Contemporaneous: Chapter 45
45. Sunday morning, I’m in bed, drifting in and out of a fitful sleep, an attempt to escape reality, but knowing I’m now at a time in the morning I have to face the day. That truth ushers in an unnavigable dread – this knowing that there’s maybe sixteen waking hours where I have to live in this new reality, but it’s a reality that I don’t want any part of. The worst thing is I don’t see an end to this. Even my relationship with Lana, as inexorable as it might’ve seemed when I was in it, always felt finite. This doesn’t. All that remains is the infinity of…
Contemporaneous: Chapters 42 – 44
42. The phone rings. I almost don’t answer it, because I think it’ll be Lana, launching another salvo – part of me worries she’ll show up on my doorstep to continue this, although she’s only ever done that when she incontrovertibly knows she’s the one who’s fucked up, and wants to be conciliatory. You can place those visits along with Halley’s Comet. And my head’s raw. My ears are raw. I’m raw. Like I’m recoiling in expectation of some inexorable, scathing deconstruction of all my inadequacies. I wonder if this is how tortured prisoners, where the expectation now is just as horrifying as the experience itself. Fuck that. What I…