evan ou vinnie

He had done all that. He had risen, fallen, then risen again, more severe, harsher and he kept rising and biting harder than the piercing snowstorms he viewed unbothered from his office on the top floor of the Northland bank. Only, he had not done that out of his own, sole efforts. He did not rise a second time all by himself. A stain, he could consider it, on his record of achievements but over time he decided it mattered not. Not when he could harvest the fruit of his newly gained alliance and gain even more, rise even higher, higher than the gods both his partner and himself held so much disdain for.

So why was it so goddamn difficult to get used to the absence of someone who was never supposed to be there in the first place? Someone who should’ve died years, centuries ago but instead remained next to him, continuing to aid him in his affairs? Someone who gifted him immortality and then simply went away?

The bills and paperwork simply aren’t enough to account as a distraction. The sound of the scritching pen doesn’t scratch his ears enough, the secretaries aren’t talking nearly swiftly enough, the snowstorm isn’t slamming on his windows hard enough, the cigarettes aren’t scorching his throat enough and aren't making his lungs decay as fast as he’d like them to. The liquor doesn’t sway him like it used to, it doesn’t fill his chest with a satisfaction akin to that which he felt when he shared it. The music never sounds in tune anymore and the opera has not released a performance worth attending.

This was it. Their own performance had already reached its crescendo long before he even took notice of it. And the lively, blooming melody had started concluding in a dizzying series of notes, each piercing his ears a little more intensely than the previous one. Or maybe that was just the buzz in his ears as he massaged his left temple with his gloved index and middle finger, slouched on his desk, another half burned cigarette gone unsmoked in his right.

When you hold everything of value in your hand it’s that easy, in the end, it seems, to lose track of how fast its due date approaches. A rookie mistake, he thinks and that he would slap himself across the face were he standing in front of his own self. A rookie mistake over which he’d show relentless contempt had anyone else made it. A rookie mistake he never thought himself capable of making anymore. A rookie mistake he hadn’t made since his late teens, early twenties.

Before him.

There was a ‘before him’, there was. A distant memory, those years had become over the course of the centuries passed. Half a millennium. The weight of all those years had been weighing on his shoulders for the past few days for reasons he knew not. As if that wasn’t enough, his even more distant past –the past without certainty, without resources, without him– had returned to once again stab him in the back. Right on the side of his neck. On his solar plexus, so that he could breathe no more.

He started coughing. Was it from the cigarettes? From the fumes in which his office had enveloped or from the burning fireplace that hadn’t been cleaned since who knows when.

Head buzzing, throat sore.

One more cigarette. The lighter trembled in his hands.

Head in his hands. The smoke invaded his bejeweled spectacles and seared his already damaged eyes.

A sip of fire water. A throat even more burnt.

Another cigarette, but this time his pipe refused to cooperate.

The scent from the ink was too prominent in every breath he took. He still can’t breathe.

Is this the end? He lies back on his chair, expectant of the light that would supposedly take him away as well.

.

.

.

But the light never came. Instead, his breathing stabilized, his throat –though clumped– began to heal and his eyes had self-moisturized. To rinse the smoke off, of course. Another escape. His half-lidded eyes remained pinned on the zinc white ceiling. He sat upright once more and pushed his spectacles over his eyes trying to wipe them. He pinched the bridge of his nose as hard as he could because the damn headache would not leave his head. The hell. Alone.

In a fit of rage, he grabbed the resin construct and hurled it across the room on the door. It dropped on the floor, having already been shattered from the impact. All this... For… ‘appreciating’. For responding like this due to the lack of… appreciation? He was left there, staring at it with a most irate look on his face. The wrinkles on his deformed of rage visage almost made it as though his true age was showing. His fists were clenched on the wooden surface, scolding himself for reacting in this manner. They were trembling from the tension because of one sole thought that had just crossed his mind.