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Novelo Rectangle

An umbrella twirls in the wind. Shoes disappear from beside the doorway. A clock chimes gently as it has all year, consistent though dulled. A woman’s hand reaches outside the window to feel the air – its humidity and temperature. Blue and pink petals of flowers blooming in their pots just beyond the window pane flutter in time with the gentle palpitations of the wind’s heartbeat, brushing against her fingertips. Hand staying where she had moved to close the window, she smiles and turns, goes back to where the pasta water has begun bubbling out of its pot. Save for these things, the apartment lies still. * Two creatures that might have been human, once, sit on the roof, petals and leaves picked up by the wind sailing on its currents beneath them. A car starts in the street and pulls out, heading to the main road.The creature on the right – right from the angle of one looking in the same direction as they – has a patchwork face of artists’ hands, paintings expanding and folding in tandem with changes in the pressure, heat, and direction of air. Starry Night spasms across its cheek. It leans backwards, turning towards a sun that could have burned its retinas if it was still living. Squinting has long been pointless – its painted eyes narrow anyway. It amused itself with its instincts. “What ghost is the saddest, Sam?” it asks the wide expanse of the sky. “Can you tell me?” “Go away, Bob.” Bob continues, “You’d assume the one that died a painful death, or the one who had no guests at its funeral. No funeral at all, even. Dead in some canyon.” Bob stretches, chuckles, and with a sigh goes on, “Yes… or the angry ones – the folks that fling teacups and trip people on carpets and smother babies in their sleep. All because their wallet couldn’t take anger management lessons.” A pause. “But Sam… you know they’re wrong?” “Don’t call me Sam.” “Ah, but Sam helps me remember.” “Leave.” Bob laughs. “You leave.” It grins, as if it had told an incredibly funny joke. “Ah well, it’s not like you’re missing much from Lindsay’s Convenience Store.” “To Hell with Lindsay’s Convenience Store.” “At least in Hell you would have a chance to say hi,” Bob muses. The shadows wreathing Sam’s soul bristle in offense, aggressive and territorial. Sam doesn’t react to them – they weren’t its to command; they stretch both far away and close on by, tendrils of inky black settling on clocks and umbrellas and snatching up shoes, following a car to a high-rise in the office district. It’s quiet, for a little while. Peace. “I just don’t understand,” laments Sam. “This rooftop is so damn boring.” It flinches backwards, narrowly avoiding the tenth shoe that’d vaulted itself out the window that week in pursuit of… well. The creature couldn’t recall. A better view, maybe. The converse joined its brethren behind the chimney. Bob looks at Sam. A fraction of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel sails over its eye. “Have you tried haunting?” “I can barely move as is. How do you suppose I attempt controlling a TV remote?” “I didn’t say a TV remote.” “It’s an example! She’s always watching the TV.” A scoff. “Calm down. At least she loves you.” Shaking its head, Sam groans, “It’s been years.” A half-empty Excel sheet and a man picking his nose at the next desk over in a painfully lit office flashes through its mind, and it shakes what vaguely qualifies as its head, disgusted. “This is torture.” Scoffing again, Bob leans on its knees. “You don’t know torture.” “I’m playing houseguest to a woman whose favourite past time is ignoring me.” The Birth of Venus blooms across Bob’s torso as it looks out across the city. “Love brings no reason.” “If reason must be a slave to love then its better to not love at all.” “Shut up.” “Live with the living. Die with the dead. Focus on the present not the past. Kung Fu Panda, Master Oogway. I remember that.” The pressure on the roof changes, even the pile of boots cowers in fright. Bob frowns and Kronos devours his sons. “What would you even know about it, huh? Amnesiac.” Sam turns its head to where a murder had landed on the crown of the roof, fighting over the shiniest shoes. The colours of Bob’s being bleed away, sinking into the rooftop until they’re gone completely, and So-Alone-Man is left to ponder its existence alone. “And that’s the difference between us, isn’t it,” Sam grumbles to the discarded converse. The shoe had fallen out of the pile in the scramble, has been inching, slowly and dangerously, to the edge of the slanted roof. Sam felt much like that converse. “Bob can leave, I must stay. I’m no better off that you. Stupid shoe.” Sighing, the creature lies back on the roof tiles and ignores the way boots and shoes vibrate out of the crows clutches and towards him. Like the Indian peninsula vibrating into the Eurasian plate until they formed the Himalayas. A dilemma for a different endless day.

Soulworm

Erica

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