Eternity in the Half-Light

Chapter one

‘Could you be the most beautiful girl in the world?’

Sam extended a spidery finger and pressed the snooze button to temporarily silence the artist formerly known as Prince’s perfect falsetto.

The numbing silence of the weakly lit bedroom invaded his ears, shifting all of his attention to an inconvenient thought which had formed in his brain; Wednesday.

He opened his right eye and brought the green numbers on the front of his radio alarm clock into focus.

‘If the stars ever fell one by one from – ’

Sam didn’t want to fall into a perpetual cycle of snoozing and waking every few minutes so he pushed the switch on the side of his clock to the ‘off’ position.

With what seemed like all of the energy he owned, Sam threw the warm duvet from his listless and slightly clammy body.

He hoped the ensuing chill would spark him into action; ‘action’ being defined as getting to his feet, running into the bathroom and turning on the shower.

He lay staring at the ceiling however, hating Wednesday.

Wednesday was the furthest Sam could be from a weekend.

‘Wednesday lunchtime’, he thought, ‘then it’s like cycling downhill, sticking both your legs out and screaming ‘wheeee’’.

He’d read in a newspaper recently that the furthest you could get from the sea in the United Kingdom was a place called Church Flatts Farm.

Wednesday was like wanting to paddle in a rock pool but realising you’re living at Church Flatts Farm, without the need to feed or smell pigs.

Sam glanced at the empty left half of his double bed.

It had been a year since Louise had slept there. He still didn’t fully understand why she’d left him; their two year relationship had its problems but he thought none serious enough to cause her to walk out.

‘I should have tidied up the bedroom and emptied the dishwasher when I got home from work,’ he thought, ‘that’s the reason she left.’

Sam glanced at the clock again; twenty minutes had passed since he’d first woken and he was no nearer leaving the house for work.

Again, instead of performing his daily routine of showering, eating breakfast, watching a series of stories about current international tragedies (which the media referred to as ‘the news’) and leaving the house, he walked through these events in his mind until another ten minutes had passed.

‘It’s Wednesday’, he thought again, ‘the least motivational thought of all time’.

Sam eventually left the house at eight thirty carrying a thin plastic bag containing hastily made sandwiches and an apple.

He unhooked the latch on the tired garden gate, tugged it open with a squeak and stepped out onto the path.

He let go of the gate which sprung closed with a crash.

Sam was unnerved by the absence of life as he ambled down the hill towards the call centre where he worked; no cars, no people and no birds.

He tried remembering his dream from that morning in order to occupy his sullen mind.