It’s rainy when he decides to do it.
Sunny when it’s over.
He thinks about that a lot.
The next morning, the train is busy, standing room only.
A woman looks at him; they make eye contact. She pities him, or is that fear? His own panic is mild, yet he grips the pole tighter. It will be his eyes; they give it all away. He shuts them as long as he can.
His ticket doesn’t go through the barrier, it will be the police, this is it. But no one comes, he holds up commuters who say nothing, because they’re polite enough not to, but tut because they’re human.
The croissant he gets is stale, the coffee bland. A karmic justice. He uses the wrong card to pay and spends the next twenty minutes worrying about his overdraft fee. He can’t help it.
At work no one speaks to him. That’s fine. His emails don’t even load, as if in agreement. After ten minutes he takes the first of many toilet breaks, holding the broken cubicle door shut with one arm as he scrolls aimlessly.
Lunchtime inches toward him and yet the break speeds past. Still nothing. His foot jammers, he finds it hard to concentrate. The cells of the spread sheet seem to wink at him. They know.
By midafternoon he can’t take it anymore. He feigns sickness, he leaves in a hurry. Rather than the train, he walks. There’s no purpose to it, no destination, the pavement feels claggy beneath his feet. It’s pulling him down, he might want it to, he thinks.
Someone stops him in the street. It snaps him back. He was here yesterday, a man says. He shakes his head, mutters something. The building looms over him, another person comes toward him.
A third and a fourth soon follow. They poke and they prod. You were here; it’s a chant. It’s you. Why did you do that? Why did you come back?
It’s not sunny now. The sky spins, faster until he falls.
He wakes in his bed.
Ready to do it all over again.
By Louis Urbanowski
Stories by Louis Urbanowski 