The Last Time

The last time I saw Rachel seemed enshrouded in the mist I now realised had been encapsulating me at the time. The images were hazy, incomplete; the emotional connection felt hollowed out, empty of any true weight. I remember I had been in the grippe of a malaise that had essentially threatened my spiritual health since I had left school all those many years prior. I was lying naked and fearful upon my wrinkled and worn bed linen, writhing and fighting with my consciousness for an answer to it all, this life that we all must lead on our own. The doorbell had chimed once, fitful and furtive, echoing down my hallway and greeting me with a baleful jabbing of knowledge that it must be answered. I groaned and found myself gripping my pillow against my chest, hugging so tightly as though were I to let go I would set adrift from the security of my deep maroon-upholstered and lacquered IKEA-inspired surroundings. I prayed that the caller would go, prayed to all and sundry that would listen… ‘please god, please let this person go now and leave me’, ‘please god, let the person at my door realise they are wanted elsewhere’, ‘let them realise that they know not what they do, but that they must go and leave me be, thus it is done by the power of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost’; make them presume no one was home, perhaps call back at another time; but they did not. The doorbell chimed again, longer this time – an incessant calling of attention, someone is here, you must answer the door, society bids this convention be followed. A deep moan and then I’m languidly rolling to the edge of my bed and then dropping, flummoxed to the floor, the brittle cold of the bare polished floorboards clanging against my bones with a dull, thudding pain that took time to subside. Pulling my bathrobe around my nakedness, I lurch up towards the door to greet a ghost from my memory.