Purgatory

The trash can lid closes with a thud. The man walks the eight steps to the reclining chair and lets out a groan when he hits the chair a little too hard. Coughs three times into his fist from the impact.

That's when Shadow decides it's the perfect time to come and sit down at his feet.

 The man and the black cat make eye contact. It's broken when Shadow mews.

"But I just sat down." The man whines. He only gets another mewl in response. He knows that she's only doing this to ask for food. There's a huff and the grumpy man starts searching for the TV remote he knows for sure is under the couch cushion. He does this to ignore the cat of course.

There's six different pricks into his calf and he hisses in pain. There's a meow and he watches the tiny kitten attempt to crawl up into his lap. Unfortunately Shadow is too small and currently causing the man a lot of pain.

He reaches over to pick up the cat by the scruff of the neck. There's an awkward few seconds where Shadow doesn't want to retract her claws and holds on even tighter to his calf.

The man mentally curses himself for wearing shorts. The miniature wounds will heal in at most a week, doesn't mean they don't hurt right now.

"You're lucky Yami is sleeping in her room." The cat hisses angrily at him. 

"Why did me and Kelly let her get a cat?" When he gets no response he puts the cat down on the ground and takes a deep breath.

He lets it out as he slowly manages to stand up from the chair. He takes a moment to cough before he makes his way towards the kitchen.

He hears the soft padding of Shadow following behind as he walks around looking for the packages of cat food. 

The man watches the cat eat for a few seconds before he decides to get his third yogurt cup for the day. He knows he should have a better breakfast, but hey, his daughter is asleep and his wife is at work, no one has to know, he tells himself as he reaches out towards the refrigerator with his left hand. That's when he notices the blank white board hanging on the fridge.

His wife insisted that they get the whiteboard so she could leave notes for him before she went to work. As a way to talk to her family without having to be present. It mostly turns into a list of chores, still doesn't change the fact that she does it everyday, without fail.

The man stares dumbfoundead at the blank board in front of him. He continues to stare as if the inanimate object can answer all the questions of the universe. It's something soft and fuzzy rubbing against his leg that brings him out of his trance.

The man scrunches his nose and steps away from the animal. Shadow prances away happily to some dark corner of the house to nap. Now satisfied that a human has fulfilled her wishes of giving her sustenance.

The man glances back up at the miniature white board to make sure it's still blank. He sighs. "Weird." He says to no one in particular. 

The man walks to the other side of the house. Determined to wake up Yami so they can have breakfast. Kelly may not have given him any specific chores for today but he won't make the same mistake as last time. He'd rather deal with a sleep deprived grumpy thirteen year old rather than the wrath of his wife for not feeding their daughter.

Besides, he doubts Yami will have school today because of last night's blizzard. He only asks that she eat before she can go back to bed. Or lock herself in her room to do whatever pubescent girls do these days.

He raised his fist ready to knock when there's a small creak of a door. The bedroom door is already opened a sliver. The door lets out a louder whine when he opens it enough to fit his head in.

"Yami?" 

The lime green walls echo his voice right back to him. The man steps further into the room. Taking a quick look around the familiar atmosphere before his eyes land on the bed.

He stands there blinking at it for a good minute before his brain tells him that he should move. He does another quick look around the room before he's facing the bed again. 

The bed. With it's green-yellow bedsheets and white pillows. Perfectly made. How every and any paternal figure wants a bed after someone has just slept in it. Only, this time he wants to see a peaceful body sleeping rather than an empty bed. Because no kid makes their bed right after they get out of it.

"Yamilet?" The man calls out once more.

He strains his ears waiting for a response. He waits for so long that he prays to hear anything at all. A groan from the house settling. A toilet flush. The soft patters of Shadow walking around aimlessly in the hallway behind him. He gets no response.

The man exits the room with a lump in his throat. He closes the bedroom door slowly behind him.

The next few hours are spent checking and double checking every room in the house. When he finally collapses onto the couch due to a coughing fit he decides that everything is too much.

The house is too empty, too clean, too perfect. All the dishes are clean and in the cabinets. The countertops are so clean you can see your reflection. Not even a dirty stray sock is lying on the ground somewhere. The coffee table in the living room looks brand new even though the thing is over twice as old as Yami.

Most importantly, it's too quiet. There's usually noise. The sounds of the heater releasing warmth into all the main rooms, neighbors yelling at each other outside, a dog barking a few blocks down, a sprinkler watering grass-

The man sits up. Sprinklers. There should be no sprinklers. There was a blizzard last night. 

He quickly makes his way to the front door with newfound vigor. He's probably overreacting. Everything is fine. Yami must be outside with some friends playing in the snow.

Lately she's been moody and locking herself in her room but she's still a child at heart. And what child wouldn't take advantage of an opportunity like this. No school, at least two feet of snow right outside, your friends living only a few houses away because your family has never moved from this one house. 

The man practically skips to the door, ecstatic to see his daughter, or at least hear her laughter since it's more likely she'd be at her friend's house than in the front lawn.

Right when he twists the doorknob he's attacked into another coughing fit. This one's worse than the last one. This one actually feels like it would be better if his lungs got taken out rather than turning themselves inside out and causing him this much pain.

After it subsides he takes two deep breaths to make sure the coughing has stopped for now. He then remembers that his hand is still on the doorknob and the door is wide open. He grins, previous joy not destroyed due to some harmless coughing. Then he raised his head to look out the door. The smile sinks faster than the Titanic.

The man takes a hesitant step forward and blinks a few times to make sure what he's seeing is actually real. He makes it to the halfway mark between the porch and gate then spins in a circle to look around.

"I must be going crazy." He whispers to himself. 

Everything is perfect. Just how it was inside the house. No leaf out of place, birds chirping, nor stain on the stone sidewalk. Most noticeable thing though, no people. The neighborhood looks impeccable, yet as if it's been abandoned for decades. It's hard to tell specific details from anything besides that though. 

If you asked the man what time of year it was, or time of day. He wouldn't be able to tell you. It's a bright day out, but the sun is nowhere to be seen in the cloudless blue sky. It's not too hot or cold. There are no flowers blooming or withering to be able to tell if it's autumn or spring. The leftover snow from the blizzard is only some old memory. And there is no wind to help create the wondrous music that is nature. 

Eventually, the man goes back inside, defeated and confused. He continues with a normal day as best he can. It's harder to do when the concept of time is skewed.

Electronics don't work, he tried calling the only person he bothered to memorize the phone number of, Kelly, but every phone he tried refused to change from it's black screen. He even searched a department store for anything of use to him, whether it's a note from God himself or a magical phone charger that would get a phone working, only to find a battery powered analog clock that would not change from 3:32.

He went back home with more questions than answers. 

Sometimes it felt like he'd already spent an eternity here, other times it felt like he walked into Yami's room to wake her up only a few minutes prior. The man eventually gave up trying to do something productive.

The man found out that with enough time, everything would replace itself. All the food in the fridge, if you moved all the furniture an inch from its original spot it would be back next time you looked. The pin pricks left by Shadow are gone, making him feel like he imagined it, especially since he hasn't seen her since he fed her. 

He tried to drive his car into the neighbor's garage. To see what would happen. When his car was millimeters away from touching the garage door, he blinked and was back in his own driveway. The car is off and his keys are missing. It was as if this world refused to be disturbed.

The only thing that did seem to have a limit was cigarettes. He ran out of all the ones he had bought at some point and kept finding himself in bad condition having to repeatedly go to and from any store he knew they had cigarettes in stock. All because he decided to walk since the garage experiment made him believe that the car wouldn't get him anywhere. If he could even find his keys.

He still smoked though. It somehow brought him a sense of peace. Maybe because he knew they were supposed to have a limit and the fact that they could run out gave him hope that he wasn't crazy. Or perhaps when he first started at thirteen he knew it would be a hard habit to break and it seemed stupid to try not to smoke. Most likely it was because it gave him something to do rather than rethink all the questions he still had about this place. He's already tried looking for answers, this place doesn't want him to find any.

There is one question that he's been too scared to look for an answer though. 

"Can I die here?"