MOSAIC

Chapter 13: Candyflip

Sometimes I think the dream is stepping out and living me. I'm just a temporary placeholder of sorts. A continuously further dimmed existence while the other part of me takes on its own patterns of logic and acts by its own momentum. I'm just a vessel for...me.

​I'm not sure exactly how many nights it's been since that one particular night. Long enough so that the immediate distress has somewhat faded, but not so long that the slow-crawling dread has dissolved. It feels like I'm constantly waiting. Unceasing anticipation. Nothing has happened though. Days slither past my eyes monotonously, sometimes so uneventful they don't even feel like they happened. In a way it helps drain the anxiety, but most times the quivering uneventfulness swells my nerves back to unbearable altitudes. I find myself wishing for a catalyst a lot of the time. Literally anything to stab itself into the equation and start propelling things forward. I feel like I'm going to actually begin rotting if I sit stagnant like this for long enough, poisoned by my own body and mind. I need a stimulus. Something to push me over the edge and crack me apart. It's funny, I actually think today could be the one.

​I crept my car onwards towards my parking spot, rolling past the row of other vehicles, all familiar to me...apart from one. I could see it now only a few spaces ahead, neatly parked between two of my neighbours' cars. The daylight gleamed against the glossy red shine of its hood, sleek black rims glistening like liquid charcoal. That's Bella's car. I tried to look inside as I drove past but the reflection of the sunlight on its windshield obscured the interior.

​I parked my car in my spot, and hastily threw a few of my work tools into my trunk, occasionally glancing in the direction of the sporty red hood protruding from in between my neighbours' vehicles. That's gotta be her car. Flutters of uneasy little locusts buzzed inside my abdomen, apprehensively interested. This was a spear in the droning repetitive sheet music of my recent days. Now that something had at last happened, I realized I wasn't sure I was prepared to leave the insulative protection of monotony.

​I approached the front steps of my building, walking at an odd angle, chancing half-glances at the red sports car as though it were a living thing that would notice me staring at it. I was partially hoping it would be unoccupied and that I was altogether wrong about it being Bella's car, but when the driver side door abruptly popped open, I physically flinched.

​"Let's go up if you've got a sec," Carson said expressionlessly, sun gleaming off his smoke black shades as he strode towards me. ​

"I uh..." my mouth, throat, and brain stumbled over one another, firing off too many mixed reactions to produce anything coherent. The sight of him was earthquake-inducing.

​"You've got time, you're done work for the day." He put a firm hand on the back of my neck and guided me towards the front doors of my building. ​

We entered my apartment, me leading the way through the entrance, him following behind and clanging the door shut behind us. I put my keys down on the kitchen island and circled around to its other side, putting its width between the two of us. I skipped the usual niceties, neglecting to offer anything to drink or telling him to make himself comfortable. I stared into the dark lenses of his shades, doing my best to mask my apprehension.

​"Nice place," he said, moving past the kitchen island and towards the living room. "You do all these?" He scanned around the walls and tables of the room at some of my drawings, his dark-lensed gaze locking up with the one on the table in front of my mirror.