Prologue
How long have I been sitting here, watching shadows play on the walls?
Life tosses you around, and sometimes all there is left to cling to are the fragments of reality.
The stability of the upholstered chair beneath me.
The faint smell of the marine wind as it drifted through the window.
The honking of traffic and the rushing of people below.
The gentle murmur of the city, its constant pulse a heartbeat you can never slow down. Unlike mine. My heartbeat will eventually fade to a climactic finish long before my body is ready.
Mortality is a smirking companion, impervious to the ego’s desperate plea.
I gripped my phone. The urge to reach out and spill my sordid fate to another was a frantic bird pounding against the splintered bars of its cage. But who would I call? There was no one to console me. I was alone in a world of my own making.
With a broken sigh, I threw my phone across the living room; it bounced once, hit the wall, and landed on the polished grain of the hardwood floor. My anger was not even strong enough to break something. And I wanted to break something. I wanted to scream, to cry, to claw through the walls I had erected and release the entrails of myself.
But something had shut down inside of me so long ago, and all I was able to muster was a fury, blanketing the emptiness that engulfed me.
