Who Stole Vincent's Starry Night?

For whom the cat on the moon smiles.

Nine months had passed since the departure of Pandora. The famous time for humans to bear life, but does anybody know the amount of time necessary to bear death? If someone asked himself this question, it was Vincent with a persistent frequency on day-to-day basis.

Mortality sounds like an eternity in the loss of a loved one. In the balance of things, as he saw them fit, the loss of that loved one, who the heart is gifted to, would be the death of oneself. And this rationale, would lead to his most imperative question, why was he not dead? Quite the blue talk to have every night with the pillow. Knowing the talking wouldn't lead him anywhere, he opted to act in the most cowardly manner.

He got out of bed taking a walk throughout the apartment, dragging his rag-like body around those now stained walls. He lighted himself a cigarette for breakfast, or dinner, either way it didn't matter, all four thousand of its chemicals nourishing his fatalistic wish throughout his body. The air of the place was pungent with the stench of rotten food and trash, the curtains stopped any ray of light from filtering in, the carpet and walls scarred by cigarette burns, and all the furniture upholstered in dirt. Long gone were those lively days in these walls reminiscent of light, and with the fresh smell of Dahlias that Pandora picked up at the market on Wednesdays. Those walls were now trapped in a crystal ball of small suicides.

After the funeral he had cut off any contact with his in-laws, family, and friends. He docked calls until in a fit of rage he crushed the phone against the wall. Pandora's family gifted him the apartment out of pity and most of all to do away with any sad memories of their daughter. It was a two-way departure as her family also opted to cut ties with him. The one thing that united them was gone. Only now and then would the new security guard (appointed after the incident) of the apartments stuck the daily newspaper underneath his door, which was now stuck by a pile of newspapers, not believed to be done out of courtesy but as bait to catch if something still lived inside.

In the beginning, the neighbors had drop him off food outside his door, which he collected at late hours of the night. Trying to avoid as much contact with the outside world as possible. Other nights he would call a local restaurant and request they send his food to his door, only once a month, would he go out to the bank and withdraw money from his savings account (he had inherited a good sum in the passing of his parents and it had coincided with the devaluation of the peso in 76) to pay for liquor, cigarettes, his tab at the restaurant and a few other things. It had been months since the last time the utilities had been functioning at his apartment or he had look at himself in the mirror.

Throwing himself in the floor, with his burning smoke, he poked outside the curtains and found the dawn to his call. He liked looking out at night from the tower of his madhouse. It reminded him of the events of that night, and they fed his guilt and anger.

He took a hit watching the dark blue colors of the night dismantling. The bright stars angered him, but most of all the crescent radiant moon with a strange halo that reminded him of the smirk on the Cheshire cat. As if it laughed at him and his misery from a point of arrogance and superiority.

"You, eye in the sky that sees it all. I bet you know. Yes, you hide that secret from me behind your hypocritical smile" said accusing the Moon. "You think you and your stars are too good for me, you laugh at my misery, and hide from me the man that took my Pandora away."

It had been the thought of finding his wife's assassin that had allowed him to live on. Even through such inhumane conditions. To hold such life in between his hands, in all its fragility, and slowly rip it away in cold blood. Watching all life fleet to the riff of death and gasping mercilessly for an inexistent hope.

A comforting thought would pay him a visit. The thought of knowing no longer would his beloved be part of this land of devils and the damned.

He took to writing on the living room's wall with the lite up cherry from his cigarette. If the cigarette ran out, then he would light up another one, if the cherry was put off, then he would relight it. Unwavering in the resolution to finish his work.