Pathos - A Duskwood Fanfiction

Chapter 25 - sexual content warning

In a city far away from Duskwood, a brightly shining gibbous moon hung suspended in a completely clear midnight sky, bathing the urban landscape below it in a silvery gleam. Its light was only punctuated by the harsh white glare of the street lamps that lit every thoroughfare, and fell onto the head and shoulders of Jake in a ghostly mantle as he walked.

As he approached a non-descript low-rise building that stood in a quiet residential neighbourhood, he reached a hand into a pocket in his jeans and withdrew a set of keys. Carefully scanning the environment as he approached, his gaze took in the silence of the street slowly. Counting in his head, he saw that the number of cars that were usually parked on the street overnight had remained constant, and the colours and models of them had also not changed.

He looked at the entryway for the building as he walked towards it, eyes scanning the walls and corners of the facade for any evidence of technology that had not been present when he had left. Finding no overt sign of anything approaching a camera or new wiring, he went inside.

Walking down the hallway on the first floor, he came to a door at the very end and quietly unlocked it before slipping silently inside. After a moment, a soft warm white glow filled the room as he activated a small lamp that was seated on a computer desk, and he stood motionless as his gaze slowly swept the room.

It appeared to be exactly as he had left it; simple and bare. He had rented the room four years ago when he had found the listing for an available studio apartment that came furnished. It held a simple futon that was surprisingly comfortable, a desk, a chair, and had a tiny kitchenette that he never used. The walls were bare, and there was no evidence of any kind of personal touch to the place - it was a place of lodging only.

He walked slowly over to the desk chair and sat down, swiveling it around to face the interior of the tiny room. He leaned back into the seat and stared at the place that he had called home for four years, eyes drifting emptily over a scene that would be a gross over-exaggeration to call minimalist.

He hadn't anticipated this feeling. Hadn't realized how much more like home that room #6 of the Duskwood motel had felt, hadn't been aware of its impact upon him until he sat in the place that had been his prison for four years and felt his body physically recoil. The motel room itself had been only slightly more decorated than this, no-one could ever mistake it for anything other than what it was, but he found himself strangely yearning for its specific brand of emptiness. It was a liminal space that he had managed to find a tiny modicum of peace in, and to be without it now felt disorienting.

And he knew why, too, as he stared at the lamp light that was too washed out to be comparable to the golden glow of the lamp in room #6. He wasn't completely obtuse to his own emotional landscape. He knew that it had been solely due the women that had slowly filtered into his life through the insanity of the search for Hannah - they had been the ones to drag him out of his internal prison, one excruciating inch at a time.

Mrs. Walter, with her discreet quietude and wordless generosity. Lilly, with her instantaneous acceptance of who he was from the moment that she had set eyes upon him. Hannah, with whom he had a bond that went beyond words.

And then there was her.

To say that he had been unprepared would be far too benign a term to describe what it had been like to finally stand before her, what it had been like to finally look into the eyes that had been superimposed over every single moment that he had experienced from the moment that he had seen a picture of them online. It had been a total obliteration.

She had been too perfect to be real, he remembered thinking, as they had stood in front of each other in the Donfort's living room. Every single picture of her that he had seen had been an egregious injustice to the reality of her; she had literally robbed his brain of the ability to speak for a concerning amount of time. But when he had found his words, his usual reticence and shyness had been hijacked - it was as though some mamalian, primal part of his brain had suddenly assumed navigational control and had sent him on a kamikaze flight path right into her lips.