It starts with a knock. It always does.
I don’t know why you always knock. The entrance was wide open with the ‘open’ sign hung beside it and you had to step aside to even place your fist on the glass panel. Common courtesy to alert a storekeeper of a basement lot of this dusty, dying mall? In case you thought of stealing something but some good conscience wanted me to keep vigil on you?
Regardless, it doesn’t matter really, not anymore. No worn out memories or quiet urges spurned you to come back to this dingy place today but you did regardless. You will always come here and you will always knock on the panel, because that is the kind of person you are.
It’s gloomy. Dying fluorescent lighting in this place would illuminate enough. The thing this place will witness does not need to be seen.
You don’t recognize me. If there is one thing I should be grateful about, it is that you will never recognize me until it’s too late. There are no mirrors here. Not that I would particularly care for one, just another thing for me to duck from. For a so-called ‘antique shop’, this place is too barren, nailed-on shelves barely holding anything. The suffocating humidity is the only thing worth noting here. This place is past its time. Barely resisting entropy to even exist now, as if the history etched in the walls would be worth a damn to continue surviving.
Meekly, you will walk around the store. Pure intrigue for the je na sais quoi of it all drives you rather than anything remarkable found on those weathered second hands. You wear a smile while perusing. Soft, barely even there as it slips through your subconscious, content to discard everything else for the moment.
I hate that smile.
I hate you. You should hate me too. You have so many more reasons to hate me, what I stand for, what I will do to you. It is a venom you will learn to indulge in. Sooner or later, it will settle in you, snaking through your vessel and harboring in your flesh until you are nothing but that.
Long after I am gone, you will hate me too.
That is how it will always be.
You try to make up a question, stirring up a question for some chit chat. No intention of buying, no intention of staying, no intention of leaving. You know you hate it but it is the only thing you would ever know to do.
There is so much, too much to say to you. Regret, anger, hope, melancholy. It doesn’t matter which one of those I could say, things will end up the same regardless.
If it’s worth anything, I have mulled over this. No matter what I will say or do, a fight will always start. You can fault my loose lips, finally saying the things I wanted to say when I snap. Maybe none of the things that I will choose can impact anything, us hammering knuckles into each other is the only logical end. You will be mad, I know I will be. My steps will falter and I will end up tumbling on the floor with our hands gripping on each other’s necks. I will regret that this is the closest we will ever get to communicating. Maybe it is the only way we know how. Your conviction will always win against mine, my desperation a hint less stronger than yours. Thus, my breaths will grow shallower and shallower as this frail thing called life leaves. It scares me, what I will be thinking at the end of it all. I couldn’t see it on my face the last time.
It will be over. You will retch and heave and cry but it will be over. Some twisted depth of your heart felt better after the fact. I don’t blame you, I felt it too.
Before you realize it, my body will vanish. No trace, it would be a mercy for it to be transported into a void or possibly an afterlife. It won’t really matter.
You will take a shuddered breath.
You will realize that it is your turn to keep vigil of this place. As if it was meant to be.
You will be alone.
As you always are.
The opening for an exit is a maw. Whatever beyond it, it is too much. You wouldn’t want to go back. So you will sit, and wait, and be warped by questions pounding into your head. The rusting and rotting stool behind this counter that will hold your weight will creak and groan as you jostle with your thoughts. Just comfortable enough to not stand and leave, but not comfortable enough to abandon the thought of leaving. If you even deserve it. Even as your mind races for an out, you and I know this is the place you deserve to be.
Time doesn’t pass here. It never mattered for us. Somehow the shifting weight of the sticky damp embrace enveloping you is the only proof to you that something is changing somewhere . It loops forever more. Even if you were given an eternity, what good would ever come out? This place is the chrysalis, the stasis you have always longed for. It’s all you ever wanted, right?
So you will sit. You will sit and wait for a knock in the front.
Because that is the type of person you and I are.