My Gift To You

This is a short story I wrote a few months back one night at work when we weren't busy. Let me know what you guys think! It's one of the few things I've written that I was actually quite proud of without needing to be convinced by someone. :-P So, here it is……..



“My Gift To You”

He sat on a bed by a window in a gray hotel room, listening to a faucet drip. “How maudlin,” he said to himself in a voice so low only his Imaginary Friend could hear. “How maudlin, indeed,” he replied, his voice so deep-ish and pleasant that it seemed unreal. Seemed unreal? Like the snake whispering in Eve's ear.

He got up, walked to the faucet, turned it off, still heard it dripping in the back of his mind. “Is something leaking out of my brain?” he said, knowing the question was stupid and allowed the last words to trail off into breath, loathing himself for the current state of his affairs. “Is it really such a stupid question?” the Voice Without A Body said into his right ear delicately, slowly, allowing each word to seep into his consciousness as if this were the question on which all other questions hinged. Maybe it were such a question.

He changed his clothes, thinking that maybe the new attire would give him a new outlook on life. “Change your clothes, change your mind,” the Voice cooed so softly that no one else could hear, which would matter only if anyone else were around.

The sun outside seemed different today. Not yellow but another shade of gray. “Is this Kansas?” he said thinking of Dorothy and her dog. The Voice didn't answer back. “Is this Kansas?” he said again, demanding that his creation take part in this underplayed melodrama, a kitchen sink drama without a kitchen sink since he couldn't afford such a nice hotel room.

No answer.

No, a kitchen sink would be too much. A bathroom sink. They're smaller. Fitting, since everything he felt seemed so petty.

“Screw you,” he said and continued to walk. “What good is an imaginary friend if they won't play with you?”

But he couldn't help feeling it anyway.

He walked from the hotel to the drug store. A short walk. Not pleasant but he didn't complain. He had to escape the room at least for a little while, even if he was just exchanging one sort of gray for another. “Maybe I should get my eyes checked,” he said, half serious, wondering why everything appeared so lackluster, and half trying to lure out his friend again, hoping to elicit some sort of response from his sometime companion.

Still silence.

This was unusual, he thought to himself (since no one else seemed to be around to listen any longer). The Voice since he had wished it into being never remained silent for long. It may use silence as a response but to remain so was nearly unheard of. The Voice's own existence depended upon its chattering, and like all other sentient beings, it's primary concern was to endure. It is odd, then, he thought, that it should simply cease. It was as addicted to consciousness as much as the next psychosis.

In a double flash of realisation, he recognized both the absense of his melancholy and its subsequent return. “Was that your plan all along?” he asked it. But it was not there.

“Five cents,” the man in the store said.

“What?” His mind was anywhere but here.

“Five cents,” the man said again, less patient.

“Very inexpensive,” he said trying to smooth out his indiscretion while handing the man the money.

Back in the hotel, he sank into the mattress of his bed. “But this bed isn't really mine,” he said with a slight pause as if he expected a response out of instinct, “it's just on loan.” He closed his eyes. He fell into quiet sleep.

When he awoke without dreaming (for wasn't life a dream enough?), he emptied himself into the toilet and washed his hands at the sink. In the mirror he saw a pale and skinny body naked, hair cropped close to the scalp, eyes saggy with bags and blackness, tired eyes despite rest. “I really ought to get some sun,” he said.

A knock on the window.

A little surprised, a little confused, he stood still.

A knock on the window.

“Hello?” he said, still unmoving, still unsure what to do.

A knock on the window.

Afraid, more because he was alone without his creation than because there was somebody knocking on his tenth-storey window, he creeped out of the bathroom.

There, at the window, was a girl, no more older than he. She had radiantly yellow hair like the sun and wore a dress of green cotton, clean and nice. Her eyes sparkled blue as she looked at him, hers meeting his. She seemed like a mermaid without her tail, fascinating and stranded. He imagined her to have a beautiful voice, that she sang softly to herself in idle moments or when her mind wondered to thoughts unrelated to all that happened around her. Her eyes beckoned for him to open the window for her, to let her in from the cold winds that arrise when gray day descends into black night.

He walked to her almost in a trance. Her eyes beckoned him. They sparkled.

The shimmering of her hair.

The green of her dress like pine, like Christmas.

Her skinny limbs, willowy frame.

How vibrant she was, standing on that balcony he had never noticed.

How full of life but how sad she was.

He wanted to let her in, to touch her, to be with her, another human being, any other human being.

He opened the window, but she did not move. Yet her eyes beckoned and shimmered still.

“Don't you want to come in?” he asked.

No response but the shimmering of her blue, blue summer eyes.

“Aren't you cold?”

Silence. Nothing but that enticing gaze.

He took a step out onto the balcony, one foot planted firmly and then another. He wrapped his arms around her protectively, and she spoke softly into his ear in a deep-ish, pleasant, unreal voice, like the snake in Eve's ear, “This is my gift to you.” A Voice he recognized from countless conversations.

The wind rushed around him, feeling it with every cell of his naked body. The wind felt pleasant, and though he was face to face with his impending doom, he no longer felt the melancholy, and he was no longer afraid. In the last moment before, he formulated a final question, in case the Voice was still listening, his creation, “Is this what I wanted?”

No answer.