Birthday

Hovering in the solitude of silence, the eyes tracked the speck of dust as it sank down to the floor. The dawn sun illuminated the speck as it flitted and swirled through the air; it appeared to the pair of eyes – which belonged to a face that belonged to a body, belonging to a man - to look like a dancing angel: a creature still equipped with the joy and spirit of youth, flirting with the first rays of the sun. As the dust settled on the floor, he sighed and lifted himself out of the chair, feeling his bones groaning under his skin. His mind briefly pondered why the human body seems intent on perpetually losing its physical presence – muscles gradually growing smaller and smaller; the skin still clinging on to the residual flesh and bone until eventually… eventually, there is no more room for a soul, and it forces the life-long resident to vacate the premises, only to move on to who-knows-where. After trying to determine what exactly that meant for a short period of time, he decided that he wanted to believe that “who-knows-where” existed, and that it was better than “here”. He shook the thought off gently and slowly shuffled over to the kitchen to decide on which particular set of contents for breakfast would brighten his day more: Whiskey, or rum?
He decided to indulge himself in the former.

The kitchen was a modestly-sized section of the apartment, although its name was, for the most part, discountenanced by the absence of any culinary equipment that extended beyond the range of a kettle, a set of silverware for two, and a small, seldom used pan. The apartment itself was scarcely furnished, and had just four rooms, including a living room, a bathroom, a bedroom and the kitchen the man was now standing in. Each room, but the bedroom especially, had a clinically sanitised smell of rubbing alcohol that seemed to have been absorbed into every crevice in every wooden plank. The bedroom had a queen-sized bed and a single mechanized bed on wheels, with blue sheets and metal rails on the side: like a crib; only the bed wasn’t designed for newly-borns, rather, it was designed for a fully grown man, or woman, to rest. Either way, the man hadn’t slept in any of the beds, nor stepped into the room in weeks. There were two windows in the entire residence, one in the kitchen, in front of which the man was standing, and another which could be located in the living room whereby a chair was strategically located to avoid the sun in the morning so as to not disturb any snoozing inhabitants in the early hours of the day. The building the apartment was in was relatively old, but sturdy and it stood snugly between two adjacent buildings of the same dignified composure. The man extended his hand up towards the cabinet, and, with some effort, managed to pull down a fresh bottle of High Commissioner. He settled it on the counter and looked out the window, breaking the seal and unscrewing the cap with an aloofness that one would most likely have attributed to his slightly faltering eyesight - which invariably caused the man to appear to be staring off into some far off dimension - but was more probably the result of his wandering mind, which never seemed quite satisfied with focusing on the present.
    As he stared down the barrel of the bottle, he considered the available options for the day’s itinerary:
Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Sleep.
Satisfied that the plan would produce an emotionally and physically stimulating chapter in his life, the man started making the journey back to his resting place – but soon became more interested in the noise of a car engine outside. Peering out through the window, the man saw what he made out to be a young couple in their mid-to-late twenties pulling up to the apartment in a taxi. The man could just about make out the excited faces of the twosome from his second-floor domain, as the breaks of the taxi lurched the car to a halt. After a few seconds, the door closest to the curb opened up, and the boot of a small-ish girl tentatively placed itself on the asphalt. The girl craned her neck forward so that her nose, then her beaming face, and then the rest of her head was exposed to the world outside; curious to learn the ways of living life outside of a parents’ house or dorm room. Like a magic trick, where the magician pulls an endless length of string from his or her sleeve, the rest of the girl emerged from vehicle, her arm extended out behind her. The man watched as more and more of the arm appeared, until it revealed a pair of interlocked hands, one of which, the man discovered, belonged to the arm of the boy. The couple exited the taxi seamlessly, only bringing the handholding to an abrupt stop because the boy, with a somewhat nervously frantic disposition that may have seemed more appropriate had he still been a child, went to retrieve whatever contents were being stored in the boot of the taxi. These turned out to be a hefty black suitcase, which appeared to be strenuous work for the boy to lift out of the boot, then dump on the curbside, and a much smaller bag which was then perched carefully on top of the first. Throughout his endeavor, the boy had been chuckling and smiling. The reason for this display of joy turned out to be the presence of a camera which the girl had been using to document the events. The boy continued making faces, whilst walking towards the girl, who in a fit of giggling, was attempting to multitask: continuing to snap pictures of the boy -rotating the camera every which way - whilst taking small steps backwards in order to keep the boy’s face in frame. However, as the boy gained ground, and she was forced to lean backwards in order to prevent the nose of the boy from touching the lens, she abandoned the faux pro photographer persona, releasing the camera from her grasp and causing it to drop to her waist before the neck-strap attached snapped taut and saved it from a tragic collision with the pavement. During this interval, the boy had embraced the girl, and had started a sort of centrifugal dance performance that seemed to exude an aura of happiness. Impartial to the affectionate display, the taxi driver had already started to make his departure, leaving the couple standing facing each-other, noses touching, eyes interlocked; teeth gleaming, on the curbside. The couple continued this intimate gesture of affection, with their minds appearing to be transmitting infinite series of information through each other’s pupils, for several seconds before deciding that it was time to fetch the luggage, turn to the building, and find out what life would be like, inhabiting a dwelling together. The man watched the couple walk up the steps towards the entrance, before they disappeared out of sight below, to live the rest of their lives together.
His eyes lingered for several moments on the steps where he saw the couple step out of sight, before sighing and turning towards the corner of the living room. In it, there was a lonely desk, pushed up against the wall. It appeared timid, with its legs barely dodging the sunlight shining in through the window. On the desk stood two dusty picture frames, and one pristine one. Next to it was a bookshelf, filled with everything from dictionaries and encyclopedias, to several brick-like books that gave a detailed explanation of the origins of quantum physics and its applications, to a collection of literature and poetry - all annotated in extraordinarily neat handwriting, and complete with handwritten analyses. The man half walked, half stumbled, over to the desk, careful not to spill any of his whisky, and let his eyes scan the picture frames. The first image showed a toddler – a boy, wearing a dress - the way parents used to dress their children for photoshoots, back in the nineteen-twenties – staring, with an expression of puzzlement out of the frame and into the observer’s eyes. The man gently picked up the dull, metal frame and used his thumb to wipe some of the dust off of the cover, not taking his eyes off the boy’s. The man always thought it was weird to keep pictures of your parents in your house -- worse still; pictures of them when they were kids. But, he’d once tried removing the frames from their present position before, and within an hour he had placed them back out of a sense of loyalty that had nothing to do with his relationship with his parents.
He put down the picture frame, and followed his hand, as it glided over the next picture frame. The actual picture was so faded that the subject was almost impossible to resolve amongst the incredibly worn creases; indicative of having been folded and unfolded an innumerable number of times, and kept safeguarded from the elements in a wallet or purse. The frame itself was made of cheap wood that was warped and cracked in places due to the absorption of the ambient humidity. The man stood there, staring at the frame, trying to see the person in the picture: A healthy, fit, and young man, whose overly-dramatic ear-to-ear grin and squinting eyes, could only be the result of a naïve period of bliss. This person, of course, had once been him, in another life, he thought. And here he was, watching himself fade away, until all that would remain would be a blank, creased piece of paper and a sad wooden frame.
He took a swig of the whisky, which only at this moment, he realised, he had not drunk yet. The vile acidic blend was the perfect medicine: it set his intestines ablaze, and made his blood boil as it coursed through his veins, heading towards his heart. He felt the fire enter his right atrium, filling his heart with a burning sensation that made his eyes water. The few seconds it took for the blood to be pumped away again went by slowly, in a much appreciated period of agony.
‘Heart-burn is so much better...’ He thought.
    The ordeal steeled him for the next: Eyes red – aglow with passion and pain – he turned his attention towards the third frame, which stood bold and confident, its simple, yet elegant Mahogany-wood frame supporting a sheet of untouched glass. Behind the glass, protected from the elements, was a portrait of the same - but slightly older - smiling young man from earlier, with a pretty dark-haired girl, whose brown eyes pierced through from the other side, through the alcohol induced buffer of nausea, and into his own.
    He stood there, drinking his whisky, every so often turning to the phone on the wall, just to see if it was ringing, but it didn’t ring. Of course it didn’t. No one ever rang.
The next few hours went by in a haze, as his vision became less and less lucid, his thoughts started to flow from his head, filling the room with the contents of his imagination. He closed his eyes and the room instantly became more cheerful: he could feel lights shining brighter; and the music – Oh! How the music reverberated in his ears, drowning out the sounds of the world.
Suddenly, he opened his eyes, and saw the living room, bathed in the golden light of dusk. The room was filled with half packed and half unpacked boxes filled with books and clothes that had been pushed aside in such a way that they lined a path to the various rooms in the apartment. He was wearing his work clothes now: a white office shirt tucked into long black pants, with a thin navy blue tie around his neck – although he was acutely aware of not having worked during the day. The scent of burnt toast wafted through the air, and from the kitchen called the voice he had been yearning for:
“Welcome home!” it seemed to gleam.
He strolled into the doorway of the kitchen and smiled softly. He watched as the girl from the picture brought out a cake, with the number 25 carefully inscribed onto its surface with some coloured assortment. The cake was slightly burned, but the man either didn’t notice or didn’t care because he sat down at the tiny round table, in the cheap plastic chair, seeing her put on a false-guilt expression, before giggling, setting the cake down in front of him, giving him a quick hug and a peck on the lips, and sitting down opposite him.
    “I couldn’t find a --”
    “It’s your birthday for chris’sake” she interrupted.
    “Now shut up and eat your cake.”
As she smirked at him, the man felt his chest well up, giving him the strong sensation that he was for some reason, going to burst. Staring into her eyes, he couldn’t feel more at home.
    He broke the trance-like state by picking up the fork that was already on the table, and using it to procure a chunk of hard-crusted cake. The burned exterior tasted incredibly bitter, and he winced slightly, which made him smile – making her chuckle.
    The next thing he knew, they had ended up on the floor giggling like children. The fact that he had lost his job a week earlier didn’t matter. The fact that they could be evicted at the end of the month didn’t matter. This was the only thing that mattered. Keeping this memory alive.
 As they lay on the floor laughing, the man could feel the cold seeping back into the floor, the life fading from the room. He’d learned to stop resisting this resurgence of logic, making its way back into his veins, soon to induce the throbbing’s of a hangover.
Still in somewhat of a drunken trance, he found himself now in his usual spot, in his chair, clutching a now empty bottle of high commissioner. He raised the bottle as if to toast, and said:
“Happy birthday”.
                              To no one in particular.