She sighed in a deflated vexation.“Are you sure? I don‟t know how good I feel about that.”

“Trust me. We have a pool going and everyone tossed in some. Nobody misses it and

it‟s the least we could do.”

She buried her face in her delicate fingers, dumbfounded at the surprise basic humandecency could bring on.

Work.



The thought came in from nowhere foreseeable, but it was as pertinent as the chair

holding his weight. He had a job to attend. A career. A career? A career. He had a career

to attend. He knew. But he didn‟t know anything more.Work. The idea punctured his insides sharper than the edge of any needle. The feeling

of abandoning overbearing obligation flooded him; the kind of fear existent among the

working class that their careers were in jeopardy as a result of an inconsequential mistakeinvolving abandoning an obligation.“Thank you so much. Honestly, tell everyone thanks. Liam didn‟t tell me this was

happening.”

But Will‟s concentration was shot down over a cornfield. The effort necessary tomaintain the basic conversation was slipping away, and all labors were being diverted to

the main front of employment.

“Hey, ummm…”

“Yeah?” “I just realized I need to call my job. Do you mind if I use your phone?”

“Why would I mind?”

“I don‟t know, I just thought….” “Yes, you can use it.”

He smiled back up at her with the affirmation, like his expectations were far below the

rational line.

Will rolled before the corded receiver loosely held together on the cloned nightstand. Itwas pale white, and massive, with the twirled plastic wiring hanging off the table like the

least appetizing piece of fruit on a tree. He cautiously dislodged it from the receiver,

heard the dial tone, and began punching in the glowing rubber buttons to spell out acomplete number that Will was sure he had never called before.

It rang with that tone like marbles in a gargling rinse.

“Hello?” answered a high-pitched, nasally, male voice

“Hello, Sam? It‟s Gabriel.” Will wound the spiraling cord between his restless fingers.

“Gabriel! It‟s actually really convenient that you called…”

Shit.“…Are you busy right now?”

“Why?”

“I need you to come in.” “I‟m not supposed to work today.”

“I know. Stephanie had to leave early. It was urgent and completely unavoidable.”

“How soon do you need me?”

“As soon as you can get here. We‟re slammed.” “Okay, sure. No problem.”

“I‟m so sorry to do this to you. I really am. I tried getting in touch with, you know, at

least-“

“It‟s okay. Really, it is.” “You‟ll get paid extra for this, I promise. But you know I don‟t ask often. What did

you want, again? You called me first.”

“It doesn‟t matter now.”



“Okay. Well, thanks a lot. Are you sure you don‟t want me to find somebody else? I‟m

sure I can find someone.”

“No, seriously, I don‟t mind.” And he didn‟t.

Though he bid a reluctant adieu to the bedridden friend, he didn‟t mind sacrificing the

afternoon. In fact, the most challenging aspect that the surprise employment inquiry wasthe ultimate separation from the hospitalized stranger. He failed to know her condition,her context for being monitored by medical students in bright blue neon scrubs. He failed

to know her personality as a friend of his. He failed to know her name. He failed to know

the defining combination of traits, factors, experiences, thoughts, feelings, fears, dreams,hopes, and desires mashing together to create her unique thumbprint identity as a human

being. Though in his failures, he developed a bond. An unexplainable connection

normally reserved for long separated twins or future spouses in their first encounter. A

connection held and created by steel cable that tragically needed to be severed by life‟scruel agenda, and the knife doing the deed was named obligation.

The Canadian air in stung a little harder in front of the hospital‟s automatic glass doors

as he faced the parking lot.About fifteen minutes later, the smell of massed-produced oil hit the cilia lining his

nostrils and nearly offended him with its putrid nature.

The taxi braked in front of a fast food restaurant.

The restaurant, if he even chose to identify it as such, was stuck wedged between twoother small businesses with far more distinctiveness and a personality than it. It was

poorly disguised with intricate brickwork and wooden doorframes, mimicking the glory

held to few historical districts worldwide, let alone in one city. The brickwork matchedthat of its neighbors, serving as an injustice to them instead of the intended benefit to

better the food store.

With all the obvious grievances, it was undoubtedly a Marianas Trench of ingenuity.

When the car drove off, his sinking feeling informed him to enter its grease-coatedwalls.

Will detested fast food. That is, in his current progression of his existence. As a child,

Will couldn‟t ever be satisfied without a belly full of false processed meat and sugarysweet carbonation to swim to his underprepared intestines. As a result, his salubriousness

had been tackled headfirst into the dirt, and he was overweight and nearly obese

throughout most of his early childhood. If it hadn‟t been for everyone else‟s rallyingsupportiveness, he may have spent his teen years and more on a strict diet of lettuce and

insulin. Thankfully, he cut the junk out of his system before it could eat away at his

insides too deeply.

He snapped away from the distant memory and pushed his way through the“employees only” doorway. He may have turned back had he known just how blisteringly

rapid his shift would blitz through his borrowed life.

Following his arduous change into the designated uniform, he started the workflow

stationed beyond the register and countertop, and already, he was knee-deep into an issuehis coworker couldn‟t solve. A disgusting-looking woman toting along her equally

unhygienic spawn was in the middle of a “scream the loudest” competition with a teenage

employee, and the employee was losing. It was something about receiving an incorrectorder of chicken instead of a heart attack-inducing cheeseburger, so she felt it necessary



He dug his silver house key from the depths of his pockets, jammed it into the lock,

and twisted.

It didn‟t budge.He twisted again, and again, it refused to shift.

He yanked it from the circular lock and peered at it like it was at fault.

His third attempt had the same result.He averted his eyes to the door with frustration in his fingers, and discovered the lockrefusing his key was not that of his own apartment.

Embarrassed, he turned himself around and hoped nobody else was present to observe

his blunder. It highlighted his struggles adapting to so many different lives in such a shortduration like an overworked chameleon. He couldn‟t even retain the single number

corresponding to his own living space.

He parked himself two doors down, to what he hoped was the correct residence.

He slid the key into the mechanism, turned it, and the door gave way.He wheeled in and absorbed all he failed to notice hours earlier.

His initial impression was that the place wasn‟t much. He entered into flat, tan

carpeting inconsistent with the thick carpeting lining the floors outside. His couch pressed into the wall and faced across from a large TV with the screen curving outwards

into an arc and two thin metal rods sticking out from the top, acting as the receiver to the

thick dials on its front.

The undersized kitchen was tucked away behind a wall somewhere to the right, smallenough that Will had entirely glossed over it in his entrance. It had been forced into a

corner of the square-shaped, handicap-accessible apartment, with a wide entryway that

had somehow been overlooked. It, too, was nothing worth boasting, and had wallscompletely bare that matched the living room. Its prominent feature was the countertop

shelving customized for usefulness at half its height. The remaining space was filled with

tiles plastered together on the wall until it touched against the cabinets impossibly high

for him to adequately make use of. He assumed they were vacant and navigated his wayout.

His apartment was a recognizably shrunken version of the vanilla-bland anonymous

standard. The kind that any dough-eyed post-graduate or surprise divorce victim couldcall “home sweet this‟ll-do-for-now-while-I-get-on-my-feet.” The shelves were lower,

the composition more fluid, and the furniture sparse. It was fitting. He enjoyed it in the

way he enjoyed the casual visit to the homes of his half-friends, only to find theaccommodations more impressive than its inhabitants.

The phone tacked to the kitchen wall rang its robotic tone to the apartment air. Will

pulled it from the receiver on the second ring.

“Hello?” “Hey, it‟s”

Karen.

Orson.

Nikolai. Erik.

Sadie.

Liam.“Trav.”



His was halfway through cleansing his hands a few moments later when something

office supply colored took his attention. A sticky note with scrawled writing was wedged

between the reflective glass and its plastic, white frame:“Art gallery at 7:00.”

He had never dropped his eyes to a wristwatch faster before in his lifetime.

6:31.He never quite understood how he accomplished what followed. After all, it was nearlysuperhuman of him to disrobe, redress, and ready himself to adequately impress a group

of strangers without the taken-for-granted aid of his lower limbs. But somehow he rallied

his collective morning routine capabilities into one colossal burst of effort. He donned thelone suit and tie combination hanging in his nearby closet while he wiped away the sweat

of the day‟s labors. He fiddled with the buttons on his sleeve as his apartment door

slammed behind him not eight minutes later. It had to be a new record: least time to get

dressed with greatest possible presentably.He clasped the final elusive button on his dress jacket‟s sleeve as he waited for the

elevator once more. It wasn‟t until he heard the elevator‟s audible banging of weights

replacing counterweights that he realized his complete ignorance of the address to hisdestination.

However, once his initial panic at this information wore off, he let the hypnotizing

descent of the elevator lull him into blissful indifference. He justified himself with his

unreliable memory that he had encountered the same unchanged scenario multiple timesin his recent past. So he shrugged it off and let the artist transport him wherever he was

due to appear.

He caught a cab a few streets away from his building. The driver was reluctant toaccommodate to his handicap and was nearly ready to cause a conflict until he was

promised a worthwhile tip for his inconvenience. It convinced him easier than Will

thought he would.

A panic flare briefly stirred and died down upon the question of his destination. Willsimply repeated his earlier tactic of maintaining silence until his stolen identity briefly

took over and filled in the journey‟s holes. The driver set off with a slight annoyance in

his exterior.So he waited patiently in the rented vehicle until it pulled up to the gallery he was due

to attend.

The building itself wasn‟t anything he didn‟t expect. Brick structures with full-lengthwindows weren‟t anything to be surprised at. Its inside lights shone out to the concrete

sidewalks outside, violently advertising the uninformed passerby of the night‟s exciting

revolutions in the Canadian artistic community.

He paid the driver his allowance, breaking through his dreary professionalism.Though the building‟s entrance consisting of glass doors and steel handles proved a

gentle challenge for Will, he made his way on to the white tiled lobby at precisely two

minutes to seven.

The room he entered was inimitable to anything he had ever had the privilege ofencountering in his lifetime. The white tile lining the floor extended to all the room‟s

purposely-shadowed nooks and vintage crannies. In its center, but slightly to the right,

was a wide, metallic spiraling staircase extending to glass barriers overlooking the lobbyfloor. At the space‟s far side, through the substantial gathering, was a dark hallway



cordoned by a red velvet rope, though it clearly took a left corner to what appeared to be

the gallery‟s remainder cloaked in secrecy.

The congested room was already in full swing with their noir conversation and purplewine thick as blood. Hors‟ d‟oeuvres intertwined through the gathering on the shaky

waiter‟s plates. A buried lonesome laugh was suffocated by the overwhelming monotone

roaring through the walls.The women wore black, white, or red. There wasn‟t a single female cloaked in anyother color in the spectrum in his observable space. The men, similarly, were draped in

the most average of black dresscoats with matching silk pants. Their differences were

punctuated in the flimsy fabric chocking around their necks and falling to their waists,varying in their elegance with a moderate hue alteration.

A man donned in one such garment, barricaded by a miniature group conversation

locked eyes with Will at his entrance, and upon seeing him, was injected with fervor to

abandon his discussions. He stumbled forward into a stranger, put down his remainingunsaid words, and pushed through the throng of nightwalkers with their backs turned.

He swigged a gulp of his sparkling gold champagne with outstretched arms when he

hit a clearing.“Hey! You made it!”

He had chosen to dip his neck ornament in red dye to represent his unique design

choice and completed it with a cosmetic cornered handkerchief in the breast pocket. He

was an average height with a swarthy haircut atop his youthful, tight skin wrappedaround his cheekbones. If it weren‟t for his gracious, welcoming exterior encasing his

overbearing stature, he would have found his career among the cutthroat film

industrialists with their bad attitudes greased in their hair.But Liam was too good for that.

“Wouldn‟t miss it for the world, buddy!”

Liam closed the space between his outstretched hands and planted his left one into

Will‟s. They partook in an unnecessary handshake between kindred spirits, betweenfraternal brothers bonded by circumstance and fragmented only by distance. Will had

gotten used to half-knowing his best friends by now, and Liam was no different. But the

bond between Will‟s unwitting puppet and the man before him made him feel genuineguilt in his gut, and he hoped the spontaneous burst of memories that didn‟t belong to

him would appear sooner than usual.

Liam faced in Will‟s direction when he saw him push the chair forward, so as to allowthem to walk side by side while he examined the crowd.

“Are you seeing this turnout? Look at how many people showed up!”

“They‟re not all here for me.”

“No, but this is your chance to make the break you‟ve been looking for. Just lookaround for a second.”

“I really hope it‟s good enough. Everyone looks like they want to rip something to

pieces.”

“Look, between you and me,” he leaned in closer to Will and lowered his voice to athin, nasally point, “these people wouldn‟t know art if it was doing their moms. You‟ll be

fine.”

“But that‟s what I‟m worried about.” “Hey, you can‟t be locked up working as a cashier for the rest of your life. Here…”



“He had on like a, uhhh, what do you call it? A uhhh waistcoat, right? And he‟s trying

to be polite or whatever but he‟s eating when Clarice is talking. So he takes a bite out of

whatever he‟s eating-“ The elevator arrived with a bing, and the duo entered.

“-and basically all of it got on his shirt. I was trying not to laugh, but then he gets

pissed, so he waves to the waiter to come over-“ “This is great.” “Wait wait. So the waiter comes over and the guy wants him to clean his shirt! I was

dying!”

The two shared in a hearty, stress-induced belly laugh at the nativity Will missed thefirst time. When he finally calmed his breathing, there were tears forming in the corners

of his eyes.

“These art types, man. Be careful. I know you have to impress them and all, but Jesus,

don‟t lose yourself. Don‟t be like that guy.” “Relax, I won‟t.”

“Well, we‟ll see Mr. Bigshot.”

A light in the elevator‟s corner blinked, and the walled halves parted in front of them. The gallery‟s unseen brilliance burst into the cramped, square space. Facing them was

the staircase‟s exit and glass barricade, and Will saw the patron stream travelling the

stairs from the front side for the first time. However, blocking his otherwise transparent

view was a vase atop a metallic pedestal. It was a flashing, toxic assortment of vibrantcolors, and it appeared as though it were melting. The violet-colored face closest to the

elevator doors had been hollowed, compromising the structure of the entire piece that

somehow stood tall despite its clear shortcomings. The colored eye sore had been rununder a rolling pan one too many times and was left to sit on its metal throne. The only

logical explanation was that Salvador Dali was back from the dead, and he had taken a

liking to creating sculptures.

A congregation of eight astutely stood around the piece, some picking out its flaws intheir heads and some staring blank-faced in its marvel.

Will felt his chair shutter as he was trekked from the moving floor to the Pergo wooden

one holding the pedestal.“Have you actually seen all of these yet?” Liam voiced, his hands back around the

handles.

“No. A lot of these are new to me.” “Do you want to?”

“No, not yet. I want to see what they‟re saying about mine.”

“What about mine?”

“Isn‟t yours in the back of the room?” “Yeah, you‟re right, they won‟t get there until I‟ve had my third drink. Okay, let‟s go,

just remember what we talked about.”

“They‟re stuck up assholes and their opinion doesn‟t matter,” they emphatically

announced, together in unison.“That‟s right. Just remember that, and you‟ll be fine,” he continued, pushing Will

beyond walls lined with beauty and their respective spectators.

“What about you?”



“I‟m not worried. Nobody here is paying attention to my stuff. I might get a few

mentions but nobody is busting their ass to poke holes in my god-awful paintings.

They‟re looking for your talent, buddy.” “Whatever you say.”

The reassuring conversation distracted him from the dense crowds of success queens

forming around the artworks. Were he looking around the suffocating second-floorgallery, he might have noticed variety in the modern life surrounding him, exuberatingwith solidified paint drops overlapping in an infinite dance of combination. Some were

basic with purpose (a red dot in the corner of a blank canvas, with a blue one in the

corner opposite). Some were colorful, representing every nook and cranny concealed between the overbearing primaries (a feminine, resolute, rainbow-colored face fading

from a darkened background). And some were indescribable (a flurry of newly-created

shapes and patterns blended into a triangular canvas). All bore the brunt of a slightly

drunken scrutinizing authority, yet confidently lined the open walls like they knew their presence was destined for the ages.

A massive wall with perfectly cornered edges rose from the floor in the room‟s center,

dividing it into two halves broken with constrained doorways, and with paintings oneither side. Liam directed them in a beeline for the room‟s second half beyond the

stubborn wall, its contents invisible to the rebellious pair. They dodged their way around

a couple mentally dissecting a framed tapestry, another deranged sculpture sitting on an

identical pedestal, and another barrage of wait staff in a cold sweat with another plethoraof miniature foods resting in their palms.

The room‟s second half was no different from the first, at least in terms of its structure.

The two long walls and two short ones matched the ones of the previous, yet the art wasenjoyably mismatched upon them. Three canvases barricaded by ankle-high wires

occupied the opposite wall‟s entirety, but Liam directed Will to the right-facing wall, and

the largest painting attached to it caught Will‟s attention.

“I‟m going to find Emily and get another drink. I‟ll be right back.” The distracting comment tore into Will‟s preliminary expectations of the painting he

was preparing to observe.

“But good luck. You won‟t need it.”Will felt a brotherly tap on his right shoulderblade, and the tense grip on the handles

was relieved.

As the crowd poured in to the room‟s second half, Will read the descriptive card gluedto the wall, and lightly touching against the canvas‟s lower right-hand corner:

“Gabriel Moreu:

Passion and Envy”

It‟s…mine? It’s yours.

He let his eyes dart to the framed portrayal.

It was nothing less than magnificent.

It was a glorious cacophony of pigment transformed and rewritten to somehow form a beautiful image out of nothing. It was mystery and brilliance encapsulated in a square

using liquid tools

It was an eye. But it was more than its face value.



Its curvature and brows were formed with orange harvested from the sun‟s corners and

leaves lining the trees in the dead of autumn. The blue backing that the orange melted

into was rocky smooth, claiming inspiration from the skies above paradise, and wasgarnished with a slow, graceful fade into blackness to the ceasing edges. What should

have been the eye‟s white was instead painted black, matching the opaquely darkened

canvas edges. The flawlessly circular iris borrowed its bright orange color from theorange structuring its existence, yet took no shame in increasing its vibrancy and brightness with a subtle, nearly invisible splash of white undertone.

But its most prominent, stunning feature was the radiance in the pupil. The black void

naturally created by the iris‟s circulation was lavishly filled with miniature figures sittingon a park bench. They were captured by a lush color range encompassing the entire

visible spectrum, as were their surroundings. The loosely defined park bench bled into an

obvious walkway, breaking the limits imposed by perspective and stretching outwards to

meet the pupil‟s edges. Trees were detailed into the bench‟s surroundings, peppered inwith vibrant purples and pinks and greens and yellows and reds all at once.

The surreal painting stretched its gazing ponderousness into reality. The figures

swimming in the pupil questioned its bounds and demanded reform in Will‟s soul.“This is quite an interesting piece here,” the voice said.

It broke his enduring trance, forcing him to twist his uninterrupted stare around to meet

the figure addressing him.

“I‟m sorry?” he replied, maneuvering his chair to face them on his left.It was another petite woman with an identical structure as both Emily and the one who

introduced the showing on the stairs. In lieu of the shimmering gowns that they wore,

however, she was covered by a black cashmere sweater and simple grey pants. She wasabsent a champagne or red wine glass and instead chose twirl her diamond necklace

between her fingers with one hand, and stabilize her elbow in her palm with the other.

“I was just commenting on what an interesting piece this is. I quite enjoy it.”

Unsure of what to say, he answered with a quick hum of approval and thanked her.“Is it yours?”

“Y-yes ma‟am.”

He struggled to force the affirmative statement from his tongue, though he knew it to be true.

“Well it‟s very well done. I appreciate the…”

He didn‟t hear the remainder of her praise. Instead it drowned out and faded into theanalytically erroneous chorus insisting it be the song to orchestrate the evening. He

caught every alternating word she spoke, like “color” and “vibrant” and more he weren‟t

sure he had heard uttered from a human mouth in his lifetime. With every instance in

which she briefly turned to him for his reaction, he could only nod and agree with herseemingly professional assessments.

Her presence apparently drew a crowd. In the dead center of her speech, a man in a

royal blue tie appeared to the woman‟s left side, studying the artwork with a furrowed

brow. He was followed by a portly man stuffed into a less loud Bill Cosby sweater andgnawing on a plate of bite-sized, delicate fruit. The woman paused her analysis and the

portly man jumped on the lull between feverous gum flaps.

“Now, what am I looking at here? What are you saying with this piece?”



“Well sir, this piece is called „Passion and Envy and I believe it highlights the human

experience using our most often used sense: sight. Note the color change from…”

His mind trailed off while his mouth spat out an analytical monologue whose wordswere as foreign as the tongue he spoke them in. He relaxed as the backup corners in his

mind took the socially awkward brunt, explaining the masterpiece satisfactorily enough

to convince the portly man to nod periodically during the explanation.Liam and Emily filled their way in at some intangible moment.“…which is why I chose to use that yellow shade in the first place,” he concluded,

snapping back into the last thing he could remember.

Whatever Will told the portly man in the outrageous sweater, it seemed to haveworked. He allowed his remaining appetizers to carelessly twirl on his small plate,

neglected by his attention direction to the artist in front of him. Both he and the man in

the blue tie had a tightened appearance to the skin on their skulls. The universal sign of

approval without giving it away.“Well, thank you very much Mr….”

“Moreu.”

“Mr. Moreu. I enjoy your work very much.” “Thank you sir.”

He shuffled away without saying another word. He feigned a more pressing art piece in

the corner of his eye, convincing no one through his body language that it deserved his

complete attention. It was easier than falsifying empty excuses. The two others followedclosely behind in a similar fashion with food and drink in their respective hands. Emily

and Liam stepped forward: her studying Gabriel‟s artwork, and him studying the critics

who had just departed over his shoulder.“That looked like it went well,” Liam commented.

“Oh my god that was nerve-racking, but I guess I won them over somehow. I like my

chances with these people.”

“Don‟t get cocky. Still have a whole night ahead.” And they did. But what he failed to mention was how it would pass by like a cloak in

the shadows.

The crowd didn‟t take long to blend into a blur of dark clothing and false suaveness,interchangeably drawling in front of Will‟s painting like an un-amused chorus line. If

they felt emotion beneath their faces, they didn‟t show it. The same questions would peek

from under the dirt every third or fourth rotation of guests, and he‟d respectfully addressthem in the same inferior tone he used with their colleagues. It was somewhere in the

territory halfway between respectful and tedious, but it made believers from indecisive

skeptics, and that was good enough for Will.

He made a schizophrenic habit to visit his fellow exhibits filling out the gallery‟sremainder, and was pleasurably surprised at the awe-inspiring physical expressions of the

human spirit occupying the same space as the identity thief. His personal favorite was an

abstract representation of a lake with purple water and green shadows. Its artist was a shy

brunette embarrassed at her own existence. Liam‟s crippled attempts at her courtshipmade their first appearance of the evening, and the friends shared in a well-intentioned

laugh at his expense.

He made his comprehensive rounds at the complete extended rotunda before the firsthour, which included the third and fourth rooms entirely out of sight. Though he managed



to do so only by allowing himself to catch a fleeting glimpse at the splendor, as opposed

to the lengthy mental dissections his peers were undertaking. He asked questions,

participated in discussions, fragmented messages built within the solidified colors andmelded sculptures. One of his personal favorites was fifteen minutes into his private

journey when he proposed the artist‟s purpose that his improvised book club for artists

had entirely overlooked, earning him the intrigued sounds of vague, misplaced approval.A crowd of about seven was suffocating his artwork when he finally made his way back to it. Thankfully, none could identify him as the artist, so he relaxed his unnecessary

jitters and listened to their critique. It was unpredictably sparse. Most of the lingual

identifiers were words of praise, though their validity to Will was tossed into questionwhen he remembered that they were likely on their third glass of wine at this hour.

The man with the royal blue tie made his way back through the throng. His appearance

hadn‟t changed significantly since their first encounter. His hair was slightly mor e out of

place than it had been, along with the few ruffles within his shirt fabric. Yet his tieremained dutifully prostrate at the front of his outfit. He now also held a perfectly circular

glass in his right hand.

It was with his secondary manifestation that Will was gratefully able to peg hisappearance for a mental note. His face was squared and thick, with a rectangular forehead

slightly below a height that would have made it disproportionate. He was clean-shaven to

a science where it appeared as though his facial hair had receded back into his unhindered

pores. The same was true of his thin eyebrows.He sauntered towards Will with a look across his face like he was trying to recall

misplaced information.

“Gabriel, right?” he asked. “Yes sir. Gabriel Moreu.”

“Dominic Swanson,” he replied, extended his slightly angled palm to Will‟s chest

level.

“I‟m an art collector. Not from this country, though. I‟m from London.” “You speak French?”

“When you‟re in this country long enough, you start to pick up its habits fairly

quickly.” “Sound reasoning.”

“Yes, I suppose it‟s as good a reason as any to be bilingual. Anyway, Gabriel – may I

call you Gabriel?” “Of course.”

“I‟m very interested in this piece you‟ve made here. To be frank with you, it‟s one of

my favorite pieces in the entire showing.”

“Thank you very much sir, I‟m flattered.” “How long did it take you to complete?”

“Is art ever truly „complete,‟ Mr. Swanson?”

Dominic pondered for no longer than a moment, but wore a badge of impressments.

“I suppose it isn‟t,” he retorted with a half -grin forming in his mouth‟s corner.The perilous conversational venture had paid off

“How much are you asking for the piece right now, as-is?” Dominic returned with.

“It‟s not for sale, unfortunately. I‟m sorry.”



But Dominic‟s expression didn‟t flinch at the comment. Not a skin cell shifted from

formation.

“Name your price,” he snapped back. “It would be outrageously high. Something like a thousand-“

“How about thirty-five?”

Gabriel nearly fell from his chair. He felt his jaw disobey its muscular expectations andhis lower molars separate from the descending ones. The air was suspiciously absentfrom his lungs.

“Of course, that‟s in American currency. At the end of it you‟d probably see a number

closer to twenty-eight…” “I-I‟m sorry?”

“I could go higher, though. You have bills to pay, and I can understand that.”

“Twenty-eight…”

“How about this? How about I‟ll get you thirty-seven-five American, so that‟ll roundyou up to an even thirty thousand Canadian? I‟ll tell them you drove a hard bargain.”

“I‟m sorry, did you just say thirty thousand dollars?”

“Of course! What did you think I said?” The images before him representing authenticity went unchanged, yet their legitimacy

was forcefully hurled into the questioning ring of fire. The man‟s words became

fantastical visions. The feeling sent a pulsing wave to his overdriven concentration, and

he felt the floor beneath his seat turn to water while he stared into Dominic‟sunquestioning expression.

“I…I‟m beside myself. I don‟t know what to say. I‟m at a complete loss of words.”

He tried desperately to beat down the smile glued to his face, but it carried on as theunderdog story an audience would eat for its daily dose of redemption song. It was

impossibly cemented to his skin beyond the strength reserves in his cheeks.

“Is it a deal?”

He caught his own words in his clutches with a gaping question that had chosen theclosest possible second to sweep into consideration.

“I just have one question,” he said, touching his forehead with his fingertips and

compromising whatever levelheaded appearance remained.“Why pay that much? I mean, don‟t get me wrong, I‟m grateful….”

Dominic flared his pearled teeth the millisecond following hearing the question. He

turned slightly and grazed his chin with his palm.“Good man, I was hoping you would ask that sooner,” he replied, wagging a finger

with his free hand.

“Look, between you and I,” he continued as he looked over both shoulders, his voice

muffled by his own head‟s turn, “the art scene here sucks, and I‟m on a budget where I‟msupposed to find the best stuff in town. Your piece here…it‟s amazing. You have to

understand. It‟s amazing. I mean I‟m paying you thirty thousand for it and I just met

you.”

“This is amazing. Oh my God.”The social convention walls were being torn down in the interaction between the art

associates. Gabriel felt his face flaring up, his politeness and vocabulary on the decline,

and his stress-induced jitters flying through the roof.



“So, do we have a deal?” Dominic returned, a warm grin beaming down to the

overwhelmed artist.

“Absolutely! Are you kidding?” The business hands slammed together in a near clap, concluding in a vigorous shaking

that was reserved only for enthusiastic harmony.

“Can I get your phone number? I‟ll call you tomorrow and we can hammer out thedetails.“Yes. Of course. I can‟t believe this. Thank you so much.”

“You‟re very welcome sir. Keep up this quality work and I think you have a bright

future ahead of you.” “I‟d sure like to hope so.”

“Well, with talent like that, you don‟t need hope, my friend. Oh, before I forget, take

my business card. You need anything before tomorrow, call me at this number.”

The whirlwind took over and ate whatever remained of the evening‟s grinding drawl. In a short while, the night ended as suddenly as it had begun, and with about the same

urgency at a first inspection. The authority-charging woman in the red dress from the

evening‟s dawning made her first appearance in hours, manifesting from thin air to thestaircase‟s descending entrance. She made a short-lived speech incorporating plagiarized

elements from her own work earlier on, thanking and commending the entire crowd for

their presence and piece of mind to arrive. Though her politeness was a façade, as the

gallery had made it a point to close its doors precisely when it had decided it was meantto, and chose to not-too-subtlety kick everyone to the curb at her speech‟s conclusion.

Nobody commented on the behavior. Some were grateful in their own private isle. Some

were indifferent. None were appalled. So the constricted mob flooded out to Quebec‟ssidewalks without so much as a warning.

Liam took Emily home. His intent was to fulfill his own secret animalistic escapades,

though, to be fair, she had been outwardly expressing her attraction to him around the

time the three of them ran into each other by the tree painting. She was on her seconddrink, and she didn‟t make a habit of losing her footing under her own decisions,

especially when she was among public company. She wasn‟t rebellious enough to have

that particular fire within her. And she was content with a sober infatuation.They crossed paths by sheer coincidence while they were observing the same artwork

at the same particular duration (though, how much of that “coincidence” was left in fate‟s

natural sculpting hands remains beyond questionable). They locked eyes and managed tosynchronize their telepathic messages that were too socially uncomfortable for words,

while simultaneously abandoning their triumphant companion, who perhaps deserved

their attentions more so than they did.

At the night‟s spiraling conclusion, months of blanketed sexual tension and mentalundressing between them burst like an unkempt river dam in the whimsical free flow that

could have only been provided by the convenient art exhibition. They set out to Emily‟s

apartment as a couple driven by forces of their own expectation, because they had

decided they were meant to do so.Gabriel was at least grateful to have the opportunity to watch them disappear into the

flaring taillights that the darkness brought in, soaked by rainwater. The sky had quietly

opened up sometime during their occupied evening hours, so that when the crowdabandoned the gallery, they were greeted to soggy concrete and puddles forming against



the sidewalk barriers. It wasn‟t a brutal rain, and it wasn‟t a particularly harassing one.

Instead it had chosen its droplets to follow a soft, casual downpour that was just heavy

enough to disobey its parental storm clouds, but not heavy enough to cause anyonetrouble.

But neither dreary rainwater nor his instinctive associates could bring down his

durable foundation.His way home reflected his demeanor better than he could describe. Fewer than noinstances came across as outrageously unique to both him and the handful of pedestrians

wandering the sleepy city with him. If anything, it could have been described with dreary

overtones that penetrated into the vibrant culture by day. The wandering darkness did notinspire words reflecting positivity by any means. Except to Gabriel. Tonight, and his way

home, was a hollow shell for which he could fill his optimistic attitude.

He managed to catch a taxi a short walk away from the emptying gallery. The driver

was silent save for his obligatory questions that were all but stated in his job description. Neither tried to force small talk concerning the ongoing downpour, nor concerning

anything else on their minds. Both considered it, but mutually thought it unnecessary, and

let the mildly inclement raindrops do the talking for them instead.He gave the driver a generous tip for no other reason than his own satisfaction of its

idea. That, and his hospitality now had a monetary source. From there it was a blur to his

apartment‟s front door (with a flawless entry, this time).

He begun untying the knot pressing into his throat. The one belonging to his oxygen-stealing necktie. It hit the couch‟s arm no more than a second of its chokehold release,

deflating like a birthday balloon three weeks after the fact. He disrobed to his

underclothing which he forgot existed, and didn‟t trouble himself with replacing them inhis celebration, and instead chose to seat himself on the nearby sofa for an unknown

justification.

He flicked on his television. The screen hummed and the static faded into grainy focus.

Another never-ending advertisement for the upcoming “Star Wars” part six finalinstallment blinked on the screen, nearly inducing an eye roll from its owner. So he took

a death grip of the remote control at his side, and clicked his way through the static until

settling on a late-night newscast rallying up the daily sorrow for the audience to havesomething to glue to their overworked eyes.

The current events drawl blasting across the airwaves did nothing to appease his

unwavering appetite for ceaseless stimulation and limitless energy. The rolling static,which could once dizzy him from a half-sleep, was less than insignificant by comparison

in the fresh light. Instead, the static noise was like a warm blanket, comforting him when

he least needed it.

Click.The coke-fueled, hyperactive advertisement (featuring the pitchman in his pale blue

button-down) with its blinking clock in the bottom corner and its insistent hotline

obscuring the screen‟s nether half was a full dose of Ambien. A dark corner in his head‟s

legitimacy complex toyed with the idea to call them up and order the useless piece of plastic that they were pushing as acceptable merchandise.

No. Not tonight. Click.

Come to think of it, the preceding day kicked his ass harder than it had ever beenkicked in recent memory. The unexpected contraption necessary for his transportation



made a stew from the meat beneath his arms, and brought with it uneasy social

contrivances following it around like the Grim Reaper. He was dutifully and mercilessly

directed to a slew of activities demanding by preceding standards, eating into his willslike termites as he was shipped off to the hospital, than to his employment, then to an art

exhibition beyond his consent boundaries.

But within his short-lived experience among the paraplegic community, his long-forgotten sense of accomplishment and reward flooded back to where the drought madeitself home. The proverbial diamond in the rough came up clean, flawless, and priceless.

His internal reward was to go on record to be the least-deserving sense of self-satisfaction

and accomplishment in the history of artistry; reward and accomplishment for nothing buttaking credit for a painting that wasn‟t his.

But this knowledge was immaterial, and Gabriel was overjoyed with life‟s gracious

prospects in the upcoming days in his continuation. The upcoming days that Will was

grateful to have spent no more than a fleeting moment occupying and observing. Nomore than a dirt speck in the miles-long beach with stories to tell and seaglass resting just

below the surface.

Though he felt himself greater than the sum of his self-established limitations. He wasa puzzle piece with single rounded edge. A small, non-cornered puzzle piece whose color

blended inconsequentially with its infinite neighbors. Perhaps its presence was

unnecessary; perhaps the image could have been easily realized without its small aiding

ability. Yet it remained a puzzle piece: a fragment in the greater being that without itfilling the miniscule portion, the overall image could never truly be complete.

Regardless, the two intertwined lives were due their separations in less than a short

while, and Gabriel moved himself in his bathroom‟s direction to begin the nighttimeroutine, repeated daily for the dawning of all time.

He directed himself to his bedroom.

The light switch defiantly sat in the upright position in the room‟s far side wall. He

couldn‟t bring himself to busy himself with the chore required to quiet the screamingwhite light, so he let it be. After all, he didn‟t need its compliance to accomplish diving

into the slumbering wave pool. So he made his way to his bed‟s welcoming corner and

begun to hoist himself up.He took his calculated time to ensure none of the moving pieces would chose to

abandon him in his final hour of need, and neither would his overworked torso. He

remarked to himself in his exhausted miasma that his bed was farther from his reach thanhis expectations had allowed.

His fragility slamming into the tough mattress mirrored his exasperated attempts when

the sun was still high, a connection he couldn‟t have possibly drawn in his dawning hour.

The dawning hour concluding his co-existence with a man called Gabriel Moreu. I want to go back, he may have recalled speaking.

You always have.

I t hasn’t been lost on me.

I believe you.

chapter monday

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