Henry kept time in his closet the same way he wrote letters, with sloping, careful hands. It often tried to leak under the door as he slept, but insomnia kept him closing all the cracks with his chapped fingers, mumbling curses to the dark. He took his medication, just like the doctors told him to, but they never quite seemed to help-- in fact, they seemed to distract him more than anything else with ugly-faced headaches and garish "Warning"s. Yes, it was an apathetic reading, a list of symptoms to eat and spit out like gristle, like they were food that his molars didn't know how to encompass, but time was like that too, and he knew time better than anything else, even though he could never quite fit his teeth around it. His jaw ached from trying.
Henry liked to write to Margaret quite a bit, though he didn't know her address. Usually, he wrote about his hands, what he saw and heard and occasionally, what he made for dinner: chicken and potatoes and spices that kept his mouth warm in the winter from the corner store. Sometimes he made soup. Henry wrote about a girl he loved, how she’d brown hair and big blue eyes and how small her hands were, good for holding though never quite the same as Margaret's. It'd been years since he'd seen her, years and years, and he hoped that someday, when he had enough time stored away, he'd be able to again. Henry liked to picture what she'd look like now, wondered if she still wore sundresses or the sweater her grandmother made that she used to wear when visiting family. She'd hated it. He wondered how much her eyes crinkled when she smiled, if she smiled at all now. He'd loved her smile and wondered what it looked like, all grown up, if her eyes were still blue. They probably were. He thought about them as he left the doctor's office, bag of medication tucked under his arm. Blue, blue, blue.
As he started the car, Henry was surprised at how much his hands shook. He needed more rest, more dreams, more time to sleep-- but that was impossible. Time was hard to get, even harder to take care of. For a brief moment, he considered calling Pete to take care of it, just for a day, just for a couple of hours so he could get some sleep-- but he couldn't. Pete knew Margaret, knew Henry like a brother but he did not know how to curve his hands properly or how to dream time or taste time or push time back into its little crevices. Going to Pete wasn't an option. Sighing, Henry slowed at a red light. There was too little time, too much time-- too many things intertwined with time. He missed Margaret.
The light changed and Henry spun the wheel like he spun time, fluid, focused hands. The sidewalks swayed in the heat and shimmered and he thought about the summer they met: quiet days, loud laughs, gentle sundresses, and then shook the memories from his head. They were still too big for his teeth, took too much time to think about. But, they rang through his head, staticy and muted. He tuned the radio to another station, classical this time. As he parked, the static roared into a crescendo of Strauss' Blue Danube and he turned it to a quiet orchestra, almost a whisper, a mechanical scratch. He closed his eyes for a moment, swathed himself in the music but his eyes squirmed under their lids and he wondered what Margaret would think-- she'd never liked classical music. Henry swallowed the time from the rest of the song and carried the violin melody in his footstep to the front door, the horns and the cello thrum in between his incisors; he struggled not to whistle. The song tasted like river water and corroding stone bridges and a vandal's paint.
Inside, the house was cool, as was the glass of water down his throat. He could taste the chemicals wrestle their way down his esophagus and he left the crinkle of his hospital paper bag in the kitchen, fumbling his way over to his bedroom to rest. Falling onto his bed with heavy limbs, he tucked his tired hands under his face, closed his eyes with time nestled in between his throat and mouth and a lopsided pill for sleep shoved its way down his chest.
And Henry did sleep. He slept as his closet doors creaked with time straining against them with its tired shoulders and as he slept, it began to seep out the cracks. It curled itself around him and then it slowly dissolved into hours and day, an unspoken insomnia eaten up by dreams and wrestling chemicals. Henry lay for a long, long time and his hands forgot how to curve, and he forgot the taste of time, how to push it back, though now, it was much too late-- when he woke up, it was gone. He wrote a letter, wrote until his hands ached and his eyes closed--and then, he curled up into more cramped memories of Margaret and dreamed of long days filled with time.
It was still lovely. No kidding. I hate flattery. I'm really glad to have read this. This is for the BIG random contest, right? Well, I really wanted to enter... but things happen. So yeah... I hope I've helped, even just a little. Hope you had fun writing this! =) Wish you the best for the contest. The prizes are BIG... :O
Gender:
Points: 719
Reviews: 562