Affliction | ✓

i | him | 2

summer, 2016

he's exhausted. boring dinner parties were not his thing and being surrounded by stuffy bourgeois people was mentally taxing.

he's twirling a champagne glass in his hand, chugging it quickly and getting a new one so the evening could go by faster, his collar seems to be suffocating him and he's used to all the disappointed stares at him by now.

"i'm a data analyst," he says when he's asked what he does for a living.

"seems like a boring job, crunching numbers." one guy says as he regards him with a condescending smirk.

"it's not like signing a bunch of papers and looking like a stupid puppet is any more interesting, ronald." he replies, snarky which wipes out the dirty smirk off the other man's face.

some replies are just plain clueless: "what exactly does a data analyst do?"

"well, we analyse the numbers given to us and help make better business decisions. we collect data, whether it's for logistics or market survey, that's pretty much all we do in the office. it gets crazy boring but whatever, i'm good at it and the pay's not too bad."

the stares he gets back are blank and bored. he isn't surprised.

he's heard the whispers, "can you believe clifford's son works a desk job?" their hushed voices feel loud.

he sighs internally, he's tired of everything. life had become dull grey, monotonous.

figuring that neither his father or his step-mother would miss him, he ventures out of the house, throwing his jacket on his back.

the air feels cool and he inhales, feeling better already. nobody gave a shit where he was and he was fine with it.

I hope you hurt the way you hurt me, the way you've probably hurt other people. unbidden, her words come to bite him but it had been a couple of years of him repeating everything she uttered to him like a mantra, the effect had been nullified, he was no longer strongly affected.

what a lie, he thinks. he's still deeply rooted with what she told him, memories of her are still fresh and the intense hatred he has for himself has only grown larger.

his entire existence is a moot point, he's living only for the sake of living, he doesn't really have anyone or anything that's particularly keeping him here.

i'm barely afloat, he thinks. he wants to die and it's frightening how he's not even a little terrified of death.

there's six months until it's the new year and he wants to die. what exactly is he waiting for? there's nothing left on this earth for him really. you know what you must do, he thinks. he has to find her, apologise, make peace with her but how can he even begin to find her on this vast planet? would she even want to listen to his bullshit apology after everything he did to her? it's impossible but he gives himself six months, six months to try and find her, six months before he kills himself.

*******

two months later, he's tired. everywhere he tries looking, she's gone, like a ghost. he follows her trail till another country but then it goes cold. he decides to drop it, to just continuously live life until it's new years, climb his rooftop and jump the fuck down so he's dead.

*******

autumn, 2016

it's saturday or was it friday? all the days are blurring together but it's nearly the weekend and he's in desperate need for groceries, despite not wanting to drag himself out of his apartment. he really doesn't want to survive but it's september and that means there's still 3.5 months before he kills himself. it's crazy how he thinks about the inevitable with such a level of calmness.