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The Disappearance

Anonymous
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Posted 02/01/08 - 11:38 AM: Subject: The Disappearance	#1
Heavy, gray clouds drag themselves reluctantly across the sky low and thick. A wet pavement with crushed and broken paving stones, paralyzed from years of near disuse, crawls through a deserted backstreet. A Citroen 2CV with a smashed headlight and peeling paintwork is parked with two wheels on the curb. The owner has long gone and there is a notice of dereliction glued to the dirty and shattered windscreen. The nearest door belongs to an apartment building. Inside, the letterboxes have been vandalized, mildew spreads across the walls and a small, bare, burnt out light bulb hangs on a twisted, dusty wire sprouting from a gash in the ceiling. On the third floor there are four doors of plywood, which were once nicely varnished but now the damp has warped and mottled the wood and flakes of the original varnish dully curl off in abstract patches. Behind the door with the plastic 3b screwed into it a woman's voice is getting louder. "What the hell do you mean: 'she's just a friend'? Don't think I don't know there's something more going on! I was standing next to you both and I saw the way you looked at her. That's not the way you go on with someone who's just a friend!" Stubbing out the cigarette, whose smoke filled the already suffocating atmosphere in the small flat, she grabs a large cloth bag from the coat rack beside the door and starts gathering odds and ends from the bookcase and shelves. These things are her belongings. "I've had enough of this crap! I'm going and don't try to follow me. Try and get yourself sorted out instead, loser!" Hair uncombed and still struggling to get her coat on, she pulls the door open and slams it behind her. As her footsteps fade off into the stairwell he is left to deal with the situation. He knows that this is going to be the end. There is a certain finality in his eyes and he resolves himself to the inevitable events that will follow. Sitting on the torn sofa with his head in his hands he glances up at the door. She said not to follow her but he wants her back so much. He stands up and goes to the door. He puts his hand on the handle but he just doesn't have the mental strength to turn it. Resolutely, he bows his head and goes into the bedroom. There he finds a t-shirt that she forgot to take with her. He pushes his face into the material in a vain hope to feel her for one more time. When he realizes that this is not possible the world becomes a sharp sheet of cold steel with only one purpose: to slice his soul into unrecognizable shreds. The cheap wooden window blinds are still shut and shafts of pale light tendrils piercing through the cracks catch the heavy dust and smoke floating in the room. Cigarette smoke has never seemed so still. The fridge is almost empty but there is a can of tuna fish in the cupboard. Erratic but somehow predictable he gets up repeatedly to look in the kitchen. He sees a knife in the drawer and his mind clouds over. "This could be the instrument of my fate," he thinks. But no, it's just too dramatic and he decides to hide the knife by throwing it on top of one of the cupboards that get opened maybe once a month or less. Slowly he eats everything in the apartment. On the second day the toilet paper runs out and after three days closed in these three rooms he starts to think about going out to buy some food. The keys are hanging by the door, beside a scarf, which she also left but he had not noticed until now. Now things are different. She is no longer someone he knew and loved, she has become a towering goddess in his mind and the scarf, unlike the t-shirt is a religious symbol. The sudden impact of seeing the scarf freezes him, as would a divine revelation. The door no longer leads out into the real world. On the other side lies the possibility of her existence. He is no longer going out to find something to eat, going out now represents a test of faith as real as death. But he must go out or starve. With all the shutters closed the light in the apartment has been reduced to one electric bulb in the kitchen and whatever light manages to reach the other rooms from there. He makes one last attempt to get through the door. Unshaven and dressed in the same clothes for four days now he finally manages to get past the scarf and his need for food and toilet paper has proved stronger than his fear of what may lay beyond the door. His hands tremble as he reaches for the handle and he realizes that it was the last thing she touched as she left. With piety he places his hand on the brass door handle almost expecting to get burnt. The dim light in the hall is not even enough to read by but to him it seems blinding and unbearable. He is stripped of all defenses outside the door. In the deserted street a strong wind spins old newspapers and plastic supermarket bags into the air. His steps are not quite regular. His limbs are sticky and awkward. Dressed in a black sweatshirt and old jeans he staggers in the direction of the store. Before getting to the store his attention is drawn to a paint shop. The shop window is not extravagant but something in his mind makes a connection with all the identical cans stacked in pyramids. The rolls of cardboard and plastic sheeting flap spasmodically in the stiff breeze. The spiral of undulated cardboard draws him in to a whirlpool of darkness. His hunger and dizziness are beginning to affect his conscious ability to make logical decisions. Spinning now in a dive he can see a light at the bottom of the roll of blackness. This also fades and he almost collapses in a heap on the street. He is caught by the shop owner who then takes him inside the paint store and gives him a glass of water. Dazed and confused, he tries to find meaning in this turn of events but he cannot. He is sitting opposite a shelf lined with tins of black paint. Pitch black, like his soul. If he could be in the black paint then he would be able to hide and she would never know. He buys about ten kilos of black paint and a large brush. He struggles back to the apartment with the cans and brush. The door closes slowly behind him in the dim hall. After regaining his breath he opens one of the tins. Black. No light comes from the interior of the tin. To check that there is really something in the tin he dips the brush tentatively into the darkness. It comes out with the edge of the bristles black as night. A drop falls onto the carpet and no reflection comes from the wet paint droplet. He lights a small candle on the coffee table in front of him. Then he gets up, goes to the kitchen, turns of the light there and returns to stare at the tins of paint in the light of the candle. He just sits there. He is not waiting for something to happen. Suddenly he takes the brush and puts its full length in the first open tin. When he brings it out the bristles are almost invisible in the candlelight. Starting with the drops on the carpet, he pushes the brush around on the floor and then onto the walls. Dragging the tin around as he goes he paints everything in the apartment black. The fridge, the light switches, the furniture, the windows, the television, the bed, the mirror, everything. Among the last thing to be painted are of course the door and door handle. He has left till the very end the scarf, the object that has linked him with his own image of reality until now. He takes the scarf from the hook on which it hangs and holds it tightly in one hand. For the first time in four days his eyes focus on our reality, but not to stay, not to cling to something, not possessing, rather a final farewell glance. His face changes again and is now distant and unconnected to his immediate surroundings. His grasp on the scarf tightens and then it plunges into the last tin wrapped around his hand and wipes out the last paint. With this the last reflecting surface in the apartment is covered in the black paint. Only the candle is left as a visible point of light. His face looms into the candlelight and his eyes close slowly. As he leans back in the now black sofa his face also recedes into the blackness. Outside in the hall children are playing. The night comes and the morning comes and a woman carrying shopping passes the door. She lives in the next apartment. The cycle repeats. The woman who normally keeps herself to herself starts to get concerned. She knocks on the old door where the plastic 3b is screwed in tightly. There is an unfamiliar odor in the air. No answer. Later she tries again. No answer. The woman has met with the couple that once lived here and has kept a phone number. Later that day, outside 3b stands the woman from next door and the girl who had become a goddess in the eyes of the man who loved her. The girl takes out a key and places it in the lock. The key turns slowly and the door opens. As they stand there in front of the doorway a cold gust of air rushes into the room carrying some dust with it. Blackness is before them. The girl wants to step inside but her foot can't find the floor so she pulls back. There is nothing to be seen beyond the door, nothing to be heard. Her voice gave no echo and there was no ambient sound from the space on the other side of the door. No light from any window could be seen and no floor or wall could be touched. You see, the odor was not that of death but rather the odor of nothing. He had literally disappeared. His goddess was real and he had fulfilled his usefulness in this world. The truth is simple but cruel. There is no time or place on the road for a 2CV that has reached its destination and finds itself abandoned. A dereliction notice for a human being is not as obvious. Edited by Tobias on 02/04/08 - 03:47 AM

Fergus Currie
Blind watcher of the sky

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Posted 02/04/08 - 03:53 AM:	#2
Nice to see the paragraphs at last!
...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise. ...so never send Achilles to get fags!

Paul
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Posted 02/04/08 - 09:48 AM:	#3
I've deleted all the pre-paragraph votes. Please re-vote.
"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'." - Arthur Eddington

Fergus Currie
Blind watcher of the sky

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Joined: Jan 11, 2008
Location: Athens Greece
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Posted 02/05/08 - 04:36 AM:	#4
Why?
...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise. ...so never send Achilles to get fags!

Paul
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Posted 02/05/08 - 12:35 PM:	#5
Because it's not the same story they voted on now.
"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'." - Arthur Eddington

Fergus Currie
Blind watcher of the sky

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Posted 02/06/08 - 01:11 AM:	#6
Paul wrote: Because it's not the same story they voted on now. You are kidding, right? It's exactly the same story I posted a month ago. I copied and pasted it from here: http://www.talentdatabase.com/channels/15/profile... Do you think I sat down and deleted the paragraphs myself? Fergus
...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise. ...so never send Achilles to get fags!

Paul
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Joined: Mar 10, 2002
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Posted 02/06/08 - 09:17 AM:	#7
If you're incapable of understanding that a story reads differently with paragraphs than without, you're hopeless. You may plead with people to give you back the "poor" votes you had previously. I'd upgraded mine to fair, but as you insist, I'll go back to poor. Do you think I sat down and deleted the paragraphs myself? Actually yes, since it was a plain text submission and the link you give shows no readable paragraphs there, just line breaks with no indentation. But that's beside the point.
"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'." - Arthur Eddington

Fergus Currie
Blind watcher of the sky

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Joined: Jan 11, 2008
Location: Athens Greece
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Total Posts: 144

Posted 02/07/08 - 02:10 AM:	#8
I didn't ask if you thought I put paragraphs in, I asked if you though I took them out in the original post. Yes, I did put paragraphs in the re-post since your text editor took out my line break style, which is normal practice in short stories. As for being hopeless, I trust my hopelessness depends on something more substantial than my inability to understand the grammatical difference between 'Last Exit from Brooklyn' and 'War and Peace'. FC
...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise. ...so never send Achilles to get fags!

Caldwell
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Posted 02/19/08 - 04:24 AM:	#9
I like that story, The Disappearance. 'why I asked for paragraphs, too. I believe I voted "good" for it, tied with "curiosity", though can't recall now what button I hit. With paragraphs, the story reads a lot better.

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