Where do I go when I’m not with you?

He rented out a little room on the other side of town, a small room with one window in the north. The floors were wooden, scraped and scarred from years of use and zero maintenance. The room came furnished, but the landlord removed the bed and dresser upon his request. Remaining was a chair, table and bookcase that were quickly put to use in his first hours there. Unloading a box of old books, a few pads of paper and his pipe he had completely moved into his shelter.

Being the man that he was he knew that he had a struggle ahead of him, to protect his shelter at all costs, especially to protect it from himself. The time had long passed since he felt accustomed to being alone. Now, with this new space, he was determined to keep it to himself. A space not for friends, nor lovers, but a place of solitude.

He found himself there when he could be. When other aspects of life were not anticipating him. He slid out of their world and into his own. His time in the room was filled with nothingness, with every antithesis of what was to be. He wrote nothings, he drew nothings, and thought nothings. His papers were never to be seen and his poems were never to be read. They were not especially good, and certainly lacked most aspects that would make them readable to others, but they were solitary musings and served to give him greater purpose.

But the term solitary musings does not fit the nature of these writings entirely, for there were, due to the nature of language, traces of past writings, and music, and sights. In this manner the room of nothingness was in fact filled with ghosts, shadows, and shades. It was not long until there exploded the realization that, against every precaution, he had failed to protect his solitude.

In the frenzied time surrounding this realization he had begun to loose sleep and to show the early signs of madness. Even in their world the voices walked with him and the images were scribbled out before his eyes. He walked to the tune of ghostly music and the food he ate was tainted with the lack of the modern world. His associates in their world were beginning to notice something was not right with him.

His visits to the room were now struggles, barren attempts to think a new thought, to write the solitary line of verse, to put a tune in his mind that did not base itself upon the past. He then stopped…

©EschatonLife