Alpine

Gambit 3 - Flow

The next morning, I still felt horrible. I slept through an hour's worth of sleep-button alarm delays. If my apartment had been filled with the smell of coffee, maybe that would have enticed me to get up and be human. However, the concept of "tomorrow" had not meant anything last night. The coffee machine never got set up to run. The only thing my apartment smelled like was stale air.

Dwelling on how things had been last night was fruitless though. It was morning now. I had to make a choice between going to work or calling in sick. My paid time off was running short. I rolled out of bed onto the floor like a soggy burrito. I stared at the pile of dirty clothes. Nope. Fairies had not magically done my laundry during the night.

With a sigh, I wriggled out of my blanket and glanced down at what I was wearing. The clothes I had put on for his... thinking the phrase dinner party made my stomach lurch and my mouth go dry. My work clothes were still on the bathroom floor. l was 90% I had not vomited on them last night. They would do.

I crawled towards the bathroom until some dim vestige of dignity jeered, could you be more pathetic? Fine. Groggily, I rose to my feet, dragging my shoulder up the wall for balance. Because yes, this looks so much less pathetic.

Once I had the crumpled mass of cloth in hand, I staggered to the coffee machine. Stuff a filter in place. Dump an unmeasured heap of grounds on top. Start it. With the promise of relief on the way, I put on my slacks, my undershirt, and the button down. When I reached the central button, the image of my car sitting by itself in the work parking lot knocked on my consciousness. I squelched a near sob with the words, "I'm not riding with him. Not again."

The thought of a taxi was dismissed as soon as I considered it. I could barely deal with myself. Like hell would I inflict my sorry state on someone else. I checked the time. Walking was still a viable option if I left now. I gave the coffee brewer a desperate, longing stare. With my head down, I shut it off. It sputtered in complaint as the brewing light dimmed. I drank the two drops of boiling-hot filth directly from the pot and grabbed my messenger bag on the way out the door.

Walking out into the cool morning and turning away from the parking lot felt wrong. I was supposed to pull out my keys. I was supposed to analyze where his car was relative to mine. I was supposed to steel myself against whatever horrors he would have ready for me today. In place of the muffled grumble of my car's engine, I heard birds singing. Logically, I know that every vehicle on the road has at least one individual in it. However, the confines of the driver seat always made me feel like I was the only person on earth. Out on the sidewalk, I felt different.

Weaving around the gal hurrying to her favorite cafe for her morning java. Dodging aside, as a guy, laughing, lost in conversation with someone close, nearly collided with me. Saying "Excuse me" as I sidestepped around the slowest travelers. There was a whole community of people around me. A community that I technically belonged to.

I spent so much time holed up in my apartment alone, that I somehow forgot that anyone else was real. Even though Switch had shattered my belief that he only existed at work, I still felt the same about everyone else. Unless his gravity pulled them out of the ether to play a part in one of his dark games, my coworkers were phantoms. Puppets whose only purpose was to fulfill necessary roles, so the scenes in my life marked as "work" would feel legitimate. People were placeholders.

Except they were not.

Here, now, I was a bit part with no meaningful dialogue, making the barest impression on the lives of all the people playing equally inconsequential roles in my life. How easily I could change that. It would only take a few words to elevate any one of these bodies into an acquaintance, a friend, a lover, a partner. My grand epiphany was bittered by the acidic second thought: Yes, talking to strangers is how you meet people, you fucking dumbass.