Through Glass(25)

I was stuck in the shadows.

I looked away from my hallucination, my eyes scanning the darkness almost waiting for the rest of my brothers to appear.

“I guess this is it, Frances,” I whispered as I turned my head toward her web that occupied the now bare shelf. “I told you, you should have taken the chandelier.”

I wanted to imagine her looking at me, her laughing and saying something wise.

I should have named her Charlotte.

I grinned at the memory of my mother reading that story to me after my brother, Travis, was born and I was feeling exceptionally alone. She would do all the voices and she was terrible at it, which was probably better. I laughed more when she read that book rather than cried. Charlotte’s Web was a comedy to me. I was in Junior High before I realized that the spider actually died.

My vision faded in and out as I watched her web; as my face burned and my body ached.

“I’m sorry, Cohen,” I said, wishing I could at least make it up the stairs to see him one last time. I would just have to make do with ghost mom.

I had barely gotten his name out before I saw it. My eyes focused beyond Frances’s web to the brown packet she had enclosed in her web.

Food.

My body jumped in a mad dash to get at it, arms flailing and legs moving, only to collapse right back to the ground as my legs forgot how to support me. I scuttled across the floor as I brought myself back up, ready to try again. This time I hoisted myself up, my arms clinging to the counter as I pulled myself up in a desperate attempt to get to the food.

I didn’t even watch where I was reaching. I simply plunged my hand through the web, ripping it apart as my fingers curled around the brown packet of gruel.

My body collapsed to the ground the second I gripped it in my fingers. I sunk against the piles of trash on the floor, bringing the packet to my lips and ripping it open with my teeth. I didn’t look for a bowl. I just pressed my lips to the small opening and squeezed, sighing as the disgusting material hit my tongue.

It tasted like vomit and smelled like sewage. It was probably a few months old, however I didn’t care. It was food. I sucked and squeezed until every last drop was gone and then I ripped the packet open to lick the slimy contents off the silver lined paper.

I licked and, with each lick, I sighed while letting the grit hit my tongue to slide down my throat. I licked until the paper was clean and the ache in my stomach wasn’t as bad. I felt the residual twinge rumble through me as I looked at the packet; the brown paper of other packets littered the floor below it.

An overlooked plethora of nourishment had been around me this entire time, hidden in the linings of the discarded food packets that I had merely thrown on the floor over the years. I grabbed them without caring how old they were and ripped them open; my fingers shaking as I reveled in the dried bits of gruel.

I licked every packet I could find, letting as much food into my body as I could possibly allow. I don’t know why I didn’t think about this before, but it didn’t matter. It was in my stomach now while my belly was distending further and further the more I put into it.

Even though it wasn’t that much, I was already starting to hurt from overeating.

I didn’t care about saving more for later. The thought didn’t even cross my mind before I was surrounded by empty packets; each one licked clean and still no prospect of food for tomorrow.

Although, I wouldn’t think about that now. It wasn’t worth it to worry about tomorrow; today I had found food and that’s what mattered.

Right now I would focus on the uncomfortable pain from having eaten so much, the way my stomach stood out comically from my rib cage. It felt good to have food inside of me. I could already feel my body responding to it; not with energy, more just in comfort. I could sit and smile like a happy, fat man all day; except I wasn’t a happy fat man, I was an emaciated twenty-year-old. Either way, I was still comfortable and that’s really all that mattered.

I smiled and licked my lips, wishing I was tasting something besides the moldy gruel, yet savoring the last little bit that hit my stomach anyway.

I looked around me, partially wanting to search for more empty packets to lick, however I knew that, at the very least, I needed to save something for tomorrow. As much as I didn’t want to. Who knew, maybe they would come soon. Maybe then it wouldn’t matter.

I slowly pushed myself to standing, surprised at how quickly my body had regained strength. Granted, I wasn’t going to be running a mile or lifting weights anytime soon, but supporting my own weight was a start. At least now my body felt normal, well as normal as I could feel when eating moldy food in the dark.

I was torn between being tired and being bored. Part of me wanted to head up those stairs and take a long nap, while the other part wanted to read one of the same twenty books again for the eightieth time.

The book would have to win out, as much as my body felt like it needed to sleep, I didn’t think it was time yet. I don’t know what determined it as being time to sleep, but my body always seemed to know. As tired as I felt right now, I was pretty sure it just wasn’t time.

I had made it up about half the staircase when a small dinging hit my ears, the sound small and foreign like the bell of a small child’s bike, but growing to a high pitched shriek before it once again faded to nothing.

My shoulders relaxed at the noise, my whole body swirling with excitement. A shower. I had been waiting for so long to take a shower. At first the bell for water had rung every week, but slowly it’s been farther and farther apart, which was becoming a problem.