The Long Night

The hideously brown colored moth flew directly towards and lamp. The feeble light inside the room flickered every time the moth flapped its pellucid wings. The thin, flimsy white curtain danced up and down just the way the cool breeze guided it, showing off the moon at the exact center of the starry heaven. The orb of night had decided to wear the most wonderful shade of light pink that night.

The weather outside the room was way too pleasing to belong to summer. Too pleasing to belong to any of the seasons. It was one of those nights when one gets an indistinct vista of what the paradise above would feel like.

The ambience inside the room was entirely different. It was dirty. It had not been cleaned for days. Or perhaps weeks. The paint on the walls was light dandelion yellow and more than ten years old. Several psychedelic portraits were stuck carelessly on one of those walls with cello tapes. Mostly, there were portraits of a young man, attentively painted, with large eyes, uneven teeth, and with smokes and branches and birds emerging from different organs of the face.

The room did not contain much furniture, except a bed, a table, a chair and a small cupboard. Most of the room was filled with books, paints, brushes, canvases and almost everything an art fanatic would own.

And the room contained a whimpering girl. Laying on the floor, her eyes fixed to the ceiling. She had been crying for long but the tears dried up on their way down to her ears. She kept staring at the ceiling, being unaware of her surroundings. She had her senses swimming in a pool of remorse.

She noticed the moth fly again and sit on one of her books. She knew it might even start chewing its way through the papers but she made no attempts to shoo it away. The crying and the thinking had made her too weak to do anything.

A notification tone dinged from her phone. She imagined rushing towards it to check her messages. She could have repeated the same performance that crossed her mind but she remained where she laid. She imagined the conversation she could have had if she checked her phone.

She imagined someone texting her -“Hey! Let’s go to that café you always keep talking about. Free tomorrow?”

She would have replied -“Oh my God! Yes! Let’s Go there tomorrow.”

-“Look after yourself until I get to see you tomorrow.”

She did not think of any specific person texting her. She only imagined getting excited to go to her favorite café. And that imagination led her to another vision of being present in that café with her friend, uncertain about who that friend was. They talked, they laughed, played little games and giggled a little more over something petty.

Her urge to cry her eyes out restored when that vision showed her parting from her friend and returning back to her apartment. She thought of the small, untidy room she lived in, the even smaller kitchen and the shoddy bathroom.

Quickly escaping from her fantasy, she sat up. The shortest hand of her clock was set a little beneath two. She made no observation of the other two hands. To her knowledge it was two something at night. The last time she checked the clock, it was 1:45 AM. The last time felt like five hours ago. Five more actual hours were to pass before she could start her day. Without ending the one that seemed to be persisting for too long. The night seemed unbearably ceaseless.

Halfway to the kitchen, she questioned herself the purpose of her own ongoing action. Why was she going to the kitchen? She was not feeling hungry. She was not craving anything. Or did she want something a few moments ago which she failed to recall now? She opened the fridge anyway. The empty fridge.

A soft cry broke free from her mouth. Only a few sobs and at the next moment she was howling. She fell on her knees and cried as loud as she could but as soon as she remembered her neighbors, she covered her mouth. She did not want to wake them up. She thought her neighbors hated her enough already. Soon, it became hard to breathe with her hands on her mouth and her nose filled. She tried to calm herself down. She tried to take air in and out slowly through her mouth. The impulse to cry was entirely gone. She wiped her remaining tears off her cheeks and looked around. She could not recollect why she started crying in front of the fridge. How stupid the whole thing seemed to her.

She walked inside the bathroom to wash her face. After the first splash of water, the memory of her being on a beach flashed inside her mind. That was seven years ago. Could even be eight years ago. It was the time when her life was not this big of a mess. When she did not bother to impress everyone around her. When she loved herself. The second splash drained the memory of that day away from her mind, for the time being. Her eyes shifted toward the tile cleaner which she had left on the floor a few days ago.

“What if I drink this?” she thought to herself. She thought about it’s possible taste and viscosity. She envisioned the foam that might come out from her mouth. She thought how her whole body might shiver and shake. And how her hands would try to get herself something to pull her out from her punishment. But it might have been too late by then. She could have been helplessly laying on the floor, regretting what she did and impatiently waiting for her life to end. For all misery to end. All at once.

No! That was enough! She had already had five or six suicidal thoughts since the time she entered her apartment. That was around 4 O’clock in the evening. Looking away immediately, she walked out and returned to the kitchen. There were a few loaves of bread on the cabinet. And butter would taste fine along with it. She pulled a knife and started spreading the butter.

“How long will it take for me to die if I slit my veins with this?” She thought again, looking at the knife. And she had another train of thoughts about the consequences that might start from her slitting her veins and end by a slow, torturous death.

She knew this was not normal, but she was not much bothered as this is not something new to her. She had been in this emotional state since last year.

After eating only half a slice of bread, she laid herself on her bed. A weird voice came from the corridor of the apartment. She started thinking about her neighbors again. How much they disliked her. Or she thought they disliked her. These days she cannot name a single person who she thinks does not dislike her. It was very uncertain to her why they disliked her or why she thought they disliked her. All she could think of was that she stirred nobody. She influenced nobody. People around her were not much concerned about her presence. It was unlikely for them to detest her. But she could not stop thinking that she was being despised by everyone around her. She looked at herself as a liability everywhere. She could not explain her disillusionment. Not even to herself.

When the night seemed to have ended, birds announced the advent of dawn. The moth laid dead on the floor. She got up, took a shower. Kept thinking about the rather incessant night bringing the most awful thoughts. But no matter how tired she felt, she would have to get down to work. Staying alone at home was worse, lethal even. Solitude made her feel vulnerable.

She prepared herself for the day and at last, she stepped out of her apartment. Out in the sunshine. The light was too bright and the weather too hot. It was nothing like the night before. She wore her shades and set forth to go through another tedious and uneventful day.