A continuation of my novel 40. This falls after the post 40: In Continuation. (Edited second and third paragraphs so they aren't so cluncky--wanted the phone message to be more abrupt. Also rewrote the ending to be more visual about the people Mark sees on the street.)
I am from Oregon. To be precise, 443 N. Albany Road in Grisham, Oregon, a city I had never walked in, let alone knew existed. I eyed the phone number listed and I grew anxious because I was already getting off the bed and walking over to the phone. Throwing the driver's license down next to the phone, I picked up the phone for the second time this evening and began punching numbers. If Janet or one of the kids answers the phone, I thought, I’ll treat it as a simple "how are things going" type call, making a point to say "I just wanted to check in to say... I hope all is well." But what if no one answers? What if..... I didn’t even want to tread in that direction.
After four rings, there was a sudden click. I froze in anticipation, nearly hearing Janet’s voice. But the voice was not Janet. What I heard was an aberration of my own voice, sad and empty, as if it were coming from a soulless man who had fallen in upon himself, into an abyss where the threads of light are broken into tiny fibers and suddenly swallowed. Or, perhaps, I was nothing more than my own shadow that found refuge in the long shadows of eventide and night.
"This is Mark Byatt," the shadow said. "I can’t come to the phone. Leave a message if you want. I can’t promise I’ll call back."
I didn’t leave a message. I hung up the phone and stared out onto the Vegas cityscape. Sidewalks in every direction were alive with the movement of people barely recognizable. In the moonless night, on the side streets behind the casinos, humans lost the features on their faces; and their arms and legs slowly became swallowed into the blackness the further they were from the torso. But the people walking into the burn of a billion casino lights lining every entrance suddenly grew grotesque, as if the lights were revealing the monster inside each one--eye sockets stretched below sharpened cheek bones, eyebrows devoured eyes, noses grew beyond the face or drooped below lips that grew fat and red on women or long and thin on men as if they had been sewn shut.
Despite the horror of what I saw, these people were together, mingling and touching. They were alive with a purpose, direction.
It was surreal. The window kept out all noise from the city. And these walls kept out any sound from the rooms surrounding me. I had never felt so solitary.
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