Nolan stepped quickly into his apartment and tossed his keys on the
table next to the door with a dull clatter that seemed to die too
quickly in the still air. He walked down the short hallway without
bothering to take off his shoes and into the small kitchen. He grabbed a
shot glass and a bottle of cheap whiskey from the cabinets above the
counter and filled the glass with booze. Nolan carried the glass and
the bottle into the living room and slumped down onto the couch,
spilling whiskey on his hand and pants. He didn’t notice. Nolan
drained the glass, wincing as the alcohol burned its way down his
throat, and filled it again.
The car ride home had been
mercifully silent and uneventful. Upon entering the vehicle Nolan had
found a large, manila envelope with his name on it containing the two
personal items he'd left in his cab the night before: his cellphone and
his share of that night's earnings. His only vocal interaction with the
driver was to confirm that, yes, his cab had been returned to the
garage. Having settled that marginally important piece of business he
had settled back into the seat for the remainder of the trip.
Returning home Nolan found he was too mentally and emotionally restless
to sit alone in his empty apartment and dwell on all he'd learned. He
needed distraction and decided a walk through the city might be just the
thing to clear his head. Inlet City was not a bustling metropolis by
any measure but it was well populated for its size and, it being a
Friday night, the streets were full and humming with life; it seemed the
perfect mixture of white noise and ceaseless movement to act as the
background for a evening of introspection and contemplation.
Unfortunately for Nolan he couldn't have been more wrong. He'd walked
those street many times before and knew them all very well. It should
have been comforting, being in a familiar place, with all the familiar
sights and sounds, but as he walked a feeling of paranoid unease began
to creep over him. All the shadows now seemed to deep. Seemingly
innocent glances from people passing by now felt full of concealed
malice. Every fleeting movement in of the corner of one eye made him
want to whirl around to face it. With every unexpected sound he had to
fight an overwhelming urge to run away.
All the familiar
things he'd come to know had taken on menacing overtones. Everything
seemed changed. Mr. Sound's words came back to him then and it wasn't
hard to see the truth. Nothing had changed. He was the thing
that was different. He'd become permanently hyper-aware of the world
around him. His mind latched on to every movement, every sound, every
smell, desperate to analyze its meaning. No longer could anything be
taken for granted, reason and rationale no longer applied, and all
manner of terrible possibilities had been granted credence. The world
had become a chaos of potential dangers; a night river, cold and black,
whose waters he could no longer trust nor navigate. Nolan retread back
up the street. The quiet and solitude of his empty apartment, and its
supposed safety, suddenly seemed much more appealing.
Being
there, however, had proved to be less than comforting. Was it possible
that he had once thought his apartment was quiet? It had been a sound
that had sent him on his bizarre adventure and so it seemed his mind
remained attuned to every noise. The hum of the refrigerator running in
the kitchen, the quiet buzz of some loose connection in the bulb of the
lamp behind him, and through the closed window came the muffled drone
of the city going about its business.
I'll probably always be sensitive to sounds now, he thought, just waiting for the next one that means “danger”.
Nolan downed the second shot of whiskey and poured himself another. It
was all too much for him to deal with at that point, he was too tired
and too overwhelmed to approach the situation with anything resembling
coherence. Perhaps what he really needed was to relax and get some
rest, if he could. The alcohol was already working its magic on him and
hopefully a few minutes of quiet reading would finish the job. Nolan
got up from the couch and turned, meaning to get a book from the
bookshelf, but he stopped short of his destination. The bookshelf was
empty. It wasn't unusual for the shelves to be empty. In fact, when he
thought about it, they were always empty. He had purchased those
shelves when he'd first moved in with the intention of populating them
with books but somehow never had. Nolan stared at the empty shelves as
if seeing them for the first time, which, in a way, he was. He liked to
read, it was how he usually passed the time while he waited for his
next fare, so he tended to read a lot. So where were all his books? He
thought back to the last book he'd read, a collection of Harlan Ellison
short stories, and remembered that he'd given it to one of his
customers on the very day he had finished it. The one before that he
had left on the table of a coffee shop. The one before that was
abandoned on a park bench. On it went, as far back as he could recall,
every book was left behind or given away. He never collected them. It
wasn't a decisive act on his part, there was no altruism involved, and
until then he hadn't even realized he was doing it.
The hazy
outline of an idea began to materialize in his head, spawned by that
strange epiphany, and he turned in a slow circle, letting his eyes slide
over everything. The walls were bare and the shelves were empty. He
knew if he were to open any of the drawers or closets he would find
something similar. It wasn't just that room either, the whole
apartment, every single room, was the same. He never collected
anything, not one keepsake or memento, nothing since he had awoke from
his coma. Even his laptop, which he had bought to assist him in
researching his past, only contained what had been on it when it was
purchased. It now sat on his otherwise empty desk collecting dust,
abandoned along with his fruitless quest for self-knowledge. It struck
him in that moment, as he surveyed his living space, how unused it
looked. At first glance one could easily have mistaken it for an
uninhabited place, a furnished apartment awaiting a resident, and the
strangest part was that this new revelation did not arouse any desire on
his part to change it. He felt no more attachment to that particular
place then he would have to any of the other thousands of homes in the
city, or the world for that matter.
Nolan was overcome by a
rapid succession of thoughts, each one spawning a new thought, like
dividing cells, coming faster then he could examine them, taxing his
already overtaxed mental faculties. How easily he had denied the
pattern sitting right in front of him, fooling himself into believing
that he was actually trying to move on and rebuild his life when all
along he had been actively doing the exact opposite. It wasn't the lack
of material possessions that concerned him but what that lack
represented. No wonder he felt so empty and aimless.
I'm a homeless man with a place to live, Nolan thought despairingly.
Nolan drew the card Mr. Sound had given him from his pocket. He went
into his bedroom, sat down on the edge the bed, and took off his shoes,
all at once feeling more tired than he could ever remember having felt.
He didn't even bother undressing, but before he laid down, he placed
his phone on the bedside table and carefully placed the card next to it.
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