PARIS | lando norris

044. i wish that i could block me out

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
[ real life ]
❛ i wish that i could block me out ❜

The room had stopped feeling like a room somewhere around the second day.

It was still recognisably Marnie's, the same soft, warm lighting from the fairy lights draped unevenly across the wall, the same framed prints of places she'd travelled to, the same pictures of all her friends pinned to her board, slightly crooked because she never had the patience to fix them properly. Her camera sat abandoned on her desk, lens cap off, battery long dead.

But the air had changed.

It was heavier now.

And so was the silence. That was the first thing Marnie noticed—the silence.

Not the peaceful kind, not the king you sink into after a long day, no, this silence felt thick, almost humid. It pressed against her ears until even the smallest sound felt intrusive.

The curtains were still half-drawn from when she'd yanked them shut in a panic, leaving thin slashes on grey daylight cutting across her bedroom like accusations. Dust floated lazily through those beams, undisturbed. Her phone lay face down somewhere under the duvet, ignored enough she had become immune to its constant buzzing. Even the plants on her windowsill – the ones she used to talk to jokingly when editing late at night – were beginning to droop.