Unsent letter #8

Dear You,

Give or take a day or two, and more or less half a memory away, it struck me this afternoon, like a forceful blow to the back of the neck from a malevolent spirit, that it has been a full year since this still regrettably one-sided correspondence began.

Such thoughts frequently occur to me when I am paying homage to your instruments of mental cruelty. Indeed, on this occasion I was chewing on the pencil you once used to write the only letter I ever received in your embarrassed and apologetic script, barely there except when held up to the halogen light and examined like a faded will and testament. Such devotion has taken me almost through to the implement’s soft lead. My tongue is now riddled with splintered wood, and near-fatal poisoning will surely follow. I hope such gruesome details worry you unduly, so that your eternity will be wracked with guilt for not dropping everything, including your motionless pretence, and rushing to my bedside.

Since you are suspended forever in aspic, eyes wide and startled to the point of splitting, yet skilfully avoiding everyone’s gaze, I am entirely unsure as to what stage of the yearly cycle of life you are currently experiencing. I, however, am enduring the joy and goodwill of Christmas. As befits the festive season, I considered it only polite to send you this round robin to keep you informed of the various dubious activities that have continued in your honour.

Everyone you ever knew courtesy of my exaggerated monologues still exists. I would like to tell you that you are sorely missed, but you’re not. They have admitted that they find it difficult to dwell upon your fading into nothing when you were only ever a nebulous presence at the best of times, and at the worst of times simply a frayed breathing, taking each of your terrified inhalations from far under a narrow unmade bed. I bring up your name in polite conversation, but the standard response of the dutiful listener is to shift uneasily from heel to heel, examine the bottom of their teacup and claim that you were a figment of my unfettered imagination. I find it increasingly difficult to argue.

Your family await any hesitant updates from abroad or afar, still unable to accept that they should be rifling through their cupboards for the crumbs of comfort they so desire. The last time I spoke to them, they informed me through distant, hollow monotones that they leave a hopeful cursor blinking at the corner of their screen, in full expectation that you will resume communicating with them from a safe distance. I did as I know you would wish, and told them to expect a message any day now, delivered in your characteristic minuscule grey Arial, just as lowercase and unassuming as they fondly remember.

Your neighbours remain curiously silent through the flimsy cardboard partitions, but have been kind enough to retrieve your key from under the dirty beige stair carpet as often as they feel able, enter your simple white tomb and dust your possessions for tell-tale fingerprints. Needless to say, the only signs of disturbance were mine - the remnants of drunken nights when I broke in to paint brutal messages across your protective walls. They have also watered your plants, even though each of the exotic varieties died many months ago. Thus, everything is entirely as you left it, but wreathed in cobwebs and carpeted with dry leaves.

As for my own news, there is so much I could tell that I don’t wish to share it. I trust, instead, that my silence will allow you to sleep on, blissfully unaware of anything except the rhythm of your own internal metronome, seventy-two beats a minute.

Yours forever,
An Unreliable Witness