Reaching my own apartment later that night ...

Huh?

Reaching my own apartment later that night, after several stops at bars displaying varying standards of morals and hygiene, I hoped that finally I could just fall inside and push all thoughts of E’s tale from my head, just go inside, down some wine, pull the shutters, get into bed, sleep … sleep would help.

 

I ran past Madame Jasmine as she pretended to shake dust from her doormat, knowing that she was keeping an eye on who was coming or going at this hour (my entrance through the main door of the building had been thunderous.) I muttered incoherently, deliberately, and ran up the stairs. My hands were shaking like a true alcoholic as I tried to get the key in the door and finally, after hissing and spitting at the current incompatibility of key and keyhole, I was inside.

 

But it was instantly clear that there was something wrong here as well.

 

I slammed the door and leaned against it, trying to get my breath back. My hair was all stuck to my sweating forehead and I had to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “What’s different?” I shouted out loud. I licked my lips as my eyes flew across every surface, into every space. I couldn’t tell.

 

I stood on the heal of each shoe and pulled my feet from them, lifted my shirt up and over my head as I crossed the room, past the kitchen area and into the bedroom. I still couldn’t see anything different, but it was in the air. Change. With one hand I unbuttoned my jeans while the other pulled the shutters closed, and once I was finally naked I slipped underneath my crimson bedcovers.

 

Then it came to me. She was gone. Really gone … taken from me, not physically but in other ways that I would never even begin to adjust to, or understand. Not even her scent lingered on the bed sheets. I buried my face into the pillow and inhaled as deeply and franticly as someone rescued from a burning building would bury their face into an oxygen mask, but all I could smell was the factory cotton and my own stale sweat.