By: M. R. Vega
The room stands immaculate, organized, ordered, alphabetized, nothing is out of place. The office corner of the large room also stands more than organized, more than immaculate, and David Broadmoor wants it all to burn.
There crawls a sneaking, inkling, dark and putrid mess tucked in the corner, spoiled, foul and rotting. David can see it, the tendrils of that darkness trickling along the edges, the deep crevices of the wood, stinking and permeating through the walls, touching those who slept so near.
The calls, they come with something still and monotonous, an arid dribble to what working is anymore for David. After losing her and, his kids through the tumultuous divorce, then losing his dogs, the house, and his dignity, David is finding he doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. He stands in the office, once his office, once his house, and what was owned by the whole that was his family, now it’s just a constant reminder of failure, hesitations and everything that he regrets. His self-deprecating is laughable and David knows it, he knows he deserves this, what’s pathetic and we don’t know if David is aware, is that regardless of it all, he won’t stop trying even though he needs too.
He mutters to himself “you’re an idiot, a stupid bucket of mess, what good were you?” His mind reels with this thought and the horrors that flood deeper in, he knows but the prospects of not knowing beat his reason every minute since they drove off. The clean room now feels cluttered to David, his desk a mess, and the shadows tend to creep into the light more as he lets his suffering consume him. He scans the space and smiles. The curated moldings, shelving sanded, polished, and gleaming looks surreal, made from tentacles, made from fire and brimstone. He scowls and sees it all tarnished and meaningless.
A picture of what can be referred to as a loosely based R2D2 from Star Wars, drawn by his 11-year-old rests partially tattered and crumpled from the little hands that made it, its still anxiously perched where his son left it before the ex-wife took him away. David furrows his brow, puts his fingers to the temples while trying to breathe while counting down the minutes before clocking in signing on and dealing with the draw, the draw of what he’s come to truly loathe. The kennels are empty, but there’s a car door shutting in the distance, it’s still early, he runs to the door with a heavy hope they’re back, he imagines her coming up the sidewalk to the front door, wet eyed, silent, and nodding at him curtly knowing it was a mistake.
He swings the heavy oak door open wide, a meek grin on his aging, and tired face stops stunted by a lack of anything before him. He cranes his neck out the doorway and Peers, down the neighbourhood, glances to the far side past the garage, an inkling of hope still hanging, until a car door closing happens again, he sees the milkman, hangs a heavy head, waves with barring teeth and scurries back inside. David thinks to himself of all the fool hearted acts, the stupid antics, and naive hopes, that had to be the f****** idiotic and presumptuous move was that? His body rebuked the thought and he shook off what he could, while dragging his lumbering mass to the kitchen wallowing the ache of silence, and he breathes in the shadows, he breathed in the darkness.
It shudders, heaves, grows and billows, the mass reaches from corner to corner of that office, the breathing death throws shadows lurking and snarling for more. It watches the scenes, grasps at the sorrow, gobbles up the despair, and inhales his breathing anxiety with a glee that satisfies even the hungriest of the gluttonous.
David leaves a full plate of barely picked at left overs steaming in the microwave, the fragrance of garlic, onions, and asada doesn’t jolt him back to the counter, to being home. He looks at the microwave with anguish, knowing the food would do well, but decides to head back to the dampened office.
David finds it comfortable, oddly so, he feels an almost cathartic resonance around himself, exhales heavily while he plugs his headset back in, logs into Teams again, and looks to the corner where it festers, oozes, gnaws and watches. He sends a sparked message asking for peace, asking for a minute to talk to the kids, maybe wish them a goodnight, but ends with the self deprecation she expected leaving him without a response and a fading ellipsis in messenger likely to disappear.
The gunshots, lasers, and colors on the screens erase minor bouts of anger, dissolve brief whisps of agony for David, but unknowingly the shadows eat it up, their gestation, the silent gnashing and gnawing at his soul keeps him stoic, listless, and manic. He waves at the darkness, tugging at the blinds to shutter the sun and retreats to the office, scrolling again in Messenger, seeing that ellipsis blinking, fading, blinking, and blinking.
It has gained more than half of the office, masticating the dreads, the horrors, fears, gnawing at those anxieties, mashing and gnashing the hate that plagues, boiling, and driving between ideologies, lost realities unforeseen, and a logic that is only to be further unraveled. Its hunger continues and deepens. It forages on to reach for the lowest, for the deepest, to consume and to take over.
His mind drifts, thinking of her, thinking of them, thinking of it, of red, of death, thinking of her.
David tires and rests, falling asleep to the blinking ellipsis on his phone screen, wanting, wishing to say goodnight.
Dream Dark Stories 