I had one of those weird bursts of inspiration and wrote most of the first chapter of a potential novel. Nothing is likely to come of it as I don’t really know where to take it from here, but I’m pretty happy with the prose and the mood, so I figured I’d share. It is definitely a bit on the odd side of course, I hope you’d expect that from me by now. Anyway, here you go, chapter one of Possibility Days:
There were days when the world was empty, when time stood still, and when accomplishing anything seemed almost as monumental as accomplishing nothing. There were days when the world was on fire, when the edge between success and failure seemed thin and sharp, and when the only possible emotion was a panicked, manic, make-believe optimism.
There were days in the middle.
As
Andrew woke up each morning,
he always had a gut feeling about what kind of day it was going to
be. Those
feelings weren’t
always accurate of course; the days always seemed to be playing
tricks on him worse than the weather forecast. But
it made him feel better to pretend he had some control over things.
Today, for example, had started out like a distinctly
middle day, but had unexpectedly sagged towards the end before
picking up sharply at the last minute. The
pattern reminded him of the
bass drop in a
particularly formulaic pop
song.
Now
it was starting to sag again,
but that was OK. It was late, he was tired, and as long as he didn’t
fall all the way into paranoia a little bit of fade at the end of the
day made it easier to get to sleep. It was probably natural,
something to do with melatonin or testosterone levels or some other
hormonal thing.
Standing
in the bathroom brushing his
teeth, he made half an effort to recall all of the things he had
accomplished today, but the idea seemed just a little out of reach;
he was fading fast then.
Some of those things had
seemed interesting or valuable at the time, but now they were just…
there. Mechanistic results of a boring, predictable universe. Like
the toothbrush, travelling hypnotically back and forth over his
teeth, its position ever-changing but its motion always exactly the
same. Andrew paused, and spit, then rinsed off the toothbrush,
gargled briefly, and spit again. Tomorrow would be different, he
knew, even if it would also
be exactly
the same. Life was funny like
that.
As
he made his way out of the bathroom and into the big, open,
mostly-empty
room that served as his
bedroom, his
hand batted the wall near the bathroom light switch. He hit the fan
switch by accident, turned that off again, then fumbled left
automatically until he could
kill the lights. The
room was plunged into grey, the glow
of the city still sneaking
around the edges of the big bay window.
Everything
about this condo had seemed
like a good idea originally:
the
massive rooms, the
floor-to-ceiling windows; even
the oddly-located light
switches had
seemed more cool than
frustrating.
It was
still an impressive
place to show off to friends and
family, but
if he was being honest he’d trade it all back for a bedroom that
got properly dark at night.
The simple things were
underrated.
Crossing
the shadows to
his bed, Andrew knelt to pray
and tried
to sink into the comforting
thought of all the
other people who
were praying at that moment.
They formed a
vast network of humanity in
his mind, united by ritual,
and reaching out toward something greater than themselves. Andrew
didn’t even believe in god anymore, and hadn’t for a long time,
but he still believed in the
universe, and in humanity, and that was enough to pray to in his
opinion. No matter what kind
of day it had been, the reminder that he was somehow not alone in the
world was usually
a comforting one.
This
night, praying to the universe
quickly turned into a
muttered reassurance that
tomorrow would be another day, and that things always seemed brighter
in the morning. It
was time to stop. Giving
up on the universe for one
more day,
he unbent his knees and crawled into bed, pulling the covers up to
just under his nose and folding his hands over his stomach. The
day finally complete, Andrew
waited for sleep to come.