Everything disappeared behind the linen. Comfort arose as if out of nothing. Sympathetic cloth touches soothed her heartache which the drink could not even reach. She wrapped herself deeper in the linen as if she became part of the very fibers. The death of her sister still clung to her, the call still fresh in her memory. But now she contemplated the situation not through her old ways but tainted by the philosophical lens imposed onto her through the introduction brought about by the mysterious K figure.

What does it all mean? What does it all mean when nothing has inherent meaning? What does it all mean when absurdity is the only response she receives from the stars and the moon that illuminate her room?

The linen wrapped around her sympathetically touched her and comforted her aching heart. She yearned to get beyond these feelings that pressed her down. She wanted to understand and she knew that this only happen through K. But how could she confine in him these feelings mixed with the philosophical thoughts that he brought about? Would it not have been better if he did not enter her life like this? She felt the urge to see him, to confront him with these discomforts.

But it was the middle of the night and she was drunk.

The kitchen was dark. The bottle of wine is again empty. She could not trouble herself to throw it away. The glass of wine was at room temperature when she drank it even though the bottle was in the fridge. The night was ripe for wicked dreams, the screams of her sister, mixed with her own. But she could not face these demons alone tonight. Camus had no answers to the existential questions facing her, nor could she find any answers in the cold harsh light of the moon. K was also not a lover she could crawl onto to lose herself in his eyes.

The glass of wine was her only lover, solitude her only friend, and the linen was the only sympathy she needed. She walked back to her bed and fell into its open and receiving arms. For the first time in years, she yearned the touch of a lover, the comfort of love, the feeling of being seen and looked at. The wine did not make her drunk; it made her long. Her sister was gone, K was turning more mysterious with every meeting, and her family could not care about anything she did. Her father did not call her after the funeral. Her mother was still subordinate to her father and there was no hope that she will ever escape. Her mother died the day she married her father.

She downed the last sip of the wine. Her head did not spin like usual. She did not find comfort in her sober moments. The night was cold and she felt the demons in her dreams already scratching to come out.

Postscriptum, or The End Is In Sight

I think I need to pull the reins in on the story and begin to conclude it. It cannot go on forever. I also want to rewrite it in a longer version that might hit 50 000 words or a short novella length. At this stage, it is close to 10 000 words. Various sections lack depth, but the goal was to get the ideas on paper (i.e., screen). Now they are there, and I need to bring the tension in with some events. I foreshadowed this in the prelude. I will keep it like that as I think that prelude hit something akin to gold. I just need to work on the idea a bit more. For now, I hope you enjoyed this modulation and that you are safe!

All of the musings and writings in this post is my own. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300, and used in this post as well. I edited the photographs to be black and white.