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