One thinks of approaching the lonesome and yet hesitate in doing so. Is there a reason not to?
The next morning's strike resembled the force of a steam hammer against her chest and the weight of an anvil pressing onto her skull until it would rupture into bloody ground meat.
Unusually, Irving had not dreamt of anything and as such had no means to decipher the agony that she began the day with. Her heart was the most exuberant of her organs and she could hardly contain its excitement, though she tried by pressing her hand onto her chest. For a time, she believed there was an underlying plague killing her steadily.
I can't be, though, she thought with a shake of her head. It had only been a dramatic guess to her state and as she decided upon it, the trivial matter no longer concerned her. She caught sight of Grimble asleep inside his cage and felt inexplicably glad.
Irving threw the covers away from her body and slid down the bed, tottering and stepping toward the connected bathroom. Somewhere in her routine, it had occurred to her that she did not even know the time, and it pricked at her mind until she had dressed and finally stepped out of her cavern onto the living room, where a grandfather clock stood all the way toward the end, locked in its wooden encasement.
"A quarter past three." She turned her head toward the window; the sky was still dark. "A quarter past three...in the morning. There are still some hours until school."
Irving nearly went back into her room but stopped herself. Her hand's proximity to the door's handle seemed almost wrong to her. As if that were not what she was meant to do. Oddly, the sensation was not foreign, and, in some instance, she had even thought of it as well.
She stood still for a moment and crept soundlessly toward the door a few paces away from hers: the young man's room. She placed her ear to the door and heard no snores, confusing her. Irving immediately turned to face the living room, only furnished with an old couch and a coffee table before it, a few small shelves and a television toward the left of the room with two windows on either side. Prominently, she found the young man asleep on the sofa, which was too small for his long body.
Why does he never use the bed? She questioned but did not answer. The girl briskly entered his room, heaped up the blanket and laid it on him carefully before continuing on her own undertaking.
The conception was not definite although she had already formed the object of her following actions: she grabbed the large coat hanging beside the door to the complex, the keys belonging to it already stuffed deep into one of its pockets, slipped on her heeled boots, and headed down the stairs at the end of the hall. On her last step, she paused, struck with a sudden realization.
And if he has only been pretending to be sleeping? If he knows what I will do? But another thought, more essential than the last, reminded her: He will do nothing anyway. And I am only seeking for an answer.
With that, she continued on her stroll, and though not aimless, she had very little idea of where to go. Little, but there was some idea. It was only so minute since the larger possibility of her surmise being flawed never ceased to exist, and it was the thing she would believe the most in the majority of occasions such as this. She walked down the sidewalks, as far from the road as possible, looking ahead and believing to be aware of her surroundings to the necessary extent. Regardless of her beliefs, her vigilance was not in any way disconnected from her thoughts, and they merged in a strange way, where she would see what was around her but not truly observe them.
Her chief aim revolved around unspoken words that were to be said in the chance that her intuition was correct. She prepared a speech beforehand, a lonesome monologue, of those that were recited repeatedly and obstinately in numerous cycles, until it engraved itself so deep into the mind that it would vanish once it sunk wholly down. She hissed at her own incompetence and muttered curses once her rails were distracted with either a stranger or a strange thought.
