Float - A Short Story

“Dear diary,

Rainy morning. Thundery morning. A lazy morning.

My wife died half a decade ago today. Nothing’s new this year. I went to her, laid some fresh flowers, cried a little, remembered a lot, and kept at busy life even before those flowers withered. The Dead don’t haunt us; we haunt them with memories in our gray-brains and cemeteries in graveyards.

I drove to the office in my car, listening to Bach. I filed the work I’ve been working on since last week, had a meeting, stitched a few fake smiles, shaken some calloused hands, and answered questions of no importance. I had lunch at the cafeteria—yes, sandwiches again. “No more calls, and details of the next project will be mailed to you by tomorrow,” conveyed my secretary over the desk phone. So, the rest of the afternoon was leisure. But that’s when something odd happened.

Swivelling in my chair made me sick after some time, so I rested my gaze upon a crow on a pole outside my window. The muffled chatter, heels clicking, printers whirring, and landlines ringing outside my office continued as it does daily. However, nothing could shake my attention off the crow—my new favourite hobby to kill time.

The crow stayed. It didn’t fly away like my wife did years ago, leaving me to get bored. Instead, it actually stared back at me. Minutes went by; I laid still in the same position, so did my friend, and we rested our gazes on each other. My hands and legs felt numb, little sparkles all over my feet and palms, but I didn’t move. I didn’t want to scare off the bird; I didn’t want to lose that moment, that place in the cosmos which belongs to me and mine only—the chair, the window, the crow, which showed me comfort after an eternity. No fool would lose it by moving; I am not a fool.

An hour drifted by. I became aware that I am not the one trying to be still, but the bizarre bird outside my window kept me in its trance. It used some uncanny magic—either by mixing its feathers into my coffee or casting a spell by looking directly into my soul through my eyes. However, I am paralyzed, stiff, rendered still, trapped in my chair, enslaved by the crow. The music of the office is slowly dimmed, the only thing I heard is the bird’s ear-piercing caw at a deafening volume. All I heard, thought, and felt was; caw-caw-caw-caw-caw!

My eyes stung, not able to flutter, my muscles ached with agonizing pain, my ears bled. After a while, my master took an abrupt flight, leaving me all alone again, just like my wife did. Blood slowly circulated through my limbs, restoring their function with a few moments of sharp cramps. I got up from my chair, limped out of my office, into the restroom. Nobody noticed me on my way, saw through me, busy bastards.

I looked in the mirror and was terrified at the sight of me. With bloody eyes hanging out of my sockets, ears each twisted back, only dozens of hairs left on my head, inverted nose, skeletal body, ripped throat—just like a buried human taken out from his grave before the insects did their thing. Every scream of mine echoed like a ghastly whisper. Each step I took to move my weightless form seemed like floating. I floated out of the restroom and into my office. There lay a body, in the chair, of someone that I don’t know. I floated out of the office, down the steps, into the street.

I could feel nothing anymore. The only thing I felt was that I have sight and I am able to float in the direction I want. I am a ghost. I was sure that I was dead but not sure how. There are only a few ways that can explain this. I should be dead this morning in my bed, and all I have been experiencing since then is hell. That explains the raw taste of coffee and not being able to remember the names of my colleagues. I am slowly drifting into hell. If that doesn’t explain it, being killed by the curse of that crow would be another way that makes sense. Trying to make sense of things by accepting the things that not at all make sense is the last resort of humans to not go mad. My wife did it for years; believed in God.

I am killed by the crow in the office or by grief in bed this morning, or I am dead the same day as my wife did on that day when we ran into that accident. That explains even more things, why doctors couldn’t believe that I am alive when my wife and I both sat in front of the car, which has, on both sides of our seats, the same approved premium-quality airbags. I sued the company because they worked only on my side and not hers; I guess they didn’t work on either side. Maybe I am dead that day, and this is the way, God—the man my wife believed in for years—is finally doing right by her by punishing me for being in the driver’s seat that day. How oddly you’ll be open to all possibilities once you know for sure that there is another side to what you see, the so-called reality.

I waited so to get out of that hell, to be redeemed of that curse, pay for that mistake, and finally be fully dead—whatever it is. But no one wanted me. Not the devil, God, or my friend the crow. They all left me alone. As each hour passed by, my skin, which is left, came peeling off, my eyes grew down even farther from my sockets, half of my organs are already fell apart, oozing blood from every pore, my lower jaw took a ninety-degree turn, hunger is a feeling I didn’t feel anymore. Night and day, I spent floating around with no one to notice me, no air to feel, nothing to hold—only dripping brown fluid all over the way I float.

If - walking near to them, crawling under their beds at night, floating over them in their sleep, whispering in their ears, revealing to them at certain times for some reasons, giving their clothes a foul smell with brown fluid, running wrist bones over them now and then—is haunting, the dead don’t haunt us; the half-dead does.”

Thus read some human on his screen, knowing not of my existence as I peered over their shoulder all this time. They turned and looked behind them to see if I am still floating when they read, in their mind, the last word—as silly as it seems but the terrifying word—Caw!