The sun journeyed on, leaving her to herself. Condensate sweated on the once cold carton of orange juice. It was the natural cycle of life and yet she doubted the sun would truly shine again. She prayed for death but death would not come. What's the point of anything now? To move and to not move are the same thing. But she was tiring of the fear and hiding and the tugging weight in her hand. The zombie groceries reached their final destination. So what now?
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"No! No I didn't!"
Weighted in despair, she sat shackled to the couch in her apartment that seemed a stranger's. The darkness of the evening made the shadow hanging over her tangible, turning air into water on which she choked. Prickly questions freely pitchforked her - and without satisfactory answers the poking forks would feast for an eternity.
But the answers brought a hell of their own.
She twisted her wedding ring like in the old days when in times of stress, a curious vanity as she had smirked away her cares. Back then the bottom line to success was a simple one: am I married or not? If so, then it's all good. Now, with the marriage gone with the wind, the twisting of the worn ring only mocked her.
"I couldn't have! I wasn't doing that at all!"
Food, in yesteryears a treasured treat, lay tasteless in her mouth. Once savored books gathered dust in the waiting. The passions that had driven her careened off the road, wrecking the tenets of her guideposts. The note on her Faustian bargain for a secure life came due - leaving her neither with security or life. She felt the stinging angst of becoming cliche.
She need only have made a tiny step. A step she could do at any time, she told herself. "Why wouldn't I want to give myself credit? Heck, that's easy!" But she knew the truth. Giving herself proper credit was the pea under the mattress - one that would turn into a boulder. She'd married on the premise of being a nobody - a lie of hidden shame. Viciously she had protected the lie, killing herself, addicted to the humiliation. So tenacious was she, the lie became reality: she was all used up, a nobody at last!
"Don't let it be so! It's all gone now..."
A normal person would have left her marriage years ago, giving up the charade. The lust in her heart had won the day - but a deeper truth had yet to be told. The thing that had fed her, kept faint hopes alive and the echo of her dreams still ringing was him. The Janitor Man. The one who believed in her and saw her as the sun and the moon and the stars and the fulfillment of his wildest dreams come true. She used his love to make her marriage feel good. That account had also been drained dry.
The wall clock ticked in ominous silence. Waves of reality smashed into her, causing her to physically rock back and forth. The easy way led to the hardest fate possible. Left at ground zero of her own nuclear bomb. Her body ached for the needle of lies once more but that juice had run dry too. She doubled in two to the point of placing her hands on the coffee table, resting her heavy head on top. Gone. Everything's gone.
"God is dead."
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In the evening when the day is done
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