Inside Paradise - III

That night when William lay in bed, he thought of what the next few days would bring. His life, ever since coming into the city, had been less. Time seemed to pass him by, leaving him in some meaningless routine. It eroded his body but kept his mind in a semi-conscious pseudo-present, where the past and future met and mingled within the space of a nano-second, but never allowed him to be within it, forcing him into the fringes of either memories or hopes of the future.

William worked at the library, reading words out loud to crowds of the unfortunate, children or misfits - but everyone existing here could be considered an unfortunate, a man suspended in his lost childhood, or a misfit, nobody has anything to hold onto anymore; not in a time or place like this.

His job was a government gig and so he received that much more food and water and heating. He seemed to float through the days and months and years he spent here. Faces seemed blurred and strange, no matter how many times he had seen them, no matter how familiar they should've been.

His body which he knew was failing him now, seemed less and less his own as the stretch of time continued. Sometimes much like earlier today, he would try to find the key to his drawer, fail, and forget he wanted whatever was inside it. Sometimes he really did forget what was inside. Sometimes he knew exactly what he was trying to do, but most of the time it didn't matter. And it never did. If he stopped existing, it wouldn't mean a thing to anyone. Yet, sometimes memories of when he meant something to someone would appear, a time he could leave the city when he wanted, unquestioned. A time he could pull some strings and get himself a fifth-grade med card. He remembered a time when the name Charlie forced up some kind of emotion other than confusion and a very distant moroseness. But time has stopped running like it used to. A series of three paragraphs destroyed his life and it's lethargic and unbroken procession froze up entirely. And as the first of many dreams took hold of William's consciousness he knew he must return to an old life he forced himself to forget, a life outside of this depressive cocoon and within the cold dark beyond.