The Day After Forever [WA 2013]

[TDAF]-06

Mel.

The day you refused to work was the best day of my life.

Someone had upset you, and you, being the stubborn woman you are, did not budge from the couch in my apartment. So I called in sick and we spent the whole afternoon curled up on the furniture, wrapped around each other until I didn't know whose body part was who's.

The smile you wore until the moment you left was so full of love, full of happiness, I knew I would've done anything you asked in a second.

_

The moment I stepped through the door all noise ceased, and I found my gaze met by half a dozen eyes, all bearing the same emotion.
Pity.
Hastily I walked to my office, head low. Their stares followed me to the back room, burning into my skull - but when I turned round all heads snapped back to their computers. I sighed, a noise heavy with grief and despondence, and pushed the door open.
My office looked the same as it did when I left; the desk the same, the walls the same, the blinds the same. Grey, grey, grey. Everything is grey nowadays.
The only thing that had changed were the numerous cardboard boxes scattered around the room, all in various stages of 'packed away'.
I don't remember my feet moving. I don't remember moving at all. But suddenly I found myself in front of the nearest box that was left on the table. Its flaps were open; someone was still in the process of packing, possibly having stepped outside for a quick smoke.
I reached in to the void of the box and drew out a gilded photo frame.
The woman in the picture was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen; her eyes were as bright as the sky on the summer day, and her cheeks were flushed with health. I set the frame down slowly, hands trembling.
When William entered the room three minutes later, the floor was covered in shards of glass and tears.
I looked down at my fingers: blood was pooling out of them.
The tears hurt more.
-
Hours later I lay in darkness, mind reeling.
William's face when he saw the smashed glass.
Her expression, full of delight and summer and better days, littered the office floor in tiny fractions.
The look in his eyes as he spoke.
Her eyes.
Lit up, they bring dreadful thoughts.
Him. Her.
Me.
Extended holiday due to stress trauma, causing work applicant unable to function properly.
I gazed at the ceiling, my thoughts chasing one another in the shroud of black.

-
(Only two years late)