As nightfall came upon the quaint little neighborhood without a name, it brought an unexpected turn of the weather also. The heavy rainfall coming down, which had already been enough of an announcement, had quickly turned into lumps of hail, smacking rooftops, windshields, and creating what sounded like a massive thunderstorm. As the same time, it was accompanied by flashes of lightning, which illuminated the wind-thrown trees and fences for hours on end.

   Nevertheless, the minutes and the hours of the day seem to drag on and on for an old man, as if the sleet and wind had never been a source of commotion to him. This man ripe in his 90's sat quietly on his chair in his ancient manor, rocking steadily back and forth. He frowned and observed what foul weather he could see outside his window, if he could see outside of it at all.

   His entire house was cluttered with items he had acquired over the years when he was still a young, gung-ho type of man, looking for adventure; there was anything from old radio boxes to half-finished taxidermy pieces to his long dead cat, Scruffy.  When he had grown into old age, they had been carefully stacked in boxes, crowding the stained yellow walls and Victorian-aged furniture lying around him.  They fought for space in the airtight rooms of the manor, even threatening to spill over out the doors and windows sometimes. But as long as he was the only one to ever occupy the house for the rest of his life, he wasn't going to bother sweeping anything out.

  He was not exactly a man of the outdoors; at least, not anymore. Once upon a time he could have been considered handsome also, but age eventually got the better of him. Now, if you were to walk past him on the street, he would stand out- but in the sense of his bald, polished head, which sloped downwards to meet a face which seemed to have more than a million wrinkles and sagged skin. The strong waft of smoke leaving a trail of scent wherever he stepped foot would also have rendered him more than haggard.

   He pressed his shriveled lips to his cigarette, his frail and arthritis-riddled hand shaking as he lights the butt. The man inhales deeply, and puffs out, releasing a cloud of smoke into his already-musty living room. He snorts at the bottle of pills on the table in front of him, unopened and slightly covered with dust.  He hears cackling static coming from the antenna TV, but pays it no attention. The days where television played entertaining shows were long gone. But his memories still weren't.

   Taking no notice of the pounding sleet against his house, his eyes sparkled with youth as he leaned back in his chair and recalled the moments he spent running around this very house, having known every space and crevice of it. Back then, nothing was better than a glass of fresh, homemade lemonade, and nothing was worse than getting a panning when you were late for class. His eyes trailed over to box number 8.

   The man was playing his life over in his head like a montage, pausing every few memories to relish the especially good parts. He led his eyes around the room, going from box number 16 to 30 to 45, and so on. For him, there was nothing better than living in the past. The future was always bleak for him, an old, aged man. What other possibility could death hold in his palms?

   As he looked around his room, his eyes kept on wandering over to box number 16. It was no different than the other piles of boxes, old and crumbling with age, as he also was. But the forgotten contents in the box were what kept him awake day and night, a special reminder for him to keep on living. It was the box that held the contents of his Belle Maria.

  At the thought of his lover, the childish light in the old man's eyes faded away, and he abruptly stopped rocking. There was only static in the background as he narrowed his eyes and hunched over, his mind suddenly plagued with remembered obsession.

  They were lovers, united years ago in a faraway land. He cherished every little thing about her; the sound of her laughter, her luminescent skin, and the way she walked as if she floated on air. There was no such thing as time when he was with her, back when they still passed the days together with little thought about anything else but each other. But for forgetting about time, he had to pay a dear price.

   As the years flew by, he never noticed her destructive self. He, being a prideful man, refused to believe that one day, she might have to go like all people do. So instead of preparing himself for that day, he made himself forget that there ever was an end to them. The man had kept a firm watch over her every single moment of the day, and whatever real love he ever had for her quickly turned into a frightening obsession.  He never saw the sheer terror in her eyes whenever they met afterwards, how she would always jerk away when he tried to pull her close, to feel her soft skin on his dry, chapped ones.

   He didn't know how he had ended up alone and lover-less like now, but at least he was grateful that whatever happened had been quick and painless. Perhaps it was better for him not to know. It would have saved him many stabs of guilt and even more misery.


("You have to stay," He had cried on her last days.  There were so many things he wanted to tell her, and so much that she still didn't know. She didn't know that he had preferred apples to oranges, that his favorite instrument was the kazoo. That he could not write properly with both hands, that he spent endless nights tossing and turning, envisioning his own death. He had done everything to prolong her stay. But he had forgotten the one thing which he could never have prevented, which had swept down and took her without permission.

  But instead, she just smiled a faint smile, which she had thought was sufficient enough for his obsessive mind, and left.)


  Soon, he was jerked out of his thoughts. In the distance, the chime of Church bells rang out into the neighborhood, announcing that midnight had struck. With only a faint sense of the time since the last decade, the man painstakingly arose from his chair, taking gargantuan efforts to balance himself out of his stiff composure. Brushing box after box out of the way, he slowly made his way up the creaky, spiral stairs, deciding it was time for a rest. But in reality, he had no need of rest. He could in fact have gone on days sitting on that chair, living only on the barest essentials. Sleep was only worth the time because of the escape it provided from his old, rusty train of thought, which had veered its way into insanity more than once.

  All this, to live for a woman, he would sometimes think. But only for a fraction of a second. Afterwards, he would always be re-submerged by his love for her, which had outlived the decades and always stuck with him, refusing to leave his side. Did his lover ever return the favor, before she parted from this world? Part of him didn't want to know; "I still love you, and that's more than enough," he would muse. Yet another part of him questioned, "But do you still love me?"

  Outside, the weather had calmed. All was silent again, including his thoughts. The man slipped bare into his bed, believing that everything was alright, even for the moment. Nothing would chase him after he had escaped into the realm of dreams.

  But he was wrong; that was how He had shown up.