Short Story - Anavrin

Tale - Anavrin

ANAVRIN

by Everton Mareto

1

The clocks on the wall, on the computer and on the wrist indicated... hours of the afternoon. The office was so set up that you wouldn't know what time it was otherwise than by the devices; the lights, which dominated the place, wouldn't let you notice the time, sometimes not even when the windows were open.

Leonard was sitting at his desk, concentrating on paperwork. Around him, the office was crowded with employees. Some sitting, some walking, but all working.

This process lasted some more time, a couple of hours, until the working hours ended. After that, Leonard closed his office, so to speak, and left the building, heading for his apartment.

There, as always, the first thing he did was bathe; wash himself and feel better after the day. He went to find a little more rest, for his mind and body, on the sofa watching TV.

The clock was ticking eight hours when he thought it was time to feed. He got up from the couch almost as if he was carrying his body. He had no desire to leave home and the sacrifice of feeding could be overlooked at the expense of staying where he was, of feeding his unwillingness.

There was no will, but he left anyway.

At the restaurant, which was not far from where he lived, he sat alone. It was night and the atmosphere of the place joined it, with weak and sparse lights.

After dinner, he felt better, more alive, as if he had more life. He never thought, before he ate anything, how good it was for him. It was so much so that in the street, after leaving the restaurant, he walked more easily, more animated to go somewhere, with firmer steps, decisive speed, never losing his pace.

He realized, through the silence that was becoming more and more present, and through the darkness that little by little dominated the places, that he had moved a little away from the commercial center of the city, where there were more lights and more people.

Leonard stopped when he got near an alley. An alley between two buildings, even darker than the main street. There, he was looking up, looking at the floors of the building. The silence was even greater than before.

Through a fire escape, he began to climb the building, looking inside each floor as he climbed. He stopped on the fourth floor, just after looking inside the building. He opened a window and went inside. It was an office floor too, like the one he worked on. The difference was that it was separated into rooms, office rooms.

In the room he entered, he began to look for papers; first on the table, then in the drawers, looking quickly at each one, and finally in the iron cupboard near the wall. He didn't seem to be finding what he wanted.

Kind of disappointed and running out, he approached the window leading to the main street and looked at the building across the street. He tried, he forced his vision, as if he could see inside the other building. Then, a door noise being opened made him suddenly turn around. Luckily, the door being opened wasn't from the office he was in.

Concerned to be found in there, Leonard paralyzed himself, striving to listen. And what he managed to do was detect steps of people entering the office next door, and entering through the door, not the window, like him. He also reached out to talking voices, but was unable to understand what they were saying. With calm steps, he directed himself to the wall that divided the two rooms, looking for the distance of the talking voices. Only when he was close to the wall was he able to understand what they were saying.