Another car journey which was to prove all too long: my hands trembled with the intense excitement of a new player in my game; one with the understanding of what I was, with no reservation in their acceptance of what I was. It was the same feeling which had filled me from the initial realisation, and had begun to consume me to the point of a yearning for this stranger; this wonderful stranger.

Arrival, and the fitting of the new door began. Misplaced screws widened drilled holes for hinges; hinges which were thus to be fitted in a manner not parallel to the doorframe; a door which was further to be fitted to the hinges in a manner not straight – a single mistake catalysed by a sense of complete and utter confusion; of excitement; of longing; of sheer uncontrollable desire for the possibility of understanding leading to each further step’s accuracy being limited: it was a microcosm of the nature of life itself. How workmanship meant nothing to me, though: I needed evidence of my instinct, proof of my fellow traveller on a path infrequently followed. Lock fitted; door closed; barrel turned: tight and a little too much force was required to, but it would do. It would have to do.

Just as I went to return to my own flat, Tanya called me in that impenetrable husk of hers:

“I apologise for my rudeness earlier: you’ve been so helpful. Come in for a drink.”

A flash of the cleanest of white hopes appeared to me: as she prepared my drink, I would have at least the smallest of opportunities to search for the evidence I so desperately craved. Naturally, my acceptance of her offer was inevitable, and I walked into her dank, damp, unkempt ‘abode’, if such a lavish term could be applied seriously to such a place. The most depressing part of all of this is that she’d actually cleaned up: clothes now had homes once again, and her personal order was restored; but the flat as a whole was still an example of the most candid of fetid homesteads. It was, in a way, something perfectly reflective of her: all of these flats were sold as pristine showhomes, furnished and tidy; the very ideal of yuppie perfection. Tanya had had her days of beauty and her youth of consumerist fantasy; but she became bitter and disaffected with the entire matter. The smells emanating from her home had gradually increased in the extent of their appalling vigour as this process had continued: watching her intrigued me, as her physical decay really did occur in perfect accordance with her mental. Once full cheeks had diminished into the sunken cheekbones of a starving whore; just as any sense of my respect for her privacy was to degenerate into flagrant mooching.

“Wha… what’s happened?”

Of course, my lack of aptitude in the perception of the painfully obvious had not failed me here: it was startlingly apparent that her flat had been broken into; her drawers rummaged through; and her belongings strewn everywhere, latching onto whatever would catch them. Jumpers on the hung paintings, coatstand and ridiculously oversized television; one pair of jeans on the bedpost and several others strewn across the floor with a perceptible lack of care; but the underwear was far more orderly in its relocation. That isn’t to say that it was neatly laid out in folded piles, but there was far more to it than the pseudo-random launching of clothing in all directions. It was just women’s clothes; women’s clothes following what could almost be diffusion patterns, with not concentration being the factor in where everything moved to, but rather the proximity of pieces of clothing to genitalia: it was the vandalism of the sexually frustrated.

This seemed… familiar. Memories came back to me. This reminded me of myself: a focus on the clothes, with a certain care paid to the more personal of garments. He was undressing her with clothes off to begin with: the clothes which come off first had been flung furthest. Could it be that I had someone close to my heart to close to my home?

“What do you think happened? Someone’s broken into my home and destroyed any sense of order which I had in my fetid homestead.”

Taking into account her complete and utter lack of understanding of (or will to use) colloquialisms, English being an unfortunate second language in her eyes, she sounded quite impassioned and somewhat annoyed at my question.

“Is anything missing?”

“Well, no; but that’s not the point.”

“Don’t fret. I’ll fix your door and you can get to getting things back in order.”

She hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t noticed the order to her chaos: I may still have the chance of finding a new playmate, if not a protegé voyeur if the sloppiness of this operation was anything proportional to his inexperience in his, our art.

Woodworking never was a strength of mine, so the concept of any repair of the door was out of the question; but the drive to Focus for a new door and lock was more than enough of an excuse to contemplate what had happened and what it meant for me: if I was right, I was no longer alone. I no longer had to hide my more socially reprehensible act. I no longer had to act alone: I could gain an enabler in my activities; someone to facilitiate and inspire me. The premature yet inevitable splintering of rotting lignin and cellulose had afforded me such a possibility in opportunity.

This was not down to chance: this was down to some wonderful, divine cause.

6 o’clock comes, and my head is back in the office: 15 minutes of work lost to the wondrous siren song of the careless fancy desired such that it approached trance. The return to the reality of my still being and hour and a half from my dimly lit refuge hits me with a force which could only be surmised as ‘crushing’. I leave; I had to leave: the journey is all that now matters. Home is all that matters, and it’s close to a crippling hunger at this moment. Never mind: right turns and traffic lights will distract me from longing for the comforts of home.

Time: that inalienable but oh-so human of constructs. Arbitrary measures of quantities which are not real; quantities which just measure that passage of events in the grand scheme of things: a second is nothing real; a second is an idea. Time just makes things seem further away: there are six traffic lights on the way home, each of which could hold me up for a maximum of thirty seconds: that’s three minutes, bringing my total journey time up to ninety-three minutes, assuming the best of conditions otherwise. One hundred and eighty seconds, essentially wasted. Pointless. To be quickly forgotten. Why can’t people move faster? Why can’t people have the common sense to look before crossing? Why can’t people take a little risk?

If I didn’t measure time, things would just take as long as they took. Things would be simple. Things would be more relaxed: the distinction between haste and speed would be an empty one.

To my delight, everything goes well; and I’m outside home in what is probably a personal best time: it’s seven twenty-five in the evening. Tanya, The Russian Neighbour, is waiting in our shared hallway: my mind races as to work out what it is that she wants, in spite of my all-consuming desire to be inside my apartment, viewing the end result of my work. She pulls me to one side in that typical way in which she always does: the sidewards head-tilt causing her fringe to fall from her eyes, an action performed in unison with a purr always hinting of a faux-desperation. She is a manipulator if nothing else; but her calibre with regard to this is something that is truly incapable of being criticised.

“Hey.”

It wasn’t just the purr which sounded desperate anymore: she looked frail, almost grey in spite of basking in the throw of this dreadful tungsten lighting: even the warm colour cast of the light was insufficient to put even the slightest of colour on the ever sagging skin under her cheekbones; the most gaunt of cheekbones. It was impressive to see this strong woman reduced to a wreck: stress truly is a destroyer of man and woman alike.

It reminded me of nothing but that experiment my physics teachers did with cellophane and a projector to amaze the more simple-minded, more blackbird-like students amongst my peers: they’d take this sheet of cellophane and rip it in front of the light to show the effects of this increased stress upon the material on its refractive properties. There would always be a point where the plastic ceased to be clear upon the screen and the yellow, red and green coronae would appear in their resplendent glory instantly; without no prior warning as to what was about to occur. ‘Ooh’s and ‘ahh’s accompanied this demonstration, of course, to be met with my almost trademark cynical sneer.

It wasn’t so much the opening and closing of the shutters which was bothering me: it was the separation of the colours of light. Perfect single-coloured bars were formed with each time that the shutters were closed: the red, green and yellow filtered strobes ceased to combine to create an elegantly off-white light on the wall of the office; each colour bled its diffracted light to me through usage-weathered polypropylene. Everything was unbalanced; unsymmetrical; unnatural.

The shutters opened once again, and I was bathing in my preferred pleasant beige light; capable of doing the glamorous office dogwork for which someone of my abilities and qualifications is so wonderfully suited. You know; filing, photocopying, even, on good days, the unparalleled glory of post sorting: those tasks designed for the graduate with First Honours from a top-ten university. I suppose that this is what I get for taking an Arts degree, though: a lack of definition in the job market and an overwhelming predilection for the subjective.

Just as the light split into its constituent parts once again, my mind mirrored its change in state: my surroundings were no longer my mental habitat. My thoughts splintered into the realms of home: the opening of the kitschly rotting door bearing it’s gift of that unusual scent which could only be defined as that of my home; that combination of the natural smells of the innumerable amount of fruit and the chemical smells emitted so strongly from lazily unclosed bottles of ammonium thiosulphate happening in such a small studio apartment, whilst overbearing, was mine and mine alone. Esters meeting ammonia – the perfect example of the concept of neutrality: the sweet meeting the foul. This was my haven; my sanctuary.

The laziest of partition walling split that tiny room into two: a single piece of chipboard with a five foot, six inch ‘doorway’ cut into it. Thick black drapes hung from the top of this hole-in-the-wall: the perfect protector of my little voyeuristic antics from the derelictor of them that light would be. This was my true workplace.

Find the contents for the story here.