This is the first of some creative writing pieces that I hope to gain the confidence to post. With any luck, there will be at least a few more.

This is a story. Erm… please read all the way through.

My life is one of ordinary eccentricity. My employment at the pencil factory administration was somehow lost in a reorganization; they send me money and I go to work, but no one seems to remember I’m there. In the rare event that I catch an eye of a co-worker, the glance drops almost before I know it was there to begin with. I have an office, windowless, with a desk and a useless computer.

Since my son’s underdeveloped heart failed his growing body a year or two ago, the work ethic has been dead like a pen out of ink, its last desperate fits of vitality no longer worth the effort. I have come to locking my door and shutting out the fluorescents. I still wear a tie, but mostly just lie on my floor and try to forget.

Last week, I fell asleep and woke to the sounds of another productive day at work. The perceived necessity of my home suddenly left me and it was resolved by the ruling council of my mind that donuts and free coffee would be enough to sustain me.

I have mentioned that my main occupation is forgetting. These past few days have been less profitable in that column. I see more during these sessions of morbid solitude than I might once have. Most of what I see I remember, but sometimes, sometimes I see something so familiar that it must have happened, but my memory is an accursedly strong one, one that would not let these things slip away. I have wondered, however much my mind recoils at the thought, if these visions are not of anyone’s memories at all — but that, perhaps, they are projections, extrapolations of historical data. I remember this feeling, this pattern, from when my ambitions dominated my mind and my wife came home from the hospital for days on end and I’d hold her hand and talk to her with my eyes and tell her that she was more beautiful than ever and when she was, she was, she was more beautiful than ever.

Today I lie on the pearly-white carpet, my limbs outstretched. I am remembering thousands, millions of times like this one, and I remember remembering millions of times, my limbs outstretched, fingers gripping the pearly-white carpet. My memories connect, as they sometimes do, and I see a shape run through them. Death has followed me. There was death in birth (my mother’s) and death in life (those of cats, fish, cancerous best friends, my father, and more that I will not let myself flatten into words) and I can only expect the death in death.

This is the only death I have left to fear, I tell myself, and it is only one. To fear? No, not to fear — the death in my death will be the end of my memories. The vessel that has so long preserved the poisoned air will be forever vanished. Or will death free the memories into the atmosphere, where they will find their way down a breath and into a lung? It is difficult to care, for my eyes will be closed and my breath will be still.

Without so much as a warning, I am sucked again into a memory. I lie on the pearly-white carpet, my limbs outstretched, moving randomly like exotic sea vegetation. I am remembering, but that is not important. My eyes are closed and my chest moves slowly. There is no noise, but my door opens.

Like so often happens, my eyelids are thrown open in the dark. There is nothing to see, but my eyes need to stay open anyway. This memory is not one I’ve yet had, but I know, I know, that this is only because I’ve not lived out enough time, that one day, it will be in my past, I will remember it. I reach to loosen my tie then my collar. My shaking hands feel a button snap, but I don’t hear it because my eyes have closed. I lie on the pearly-white carpet, my hands and feet writhe in the air but do not find anything. I am remembering, and it is important. My breath and my heart move faster than I can remember; they race each other to the finish. There is no noise, but my door opens. The expected flood of light does not come, the influx of sound that I have learned to dread is oppressively absent. The dark becomes darker; the ink that the air holds spreads slowly and ploddingly toward me and the pearly-white carpet.

My eyes are open, my mouth is open, and I scream into my rectangular existence. My door is closed, but I tear off my striped tie. My shaking, shaking hands claw at my buttons, and this time I hear them, I hear them land with deadened pops on the pearly, pearly, pearly-white carpet. Anything, anything to breathe, to let my heart slow!

My eyes are open and they remain on my office door, closed, closed, I lean against it and slide to the floor. I can hear my wild breath gasp once then slow. The pulse that once shook my skin and my body now only pounds in mocking memory of its tyranny. My eyes slowly shut in relief.

My door opens. The expected quiet of the studious building is replaced by a divine roar, a diabolical scream that threatens to tear my mind from my body. The dark becomes darker; the sound that before filled all my thoughts and shook away all but the pearly-white carpet only increases, overflows my understanding and breaks the walls of my consciousness. The sound moves towards me. Its intentions are clearer than ever.

When I slowly open my eyes and lift my too-large body, only for it to sink again, I watch again my door, but this time I know, I know, I can no longer fear. I stand only by the volition of my body and I face the door.

It opens, and I see. I see. My eyes fall, so does my body. I kneel and I kiss, I kiss, I kiss the pearly-white carpet.