Diminuendo

Click... click... click...

It was becoming incessant. He had been warned of its inevitable deterioration, but still hated to admit it. The afternoon was etherised, remiss of colour, owing, in no small part, to the forest of stacks towering from square structures.

Click... click... click...

Adam winced, dragging a leg behind him as subtlety as possible, attempting to maintain the same elegance with his expression. The doors parted silently, like the sea, allowing him leave of the clinic. Stepping forth, the familiar scent failed to astound him as it once had, instead providing solace in its consistency. He continued on until reaching a flight of stairs as blackened and oily as the surroundings. Out came a long breath followed by a raspy inhale. Adam turned to his right and struggled down the much longer and more windy ramp, knuckles' white against the cold steel rail.

On the sidewalk now, trudging below the sordid brands of this and that, people swarmed and writhed with a sickening vacancy, kicking about a sea of petrochemical products. Adam hugged the shop fronts in an attempt to avoid further misfortunes, yet in doing so found himself wading through the discarded objects of consumption long consumed. Glancing at the shop windows and making a conscious effort to ignore his own image, he searched through the mostly empty remnants of hopeful ventures.

Particularly poignant was the Bloch Dance Store, within which stood a frozen figure, clad with the decaying memory of a time long passed. The bodice was a faint shade of pink, bleached by the marching of time. The tutu was worse off, pieces of fabric falling about the floor like a dreary autumn. He had once counselled a dancer, a ballerina. Her passion for the art was admirable, inciting slight envy within Adam despite his humanitarian tendencies.

He leaned on the lobby door, convincing it to open despite the thoroughly oxidised hinges. A few people were loitering about the lobby twiddling their thumbs, a collective expression of absence plastered upon their pale faces. Adam shuffled across to the elevator, adding more dark footprints to the once white tiles. Below the broken lights of the lift stood a man he knew he recognised.
...
The floor above, apartment number 343. 'Yes, that was it' he thought. Approaching him sheepishly, Adam gave a small wave- more out of courtesy than fondness.
'Good evening Adam', came the unwelcome dialogue.
'Is it evening?' Adam asked bleakly.
'I think so'
'Why don't you know?'
'My watch broke', the man tapped his watch which was, as he said, static. Silence followed, interrupted occasionally by a cough or the sound of the door's protests.

The elevator was suspenseful, or so Adam thought, in that you never knew when it would arrive. He enjoyed guessing when it would get there and where it was now. Sometimes, and only if he was sure no one was about, Adam would put his ear to the wall and try to hear the archaic pulleys. Doing so would make him slightly nervous when it finally did come, as it would create an acute awareness of the lack of lubricant. The conversation resumed much to Adam's dismay.

'What'd you do?' the man asked flatly.
'Counselling.' Adam sighed.
'One of the more recent ones innit?'
'Not recent enough'

Adam didn't work anymore, lest for a day or two when they got it wrong. In the expanse of time since he had been deprived of a living, it had only happened twice. One time was when a young man had wrongly been prescribed some vitamins and an exercise routine. He was found a week into his schedule painted upon a footpath. Needless to say, it didn't go down well. Marched to the office was Adam, sleep still caking his eyes, a wet patch visible on his sleeve. They had asked why it happened- why the calculations were wrong. Adam wasn't suited for mathematics and had found it all quite perplexing. He had gone over the man's digital interviews; his name was Sean. Even through the monitor he appeared ghostly white, a weary expression set in stone on his drooping features. As it turned out, lying about one's own mental state was entirely illogical, incalculable and displaying a certain degree of stupidity. A new program was to be developed at once, instead opting to assume the worst of all cases presented. This was apparently the only certain way for an improvement in cases. Adam thought this amusing; that an effective and consistent strategy was ultimately no strategy at all. Perhaps his profession was indeed being sold short.