Bastille Imagines

Good Grief

4:37AM

Glaring at those harsh numbers you think to yourself how you could lose so much sleep over such pointless matters. So many hours wasted blankly staring into space with thoughts racing through your head a million miles per hour. Problems to be solved, issues to be dealt with, financial struggles to overcome. What now?

Your body tingles almost numbingly from the cramp positions you've manipulated yourself into, hoping that with the little amount of confidence you have, comfort would soon find its way and send you to sleep. But you've found that after 6 hours of miserably failing, all attempts are fruitless.

You realise that there's nothing more to be done so you arise from your useless bed and hover over to your window where a hint of a sunrise starts to show, painting the sky with its vibrant yellows and oranges into baby blues that you can't help but to let the inner photographer capture. Sometimes you appreciate the view that your shitty-15th-floor apartment gives you, blessed with a window sill to sit upon to admire nature's show.

And then it starts. Quite conveniently actually. Through these paper thin walls of your cheaply rented flat, the slow melancholy music starts to play and is soon accompanied by the gentle and benevolent voice of its creator. God. What a voice.

"Every minute and every hour I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more."

Perched upon the window sill, you sit motionless in the darkness of your room, letting the total silence from your half of the wall isolate the music coming from next door. If this couldn't send a baby to sleep, then you don't know what can. You stifle a laugh hearing his attempts trying to keep a low volume so as to not wake his neighbours, but it's okay, because you're already awake. You've been awake for hours.

Having been acquainted only a couple of months ago, there's not much to Dan, but enough to know the basics: name, age, occupation and bits and bobs of interests. You could confidently classify yourself as a friend to him seeing that none of the older gits that live here didn't give a toss about who he was. So, to make him feel welcome in a particularly unwelcoming block of flats, you introduced yourself as a friendly next door neighbour. And you still uphold that reputation to this day. When you first met him it only took you a couple of seconds to admit to yourself that yeah, he's quite the looker. But that much-relied-upon spark that was created upon meeting didn't have enough power to push you over the borderline of friendship, and therein lies the problem as to why you're nothing more than 'friends'.

Again looking at the clock you begin to ponder why he's awake at such an ungodly hour. Nothing comes to head, but if it's led him to console himself by playing his comforting music, then maybe it's best you check up on him. Yeah. He might need company. Company can't harm anyone, right?

Kneeling on your bed with ear pressed flat against the coldness of the crumbling wall, you gently tap a rhythmic beat hoping to be noticed and almost imminently the music comes to you a halt. You can just make out a coherent "ow" as a cluster of noise rumbles from the room beside you as he races towards the wall. Clumsy. Soon you hear an identical beat being communicated back to you and it sends a smile to your lips.

"Hello." His slightly raspy, but prominent voice politely greets.

"Hi." You gently respond, his voice causing excitatory effects on your heart.

"It's way past your bedtime is it not?" You hear his jokingly authoritative tone of his soothing voice vibrate through the walls.

"Can't sleep. What about you?" You loudly whisper back. You press your hand against your wall, wishing that the wall wasn't really there. You hear a deflated sigh and a brief moment of silence as if he is letting the defeat of having no sleep settle in.