The Emptiness

London 5pm. Raining like never before he thought to himself. It hasn't rained like this in ages. A constant barrage of the wet stuff lashing down on to the busy commuting rush hour home. From eight floors up people were like toys and cars like big presents, all running around without a care of the rain. But from eight floors up that was all that mattered, the wet had started to move in and the heat of the city could be drowned allowing a chance for some in-eventful changes to happen. London never ceased to move, day or night, wet or dry people thrashed there way across the roads, drove within inches of each other and burst on and off trains and buses. But from eight floors up that was a completely different world.

At eight floors up silence. Nothing, just the rain on the window and the thunderstorm off in the distance. Everything else was quiet, no hum of a fridge, not kettle boiling, no chatter of neighbours. In this flat was nothing more than a coffee table, dining table and a settee that converted into a bed. On the eighth floor the only thing which happened was watching. Here laid the chance for a completely hollow man to hide from everything and just let the world pass. The hustle of the streets could be forgotten and with the sun covered up the only worrying thing was if the hot cup of tea in the flask mug would be spilt.

Across the road on floor ten a completely different process was happening, they were watching a person in the flat on the eighth floor, quite some distance off through the binoculars they sat and took notes, trying to listen for anything from the bug in the ceiling. Nothing.

Back on the eighth floor, he tapped and rolled his empty mug across the dining room table. Absolutely nothing, void of all emotion, void of all presence you might argue. Completely out with the fairies. He didn't care about that, but the tea had to keep coming. He drank it all, gradually letting it cool, playing with the flask, whilst watching the the storm and the people, before eventually letting the flask roll off the table and roll across the room. His 15 by 10ft square, his own empty space for his own empty prison whilst he turned gradually into a child. For a man of 35 going on 70, he seemed well kept to the outside world, but on the inside he longed for his own thoughts his own ideas and ideals to make in life, just the way he wanted them. Not for him, all of his ideas and thoughts were somebody else's. A waiting game to see who would move first, the people across the road on the tenth floor or him.

He sat and waited and let the random music tunes he could remember from the outside wash over him whilst thinking about what to do next. He sat and thought, thought some more and couldn't make any conclusions because he couldn't remember where he began, so he just sat and watched and kept going back to where he began, the flask of tea...and spotted some people in the tenth floor or so he thought. He couldn't remember seeing anyone there before, but the rain was good. So he went back to watching the commuters living busy lives, but he couldn't think of why he would want to be out there, all those sharks waiting to get him. He just wanted to hide from them all, burnt out of energy and what seemed to be a fast declining acknowledgement of the world around him. He felt no connection to anything, just the emptiness of everything. He knew he was meant to know and feel things, but he couldn't place his finger on it, so instead he allowed himself to work back into the regressive stages, before long he would be completely blank.