The Lonely Season
by Paul Hina

        It was the lonely season, the season that dominates the year. I can't seem to recall the time of year where this story takes place. I only know that there was a lonely climate that I had been carrying with me for quite some time. It doesn't seem to have been a time of profound activity for me, and yet the world around me changed so drastically. Still, looking back, it is hard for me to say whether my world crumbled or flourished during this season.
        I was living in an old hotel in an unfamiliar city. I had tried for weeks to accomplish some promising environment to compliment my work in the room that held me, but I would've gone anywhere else to escape the desperate atmosphere that consumed that room, as well as the hotel. Though I saw no evidence of life, besides my own, in that place, I could feel, and often hear, the beaten spirit of every patron, past and present. I was sure that my inability to leave that room would eventually extinguish what was left of my spirit, too. I needed a place to free myself from the hollow hallways of that hotel that led my mind chasing a labyrinth to nowhere. To find a place where I could work peacefully without the sounds of mumbling walls haunting me into the more terrifying silence at night. I wanted only to sleep in that hotel, if even that could be done peacefully.
        I decided that I needed to leave the hotel, needed to leave the city. I could take the train to a neighboring city to explore its cafés and bars for a place I felt free to work, a place that gave me the space I desired, or even better the inspiration I was so lacking.

        After arriving in the city, and walking through as many streets as I could imagine, I happened onto a café, a café that I nearly passed right by. This café was nearly buried out of sight because of the distance it held from the street. It looked somewhat like a trailer home, long and thin, barely standing, and suspended a little above the ground. There were no signs declaring it to be a café, only a small cardboard sign in the window that read 'open'. If the windows hadn't been so prominent, I would've never known it to be a café, but after spotting the lunch counter and other general instruments that traditionally decorate a café of this intimate size, I felt confident that it was indeed what I had expected.
        I entered and was surprised to find that, besides the waiter, the café was completely void of people, even any remnant that would lead one to believe that someone had recently visited. The waiter quickly seated me without a word, only gesturing towards the five booths to the left side of the entrance door. I took my seat and promptly inspected the menu that was laid out like a place mat in front of me on the table. I made clear what I wanted, and the waiter hurried away through the open side of the L-shaped counter, and began gathering items from behind the counter to accommodate my order.
        The café was very intimate, too intimate. The stools around the L-shaped counter were all covered in red vinyl just like the booths that covered the front wall, five on the left side of the entrance door, four on the right. The stools showed no signs of ever having been sat upon, no signs of weight, nor any apparent marks of age. In fact everything appeared to be new, untouched, or as I said, there were no visible clues that would lead one to believe that anyone had ever been there before myself.
        Being as I was the only customer, I could not imagine the waiter allowing me any space to work. I was sure he would constantly be over me with a coffee refill, or simply a need to busy himself around me in some way. He turned a small radio on, a rather beat up machine located atop the lunch counter, to some classical music, and looked at me smiling, as if he could sense my uneasiness. The music, however, only exemplified the café's emptiness, and intensified my own emptiness in sitting there without any additional life around me. I knew I could remain no longer.
        I got up and left some money on the counter, feeling bad that I had already ordered and was leaving without partaking in what the waiter was currently in the process of preparing for me. I gave him a nod of apologetic thanks, and half expected his expression to be one of disapproval with my leaving, but he seemed as excited to see me leave as he was to see me at all.
        I had barely made it to the end of the block when I came to the realization that I was lost. I had walked such a great distance in getting here that I was unsure of how to return to the train. I saw no one on the streets, and hadn't noticed a single passing car. My only alternative was to return to the café, and ask the waiter for directions.
        When I got back to the café I was shocked to see that not only was the small cardboard sign in the window missing, but that all the windows had been boarded up. I hesitated to approach, but felt an enormous need to do so. Upon closer inspection the building appeared to have been condemned for years. I retraced my steps over and over again, searching for some logical explanation. I was sure that only a few moments had past since I was sitting inside that very building. This was the same building. I backed away, a bit dizzy from the circumstance. The name Sarah was spray painted in black over one of the boarded up windows. Somehow, for what reason I do not fully understand, this justified the happening, and stripped it bare of its peculiarity.

****

        My room would seem to get smaller and smaller with every passing day. I tried to occupy every waking moment, which was nearly around the clock, since the incident with the café. I had just moved the bed for the third time, against the far-left corner of the room, hoping that this could possibly create a new series of pictures out of the erratic spots of thickened white paint on the ceiling. These spots created a pattern that challenged one's mind to form images if one were to stare long enough at one section, which I had been doing. I wanted to get myself up and out of bed, and the blue flowers, on the otherwise white blanket that covered the bed, seemed to grow to life, pushing me to sit up.
        Trying to free my mind of Sarah, I took to counting the cigarette burns on the carpet. The carpet was blue, alternating from light to dark every other strand of fabric, except of course for the black cigarette burns which took up a good deal of the carpet's space. One burn was particularly large, badly hidden under the dresser; I wondered how it got there. Somehow, though, none of this took my mind from Sarah, only caused her mystery to haunt me more prevalently.
        I crossed from the bed over to the window, in the right rear corner of the room, to try and create a little space inside this claustrophobic feeling, but it did not help, only reminded me of the space I wasn't making available to myself.
        Walking to the other side of the room, I opened the second of three doors. This door contained a small sink with a mirror above it. I ran some cold water into my hands, and rubbed them over my hair and face. I looked at myself in the mirror, which had a horizontal crack running directly across my face's reflection. This crack gave a misleading appearance to the proportion of my face and its features. I wondered, looking at that strange face in the mirror, how things become disconnected in reflection, and I entertained those questions that were scattered throughout my thoughts. There was the question of whether the situation with the café had ever really taken place. Had I, in a desperate plea for inspiration, created this absurd fantasy to draw from? I hadn't the answer to this question. I saw the café, alive and dead, so many times since that day, replayed every motion, every moment so often that it seemed very much like a disconnected reflection, a dream I couldn't shake to wake from.

        After many hours of suffocating myself in the room, I decided to venture out into the hollow hallways to search out the fire escape. I had no desire to leave the hotel, only a desire for fresh air and a little space to breathe it in. As I made my way down the hallway to the fire escape, I could hear voices, breathing. The hallways were very thin in that place, and the walls even thinner. There was life in this place, and I feared even the briefest encounter with the owners of those unknown voices.
        The fire escape was a tiny structure made up of a series of thin black metal bars. Three adjoining walls of these same metal bars, coming about waist high, were housing the structure to the building with large rusting bolts. Looking down through the spaces in the floor of the bars I could see a group of small girls directly below me. They were huddled together, making a circle where all of their heads, directed down, created a center point that allowed their bodies to branch out like the petals of some bizarre flower. They were fiddling with something on the sidewalk, what it was I could not tell.
        From this height it was easy to watch the people walking together, nearly the same hurried speed, moving in straight lines, comers to the right, goers to the left. All of them were closing in on an unknown destination. It occurred to me that I couldn't recall a time where I held a sense of destination. A place that instinctively carried my legs in its direction, a place where I felt I belonged to something that needed me to help it function.
         The predictably moving people began to blur, leaving streaks of their particular color behind them like tails of themselves, running into the next faded image of another's personal color and so on, smearing in perpetual motion, a line of distinctly different colors, unrecognizable where one body begins and ends. One stream of paint bleeding into scattered shades lacking any distinct characteristics, except in color.
        From the running colors, crossing calmly from the street into the more dangerous traffic of the sidewalk, was a young woman. Her steps short, confident, and unhurried. She was wearing a black floral patterned dress, tight around the shoulders and chest, flowing into a wide skirt that fell just below the knees. Her hair haphazardly tied behind her head. She walked through the comers and the goers as though not noticing them, as if they were indeed only blurs of running colors. I could not manage to distinguish any of the other people from blur into one of distinct form, but I was sure they looked at her as I did. If I knew her name I would've screamed it, and every part of my body did scream for her, all but my mouth. The young woman approached the group of small girls, who were now all gathered around their finished project. She stood with them as if she had been there during the entire construction of their game. The small girls began to giggle a little at her sudden unexpected presence. She appeared oblivious to the fact that they were laughing at her expense, laughing with them.
        The game laid out before them consisted of a series of eight blocks, each block owning its own number, one through eight. Block one sitting below blocks two and three, which met in the center of block one. Meeting atop the center of blocks two and three was block four, which sat directly below block five. Block five was under blocks six and seven, which met in the center of block five. Leaving block eight to sit above the center of blocks six and seven.
        All the girls, including the young woman, proceeded to line up behind block one. The first girl in line threw a stone into block three, and began to jump into the blocks. The other girls began to clap and sing, all together in unison. The young woman, clapping along with the other girls, quickly picked up the words to the song, as if she had remembered the song from when she was a small girl. I tried desperately to decipher the words to their song, but the exact words were inaudible from this height.
        The first girl jumped through all the blocks except block three, which contained the stone. As the first girl finished she would retrieve the stone, and hand it to the next in line. She then joined in with the clapping and singing of the other girls, and would return to the opposite side of the game, waiting for the next girl in line to join her on that side. The next girl threw the stone into block six, and began to jump into the blocks. The young woman stood there waiting patiently for her turn.
        After the fourth and final girl finished she retrieved the stone to take to the young woman, and then returned to the opposite side of the game with the other girls. All the girls, still clapping and singing, looked intently to the young woman to see if she would complete the task at hand. The young woman approached block one. She recklessly kicked her shoes off to the side of the game, and reached to the hem of her skirt, tucking it in such a way that wouldn't disturb her turn at the blocks. I could not see her face from my viewpoint, but I was sure, even if only for a moment, that her face was the face of a child's.
        She threw the stone into block six and jumped; right foot lands in block one. Jumps, left foot lands in block two, right foot lands in block three. Jumps, left foot lands in block four. Jumps, left foot lands in block five. Jumps, left foot avoids block six, right foot lands in block seven. Jumps, right foot lands in block eight.
        The small girls that had awaited her arrival on the other side of the blocks ended their song, and sped up their clapping to that of applause. She embraced several of them around the shoulders, and was quickly on her way. One of the small girls, pointing in the direction of the young woman's shoes, yelled something to the young woman, the exact words still inaudible from this height. The young woman, unfazed, continued to walk away, barefoot, delicately, like a child. Her skirt still tucked in such a way.
        I realized suddenly that I was on my knees, kneeling on the thin black bars of the fire escape. My hands are holding tightly to the thin bars that now came up head high, watching her walk away. I clutched the bars in front of me like a prisoner, a prisoner who wanted nothing more but to escape. She then turned the corner of the street, disappearing. She was unknown. Destination, sadly, also unknown.
        I gathered what was left of my composure to exit the fire escape into the hollow hallways of the hotel, completely mesmerized by this young woman. Chasing myself down the stairs, ignoring any noise, any fear of accidental encounters, searching only for the front door of the building. When I reached the front door I could see the small girls, still singing, clapping, and jumping. Then I saw the shoes, my destination.
        I entered into the noise of the street and walked, barefoot, to the shoes. I leaned over and picked one up, held it in my hands, studied it. It was black suede, two-inch heel. One piece of fabric laid from one side of the toe to the other, another piece of fabric doing the same on the opposite side creating an X out of the two pieces. I raised the shoe to my face, wanting to breathe just one breath of her step, and there was laughter. More entertained by my peculiarity than their game, the small girls had gathered around me. I turned away, with shoe in hand, and reentered the hotel.

        The shoe now lying on the table, in the rear left corner of the room, was the only piece that remained of the young woman. I began to wonder about her, who she could be. I began to think of the café. The name Sarah painted in black over the boarded up window. Could she have been Sarah? To me she was any woman, any name. I tried to imagine her painting her name on the boarded up window; she fit as perfectly as anyone would.

        As I was saying, this shoe I had on my table belonged to a young woman named Sarah. He hadn't affected her yet, though he passed in and out of her life every day. He, in fact, hadn't yet noticed her. His morning jog would take him passed her house every morning, but they both upheld separate destinies, separate lives. Soon, perhaps, their destinations would lead them to each other. Maybe, her name is not yet on the boarded up windows of the café. Perhaps the café windows are still in tact, and it is business as usual.

        The alarm clock penetrates his dream into a flimsy half sleep, until his eyes discover his bedroom, dizzy in their drowsiness. Turning to the side of the bed where the continual droning clock buzzes its low hum on the nightstand beside him, he shuts it down with a practiced routine motion, the same as everyday. Sitting up, he wipes the remaining night's sleep from his eyes, and reaches to the alarm clock for his wristwatch, which sits atop the clock. He fastens it tightly in the appropriate place, where it fits snugly on his wrist, and looks into the face of the watch. The time is where it should be, where he knew it would be.
        He slowly rises from bed, careful not to wake his wife, who is still presumably resting on her side of the bed, crosses from the bed to the bathroom, which are only a few steps apart. In the bathroom he performs his usual morning routine, brushing his teeth, and several other tedious acts of necessity. His shower will have to wait until he completes his morning jog.
        Entering the bedroom again he approaches a dresser that contains four drawers. A tall oak dresser placed across from the foot of the bed, against the wall, directly beside the doorway that leads to the second story hall. He opens the top drawer of the four and removes his jogging clothes, neatly folded by his wife. He proceeds to change from his nightclothes, and quickly begins dressing for his jog. His wife stirs a little under the blankets. He looks in her direction, fearing that she might wake. Her arm peeks out from under the blanket and he knows she will wake soon. He does not want to encounter her this morning, for what reason he is not sure, and doesn't bother to search his mind for a reason.
        Half dressed, he enters the hallway, fighting with his jogging pants as he descends the stairs, almost falling several times. He reaches the front door at the bottom of the stairs and, without hesitation, enters the morning.
        It is a cool morning. He breathes it in and begins his jog, slow at first. Since moving to this neighborhood he has not once altered his route. Strictly stepping onto the usual streets, well aware of which corners to turn in order to efficiently return him home. He can feel the dampness of the morning on his face, and though a little too cool at first, it begins to exhilarate him. His pace begins to pick up; his heart does the same. His pulse, feeling swollen, beats hot in his ears. His whole body pulsates, and he feels invigorated.
        There is some kind of innocence to these mornings. Every one a virtual time warp, causing him to feel younger, as if he had been transported into a different season of his life, when he was younger, still full of hope. This thought always makes him smile, and he allows himself to play along with the fantasy. Pretending that anything could happen, almost expecting it to. At any moment something could stumble into his mundane life and shake it up, for at least a morning anyway.
        His breath is not at all labored. He notices this as if discovering it for the first time. Only weeks ago he would be forced to cut his runs short because of the breath he wasn't able to catch. Now, however, he felt very young, fit, and nearly indestructible. His body was moving effortlessly, like a well-built mechanism, not faltering. He bends his arm to look into the face of his watch. The time is where it should be, where he knew it would be.
        Running down the same streets he had run down a hundred times, he wonders about the houses, the cars. As he watches these ornaments fly by one by one, he speculates about the lives that might revolve around them. There is a sense of complacency that comes over him. He has done very well by himself to live in a neighborhood such as this one. It is a beautiful and pleasant area, an area that one could easily presume to be built on safety and happiness.
        He grabs excerpts of images, gestures, and décor through the windows of some of the houses. There are families talking, gathered around tables for breakfast, hurrying off to the places people normally hurry off to in the morning. He speculates on their conversations, placing imaginary words and situations into the small fragment he is allowed to visit in each family's home as he passes by. It occurs to him that, from the street, to look inside any of the windows of his home would lead no one to any conclusions of family, happiness. He and his wife don't talk anymore; he can scarcely remember a time when they did. Now they argue. More accurately, she argues, he makes half-hearted attempts at listening, tries to tolerate her lonely outbursts.
        One window, a patio window, seems to shine out into the street. The curtains are wide open, or non-existent. He stumbles a little on what he observes, breaking his stride, and then stops. A young woman, dressed as if for ballet, is in perfect view, dancing. Dancing to music he can not hear, but dancing nevertheless. Her torso appears to be removed from her limbs. Right leg positioned with the toe pointed, touching the right side of the left leg's knee. The right leg permitted only to touch the ground when propelling her to spin. The torso also spins, but is still somehow disconnected. Her arms, a thin blue scarf tied to one wrist, are, with the help of the scarf, creating an imaginary mist around her circles. Those arms appear to periodically reach in to keep the torso in spin. Unlike the legs which seem only to keep themselves spinning. Her arms are constantly reaching, spinning the body over and over, move up and in, down and out, creating many beautiful, unbelievable, shapes.
        She stops dancing rather abruptly, the imaginary mist falls to the floor, and she disappears out of sight. He assumes that her music has ended, but his hasn't. He hasn't had enough of her dance. He waits. She does not return. The music ends. He continues his jog, begins his journey home, running on the disconnected legs of a man lingering in music.
        As he distances himself from her patio window he dwells in the aperture left in his mind. The young woman's image frozen in one remembered position. The moment caught, stuck on him. The image has been misrepresented, but only at his mental request. The young woman caught with red light surrounding her like thinly spread cotton. The scarf tied to her wrist, creating a blue streak, almost neon, encircling her. Her face the only stationary part of the body. Everything else spun into faded recollection, but her face perfectly still. Her features, unfathomable, were smeared by the distance of the image, faded on the edges by the red cotton and the apparent persistence of movement.
        His house is well within view now, and as he approaches he looks into the face of his watch. The time is where it should be, where he knew it would be. He looks again at his house, peers inside the windows, and runs right by, temporarily.

****

        After, finally, reaching a neighborhood he is familiar with, he races home. He enters the front door and goes straight for the upstairs bathroom, still haunted by the situation at the café, wanting to wash away the rain and the image of her laughing at him, taunting him. Upon reaching the bathroom he goes to the sink, which has a mirror above it. He runs some cold water over his hands, rubs them over his hair and face. He looks at himself in the mirror, which shows a new horizontal crack that runs directly across his face's reflection. This crack gives a misleading appearance to the proportion of his face and its features. He wonders, looking at this strange face in the mirror, how things become disconnected in reflection, and he entertains those questions that are scattered throughout his thoughts. There is the question of whether or not the situation with the café had ever really taken place. Had he, in a desperate plea to end what he already knew to be truly wrong, created this absurd fantasy to free himself of the responsibility of his actions? He hadn't the answer to this question. He saw the café, alive and dead, many times since leaving the scene, replayed every motion, every moment so often that it seemed very much like a disconnected reflection, a dream he couldn't shake to wake from.
        Out of the corner of his eye he can see that there is blood in the bowl of the toilet, located to the left of the sink, and all around the rim and floor. He looks closer. There is a lot of blood in the bowl, and all around the rim and floor. There is a steady stream of blood that trails from the bathroom into the bedroom. Through the bedroom there is still a steady stream of blood that trails into the hallway. In the hallway there is another more erratic stream of blood that trails down the staircase. As he descends the stairs, following the erratic trail of blood, he notices that the door to the left side of the staircase is open. It is his study door, and he wonders how it had been opened, the only key in his possession. Inside the doorway his wife's head hangs atop the arm of the red velvet couch. Her hair haphazardly tied behind her head, and hanging over the arm of the couch. He descends the remaining stairs and enters the study. His wife is lying on the couch, motionless. Her face is very neatly made up. She is wearing a black floral patterned dress, tight around the shoulders and chest, flowing into a long wide skirt that falls a little below her knees. Her shoes are black suede, two-inch heel. One piece of fabric lying from one side of the toe to the other, another piece of fabric doing the same on the opposite side creating an X out of the two pieces. There is blood all around the floor leading to the couch, and surrounding the couch. Her wrists have been cut, and a razor lies directly under her fallen right arm. Most of the blood, however, comes from under her skirt. The skirt is soaked clear through with her blood. The object used to penetrate her womb still unseen, probably still in the upstairs bathroom.
        There is no sign of movement. Her whole body uncomfortably positioned. He looks into her eyes, fully open, and realizes that he hasn't looked, really looked, into those eyes for a very long time. They are beautiful eyes, young eyes. He leans in to kiss her, and does. Her lips are stiff, and very red from the heavy coating of lipstick. He kneels down before her, his left hand placed in a puddle of blood on the floor below her dangling right arm. He wipes at the lipstick with his right hand. Soft at first, barely touching the lips, and then almost violently he rubs at her lips. He stops himself, raises both his red stained hands to his face and weeps.
        He rises from his knelt position on the floor and notices that pinned between his wife's hip, and the back of the couch is a heart shaped box. He dislodges this ceramic box and pries the front open, its back on hinges. A small figurine resembling a ballet dancer spins slowly inside the box. The high chime of a popular song for children, one he was once familiar with, but has long since forgotten, accompanies the dancer. There is a gold plate placed at the feet of the spinning dancer with the inscription, 'For My Lovely Dancing Sarah'. He drops the box to the floor. It shatters as it meets the blood already there.
        He runs. He runs his usual direction, straight to the young woman's house. He didn't know why, didn't know what he would say. He just wants to see her one more time, let her know that he is sorry for all he has done. He wants to run, to penetrate time, but he knows he can not. Still he runs.
        He arrives at her house, and no lights are on. There is nothing to be seen through the patio window, only darkness. Out of breath, he approaches the patio door. He bends over and looks into the face of his watch. The time is where it should be, where he knew it would be. He reaches his hand to knock at the door, but looks into the face of his watch again. He unlatches the wristband and lets his arm fall. He walks slowly away from the young woman's house. He didn't hear the watch fall, and doesn't know if it fell at all. As he walks slowly away he constantly shakes at his arm, almost as if he believed the watch was still clinging to his wrist.
        He walks through the city with no destination in mind. The streets are scattered with people and lights. Headlights skim through the people creating shadows on either side of their bodies, encircling their existence in darkness. The street lamps are periodically bright, depending on the distance between the light and the figure it shines upon. The lights cover their bodies in a brighter shadow and then the shadow dims into darkness as the figure distances itself, until the next light continues the process. He walks further noticing the shadows have become their own figures, separate from their inventors. All these shadows contort into shape and color, one by one, living, producing new shadows that leave their new composer for more shadow of themselves. It was now daylight, and this realization left room for no more shadows, and the day opens up into an army of people. He walks through the traffic of people, searching for a way out of the city.
        Eventually he finds his way to a train station, and gets on the first available train to whatever neighboring city it is headed for. He sits on the train and watches the white lights that decorate the tunnel outside, counting each light as it passes by, until the lights fly by in one long white streak, unable to be counted. Nothing can occupy him from what he can not forget. They are all gone.
        He gets off the train and walks, not knowing where he is. A good part of the day passes with him walking, not knowing where he is. He is tired and spots an old hotel. He enters this hotel and purchases a room, climbs the stairs, and turns down a hollow hallway to his door. He opens the door, immediately crosses the room to his new bed. He lies on his new bed to sleep, but the story will not leave him.

        It was the lonely season, the season that dominates the year. I can't seem to recall the exact time of year where this story takes place.

The Lonely Season by Paul Hina is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.