Feminine Revenge [Ongoing]

Chapter Fourteen: Packing an Empty Case

I stare at my case in front of me, yawning open and empty like an ominous cave. I have either had nothing to pack or have remained in my home for the other part of my life. Travel never crossed my mind. I love the security of a constant house and a full cupboard. The same day in day out.

This case is not even mine. It belonged to Emery with all his love for adventure and travel. Not his favourite, not by a long shot. He had used this one for work – or training, rather – until it was battered and worn. Deeming it unusable, he bought himself a new one with his earnings and left this is the cupboard 'for a rainy day', claiming you could never know when you might need something trusty like this again. I scoffed, but he packed it away awfully well and so I let it be.

I just need to pack the essentials. What had Emery put in his while he ran around the room in circles? Always told me – indirectly of course – that you needed the essentials. I never really listened, knowing only that he needed me there to tell everything to. Verbally running through an in-built mental checklist. I wrack my brain for any one of those many talks. The most recent would be the best. That time he had prepared for travel that would have lasted ... well about the length of time that mine should last.

Clothes that I would plan to wear on the daily. Comfortable, washable, and function for labour. I think back to a time before endless suits and layers of starchy cloth. Rifling through my chest-of-drawers, I notice, with quite some dismay, that those clothes I wear these days are the only thing I have anymore. Stacks of button-downs and ironed slacks. Ties galore too. Some of the least functional clothes the everyday person can own. I suck in a deep, slow breath and curse my profession choice for perhaps the first time ever. First time since the last time I did that, which must've been to lament the lack of time I could spend with Emery – with him having to wake up later and work late, and my early morning shifts to get the news out and rolling as soon as possible.

I finger the too-rough material laying in the second drawer of my chest-of-drawers and stare into the wide expanse of off-white; stubbornly refusing to lift my head and acknowledge the other one – nearly identical to my own – that stood on the opposite side of the room. His side, which I never touched. Not even after he passed and the room, by all rhyme and reason, now belonged entirely to me. Still, I have not touched it since and I will not touch it now.

Yes, he owned all the clothes that I would ever need to take along on this trip. Yes, they would be far more comfortable than the material I still pinched between my two fingers. Yes, the material would be durable enough to hold up against whatever life threw at me and made for the weather I had no idea about but would surely encounter. Yes, it would be smart of me to take the clothes of a man who would never again wear them. Yes, Emery himself would have shoved these at me had he been here; insisting that I take them even though they were his because I could actually use them right now.

Would I take them? No.

Yes.

I didn't want to touch his stuff. I wanted it to forever remain in the state that his chaotic mind had left them in. I wanted that organized disorganization that only ever applied to the way he organized his clothes. The rest of his life made sense, but his clothes were organized by occasion, then by piece. Before meeting him, it had never occurred to me that someone could even consider organizing their clothes like that. It was logical to organize by undergarments, shirts, pants, and so on. Not by formal wear, work clothes, messy clothes, and whatever the hell else he thought up. I tried to get him to explain it to me once, but he had quickly lost me just a few minutes in.

It was effective, I'll give him that. He came to ever function and occasion imaginable dressed perfectly and just right for the event. Never once overdressed or underdressed. He also always managed to find clothes for work no matter how much was already in the wash. Not that he owned that many clothes. The same as me, but he kept pulling them out of nowhere. Then with the discrepancies in our style and career choice, I ruled out the robbing of my clothes and resigned myself to the fact that I was never really going to be able to figure out this unsolvable mystery.