Empty
So really, it is in my mind that I’m alone. The world, it is waiting for me to snap out of my delusion. I may be walking the streets alone in my mind but actually, the streets are teaming with people, probably looking at me with pity, perhaps disdain.
Another simpleton who snapped under the pressure
Well let them think what they want. I have to get back to my kids. Pour on the drugs, try the electronic simulation upon my broken brain because my kids need me.
They’re young my kids; four and eight. Thomas is four and Edward is eight. Their Dad he tries but he can’t handle the boys. I wanted to stay home with them but we just couldn’t make it.
Couldn’t make it or couldn’t do with less?
The city is so empty. I walk.
I shout and listen to my echoing voice careen toward the glass and concrete structures high in the air. My voice echoes out toward the coast and drops off into the Atlantic.
Alone.
No voice to echo back.
A couple of months ago I made it home.
Nothing. They boy’s toys still in their place but nothing.
The refrigerator still on but the food had gone bad.
I went to their sitter’s house. It smelled stale and empty; the boys’ backpack still in the hallway and their lunches slimy in their lunch boxes.
I stayed there for a month, waiting for the boys to return. I finally had to make a decision go insane or start walking. It took me a week longer to try and decide which of the boy’s backpacks I wanted to take. I was almost downtown when I realized I left both of them behind.
So if I was heading downtown again, I reasoned, I might as well see if Gerald was at home, I mean at work.
I stop by the grocery store and take what I want. Not much, mind you, I need to make the world last. I catch a reflection of myself in the darkened window of a café. That used to throw me, it really did, thinking at last I found another human being. Now I know it is just me.
So Gerald works in the financial district and that’s where I find myself.
Paper scuttles across the pavement and hangs up on the curb of the street; no one chasing it. Perhaps it’s a state secret, let loose by a well paid informant that goes mad later and blanks the world, all except me.
Gerald may be glad to see me, now that I’ve lost that baby fat he used to hound me about. I take the stairs to prove I’ve done well at a few things since he has been gone.
I walk thirty flights and he is not there. He is not there, nor his boss, nor the girlfriend he thinks I have no clue about.
So I turn around and walk back down.
I miss my kids.