ThisEmptyChair

“So?” He said through a deep, tired sigh—without trying to hide exasperation.

He sat there across the table staring at me like an investigator from a bad action movie. Eyes ablaze. Jaw muscles tensed. Legs crossed. Cigarette between fore and middle finger while thumb and the rest of his right-hand fingers tried to keep a stale cup of coffee from spilling in his anger. He was purposefully staring at me. Studying me. Predators like cats never studied their prey as meticulously as I know he was doing me then—and with such loathing. Hatred is a loud neon sign that stands in brave contrast to the gloom of human relations. It does not just reveal itself, it proclaims itself.

I fixed my eyes at the stirring universe and the dance of quasars between where I was sitting and the filthy floor. Him I kept in the corner of my eye. Silence walked majestic in the room. Not the kind that reigns inside churches but the iron-handed fascist that overlords the cemetery. My mouth was stitched from within and welded from without. Hard-pressed on keeping my thoughts from spilling like an angry white water. On the other hand, He, my investigator, in his anger couldn’t say another word.

But after what seemed like a complete revolution of the universe, my cold-blooded examiner broke his silence. His trembling hands betray his lousy impersonation of a patient man.

“So?” He asked for the nth time as he took a last drag from his nearly-burnt out fag. From where I sat, he looked to me like The Red Bull from Peter Beagle’s Last Unicorn. The industrial smoke coming out of his nostrils complemented the roaring fury in his infernal eyes. Thank heavens we wasn’t foaming the mouth. He would be charging at me anytime now, I said to myself, and pin me against the wall to break my spine if not my silence.

Despite myself, I took a bite from what now looked like my unmotivated tuna sandwich (it was as interesting as last week’s news) and chewed it with the gusto of a hepatitis B patient, and continued stargazing at the kitchen floor. It took a valiant effort to be swallowed. Then I took a sip of my hot coco. If the sandwich was horrendous, the choco was bloodcurdling. But I could swear these were wonderful—amazing even. They have always been. What happened to my meal, then?

He happened.

A fissure began to run across His mirthless face. Ah, that sinister grin. He had had a hand on the ruin of my meal. I knew it. Shapes of things to come. He will have a hand on the ruin of everything I most enjoy. Everything. Moments of quiet soliloquy. Shift of rain to drizzle, or dusk to night. Parmesan on pasta. Cinnamon on my coco. Bonus tracks on CDs. Bird on a wire. A kid whistling. Everything. He’d ruin everything.

It was how it would be if I didn’t deal with him soon.

I decided to face him then. I raised my eyes and directed it towards his direction.

But where was he? How could he have vanished into thin air and leave only a piece of crumpled table napkin? I could still feel his presence like a rank odor. He was about. But where?

“So?” I heard him say again, fading, coupled with the suppressed laughter of a knave finding a method to slay his king.

He was gone. Nothing. Nowhere. One never gets to see and study him directly. He is a shadow, forever scurrying away and dancing outside the province of light. One can see him only from the corner of one’s eye, never in front.

I could hear his goading “So,” in my head. It was unsettling. A small black stain on a divine white shirt. A dent on the hood of a brand new car. A splinter in the mind.

So my (un)kind and (un)helpful counselor has deserted me just as when I decided to give in to his single-worded badgering. So much for fairy godmothers or guardian angels. Guilt as an intolerant counselor efficiently counsels without counseling. That darn unwanted visitor.

I abandoned my meal—decided to rid myself of the mountain that sprang from the marbled floor of my restless head.

31July05, 457am.

My hostile room.