4:37 AM

With a long, exhausted blink, his glued eyes open. A couple more swift blinks followed by a resonating, endless yawn. Then, a sudden twitch, as if a thousand needles pierced his body. “What day is it?! Did I oversleep?!” The world hushed, and all he heard was the pulse of his heart drumming against his eardrums in a manic rhythm. With a still numb hand, he searched in the dark for his phone. Heavy breathing, strong palpitations, His hand picking up the pace. He lifted the blanket, tossed aside pillows, searching. Nothing. The air in the room thickened, and still, he didn’t know. Was it another dawn, or the mids of the night? For too long, his days and nights had blurred into a single, bleak darkness. Finally, he sees a black square resting on the white towel by his bed. His finger tapped the screen manically, and finally, it revealed the time: 4:37 in the morning. The drummer slowed down the beat, and all that fills the room is calming silence.

It could well have been 16:37, for the only measure of time was his exhaustion, a silent signal to rest. But rest was a luxury, and he was waiting, yearning for that one merciful day of freedom. The one that would allow him truly to rest, to gather just enough strength to endure. In his sweat-soaked bed, behind shut-down blinds, in his old apartment, with its significant musty, ever-present odor in the air. Was that day today? Will it be tomorrow? He didn’t know, only hoped.

Still tired, he sat on the edge of the bed, accompanied by the crackling sound of the old wooden frame, or was it a pop from his own joints? He hardly notices the difference. His gaze darted, a panicked search for something familiar, anything to anchor him. Still half-asleep, his pupils frantically shifted from the hollow walls to the dust dancing in the corner of the room, seeking something, anything. Then, he saw it in the window across the room: a silhouette.

It resembled a young boy, but something was unsettling. Long black hair, messy, greasy, and thin, hangs over sunken cheeks, dry, cracked skin on his wrinkled face. His mouth was slightly open, struggling with every breath. He does not understand. When their eyes met, the silhouette didn’t meet his gaze, but stared through him with vacant, glassy eyes. As he turned his head to the side in confusion, the figure mimicked his movement. He tried to understand why, and in that moment, cold sweat broke out over his body in sudden realization. He couldn’t accept it. “Is that fragile existence truly me?” he whispered. No, it couldn’t be. He shook his head in utter disbelief. His body begins to tremble, and as his eyes get watery, the silhouette slowly wiped down tears from its hollow cheeks.

He quickly turned away from the window, turning toward the blank white wall. Still shaken, he drifted, as he so often did, into a void of nothingness. Blurry vision fixed on the whiteness while his confused mind struggled to form a thought. Nothing comes. Ordinary tasks had become an unbearable drain, and the idea of the mundane morning rituals just pulled him back to limbo. With a quick shake of his head, he snapped back to present and mustered what energy was left to fight this morning.

Sluggishly, he began to move toward the bathroom. Shoulders hunched, head bowed, his feet dragging across the floor. He moved with a strange, ethereal lightness, like a leaf caught in a gentle breeze, allowing the air to carry him. His mind began to wander again, only to be jolted back to reality by a sudden burst of harsh light in the bathroom.

He reached for the worn-down toothbrush from a half-broken mug and squeezed the last drop of toothpaste from the tube. Aggressively, he began brushing his yellowed teeth, scanning the room with his eyes. Suddenly, the toothbrush slips from his weak grip and hits the bottom of the sink. His whole body trembles at the full horror reflected in the mirror. “How long has it been?” he mumbled chokingly. His skull, covered in wrinkled, worn skin and thinning hair, now revealed its naked truth: ribs pushing visibly through flesh, saggy chest a cruel mockery of a once-masculine chest.

Devastated, he crumpled, naked, onto the cold marble floor. He wanted to scream, but only silence answered, amplified by the slow flicker of the naked lightbulb overhead. There was only one villain in this desolate narrative, and he lay on the cold bathroom floor. What he had stubbornly refused all his life was now what he desperately awaited, his gaze fixed on the doorway. Staring, waiting for something, someone, but no one even remembered his face.