Shades of Despair

ALONE

Of late the figures in the shadows had become more real yet more fantastic. Demonic monsters with fangs now approached his windows where once the specters had merely floated across the surface of the brick wall opposite his bedroom: dogs, children, sometimes only clouds.

Joe B had no clue to the source of the shadows, not even the light which cast them  there in the mid-hours of the night.  It was as though he lived in a cave, a prisoner to some fiendish jailer and his own conscience.   He was fearful each night when he threw back the comforter and climbed into bed, but each morning he told himself that it was nothing more than his nerves which caused these phenomena and that the visions would cease to appear when he got his life in order.  For the past year he had lived here in this apartment.  The shadows had begun a few months after he moved in but had progressed to their current form only recently.  He supposed that, perhaps, the drinking might have something to do with it.  He knew he had been doing a bit too much of that, but it was only because his life had become such a tangle.  Once he got things straightened out he'd get control of himself.

His daughter had mentioned it to him, asked him if he wouldn't cut out the drinking.  But what did she know about it?  Hell, he'd been doing it for thirty years and it had never held him back.  Still, he had to admit he'd gone a bit overboard this past year.  He'd do something about it.  In fact, he hadn't had a drink now in three days -- except, of course, just before he went to bed.   Then he'd take a couple of stiff ones.  His sleeping pills.

That hadn't changed things any.  He was as unhappy as before and the ogres of the night persisted.  He looked over at the lighted clock on his radio.  It was one-thirty.  The shadows were still there on the wall across from his windows, but now they were moving.  Where was that God-damned light coming from anyway?  It couldn't be the moon.   Next door, beside the building with the haunted wall, was an apartment complex with a  large garden behind; it abutted his building in a T.  Could it be that there were lights in that yard?  He couldn't see.  The end of his room on that side was closed off, no windows, only a cruel wall.

He switched on the table lamp on the night stand beside his bed, rolled from beneath the comforter and stood.  He went first into the bathroom off his sleeping area and relieved his bladder then scuffed his toes into slippers from the closet between the bath and bedroom and shuffled out into the room where he spent most of his time these days.

It was a rather large room divided into three areas, a dining wing, a kitchen separated by a ribs-high counter from the third, an expansive parlor.  In the shadowed darkness he went to the kitchen, switched on an overhead light and, from the cupboard beneath the counter he took his half-gallon jug of vodka.  He held it up to the light and saw that it was half full.  A good omen, he thought, for he had bought it on Friday and there was this much left on Sunday. 

He took a glass from the overhead cupboard, dropped in some ice from the refrigerator and filled it halfway with the clear substance from the bottle.  He first sipped, then gulped, then drained the glass.  As he poured another four fingers into the glass he already felt the settling effects of the potion.

With the second drink and the bottle in hand he moved to the parlor area, switched on the TV and settled into the sofa.   Perhaps, he thought, there is a late, late movie or even a bit of porn.   No, it was Sunday night -- correction, Monday morning -- the porn was only on Friday and Saturday.  With the wonderful little steering devise he held in his hand he rode the highway of TV channels.  Most carried nothing more than station signals but a few had programs: some very old situation comedies or even more ancient movies.  Finally, he switched to a channel with a motion picture in color.   In his weary, hazy mind he recognized James Dean so he pegged it as "Giant."  The grandiose music in the background affirmed his suspicion.