Main Character Vibes

Sufficient onto the day was the evil thereof

 It was 11 pm when Elias finally reached his apartment building after a few starry hours of unbridled release. He climbed the staircase with a persistent smile on his face and with an uncharacteristic spring in his step; taking the invigorated strides of a rejuvenated man. The door was already unlocked. Elias stood there for a few moments straightening up his clothes and running his hand through his disheveled hair before he went in.

Tilly was in the living room lounging in her sweats in front of the television set watching her go-to comfort show. She was relaxing with her hair tied up and sitting with no makeup on after a dreary long Sunday at the office. Seemingly starved, Tilly was ravenously poking at a box of Chinese takeout while she loudly slurped the noodles that she managed to successfully clamp between her sticks.

The mere sight of her immediately expunged the smile off Elias's face. A smile made dim by a certain self-aware encounter with a straying thought. It dampened his mood. How docile...how silent... how lifeless...how dead her unprepossessing disposition seemed to be in stark contrast to the liveliness and sheer womanhood of the Madame at the brothel. All that seemed to be missing from this deathly scene was a candlelight vigil.

He was quickly becoming aware of the fact that his carnal escapade with Wayne was merely a respite, not an antidote.

"Hi, babe," Tilly said through a mouthful of food while hunching over the back of the couch to indicate the expectation of a kiss from Elias.

"Hi," he grumbled as he swiftly landed her a peck before making his way to the kitchen.

"I got you some food. I didn't know if you ate or not. You didn't pick up your phone..." she said with shrouded passive-aggression

"Yeah sorry, I had it on silent. I went with Wayne to his art gallery and there was a posh event going on..."

The duplicitous calmness with which Elias was able to carry himself through the lies surprised even him yet for some vague reason he found it to be thrilling.

Not only had he sacrificed his liberty and high-minded ambitions for an ungrateful girl with daddy issues; but more debasingly, he felt that he was culling the intimacy and vitality of his twenties. Both of which he felt he had earned. It was all for nothing. And it was far too early for that. He was still young and in his supposedly rowdy years. As far as Elias was concerned their relationship was over. A foregone conclusion if only in theory; its execution was left for him to pan out. But that was the mere justification of a guilt-ridden conscience desperately clinging to any morsel of an excuse to assuage itself from being in the wrong.

He couldn't tell her. He didn't want to hurt her. Even if he was truly over the relationship, he still cared about her. Companionship and memories had solidified over three years.

As he stood there in the kitchen eyeing Tilly like a scornful hawk, he was unsettled by the growing sense of umbrage towards her and the connotations of himself which she represented; a pulseless, impotent, blueprint of a man stuck in an abyss; A mere incarnation of insecurities, reservations, and impotence...above all impotence.

He desperately needed a change. But he lacked the definitive details or the roadmap for what that change should look like. But sometimes, he reasoned, it can be sufficient to want to run away from something without having something to run towards. All he knew was that this was no longer something he was able to tolerate.

"I got you Combo Nine, babe. It's in the bottom fridge shelf," Tilly yelled out as she slurped her noodles

Her loud chewing and lip-smacking had always annoyed him, but now he was inexplicably feeling that it was salt purposefully sprinkled on a freshly inflicted wound.