Clutching The Darkness

Chapter 10: Confusion

The wind howled as it clawed its way throughout the town, slashing at trash in alleys and bashing into loosened cluster-mailboxes. Wrappers from greasy burgers and paper bags swooshed by.

Red bird feathers danced hopelessly in the gust; free of any sense of direction, confused in the surrounding maelstrom. The squeaks of a rat chirped in anticipation as it chased after the direction of the feathers.

Why is HE here? Out of all the times that he could be wandering around, he happens to be near the place of my... murders. What did he even go do again? After the- After...after what?

Ah yeah, after I left the diner earlier today, didn't he go with Zay somewhere? Is that why he's here now? Did Zay send him? I wouldn't be surprised. I did bail on her, so maybe she took that time to curse me out while they left together to who-knows-where. Probably about how I'm a coward. How I disallowed her a conversation...again.

"You look like shit," he said with his usual candor.

"Gee thanks. Where have you been?"

"I was... experimenting with a new drug."

Ugh, of course he is. What type was he even into now? Sticking himself with syringes doesn't seem to be his style anymore. Is that what he's been doing though? He seemed hesitant, and I wondered if he was struggling to be cautious and overt about the information he wanted to reveal, or perhaps sheepish about his drug habits.

"You gotta quit that man."

He stood in silence as if he had his own mental fog of confusing oblivion coveting his brain. And I reciprocated his demeanor. I leaned across the wall of a corner store and he did the same, but suddenly realizing how the town could just turn back into its distorted form, I stepped away awkwardly.

He gave me a side glance as if to say 'what is wrong with you? Act like a normal person', and I merely just silently stabbed at a rusted nail that laid around. He shifted several times, his arms shaky like he had very mild Parkinson's disease.

The air began to thin, and the more I gave him a shifty side glance, the more it felt like both of us were stuck in a bubble- a prison full of our energies and ever so decreasing oxygen levels. Who would be the first to crack?

How do I handle a situation like this? Should I save face and continue to act stoically? Or-

"We haven't spoken in a while."

"Yeah."

More silence. I suddenly found an interest in two little black ants that crawled around the cracked concrete. I wondered if those cracks were like massive fissures or ravines for animals of that size, and if they were, was that the reason these two ants were splitting more and more away from each other? I guess I should say something...

"You doing alri-"

"You've been avoiding everyone for the last month."

Back to the ants I guess. The way the two of them walked side by side, yet a whole canyon apart. Same color, same species, and perhaps even same social circle. To them, that crack could lead into a world of unknown, possibly killing them or even leaving them lost. They'd both go back to their queen or hill or whatever it is that ants do, but in the end, their distance will forever be vast.

If ants can produce hierarchical structures and complex labor societies, it's a mystery to me that they haven't facilitated their own economic systems. Like why haven't they traded with other colonies of their same species? Their GDP would skyrocket!

If anything I've learned from Isaac about social scenarios, is that pretending that nothing is wrong and laughing or painfully joking it away can sometimes act as a temporary bandage. Just enough to carry you through that scenario, although I suspected that when everything is done, you'd kick yourself and hurt yourself internally due to the stupidity of the way you handle things. Although, in this scenario, I had to gamble on that.