Ephemeris

18 : Fall into the Sky

Morning came suddenly. Daniel awoke with a hunger he had never felt. He oriented himself upright, defying the lack of gravity. The dusty-looking glass hanging on the wall mirrored his deadbeat body. Gliding lazily, he headed for it. He got low-spirited at the boy looking back at him. The reflection looked hungry and weary, with dark circles under its eyes. He flexed his aching neck and noticed more drastic changes in his body. His face was ruggedly bony, his clavicles were more prominent, and his arms and torso lacked sufficient flesh. His malnourished appearance did not give him a shock.

If truth be told, obscured from plain sight, he was hysterically laughing and mocking his mirrored self silently. His ingrained aversion to the boy's horrid sight was unoriginal, for this starvation was his penitence for his committed sins and shortcomings. In the last few hours, he inflicted pain on the old man who had lost a dearly loved one. He felt liable for it because he had done a stupid thing. He hauled the root of the old man's sadness onto the surface. Moreover, he recalled that he didn't thank the kind nurse, Abraham's grandson, who gave a little time to see them through.

After pondering the past, he felt sick because he paid the nurse with petty displays of selfishness and impassiveness. He thought he was horrid and ungrateful, and his ugly reflection was his true self. "Why can't the past just die?" he whispered as a profound affliction came, hanging over his tousled curls.

Daniel pressed a palm against the mirror's dusty surface and gave himself a gentle push, drifting away from it. For a moment, his irises were mesmerized by the shiny glass's reflective glare, wondering if the dull shine might grant him some scrap of optimism. But nothing happened. The harsh but brilliant gleam did nothing to wake his sleepy head. It's futile, and I'll tire myself searching for things in this world that really seize a bit of fascination, he thought.

He rubbed his hands together, yearning for familiar, tender voices to call his name. He wanted to hear the voices of his parents, but both were so distant. One was out there, unreachable, navigating outer space, and the other was at this very house, imprisoned inside her bedroom. Seeing them together seemed a mere pointless creation of the mind. However, dreaming about them helped him do all his dreams he could, such as hoping for a day that they would exchange their sorry for each other, teaching him to live for them, and giving him the strength to try to continue to exist.

Daniel clasped his eyelids and then arrested his breathing. He grasped for the tiny glow, his far-off dream, in the emptiness. He opened his eyes and fain mused that maybe hope was challenging him, getting him stronger and ready for that day yet to come. He wished that that notion would hang on and never escape his psyche. But it was unattainable having an empty stomach. He could hear the unmelodious wails of his innards, complaining of not feeding them with solid food. The box of sustenance was there outside his room, but the few contents of it were saved for some time to consume. He was craving a small breakfast to please his taste buds, but abstaining and not listening to his biological needs would certainly support him, Abraham, and his mother to have longer days to live.

The boy plucked the leather jacket suspended mid-air and pulled it on, covering his skinny musculature. He looked outside to check if Abraham was up, but the old man's windowpane was shut. He groaned. Disappointed, he slid the window shut and fixed the curtains, all deciding to give him some time to recover.

The rumbling of his stomach and its adjuncts jiggled his concave abdomen. He snaked his arms around his tummy, trying to have power over the involuntary bodily processes. Gnawing pain burned inside like molten lava crawling and charring whatever came in its path. The gel-like coat of mucus lining his stomach wall was failing. It slowly yielded to the corrosive effect of gastric juice. Sooner or later, his stomach walls might erode to the point that it burrows a hole in it. He gathered all the liquid produced by his mouth and gulped it down the esophagus. It didn't take effect to relieve the biting sore; in fact, it intensified it. He curled like a ball, floating a meter off the floor, and remained quiet, waiting the minute his stomach stopped throbbing.